The street was unforgiving; Garec felt more skin scrape from his hip. Beside him, Ford cursed, and rolled over with a moan.
Brexan lay still, unnervingly silent.
‘See to her!’ Garec shouted, slipping an arm through one of his quivers, but the captain didn’t move. ‘Captain Ford!’ Garec kicked him hard in the lower leg.
‘What? What was that? Garec, what was that?’ Shaking, obviously in shock, he covered his face with his hands.
‘See to Brexan,’ Garec repeated and strung his bow. ‘I’ll be back.’ He watched long enough to see the seaman push himself onto all fours. Good enough, he thought, trying not to worry that he’d seen no sign of life from Brexan. There’d be time for that later.
He hesitated at the corner, ignoring the screams of the injured, the headless jemmafish strewn about and the crunch of broken glass beneath his boots. He felt blood trickling down his back and soaking into his clothes. His side ached and his hip blazed where he had scraped it raw. Not much time, he thought. The waterfront guards will be here in two breaths. There was another explosion, this one further away, somewhere east of the tavern, but like the blood, the fish, the screams and the broken glass, the Bringer of Death ignored it. He’d have one shot, maybe two, before Mark Jenkins found and killed him.
‘The whoreson was in the tavern the whole time,’ he murmured.
Jacrys was a few steps from the tiny foyer when the first explosion rocked the tavern and his upstairs safehouse. Without a banister, his tenuous grip on the cracked wooden walls failed and he tumbled to the lower floor. As the last step creaked beneath his weight, Jacrys took stock of his broken body. His chin dripped blood and a collarbone was broken – painful but not alarming; he needed only one good arm for what he was about to do. One ankle had been wrenched and he recognised the unpleasant tingling sensation that meant he’d torn ligaments. This too was inconvenient, but no real deterrent. The biggest problem was that something had finally broken – irreparably this time – inside his lung. He realised it was filling with blood, and quickly too; he’d drown soon.
So there was precious little time left. Jacrys fumbled for Thadrake’s knife, set his jaw and pushed himself to his feet with a groan, screaming involuntarily when the broken ends of his collarbone rubbed together, and again when his ankle thunked against the wall. The sound was horrific, a penultimate death-rattle.
He barely registered the second explosion, nor did he hear the cries of the injured. With blood smeared over his face and bubbling on his lips, Jacrys Marseth staggered into the street.
Alen – Kantu – had been outside the tavern for just a moment when he felt the seeking spell. He didn’t know why Fantus had failed to detect it, but he would have to act quickly, on faith that he had truly found his old friend. Someone close by was trying to kill him.
He cast a shield to protect himself and Hannah, a spell he hadn’t called in over a thousand Twinmoons. Then he screamed, ‘Fantus! Fantus, get down!’ and pushed Hannah beneath the doorway, hoping the solid construction around the entryway might offer some slight protection. He had an instant’s eye contact with Fantus before a wagon loaded with malodorous fish rattled past, then the blast crashed and rolled along the road. There hadn’t been time to cast a protection spell over Fantus. His ears ringing, his magic boiling in his blood, Alen sprang to his feet and turned to face their attacker.
It was Nerak, it had to be, and whether he was in the guise of Prince Malagon, Princess Bellan, or a dockside shopkeeper, he didn’t care. He had waited half his life for this chance; it was time for vengeance. From the east a muscular South Coaster, a sailor, strode into the carnage, rather than fleeing like most. The sailor stared straight ahead, through the crowds and across the wharf to where Fantus’ body lay crumpled against the base of the wooden crane. He didn’t turn aside, nor did he appear to flinch, or even to notice Alen at all.
Nine hundred Twinmoons he has his slaves searching for me, and now I’m fifteen paces away and he doesn’t know it?
He glanced at Hannah. She was obviously shaken, but unhurt. Brushing bits of glass from her tunic, she looked up at him and shook her head.
I wish you could feel this… It’s like Sandcliff used to be. The energy is all over the place.
Whose energy is it?
I don’t know, but it’s enormous, more powerful than me or Fantus, or even Milla.
Alen was shocked into stillness for a moment: nine hundred Twinmoons, and now Nerak didn’t wish to face him. It didn’t make sense. Then, watching Hannah pull herself up using the door frame, he realised what Fantus had screamed before diving to the cobblestones.
‘It’s not Nerak,’ he whispered.
‘What?’ Hannah said, her ears still ringing. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘It’s not him.’ He pointed discreetly at the Ronan sailor, then clasped his hands together while his mind spiralled, almost out of control. ‘What are we doing here?’ he asked finally. Larion magic swirled around him. He revelled in it for a moment, allowing it to float him effortlessly back countless Twinmoons, to Sandcliff and to Pikan and his friends. He had been waiting half his life for a chance to kill his old colleague, and in an instant, he had lost it. He could still sense vestiges of Nerak, a faint scent, occasional traces of magic employed in recent Twinmoons, but Fantus had been right: whoever that was, it wasn’t Nerak.
‘What are we doing here?’ he said again, still watching the South Coaster push through the crowd. ‘What is that thing?’
‘It’s them, Alen,’ Hannah said, ‘your friends – they’re here! That’s Fantus over there; you said so yourself… Alen, help them, now!’
He looked around, then said, ‘You’re right; Hannah, please, get back inside!’ He raised his palms to the sky, feeling his magic marshal itself for battle. Once he was certain the dark-skinned sailor was preoccupied with Fantus, and when the crowds around the Ronan sailor were thinnest, he released an incendiary spell that sent a second shock wave blazing across the pier.
The magic caught Redrick Shen unawares and he crashed through the front window of the Malakasian customs house. Alen started across the road, watching the wreckage and waiting for the South Coaster to reappear. With another spell at his fingertips, he ignored the warning sensation tickling the hairs on the back of his neck. It was nothing; he was just upset. There was nothing to be ‘Mark Jenkins!’
Alen heard the shout, louder and more intense than the here-and-there cries of the injured, but he paid it no attention, preferring instead to watch and wait for the thing inside the customs house. It wouldn’t be long; it would be back. Perhaps if he pulled the whole building down, perhaps that might Arrow!
He let go the magic before turning around; Garec’s first shot glanced up and over his shoulder, striking an invisible Larion barrier.
‘You there!’ he shouted Another arrow; rutters, but this boy is fast!
With a flick of his wrist, he set Garec’s second shaft afire, sidestepped it and watched as it embedded itself in the wall of the building behind him.
‘Stop shooting at me!’ he cried, but another arrow was already on the way. He deflected this one too, then called a spell to stun the bowman, who had appeared out of a side street next to the tavern. The spell hit the archer in the chest, knocking him to the ground amidst a mess of fish and broken glass and wooden splinters.
When Alen started back toward the customs house, the creature was gone.
Thunk. The lights came on, not as before; these weren’t swamp lights, orange twilights and red dawns coloured by marsh gases and fog. Rather, these were noisy, overhead lights, the kind one would find in a cafeteria or a warehouse. They came on with an audible thunk as the breaker switched. And they didn’t brighten the room all of a sudden, like bathroom lights or lights on a stage; they took some time to warm up, and afterwards, the entire swamp would be bathed in the cold, harsh glare of shopping-mall white.