55. Reznyk
Chapter 55
Reznyk
YOU’RE AFRAID
M agic pulses inside me like a dying star. I push away from Kira, then spin to face the door, letting my tattered black cloak flare. Maybe, if the gods are merciful, it will hide the woman behind me.
Fyrris stands in the doorway, framed by the light of a torch in the wall behind him. His sparkling white robes gleam like a beacon as his lips pull back in a snarl. I step toward him, throwing myself between Kira and the monster.
His eyes widen.
It’s only for a heartbeat, just a flash of white before his face settles back into its customary disapproving scowl. But I saw it, and I know what it means. I’ve held knives to people’s throats, after all. I’ve hunted animals and humans, down narrow alleyways or between the knobby roots of half-submerged trees in the swamps.
I know fear.
Fyrris’s hand darts into the folds of his robe and flashes back, a trembling silver chain in his fist. His mouth twists as he spits my name in the same voice that used to make me jump. He’s acting like the Exemplar of the Towers, the man who holds all the power.
But he’s alone. And some part of him is starting to wonder if coming here by himself was such a good idea.
Magic boils inside my muscles. I leap before Fyrris can move. His eyes go wide once more, a second flash of white in the gloom. And then my knee hits his gut, and we both go down.
The silver chain flies from his hand. I feel it go, its trapped magic screaming and writhing when it hits the ground. There’s a second chain in his robes, of course, but I grab both his hands and pin them to the ground. Blood drips down my wrists from the raw wounds the manacles left behind. Crimson drops land on the immaculate sleeves of his white robe.
He growls at me. I press my knee into the center of his chest. Magic sparks and hisses across his robes.
“More are coming,” Fyrris sneers.
Of course they are. I suck in a breath; the hiss of captured magic burns along the edge of my awareness. More Exemplars, more silver chains. More nightmare steel.
I move my knee from his chest to his arm and let his hand go. Slowly, and close enough to his face that he can’t possibly pull away, I drag magic from my body and force it to harden in my palm.
Fyrris gasps, a sharp inhale. We’re so close I feel his breath draw across my skin. It’s an intimate thing, to murder someone. It brings you almost as close as a lover.
“You taught me this,” I whisper.
I grasp the solid blade of magic, then turn it over in my hand. There’s a horrible familiarity to its heft and balance, as if this deadly weapon has always been a part of me.
Because this is what I am, something hard and sharp held against the world’s throat. I lower the blade toward Fyrris’s neck. His skin ripples as he swallows.
“You can kill me,” Fyrris whispers, low and thick. “But can you stop all of us?”
My hand trembles. The blade slips a hair’s breadth. Blood pools against the magic, a gleaming red crack in his pale neck. Fyrris meets my gaze.
He smiles. My breath freezes in my throat. I’m going to kill him, and still, he looks like he’s won.
Because this is what he expects, I realize with strange, numb certainty. He taught me how to make this blade, how to turn the magic trapped inside the Towers’s silver into weapons. I raise my eyes for a heartbeat, glancing at the darkened doorway. I don’t sense the magic yet, the silver chains and panic of the other Exemplars.
But Fyrris is right. They will come. And I will have to kill them too.
The scent of blood fills my nostrils and coats the back of my mouth. We’ll have to pull their corpses from the doorway, Kira and I. We’ll have to step over white robes slick with crimson, climb stairs sticky with blood, cross the courtyard filled with Guards and Novices and the man who comes to feed the donkeys, the women who come in the morning to bake the bread.
I’ll have to kill them all.
Maybe they won’t all try to stop us. Maybe some of them will survive, huddled under straw or overturned carriages, trying not to hear the screams or see the way blood glistens on the cobblestones. Maybe they’ll live long enough to wish they could forget the way the smell of death coats the inside of your throat.
Kira and I will swim through an ocean of blood to escape this place.
And that’s why Fyrris is smiling. That’s what he expects, what he trained me to do. Even after I spill his blood across these stones, I’ll still be the Godkiller. I’ll still be his creation.
There’s a low rustling behind me. It must be Kira, moving away from the wall. Maybe moving away from me. I don’t dare turn back to look at her.
But something shifts inside my chest. Kira’s face comes back to me, her scowl when she yelled that I don’t have enough food. The tears caught in her lashes when she whispered that she doesn’t want me to die.
Fyrris looks at me, and he sees a monster. Destruction, fear, and death; that’s all the Towers have ever expected from me.
But Kira saw something else.
And maybe that’s enough to free me, one person in all the world who doesn’t think I’m a monster. Who thinks I’m worth saving.
My eyes catch on the glimmer of blood on Fyrris’s neck, that single scarlet drop at the edge of my blade of magic. Red, silver, I’ve seen enough blood to last a thousand lifetimes.
I lean back, bringing the magical blade with me. Fyrris sneers at me. Blood leaks down his neck from the place where my magic bit into his skin, and his eyes are wide. I balance the blade of magic between my fingers.
“You’re afraid,” I say.
Fyrris makes a gagging sound, as though the thought disgusts him. But his pulse beats in his neck like a beast in a trap. I frown down at him as the truth slowly reveals herself.
“Not just to die,” I say. “You’re afraid that I’m going to escape.”
Fyrris opens his mouth. I drop the blade, pressing the flat edge against his lips.
“Shhhh,” I whisper. “I’m not finished.”
His eyes grow even wider. One hand flutters against the stones, like he’s going to try to reach for the silver chain hidden in his robes. I pull magic from my body and pin his wrists to the ground.
“The Towers are running out of magic,” I continue. “Why else would you be desperate enough to murder an old god?”
Fyrris scowls at me.
“You need my magic,” I say. “You need it so badly that you’d risk making enemies of the Castinacs.”
I glance at the door to my cell. It’s still wide open. I rock back, taking my blade with me. The hallway beyond the cell door still feels empty. There’s no trapped magic in there, no silver chains. Perhaps the other Exemplars are coming. Perhaps not.
“You need it so badly that you risked coming here alone,” I say. “Didn’t you, Fyrris?”
“We’ll kill you,” Fyrris growls. “We’ll kill you and everyone you’ve ever cared about.”
I shake my head. That’s the only language he understands, violence, threats, and death. That’s all the Towers have to offer. There are no hidden wellsprings of magic, no stories come to life?—
And suddenly, another answer appears. Something the Towers can’t even imagine.
My next breath sounds almost like a laugh. Fyrris’s eyes widen again, that flash of fear, because now I’m no longer speaking a language he can understand. Hope and love are as far beyond him as the bright shining stars in the sky.
I grin at Fyrris as I point the blade directly at the swell of his throat.
“I’m leaving,” I declare. “And you cannot stop me. Nor will any of the other men or women from these Towers.”
He frowns from behind my magical blade. I lean closer, until I’m almost whispering in his ear.
“You don’t know who I love,” I whisper. “You wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
I remember Lenore, standing with her hands bound, the Towers’s attempt to find someone I love. They are desperate, just like I told Matius and Tholious. And it makes them weak.
“The Towers have made powerful enemies,” I continue. “The Magantis. The Castinacs.”
“Lenore is dead,” Fyrris hisses. But he says it like a man whispering the words of a prayer he’s never once believed.
“Lenore’s not dead,” I whisper. “She’s in Fyher’s Landing right now, telling her family everything.”
That’s what Kira implied, at least. I lean back, watching the white flash of fear in Fyrris’s eyes.
“Chase me as long as you want,” I say. “It took you years to find me, and it’s taken me one day to break your godsdamned chains. I’m stronger than the Towers, Fyrris. Both of us know it.”
He trembles. It’s answer enough. I let my magical blade melt back into oblivion.
“I’m leaving the Towers,” I declare. “I’m going to live. And whoever your enemies are, wherever they’re hiding, I’ll find them. I’ll join them. And we will ruin you.”
I step back, although I leave the magic pressing Fyrris’s wrists to the ground.
“You’ll never make it past the gates,” he growls.
Blood from my wrists stains the sleeves of his white robes. His fear is obvious now, naked and raw like the skinned rabbit on the grass outside my cabin. He was willing to die, some part of me realizes. He’s afraid to live.
“What will you tell the other Exemplars?” I ask. “When they come in here to find you alone and the chains empty, and they want to know what deal you made with the Godkiller to save your own life?”
For the first time since I presented myself to the Exemplars of the Towers and begged them to teach me, Fyrris is completely silent. His eyes are wide; his face looks almost as pale as his dirt-smeared robes.
He’s just a man, after all. Just a bitter old man, hiding behind stone walls, sending boys out to face the horrors he can’t stomach and to bring the spoils back to him.
I turn away. Kira is standing behind me with Fyrris’s silver chain in her hand. I shiver at the metal on her bare skin, imagining the scream and hiss of the angry magic trapped inside, but she can’t feel any of it. It makes her powerful, able to do things I never could. I grab her hand, pressing the silver chain between us.
Travel magic is a myth, of course. Just like talking animals, old gods, and true love.
I pull on the magic in the silver chain and the magic trapped inside my body, the last remnants of an old god that I tried to free but that chose instead, for reasons I will never begin to understand, to stay with me.
And I all but hear the magic cry for joy as I release it.