Drawn Blades (4 page)

I first heard it come into the alley behind me when I slipped through the warehouse’s hidden entrance. I’d dropped the heavy bar in response, but it forced the door within a matter of moments. By then, I’d gotten up onto the balcony above, though I hadn’t had the time to make it all the way up to the concealed loft where my gear was stored.

The creature was patterned and colored like a tiger, but it moved more like a hound. Big, bear-sized, maybe six hundred pounds. It came through the broken door slowly, head low—sniffing along my back trail. I could see it tracing the route I had followed after I entered. I didn’t know how good its eyes were, or anything else about it, really. I’d never seen its like before and it practically reeked of magic. For that matter, nothing that big and obviously dangerous should have gotten anywhere near this deep into a city the size of Tien. Which made it a sending of some sort—quite possibly conjured directly into the alley.

Shrouding myself in Triss’s substance, I drew my right-hand sword and leaped lightly onto the railing that separated the balcony from the lower level, slipping back toward where I had come in. When the thing passed below me, I dropped. Landing to one side of the creature’s head, I swung my sword in a beheading arc. The short, curved blade hardly slowed as it passed through the thick neck—such were its goddess-forged enchantments.

A moment later, I skewered the head on the tip of my sword and lifted it for a better look. It was heavy, even for a head, and ugly—a nightmare of extra teeth and tusks—and it nearly cost me a broken leg. I was so busy examining it that I almost missed seeing the swing of the body’s right forepaw—almost.

The long claws shattered a crate as I crow-hopped back out of the way—the best I could manage with that head weighing down my sword. I cleared my blade and turned to face the still- standing body, drawing my second sword. It was looking right at me—if anything without a head can be said to look. The gaping wound of its neck pointed straight at my heart as it continued to slowly drool blood. The headless body took a ponderous step toward me. I backed up again and it followed.

Now what? Normally when I beheaded something, it stopped coming after me. Especially when I used my goddess-forged swords. I wasn’t at all sure how you killed a thing that could shrug that off.

Triss?
I mindspoke.

No idea.

I had a problem. A big, ugly, magical problem. The blood stopped dripping off the end of its neck about then, and . . . I realized that I had a big, ugly,
regenerating
magical problem. Even as I watched, the thing had begun to grow a fresh head. I glanced down at my sword then, checking to see if someone had somehow managed to substitute an ordinary steel blade for my own.

But no, the light-absorbing black steel of the goddess was as familiar as the hand that held it. More so, since flesh could be bent to new shapes by the right spell, while Namara’s steel was immutable and all but unbreakable. But that same divinely forged blade should have acted to magically cauterize the wound and prevent any regeneration. For that matter, it should have broken whatever spell bound the thing to life and killed it even if beheading didn’t.

The whatsis swiped at me with a paw again. I was tempted to slice it off, but a nasty thought occurred to me then and I simply slipped aside. I looked around for the fallen head and discovered that I’d made the right decision. It had begun to grow itself a new neck—and presumably, given time, a whole new body. I mentally pointed that out to Triss as I put one of the pillars that held up the balcony between me and the thing.

We need a plan,
I sent.
Ideally yesterday. I don’t suppose you could send it into the everdark?

Not in any reasonable amount of time. It’s too big and too magical. Maybe if you could get it to hold still for an hour or two . . .

Somehow I don’t think it’s going to cooperate.

It struck again, shattering the thick wooden pillar and sending splinters flying every which way. One thick sliver embedded itself painfully in the back of my hand, and I snarled an angry curse. When I yanked it out with my teeth, the taste of tarred oak gave me the first ghost of an idea, but I needed a bit more time to let it grow into something solid.

I slipped sideways, keeping one sword between me and it to fend off any more sudden attacks. When I got to the next pillar, I used a long vertical cut to shear off a corner, effectively making myself a short wooden spear.

I quickly returned my left sword to the sheath on my back and slid a foot under the jagged piece of wood, flipping it up into my hand. I was only just in time, as the beast charged me then and I had to cartwheel out of its way to avoid a vicious swipe from freshly regrown tusks. Moving in behind the whatsis, I jabbed the rough spear through one of its hind feet and down into a crack between two flagstones. It wouldn’t stop it for long, but it ought to—

“Oh, fuck.” I swore aloud as the damned thing kept moving forward without slowing. Sure, its hind leg stretched out briefly like some boneless bit of tentacle, but then the flesh simply parted around the wooden spike and grew back together afterward, like water cut by a knife.

That’s not good,
sent Triss.

No. I think we’re going to have to do something pretty drastic.

Any idea what?

Maybe, yeah, but it’s ugly dangerous. I need you to go to sleep for a bit while I see about making a fire.
I hate using fire as a weapon, but I didn’t see a lot of choice given the thing’s regeneration.

A low growl from behind warned me that the original head would soon be providing me with a second whatsis to deal with. I needed to end this fast, and I could only see one way to do that. I silently kissed off the supplies that I’d not yet had the time to retrieve and set about implementing my plan.

For starters, I took over from Triss, who had slipped into the dream state that allowed me to use his powers and senses as my own. The whatsis seemed to favor scent over sight, which meant there was little point in shrouding myself, but any sort of complex magic required that there be only one of us pulling on the reins. Honestly, I suspect he would be better at the spellwork than I was if we could arrange things that way. But, with the notably bizarre exception of the Dyads, that’s simply not how the mage-familiar relationship goes.

Magic works much like swordplay, with the mage in the role of the hand on the hilt and the familiar playing the part of the blade. I drew my shadow up from the floor and across my skin, forming it into a coating thinner than the finest hair as I bent Triss’s substance to my will.

When it covered my face and head, my senses expanded into the realm of shadow in ways that are hard to describe in any human language. Darkness took on tastes and textures that no mortal tongue or eyes ever experienced—light howled, color vanished, and textures whispered. The first time I’d clothed myself in Triss’s substance, the utterly disorienting mishmash of sensation had driven me to my knees. It had taken years of training to allow me to interpret the flood of new information in any useful way.

I got out ahead of the whatsis again now. Easy enough, since it didn’t seem to be in all that big a hurry to kill me. That was convenient, but also worrying. When someone is trying to murder you in a leisurely sort of way, it’s usually because they’re not at all concerned that you’re going to get away. Hopefully, that was out of ignorance of who I was and what I could accomplish, but somehow, I doubted it.

I took down the pillars holding up the part of the balcony overhanging the secret door—shutting it forever. That narrowed my exit options considerably, since the main entrance had been bricked over years before. It was one of the things that had attracted me to the potential fallback in the first place. That and its location deep in the Downunders where structures didn’t so much get built as they accreted, which was all the more reason to feel a pang of regret for what I was about to do to the place.

I began to work my way around the periphery of the building. I moved as quickly as I could. But the necessity of dragging one sword tip to score a continuous line along the stone flags behind me made for slower going than I’d have liked. That gave the whatsis and its slightly smaller twin time to catch up to me before I’d quite finished inscribing my circle of protection. I was just speaking the word of closing and binding as I brought my scored line back to bite its own tail when they came at me from both sides.

Even the fanciest of footwork only barely sufficed to get me clear as I took two running steps up the wall and then backflipped into a swords-tip cartwheel. The maneuver would likely have resulted in my breaking my idiot neck only a year or two before, and it certainly would have shattered the lesser swords I’d been wielding at the time. As it was, I barely held on through the shock of first one blade and then the other striking the hard flags tip first as I vaulted through the narrow gap between monsters. My hands and wrists felt like someone had struck them with hammers.

As I raced out into the center of the warehouse, I sheathed my swords and extended my arms toward the ceiling. Triss whimpered in his sleep as I shot magefire from my palms—Shades and the element of fire make for a painful mix, but it was the only plan I had, and I was all out of time. In a matter of instants, the main trusses sprouted blossoms of red and gold and I closed my fists—quenching the fires of magic. The building was aflame, and soon it would be falling in on itself.

Now I just had to get out. . . .

T
he
flame that burns the bones. Call it bonfire if you like, or the older and more honest bonefire. Whatever name you give it, a burning skeleton holds a terrible beauty.

Whether it belongs to a man or a building older than any mortal span, the result is much the same. All-devouring chaos claims another victim. From the outside it can be gorgeous, even cleansing. From the inside, all that matters is getting out.

I had deliberately left the central pillar of the warehouse untouched when I called the magefires to my service. But, before I could even begin to mount that rough-cut length of timber, the whatsis and its likewise-evil twin were upon me again. There was no subtlety to their approach—a small mercy that brought them straight in from the front. I hadn’t the time to draw my swords again, nor, frankly, the inclination—they’d done me little enough good so far.

Magic might have done me better service, but I am no Siri, nor even Faran. The finer points of spellwork have always eluded me. Beyond that, the same flames that I hoped would save me now circumscribed my shadow-centered magic as thoroughly as any chains or bars of irons would have prevented more ordinary means.

So, I put my trust in luck and a good grip where another of my order might have chosen fancy bladework or a well-tempered spell, and simply leaped as high as I could up the pillar, wrapping arms and legs tight around its rough girth and hoping that it would be enough.

The shock of impact as the paired monstrosities struck and shattered the bottom six feet of the pillar very nearly finished me. Aged oak a foot thick and iron hard though it was, the wood burst to flinders when the great beasts struck it. Slivers drove deep into ankles suddenly clutching air. The ceiling dropped a good yard, and me with it, leaving the remains of the pillar hanging from the cross braces above instead of supporting them.

I had just enough time and presence of mind to shimmy up out of reach of my ungentle friends before they could strike again. This time, with no support left, the pillar merely lost a bit more of its end. Then I was up and away, climbing into the fiery rafters above and hoping to find some hole where I might squirm out before fire devoured us all.

I could feel Triss tossing and turning deep down in the sleep of magic. As too-real nightmares of fire and sun chewed at the Shade’s substance, I pushed him farther and farther into my own weak and mortal shadow, shielding him from the flames as best I could with the stuff of my own flesh. It wasn’t enough, and the fires I had started tore angrily at my familiar, racking me with guilt.

I lost track of the creatures below as the fire and smoke that ruled the upper reaches of the warehouse became the whole of my world. By the time I reached the rafters, there was no path left to me that didn’t pass through flame. Leaping from my pillar to one of the rafters, I sprinted along its fiery length, grateful for the low boots that kept my burns to something time might treat even without the aid of magic.

Soon, I reached a point where the cracked and aging terra- cotta tiles of the roof hung inches above my head, with only the threadbare bamboo matting between them and me. By then, smoke owned my sight and had taken a good bite from my lungs as well. It was break through or die.

Five feet more, and I paused to flip the rough silk of my hood and muffler into place, costing me precious but necessary seconds. Then I unsheathed my swords and crossed my arms. Bracing the blunt back sides across my shoulders and the back of my neck, I formed them into a rough triangle pointed toward the sky.

Picking a spot more or less at random, I put the paired tips of my swords against the bamboo and drove upward, punching through matting and shoving tiles aside to create an opening into the world above. For one brief, beautiful moment, cool air and bright light surrounded me—heaven. But I hadn’t the time to enjoy it because I knew what must come next.

I took a quick, shallow breath, then closed my mouth tight and forced the desperately needed clean air back out through my nostrils, as I leaped upward. Fire followed me, erupting up and out in a huge column as the air-starved flames below suddenly found a fresh route to the sky and the fuel it brought with it. My forelock burned away, but my silks protected me from the worst of the blast, and exhaling through it all kept me from scorching my lungs.

I hit the roof on fire and rolling. Again, the thick raw silk of my assassin’s grays meant that my burns, while painful, weren’t crippling. I stopped rolling when a low and broken chimney caught me in the ribs. The roof tile was hot enough to cook fish, and my elbows burned through my sleeves as I levered myself back to my feet. Smoke was everywhere, blinding and confusing, and I might have died then if a thick twist of it hadn’t suddenly shaped itself into something like Siri’s slender form and led me through the chaos.

At least, that’s what I think happened, though the pain of my burns and a head made too light by shallow breathing and caustic fumes might have sent my mind astray. Whatever the cause—madness, or method, or merest luck, I had almost reached the edge of my strength when I passed from a smoky maze into clear air and bright sun. It happened all in an instant as I stumbled over the low coping between one roof and the next, and, with that, passed the line of protection I’d drawn to circumscribe my fire.

I fell to hands and knees, and then onto my side, gasping and coughing as I tried to breathe enough to catch up for what felt like a life’s worth of inhaled smoke. A towering cloud of gray and black rose behind me, threaded here and there with the brighter colors of active fire where it angrily clawed the sky. A few feet away, just on the other side of the magical line I’d drawn with steel and magic, stood the shape that might or might not have been Siri. It seemed to blow me a kiss in the instant before it blew away itself. And that made me doubt its existence more than anything—Siri never mixed her pleasure with her work, though she did both with rare verve and focus.

I was still trying to sort out what I ought to believe about those mad air-starved moments in the fire, when a new shape appeared where Siri’s might once have been. This one was big and broad, moving like a crippled bear, and all too familiar—my whatsis come calling again. Fire rode its back and shoulders, a burning cloak that haloed the beast and consumed it, though not quick enough by half.

It staggered as it reached the line that divided fire from freedom and went to its knees. I struck then—though I hadn’t known I had it in me till I moved—rolling up onto my own knees and driving both swords deep into the monster’s chest. It reared back, teetering on the edge of balance. I followed, using its motion to lever myself to my feet. Letting go my hilts, I took a long step back. Then I pivoted and kicked with all the strength I had left, striking the paired pommels of my blades and driving them hilt deep into charring flesh.

Before I could move to recover my swords, the whatsis staggered back out of easy reach, though whether it was dead at that point or simply overbalanced I couldn’t say. It flailed its great paws for one brief instant, then went over backward, smashing into and through the burning and weakened roof with a tremendous crash and another eruption of flame. I had one moment of clarity to curse myself for letting it take my swords with it and to wonder how long I would have to wait for the fires to cool so that I could retrieve them. Then the sky tilted up and away from me, taking the world with it.

*   *   *

“Old
fool.” It was Faran’s voice sounding angry and worried and oh-so-very-far away as she spoke quietly. “What were you thinking?”

My laugh turned into a hacking cough as I opened one eye. My apprentice was hovering just above me, her face dark and hidden by her cowl, with the stars behind her. “Not much, actually, my young monster,” I replied, or husked, really—speaking hurt. “I was too busy simply surviving.”

I took a mental inventory of my condition and, despite a host of places both hot and tender, I found that I felt better than I had any right to. I could sense Triss hunkered somewhere down deep in my shadow, though I couldn’t tell whether he was sleeping still or unconscious. I decided not to try to wake him. Given the element of fire, he would need more recovery time than I did.

“What time is it?” I asked. “And where am I?”

“A bit after midnight,” answered Faran. “The quarter hour just chimed. And you’re atop a water tank about a hundred feet from where I found you. I didn’t want to move you so far given the condition you were in, but I had to get you away from the Crown Elite and their damned stone dogs before one of them decided you were close enough to dead that they could safely get away with pushing you the rest of the way over the line.”

“Elite?” I blinked my other eye open to try to get a better view of Faran’s face, but shadow and more than shadow continued to hide her expression. “I think the dance moved on without me there. What do the Elite have to do with anything?”

“Did you hit your head along with all the burns?” Faran asked, her voice going sharp and acerbic. “Who did you think was going to show up to investigate when a damned great magical fire consumed a building no one knew was there? Especially when the famous Aral Kingslayer—assassin and former lover of the new queen—was found unconscious on the roof right at the edge of the circle that bound the flames to that one building? The royal hunt?”

“Point, though I’d have expected Captain Fei’s people to get here first.”

“The guards’ Silent Branch? They did, which is the main reason you’re alive. Fei herself sent me a whisper as to where to find you, and to come double quick, too. Royal pardon or no, the Elite still hate you far more for the two bad kings you killed than they could ever love you for putting a good queen on the throne. You’re the living symbol of their worst failures, and not a one of them would have thought twice about tipping you back into the fire and watching you roast, if there weren’t any official witnesses about to whisper in the queen’s ear.”

“True enough.”

The Elite were tasked with making sure that whoever happened to wear Zhan’s crown at a given moment stayed alive, well, and firmly in power. Utterly loyal to the throne and ruthless in pursuit of their duties, they were among the best mages and warriors in the eleven kingdoms—right up there with my own order or the Dyads of Kodamia.

Their familiars—earth elementals who took the shape of lion-like dogs the size of small horses—were just this side of unkillable. Tougher and much smarter than the whatsis, the stone dogs have come close to killing me on several occasions. The Elite made brutal and bitter enemies, and they hated me. Both for the pair of kings I’d ghosted out from under them, and for the rather large number of their fellows I’d sent to guard those fallen masters on the far side of the grave.

All of which made a bad idea of lingering in the vicinity any longer than need forced us to. I started to push myself into a sitting position, but Faran put a hand gently on my chest and spoke quietly. “Stay low. The tank’s a small one with a low rake.”

I nodded and rolled over rather than sitting up. In a city like Tien, water tanks were among the assassin’s best friends. They tended to sit up high, and most of them had dished tops to collect the frequent rains and reduce the amount of lifting and pumping involved in keeping them full. Perfect for hiding. But the smaller the tank and the lower the rake on the roof, the smaller the cover it provided. That made me plenty cautious as I crawled up to the low edge and looked for what was left of the fire I’d started.

The answer was a few errant wisps of smoke rising from a black and gaping hole in the rooftops, and not much more. . . . A gaping hole in the rooftops absolutely surrounded by Tienese officialdom. I counted three Elite, a dozen or so Crown Guards, and perhaps fifty Stingers—as we called the yellow-and-black-clad city watch. It was past time to wake Triss and get moving again, and I said as much to Faran.

She gave a relieved nod. “Wonderful, let’s be gone.”

“There’s only one little problem we have to settle before our departure.”

Faran sighed. “Of course there is. Let me guess. Your swords are in yonder big smoking hole in the ground, right?”

I smiled. I didn’t think she’d have missed them going missing. “They are indeed. On our way out, we need to amble over there, slip through the crowd, climb down the still-hot walls, and root through the ashes, all without drawing any unwanted attention.”

“Would a really big distraction help?” she asked.

“Did you have something in mind?”

“In fact, I did. I was thinking that a tiny little rooftop water tank coming apart when the enormous dragon that has wedged itself inside makes its exit is probably high up on any list of things that would draw the eye.”

I blinked at her. “Wait. What, now?”

She smiled sweetly. “Do I need to repeat myself using words smaller than ‘dragon’ and ‘water tank’?”

I touched the top of the tank with my palm. “Shang . . . is in here?”

She nodded. “You were pretty badly cooked when I carried you up here. You didn’t actually think you’d recover as much as you have just from a couple hours of lying unconscious on a rooftop, did you?”