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I hurl myself into the edge of the opening door, managing to duck my head just slightly at the same time. My forehead slams into the hard wooden corner with all the force I can bring to bear.
Pain explodes through my skull for a fleeting second. Then my mind spirals into darkness.
Three
Stavros
As we wander the city streets, I keep the stump of my left wrist hidden in my pocket. The empty prosthetic base still strapped to it feels unnervingly light.
With fifteen years behind me since I sacrificed my hand in my dedication ceremony to Sabrelle, I can’t say I miss it at all. After all this time, the metal and wooden contraptions that’ve taken its place are even more familiar than the flesh I gave up.
But going completely without leaves me at too obvious a disadvantage.
Unfortunately, the metal combat prosthetic that’s the only option I have available is far too identifiable, making it a disadvantage in itself. It’s too large for me to easily conceal it in a pocket and too inhuman to escape notice.
And I’m not entirely sure whether I’m prowling Regica as a returning hero or a wanted criminal.
A glow streaks through the thickening night from various pub and restaurant windows. When a cluster of jovial patrons emerges from one of the pubs, the four of us draw to a stop not far away as if we’re pausing to debate our destination.
Rheave studies them for a moment and murmurs beneath a burst of their raucous laughter. “They don’t look very important.”
The daimon in human form tends to state the truth baldly—a quality I’ve come to appreciate in many circumstances.
I dip my head in acknowledgment. “They don’t. But you never know who might have seen or overheard something odd they’ll decide to mention to their friends.”
Alek shifts restlessly on his feet. Between the shadow of his cloak’s hood and the thin scarf he’s wrapped across his lower face to hide his scars, I can’t make out the scholar’s expression, but I can guess what he’s thinking.
We have to take whatever slim chances we can get of dredging up information, because we’ve gone all day without discovering anything at all.
With every peal of the temple bells on the hour, the dread in my gut has expanded. I’ve fought unpredictable enemies before but never any as baffling as this.
The pub-goers exchange a few crude comments about one of the barmaids complete with gestures of demonstration and then make noises of commiseration while one complains about his harsh boss at the bathhouse. They amble off leaving us just as uncertain as before.
Casimir grimaces and rakes his fingers through his tawny hair, an unusually tense gesture from the normally serene courtesan. “Whatever happened to Ivy and Hessild, it might not have anything to do with Regica. What if we’ve come to the wrong place?”
Alek speaks up in his flat, matter-of-fact tone. “The only thing we can say for sure about the scourge sorcerers is that they wanted to destroy the royal family. The royal family is here. At least, they were here as of last night.”
He glances toward me with a question in his brown eyes.
I peer down the street toward the palace’s high towers several blocks away. A few windows gleam with lantern light, blurring after a moment with my damaged vision.
My thoughts slide back to last night. “The Order of the Wild’s army posed an obvious threat, but as far as we can tell, none of their forces breached even the city walls. In a scenario like that, it’d be unwise for King Konram to leave a secure position and put himself in a potentially precarious one on the road.”
“Especially when his advisors are being murdered with magic on those roads,” Rheave says helpfully. His dark brown curls sway with the cock of his head.
My stomach clenches at the reminder.
We left Hessild Korinya, the king’s primary magic advisor, and her two soldier escorts lying on the road where they died. It felt disrespectful to abandon their bodies like that, but any attempt at rites we offered them could be seen as a sign that we had a hand in their death.
We can hope that leaving them undisturbed will increase the chances that the king’s people can determine what—and who—killed them. And that it wasn’t the fugitives she’d been sent to retrieve for his pardon.
I left a note tucked beneath her arm, saying that the scourge sorcerers had struck and that we’d ridden off to pursue them. But of course, that’s only part of the truth.
The battle that’s torn at me since this morning surges up again.
I should go to the king and inform him directly of what happened. Warn him that there’s an even greater threat than we realized, one working by methods more subtle than we could anticipate.
But if we go to him without any answers and without the woman he most hesitated to pardon, I don’t need my gift of glimpsing the future to predict the outcome.
