Brian McClellan - Servant of the Crown

He needn’t have worried. The body below him was still as a corpse, shirt soaked with blood. Tamas’s bullet had ripped through her heart and lungs, killing her almost instantly.

The only problem was, the corpse was not Privileged Dienne.

It was a young woman with auburn hair, too young to be a full Privileged but wearing the gloves. Dienne’s apprentice, perhaps.

“Oh, pit,” Tamas said. He leapt for the door, throwing himself from the moving carriage only a moment before sorcery tore it in half.

He landed in a clumsy roll, feeling his ankle turn beneath him. He forced himself up, a sharp pain shooting up his leg, and ran for the nearest alley, batting at his ass to put out the flames on his greatcoat.

He searched windows and alleys for Dienne, trying to determine the direction of the next attack.

Two cabal guards emerged from the alley, putting themselves in his path. He drew his sword at a dead run, trying his damnedest not to fall from the pain in his ankle. If he stopped moving Dienne would kill him with the merest flick of her fingers. That thought was the only thing that made him fling himself to the side just a moment before the cobbles erupted in a geyser of flame.

He gave a triumphant shout that turned into a scream as his ankle turned below him. He fell, slamming his knee hard enough to rattle his teeth. His sword was pinned beneath him, and he rolled, trying desperately to free it as the two cabal guards closed in on him.

Erika arrived like a flash, her sword a blur. She took one with the flick of her sword at his neck and the other in the belly, just below the cuirass. She spun toward Tamas and snatched him by the arm, dragging him to his feet even as he tried to wave her off.

“Dienne’s still out here!” Tamas said.

“I know.”

Erika yanked him into the mouth of the alley where Tamas snatched at his kit, cracking a powder charge and shoving it into his mouth. The pain in his knee and ankle gradually subsided, reduced to a distant throb. He gingerly put weight on the ankle.

“Can you run?” Erika asked.

“No. I won’t be able to do much more than hobble.”

“All right. But we have to move.”

Tamas nodded his thanks, cursing himself for allowing Dienne to trick him. He had depended on the king’s assurances, on her not bringing any other Privileged into the conflict. He hadn’t even considered an apprentice.

“Guards?” he asked.

“All accounted for,” she said. “We got more than we expected in the initial blast and the rest were easy to clean up in the confusion.”

Tamas noticed there was a thin cut beneath Erika’s eye and her sleeve was black with blood.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I can still move it.”

Limping, Tamas took point, leading her down the alley and into the next street. “Did you see where she was?” he whispered.

“The sorcery came from above. She’s on one of the tenements. Why hasn’t she just leveled the whole block yet?”

Tamas shook his head. “Trying not to hit her own men, maybe. Cabal guards are hard to replace.”

“How long until she realizes they’re all dead?”

“Not long enough.” Tamas swore. “I lost my pistol.”

Erika drew hers and shoved it into his hand. “I have two,” she said.

Tamas checked to be sure it was loaded, pan primed. “We have to split up,” he said. “It will make it harder for her to track us. We flank her and wait for an opportunity. Don’t risk a shot to the chest. If you miss her heart she’ll kill you before you reload. Go for the head.”

“Are you sure we should separate?” Erika glanced at his leg.

“I’m sure,” he said. “Stay off the tenements. It makes too easy a target. She can just blow the roof off like that.” He snapped his fingers.

“I’m ready,” she said.

He reached out and took her hand. It trembled slightly, and he gave it a squeeze. “Whatever happens …”

Erika took a handful of his greatcoat and kissed him deeply before he set off at a limping run across the street. Each step sent an agonizing spear of pain up his leg, breaking the focus of his powder trance. He moved from alley to alley, sticking to the deepest shadows out of the light of the full moon, eyes on the rooftops as he waited for the first attack.

A flicker of movement was his only warning before a fireball streaked out of the sky, rocketing past his head, and splashing against the wall behind him. He stumbled forwards, catching himself on the street curb, then running forward, forcing himself to ignore the pain that threatened to overwhelm him.

Blast after blast followed him down the street, flaring into the night sky, getting closer and closer to his heels. He tried to put on a burst of speed only to falter, ankle turning beneath him.

He looked up helplessly, snatching out his pistol and trying to pinpoint the moving shadow that threw fire from above.

A pistol blast made him jump. Erika’s shot was low, hitting the lip of the wall just below Dienne, showering the street with masonry and forcing the Privileged to jump back.

Tamas limped to cover, then watched as a gout of flame lit up the ground just down the street. Dienne had Erika in her sights now.

He tore open the closest door, stumbling through the dark halls of the tenement until he found the stairs, and climbed them one agonizing floor after another. He battered open the door to come out on the flat roof, searching to get his bearings.

The night was silent. He crouched, creeping as fast as he dare, searching the surrounding rooftops. His noisy entrance had stopped Dienne from firing at Erika, but it had also given away his element of surprise. He kept his pistol raised in front of him, listening for any sound of movement, trying to hear above his own labored breathing.

Tamas’s foot hit something, and he tried to step over it out of instinct. His leg didn’t move. Nor, he found a moment later, did anything else.

He stood frozen in place, his hands suddenly trembling, unable even to pull the trigger of his pistol. Dienne emerged from the shadows of the rooftop only a dozen feet away, stepping into the moonlight, her gloved hands held high. One of her fingers twitched and Tamas’s pistol was torn from his hand and thrown into the street below.

Tamas strained against the sorcery that held him. The helplessness of his position made him furious, fueling his strength, but even with his powder trance he could do nothing. Over Dienne’s shoulder he saw a figure on the next rooftop over.

Damn it, Erika, he thought. She had ignored his advice to stay off the roof. He tried to will her to flee. She wouldn’t be close enough to bluff Dienne, and he doubted she’d had time to reload her one pistol before Dienne could capture her as well.

“Finish it,” Tamas grunted, using all his strength just to move his mouth. If she killed him now, Erika would see it a lost cause and flee.

Dienne shook her head. “You would like that, wouldn’t you? No, I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to kill you slowly, painfully, over the next several years. You and your companion, whoever the pit she is. I’ll make you watch each other scream. I’ll …”

“Oh, shut up,” Tamas said.

Dienne looked startled.

A heavy clay shingle soared through the air and slammed into Dienne’s shoulder with enough force to throw her to her knees. Dienne turned, her fingers twitching, and at this range Tamas could feel the sorcery she pulled into the world.

But her focus had been broken, her attention turned from him.

He surged forward, free of her spell, covering the distance between them in the blink of an eye. He broke her wrist first, then spun her away from Erika just to be sure. Tamas snatched her by the throat and lifted her above his head.