Chapter 10 #2
He thinks just because I claimed this ancient sword I know how to use it? I can barely hold it upright. I haven’t even had time to look at it properly, let alone learn how to do anything like that.
I can’t, I mouth back. Still, I try. Nothing happens.
“Enough whispering, we can hear you,” the woman snaps. “And I assure you, if you try to throw your blade, it’s not going to work.” She takes a feline step forward. “We are faster than you. Stronger than you. We hear everything. Smell everything. Even your fear …”
She looks back at the two masked men. “Mortals are so weak. So pathetic.” In a flash, she’s right in front of us, hand outstretched. “The blade. Let’s see it.”
I don’t make a single move.
Her glittering eyes narrow. The archer cocks his arrow. He aims it right at my head. “Leave it right here, or you die. But not before I slice your face off, slowly, carefully, so that you feel every single turn of my dagger.”
I swallow. Dread spills through my bones as I reach back toward my sword.
“Try something, and your friends die too,” she warns.
I’m not stupid enough to try anything now.
Not when I just saw her cross a few yards in less time than it takes me to blink.
I curl my hand around the hilt. Lift it with all my strength, teeth gritted with the effort.
Bury the blade right between us, in the dirt of a missing stone.
I step back just as she steps forward.
Her eyes widen. “Look at this,” she says, turning back toward her companions. “She must have stolen it from somewhere important … The diamond alone … What kind of favor do you think it might be worth?”
The green-masked thief steps forward. “A good one,” he says. He still hasn’t lowered his bow. “You know how much our god enjoys rarities.”
The woman nods, eyes flashing with greed. She curls both hands around the hilt. Pulls.
Nothing happens.
She frowns. Pulls again. Again. She digs her steel-plated boots into the ground, bends her knees. A frustrated groan escapes her lips.
The sword doesn’t move an inch.
There’s the twang of a bow. I close my eyes, bracing myself for a flash of pain.
Nothing.
I open them to see the arrow sticking out of the woman’s forehead, right through the mask. Her hands are still around my sword’s hilt.
She drops to the ground, blood dripping in a line down the ruby. It’s red, just like ours. Not the fabled silver blood of the gods.
Metal clashes. The gold-masked and green-masked thieves are dueling. They fight in wild streaks of color.
“Run,” Zane says. I pull my sword from the dirt, and we shoot into the forest. It’s not long before more steps join us. Faster steps.
A beam of silver metal arcs to my left, and I just barely stop it with my blade, both arms hardly holding it up. The green-masked thief. There’s a sickening crack as his sword breaks in half against mine, but that doesn’t stop him.
A moment later, his halved blade is at my neck. My pulse beats along the jagged metal.
Then a sword is through his chest. He falls, only to reveal the gold-masked thief standing behind him. The first one we encountered on the road.
“Where did you find it?” he demands as he lifts his sword between us.
My back is against a tree. There’s nowhere to run. Even if there was, he would catch me.
“The—the other side,” I say, trying to buy myself any time.
My blade is still in my hand. Just as I wonder if I have the strength to raise it again, the tip of his weapon is against my heart.
“Where?” he demands. “Where exactly?”
I open my mouth to answer—
And close it against a spray of blood.
The man … his head is gone. It’s on the ground, right in front of my foot. I push the rest of his body away before it and his blade can fall onto me.
Zane is standing there, blood coating his ax, panting. Kira is just behind him, looking like she’s going to retch again.
“You—you didn’t run,” I say, looking between them.
The corner of his mouth lifts. “We made a pact. Remember?”
I remember. Kira rushes forward, pulling a scarf from her bag and using it to wipe the blood from my face. “There’s a lot. Hold still.” I do. I do, even as my heart races, energy coursing through my veins.
Without Zane and his ax … I would be dead.
My sword makes me a target—even here. I can’t forget that.
Once the blood is wiped away, we collect the two immortals’ heads. We go back to the road, and Zane cuts the woman’s off too. We each hold one, by the hair, and continue down the path, through the rising dusk.
When the trees rustle again further down, Zane merely holds up one of the masked heads and says, “Consider the price paid.”
It’s nearly dusk when we reach the village of Westwere. A wall sits around it, with a moat, and a narrow bridge that’s already being pulled up.
We race forward, heads still in hand, and jump. The bridge stops.
A foot above us, a window in the wall slides open. “Get off,” an immortal man barks. “It’s almost sunset.”
So the danger of night is real.
“We need a place to stay. Please.” I take the coin out of my pocket and hold it over my head, hoping it’s actually worth something here.
He eyes it, and us, warily. Then he notices the heads.
For a moment, I wonder if keeping them with us was a mistake. We don’t know how immortals work. Maybe they all serve the same god.
The window slams closed. Panic floods my chest.
Just when I think we’re about to be locked out, it opens again, this time, as a full door. And I see the man wasn’t standing on a platform. He’s seven feet tall, at least.
“In, quickly,” he says. “You’re playing with fate, being outside this close to sundown.” He shakes his head before pulling the thick chains again, raising the bridge completely in just a few tugs.
Immortals are powerful. So why are they so afraid of night?
What could be so bad that even this immortal fears it?
He runs his large hand down his face, before sighing with his entire body. “That time of the century then, is it?” he says, seemingly to himself. He frowns down at us. “Come with me.”
We all look over at each other, surprised. I really thought he would leave us outside the gates. Our encounters with all immortals so far haven’t exactly been pleasant.
The village is modest. All the structures seem to slope, one way or another. He leads us down a mostly empty street. We pass by countless doors and hear lock after lock turning.
He stops in front of a quaint house with four stories that is noticeably tilting to the side, held upright by an equally precarious-looking tower.
He knocks three times. A moment passes. Another.
Then a tall, beautiful immortal with violet eyes and blond hair tied into a single braid that starts at the top of her scalp opens the door. She looks up at the man and smiles.
Then she sees us.
Her face pales. She shakes her head. “No. I told you after the last time, no—”
He’s leaning casually against the threshold. “They killed three Masks.”
She blinks. Her eyes slide down to the heads we still hold.
The blond immortal opens the door wider. “Come in.” Her face scrunches. “Leave those outside.”
We step into a bustling room. It’s a tavern, filled to the brim with immortal knights, still in their full armor. They’re massive, towering figures, like statues. Fear sinks through me.
The room goes quiet.
“They’re guests,” the blond immortal says, her voice firm, and the chatter gradually starts up again.
Still, I feel eyes on us. Some curious. Others disgusted.
“I’m Xara. Welcome to my inn.”
“Thank you,” I say warily, watching as she bolts three different locks at the door.
“Weapons at the front,” she commands, motioning toward a patch of swords at the entrance, all dug into the floorboards.
Zane doesn’t look happy about it, but we each dig our weapons through the wood. It feels wrong walking away from my sword … but we need a place to sleep. This is her inn. She makes the rules. I only hope it’ll be there in the morning.
Xara puts her hands together. “Hungry? Thirsty? Tired?”
“All three,” Kira says.
Xara’s mouth turns up knowingly. “You mortals are always all three.” She leads us through the crowd toward the bar. Even massive immortal warriors stumble aside to let Xara pass.
She motions for a few of them to make some room, and we are presented with three seats at the counter. “It’s been a century or so. You’ll have to remind me. Do mortals drink ale?”
Kira barks out a laugh. “Most drink far too much of it.”
Now behind the bar, Xara eyes some of the warriors in the tavern. “Immortals have that problem too.” She presents each of us with a tall, foaming glass.
The color of the ale is different than it is on Stormside. It’s less yellow and more sparkling gold.
I take a tentative sip and sigh, in spite of myself. It’s cold, and bubbly, and refreshing. I look up, only to see Xara smiling at me.
“It never gets old,” she says.
“What doesn’t?”
“Watching mortals try something for the first time.” She lifts a shoulder.
“We’ve been alive for centuries. Nothing is ever new anymore.
” She looks at us. “But for you … everything is new. Your lives are so short. There’s not enough time to try everything.
” She says it almost reverently. She puts her hands on the bar.
They’re small but callused in the same places mine are. “I’ll be back with some food.”
A few moments later, we’re presented with three bowls of soup that taste decidedly better than the ones the scholars gave us.
It has vegetables not too different from the ones I’ve seen sold in the nicer markets, and meat that has been seasoned.
I’m too damned hungry to question the fact that Xara doesn’t ask for payment.
We finish our bowls, and Xara brings us a second helping.
Then a third. Zane and I keep looking around for any approaching danger, but Kira chats happily, telling Xara our names and all about Brambleside.
The immortal listens intently, interrupting only to ask questions.