CHAPTER 91

The tip of Valkas’ boot come into view in front of Medrein’s body. The Black Sword comes down, gives the forlorn head a poke. My father stares up, mouth hanging open in disbelief.

Only then does Valkas come into the room, illuminated by a floating white orb that stays somewhere ahead and above him. He stares at the table I pulled to the middle of the room, at the ceiling grate lying on the floor, at the long chute darting up and mixing with other chutes until they all turn into a distant chimney.

He’s not fooled by it. Not for a second. I know it when I run out from behind the table, when I swing up with Rue shaped into a light sword. Valkas sidesteps me, lets the blade slice in front of his face and the momentum to carry me out into the corridor, tripping on Father’s body and falling next to Amelia’s dagger, directly in front of Medrein’s unblinking eyes.

Godtouched watch me from the end of the corridor. There are more of them; and they’re closer now, though their relaxed expressions and down-facing weapons show how much they care. They were brought in to catch me. Now that I’m caught, that Medrein has been dealt with, they’re only sticking around to watch a job well done.

What will my punishment be, they ask themselves, maybe hoping for something interesting. Observant notices it all, but I let their presence slip from my awareness. I stand up slowly. Valkas steps into view, frame squared with the open door.

I scream and swing again, wide. The guildleader steps aside, a flowing, quick movement, and trips me up; I fall down hard against the table, throwing the few remaining glass instruments tumble and shatter against the floor.

“You’ve lost, Malco,” Valkas says. “It was a bold plan, I’ll admit it. Just barging into my room, bold as you please? No one’s ever tried that route before, let me tell you. Mostly because they know what I do to them. Do you know what I do to them, Malco? I’m sure the stories circulate. In fact, I make sure they do.”

I spin, plant my back foot, and dart forward at the same time Rue turns into a longer, thinner weapon, ending in a terribly sharp tip. Valkas is no longer there, but at my side.

Even through the living armor, the punch to my kidney drives the air from my lungs. I fall down, gasping for air, clutching the afflicted area. He’s quick. Too quick.

“You know Hunch, don’t you?” He asks, not even out of breath. “I’m sure you used it in the fight with that pissant Rao. I have a similar thing. Better, though.”

He steps close to me, plants the Black Sword, then crouches down to my level. His smile is warm, his eyes steady. There is nothing in his expression at all that could betray what he’s just done.

“Look,” he says, rolling a wrist. “There’s no reason why you need to do this. I know you think there is, but there isn’t.”

I make a mockery of an attack. The shadow of a movement. All the excuse Valkas needs to backhand me onto my back.

“Oh.”

I feel his hand on my neck. For a moment, I think he’s trying to suffocate me, but then he yanks his hand away and the gold chain around my neck breaks. Valkas holds Lysander’s amulet up to his eyes.

“Why didn’t you just escape?” He wonders aloud, eyes shining lit with the diamond’s glimmer.

Get up.

“You did this in the dungeon too,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it when you sent that girl through the Golden Door. Oh, man. I thought I was seeing things. We’ve had a lot of good moments over the years, but never anything like that.” Valkas turns the amulet in my direction. “And now you did it again. Do you realize that? You could have gone anywhere. Back home, for one. Instead, you came here, got your dad killed and yourself caught. How’s that for a plan?”

Get up, Malco, Rue repeats.

I do. My legs shake and my breath is heavy, but I come back up again, blade in hand and pointed at Valkas.

He smiles.

“I like you, Malco. I really do. You don’t have to take my word for it; I’m usually not this patient with people. Ask your buddy Rao.” The smile again, lightning, there and gone. “I give Challengers a little more leeway, but you… You’ve gone past the mark and then just kept going. That thing you pulled off just now, trying to get me mad? Oof. But.” He raises a finger. “I do like you. You show spirit.”

I don’t answer. Don’t say anything. I’m stretched thin; my skin feels like it’s about to burst from the inside.

“What’s more, you know when to keep quiet! It’s a rare gift that, let me tell you,” Valkas laughs.

A sound echoes down the corridor like a moan from the depths of the earth. A smidge of dust falls down from above, shining like silver in the light of Valkas’ orb.

“The boys are rowdy tonight, it seems. We’re all feeling a bit wild, aren’t we?”

It’s amazing, I think.

What is, Malco?

He really can’t stay quiet. It hurts him almost physically.

Valkas coughs into the back of his hand.

“As I was saying. I want to forgive you, Malco. I want the Black Sword guild to have a great Challenge year. The competition is strong, but even then, we’re going to win. You have what it takes to win it, Malco.” Valkas tempers his smile, looks at me seriously, hands clasping the Black Sword’s pommel. “Don’t let this ugly business get in the way of that. Do what’s smart. Be my Champion.”

I watch the guild leader. Beautiful, regal, holding the sword he took from the previous despot, hardly a hair out of place. The image of the promised prince. If it wasn’t for that smile, that is. If his eyes weren’t so cold and dead, so calculating. If they didn’t shift between me and the door, making sure we’re not being watched or waiting for the audience he’s not sure is coming.

“What happens to the Champions?” I ask.

A crinkle in the corners of his mouth. Downward.

“Pardon?”

“You said the issue with Medrein was that he was a Champion. But if I win the Challenge for you, if I become a Champion, what will happen to me?”

Valkas opens his mouth to answer, hesitates, and then turns his head sharply when a member of his guard appears in the doorway. From my point of view, I can only spot the tip of his well-polished black boots.

“Sorry, sir,” comes the diffident, polite voice. Teryon, I realize. “I sent some people upstairs to check on the disturbance. I’ll have a report soon—”

“Teryon,” Valkas cuts in. “I’m talking to Malco. Step back and keep everyone back. Do you hear?”

A pause. Even from the tip of his boot I can see Teryon strain to recover his bearings. Not a man used to being criticized. He mumbles an apology and bows with a greater show of respect than any I’ve seen from a Godtouched.

“Why were you keeping a Champion in chains?” I ask before Teryon can walk away.

A flash in Valkas’ eyes. Had he truly not realized? Had he not put two and two together?

“I caged your father for his crime, then kept him as a bargaining chip,” he says. “To keep you in line.”

A dangerous smile plays upon my face now. Why lie? Why pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about?

“Not him,” I say. “I mean the other Champion. The one you kept in the special room. The one Meriana was—”

Two booms above interrupt me. They sound closer than before, and nothing like the sudden roar of a crowd. More something hitting hard against something else. Something else follows, long and urgent. A scream.

But the Godtouched hardly stir from their positions.

“Sir?” Teryon asks finally. “Do we have another Champion prisoner that I’m not aware of?”

A vein throbs in Valkas’ forehead, as if he’s raring to snap at the leader of the guard, yet knows there are other things he must attend to.

“Had?” he barks. “Had? What do you mean had?” Valkas demands, stepping towards me.

I do my best to smile a Valkas smile, showing teeth.

“Well, of course he’s not a prisoner any longer…”

“What did you do!”

Valkas steps forward, arm reaching for me, Black Sword held at his back. I react instinctively. My arm draws back and snaps forward like a whip, throwing the dagger in my hand. Amelia’s dagger, recovered from Father’s body. The guild leader reacts quickly, exactly like someone under the Hunch spell, twisting out of the way of the knife and taking his eyes off me for a second.

It’s all I need. Dirty Fighter does the rest.

When he turns back to look at me, Rue has wrapped around my severed wrist and extended, sharp and vicious, for a cut that Valkas cannot completely defend. He’s quick, but he still has weight, still has momentum, and he can still be caught off guard.

“—fucker!” the guildleader yells, clutching his face with a suddenly red and dripping hand. “Bastard mother—”

Professional, precise, Teryon dashes into the room, sword drawn, between me and the guild leader. He doesn’t attack me, standing back behind the worktable, but he makes it abundantly clear that further violence on my part would be a poor decision.

“Sir,” Teryon begins.

“Fuck it!” Valkas yells. He takes the hand away from his face, revealing a ravaged mess of an eye crying blood and a clearer fluid, and wraps it around the hilt of the Black Sword.

When the sword comes down, I’m already jumping to the side. Though the blade misses the table by a good length, the arc of darkness that springs for it is enough to cleave the wood in two, bringing the entire thing crashing down in two clean slices.

“Attack me?”

Another arc, another line chipped off the wall and floor. It misses me by a wide margin. It changes nothing. I’m still going to die. It’s still going to matter very little. But the joy of having gouged Valkas’ eye out, of having outsmarted him, well—

Well. It’s not that great a consolation.

But something may come of it still. Between Valkas’ screams and blind swings, I see the look in Teryon’s eyes. Confusion. A crack where I can stick a crowbar.

“Malakei is long gone!” I yell. “Your Champion is loose in the city!”

Another swing cuts a clean hole into the darkness of the neighboring room.

“You’ll never see him again!”

“Sir—”

But Valkas answers only with pure rage. He lifts his sword, he swings, and suddenly he’s thrown off-balance, careening into the wall while Teryon tries to hold him up.

The entire corridor shakes as another bellow makes its way down to us. This one is not a distant echo, but a loud roar, growing louder.

“What – is – that?” Valkas demands as he stands.

Teryon rushes out, sword in hand. From my spot on the ground, half-crouched and ready to jump again, I see him stop, see him freeze. A series of screams punctuate the roar. The Godtouched guard. I realize it at the same as Valkas, who runs out of the room without a look back, sword at the ready.

My heart pumps as I stand timorously and walk to the doorway. I have to steel myself before peeking out.

What I see is fog. Fearful and alive, roiling like a fat river, splintering bone and drawing blood from a mess of Godtouched who stand, trying to contain it.

The first thought that comes into my mind is that Malakei followed me here, that this is his power, that he comes for me—

Another thought overtakes it. Amelia. Powerful Amelia, who sent her shadows to find me one night, who killed the robbers that waylaid me—

And then Observant catches something. A dancing warrior in the middle of the turmoil.

Essa?

Teryon and Valkas have seen her too, and found a target. They run, blades drawn. What they didn’t see is that Essa isn’t in control of the fog, merely protected by it. As Teryon jumps, a desperate attempt to hit the Challenger while her back is turned to fight a Godtouched guard, a coil of solid fog spears him through the chest, killing the man instantly.

Valkas stops. The fog has no eyes. The fog has no mouth. But it does have a shape. It fills the hallway from wall to wall, blocking off everything else. It opens a curtain, a gray veil, and Essa walks from underneath it, coming into the light of Valkas’ magic orb.

One-eyed, Valkas looks at her, at the mass of gray, and finally turns to look at me. And then he makes the wrong choice. He smiles.

“I can give you Lysander, Malco,” he says. “We can reach an understanding—"

Before he can say whatever he had in mind, the mist has pinned him to the floor. Rue solidifies in my hand, growing long and sharp.

I bury him in the guildleader’s remaining eye. Bury him deep and feel Rue twist and turn of his own accord in Valkas’ brain.

Silence fills the hall. The magic illuminating orb winks out and falls down from its suspended place, pinging off the stone floor.

By the distant light streaming in from the floor above, I look up at Essa. At the same time the mass of fog wobbles, contracts, and then collapses, as if contracting very rapidly, into a single, recognizable shape.

Hilde. Smiling bravely, trying to keep a terrible shaking under control.

“Thank you,” I say.

There’s no time for more. Godtouched stir along the corridor, and bodies begin to dissolve as their owners return. I dig into Valkas’ clothes and grab hold of Lysander’s amulet. I know what I did wrong. Or at least I suspect it.

I touch their hands with mine, clutching the amulet.

“Carmynae Escamut duam Dael Nodrimu. Roark’s Stables.”

I focus on my father’s eyes. A glint, half-perceived in the darkness. And then green envelops the world and carries me far away.