2. Reznyk
Chapter 2
Reznyk
brOKEN GLASS
I wake to the sound of breaking glass.
My eyes snap open. I gasp in the dark. My hands twist in the rough wool smothering me. Where am I? Who’s threatening me?
There’s a wave of sleepy annoyance from the far side of the bed, a prickly, disinterested presence. My heartbeat slows as I send a flicker of magic across the room to light the lamp on the far wall. A pool of light spreads across the floor, revealing the same rough floorboards and thick log walls I’ve woken up to for the past six months.
“Right,” I whisper to the empty room. “I’m an idiot.”
That prickle of awareness spikes again. I turn to the foot of my bed and meet the indolent gaze of a large, scruffy gray tomcat.
“Excuse me, Sir Xavier,” I tell the cat, with a little bow. “I beg your pardon if I’ve interrupted your slumber.”
Xavier flicks a battered ear at me and sinks his head onto his massive paws. Annoyance radiates off him like heat from a furnace. I tug my legs out of the tangle of blankets, trying not to further upset His Highness, and drop my bare feet onto the floor.
It’s cold. I run my hands along my arms, trying to fight the chill that permeated the room overnight. Nights in the high mountains are always cold. Especially for someone who grew up in the swamps.
“Look on the bright side,” I mutter out loud, continuing my conversation with the empty room. “It’s about to get a lot colder.”
It’s a bad habit for a man living alone: talking to yourself. One of many I’ve picked up in the past two years. With a sigh, I drag myself across the room. One of these days, I promise myself for the thousandth time, I’ll drag a moth-eaten rug out of the old keep, shake the century’s worth of dust out of it, and spread it in here.
But, since I’m rather terrible at fulfilling the promises I make to myself, I shuffle across the cold floor, shove my feet into my boots, pull my cloak over my shoulders, and take the lantern off the wall.
The stone keep before me sits wrapped in shadows, the only remaining structure in the middle of what was once an elven fortress for some long-forgotten war. When I first discovered this place, the lone tower squatting beneath three sharp peaks reminded me of a middle finger raised at the world.
It fits me perfectly.
My footsteps echo off the stone walls as I climb the stairs, muttering under my breath about what I’d like to do to whoever broke my wards this time. Damn it, this is exactly why I live with a cat. Because it’s not ranting to yourself if you’re talking to someone else, and the battered smoke-colored tom I saved from an ignoble drowning counts as someone.
But Xavier has the common sense to stay inside during the coldest part of the night instead of venturing into the ruined keep. Hells, not even the owls want to live in this drafty tower.
I reach the top of the stairs, panting slightly, although whether that’s from my climb or the remains of my latest nightmare, I’m not sure. Always the same godsdamned nightmare, every godsdamned night. The heavy crossbow, the silver bolt. The rising sun. The fire.
“Fuck,” I mumble under my breath.
At the top of the stairs is the only locked door in the keep, or hells, in all of the Daggers, for all I know. I fumble with the key ring while the lantern’s golden light dances wildly across the dusty stone stairs. The key rattles when I press it in the lock. I push the door open.
Moonlight fills the room, dancing across the dozens and dozens of mirrors I’ve hung on the walls. All of my traps, linked to all of my magical wards, just waiting for someone to trip them.
The lantern’s light splashes across the shards of glass littering the floor, making them glow like diamonds. My gut clenches like a fist. I know what woke me, what it had to be, but damn it, that knowledge doesn’t make this any easier to see.
Still, I force myself to walk the room, methodically checking every trap, making sure the magic humming through the mirrors is as vibrant as ever. Two of the northern traps have grown weaker, and I take the time to repair them before moving on. The western wall is fine, as is the eastern.
On the southern wall, the highest mirror hangs empty. Below it, glass shines on the floor like freshly fallen snow.
I sigh as I stare at the wreckage of magic and broken glass.
It’s exactly what I expected. Someone or something has crossed into the Dagger Mountains from the south. And from the look of the broken glass scattered across the stone floor, it’s a large group. I set these wards to warn me of any human presence or anything magical. The southern wards exploded a few weeks ago when two ravens from the Towers crossed into the valley.
I should have killed them. It’s what I’m trained to do. Hells, it’s probably what they expected. I stood on the top of the keep in the light of the rising sun, magic crystalizing into sharp blades in both my hands, and I waited for the messengers of my doom.
“But I couldn’t do it,” I mutter to the shards of broken glass. “I couldn’t even kill the godsdamned ravens.”
With a sigh, I grab the broom and start to clean the place up. Those were the last of the mirrors, which is a damn shame. I can tie magic to anything, of course, but reflective surfaces have always been the easiest for me. Now I’ll have to make due with polished pot lids, I suppose.
Dawn swells through the windows by the time I finish resetting the wards. My body aches with the strange fatigue that comes from manipulating magic. It reminds me of my time in the Towers, when the magic I used came from silver pipes and chains instead of my own body.
I pull my cloak around my shoulders as I lock the door behind me and walk down the stairs. Two things could have broken my wards: humans or magic. It was magic last time, when the Towers sent their raven scouts.
It doesn’t feel like magic this time.
I walk out of the tower and watch morning spill across the forest far below me. Golden leaves wink and shine in that carpet of green, a constant reminder that the nights are only going to get colder.
Somewhere down there, hidden under that cloak of green and gold, are the bastards who broke my wards. Magic flares against my palms, forming blades as sharp as broken glass.
They have no idea what’s waiting for them in the Daggers.