Tes scrambled down the stairs. She didn’t look back, not when halfway down she felt the tension break, the shudder of air and hiss of steel and the thunk of metal as sharpened points found wood.
She hit the ground floor and staggered, pain shooting through her bloody hand and wounded side, but she kept going, across the empty tavern to the door, which she flung open, only to collide with a man coming in.
She stumbled back, felt a hand on her shoulder, but there was no malice in it, only a gentle firmness as he steadied her. She looked up and saw silver light, saw red hair, parted by a streak of white, saw two eyes, one blue, the other black.
Kell Maresh, the Antari prince.
Tes was pretty sure she was supposed to bow, but her side hurt too much and he was still holding her up so she managed only a weak “Mas vares.”
Like Lila Bard, he stood at the center of a silver net, but something was wrong with the threads. Where the other Antari’s shone bright and steady, his flickered and frayed.
Broken. His magic was broken.
Kell Maresh looked down at her and frowned. “You’re hurt.”
And Tesali Ranek looked up at him and said, “So are you.”
His frown deepened, a question forming on his lips. But he never got a chance to ask, because in that moment, the building rumbled and shook from the battle upstairs, and Kell looked up, over Tes’s head, and Tes looked past him into the street and screamed, “Look out!”
Kell was already turning. Already drawing a sword from his hip as he did, the blade singing as it clashed against Calin’s ax with ringing force.
“Get back,” he warned, and it took Tes an instant to realize he was speaking to her. She retreated into the tavern, and so did the Antari prince, Calin on their heels. The second killer was just as tall as Kell Maresh, and twice as wide, his body blocking out the light of the street beyond as surely as a door.
“Now this is a treat,” he said in that broken-stone voice. “I’ve killed a lot of people, but never one like you.”
“An Antari? Or a prince?”
His face split in a wretched grin. “You know, they say you’re hard to kill. I think they’re just not trying hard enough.”
The ax swung again, and Kell Maresh produced a second sword, crossed the two in time to stop the weapon’s force.
“You’ll need more than swords,” said the killer.
“I doubt it,” said Kell. “You look like you’ve lost a lot of fights.”
Calin’s smile widened. “No,” he said. “The losers are all dead.”
He surged at the prince, who twisted, and blocked, and Tes saw her chance, and bolted for the open door. She was nearly there when it slammed shut in her face.
“Don’t let her leave!” shouted Lila from the top of the stairs. “She has the persalis.”
The Antari prince glanced at Tes, eyes wide in surprise, and in that instant, Calin spun his ax and slammed its handle into the prince’s cheek.
Kell Maresh staggered, lip splitting from the blow. His fingers went to the cut, and came away red.
“Come on, princeling,” goaded Calin. “Don’t tell me that eye is just for show.”
Kell’s hand clenched, and Tes saw his magic twitch, the way Lila’s had before she called forth the freezing spell. But then he spit the blood onto the floor.
“You’re not worth it,” he said, and as Calin roared, and came again, Kell swept his arm across a table, sending an abandoned pint into the killer’s face. The glass didn’t shatter, but the spirit splashed the killer’s front. Kell scraped his blades, and a spark leapt off, and onto Calin. It caught, fire racing over the killer’s front.
He flailed, struggling to douse the flames, and Tes knew what she had to do.
She pushed off the door, launched herself back across the tavern. She fell to her knees beneath the bar, searching with her hands until she found the hidden parcel, and pulled it out. The doormaker—the persalis, Lila had called it—the source of all this strife.
She began to tug at the threads, pulling them apart, but this time, she wasn’t just disassembling the spell. Her fingers flew across the magic, as across the room, Calin had put himself out, smoke rising from his singed dishwater hair. He surged toward the Antari prince, as the ceiling above them gave way, and Bex came crashing down. She landed in a crouch atop a table and rolled out of the way just as Lila dropped through, blood running into one eye and a wicked smile on her face.
The stories about Delilah Bard were true.
Despite the violence, and the chaos, she was clearly having fun.
She held in her hands a pair of blades now; not steel, but conjured out of stone and ice.
“Some people,” she mused, “just don’t know how to die.”
Blood darkened the cloth on Bex’s arm and thigh, and stained her cheek, and there was a feral light in her eyes, her magic burning crimson on the air around her as she called her metal home into a shield, then a sword, then a molten whip.
Tes worked faster, blood slicking her wounded hand as her shaking fingers frantically tied off a knot. The building groaned, and Tes wondered how much longer it would hold. She didn’t want to find out.
Calin swung his ax, only to find that the metal edge had disappeared, drawn into Bex’s fight, while Kell’s sword held firm, its edge gleaming with spellwork. He brought the blade to the killer’s throat, but Calin only smiled.
“I’ll get that magic out of you,” he said, “one way or another.” The floor rumbled as he spoke, and earth shot up between the slats, turned to tendrils. Kell Maresh slashed through them, but they simply parted and re-formed. One found his wrist, and clamped down, dragging his sword out of the way, exposing the prince’s chest, and throat.
“Stop!”
Four heads turned toward Tes.
She was on her feet, holding the persalis out in both hands.
“This is what you came for, right?” she said. “Then take it.”
Lila Bard looked at her in horror. Bex smiled grimly, and took a step toward her, and as she did, Tes’s fingers twitched, pulling on the strings at the edge of the spell. A light flickered through them like a lit fuse, a spark only she could see. It skated, bright and fast across the surface of the box.
And then, the persalis burned.
IV
“No!” shouted Bex, surging forward, but Lila blocked her path as the object in Tes’s hands went up in flame. It burned fast, far faster than it should—days of work, erased by a single spell—and then the persalis crumbled, like ash, between her fingers.
“Shouldn’t have done that, little girl,” growled Calin.
Bex stared, face going from scarlet to grey.
“You’re dead,” she snarled, metal coiling back around her forearm, but Lila Bard stepped between the killer and the girl.
“So keen to go again?” she asked, a sharp thrill in her voice. “You should know, I’ve been holding back.” The air whipped around her as she said it. The whole inn groaned. The light in the lanterns peeled into ribbons. “And Kell here, well, he hasn’t even gotten started.” Those ribbons of flame circled his shoulders. The wind caught his copper hair. If Tes didn’t know better, if she couldn’t see better, she might have thought the magic was his own.
The two killers finally seemed to take stock of their situation. Blood stained Bex’s skin from a dozen weeping cuts. Smoke wafted off Calin’s half-burned shirt. Two of the strongest magicians in the world stood between them and Tes, and the persalis they’d come for was nothing but a smear of soot on the splintered floor.
Calin flashed Kell a smile that felt like a threat, but said nothing.
Bex’s eyes slid past the Antari, and landed on Tes.
“You and I,” she said coldly, “are not done.”
Lila flicked her wrist, and the tavern door swung wide.
“Run along now,” she said. “Unless you’d like to stay and tell us who hired you. We can pour a pint and talk about the Hand.”