Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Ifling myself up the last few steps and over the smooth stone tiles of the tower’s highest platform.
There’s little room to maneuver. I’m going with the best strategy the environment allows: barrel straight into my target and knock him down.
If I can pin him to the floor with the sword at his throat, I don’t think there’s much his ravaged accomplices can do. And once Stavros gets here, possibly with the king’s soldiers in tow, he can take Wendos into custody.
That’s the idea, anyway. I didn’t take into account the scourge sorcerers’ other accomplices, unwilling or not.
I hurtle across the floor, the blade flashing. Wendos starts to whirl at the thump of my feet, too slow.
Just as I’m about to dart between two of the slouched figures to reach him, an invisible force smacks into me from the side with a crackle of supernatural power.
He must have commanded at least one daimon to play guard.
I stumble to the side. As I regain my balance and whip back toward him, Wendos’s eyes widen.
He snaps out a sharp, nasal-toned phrase of words I don’t recognize, and all at once I’m battered by a supernatural onslaught.
Blows pummel me from chest to calves as if a heap of invisible fists are slamming into me all at once. I hiss in pain and stagger backward, and something flits past my ankles, knocking my feet out from under me.
Right at the top of the stairs.
I skid down several steps as I grope to catch my fall. My tailbone jars against the stone edges, pain spiking up my spine.
The royal sword goes spinning out of my grasp, clattering farther down the stairwell.
Just as I manage to snag my fingertips on a small groove in the wall, Wendos sweeps his hand downward as if in command. I don’t know what specifically he was hoping his harnessed daimon would do, but the stairs above me shake and crack.
Chunks of stone surge toward me, some bashing into my body, others tumbling past me after my sword or raining down through the widening crack onto the stairs below. One particularly large piece crashes down on my shin.
I can’t hold back the cry of pain at the agony that lances through my leg. It feels like the blasted chunk of marble shattered the bone.
A pit has opened up in the stairwell between me and the platform where Wendos is standing—six steps fallen away, leaving nothing but empty air unless I want to plummet a story down onto the rubble beneath.
My magic surges through me, battering me from the inside out in turn for a chance to fight back. I clamp down on it with the clenching of my jaw.
My power scratches at my innards with its usual frustration, but not nearly as overwhelmingly as the last several times. As if the fact that I let it out yesterday has partly appeased it.
I don’t know whether to rejoice or cringe away from that fact.
I wrench myself into a proper sitting position, pushing close to the wall and gasping for breath. I could have jumped that distance, even going upward, at my best.
But not with a broken leg.
We can still do this, Ivy, Julita says, but there’s a wobble in her voice. I know you can find a way.
Wendos saunters up to the crumbled edge of the platform to gaze down at me. There’s no hint left in his tense face of the supposedly concerned guy who implored me to turn to him if I needed help.
As he takes me in, his eyebrows rise. He makes a scoffing sound. “You. How the hell did you find me?”
I scowl at him. “You aren’t half as smart as you’d obviously like to believe you are.”
Wendos lets out a low chuckle. “And yet somehow no one other than me realized Julita had noticed our activities. I took care of her before our past association became a liability with my colleagues, and I’ll take care of you too. The others will never even have to know.”
Oh, he thinks so, does he? Julita sneers.
A shiver wriggles down my spine. I bite my tongue against the urge to throw Wendos’s bragging remarks back at him, to tell him he never managed to get rid of Julita entirely.
The less he thinks I know, the more chance there is that he’ll give me an opening.
I still have two knives—one at my right hip and one in my left boot. But I can’t risk reaching for them while he’s looking straight at me.
The pain in my shin throbs on. Unwanted tears sting behind my eyes.
“What’s happened?” one of the armless figures mumbles, turning her sightless face. “Are we—”
Wendos doesn’t even look back at her as he snaps out his answer. “I’ve got it under control. Go back to focusing on your gift.”
I lever my body carefully so that my legs are parallel with me on the same step, giving me a more stable position. “The gifts aren’t really theirs when you and your ‘colleagues’ convinced them to make their sacrifices for your purpose, are they?”
I pitch my voice so the slouched figures can hear me too. If I can make them rethink helping him…
I can’t see them from here, but none of them says another word.
Wendos gives no indication of concern. “It’s their purpose too. It’ll be better for all of us. Even you, no matter what Julita told you before she died. Who are you really?”
I edge my hand a little closer to my hip. “A friend. Unlike you.”
“As you apparently knew from the start.” He bears his teeth in an unnerving grin. “That’s fine. We’ll figure it out.”
His gaze sweeps over me, lingering on the blood streaking through my underskirt from my broken shin and how gingerly I’ve angled my leg. “I don’t think you’re walking down all those stairs, so you can stay right there until I’ve finished the important part. Then I’ll deal with you.”
He starts to turn away.
My heart lurches. I can’t just stand here and watch while he compels a horde of daimon to ravage all of Florian.
The men can’t be that far behind me, can they? With the Crown’s Watch at their heels?
Simply delaying him might be all I need.
I blurt out the first thing that pops into my head, desperate to interrupt his work. “How is destroying the city good for anyone?”
Wendos lets out another chilling laugh. “Sometimes you have to knock a few things down in order to build something better. Even the All-Giver knew that. The Order of the Wild will put things right.”
He brushes his hand down his front in a three-fingered tap… as if he thinks the divinities would approve of this madness. I barely stop my jaw from dropping.
Julita’s voice has turned faint. He’s gone even more insane than he was before.
“The Order of the Wild?” I ask, but Wendos ignores me, walking away. I can’t even see the tufts of his stupid shaggy hair from my current position.
“Let’s continue,” he says to his accomplices, and picks up his previous muttered chant. I can make out the syllables now, but they’re no words I know.
The waft of magic they stir raises the hairs on my arms.
As I force my breaths to even out, mastering the pain in my leg, Julita’s presence stirs.
You are, you know, she says quietly.
I arch an eyebrow in a question Wendos can’t hear.
A friend. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. However this ends… Thank you.
Tears that have nothing to do with my fractured shin form behind my eyes. I didn’t ask for this mission, and there are plenty of things I’ve criticized Julita for, but she didn’t have to say that. She must know by now there’s no need to say anything to get me to keep fighting.
She simply wanted me to know.
I dip my head in silent acknowledgment. Then I lean forward to reach for the sheath in my boot.
If I’m only going to get one chance, I want my favorite knife.
The blade slides out easily, my fingers curling around the familiar hilt. But I can hardly hit Wendos with it when he’s out of sight.
He’s underestimated me in his arrogance. I have to take full advantage of that fact, whatever way I can.
The daimon on guard only intervened when I got close to Wendos. He indicated in the conversation I overheard after the ball that he can’t direct them too specifically.
It’s possible that a thrown knife could get past them. I just need to be in a position to actually throw it.
As I shift my legs, I grit my teeth until my jaw is aching nearly as much as my shin. My power twitches inside me, reminding me that I could heal my leg if I wanted to.
But at what cost?
If I could be sure it’d be Wendos’s bones broken in my place, that’d be one thing. For all I know, the backlash will hit some innocent person.
Or one of the men hopefully climbing the stairs beneath me, sending them toppling to a snapped neck.
How much good would it do me to fix my leg anyway? I already know that throwing my whole body at this asshole isn’t the answer.
With the threat to my life no longer immediate, I can tune out the nagging of my magic, if only some of the physical pain I’m in. I can’t put any weight on my one foot, so I angle myself around until I’m squatting on my knees.
My cloak seems likely to trip me up in my current position. It isn’t as if I need to hide my dress here.
I untie it and let it slip from my shoulders onto the lower stairs. Then, with my hand braced against the wall and tears I can’t blink back welling in my eyes, I lurch up one step.
Then another.
Then another.
Each impact radiates a sharper agony through my leg from foot to hip. The pain crackles through my thoughts, dizzying me. I bite my lip to hold back a whimper.
Without consciously intending to, I find myself picturing Casimir. The affection in his voice when he told me he wanted me. The sparkle of his eyes when he thanked me after our ride through the woods.
He doesn’t know the worst of me, no. But he’s been there for the parts of me I have let him see. He’s made a place for me.
They all have, in their own way.
Stavros, handing the sword to me a couple of hours ago. His bemused shock when he realized just how famous a thief I am.
Alek’s anguished apology at my bedside. The firmness of his arms, carrying me from the library to help me hide my pain from prying eyes.