Chapter 33
Deep into the night, the temperature had dropped drastically, and Ksenia pulled her all-black wax-wool outfit even tighter around her.
The cold penetrated her thick leather gloves and sank into her bones as she trailed the riverbank, moving between the alder trees that leaned into the water.
She favored the smooth river stones, perched dangerously close to the rushing water’s edge, where her footprints left no trace and little debris and thus no evidence of her visit.
Only an insane person would go back to the scene of the crime after being discharged from the infirmary. But she was no sane person, and she also could not withstand the pain from being separated from Caromir for this length of time.
And she could not afford for Bohdan to find it first.
Her head was in a vise grip, a vicious and pulsing throb synchronized with her heartbeat, agony drilling through her temple and behind her eyes.
She fought back the nausea as her vision fragmented at the edges, bursts of color erupting behind her eyelids as she pressed herself against a damp tree trunk.
She peeked out. A few dozen paces upriver, dots of warm light bobbed: lanterns held by Envorsen—by Bohdan—searching for Archbishop Serafin’s body and any evidence of the crime.
She could hear every mud-sucked footstep, every held breath as the guards waded into knee-deep water, turning over driftwood, parting reeds at the banks.
The rush of river water grew louder in her ears, and she pressed her hands against her temples to try to soothe the noise.
Her concentration was fractured as she mindlessly let her pain lead her to the hellbound dagger.
As she drew closer, the mind-numbing pain began to recede. Her throat loosened a fraction, and she wiped the cold sweat from her brow.
Tall, spear-like stems clustered in the shallow water, swaying in the ravine-funneled wind.
There.
A shard of silver glinted in her eye as Ksenia waded into the shallow water to press aside the stalks. Caromir lay caught against fresh green growth, pierced through the previous season’s dead reeds, vibrant and shining against the mud and decay.
She grasped the blade and clutched it flat against her chest, the pressure in her head vanishing so completely that she became dizzy. Her eyes adjusted back to her pitch-black surroundings, the lantern light bobbing steadily closer. Shadow and light came back into focus without blurry auras.
Quickly, she picked a path up the riverbank and followed it to Hearth.
“What’s happening in the castle? There was so much commotion last night, I couldn’t fall asleep…” Danika rubbed at the circles beneath her eyes as Ksenia snuck through the service doors into the forge.
“Archbishop Serafin was assassinated.” Ksenia proffered her half of a sweet bun wrapped in wax paper from her pack.
She had already nibbled the edges but had saved the center, where most of the sugar and nuts had accumulated. Danika’s favorite.
“Assassinated? In Hearth?” Danika’s eyes widened, unwrapping the pastry. “Who do you think did it?”
Ksenia’s tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth. “We’re looking.”
Danika’s eyes narrowed a fraction as she chewed. “You can’t lie to me. Your jaw always squares a little when you lie, especially when it’s bad.” She surveyed Ksenia with her head tilted. “What’s happening?”
Ksenia blinked then sighed. She moved closer to Danika. “I’m carrying out a mission for the Bound Eye, and last night was the first step.”
She bit her tongue to keep from going further.
It was better that Danika didn’t know every aspect of their assassination plan.
“It was you?” Danika whispered, her face ashen.
Ksenia nodded, reaching for a couple of blue-gray ingots and common steel ingots.
“You’re playing with fire, Senna. What are you doing?”
“That’s sort of the purpose of a forge.” Ksenia tossed more ingots into the flame.
“No—don’t deflect.” Danika’s hand closed around her arm.
“I’m doing what no one else can and no one else will.” Ksenia turned away. “You have to trust me on this. I can’t tell you more because it’s too dangerous.”
“Every time I see you, you look more haunted. And I think it’s because of your blade,” Danika said firmly.
Danika was partially right, of course. The line between Senka the spymaster and Ksenia the rebel bondsmith was becoming blurred, and she feared her original form wouldn’t be intact by the end.
“Bonded weapons don’t make decisions.” Ksenia faced her but closed her eyes. “People make decisions. They’ll make the same ones with common steel.”
“Bonded weapons are an addiction,” Danika hissed, hand clenched. “We’re feeding that.”
“We saved forty-four families,” Ksenia said, her voice quiet with a hard edge. “We did that. And it’s what we should be focused on. Not taking away the only advantage people like us have.”
Silence hung heavy between them.
She didn’t want to fight. Not again.
“I don’t want to lose you.” Danika shook her head, her brows pinched together. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Ksenia pulled her close, and Danika buried her face into her shoulder.
“I want to help.” Her words were small and muffled. “I just don’t always know how. Sometimes I think what Dad was working on could—but it’s so complicated.”
Ksenia’s shoulders slumped from relief. Then guilt.
She set her chin on Danika’s shoulder.
“There is something I need your help with.”
Danika pulled back to look at her.
Ksenia loathed to put Danika in danger. But there was no way she would be able to figure out Danika’s particular gravity-well locks anytime soon. It was a mini labyrinth inside, with counter-pressure and bearings of varying weights that made her head spin whenever Danika tried to explain it to her.
“How?” Her voice brought Ksenia back to the present.
Ksenia raked her hand through her hair. “I need a copy of his study key. I recognized your lock before I even reached the landing.”
Danika’s eyebrows rose, questions crossing her face, but she suppressed them. “Easy enough.”
Purple and blue sparks flew from the furnace.
“Shall we continue?” Ksenia tipped her chin at it, grateful for the distraction.
Ksenia reached for a halter front made entirely of chainmail, then pulled it over her head to cover her torso before replacing her apron.
Danika rubbed her shoulder. “I’m not looking forward to this.” She copied her sister.
“Yeah, this is going to fucking suck.”
This time, Karsan had demanded a Damascus pattern.
The more complex the pattern, the greater the weapon’s potential. But it came at a cost.
Not all bondsmiths had the skill or constitution to survive it.
Ksenia pulled the bars of white-hot common iron from the forge while Danika drew out the Grastelian ones.
They stacked them in a chessboard pattern atop each other on the anvil, the metals bubbling and hissing.
“Ready?” Danika bit her lip, hammer poised. “If we need to bail, we bail. It’s just steel. It’s not worth life and limb, all right?”
Ksenia nodded her assent, lips pressed thin.
The metals rejected their forced marriage—a burst of red sparks.
Then, the resonances hit her like a cold wind funneled through a snow-swept valley.
Her eyes clenched shut as pressure crept from the base of her skull, spreading forward.
Sharp, angry, discordant resonances darted through her mind, streaking through, there and gone—predators moving between the trees of a leafless, winter forest, calling to one another in the dark.
Reverberating, circling them.
And beneath it all, a deep and mournful sound that bounced off the frozen ground and trees like a hunting horn.
Ksenia imagined Danika behind her in a clearing, steadily swinging, her breath white puffs in the cold.
The resonances warbled, then became clear in her mind.
They took form and moved at the forest line, just visible, maybe a half-dozen, moving like predators assessing whether they were a worthy meal.
She imagined their humble home and quickly built it, stone by stone. She could feel the moss growing on the mortar.
Not quickly enough—the first one broke from the trees, clearing the stone wall before it closed with the thatch roof.
A buzzing heat started to build behind her eyes.
Maybe she did need to kill them.
It was a roiling mass of dark smoke on four legs, prowling. Blue fire roared where its eyes should’ve been, and what resembled jaws snapped at her.
She grabbed a half-finished sword off their worktable. Tempered, but unsharpened.
The tip clanged and bounced against the ground.
Heavier than she expected.
It lunged and she hefted it, barely catching its shoulder mid-leap, the blade passing through the smoke but grazing something solid beneath.
A scatter of sparks accompanied its discordant shriek, like steel on steel.
It skidded, slamming against the wall—a deep grind echoed as the stones shifted, sending mortar dust flying.
Pain snapped through their minds.
“Bail?” Danika panted.
The compromised wall forced the roof to sag inward, and snow drifted in from the cracks.
Its jaws opened wide, saliva dripping from tooth to tooth as it turned in Danika’s direction.
“No,” Ksenia grunted. She rushed and drove her blade into its side, crashing into their mother’s old wooden spindle. “Keep—going.”
Danika drew out the blade steadily, sweat pouring down her face.
Outside, heavy strikes bludgeoned the walls, and she readied her blade once more.
Her chest tightened, like something was closing around her ribs. Her nose ran warm, trickling over her lip.
When it was over, she was on her knees.
Formless dark bodies were mangled and piled atop one another around and in the ruins of their home. Walls half torn, snow falling freely through the bowed ceiling.
Ksenia panted, lungs burning. Her hand was welded shut around her sword.
The hammer strikes stopped, snapping Ksenia back to reality.
“Your nose.” Danika blinked at Ksenia and the bodies, then at the blade.
Ksenia drew herself to her feet, only to slump against the anvil, forehead nearly touching the cooling steel. “I know.”
“We should have bailed.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“That doesn’t matter—” Danika broke off, jaw clenched.