I look at him. I have been calm thus far, but this man has wrought so much destruction, so much death, upon a world not even his own. I think of all the bodies that lay alongside my father’s, still awaiting their rites. The hundreds of men and women I now know were slaughtered in the surrounding villages. He has come into Luceum, this place I have come to love, and he has tried to tear itapart.
I reach down and take the torc from him. Hold it up to inspect it in my silver hand. Closer to my eyes, there’s no mistaking the gentle glow of imbuing.
With a single squeeze, I crush it.
“NO!” The shout rips from Ruarc’s throat and he leaps forward, prevented from reaching me by his bonds. The light of imbuing vanishes from the crumpled metal in my hand, the triskeles barely recognisable anymore. “Why?”
“I don’t know what this was, Ruarc. A trap, or something that genuinely would have informed me. Either way, I was never going to put it on.” My hands shake with anger, but my voice is cold and calm. “I may listen to your story, in time. Fromyou. But not tonight. Not yet.”
Ruarc scowls. “Why not?”
I hold up the crumpled iron torc. Pause, let the sight of it sink in. “Because tonight, I cannot guarantee that I will not do this to you as well.”
I spin and head for the door.
“Thedraoi. Do not tell them what you are, Silverhand. Do not tell anyone who you truly are or you may find yourself responsible for far worse than a few hundred dead.” He calls it after me. Pleading. “Say nothing, do nothing, until I have explained everything to you. Promise me.”
I shiver at both the certainty of his words, and their import. Nod slowly. “Not until I have heard you, Ruarc.”
I shut the door behind me, and stride toward the breaking dawn.
LXXX
THE WAR FOR CATEN RAGES AROUND US BENEATH ANenveloping night sky, stars shrouded by smoke and drifting grit. The dust-choked streets are lit now only either by torches carried by mobs, or the sporadic fires illuminating the devastation of the Will shells that lit them. Everything is cast in shadows and silhouette against deep, angry reds. Screams and clashing shouts echo. Sometimes distant. Sometimes so close and unexpected that we are forced to take cover.
Eidhin and I stagger on, and fight, and stagger on some more. I keep my metal mask on and arm half formed, barely enough pieces to complete the illusion and still be able to walk. We hide from the larger companies of both sides, but step in wherever we find Octavii and Septimii being hunted by individual legionnaires. Show ourselves to anyone who isn’t a threat, too. Each time I pretend I don’t feel the grinding ache of what I’m doing to my body, or the cold rage that drives me, or any of the grief that I keep buried firmly beneath it all, and stand tall, and tell all who will listen to spread the word that Carnifex is fighting for them.
Some curse me fearfully for what I have brought upon the city. Far fewer than I expect, though.
In between, we rest, and I send my imbued shards high into the air as a signal to Ka, and as we apprehensively wait I explain the missing pieces of my life to my friend. I don’t know how long it’s been since we started. Hours? Diago, at least, is being treated back at Domus Telimus, a brief stop and a dismayed Kadmos behind us. And I sent multiple messages warning Tertius Ericius of my bad information, though I have no idea whether any of them reached him before the first Will shells started to fall in the Forum.
“What happens if this other man—Ostius—finds us first?” Eidhin pants at one point as we stumble to a seat in a darkened alley, snatching a few precious moments of rest after another skirmish. He’s doing the bulk of the fighting. My metal blades are effective at range, but my lack of true mobility means I have to hang back and simply assist him most of the time.
“He won’t.” I tear another strip of cloth and bind the new wound on hisleg. Shallow, but bleeding too much to ignore. “I destroyed the amulet he was using to track me.”
“The one he gave you for protection?”
“That’s the one.”
Eidhin takes a breath to say something, then looks at me, then just lets it out again. “I suppose it would be inconvenient if he tried to kill Ka while you were trying to negotiate with him,” he concedes with an exasperated mutter.
We fight on. At one point we stray too close to the front lines and suddenly there is a shifting in the air, a sweeping away of smoke and then a Transvect is screaming above us, its base lit orange by Caten’s flames. Sextii leap, slamming into the ground around us, eyes dark, breaking cobblestone with their impacts. We fling ourselves for the shadows of the nearest alley, unseen by the detachment who are already sprinting along the rubble-strewn street toward their target.
And then seconds later, an explosion from the sky. The Transvect plummets; there is a thundering, shattering roar not more than a few streets away. Dust is shoved in a wave away from the crash. Glass shatters. Through hands shielding faces, we see a plume of fire unfolding toward the heavens as the rest of the Will shells on board go up.
We stumble away. I’ve lost my sense of where we are, but Eidhin estimates the impact was close to the Forum.
I think of my remaining friends, and hope they are far from here.
Finally, though, it is too much. Even with Kadmos’s tea and my Will and fear and desperation all pulsing through me, my body cannot take anymore. I am becoming sluggish and I can see that Eidhin, stoic though he is, is the same.
“We can rest here. Just for a while.” We’re back in Alta Semita, I think. Hard to know; streets and buildings all look the same once they’re in pieces. “That house doesn’t look like it’s going to fall down.”
Eidhin barely grunts his affirmation, and we limp to the structure. Much of the back half is gone and we clamber over stone rather than use the door, but enough of the façade remains that it should hide us from the view of any passersby. I collapse to the ground, back against the wall. Eidhin crouches in front of me. Somehow, still able to stand.
“You are getting slow. Even with those blades,” he says abruptly. “You should rest.”
I stare at his eyes, red-rimmed from exhaustion, and laugh softly. “Sure.”
