Even Maggie had moved a little closer to me, edging away.
“-know what’s going to happen, Rose?” Isadora was asking.
“I’m positive,” Rose said.
“That makes things harder.”
“You’re making things harder,” Rose said. “What’s the idea? Doing Wrong for the sake of balancing out all the Right in the world?”
“No. That’s not what I do, and it’s not how I operate.”
“How do you operate?”
“If the scales are tilted one way, sometimes drastic action is needed to restore things. They may wobble in the aftermath, but equilibrium will be reached.”
“Then this looks like a whole fuckload of balance coming further down the road.”
“That’s an accurate assessment.”
Ty looked up at me as I passed, trudging forward. The blade of the sword dragged through the snowbank, and I used it like a clumsy sort of cane, thrusting it back to stab it into deeper, more solid snow and ice, to have something to press against. It slid free when I resumed moving forward.
It felt oddly squishy, but that was largely blood welling up to fill the fingertips of my gloves. The spikes were just deep enough to make wielding the thing painful, but not so deep that it was impossible. My arm throbbed up to the elbow, but I already had endorphins flooding my system, trying to counteract the pain elsewhere, my hand was cold.
Tiff’s head was bowed, and she was shaking, holding her hands to Alexis’ wound, but something Ty did or a sound he made seemed to clue her in. She looked up and her eyes went wide as she saw me.
Ty started to stand, to stop me, but something about my expression gave him pause.
I couldn’t talk, so I willed them to stay instead.
It was a distance to the Sphinx. Six paces. She was facing the window, and her own wing blocked her view of me.
I wasn’t sure I’d make it that far.
“Spirits,” I muttered, my words barely coherent, I was speaking so quietly. I made each breath a word, wheezed and whispered out past my lips. “Gods. Elementals. Goblins. Faerie. Take morsels from me. Take power. But give strength. Give me… what I need. Give it first.”
If there was a difference, I wasn’t sure I could tell.
“Hyena,” I said. “You… if you decide… break binding… attack sphinx… feel free…”
I focused on the sphinx. Her back leg, closest to me. The leg alone was almost as large as I was.
“Why wait?” Rose was saying.
“Because asking is akin to groveling. It sets one on the wrong foot, to be the supplicant, the power is handed off to another.”
“Fell, Blake, and someone very close to Blake are bleeding to death,” Rose said. “And you’re concerned about power?”
“You don’t deal with the lord of Toronto without being concerned about power. If Blake dies, it isn’t a great loss. Fell? He serves the lord of the city, and as much as he’s a thorn in his master’s side now, he won’t remain there.”
“I thought you wanted Con-”
“Careful,” Isadora cut in, wasting no time.
Her claws had come out.
“I thought you wanted the lord of the city to stay in place. Why let Fell die?”
“Because he won’t return to being a servant. He’d continue fighting. This way, his niece will be pressed to take over. Unfortunate, given how very young she is, but it maintains the balance.”
“And Alexis?”
“Your friends should be able to save her if left alone. I will strive to make sure that happens.”
“They’re not my friends. They’re Blake’s.”
Fell’s niece?
Fell hadn’t said anything about that.
Fell and I were disposable? We would be replaced, so the universe could do without us?
Fuck that.
Another blackout moment. I was close enough.
The sword clinked as I pulled it out of the snowbank and it touched sidewalk.
I moved my head, nudging Evan from my shoulder.
He knew what he was doing.
I was swinging one-handed, but Evan flew past, to give it a bit more force, a bit of a push.
I wasn’t strong enough to lift it clear off the ground, so the point scraped against the sidewalk, carving an arc.
I aimed for her hamstrings, for lack of a better word.
She moved in that same moment, and I saw her legs move out of reach.
She turned around in a moment. Her front paw, claws sheathed, lifted off the ground, blocking my swinging arm from moving any further. The blade’s tip passed harmlessly under the raised claw.
“No, little warrior,” she said. “Better monster slayers than you have tried.”
I gazed at her with eyes that might have been dull, unfocused.
The lion, the bird of prey, neither suggested slow reflexes. Her mother had been made to be a warden, a guardian of a holy place.
Yeah, she was right. If it was that easy, it would have been accomplished long ago.
Isadora’s paw pushed me back. Already off balance from the swing, I was out of strength. I landed hard, my head hitting snowbank.
Tiff shrieked. Or at least, I was pretty sure it was Tiff.
I heard Ty say something. I only caught the tail end. “-he’d want you to stay and help Alexis.”
The only person who stood by me here was Evan, landing on my forehead. Even the Hyena was gone, having fallen free of my grip.
I suspected black spots were passing across my field of vision, but it was hard to tell. There was only dark sky above, and endless amounts of falling snow. I wasn’t sure how to tell what was a black spot and what was simply black.
“I thought he’d passed out,” Isadora said.
“So did I,” Rose said.
I closed my eyes. The white of the snow was too bright against the darkness.
“He’s not showing,” Rose said.
“I know,” Isadora commented. “I’m not in a particular hurry. Haste makes waste, after all.”
“He doesn’t think you have it in you.”
“Fuck you, Rose,” Ty said. “Don’t encourage her to kill him.”
“I’m not,” Rose said. “Isadora, the stakes aren’t high enough, and they won’t get high enough. The lord of the city won’t show to ask you not to kill Blake because that shows that he’s weak. Now you won’t back down because it makes you look weak, and I don’t think you want Conquest to move forward with this. It’s a stalemate, and every second that passes, decent people are bleeding to death.”
“I’ll assume you aren’t counting Fell among these decent people,” Isadora said. “You’re right, but neither Conquest nor I lose anything substantial if these people bleed to death. If I hold you hostage, after the fact…”
Rose knows, I realized. Isadora told her, or she’d already figured it out. She knows that if I die, she gets to live. She’s not worried because she knows, and the people who are dying aren’t her friends?
“Blake put up a fight,” Rose said. “You’re going to let him die after that?”
“Are you implying it’s wrong?”
“No. I’m saying it’s… ignoble,” Rose said.
My back was wet with sweat and blood, and the chill crept up through the moisture, seeping into the core of my body.
I felt like my strength was being drawn out by the ground, along with blood and warmth. I couldn’t shake the lingering image of my body melding or melting into the surface of the sidewalk, becoming a part of it.