50. Chapter 50
Chapter fifty
Night cloaked Lux the moment she left the Light Market’s many lanterns behind. Random shouts and muffled sobs seeped from alcoves and behind shadowed corners, and every few feet another dark outline materialized only to fade again. Ghadra had fallen into chaos.
She kept tight against the buildings’ frames, not wanting to meet anyone lest they turn to her with clouded eyes and an insatiable hunger. Friends and loved ones were the most trusting targets, but that didn’t mean Lux wasn’t an easy one. Alone and weaponless, she was acutely aware of that fact.
She hurried down an open street, a cut-off shriek jolting her into a run. The revived could be killed like any other living being, marking the mansion as the safest place in the entire town with its large stone walls, unscalable wrought-iron gate, and the Shield. She would go there, demand admittance, and then demand the Shield be threatened into action. This was their purpose . So far, they’d done nothing.
The dark brick beneath her fingers gave way to smooth stone now, no longer crumbling but well-made and well-kept. The townhomes’ few windows were high but large and impossible to reach. The doors were heavy with iron bars defending their length. How Shaw had managed any success in his thievery flew further beyond her comprehension.
Then again, he’d accomplished breaking into the mansion just fine.
At last, there it loomed, the darkest she’d ever seen it. The lampposts had been extinguished, leaving moonlight to highlight the pointed peaks that rose to reach it, and it made the hairs stand on her arms and neck. Especially while listening to the wails of those trying unsuccessfully to breach the walls.
Lux crouched, eyeing the people pooling at the gate.
“Open the gate!”
“Help us! Save us!”
A young man scaled partway up a vine-covered pillar before crashing down to the stones with a shattering crack. He moaned once, only to have a ragged girl descend from the shadows. He didn’t move again, and the shouts at the gate quickly transformed to horrified screams as the lifeblood trailed down her chin.
Lux stood, watching the girl braid long strands of dirtied hair back from her face. She was pretty with generous curves, full lips and wide eyes. But those lips were stained silver now, and those eyes were warped and unnatural. She grinned as another figure appeared from the street opposite.
The moon caught the deep blue of Riselda’s skirts, and she smiled back at the girl even as Lux’s dagger twirled in her hand. When the revived decided to take her chances against it, it was with one quick movement of Riselda’s wrist that she fell to the cobblestones clutching a spurting throat.
Riselda wiped the blade clean against the body’s ruined dress. Pulling forth an iron key from her bodice, she stepped over the widening circle of crimson to fit it into the gate. It turned easily, and the iron gave way without a sound beneath her fingers.
Lux moved from her hidden vantage.
“You have your own key? Or did you steal it?”
Riselda chuckled. It barely reached Lux’s ears. “Of course, I have a key.” Glancing over her shoulder, Riselda studied her. “Are you unhurt? It was foolish of you to bolt into the fray. The revived don’t care who you are, and they don’t care who I am either. You could be dead.”
Lux gave the bloodied stones a wide berth, pausing at the gate. “I could be. Thanks to you.”
Riselda’s eyes narrowed. “Who is Aline?”
Lux ignored her. She had a feeling Riselda already planned to ensure Shaw’s death, effectively severing all her ties to Ghadra. She didn’t need to add Aline’s to her list. “You created a plague, you murdered Colden, you kidnapped Morana, you released tortured souls upon the town. What is the next phase of your plan now, Riselda?”
Riselda tutted, spinning on her heel toward the mansion. “I harvested Colden’s lifeblood; I didn’t kill him. Sure, I deposited some very potent powder where he would inevitably find it, but he had his own will. As for my plan? The mayor has stowed himself away within his fortress, bolting at the first cry of death. If he won’t come out…I will come in.”
“What of the Shield?”
Riselda turned to stare off into the darkened city at their back. “Why do you think I’ve left the gate open?”
“Coward.” Riselda laughed, high and amused. She shoved against the unlocked doors again. And again, they didn’t give. “I can only imagine what he’s found to bar them with. A family fortune’s worth of heirlooms, no doubt. Come along, Lucena.”
Riselda descended the steps.
“Where are you going?”
“You’d have your answer if you would simply follow me.” She paused, glancing about. “A secret entrance.”
They followed a winding gravel path across the dampened grounds. When the so-named secret entrance appeared before them, Lux scoffed. “The servants’ entry?” The archway stood between two manicured hedges, the door hidden even from the moon.
“Mock away, my dear, but there are few things the mayor pays less mind to than the help. He won’t have thought to bar this.” She hauled at the ring bolted to its front. “Leave it open, won’t you?”
Against every instinct, Lux indeed left it open, slipping after Riselda through the dark corridor until a low-burning fire greeted them, flickering from the grate of the kitchen. It was empty, most of the servants having left come nightfall to spend a few minutes at the festival before crawling into their beds. The remaining few were probably huddled in their allotted quarters too frightened to leave.
A sudden shuffle from the gloom of the opened doorway sent a shiver across Lux’s skin.
“Wonderful. They’ve found it. This way.” Riselda discovered the narrow steps leading upward with ease. When they branched off, she chose the center route. “To the ballroom,” she answered Lux’s unasked question.
The subsequent door didn’t latch, swinging back and forth with the lightest pressure. Riselda swayed through, holding it wide for her to follow. “Ah, here we are. He’s allowed in more than I expected.”
Lux stood beside her within the inconspicuous alcove, regarding the richly dressed bodies currently sobbing and whispering and gesturing in anger. Many were drinking cider and wine beneath the dimmed lamplight, escalating emotions while simultaneously dulling the senses.
Half the ballroom had become filled with them—those from the Light. Lux scanned every face. Shaw wasn’t among them.
The mayor swallowed the remains of his goblet with shaking fingers. The maroon of his jacket hid the drops spilled. He hovered amongst his favorites, pretending all was as it should be. “The Shield will protect us,” he said.
The entirety of the Shield lined the room, several posted before each window and many stationed behind the towering front doors. Lux surveyed the pile of furniture stacked against it. No wonder it hadn’t budged a fraction.
A creak on the steps echoed up from far below. Lux twitched. “Riselda—”
“Good evening, Mayor.” Riselda stepped from the darkness.
The goblet landed with a ringing clatter and rolled away. “Riselda. How did you find me?” The mayor backed behind a wide man who’d gone pale.
“I will always find you.” She cackled and the large man fainted, exposing the mayor in his entirety.
“Stay away from me, witch! You should have never returned; Malgorm has tainted you. I don’t know what you’ve done, but with all these people as my witness, you’ll die for it!” With the spittle having settled, and a snap of his fingers, the Shield moved in.
“Die? We will see who dies tonight.” Scraping escaped the alcove at their backs. “We. Will. See.” A woman with a cone of badly dyed hair shrieked first, though the others followed soon after. “Goodness,” Riselda said. “How did they get in?”
Dirt and rags gave way to smiling faces and bared teeth. The poor of Ghadra, revived and thirsty, stepped into the ballroom after having followed the trail laid out for them. One after another, they lined the length. Riselda looped her arm through Lux’s, pulling her close.
“Those of the Dark, behold your illustrious mayor in all his finery.” Riselda gestured wide. “The entire lot of them have taken from you your right to prosper, leaving you crumbs instead.” She clicked her tongue. “Despicable.”
Lux wasn’t paying attention to Riselda’s anger-stoking speech. Instead, she searched for Shaw’s father amongst the revived. She didn’t find him.
When the gaunt woman Lux recognized as the Dark Market’s purveyor of bat wings swung the fire iron she’d claimed from below stairs, the mayor blubbered. “Don’t do this. What do you want, Riselda? What do you want ?”
“Freedom—”
“You have it!”
“—and revenge.”
The color abandoned his face, his red eyes meeting hers. “I’ve apologized.”
“You apologized to a girl, long ago. Do you recognize her in me? Because I do not.”
The mayor bolted.
And giant windows splintered, glass raining in. Dark and Light alike crouched against the onslaught, screams and cries reverberating against the high walls. Though, it wasn’t until black branches wound through the gaping remains that true madness ensued.
“Riselda! What is this?” Lux staggered back from the snaking darkness slithering across the ceiling.
But Riselda had gone grey. “I don’t know.”
The whisper chilled Lux’s blood until it trickled, slow as ice, in her veins. Never, in all her time of knowing Riselda, had she heard her sound afraid.
“Help!” The large man had woken from his fear-induced slumber only to have been caught up by a twisting branch gripping him about his middle. There wasn’t anything invisible about the trees’ embrace this time as the black limb squeezed harder, setting his eyes to bulging. “Help…me…”
His wheezing breaths were the last anyone heard before he was dragged from the wounded wall.
“Saints above, devil below… What have you done ?”
But Riselda could only shake her head at Lux’s question. “How are the trees here ?”
She didn’t seek an answer. Not from Lux anyway.
Lucenaaa.
Another scrabbling body was caught up only to be hauled through the shattered panes.
We have been cheated, Lucena.
Lux grabbed the black-handled dagger from a dumbstruck Riselda.
We do not forgive. We will take them all.
More glass splintered down the halls and in the foyer. Running would save no one, and yet they all tried. When the mayor’s ankles were wrenched from beneath him, his shriek pierced Lux’s ears.
“Necromancer! Morana! Riselda! Lucenaaa!” His fingers sought an invisible handhold. He slid across the floor, drawn toward the darkness beyond.
It wasn’t a tree that held him as he thought, but a man. And not one of the revived, but of the Mayor’s own elite. “Sweet, sweet revenge. Can you taste it, Mayor? Oh, I can.”
The mayor cried aloud, “Oswald? A misunderstanding!” The man gritted his teeth against the mayor’s flailing limbs. “She was willing! I swear it!”
“I—don’t—care. She was promised—to—me!” With a last grunt of effort, he hauled the mayor upright, his arm encircling his throat.
Lux didn’t move. Not a thought of saving the mayor entered her mind, though when Morana stood up amongst the melee, bloodied and angry, she wondered if she should attempt to warn this Oswald instead. Lux was fairly sure the drying red splotches adorning the expansive gown weren’t all Morana’s own.
The furious jab of a knife to the shoulder was all the encouragement the mayor’s captor needed to release his grip. The mayor dropped like a stone, panting like a worn-out dog upon the tiles and clutching his sore neck as Morana circled the dumbfounded man. Oswald’s distraction with her drew his attention from the branches hovering above him, and when a black limb encircled his throat, he didn’t even gasp as he disappeared from the mansion.
“ What are you doing here ?”
Lux glanced to Riselda as she spoke to the trees. Though whether they gave an answer, she didn’t hear. Half of the occupants were gone now, either dead or taken, and Lux started to wonder of her own fate when Morana cried out with rage, hacking at the nearest swaying boughs with her blade as they reached for her. A pointless endeavor, and her legs were soon swept from beneath her.
“Father!”
But the mayor took one last look at his daughter from the wide ballroom doors, and then he was gone.