FIVE BLADES FOR ONE

"Miss Reeve," said the tallest of them. "We have been expecting you."

He stepped forward onto the lowest stair and put back his hood. He was a man of perhaps forty, lean and olive-skinned, with a thin dark mustache and the pleasant, cultivated face of a professor of languages. He bowed. It was an excellent bow, perfectly judged, a little ironic.

"Forgive the intrusion. We are in the way of being a committee." He gestured to his companions. "Five Houses, five representatives. A rather exclusive club. It was thought that the Relic was too valuable to be left to one family, and since the Chancellor was kind enough to supply the intelligence, we saw no reason not to cooperate."

"Cooperation is a pleasant thing," I said.

"Isn't it? I do so enjoy it." He smiled. "You will, I think, give us the Relic. You will walk into the chamber, take what is there, and hand it over. And then you will come with us. The Chancellor has very particular plans."

"And if I don't?"

"Then we shall find it very difficult to keep our hands from you."

"I'd hate to cause difficulty."

"You are a sensible woman." He turned his head. "Gentlemen. Madam."

The other four dropped their hoods.

I took them in at a glance, as Hawk had taught me: name the threat, then the threat's answer. A woman of fifty, heavy-set, in dark green velvet, with a basket on her arm and a sweet round face: poison. A narrow pale young man with hollow cheeks and a ring of black iron on every finger: chains. A giant in a leather vest with a quiver on his back and a recurved bow of black wood: arrows. And last, apart from the others, a slight silent figure in gray, face half-hidden by a shawl, who stood with hands folded and eyes cast down: the ground.

"The one in gray is a rune-mage," said the Shade. "A Gold-adjacent. She has already laid a formation in the corridor behind you."

"I can see it," I said. "It's on the floor."

"And the tall one—"

"Shadow." I could feel it. The air around the olive-skinned man was wrong, dim, a patch of darkness that clung to him like a cloak. "Silver peak. Maybe Gold sprout."

"Good."

"They have been told how I fight."

"They have been told how you fought a boy in a marsh. It is not the same thing."

I loosened Ashbrand in her scabbard. I settled my weight. I said, aloud, to the man on the stair:

"I'm afraid I shall have to refuse."

The smile did not change. "A pity."

He lifted a hand.

…

The shadow struck first.

It came off him in a tide, a rolling bank of black that spilled down the steps and across the floor like ink. I felt it reach for my ankles. I felt a cold dragging weight, as of a thousand tiny hands. It swarmed up my legs. It wanted my knees.

I burned it.

The Field opened round me in a single breath, and the shadows hissed and fell back, shriveling. But I felt the cost. It had a cost, I found: the Field could not stay open while I fought. It burned the shadows, yes, and ate their structure, but it also burned my reserves, a hot steady bleed. I had perhaps ninety seconds of it.

I used it.

"Now!" cried the olive-skinned man.

The woman with the basket tossed something into the air. It was a small gray ball, round as an egg. It burst before it reached the ground, and a green mist poured out, thick, sweet, smelling of almonds and rot.

"Grave-mist," said Declan. "One breath paralyzes the lungs."

I held my breath. I held the Field. The mist hit the heat, and where the two met the green went brown, and then gray, and then to nothing. But I could not stay. I dove sideways, rolled, came up behind a pillar, and heard the twang of the giant's bowstring.

The arrows came.

There were three. They flew with the unnatural precision of Gold-etched shafts, curving round the pillar in a long arc to find my back. I spun, Ashbrand in both hands, and the blade met the first in mid-air. The Cinder ate the rune. The arrow dropped. The second came in under my guard; I felt it graze my thigh and the burn of it, the sudden hot line. The third struck the stone behind me, and burst into a fan of blue lightning that threw me across the floor.

I lay there for a second. I tasted blood. I saw, through a haze, the pale young man with the iron rings stepping forward, flicking his fingers, and a chain of black links springing from his hands to snake across the stone. It coiled. It darted.

I rolled.

The chain missed me by an inch and sank into the floor, and a puff of dust rose where it struck. It dragged itself back. I saw it uncoil for a second blow. I was on my feet, running, running toward the pale young man, and as he flung out his hand I met the chain with the flat of the blade and tore it apart.

His face went slack. A whimper escaped him. He was a Silver, a middling Silver; he had never in his life had his weapon taken apart in his hand. I did not give him time to recover. I cracked him across the jaw with the pommel and he went down in a heap.

One.

…

The ground moved.

I felt it first through my boots: a slow shudder, a rising hum. The floor of the chamber was alive with light. A pattern had sprung up around me, a great wheel of gold lines, rings within rings, flaring as I stood on it. The woman in gray had raised her hands. She had said not a word. Her eyes were closed. Her whole body was trembling with effort.

A rune-circle. A trap. A formation of immense complexity, sealing me in a ring of binding light, drawing in every scrap of Mana from the air. I felt my limbs go heavy. I felt the Cinder in my blood thicken and slow.

"Hold her," whispered the olive-skinned man. "Hold her!"

The formation tightened.

I fought it. I dropped to one knee and laid my palm on the stone, and thrust the Cinder into the lines with all my strength. For a moment nothing happened. Then something in the formation snapped, a single bright gold thread, and the whole wheel shuddered. The woman in gray cried out. The lines flickered.

But they did not break.

It was a masterpiece. It was the finest piece of rune-craft I had ever seen. It was a labyrinth of nested redundancies, each layer shielding the next, so that burning one only strengthened the others. It would have taken me an hour to unravel. I did not have an hour.

I thought: Where is the hinge?

Every structure has one. Every lattice has a point that holds the rest. I had found it in the Aegis, in the Band, in the Hollowback's spine. I stared at the golden wheel, at the dizzy whirl of the circles, at the little glowing knots at the junctions. I could not see it. I had to see it. The formation was drawing the strength from my legs, my arms, my lungs.

"Look to the center," said the Shade.

I looked.

The center of the wheel was empty. A small round space, a foot across, of bare stone. It was where the woman in gray stood, with her hands folded. She stood on the exact center of her own formation, the one place the lines did not cross.

"A caster in her own circle," said Declan. "She is not outside the structure. She is the keystone."

I understood.

I did not burn the circle. I burned the woman.

…

It was a thing I'd never done. The Cinder does not burn flesh. It burns structure. But the woman in gray was holding the formation with her own will, and her will was a structure, a thin silver thread that ran from her heart through the pattern like a cord. I could see it, with Ash Sight, as clear as a wire.

I lunged. I crossed the wheel in two strides, through the dragging air, with Ashbrand low. I felt the formation tear at me; I felt it claw at my arms. I kept going. I reached the center. The woman's eyes snapped open, large and gray and afraid.

I touched the silver thread with the point of my sword.

It parted.

The woman gave a short, high cry. Her hands flew apart. The golden wheel, deprived of its keystone, shattered into a thousand pieces and went up in a sheet of glittering dust. I felt the weight lift from my limbs like a coat. The woman fell to her knees, clutching her chest, gasping. She would live. She would also never again cast a formation of such delicacy.

Two.

I turned.

…

"Oh dear," said the olive-skinned man.

He had not moved from the steps. His smile had gone a little thin. The giant archer had drawn a fourth arrow and was holding it on the string. The woman with the basket had retreated behind a pillar. The pale young man lay where he had fallen. The woman in gray whimpered.

"You have broken three of my colleagues," said the man.

"I have. I'm sorry."

"I think you're not."

"No," I agreed. "I'm not, really."

He sighed. He pulled a pair of black gloves from his coat and drew them on, finger by finger. "I had hoped it would be tidy. But the Chancellor has been quite plain: alive, but not necessarily whole." He looked up. "I regret this very much."

He swept his hand outward.

The darkness came for me.

It was not like before. The first wave had been a feint. This was the true thing: a vast, silent, rolling dark, a darkness without light or edge. It swallowed the lanterns. It swallowed the stairs. It swallowed the Shade, who gave a short cry of anger. I felt it strike me full in the chest.

I was blind. I was deaf. I was falling through a night without bottom.

And I felt, in that darkness, the cold small fingers of a mind pressing into mine. The olive-skinned man was inside my head. He had found the weak place. He had slipped the shadow through the crack of my fear.

You are alone, said a quiet voice. You have always been alone. Your father is dead. Your mother is dead. The boy you loved gave you to the beasts. There is no one coming. Why struggle?

I could not answer. I could not breathe.

Lie down, said the voice, kindly. Lie down. It will be over soon.

And somewhere, very faint, very far, a thin cold part of me said, in perfect clarity:

That is an excellent trap. It is a pity about the premise.

I smiled.

"You know," I said, into the dark, "that is the second time this week someone has tried to tell me I am alone."

I called the Heart.

…

It came as it always came: a quiet, rising warmth. But I did not push it outward. I did not reach for a sword or a wall. I simply stopped holding it back.

I opened.

The Emberheart rose in my chest like a sun. Red light burst out of my skin, from my wrists, my throat, my eyes. It poured through the darkness, which hissed and shriveled and fell away from me in curling black rags. I heard the olive-skinned man cry out. I felt his mind recoil from mine, as a hand from a hot stove.

The shadows burned. They burned to ash, and the ash drifted in the red glow like snow.

I stood in the center of the chamber, bathed in scarlet light, with my arms spread and Ashbrand blazing in my hand, and the whole room was lit as if by sunrise.

"Impossible," whispered the man.

I went through him.

It was brief. I do not remember it well. I remember his eyes, wide and dark. I remember the black gloves rising, and the shadows flooding to his defense, and the Cinder devouring them. I remember the clean cold sensation of the blade going in.

He fell to his knees on the steps. He looked down at his chest. He looked up at me with an expression of mild, baffled reproach.

"I did say," he murmured, "that I regretted this."

"I know," I said. "I believed you."

He died on the stair. It took a minute.

…

The giant archer put down his bow.

He did it slowly, setting it on the floor with great care, as one sets down a sleeping child. He raised his hands. He looked at me, and at the dead man, and at the woman in gray, and at the stairs. There was a long moment. I could see him reckoning. Then he turned, and ran.

The woman with the basket had already gone.

I did not pursue them. I stood where I was, breathing hard, bleeding from my thigh and shoulder and a dozen small cuts, with my hair stuck to my forehead and the taste of ash in my mouth. The chamber had gone quiet. The gold light still burned through the door above me, steady and calm.

I climbed the steps.

At the top, on a plinth of black stone in the center of a small round chamber, lay a ring.

It was nothing remarkable. A plain band of pale metal, about the width of my thumb, unadorned, set with a single flat disk of white stone. It lay on a bed of faded velvet. It was cold. When I picked it up it weighed almost nothing.

I slipped it into my pocket.

"You have it," said the Shade. He had come up behind me, silent as breath. "The Argent Relic."

"Yes."

"Well done."

I did not answer. I was looking at the stairs.

At the foot of them, in a pool of gray light, the olive-skinned man lay with his eyes open. Beside him, bleeding in the dust, one of his companions, the pale young man with the iron rings, had come to himself and was crawling, groaning, towards the door.

I went down and knelt beside the dying man. I don't know why. He looked at me.

"Miss Reeve," he whispered.

"Yes."

He tried to smile. The effort cost him. His voice was no more than a thread, and the thread was running out.

"Crane knows," he breathed. "He... knows... you are not..."

"Not what?"

"...not..." A bubble of blood rose on his lip. "...not a person..."

His eyes fixed. His chest stilled.

I stayed there for a time, kneeling in the dust, with the dead man's words going round in my head like a stone in a bucket.

Not a person.

That was the second time in a week I had heard it.