Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Ivy
As exhausting as our weeks traveling across the country have been, they’ve hardened my muscles beyond any of my previous conditioning. I was never a weakling, but loping across the grassy terrain now comes much easier than it would have when I’d only just left Florian.
As I jog to the southwest, I keep my strides long and swift without pushing myself so hard that I’ll get too winded to maintain the pace.
The tingle of magic gradually thickens. There’s a whole torrent of it flowing toward the skirmish rather than seeping off the battlefield.
Someone’s definitely bolstering the scourge sorcerers’ strength.
If I can stop them before the Darium troops are completely overpowered, the two sides might still wipe each other out. Hopefully before any of the men I’ve given my heart to charge into the fray.
I catch one more flicker of dark wings against the stars up ahead, but I don’t need the crow to guide me. I simply move toward the deeper thrum of the magic, shifting course slightly when I sense it diminishing.
“Kosmel,” I murmur, tapping my hand down my front like I saw Stavros do not long ago. The gesture of the divinities feels awkward.
I’ve rarely used it, rarely trusted the gods to have my best interests at heart. But I need every bit of assistance I might get.
I lift my voice just slightly. “If you can hear me, please watch over me now. Help me see how to defeat this foe without losing myself.”
I don’t expect to hear the overwhelming divine voice resonating through my head. The godlen of trickery told me himself that he had to stay more distant. But I think I feel a subtle tug on my hair as if affectionately teasing.
Maybe it’s only my mind playing tricks and not Kosmel, but he came through for me before. While I don’t know what rules the gods have to play by, I actually believe he’ll guide me if he can.
The trouble is, I don’t know yet whether his guidance will be enough.
We’ve gotten through plenty of tight spots without his assistance, Julita remarks. You came up with this whole plan without any divine intervention. Whatever’s up ahead, we can handle it ourselves.
She speaks in the archly confident tone I’m most used to from her, but I know her well enough by now to realize that it’s usually a front. She’s got to be nervous too.
“I have two knives,” I say, taking stock for her benefit as well as my own. The third I was still carrying I had to leave on the other side of the channel. “Whoever’s over there won’t expect anyone to trace their magic, so I’ll have the element of surprise. I just have to be smart about it.”
And I’ve no doubt you can manage that.
The corner of my mouth crooks upward in half a smile at my ghostly passenger’s validation, but I lapse into silence—both for the sake of stealth and to avoid losing any more of my breath.
As I trace the reverberating energy through the chilly night breeze, the ground beneath my feet slants upward. I slow, peering up the slope.
A dark shape looms at the top. The faintest glow hazes one of the second-floor windows facing the battlefield, so slight I couldn’t have made it out from even fifty paces further away.
Our enemy is up there.
I prowl through the overgrown grass to the plateau around the building.
Closer up, I can tell it’s a farmhouse, but one that must have been abandoned. The weeds grow high along its walls, and the front steps have caved in. The glass in the windows is cracked.
In one of the first-story windows, the pane is missing completely.
I steal up to the side of the house and pluck a couple of lingering shards out of the frame. Gripping the base, I swing my leg inside and set my foot down ever so carefully on the floor.
It turns out I’m in a kitchen—next to a dusty stove that looks as if it hasn’t been lit in years, with cupboards along the walls beyond.
Drawing out one of my knives, I creep out into the hall beyond, searching for the stairs.
A muffled murmuring filters through the floor from above, followed by a retort that sounds sneering. The hairs on the back of my neck rise at the tone.
As carefully as I’m setting my feet, a warped floorboard creaks at my next slow step. I freeze, my heart skipping a beat, straining my ears for any sign that those above have noticed.
There's no sound from the second floor except a whimper that filters through the ceiling. I suppress a shudder.
After a moment, the sneering voice mutters something else. When I don't pick up any indication that the people above are coming to investigate, I creep forward even more cautiously than before.
Down the hall, I spot the shadowy staircase. I flatten myself against the wall where the boards should be most stable and ease up one careful step at a time.
The dust that my movements sends whirling into the air tickles my nose. I rub it to restrain a sneeze.
When my head is level with the floor of the hallway above, I spot movement in one of the doorways. The door is slightly ajar, and a large form stands just beyond it, only his shoulder showing in the dim lantern light.
At least, I assume it's a man from his size.
The sneering voice speaks again from farther inside the room. "Come on, come on. You can give a little more. We've got to keep those idiots full of confidence, or they'll fall down on the job again."
Julita's presence twitches at the back of my skull. Borys.
I'd thought the tone sounded familiar before. I just hadn't wanted to believe it.
But then, it fits everything I know about Julita's brother that he'd choose to contribute to the battle by extending power from afar rather than risking his neck directly.
If I have anything to say about it, that neck is going to have a very large gash in it by the time we're through.
My fingers itch around my knife, but I don't dare throw it from here. I don't have a clear view of any vital part of the man guarding the doorway, and I don't know how many others are with him and Borys.
I reach into my pocket and flick open the locket to press its inner surface. It's quite possible I won’t be able to tackle this problem all by myself.
But I have to do whatever I can manage on my own, because the battle might be lost and Borys moving on to join his comrades before any of my men reach me.
A sound like liquid pattering onto the floor carries through the doorway.
Julita outright flinches. Oh, gods. He still does it. The blood...
My stomach flips over at the thought of all the times he carved into her skin in the hopes that offering her blood would gain him additional power. Just like he’s apparently doing up there right now.
Breathing shallowly, I slink up the last few steps and along the hall toward the room. Through the thunder of my pulse, my focus narrows down to the little details I've learned how to judge during my days of thefts and cons.
The light streaks in only one angle across the floor, which means there's a single lantern. Two shadows cross the floor by the threshold, so there's another figure standing guard just inside, beyond the door. I can judge their position by the patches of darkness in the wan glow.
Crouching low and inching even nearer, I peek around the closer man's leg.
Borys is squatting across from one of the scourge sorcerers' sacrificial accomplices, her shroud discarded, her eyeless, noseless face as haunting as all those I've seen before.
As I watch, he drags the knife he's holding through the flesh of her jaw just below where her ear should be. Blood springs up, nauseatingly scarlet against her sallow skin.
To amplify his own gift, he’s making her sacrifice even more than she already has.
Their combined magic wafts through the air, vibrating through my bones. I tense against a cringe at the sensation.
I’ve got to stop him—fast.
I double-check the shadows to confirm my sense of where the second guard is standing. Then I retrieve my second knife from its sheath, brace myself, and lunge.
As I spring forward, I’m already flinging my first knife. It plunges into the first guard’s throat.
He gurgles and staggers, blood spilling across the floor while I whirl around the door.
The second man standing guard is just starting to step forward when I toss the other knife to my dominant hand and stab it home into his chest. It must puncture his heart, because before he’s even sagged to his knees, his form hardens to clay.
I clutch the hilt to wrench the blade free—and a body rams into me from the side.
No! Julita cries out.
An elbow digs into my ribs, and a fist clocks me in the jaw. I reel around with a swipe of my retrieved knife, driven by years of honed fighting instinct.
It should have been enough, even with the element of surprise my attacker had. But as Borys slashes at me with his own dagger, my magic roars up inside me, bellowing to tear him apart.
My mind spins, and Borys’s image distorts into two, three men in front of me. I swing out half-blindly, shaking my head trying to clear it, wrenching back the power that’s addled my awareness.
Borys’s blade rakes against my side like a vicious burn. His arm smacks my hand hard enough to break my grip on my knife.
As the blade falls, he rams his knee into my gut and heaves me backward.
I lurch over the threshold and slam into the banister overlooking the stairs with a burst of pain through my scars. The wood creaks against my back.
Borys hurls himself after me, lashing out with his dagger with obvious experience but middling skill. He’d stab it right through my temple if I didn’t yank my leg up in time to kick him hard in the chest.
With a grunt, Julita’s brother stumbles back to the doorway. He pauses there for a second, his dark eyes glinting, brandishing his blood-streaked blade.
It’s not just his accomplice’s blood on that dagger now. Mine is seeping into my dress where he carved open my side.
I don’t think he gouged deep enough to puncture any organs, but the throbbing ache sears through my torso.