Days of Blood & Starlight(100)

Those were the words. Akiva had heard them echo backward through the shimmer of sirithar. He already knew they were Joram’s last.

And so he dropped the glamour from his sword and drew it from his sheath. He was moving within the tide of time; it would be done before the witnesses could even register their shock. Namais and Misorias began to move, but they existed in another state of being. Akiva was fire veiled in light. They couldn’t hope to stop him. He crossed the space to the emperor in the time it took a blink of surprise to crease his cold eyes.

How could he not see the change in me? Akiva wondered, and he slid his blade through the silk of his father’s robe and into his heart.





69


SCRATCHING


It was Bast who came scratching at Karou’s window. The shutters were secured by their long brass latches, and across the room Mik’s planks were sunk in their floor gouges, jammed up under handles and hinges. Door and window were both shut tight, and Issa and Karou were within, uneasy. Karou paced. Issa twitched her tail. They were waiting for something to happen.

And something did.

The scratching at the shutters. A hoarse whisper. “Karou. Karou, open the window.”

Karou shrank back. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Bast. I’m on sentry duty, I shouldn’t be here.”

“Why are you?” Karou’s anger flared. If Bast had come across the court this morning, others might have, too. And… what if they had? Karou didn’t even know what she would have done. She was so out of her depth she wanted to curl up and cry. Oh, Brimstone, did you really think I could do this? Well, he couldn’t have known that the Wolf would live through the war to thwart her at every turn, could he?

“It’s… it’s the Wolf,” came Bast’s reply, and Karou felt as though the air were sucked out of the room. Here it was, the clatter of the other shoe dropping. What had he done? “He’s taken Amzallag and the sphinxes. I saw them from the tower.”

Taken? Karou and Issa exchanged a sharp look. Karou yanked the window open. Bast clung to the ledge, wings half-open and lightly fanning to keep her balanced on her too-narrow perch.

“Taken them where?” Karou demanded.

Bast looked stricken. “To the pit,” she whispered.

Afterward Karou would wonder if Bast had been Thiago’s pawn or his conspirator, but in that moment she didn’t suspect her. Her horror seemed real, and maybe it was. Maybe she was thinking how it could have been her making that walk, with how close she had come to taking Karou’s side. And maybe—probably—she was thinking that it was a mistake that would never again tempt her.

One does not side against the Wolf.

With shaking hands Karou buckled her knife belt back on and felt better with the weight of her crescent moons at her hips. The open window was before her. Issa was at her side, but couldn’t come through it with her. Karou turned to her.

“I’ll follow, sweet girl.” Issa moved the door, scales rippling. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”

And Karou did go, out into the night. She was already away and over the rampart when Issa pulled up the planks and set them aside. She opened the door.

And came face-to-face with Ten.





70


LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR


The emperor dropped to his knees. His eyes died; the hate flickered out of them as life poured red from his chest. No one caught him, and he keeled over with a splash into the shallow channel of the bath. Water and lather bloomed pink.

A servant girl screamed.

Namais and Misorias were in motion. Akiva blocked their strikes; nothing had ever been easier.

He sensed the guards coming off their walls, their shock blunting the air. At least one got tangled in his own bell sleeve fumbling for his hilt, and cursed. As one, Hazael and Liraz unsheathed their swords.

The Silverswords might have believed they had the advantage from numbers alone—eight to two—but at the first crossing of blades their confidence evaporated. This was no exercise of parries and thrusts such as they were used to, no nice ching and chime of silver. Hazael and Liraz wielded their longswords two-handed, such power in their strikes as had rent the armor and hide of countless revenants. Decades of battle, hands black with their terrible tally, and their onslaught caught the guards like a force of nature.

They weren’t two fighting off eight. They were two cutting through eight. Slight as Liraz was, her first blow dislocated the shoulder of the guard who blocked it. His uff of pain was followed by a clatter as his sword flew from his hand; she didn’t finish him as he staggered back but spun toward another guard with a low lightning kick that took him out at the knee. His uff bit at the heels of his comrade’s, and he was down, too.

Hazael’s first strike shaved through his opponent’s blade, leaving the guard holding a pretty silver stub.

All of this transpired in the gasp between breaths—the Misbegotten schooling the swaggering Silverswords in the vital difference between a guard and a soldier—and the guards’ eyes flared wide in understanding. The posture of the remaining five changed from menacing confidence to a defensive hunch. Readjusting their grips, they formed a loose circle around the Misbegotten, and their volley of glances, one to another, was easy to interpret:

Go on, attack them.

You attack them.