Van-Dal pressed against the wall, peering at the street below. Beside him, Seikhiel had gone unnaturally still. The shadow stumbled forward with an awkward, unsettling sort of shuffle. It looked shrunken and twisted, with proportions stretched and squashed at the same time. It looked wrong.
“We have to go.”
Van-Dal turned to ask what the shadowy thing in the square was, but Seikhiel had already reached the top of the stairs. If the unnatural creature outside could inspire the legendary Sword of Heaven to retreat…
Not wanting to complete the thought, Van-Dal charged after Seikhiel. He met him on the way back up the stairs, this time with Ragheiyont bundled in his arms. “What is that thing?” he demanded as Seikhiel began kicking doors open, searching for a second-story exit.
“Lost Souls,” Seikhiel said, his voice terse. “I don’t know how they got here, but we need to—” A door splintered off its hinges. On the other side of the room, the twilight outside illuminated a broad balcony. “This way.” Not breaking stride, Seikhiel unfurled shimmering white-gold wings.
“Wha’s Lost Souls?” slurred Ragheiyont against Seikhiel’s neck. He sounded so worn down, scarcely a shadow of his former buoyant self. Like the crabbed shade in the market square.
Seikhiel’s foot hit the balcony railing, and then he was in the air, shining wings outstretched. Van-Dal followed a beat behind. He looked down, and he saw the silent street below seething with countless twisted shadows. They were swarming?
“Lost Souls,” Seikhiel explained loudly enough for Van-Dal to hear, “are spirits of the dead who have somehow escaped the Void, which is where the Ferrymen take them.”
Van-Dal eyed the teeming streets below. “Is it normal for there to be so many of them?”
“Not remotely!”
Well that was a charming thought. “Do you think these ones have escaped?” he wondered. “Or were they simply trapped after perishing here in Interspace?” These could be the citizens of the eerily silent city.
Their numbers seemed endless.
“Look out!” Seikhiel swerved to avoid another Lost Soul, this one leaping at them from a sort of tall spire. Van-Dal twisted away from it, but its outstretched hand—if hand the transparent and formless appendage could be called—brushed against his wingtip. The touch passed right through his skin, leaving him feeling burned and chilled at the same time. He gasped, sucking his mask tight against his face.
“NO!” Ragheiyont abruptly howled. He scrabbled and twisted, fighting with all his strength to free himself from Seikhiel’s grip. Overbalanced, they both plummeted. Glancing below, Van-Dal saw why. A familiar cloth packet struck the pavingstones, and for a moment, the Lost Souls scattered away from it.
Wardbreaker.
Swallowing a curse, Van-Dal tucked his wings into a sharp dive. He could get it. He could snatch it up and show it to Ragheiyont and—
Two more Lost Souls passed through his wings just as he snapped them open to stop his descent. Numbed, he lost control of his flight, and he crashed hard into the street. He skidded to a stop, that damnable broken dagger right in front of him.
“Troublesome thing,” he grumbled, picking it up and tucking it away into a secure pocket.
Seikhiel and Ragheiyont landed heavily beside him, only just disengaged from each other. Ragheiyont looked around, his panic growing. “Where—?”
“I have it.”
“Good.” Seikhiel drew a sword, his expression grim as he placed himself between his companions and the Lost Souls that streamed back toward them.
Van-Dal pushed himself up off the pavement. “Is there a way to fight these things?”
“Not really.” Seikhiel’s sword had begun to glow with the same soft light as his wings. “I can hold them off for a while, but I’m no Ferryman.”
“There’s a gate,” Ragheiyont said, pointing. He sounded better, like the fever had gone already. Unexpected, but fortunate. “That way.”
Van-Dal glanced in the direction he indicated. A monster of a gate towered over the rooftops, two doors framed by the tusks of some ancient, immense beast. It looked like no one had opened it in centuries, but at that particular moment, it seemed prudent to trust a thief’s instinct for escape. Van-Dal drew his own sword. “Can you get it open?”
Ragheiyont stretched his wings wide. “I bet I can,” he said.
“We’re all betting on you,” Seikhiel called over his shoulder as he advanced toward the throng of Lost Souls. “Now move!”
Ragheiyont sprang into the air. Beside a Demonslayer, Van-Dal braced for the strangest battle he had ever faced.
Tharaiyelagh sat with his back pressed to the wall. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, and he rested his forehead on his knees. He looked small and miserable. Tempest sat beside him, and he never looked up.
“Tharaiyelagh,” Tempest prompted, keeping his voice gentle. Perhaps the direct approach was not best, but he needed answers. “May I see the gem?”
“What gem?” Tharaiyelagh’s legs muffled his voice. Neither of them believed him.
Tempest gave him a soft nudge. “You can just say no.”
Tharaiyelagh’s head snapped upward. “I couldn’t!” he yelped, his cheeks flaming crimson. “You are my lord’s beloved son, I would deny you nothing—”
“Don’t,” Tempest interrupted. “Don’t do that. I command you not to defer to me.”
Tharaiyelagh sent him a sly little grin. “So I should disobey you, then?”
“That’s the spirit.” Tempest nudged him again. “Did you mean it?” curiosity prompted him to ask, though he likely did not want to know. “Or were you just being diplomatic?” When Tharaiyelagh blinked at him in blank silence, he clarified: “You called me your lord’s beloved son.” Right, that was awkward. Tempest picked a stray thread from the hem of his sleeve.
“You… didn’t know?”
A creeping apprehension slithered over Tempest, a feeling that he had missed something important. “I know I’m his heir.” He picked at the sand between the flagstones beneath them. He hoped it was sand. “I assumed he made that decision because he didn’t want to fight me.”
Tharaiyelagh shook his head hard enough to smack his horns against the wall behind him. “He didn’t have to make you his heir to avoid fighting you. He did it because he saw that you would be a good prince. That you would take care of the people of—Why are you laughing?”
Tempest slung an arm around Tharaiyelagh’s shoulders. “Have I ever told you,” he said between giggles, “how I spent basically my entire mortal life avoiding being royal?”
“You didn’t!” gasped Tharaiyelagh, horrified. This was good. This felt like they might actually become friends.
“He did,” Akieryon said, reappearing from the darkened doorway he had ventured through. “The armory’s useless. A few good spear points. Everything else is ruined.” He took in their position with an arched eyebrow. Tempest grinned back at him.
“Join us,” he invited. “Relax for a minute.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
Tempest studied Akieryon’s face, wondering what emotions teemed beneath the surface. He could have asked, could have pried until Akieryon told him everything. Instead, he extended his hand and waited until Akieryon’s fingertips touched his own. “Come on,” he encouraged. “We’ll be home before you know it.”
Akieryon allowed Tempest to pull him down into the circle of his arm, but his mood did not lighten. Tempest let him stew in silence until he had made up his mind to speak. He always did.
“Home,” Akieryon murmured at length. “Shouldn’t that be Seyzharel?”
“What? No.” Tempest gave him a soft shake. “What put that idea in your head?”
“I think maybe I did,” Tharaiyelagh whispered.
Tempest groaned and slumped back against the wall. Did he deserve this? He didn’t deserve this. Somehow, he had managed to get himself caught between two shattered self esteems, and sometimes it dragged him to the tattered end of his patience. “Home,” he said, enunciating every word a bit more sharply than necessary, “is precisely where it has always been. I am not unduly stretched between two worlds. And neither of you has done anything wrong. Got it?”
Tharaiyelagh cringed, but Akieryon gave a nervous little laugh. He had been through similar conversations in the past. He just needed reminding sometimes.
“I know, I know, it’s just…” Akieryon sighed. “You make a really, really good dragon.”
“You do,” Tharaiyelagh agreed almost too quickly.
Tempest decided to accept the compliment and let the matter lie. They had enough to worry about already.
Like Tharaiyelagh’s mysterious pendant.
Gavi sat on the edge of her bunk, almost afraid to settle too much of her weight upon it. Its metal frame bolted directly to the wall, and sturdy ropes supported a mattress as thick as the breadth of her palm. Gavi had never seen a finer bed, and it was hers.
A matching bunk clung to the opposite wall, unmade. This room was hers and hers alone, which perhaps she should take as a sign of how woefully understaffed this castle truly was. Baaz had the room next door, a chamber identical to this one. They could have shared, but Gavi supposed that was unnecessary. When their new clothes arrived, Gavi would follow one of the scullery boys as he went about his chores. Thrin said they would assess her skills in two weeks.
It seemed an excessive amount of time.
A knock at the door intruded on her thoughts, and Gavi sprang to her feet, her heart leaping in her chest. Perhaps they had changed their minds. Perhaps she needed to begin her chores now.
“It’s just me,” Baaz announced, pushing the door open. When Gavi melted back onto the bed, Baaz closed the door behind her. “Whaddya make of this place?”
“There aren’t a lot of people here.” Gavi watched as Baaz took a seat on the opposite bunk. “I thought this was where the important folk lived.”
“Maybe it is,” Baaz said. “Maybe it ain’t. Pay’s good, but…”
Gavi swung one foot in the space between them. “I don’t trust it. This all seems too easy.”
Baaz scrunched her nose in thought. “Chaighan wouldn’t lead us into trouble. Not knowingly. And the little girl…”
“She’s going to bite,” Gavi predicted. After all, she had bit people herself until the slavers managed to beat it out of her, and she was only half dragon.
“Where d’ya reckon she came from? I don’t see any women hereabouts.”
“Just you and me.”
“Just you an’ me,” Baaz repeated softly.
It made them both uneasy.
Ragheiyont’s heart crashed against his ribs as he banked toward the immense gate. In the street below, the Lost Souls backed Seikhiel and Van-Dal against a crumbling wall. For a wild moment, Ragheiyont thought he might turn back. But what could he do to help them? With a grim set to his jaw, he continued onward.
The gate loomed ahead, an edifice of menace. Menace and corrosion. Ragheiyont slipped his injured arm from its sling and focused energy into his hand. He dipped into a dive and he hauled his arm back at the shoulder.
This was really going to hurt.
With all his momentum and all his strength, Ragheiyont slammed the wad of energy into the rust-encrusted lock. The impact screamed up his arm and through his bones, but it also jarred layers of rust from the mechanism. Spots swam before his eyes, empty black and fierce white. His vision dimmed at the edges, and he reeled, fighting to steady himself. He could not black out. He would not black out. Distantly, someone shouted his name, and Ragheiyont knew he would rather die than let his companions down.
Mustering his strength—what remained of it—Ragheiyont examined the lock. It was a monstrosity, a puzzle lock with moving parts that had not moved in centuries. Why? What lay on the other side, that the people of the city did not trust themselves not to open this door? Ragheiyont hovered a little above the lock, frowning down at it, trying to think past the throbbing in his arm. He forced his mind to follow the pins and tumblers through their intended movements. He could do it. He could open it.
Taking hold of one end of a long piece of metal, Ragheiyont braced both feet against the gate. He pulled with all his might, but nothing happened, except for the slipping of his blood-slicked grip. His wound had bled through the bandages, perhaps some time ago. It gave him an idea. Clawing at the tourniquet above his elbow, he tore it away. His blood ran freely into the mechanism, which would surely ruin it in time, but right now he needed what crude lubrication he could manage. His hand tingled and ached and throbbed, but he seized the pin again, yanked as hard as he could, and—
With a screech, the rod wrenched free. Ragheiyont tumbled backward, the piece of metal falling from his hands as he righted himself. The lock stayed in place for a moment, its parts held up by corrosion, but then gravity triumphed, and it settled into a new configuration. Ragheiyont studied it anew. Resolved, he grasped a handle beneath the lock and wrenched it a quarter turn to the left. The lock groaned, but it rotated as well. It settled again.
Ragheiyont dared to steal another glance at his companions. Seikhiel and Van-Dal had managed to maneuver themselves between the gate and the teeming throng of Lost Souls. By some dread sorcery, Van-Dal has drawn off a little of Seikhiel’s golden light into his own blades. The Lost Souls hissed as it passed through their misty forms, but regrouped almost instantly. Seikhiel faltered. With a pang too much like panic, Ragheiyont wondered how much of the angel’s strength had already been spent in feeding him. Fear galvanizing his determination, Ragheiyont turned back to the lock.
He needed to concentrate. Perhaps he had never needed a level head more than he needed it now. If Seikhiel died here…
Blinking away a sudden burning in his eyes, Ragheiyont scowled at the gates. He wrenched a knob to the left. It screamed. He screamed. He slammed a latch into place, and four bolts above the main mechanism shrieked open. Well, almost. The top one stuck halfway open. Ragheiyont flew up above it, then dropped down and dealt it a solid kick. The bolt budged, and another rod of metal fell free.
Behind him, Van-Dal growled. Ragheiyont looked, and he saw Seikhiel struggling back up from his knees. Van-Dal stood guard over him, facing the seething mass of shadows that pressed in upon them. Only burning, unblinking violet eyes might differentiate Lost Souls one from another, and it felt like they all gazed in a single direction. Past Van-Dal. At Seikhiel.
“No.” Taking up one of the fallen rods, Ragheiyont jammed it through a narrow opening in the heart of the mechanism. He braced himself, and he wrenched it sideways with every last drop of his ebbing strength. The lock groaned, but it rotated. A corkscrew piece dropped out of its center, spiraling into the soft silvery dust at Ragheiyont’s feet, and the rest of the mechanism fell open.
“Got it!” he bellowed, putting his shoulder against the gate. He pushed. Nothing happened. He struggled to muster more force, his feet sinking in the dust and his wings scrabbling the air. His blood darkened the silver sand. He had nothing left. “I can’t…” he sobbed, his moment of triumph crumbling to dust. “Please.” The gate towered over him, unlocked but unyielding. “Please help.”
Hot tears stung Ragheiyont’s eyes. To have come so far, to have dismantled that beast of a puzzle lock, only to be defeated by the towering bulk of the gate itself…
The gate shuddered with a sudden impact. Ragheiyont looked up, and for a moment his eyes refused to focus. He swallowed hope, blinked hard, and realized that Van-Dal did indeed push against the gate directly above him. His palms and forehead pressed to its weathered surface, his wings straining in the too-still air, he growled deep in his chest. Beside Ragheiyont, Seikhiel crouched low and slammed a shoulder against the gate. Together, they pushed. Ragheiyont called up what little of his strength remained, then dug deep within himself for some more. His eyes squeezed closed. His voice rang out rough and raw, foreign to his own ears.
With a squeal of rusty hinges, the gate swung too abruptly open. The three of them tumbled through into blinding sunlight. They landed in a heap, sprawled at the foot of a grassy slope. Grass? Sunlight? Underground? Wanting nothing more than to slip into dreamless sleep, Ragheiyont forced himself to lift his head, to look back toward the gate. Toward the Lost Souls.
The gate was gone. Grass stretched away as far as he could see, which, given his pained squint, was not actually all that far. Ah. He let his head fall back, let his eyes slide closed. So that was why the complicated lock. To discourage people from stranding themselves here. Wherever here was.
He could rest now. He could sleep, could drift away to oblivion. It would be so easy, lying as he did with half of Seikhiel’s weight pressing down across his chest, making every breath he drew a choice and a chore. He could just… stop. He could…
Familiar blood slicked his lips, and he fumbled blindly for Seikhiel’s open wound. Strange, how easily he had grown accustomed to feeding from the flesh. Angel blood tingled on his tongue and warmed his insides, reminding him that he did indeed want to continue breathing. A fresh tourniquet pinched down around his injured arm, and he squeaked against Seikhiel’s skin.
Poor, tired Seikhiel.
Ragheiyont started to pull back, but a hand slipped behind his head, holding him in place. “You need more,” Seikhiel said, his voice gentle but firm. Ragheiyont opened his eyes—how the sunlight stung!—and he met Seikhiel’s concerned stare. He could forget himself here, watching amber eyes watch him. He could stop worrying about his blood seeping into the thirsty earth, stop minding the illness that slept in his veins, stop fretting over his past mistakes. Maybe for a little while he could rest, could put down the mantle of Kleptomancer and just be Ragheiyont.
Such fanciful thoughts. Surely the sunlight had brought them on. Or perhaps the fever was upon him again? But no, he could feel no sign of it. Strange, how it had left him so quickly. That had never happened before, had it? Ah, but that was a thought to pursue when he had more strength. If he ever had strength again.
While Seikhiel fed him and Van-Dal bandaged his arm, Ragheiyont became aware of a sound like rushing water. Frowning, he propped himself up on his good elbow and glanced around for its source. When he found it, his eyes widened.
There, at the crest of the hill, a towering tree stretched its limbs against the boundless blue of the sky.