1 #4
“No matter,” he said. “I murdered my way to the throne in six months with barely a curse. I killed a soldier of the Seraph Guard, Myria. A man who could split mountains with his mind, and all it took was a dagger in a crowd. Steel does for everyone. You only need to be quick, clever and certain.”
She said nothing; silence seemed the safer bet. They’d all heard stories of the crimson summer. She couldn’t imagine her own hands so drenched in blood. Her master seemed to read it in her countenance, and inclined his head.
“In any case, everyone can wield arcana. Any fool can hold a knife. Do you imagine I took you in for anything so common?”
Just as well. Last time she’d used a knife to carve a stick, the stick had won.
“I remember when we found you in that harvesters’ den,” Vixius went on. “A child, curled up with the dead. They’d cut away your hair, your memories, your magic. Couldn’t have sold your carcass for a lyrin.”
The muddied, bloodied memory of steel bands on her wrists and a blade carving down her breastbone, of cold, cold corpses in a huddle; then brown and silver eyes in the gloom, and warm hands taking hers—
“But you’d survived it. You alone, when the same ordeal had killed everyone else there.” He stepped closer, intent as a wolf on the prey. “The will to survive and the wit to do it. Those are what I ask for. What you have.”
Her pulse was thudding in her head; yet still, she gave no answer, even as he searched her eyes for it.
“There’s a whole bright empire out there, Myria,” Vixius murmured. “Most of my men have been in the shadows so long, they’ve forgotten. I haven’t. But to find our place in the sun . . .” He trailed off, and a smile flashed like a shooting star across his face. “It’s time we changed. Think on it.”
With that, he turned for the gateway. Myria followed him through onto the starlit roof of Elysius Tower.
“Keep watch,” he said. “I shan’t be long.”
Myria waited for the whir of the descending platform. The moment it was gone, she hauled in a breath and strode to the edge of the roof. All Carintheum swept out before her—that roaring Elysium of marble and glass, cut with roads that ran in rivers of light to the Praetorium.
Pantheon above, she thought, the breath rushing out of her. What the devil was she meant to do after a thing like that? He’d struck her like lightning with the offer, and left her wits burned out in his wake.
Pull yourself together, you splitwit. Think. What do your instincts say?
Yes. They careered toward it, a moth into a brazier. Who ever said no to that kind of power? Why had she agreed to lead this job, if not for that?
But it’s not just power, is it? said a wheedling voice. No. It was how a man who trusted nothing and no one seemed, just sometimes, to trust her. He’d saved her, chosen her. To be chosen by the fifth lord was a lure too strong for her to ignore.
And, like any lure, it could leave her gasping on the hook.
Damn it all. Myria dropped her brow to her hands and let her warring feelings fall still. Temptation and fear, gratitude and distrust all blurred together, until only one thought pierced the fog.
I don’t want to leave them.
She stood there—for how long, she couldn’t mark—her mind utterly blank.
Then, a shudder billowed from below. A tide swept over her, as soft and warm as opium.
She staggered against the parapet, blackness pressing at the edges of her vision.
Her wits swayed out of her, then in again, like a small boat between deep waves.
Moments later, the spell broke and fell away in dust, like almost every other curse that came her way.
Powerless plebeian? Thank the Low Gods . . .
Myria scrambled back upright and gripped her head. Had they made a misstep down below? Triggered a trap?
She was halfway to the platform before Vixius’s last order halted her. He’d told her to keep watch. If they’d woken an alarm, they needed eyes on the roof.
She flew back to the edge and looked down.
No movement. Up? No signals flashing from the spire.
Her gaze narrowed on the phaeton lamps that coursed down the five highways.
There was no disturbance in the traffic to betray a prefecture vehicle turning suddenly against the tide.
Nonetheless, her pulse sped to a trot. She ran to the east side of the roof.
Clear. She dashed to the west.
There. Twin headlamps flared to life, clear as a brand against the darkness of Therix Park. A second set woke, then a third. Blue lamps. Prefecture phaetons. In seconds, they were gliding for the tower.
No. She gripped the balustrade. Three of them, and they just happened to be waiting a quarter of a mile from the scene of a crime? Why would the prefecture be there, unless . . .
Unless they knew that Elysius Tower would be robbed that night.
The trip in her pulse turned to a cavalry charge. Myria ran for the ascension column.
The levels flashed by fast enough to make her sick, before she plunged into the underground darkness. She leapt from the platform before it touched down, hared down the stairs, through the split black curtain—
And almost tripped headlong over Leo’s body.