Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A trius and I moved the moment the guards’ eyes left us. He took the one on the left, stabbing him through with his sword and snapping his body aside with a flick of his blood magic. I took the one on the right, driving my dagger through his throat. We tossed the bodies to either side of the doors like sacks of flour.
Within the chambers, commotion stirred immediately. The threads trembled, like the reverberations after a sudden discordant strum of an instrument, as those inside responded.
We didn’t give them time to prepare.
We burst through the doors. Tarkan’s wing was large, much more an apartment than a bedchamber. He kept his most trusted warriors close, even in the dead of night, though apparently still did not respect them enough to give them beds to sleep on—most of the men who jerked awake from their drug-laden sleep now had been sprawled out on sofas and armchairs, and a few even on the fur rug. I wondered if Tarkan had increased the number of people within his chambers in light of Atrius’s movements across Glaea.
Several of the guards inside had been awake, stationed to watch for an attack. They were ready.
But so were we.
We dismantled them. Then continued to carve our way through the men who threw themselves at us. We naturally fell into position, back-to-back, covering the areas that the other couldn’t reach. I stretched threads between our opponents and slipped between them, disappearing and reappearing at their throats before they had time to register the movement.
So quickly—so disconcertingly easily—Atrius and I fell into a rhythm. Smoother, even, than what we had done in Alka. I struck, stunned, maimed. He finished.
Through the carnage, as we cut through the first wave, Atrius rasped at me, “Where?”
Where is Tarkan?
That was the only thought in my mind, too. I could feel him there, like a splinter wedged into my fingertip.
I pointed my blade to the bedchamber. “There.”
There were other guards there, too—just a few. I sensed them rushing into Tarkan’s bedchamber from the opposite wing of the apartment. Arming him, perhaps, or maybe attempting to help him escape.
They wouldn’t get the chance for that.
The two of us stepped over the freshest bodies toward the bedchamber door.
But Tarkan wasn’t Aaves. He wouldn’t meet his death cowering at the foot of his bed. Tarkan had gotten where he was today because he was a warrior.
The door swung open.
After so many years without eyesight, one starts to forget what it feels like to see something in that form. Yet there were some images that remained seared into my mind as I had once seen them—some that I didn’t want to remember, and some that I wished I could remember more. I was not supposed to hold any of those memories, whether in love or hatred. I was supposed to wipe them all away like the Arachessen taught me.
But the memory of Tarkan’s face remained with me, another mark that still stubbornly remained on my slate.
I experienced him differently now, of course. But the image of him as I’d seen him nearly twenty years ago still struck me when he opened that door. He was a tall man, hair neat and slicked back—even in sleep, apparently—and beard well-groomed. I could sense the age in him now, the way it hollowed his cheeks and weighed down the fragile skin around his dark eyes. And yet, so much was the same. The hard angles to his appearance, brutal and selfish. The way he looked at the world like it belonged to him.
Strange, how the past didn’t feel so strong until all at once it surrounded you again, like the tides swallowing the tunnels of Alka.
Tarkan didn’t say a word to us. He just nodded, and the two guards with him lunged at us.
Atrius disposed of the first one easily. The second came at me. He was wielding an axe—the brutal tool of someone trained by a warlord, but a fine one, perhaps given to him by Tarkan himself. He was a decent fighter, but nothing special. The frenetic choppiness to his movements, too-quick and too-abrupt, hinted that he was under the influence of Pythoraseed—good quality stuff, if it helped him move faster rather than slowing him down.
Maybe that was why I didn’t recognize him at first.
Not until I blocked one of his strikes, and the proximity of him sparked something in the back of my mind, something I just couldn’t place?—
I hesitated too long. He swung.
Across the room, Tarkan lunged, wielding a jewel-encrusted saber. Atrius’s hood had fallen back. The two of them faced each other down with the vicious focus of wolves preparing to tear each other apart.
The edge of my opponent’s axe caught my veil as I pulled away, tearing it partially from my face. Frustrated by the fluttering fabric, I ripped it away, and swung back to counter?—
But my attacker’s eyes went wide. His axe clattered to the ground. His shock rippled all the threads in the room.
“Vivi?” he breathed.
Naro.
All at once, the familiarity hit me. The sound of his voice brought it back .
At the last second, I diverted my strike. I nicked his ear and sent myself stumbling against the sofa.
I whirled around.
The blood drained from my face. Weaver, it felt like it drained from my entire body. My hands were numb. I needed to fight, but couldn’t make myself move.
His presence was so different than it had been then. Blurry with years of drug use, older, harder, and scarred.
And yet—how could I not have recognized him?
How could I not have recognized my brother?
You have no brother, the Sightmother reminded me. Sylina has no brother.
“Vivi,” he breathed. “It’s you—even with that thing on your face I?—”
He staggered toward me, and I pulled back.
Hurt reverberated through his presence. Confusion.
He lurched forward again, and I took another step away.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he said.
I couldn’t think.
I couldn’t think about any of this now?—
Behind me, Atrius let out a wordless hiss of pain as Tarkan managed to get a shot in, wounding his shoulder. He recoiled, then turned back to his assailant, crimson murder in his eyes.
Tarkan.
I was here for Tarkan. Tarkan was the goal.
That was all that mattered now.
I let that little ball of fire in my stomach grow, let it burn away my confusion and fuel my focus.
I drew a thread between Tarkan and I and stepped into it easily, reappearing behind him.
But he was fast. He’d seen his guards fall to my Arachessen tricks. As soon as I reappeared, he flung his elbow back.
Pain stabbed through my ribs.
I wavered, but held my stance.
He whirled to me just as I swung my sword.
When I was a child, I thought Tarkan stood twenty feet tall. He seemed that way from the tops of his parade carts, from the statues of him hoisted in the town squares.
He was not twenty feet tall. He was six feet, maybe, if that. And yet when he loomed over me, for a moment, I felt that way again. Like he could crush me.
But I wasn’t a child anymore. I wasn’t powerless.
I let out a roar and blocked his strike before he could land it. Countered before he could move. I opened a gash in his side, earning a curse and a snarl. To his credit, he didn’t waste his breath on taunts.
He lunged at me, then fell abruptly backwards, like a puppet yanked by the strings. Beads of crimson hung suspended in the air. His threads warped, as if manipulated by an outside force.
Atrius.
The two of them tangled again. Tarkan was off-balance, startled. The next strike had him reeling.
Atrius could have finished him then. I saw the opening. I knew he did, too.
But yet, Atrius held him for a moment. Shot me a glance over Tarkan’s shoulder.
And he nodded at me.
The understanding snapped into place. He was presenting Tarkan to me. He was giving me this. I didn’t know why. I didn’t have time to question it.
I swung, aiming right for Tarkan’s exposed back?—
—And someone knocked me away.
My back struck the wood of the sofa, forcing the breath from my lungs, pain shooting through my spine.
Naro pinned me down, his chestnut hair falling over his face.
I snarled, “Get off me!”
“I can’t.” He shook his head, his face hardening, despite the wrinkle of confusion over his brow. “You can’t. You?—”
I do not have a brother.
Sylina does not have a brother.
I told myself this before whacking Naro across the face with the butt of my sword, sending him sprawling off the couch .
I leapt to my feet. Atrius had Tarkan against the wall now. It was the end.
Tarkan’s face was a mask of hatred—his presence vibrated with it. He knew death was coming for him.
“Fine,” he snarled. “See how my city?—”
But Atrius was not in the business of allowing final words to those who didn’t deserve them.
He now had Naro’s discarded axe in his free hand. With a single clean strike, he carved it straight through Tarkan’s throat. Blood spewed, painting graceful arcs across Atrius’s face, the carpet, the furniture. Some of it landed on me.
I swallowed a thick wave of envy.
Naro let out a ragged, wordless cry, charging for Atrius. I grabbed him and held him back, but he slipped my grip.
Atrius turned. His face was cold and unmoving.
He raised the axe as my brother—my stupid, foolish brother—ran straight for him.
You do not have a brother, a voice reminded me.
And yet, I screamed, “ No! ”
I threw myself in front of Naro. Atrius barely stopped himself before taking off my head. Naro tried to run right through me—whether to Atrius or to the mangled body of his dead master, I didn’t know. His presence was erratic, lurching in so many directions at once.
And yet…
It was him. Him . I didn’t know how to make sense of that. I didn’t know if I wanted to.
Out of sheer desperation, I braced myself against him and put my hands on either side of his head. I reached deep into his threads. They were tangled and broken, many of them consumed by the haze of drugs and pain.
I did the only thing I could: I sedated him. And after a few seconds, the tremors subsided. He slumped to the ground, unconscious.
I stood there, hands still raised, breath shaking.
I had thought this would be a triumphant moment. And yet here I was, in the same room as Tarkan’s body, and I had barely even looked at it.
I felt Atrius’s eyes on me. The quiet was suddenly deafening.
I turned. He stared at me with a hard, questioning gaze, the gore-covered axe still poised in his grip.
What could I say? I didn’t want to show Atrius the truth. I couldn’t even admit it to myself. I was supposed to be hiding myself from Atrius—not showing him things that no one was supposed to see.
I reached for a lie and came up with nothing.
And yet, I got the impression that he already saw some piece of the truth.
I choked out, “Please.”
“He’s one of Tarkan’s guards.”
“ Please .”
Begging. Pathetic. All I could think to do.
You have no brother, the voice reminded me, again. If his death is the Weaver’s will, it is the Weaver’s will.
And yet I—I couldn’t. I couldn’t .
I hated when Atrius looked at me like that. That unrelenting steel stare, right through my gut. He did not ask who this person was. He did not ask why I wanted to spare him.
Something in his aura softened.
He didn’t say a word. He simply turned to Tarkan’s body, grabbed his hair, and hacked his head off with several wet THWACKs of the axe.
He turned to me. “You were right,” he said. “This way was cleaner.”
Then he strode to the balcony, head in hand, to go claim his new city.