The carriage arrived at midday, stopping a mile up the road. My ears trained by warfare, I heard the vehicle’s furtive arrival. But by the time I rushed to the road, Elena was gone, along with a small trunk of clothing and books. After ten minutes alone on the abandoned estate, without another living soul, horse or man, I began to run.
They are headed to the harbor, and from there to the colonies, likely Boston. Hypatia warned me as much. Scabbard jogging against my thigh, I accelerate toward the pier. With each footstep comes the growing realization that I have lost my sister through my own stubbornness.
“Stop! Wait!” I shout, pushing through the crowd and leaving a wake of cursing, jostled people behind me. At the end of the pier, Elena and Hypatia have reached a tonguelike wooden ramp stretching over the murky water to the ship. Their faces are lost in the shade of dozens of bobbing sails, veiled in a forest glade made of ship masts instead of trees.
Miraculously, they stop.
Waving, I gather speed toward them. Hypatia lets out a panicked shout, pushing Elena onto the narrow ramp. She draws her saber, the ring of its release audible from here, and leaps on board after her, kicking the ramp away. In a short cloak and riding dress, the woman strides aboard, shouting commands to sailors who now scurry around the deck.
Fighting a sting of rejection, I realize Hypatia’s eyes are cast beyond me. A small flock of birds take wing from the forest of masts. One lifts, then three more, another one, and then three more. Their presence sparks dread in me.
Turning, I see her. Unmistakable. A viper.
Leizu advances toward me, like a storm, gusting through knots of people with a brutal elegance that sends them sprawling and yet not cursing her, only watching her retreat, kneeling, gape mouthed with awe. In a slim black dress with long sleeves and a short collar under a gray cape, she strides with one arm extended behind her back, clutching an unsheathed sword. This time there is no hidden parasol, no decorum. Her eyes are lowered, jaw set, a mane of black hair trailing her like a living shadow.
She must have been watching the Pool all along, waiting for her prey to flee.
With a flick of her wrist Leizu unlatches her cape and lets it flutter to the muddy pier. Her features are vaguely Asiatic, skin light and unblemished, long fingers wrapped around a red hilt. She sweeps the long sword before her. Xuan Yuan, the divine sword of the Yellow Emperor. The sight of that weapon sends a tremor of recognition through my entire body. I have known it before, somewhere, sometime.
As the cape falls away, it reveals a layer of black armor that glitters like snake scales. Each plate has a crescent shape—made from dozens of anima, overlapping one another to form a flexible surface. Her plum-dark lips peel back, flashing canines as she dashes right past me.
This beast wears the souls of the conquered.
The dreadful realization snaps me out of my trance. Shoving, bellowing at the people near me, I rampage ahead. Carriers and carters scatter, dropping their goods as Leizu lowers her head and launches into a zigzagging sprint.
The cutter is throwing its ropes and pushing away into the congested harbor. Her crew moves frantically, motivated by the shouted commands of Hypatia. The woman stands on the bow of the ship, her cloak shining, blue fabric trimmed in white and gold. Saber up and pointing at the pier, she shouts sharp orders over the snap of the wind.
But she is too late.
Smaller than I, Leizu reaches the end of the pier first. She moves like spilled wine, flowing between people, sliding through the shifting spaces. And as I crash through luggage and frightened passengers, I can only watch with a tight throat as she vaults aboard the ship.
Leizu lands, perched on the wooden railing.
Silhouetted by a wavering stripe of sunlight on the dark river, Hypatia leaps from the bow, slowed in my eyes by the power of the moment, her saber poised over her head in both hands, cloak flowing behind her like angel wings. Cresting the sun, she is a vision of light as she falls toward the crouched figure of Leizu and her dark copper blade.
As the blades ring, a thousand people stagger.
Heads turning, a murmur rises up. I stride through the last of the crowd, briefly losing sight of the ship in the dirty faces of a silenced multitude. For this instant, these mortals are deeply, animalistically aware that they are in the presence of something greater than themselves—something humanlike, but not of man.
I smell smoke.
A rising haze illuminates long fingers of dusky sunlight. Hypatia, curls of blond hair flying, is a blur of white and gold. Falling through shadow and light, she trades ringing blows with the darting form of Leizu. I hear the cackle of rising flame, see the deckhands scattering for buckets, some leaping overboard.
A lantern has smashed, spilling its fuel. The wick has lit a heap of furrowed sails piled on the deck. Low curls of flame already writhe across the loosely gathered canvas, sheets of smoke rising from it.
Standing at the edge of the pier, I press my saber against my hip, kneel, and dig in my boots. I break into a sprint toward the drifting ship, launching myself off the dock with the force of a cannonball. Soaring over the foul water of the Thames, I crash through the deck railing with both legs and roll, scabbard slapping the hard wood of the deck.
I can’t see Elena.
The fire is alive, growling, thick smoke already pluming. The canvas sails were dry as tinder, cultivating a blaze that will make a quick meal of this wooden ship. Crawling to my feet, the world fades into a hellscape of light and dark. High above, the mast has erupted with a bright mane of climbing flame. Specks of ash drift like snowfall through crimson rays of sunlight. Bodies are sprawled across the deck, efficient sprays of arterial blood glistening in crisscrosses over the wood.
And strange blue flashes of light are strobing through roiling smoke.
“No!” I shout, charging.
Leizu stands in the bow, both hands over her chest. Her armored cuirass has been pulled down, the throat of her dress torn wide open, her breasts exposed. Azure lightning streaks from a relic trapped under her fingers, pressed between her collarbones, the flaring light stinging the air, dancing in veinlike traces away from her body.
The monster is feeding.
Elena is crouched below the bow, on the main deck, surrounded by a curtain of flames. She holds a stiletto in each hand. The body of Hypatia is at her feet. The woman’s head is tilted back, neck exposed and lips twisted into an expression of agony. Her sword lies a few yards away, half engulfed in flames.
Hypatia’s throat and chest have been savagely ripped open, gear work and ribs exposed—her anima taken.
I leap across blazing timber, eyes on my sister.
Something dark flickers in the flame and Leizu’s blade slashes through smoke. Elena pirouettes away from the attack, her small blades folded against her forearms. A child-size demon, fearless, she leaps back at the swordswoman. Leizu retreats, her body twirling, skipping off the heaped corpses of deckhands and avoiding the twin fangs of Elena’s weapons.