Shadow Magic

CHAPTER SIXTEEN





ALCIBIADES

So. There I was, with my only ally, Lord Temur—someone who hadn’t been an ally up until a very short time ago, and maybe it said something about the state of my mind that I trusted him as much as I did, but I did. And there we were, about to be causing a whole lot of trouble for everyone, including ourselves. If Greylace had been around, he would have said something like “Any famous last words, Alcibiades my dear?” Or “I’m so very happy to be sharing this moment with such dashing figures. Oh my!” It was much nicer to be with someone who appreciated the solemnity of a moment like that one: about to go against an emperor by breaking into a veritable holding cell while all his guards, who were a whole lot better equipped than you were, came rushing at you with only one charge.

Kill.

“You seem nervous,” Lord Temur said in such a wry tone of voice that for a moment I didn’t even believe it was him. Gallows humor, I guess they called it. Even the Ke-Han must’ve had a word for it, too.

“Just feeling practical,” I said, trying not to smash my head against the ceiling as the walkways got smaller and smaller. I’d done it twice already, and the last thing we needed was to alert our enemies to our presence because I was hitting my head on things. Places like this just weren’t built for men like me. Little snakes like Caius Greylace were another story entirely.

“Your friend is very resourceful,” Lord Temur replied. “I would not worry about him. I think he can survive anything.”

“We’re not actually friends,” I began to explain, trying to find some patience within me. “In point of fact, I can’t stand the little bastard.”

“Hm,” Lord Temur said. “Time for that later, I suppose, if all goes well.”

He turned to look at me, and I could see his eyes in the darkness, black for the most part but with a flash of light. Sheer determination. I felt it too, coming up to knot in my belly; the way I always felt right before a fight broke out. A real fight, a fight that mattered.

“It is an honor to fight beside you,” Temur went on. They were like the words to some kind of ritual or prayer, and I felt awkward not knowing what my part in all this was, and even more awkward because of all the horseshit that had already gone down. “You are a worthy enemy; this makes you a worthy ally.”

“I don’t take stock in any of that,” I muttered. “Just so you know, I think all this honor and duty and fealty isn’t worth the ground a horse pisses on.”

“About as much as you do not consider the Lord Greylace your friend, I would wager,” Temur replied. “The door is only big enough for one. Who shall go out first?”

“Pardon me,” I said, with a little flourish that would’ve made Caius happy, “but I think I will.”

We could have done this better, maybe; more subtly, definitely. But that wasn’t the point. The point was keeping them from worrying too much about the two who were missing. The point was distraction.

So I put my shoulder against the door, which was too little for me anyway, said a hearty f*ck your mother to the element of surprise, and flung myself out into the mirrored hallway where, as Temur had explained, at least six men would be waiting for me.

They were quick. One lunged right at me before he’d even got over looking surprised, sword raised to kill, and this was no wooden blade made to look like the real thing. I was expecting it, of course. The sneaky bastards always had been quick, right up until the end when they’d gone and poisoned us all without our knowing it until it was too late. Lucky for both of us—the country lord and me—it was too close quarters for anyone to be using those murderous longbows that could punch through a horse, not to mention a man.

I braced my sword against the first guard, shouting bloody murder all the while because I was completely finished with sneaking around.

I heard Lord Temur directly behind me, and had a minute of feeling like we’d maybe done a terrible thing to him and his honor and whatever, getting him mixed up in our business like this. Then I couldn’t think about it anymore because the fighting had started and there wasn’t room for any thinking. I lunged forward while the poor bastard on the other end of my sword began defending himself in the cornered way that meant the fight was over before it had even really started. He knew it, and I knew it, but every man has the right to be stubborn.

I’d fought against Lord Temur in the training grounds. Shit, I’d even dueled with the bastion-damned Ke-Han Emperor himself, and both those fights had given me more than enough experience when it came to the Ke-Han style of man-to-man combat. The only thing the guard had over me was speed, which I was used to after the Emperor had turned out to be some kind of demon. The only thing you had to worry about when you were slower than the other guy was that when you hit him, you really had to connect.

Fortunately, connecting was kind of my specialty.

I hit him the next time he blocked high, throwing my weight in with the strike against his chest and sending him flying. In a neat kind of trick I couldn’t have planned even if I’d tried, he stumbled back into the next man heading toward us, blue sleeves tied back and cold duty in his eyes. I felt something knock into me from behind and realized none too soon that it was Temur, fending off an advance from yet another guard no doubt drawn there by all my noise-making.

We were in for it now. It had been a long time since I’d fought with anyone back-to-back.

“At least we know we’re in the right place,” I grunted, slamming the hilt end of my sword into some poor bastard’s face. It cracked in an ugly way that meant I’d probably got his nose, and I jerked my hand away quick before the blood started to spurt.

Temur gave a short laugh like maybe he thought I was crazy, or maybe he just enjoyed that stuff as much as I did and it was finally putting some humor into him. I almost wished I could’ve taken a break from my own fighting just to watch him and see if he looked any different now that we’d got some trouble started.

Unfortunately for both of us, the Ke-Han were stubborn if they were anything, and just then they seemed particularly stubborn about making sure I had no time for breathing, let alone sightseeing.

I blocked high with my sword, and punched another man in the gut. He doubled over with a groan; I helped him with my boot.

“Are you looking forward to becoming a hero, General Alcibiades?”

Of all the times to develop a sense of humor, I thought, wheeling around to catch another guard’s sword with my own blade. I only just did, and the way my arm ached with the impact let me know I’d caught it wrong and at too awkward an angle. It couldn’t be helped. The light there was dimmer than in other areas of the palace—because who wanted to waste lanterns on a bunch of prisoners and their guards, no doubt—and if Temur hadn’t been at my back, I’d have been worried about striking out at him too. Besides, they had all those mirrors helping them out. For all I knew, they were predicting my every move.

“If we make it out of this alive,” I told him, “I expect people to be rioting at plays about us.”

Temur laughed in his brisk, polite way, just to humor me, before I heard the thump of a body hitting the floor. We made a good team, me and the warlord, which was something I’d never have expected in a hundred years.

“I had no idea you were such a fan of the theatre,” he said, and because I was listening and not paying attention, I didn’t notice the guard I’d punched getting up.

He charged straight at me that time with a yell of his own, the movement so sharp and unexpected that I only just stepped to one side in time. Pain flared hot in my arm, followed by a warm wetness against my sleeve that meant I’d only just dodged being skewered on someone’s sword like a fried dumpling.

Being grateful for small miracles meant that I had to be glad it was only my left arm. I shook it out and swung my sword up into a defensive position. By then I was mad.

“Hey,” I said, getting Temur’s attention while the guard circled us, and more poured in from behind sliding doors and secret compartments and bastion-only-knew where else. Six guards, my mother’s left tit. The Emperor’d known we felt cornered, and he was throwing everything he had at us just to show us how futile it was to try to fight back. “You know where the prisoners are being kept, right?”

My only answer was the sharp screech of metal against metal and a shout that turned into a wet kind of gurgling.

“I beg your pardon,” said Temur, “but there was a situation I may have resolved too hastily. I did not hear your question.”

“Prisoners,” I grunted, keeping my eye on the son of a bitch who’d wounded me.

“Ah,” said Temur.

“I’m thinking you go and get them,” I elaborated. “I’ll hold ’em off here at Tiger Tail Pass or whichever one it was where we beat your sorry asses all the way back to the dome.”

“I do not think that I recall that battle,” Temur said. “I must not have been a part of the defense.”

I huffed and stepped in quick to attack before that guard got a taste for stabbing me again. The room we were in was built more simply than the others, no furniture save for the benches lining the walls and three lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was a corridor just past where Temur and I had made our stand, even worse-lit than the room. That was probably the way to the prisoners.

Would’ve been nice if the secret passageways had led us straight to where we needed to be. Would’ve been all kinds of considerate that the Ke-Han didn’t believe in.

This time, the guard squaring off with me moved too slow and I grabbed his arm, wrenching it back so that he had to drop his sword.

“Good night,” I said and clocked him in the head.

I shook my arm out again, which was a mistake, since instead of being numb it just hurt like crazy. There were more guards in the room, too, shouting and breaking formation and coming in through the walls like they were actors in that play Caius had taken me to see. Except there wasn’t anything make-believe about those swords or the duty driving the men who wielded them.

There were more guards in the room than when we’d started, now I was sure of it. If there hadn’t been bodies on the floor, unconscious or dead, I would’ve started to get really disheartened.

“Look,” I said, taking a chance on talking to Temur over my shoulder, “this is a waste of time. They’re just going to tire us out here until they can overwhelm us with sheer numbers, and then this whole thing will have been for nothing. You get it?”

“You should be the one to go on ahead since your men will trust you better,” said Temur, calm as you please.

Bastard had a point, too, but I wasn’t about to give in that easily.

“You’re the one who knows the way, remember?” I told him, before I broke a man’s jaw—and maybe my own knuckles, too, it felt like. “That’s the whole reason we brought you in the first place, so don’t go getting all useless on me now.”

I kicked a guard back, and when he fell, he broke through the wooden-framed screens and tore through the paper wall.

“Get going,” I said, “or I’ll break your head too and you’ll have to explain to Greylace and Josette what you were doing sleeping in the middle of a battle.”

“I do not know that I like the idea of explaining to Margrave Josette that I left you to fend for yourself, either,” Temur retorted. He was leaning against me a little more heavily than he had been when we’d started, and I didn’t think it was because he was preparing for a nap.

“Who’s by themselves?” I asked, insulted by the very idea. “I’m not cutting you loose, mind. I’m sending you to get the reinforcements! If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m bringing down the palace, and if you’re not sure whether I’m exaggerating or not, well then, it’s probably a good idea just to come back right away, isn’t it?”

Temur hesitated, which was his fatal error as far as I was concerned. It meant he agreed with me.

“Okay,” I said, lowering my voice, and wishing not for the first time that the walls were built of something slightly more substantial, that I could trust myself to lean against them. My arm was stinging something ferocious and dripping all down my sleeve. “Here’s how it’s going to go. I distract them while you take your chances and make a run for it, all right? Fiacre’s not an idiot, so if you explain the situation to him, I’m sure—”

An arrow whizzed past the side of my head, nicked my ear, and embedded itself in the far wall. The courtyard just beyond the wall, where the fallen guard had torn a hole in the screen, was filling with soldiers, all of whom were wielding those damned longbows.

I stepped abruptly away from Temur, hoping the loss of support wouldn’t leave him stumbling. I had a kind of plan, though it’d only just come to me a moment ago—about the time I’d realized that the chances of us both getting past had been ground right down to zero, and the chances of me holding off a palace army by myself were… Well, easier to say that if our endeavor had been a play, there wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house.

I wasn’t any kind of sentimental myself though—unlike Greylace, I didn’t have a collection of lace hankies for every occasion—and if this was truly where my play ended, so to speak, then I was sure as hell going to make it one hell of a finish.

It was the last thing I wanted to do, but it would sure as bastion prove useful. One might even call it poetic.

“As soon as their attention’s on me, you go,” I said, resigning myself quickly to not explaining the plan. Temur was a smart man. He’d figure it out for himself.

I heard a shout from behind me. Whether it was Temur or whatever man was unlucky enough to be fighting him, I didn’t know, but I couldn’t pay attention to that at the moment. Another arrow hit the wall next to my hand and I jerked it away. Things would have been so much easier if I could have just closed my damned eyes.

I was about to do something I hated, and it kind of took all my concentration to do it.

The thing no one tells you about having a Talent is that it’s a giant pain in the ass. I kept mine good and hidden for as long as I’d been able to, so long that most who found out after they’d known me still didn’t really think of me as a magician. It was why I’d up and refused the title of Margrave, back when they’d been handing them out like caramel apples after the war. General, I told them, suits me just fine. I didn’t want anything to do with being a magician, but that damned plague hadn’t taken into account who wanted a Talent—cultivated it in their bloodlines like a fine wine—and who didn’t. And after the plague, I was pretty sure I was never going to use my Talent again, no matter how useful anyone called it. Mine was a nature-based thing, the same as Josette’s, which meant we could use them pretty much anywhere and that it was real hard to stick any kind of limitations on us. Not for the first time I was really starting to wonder how they’d managed to wrap up both Fiacre and Marcy, both neat little powerhouses in their own right, and the others no slouches themselves though Ozanne was a healer, and Marius’s Talent had something to do with light. Casi and Val didn’t have any Talents to speak of. All the same, I was thinking they’d better have had a good explanation ready for why two of Volstov’s lieutenants could get snapped up that easy.

It just plain made us look bad.

Maybe the Ke-Han’d used an old trick and grabbed just one of our own to use as a hostage against the other five. I wasn’t any kind of magical scholar—needed Greylace for that, or Marius, in a pinch—but I had a feeling it was easier to neutralize just one magician, then threaten to kill him if the others so much as blinked.

Which might have meant that I was about to do a real stupid thing right about now, but I figured we’d already kicked up so much fuss by this time that it couldn’t worsen matters one way or another.

At least, I really hoped it couldn’t.

There was an underground water vein beneath the palace. It bubbled up in places as a courtyard fountain, or an ornamental pond, but the bulk of it stayed beneath the earth, like a tailor-made distraction just waiting for me to use it. It fed the hot baths Caius liked so much, among other things, but it was going to be real useful to my purpose. Even the smallest of houses needed a well. Needless to say, a palace required a whole lot more than that.

If I’d had more practice with using my Talent, I might have known better how to shape it to my will. As things stood, I just knew where the water was—uncomfortable as it was to admit it, I could feel it—and I homed in on that like a marksman on his target. As deftly as pulling back the bowstring, I yanked on the vein of water as hard as I could with all I had in me, just to get it where I wanted it to be.

The room began to shake, sending gravel skittering across the floor from where the soldiers had tracked it in. One of the guards screamed as an arrow sprouted in his shoulder, and I turned around quickly to find Temur.

He had the beginnings of a black eye, and a cut on his leg was seeping blood through the cloth, but other than that he seemed in decent enough condition. Also, he was wielding one of those longbows. It suited him.

“That’s your cue!” I shouted over the rumbling, briefly swaying off-balance. “You’ll lose your chance in a minute, so you might as well go for it now!”

I really thought for a minute he was going to make some kind of speech, like the remembrances left by poets and playwrights for fallen heroes, except if he’d tried that, I would have hit him. Instead he hesitated, and so I lunged forward and shoved him ahead of me, which seemed to snap him out of the mood quickly enough.

Not a moment too soon, since I could hear the hiss of water spraying up between the floorboards. Soon, I knew, the ground would start to crack under the pressure. Who knew where else the repercussions would be felt? I only hoped that, by then, Caius and Josette were on their horses and far away from the stables.

“I will return with your men,” Temur promised, as a geyser erupted outside and the archers howled in surprise and fear.

“Get out of here, fool!” I grunted, turning away to guard his escape.

If Temur didn’t make it through, then we were both sunk. Literally.

The polished floor beneath my feet groaned and stretched against the pressure of the water, swelling upward and knocking guards off their feet in a way that would have been almost comical if I hadn’t been fighting for my life. At least I’d be able to take the looks on their faces with me to the grave. Meanwhile, I reached out with my Talent again, wrenching the water upward this time with everything I had.

The room exploded. Splintered floorboards shot upward as if caught in an upside-down waterfall and all the lanterns went out, extinguishing even the dim light that had shone before. I could see the shadowy outlines of the guards as they got caught up in the rush, but more than that I could hear them shouting in their language, which I’d never bothered to learn, calling for backup, or help, or maybe even their own gods. They were the same gods, I supposed, who gave me my Talent in the first place. Pleading with them would do little good.

I backed up quickly, throwing myself against the wall without throwing myself through it and squinting after Temur to see whether he’d got down the hall in time. I couldn’t tell.

In the end, it probably didn’t really matter that much. Not that I was a pessimist or anything, but Temur and I had both come there with reasonable expectations of what we were going to get out of this little rescue mission, and staying intact definitely hadn’t been one of them.

Water swirled hungrily around my feet and rained down over my head, soaking me through in a matter of minutes. I heard a loud crack in the distance that nearly stopped my heart before I realized what it must have been—the giant fountain in the gardens crumbling under the pressure. Good. I hoped it was Iseul’s favorite giant fountain, and I hoped it was ruined forever.

The earth was still shaking with the aftershocks of the explosions. I readjusted my hold on my sword and squinted into the dark and the sheeting rain I’d called upon. Under such circumstances, it was difficult to tell just who was your friend and who was the guy you were trying to kill, which worked out great for me, since everyone seemed to be either clawing for their lives or running through the broken-down doors, or standing about uncertainly, not sure who to strike out at. Then I heard a shout from the hall Temur had ducked down, loud enough to be heard over the roar of the water gushing in dark geysers all around me. I didn’t know what it was, whether it meant we were winning or losing or if Fiacre had decided he didn’t feel like trusting any man at that moment and who could blame him, but I pulled as hard as I could with everything I had—if there’d been oceans nearby I’d have included those too—and just let loose.

If I was going to die in a country I hated, surrounded by soldiers I’d spent my entire life fighting and six weeks kissing up to, then I sure as hell was going to take as much of that damned palace as I could down with me.

Maybe if I’d been better educated in the ways of Talents, I’d never have tried it, since there were all sorts of rules about what you could do without draining your own life force. But the way I saw it, if it came down to dying on my terms or theirs, then I knew which side I was sticking to.

The courtyard disappeared with a boom like dragons exploding overhead, and white sheets of furious water exploded upward in its place, swallowing the trees and any soldiers yet trying to escape. The building rocked with the force of it all, knocking me clean off my feet and sending me through the far wall—grateful at last that they were made out of a bare wooden frame and mostly flimsy paper.

The water swirled after me eagerly like a hungry pet looking to be fed as I fought to get up. I blinked the droplets out of my eyes and shook my head out like the dog Caius had named me when we’d first met. One of the guards with better eyesight had finally taken notice of me, and I threw myself to one side. Moving was harder than it’d been when we’d first started that little campaign. I managed to block the guard’s sword when he swung, but only just. Even my good arm was getting tired from having to take all the weight of the sword by itself.

The only problem was that Josette was probably going to kill me if I died, or worse, if I let Temur die, whatever that was about.

I was just resigning myself to fighting about as dirty as I possibly could—biting, clawing, scratching, you name it—when all of a sudden the guard went stiff like he’d been turned to stone. A moment later he toppled over, flat on his face in the rising water.

“Is Marcelline all right?” Fiacre asked, sloshing out from behind the guard, where I guessed he’d been standing. “Are the others? They said if I used my Talent, it’d mean a quick end for them, but I thought… considering the situation…”

“Alcibiades!” Marcy sloshed through the water toward me, clutching at Marius’s sleeve. The better to drag him across the battlefield, no doubt. “Have you seen the others? I’d have torn this place down around us, only they said they’d kill the other delegates!”

She caught sight of Fiacre and stopped short.

“Ke-Han ingenuity,” I said. “No doubt everyone got that story, and they were betting on us being good and attached to our fellow delegates.”

“Yes, well I’ve no doubt that had you been in the same situation, you’d have upended the palace at once,” Marius said, just as Casimiro appeared like a shadow, with Valery behind him.

“Hello,” said Val. “Is this your rescue? Rather wet, don’t you think?”

“It’s the best I could do under the circumstances,” I said.

“Well, you know what they say,” Fiacre replied, clearly itching to take out his aggression on some of the soldiers. “You can’t choose your Talent.”

So that I wouldn’t have time to think about Fiacre and the way he—and all men like him, for that matter—rubbed my fur in the wrong direction, I paused to take stock of our numbers. Fiacre, obviously, was in tiptop shape, although I noticed there was a nasty cut on his face; probably from the debris flying in all directions a moment ago. The others were all right, though shaken, and I didn’t blame them. Marius was with Marcelline, and Wildgrave Ozanne was beside Lieutenants Casimiro and Valery. As sorry a ragtag group as I’d ever seen, but at least most of us had Talents. If ever there was a time to wish Margrave Royston was on your side—and at your side—it was right about then. Even if you did have to hope he wouldn’t blow you sky-high along with the enemy.

But no Royston, so Fiacre, the Wildgrave, Marcelline, and I would have to make do.

They called our glorious diplomatic leader “Fiacre the Spider” because of his particular skills, paralysis like a web around his enemies. I’d seen the Wildgrave, if he had time to practice his arts, bring a man back from the brink of death; the question here was only whether or not he’d have the time before we were all brought down under the Emperor’s superior numbers. And Marcelline—thank bastion for darling Marcy. She could bend metal to her will, and, considering the number of swords we’d have to go up against, I probably could have proposed to her on the spot, with Lord Temur the officiating officer at our wedding. That is, if he agreed to play the part.

Lord Temur, though, looked like he had other plans in mind for the evening. All the expression his face had been lacking ever since the first day I’d met him was out in full force. In fact, one might even have said he was grinning like a maniac and grimacing through the rest. I didn’t blame him. How many of the men he’d killed were friends, brothers in arms, soldiers he’d known since he was a little boy? Armies worked on the same principles the world around, and bastion if I was sure I couldn’t’ve done what he had.

“Here’s the plan, then,” I said, done with taking stock.

“Forgive me.” A cool voice, hard as metal that Marcy couldn’t bend, came from behind me. “But it would seem you have made a mess of my palace.”

Temur’s shoulders stiffened, and I could feel all the short hairs on the back of my neck jump to attention. I knew that voice just as well as Temur did, and the look on Fiacre’s face as he stared over my shoulder would have told me everything if I hadn’t already managed to piece it together for myself.

I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, then, because there was no avoiding what came next, I turned around. Best to get it out of the way as quick as possible—that left less time for anticipating things.

There he was: Emperor Iseul, in all his glory. His eyes were glowing mad and that necklace around his neck, creepy as ever, caught the barest hint of the light, flashing red. There was blood in it, or I was a jackrabbit’s grandpa. The whole rest of him was impeccable, though, like the image out of a nightmare. He was cool, calm, poised, without a single hair out of place. In other words, he hadn’t just been fighting off dozens of damn soldiers the way I’d been, and he’d probably been preparing himself for this inevitability all along. He was ready to fight me; he was eager. It wasn’t like the playing ground was even. But f*ck it, because I had a plan.

“Leave the others out of it,” I said, holding up my empty hand. I was between the rest and him. “I’ve used all my magic up, Your Highness, but we’ve got a fight to finish.”

“Ah,” the Emperor said. “An interesting brand of duty, I must admit.”

“Fighting you’s the only reward I want,” I said, “for saving your life.”

Everyone was real quiet after that, and I was satisfied even if the Emperor didn’t let on that I definitely had him there.

“Very well,” he said at length, and, with a flick of both arms that startled everyone around us, began to tie back his long sleeves.

We had an audience—just like last time, only more. There were the people on my side, the bare handful of them, and all of the bastards rooting for him—an assortment of guards and warlords whom I did and didn’t recognize, men caught up in the various blasts and those who’d only just joined us.

“I give you my word that none on my side will interfere,” I added, while he readied himself. “So long as you make the same promise, and we…” I cast my eyes about me for a place suitably distant from the rest of the room—a place far away enough for me to take only the two of us out and leave the rest to their own devices.

All these heroics were making my head hurt.

I wouldn’t have turned down a little Ke-Han wine, either.

“Agreed,” the Emperor said. “I too have wished to come to the conclusion of our… practice.” He smiled at me like he was commenting on what I was wearing. I spat blood out between my teeth. That creepy vial around his neck glinted red.

“You cannot do this,” Lord Temur said, stepping forward. “It is my place—”

“I have no reason to fight a dead man,” Iseul said curtly. “It is for General Alcibiades to name the place.”

“The courtyard,” I said, and jerked my head in its direction. Water was everywhere, pooling between broken rocks and fallen beams, bits of paper floating in the pools like flower petals. It was the perfect site for me to get my ass handed to me, but I wasn’t going to let it go that far.

Emperor Iseul lifted his hand, and the red-faced Jiro stepped forward to offer his sword.

“You cannot do this,” Lord Temur repeated.

I looked him in the eye. “You’re right,” I said. “About Greylace, I mean. Tell him to make sure Yana lives in high style for me.” When Temur’s expression registered confusion, I laughed. “He’ll know what I mean.”

“Enough,” Iseul said, striding past me and into the courtyard. “You have stated your objectives, General Alcibiades. You wish to kill an Emperor. In my court, men die for such treason.”

“And many other things,” I added, limping after him.

I didn’t even plan to draw my sword. The second we were clear of the others, I would burst the final waterway beneath us; we’d go shooting up toward the sky like waterborne stars, and at least I could die for some purpose, which, considering my place as a general, was my duty in life, anyway.

The Emperor, though, was always just a hair too quick for me. His sword was already drawn, and the second I’d stepped away from the others he was on me, the blade whistling through the air and coming up against mine. The impact ran through me, all the way to my toes. I swore I could feel it rock through the ground—or maybe that was another aftershock.

I didn’t have the time I needed to concentrate. He was on me, blow after blow, ceaseless and determined. Maybe he’d sensed, in his own mad way, what my plan had been. He had a keen nose for sniffing out danger. Whatever his motivations were, he was going to kill me. My arm ached so bad that my teeth were rattling in my jaw. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not he’d slice me in two—it was only a matter of when.

Good thing I’d made provisions for Yana, I thought, and brought my sword up just a hair too slow. I could see the blade of his sword as it arced downward toward my nose.

I always knew a Ke-Han would kill me. Bastion, I should consider myself lucky that it’d taken them this long.

I stood my ground and braced myself for death.

It didn’t come.

Instead, Emperor Iseul was frozen in time before me. For the first time, I saw an expression of surprise on his face—pure bafflement, I’d even say—like he’d just seen a ghost. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it—whether or not I should look behind me; if the answer would even be there.

Then Iseul fell.

It took longer than it should have for me to piece things together: the arrow in Iseul’s back—a fine arrow indeed, from one of those damned longbows. The figures in the distance, all wearing red. The shouting behind me, suddenly coming in loud and clear over the blood rushing at my temples. And the second prince, whom I recognized despite how long it’d been, clearer than all the rest, across from me on the opposite end of the courtyard.

“The punishment,” Mamoru said, his face twisted in the dark, “for treason is death.”