43. Night of Knives
Night of Knives
The plan changed the moment they reached the door.
“New approach,” Baldir said, his voice low and hard. “Danarre, you stay here.”
I stopped halfway to joining them. “What?”
“If we’re right about this, someone needs to survive. Someone needs to carry word back to Henrik if everything goes wrong.” Baldir’s eyes held the particular weight of command that expected obedience. “You’re the failsafe.”
“That’s not what we agreed.”
“I’m changing what we agreed.” He checked his sword one more time, the motion automatic and familiar. “If we don’t come back by dawn, you find a way out. You get to the horses, you ride for home, and you tell Father everything we learned tonight.”
Armand nodded, his face locked in the rigid calm of a man preparing for the worst. “Lock the door behind us. Don’t open it for anyone except us. If someone tries to force their way in—”
“I know how to defend a room,” I said, letting some of the Red Gale’s certainty bleed into my voice. “I also know what happens to failsafes in enemy territory.”
“What’s that?”
I shifted my weight against the doorframe. “They’re the last victims, killed at leisure. A messenger trapped in the heart of an enemy fortress isn’t a contingency. It’s a rat in a cage, waiting for the dogs to finish their other work.”
Baldir’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue .
“We don’t have time to debate this,” Armand said. “We move now or we don’t move at all.”
“Then stop trying to protect me and let me do my job.” I stepped toward the door. “I’m not staying behind while you walk into whatever’s waiting out there.”
“Yes,” Baldir said, his voice flat and final. “You are.”
He put one hand on my chest and pushed me back. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to make his point.
“Your job is to survive. That’s what Father would want. That’s what I want. And that’s what’s going to happen, because I’m the heir and I’m giving you an order.”
I could have argued more, could have pushed back and insisted and demanded to be included.
But looking at his face, I understood the same lesson the Red Gale had learned decades ago: some battles couldn’t be won with words.
Some required you to nod, accept the order, and then do exactly what you’d planned to do anyway once the people giving orders were out of sight.
“Fine,” I said. “Dawn. If you’re not back by dawn, I run.”
Baldir’s expression softened by a fraction. “Good. Lock the door behind us.”
They moved through the doorway without looking back, their footsteps fading into the corridor’s darkness.
I closed the door.
I locked it.
Then I turned to the window and started planning my descent.
◇ ◆ ◇
The glass panes swung outward on iron hinges, revealing a steep drop to the courtyard below. Two stories, give or take. Not impossible, but the kind of climb that punished carelessness.
The stonework outside showed its age, weathered blocks with deep mortar lines that would serve as handholds for anyone who knew how to use them.
I’d climbed worse walls in my previous life, scaling fortress towers with nothing but grip strength and the knowledge that falling meant death.
This was practically a ladder by comparison.
I stripped off the formal doublet Betta had dressed me in, trading fine silk for freedom of movement. The shirt beneath was thin enough to tear if it caught on a rough edge, so I pulled that off too. Better to climb in trousers alone than to have fabric snag a stone lip at the wrong moment.
The Knight Brand burned between my shoulder blades as I swung my legs over the windowsill. Not pain, exactly. Eagerness. The Brand knew what was coming, and it wanted it.
「The Knight stirs.」
I lowered myself over the edge, fingers finding purchase in the gaps between stones. The mortar crumbled slightly under my weight, but the hold was solid. I shifted my grip, found the next handhold, and began the descent.
Down one story. A window ledge jutted out just enough to rest my feet and redistribute my weight.
I pressed myself flat against the cold stone, listening for voices or movement in the rooms I passed.
Nothing but snores and the occasional cough from the noble guests sleeping off their wine and their politics, unaware of the knives being sharpened outside their doors .
Another story. My fingers found purchase in cracks and gaps, muscle memory from a lifetime of surviving walls that wanted me dead. The ground floor windows glowed with lamplight, likely kitchens or guard stations. Places to avoid.
I dropped the final distance into shadow between two buttresses, landing in a crouch among overgrown ivy. The courtyard beyond stretched wide and mostly empty, torches marking patrol routes I’d memorized during the walk from the gate.
Then I heard them.
“Going down soon, right?” A voice drifted from around the corner, low and urgent. Two men, maybe a third, standing in the shadow of the stable wall.
“Shush.” A second voice, sharper. “Not so loud. Someone will hear you.”
I pressed deeper into the ivy, lungs locked.
“Just saying, been waiting all night. When’s the signal?”
“When it comes. Keep your mouth shut until then.”
“What if the nobles try to run?”
“They won’t. The gates are sealed. Guards have their orders.” A pause. Then a voice gone lazy with anticipation. “The only ones leaving this estate tonight are the ones who were supposed to leave.”
The Hierophant. They were talking about his departure.
“What about the fighters? That de Blaise lot looked sharp.”
“The young ones are in the south barracks. Danzing and his veterans are in the east wing. By the time they figure out what’s happening, the barracks will be burning and the gate will be locked.”
Footsteps moved away, but the confirmation was all I needed .
This wasn’t paranoia or political maneuvering. This was an execution waiting for its cue.
◇ ◆ ◇
I crept along the wall, using shadows and architecture to mask my movement. Somewhere in the main keep, Baldir and Armand were walking toward the east wing, completely unaware that their people in the south barracks were the first targets.
The assassins weren’t going for the veterans. They were going for the easy kills first.
My team. Maise. Perrin. Grit. The rest of the squad, sixteen fighters who’d trained with us, bled with us, survived the Proving Grounds and the Stone Yard together. They were going to die in their beds, and my brothers were walking in exactly the wrong direction.
I picked up my pace, staying low and using every scrap of cover the estate offered. The practice yards lay ahead, empty at this hour, with equipment sheds and weapons racks that might offer better tools than my bare hands.
Movement ahead froze me.
Four men in plain cloaks converged near the armory entrance, their postures anything but guards making rounds. Too focused, too intent. One carried a bundle wrapped in cloth that clinked softly with each step. Bottles. Glass bottles filled with liquid that caught the torchlight like oil.
“South barracks first,” one muttered. “That’s where the de Blaise dogs sleep.”
They were going for my people.
The group split, two heading for the barracks while the others moved toward the armory itself.
Probably collecting more supplies, more fuel, more ways to ensure nobody survived.
I followed the pair heading for the barracks, keeping to shadows, the Knight Brand pushing heat through my spine with every step.
The barracks door stood closed but not barred.
These buildings were designed for housing tournament competitors, not defending against siege.
No arrow slits, no reinforced hinges, no killing grounds.
Just wooden walls and sleeping fighters who trusted the Duke’s hospitality.
The two men paused at the entrance, unwrapping their bundles with the careful attention of professionals who’d done this before.
Glass bottles filled with dark liquid. The smell hit me even from twenty paces away.
Lamp oil mixed with something chemical and sharp.
Alchemist’s fire, waiting for a flame that hadn’t been struck yet.
They planned to burn my people alive in their beds.
I needed weapons. The ceremonial dagger at my hip was decoration, blade too dull for real work and handle too ornate to grip properly. But the practice yard equipment shed sat ten paces to my left, its door secured with a simple latch.
The men were focused on their bottles, carefully positioning them against the barracks wall where the flames would spread fastest once they had a source of ignition. I slipped to the shed and lifted the latch with fingers that remembered how to move in silence even after decades of death.
Inside, practice weapons lined the walls. The spears were real wood with blunted metal points, heavy enough to kill if you knew where to aim.
I took two.
The first man died before he knew I was there.
◇ ◆ ◇
The spear left my hand the way Rulfen had taught me, the way the Red Gale had thrown a thousand times in a life before this one.
Straight and true, shoulder behind it, body rotating to add force.
The blunted point wasn’t sharp enough to slice, but it didn’t need to be.
It tore through the back of the first man’s skull with pure kinetic force, punching through bone and out through his open mouth in a spray of teeth and blood.
He jerked once, gurgling around the shaft, then crumpled forward without making a sound anyone would hear.
No time for the work to sit. I was already sprinting, low across the packed earth, the second spear angled forward like a pike.
The second man barely had time to turn. His eyes went wide as shadows gave way and a shirtless boy came out of the darkness with blood already on his weapon. His lips parted. Terror, alarm, shock at seeing what shouldn’t exist: a child with a killer’s aim and a dead man’s calm.