Lightfall, p.28
Lightfall, page 28
Cistine’s heart slammed into her throat. She forced aside all thought of the dead Order, the book thief in the temple, everything but the imminence of danger while they lunged behind a broken chunk of the wall and took cover. She slung her bow from across her chest, and Daria nodded. “You shoot for the eyes and maw. We’ll cleave through those limbs.”
Quill spun his sabers in a deft twist, loosening his wrists. “On my count.”
He numbered back from three, then they broke cover: Cistine shooting upward, Quill and Daria darting around the stone. The Atrasat was far closer than she expected, moving more swiftly than seemed natural, and she had to adjust her aim. The seconds that cost her were few, but irredeemable. The arrow skirted wide, smashing off the creature’s hide rather than through its eye. But Quill and Daria were there, dodging its limbs and ducking low, sweeping their weapons with cold precision into the Atrasat’s nearest tentacle.
The blades bounced off.
Cistine’s yelp of shock morphed into a scream when the Atrasat caught Daria across the stomach and hurled her against the hillside. She cracked headfirst against the steps and faltered with a groan, digging her blade into the soil as she struggled to rise. Then she fell back, eyes rolling to the whites.
Molten terror poured down Cistine’s chest and back. She fitted another arrow and fired, drawing the Atrasat’s focus from the unconscious hunter. This time, the beast knocked the projectile away when it wheeled to face her. For a moment, Cistine was consumed in the breeze of its turning and trapped in the shadow of its body. Those unblinking, opaque eyes branded her as the creature churned closer, and a cold certainty rooted her in place, arrow dipping, tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth.
This shouldn’t be happening. The temple this creature attacked, the dead within, or this battle. None of it was right, none of it natural. This was what Saychelle and Iri had warned her about, what Thorne believed she was sensing—that their world was imbalanced. Gentle creatures becoming savage. Men melting into the wind. Temples, ransacked.
Nazvaldolya.
Cistine flung herself sideways just as the tentacles slammed down, rutting the soil into clots. She heaved back the bowstring and fired, and this time the arrow landed true, sinking into one of those milky eyes. The Atrasat swiveled, another thick, moist gag coming from its throat, the arrow-riddled eye jumping wildly and waving the shaft like a flag of surrender. But it still had five eyes to spare.
The creature plowed toward her again, and she rolled to escape, but the barb of a tentacle caught her leg in mid-twist; though it didn’t pierce her battle armor, it encaged her ankle, pinning her in place. Cursing at the top of her voice, she yanked out her dagger and struck at the beast’s hide, but that, too, rebounded.
They needed Svarkyst steel—or an augment.
Cistine’s free hand leaped toward the pouch on her hip.
With a bellow of fury, Quill plowed into the Atrasat’s face, hacking deftly. Fluid burst from two of the eyes, and the beast moaned, reeling backward. Its barbs retracted and Cistine stumbled to her feet, testing her ankle. Though it pulsed with pain, she could still put weight on it.
The Atrasat wrapped Quill around the waist, plucked him from its face, and hurled him against the stone wall. His pained shout launched Cistine into motion; she scrambled to retrieve her bow, then watched it shatter into splinters when the Atrasat clambered over it. Reeling backward, she sprinted to Quill, sliding onto her knees beside him and heaving at his arm. “Quill, get up!”
“I’m trying,” he gasped, face drained of color, struggling to catch his wind. The Atrasat’s tentacles pounded the dirt as it hauled itself toward them; Cistine dragged Quill’s arm across her shoulders and heaved him up, his feet fighting to anchor into the soil while they staggered backward toward Daria.
That bubbling, scalding wrongness choked Cistine; it should’ve been easy to retrieve the ink, to return to Stornhaz safely. Instead, Quill was bleeding, Daria unconscious, and Cistine’s ankle buckling underneath her as the Atrasat bore down on them. Its tentacles sailed out, and she ducked, yanking Quill aside as the temple archway exploded into lethal chunks of stone raining down behind them.
“Augments, Cistine!” Quill shouted in her ear. “Use your stars-damned augments!”
She fumbled the pouch open with her free hand and drew the first flagon. But then she hesitated.
It was lightning. She could feel it without even breaking it open.
Just for a moment, she froze—but that was a moment too long.
The Atrasat’s tentacle snapped out, snatching Quill from her grip, and as it tore him away, the stillness in Cistine’s mind fractured. She reached back into her pouch and roared, a sound so brutal the Atrasat itself hesitated.
The whip of augmented fire cracked out in less than the heartbeat it took her fingers to choose, to break, to answer the call forever ringing at her side. It severed the Atrasat’s limb, spraying inky blood. Quill reached out as he fell, bringing the loose flames into his middle as he tucked and rolled across the saturated grass. He came up sliding on both knees with sabers in hand, swiping them on the bloody leaves, coating the silver steel black. Then he pushed the fire out from his armor’s threads and down the metal, flames dancing against the Atrasat’s blood as the creature retreated and rallied.
Cistine lunged to Quill’s side, power coursing over and in and through her, and whirled to place her back to his as the Atrasat coiled to strike.
“Don’t stop,” he growled. “Whatever you do, don’t stop moving.”
The tentacles speared at them from left and right. Cords of fire met it on one side, flame-licked steel on the other. Cistine and Quill held their ground and guarded each other’s backs, twisting together, the perfect steps they’d practiced in training session after training session. No strike could force them apart now; no blow winnowed past their joint guard. Gouts of fire plumed from Cistine’s armor with every kick and swipe and jab. Quill’s sabers left shimmering embers and glinting stripes sizzling on the air whenever he struck. Back-to-back, they whirled and pivoted, ducking blows, dismantling the Atrasat a piece at a time until it was the one retreating, its shrieks and moans rending the air.
But they couldn’t leave it alive in this state.
“Push in!” Quill bellowed, and they drove after the Atrasat like a blade, a storm of steel and fire unrelenting until the creature broke down against the edge of the temple. Cistine shouted for a sword and Quill tossed it to her, then dropped to one knee. Spilling the last of her fire into the blood-coated blade, she stepped up on his broad shoulders, pushed off with all her might, and soared, steel leading in an arch above her. The fiery sword sank to the hilt in the Atrasat’s forehead and slid through its skin like butter, spraying ichor as Cistine descended gracefully into the tangle of its hacked-apart limbs, feet touching down on the grass soft as the last steps of a waltz.
Absolute, ringing silence as she jerked the empty bottle from her pouch and let the blood run into it, then corked it, tucked it away, and turned to face Quill. He looked as filthy as she felt, blood dripping from the tips of his hair, his jaw and fingertips. Battlelight burned in his eyes, crying out to her adrenaline-laced ecstasy.
“Are you all right?” she panted.
“Sore, but I’ll survive.” He put out his hand, and she passed his saber back to him. “You?”
“Tired. But not…” she gestured vaguely, words burned up in the wildness of the aftermath.
“Like you’re going to collapse. Like the rest of us after we use that much of an augment.” He shook his head and sheathed his blades. “You’re a wonder, Cistine. Sometimes I think you should be teaching us.”
“Power or not, that, what we did just now…” she staggered toward him and gripped his shoulder. “That was all you. Everything I learned from you.”
Eyes brighter now, almost like tears, Quill covered her hand with his and squeezed. “Proud to be part of it, Stranger.”
They lingered a moment, the wind wheezing through the temple cracks, the Atrasat’s blood plopping on the grass behind them. Cistine shivered, the memory of dead visnprests and wrecked bookshelves slithering through her mind. “We should check on Daria.”
“Let’s hope she’s all right.” Quill grimaced, looking over the fallen Atrasat. “It’s going to be a long walk to anywhere we can find new horses.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
OF ALL THE things he faced in his short time as Chancellor, this would be the most complicated to maneuver…and the most necessary. To prove himself a man of his word, unlike his lying, ruthless predecessor—few things could be more vital. And with Cistine and Quill in the Sotefold, Tatiana and Aden in Nordbran, and the trial at a halt, Thorne needed something to occupy his mind. Still, his palms gathered sweat like tavern rags when he knocked on the door of Chancellor’s sanctum.
“Come in,” Bravis called from inside.
The room was cozier without all five Chancellors there. A deep blue ghostlamp burned on the table where Bravis hunched over a heap of papers. Thorne brushed the door shut, descended the steps, and leaned back against the banister with his arms folded. “Ration requests?”
Bravis scowled. “I swear by the stars, it’s always during our season. Every winter, some of the villages beg Stornhaz to meet their needs.”
Thorne grunted sympathetically. “If Tyve and Yager supply more seeds in the spring, it might help lessen Traisende’s burden.”
“Are you a farmer now as well as a Chancellor?”
“I had to be many things in the wilds.”
Bravis looked up from the papers, his scowl lessening. “And did you come here to hover and watch me work? Eager to see how it’s done?”
Thorne chose to ignore that subtle jab. “Actually, I came to propose a law.”
“I thought that was what Kanslar’s season was for. To pass the laws Kanslar champions.”
“As it happens, this law would directly affect my ability to govern my Court as I see fit. My hope is that if it could be passed before Kanslar’s season, I could position my people preemptively and give my Court the best chance for a smooth transition.”
Bravis sat forward, clasping his hands loosely on the endless mound of papers populating the desk. “And what is this law you find so advantageous?”
Thorne straightened up from the banister and approached him. “You know I’m having some issues with my Tribunes still showing loyalty to my father. I’ve been considering the best way to attack the issue.” He balanced his fingertips on the table and leaned his weight into them. “I propose an alteration to the laws of leadership. I would like the freedom to place women on my Tribunal.”
Bravis tipped his head, eyes hooding with contempt. “Sometimes, with all your posturing, a man could forget how long you’ve been away from the Judgement Seat. You don’t remember how things are done in the Courts.”
Thorne counted through five breaths, praying for patience. “I recognize the struggle you and the other Chancellors faced holding my father at bay. But don’t you forget that I was fighting him just as fiercely from the wilds, where I had three women in council among my cabal. Their advisement and wisdom were among my greatest assets.”
“It would be different if we were at war. Women are more than fit for battle, but for matters of law, they’re too emotional.”
“Let’s discuss emotion, then,” Thorne said. “When my grandmother died, I let my emotions rule. I hunted down my father, and if not for a woman’s intervention, I would be dead today. Don’t insult me by suggesting either that when you and Maltadova considered surrendering to Salvotor the night Kanslar set, that decision was bereft of emotion.”
Bravis’s eyes narrowed. “But a woman’s emotions can make her petty. That’s dangerous to the rule of law.”
“Men are just as vindictive. That’s what I’m facing now with my Tribunes. And with Benedikt and Valdemar, if that’s escaped your notice.”
Bravis changed tack. “The Tribunals are already in place. It would create chaos to introduce women into them now.”
“You don’t have to change yours. Nothing in the law would make it mandatory to select a woman as Tribune—though I highly recommend it. It would be at the Chancellor’s discretion.”
“Until the women all get it into their heads that they’re owed the position, and what then? This is pointless talk, it would never pass.”
Thorne shifted his weight as a twinge of pain charred the back of his right calf. “If you write this law, both Yager and Kanslar will support it. It will succeed.”
“Then ask Yager to propose it, and I’ll consider supporting it in their season.”
“Then Kanslar would lose two seasons—crucial time to consider women for our Tribunal. And if you truly intend to support this law, then it doesn’t matter who passes it, you or Yager. Your support would be behind it just the same.”
Bravis scoffed, returning to his papers. “Except if I propose it, then it’s Traisende that becomes the laughingstock of the Courts.”
“Yes. Traisende, the Court under the constellation of the Wayfinders. Four powerful women who helped set Valgard free.”
Bravis slowly raised his eyes. “Pressing me to pass the laws you want. Just like your father.”
A personal stroke this time—Thorne had him. “If I was like Salvotor, I wouldn’t ask. But I am asking, Chancellor to Chancellor. Pass this law so I can conduct my Court how I see fit. There’s no reason the Courts should hold one another at arm’s length, dangling favors.”
“I hope you would take the same position if Traisende came to you for a favor in your season.”
“I would. I consider the other Courts my allies, not my rivals. My hope is for unity in self-governance…something my father never believed in.”
“Good luck with that. Short of war, I doubt anything would blend the hearts of our Courts that way.” Bravis reclined, arms folded, looking him up and down. “If I press this law through, I’d like something in return: Kanslar’s aid with all of this nonsense.” He waved an arm at the ration requests. “Your Court is in session before mine. If you’ll agree to double the labor in the territories during the harvest and require more stock for the stores in the city, I’ll write up your law.”
Thorne frowned. It was much to ask of the territories at the advent of winter, but if he shifted the demand onto the backs of the larger, more prosperous cities and towns, and worked with Tyve and Yager to increase the prosperity of the planting season… “I’ll adjust the requirement for the stores if the law passes.”
“Now you’re thinking like a Chancellor!” Bravis chortled. “There may be hope for you yet.”
Thorne hoped that the jumping muscle in his jaw wasn’t visible as Bravis bent back over the stack of papers. “I’ll look forward to seeing that law drafted soon, Chancellor.”
Bravis waved his hand. “I’ll consult with my Tribunes and write the proposal tomorrow.”
Thorne accepted the clear dismissal and climbed the steps to the door.
“Thorne,” Bravis called up to him as he opened it, “a word of caution: tread lightly. I have less reason to hold you in contempt than Valdemar or Benedikt, but I’m still not fond of you coming to the Sanctum with propositions of laws that benefit one Court only: yours. If you make demands like these of Tyve and Skyygan, you may find enemies hiding in all the same shadows your father did.”
A chill riding down his spine, Thorne stepped out and shut the door. In the silent, empty hall, he glanced aside at the mirror next to the door. For an instant, he could see what others often found in his face: the contours and flecks of darkness like Salvotor’s.
“Will I ever be rid of you?” he muttered.
A lurch of cold wind whispered against him, trying to sound like distant, cruel laughter. Shaking it off, Thorne flexed his fingers and strode down the hall. It was time to return to his other solace—his best distraction.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
NO ONE REMARKED when Cistine, Daria, and Quill returned to Stornhaz astride different mounts than when they left, nor on the black stains in their hair and armor which not even vigorous washing in every stream between the Sotefold and the city could wash away.
Cistine almost didn’t mind the reminder of what they’d faced. There was some thrill to reliving the battle with Quill and teasing Daria about missing all of it around their campfires on the journey back, and even a trace of melancholy when they parted ways with her at the courthouse gate.
“This hardly seems worth all the trouble you went through,” Cistine said ruefully as she poured the last of the payment into Daria’s coinpurse. “That concussion was terrible, I’m so sorry.”
Daria chuckled, weighing the purse in her palm. “Please. It’s what I do for a living. I knew the risks when I went along.”
“You could’ve fooled me with how easily that Atrasat brought you down.” Quill reclined against the gate with arms folded, smirking. “If it wasn’t for us, you would’ve been minced on those steps.”
“If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place. So I’d say it all sorts itself out in the end.”
“Really, Daria, thank you.” Cistine squeezed her shoulder. “If there’s ever anything we can do…”
“Just keep me in mind the next time you have a creature to hunt.” She winked, tossed Quill a smile, and sauntered back down the bridge.
“I like her.” Quill pushed up from the gate. “Tati would, too. But stars help me if they ever meet, that’s more trouble than one man should have to handle in a lifetime.”
Cistine’s laughter sobered quickly as they ducked through the gate into the peristyle. It was her first time alone with Quill since they roused Daria after the battle; days’ worth of unspoken apologies all gathered at once on her tongue. “I’m sorry about the lightning augment. If I hadn’t hesitated…”
“Don’t worry, all of us have bridges we’re afraid to cross,” he said easily. “When the time’s right, when it means enough, you’ll manage it. Until then, we’ll make you the best flame-wielding augur in the north.”
