Chapter 20
Twenty
One of Vostop’s men stood behind him, his cudgel raised, ready to bring it down on the back of Vostop’s head, ending his life in one blow. At the last moment, Vostop turned, raising one of his hands, but what was he going to do against a weapon designed to crack open a skull?
I sliced my blade down, forcing the dwarf off-balance. He dropped the cudgel against himself, bones cracking loudly as it hit his ankle. With a scream, he fell. The rest of Vostop’s men readied their weapons, two coming at me and Tallu while the others moved toward Vostop.
Tallu surged from the wall, lightning coiled in one palm as he attacked, the electricity catching one of the dwarves full in the chest. Then, to my shock, it danced from the dwarf to the wall behind him, illuminating the granite in veins of sparkling light.
The dwarf stumbled to his feet, managing a step before he collapsed, smoke coming from his mouth.
I turned back to my initial opponent. He had lifted the cudgel from his foot and swung it at me, but I stepped back, and he overshot, the heavy weapon passing me.
Lunging forward in the gap his carelessness created, my blade pierced his throat.
The victory was too short. Something impacted me hard on the shoulder, and I stumbled down, my left arm going limp as one of the other dwarves raised his hammer again. But he underestimated me; it seemed a common failing of my opponents.
I had been trained to fight with one arm, one leg, one finger left. I rolled, ignoring the scream of agony in my shoulder, and slammed my blade up, piercing through the artery at his groin.
He gasped, dropping his hammer and reaching down helplessly, but it was too late.
I yanked out my blade, blood splattering through the air, and shoved my sword upward, going through the soft part of his chin, using the motion to drive his head back, sending his entire body in a dramatic arc.
As he fell, I pulled the blade free, turning to the last of the dwarves.
His face was shadowed, impossibly dark, but I didn’t hear the whispers from him that I had heard from Asahi.
Whoever these people were, they were not controlled by Centipede and his monstrous ilk.
He had two swords in his hands, twirling them. Tallu stepped up beside me, and I could smell the lightning on him, hear the whisper of his magic as though it was crooning in my ear.
The dwarf lunged forward, then stopped, falling to his knees, a shocked look on his face as the tip of a blade emerged from the front of his throat. A throwing dagger had pierced his neck, sharp and hard enough to slice through Krustavian bones.
Someone stepped into the light from behind him. At first, all I saw was the yellow of their clothes. One of Tallu’s servants?
Then, Topi Bemishu pushed out from behind the servant. “Pito!”
Pito took a step forward, forcing Koque backward and, for a moment, I hoped. I saw in Topi’s desperation the hunger I would feel if I had Eona? in front of me.
Koque moved around her, darting into the room where her son was, and Pito didn’t even glance at her retreating back.
The ground under us shifted, two monsters emerging.
Vostop had called them badgers, but they still looked nothing like the images I had seen drawn in books or heard tell of in campfire stories.
In those, they lived in peace with the dwarves like our borealis wolves lived with us, but these were monsters, nearly as high as my hip and twice my width.
Vostop stood, blood dripping from the side of his face where one of his men had injured him. His expression was set, and he shook his head.
I heard the whispers of Centipede, coaxing angry tones. Kill them. Kill them. Kill them all.
One of the badgers lunged forward, and I stepped into its path, drawing my blade down, but it was faster, raising massive claws to block my attack.
Its movement created a gap, and someone wielding another wolf’s claw found an opening. The wolf’s claw pierced through the badger’s neck, and I glanced to the side, hope blooming in my chest. Only northerners knew how to wield their blades so well.
In my distraction, the badger turned, snapping sharp teeth at me, but wolves fought in packs.
The servant yanked her blade free, slicing down at the badger’s tough body again and again, forcing the creature back.
As it retreated, I saw my own opening, letting it snap at her before shoving my blade into its mouth, all the way back.
It closed its mouth over the blade, but it was too late, blood poured from between its sharp teeth, and I stepped closer, using the fulcrum of the blade to push its head up. The servant dragged her wolf’s claw across its neck.
We turned as one, but between Tallu and Vostop, the other badger was dead, its eye sockets smoking, its head caved in from the heavy fall of Vostop’s hammer.
I spun to the servant who had helped me, desperate to see that face I had longed for, it had to be—
“Irad?o?” I said, my shock running through me as though Tallu had touched me with a bolt of electricity. It wasn’t Eona?. It wasn’t my sister, my twin, the other half of my own soul.
Instead, it was our cousin, the one mother had raised to lead the Northern Kingdom because she knew that her daughter would be dead before she turned twenty-five.
“Airón,” Irad?o said, using her free hand to wrap around my shoulders, drawing me close.
We were covered in blood, my arm hanging limply at my side, and everything was wrong, but Irad?o was here.
Her grip was tight around me, her panting breath as familiar as my room in the Silver City. “I’m glad we were in time. I thought—”
There was a scream like a dying animal, and we turned, seeing Tallu and Vostop standing protectively in front of Topi Bemishu, her hand on her cheek, her eyes wide.
Pito’s face had twisted, her jaw working open and closed as something crawled under her face, the skin stretching and warping as a creature wriggled over her eyeball, snaking back into Pito’s skull.
“You will not take me. You will not take the boy.” Pito spoke disjointedly, her tone flat and then rising, turning into a shriek. “You will not. Take me!”
Topi stood up, her hands extended, her tone soft and begging. “Pito, Pito. Please. Don’t do this.”
They were no longer mirror images of each other. The scar from a thrown rock shone on Topi’s forehead, and Pito’s face distended again as the creature crawled from her jaw up to her temple. Despite knowing they were useless, I wanted Topi’s pathetic words to make a difference.
“You…” Pito trailed off, and then she moved so fast that I couldn’t follow her.
She had her hand on Tallu’s throat, and he raised a palm full of electricity, but Topi screamed, “No!” and he hesitated.
Pito bore him down, her nails drawing blood, and Vostop tried to pry her off, attempting to peel her fingers from around Tallu’s throat, but she was too strong.
I was already on top of her by then, wrapping an arm around her neck and yanking hard, pulling her back, but she fought me, kicking and struggling.
She hit my bad arm, sending a shock wave of pain through my body, but I held on.
Vostop finally got Pito’s fingers off Tallu’s neck, and I practically screamed in relief.
I pulled her back, far enough that she couldn’t touch him.
She hissed and spit, and something pushed up the skin of her neck under my arm.
Hot blood soaked my sleeve as the centipede split open her throat, biting me through the thin fabric of my shirt.
I hissed from the pain, a sharp agony that made my muscles jump.
Na? pulled herself from my pocket, growing to the size of a cat as she climbed up me. She leapt from me to Pito, her face inches from the spitting and struggling woman. I still held on, ignoring the chaos and screaming, ignoring Irad?o as she tried to get close enough to use her blade.
“We will do this together.” Na? looked away from Pito’s face, and I nodded, unable to speak because of the pain in my arm, the stinging bite that left me panting and hissing.
Na? lowered her head, breathing out a blast of chilly air, freezing my skin where the creature bit me. I closed my eyes and listened, hearing as she used her desire to shape the magic. I breathed in and out, letting my own wants mix with hers.
“Kill this thing, freeze its body, let it shatter as ice dropping into the ocean.” Na? shaped the ice into a deadly thing, a killing frost that would wipe out an entire herd of elk.
Save this girl. Let her sister not lose the half of her that makes her whole.
I wrapped my own desires over Na?’s, and the two of us were panting, we were running across the tundra together, we were forcing our muscles to work in ways they shouldn’t, we were swimming the breadth of the Silver City’s bay, and we were winning.
I could feel Na?’s hatred, her bloodthirst rising as the creature occupying Pito began to wither, its body cracking under the frozen assault.
The centipede let go of my arm, trying to crawl back into the warmth of Pito’s flesh, but as it moved, its sharp, pointed legs broke off, its armored body shattering, exposing the gooey flesh beneath.
Save her. I imagined Pito as my own sister, near death in my arms, and knew that I wouldn’t let her die. The truth of it filled the void inside me that Kacha’s man had torn when he pulled my magic from me. The certainty was like filling a broken vase from a waterfall.
There was no reality in which Tallu died.
For a second, I was disoriented, the wrong name in my heart, the wrong truth sitting under my skin. But it was just as true. Tallu would not die.
And neither would Pito. The thought glowed, so true and certain that I could feel it explode out of us, the creature screaming, echoing in the tunnels.
Then the sound stopped.