Erin Evans - The God Catcher

"The God Catcher," Cassian said. "It's not too far from here."

"The fallen statue by the market?" He nodded. "Good, show Jorik and the others there. Stay out of their way, but find her. I need to know what she did with that collar. You, girl." She pointed at Shava. "I want you to check the wards on the doorways until the full wizard shows up."

She looked up at Jorik. He and Agnea were the two people she trusted with all her secrets-and her life besides. They were her eyes and ears, the hands that reached farther than she dared from her perceived position.

"If you see that bastard, don't kill him. Wait until we have Antoum. Promise me."

Jorik nodded. "Absolutely, saer."

"And the girl… you find her, you bring her to me. I don't care what she tells you-I want to hear it from her lips."

Lying behind the crate several miles away and far beneath Nazra Mrays's feet, Tennora felt a calm overtake her as she realized she was very likely about to get herself killed.

Once more she shifted enough to catch sight of Nestrix, watching Dareun and fingering the tools in her pocket. Nestrix looked as if she'd much rather be on Tennora's side of the bars and ready to dispatch Dareun-possibly by clawing his gut open with her fingernails.

After a moment, Nestrix's gaze shifted to the gap between the crates where Tennora hid. By hand gestures and mouthed words, Tennora let Nestrix know she was going to try a spell and that Nestrix should be ready to pick the lock.

Nestrix looked drawn, but she nodded. She leaned over to Antoum and whispered something to him. Tennora said a little prayer to Tymora that Nestrix was right about the memories and not simply mad as Veron had said.

Tennora wrapped her hands around her staff. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her thoughts, to focus only on the shifting remnants of the Weave and how to get bursts of acid out of it.

"Ferremo, go find those two fools," Dareun said. He snorted. "I will show them fear."

Tennora held her hands over her ears, but their voices filtered through.

"Master," Ferremo said, "that seems a reckless step." Dareun turned on the lovac. "What?"

"The goodwoman is likely to send guards searching. The bounty hunter is still in the city, and he knows about us as well. It doesn't bode well."

The silence was taut as a wire. "And how would they find us, Ferremo?" Dareun asked. "Have you been talking to someone?"

Tennora gave a quiet grunt of frustration. She thought of a different spell, one she knew as well as the stairs of the God Catcher. It wouldn't hurt anyone, but it might distract them long enough for Nestrix to escape. The lines of it uncoiled. She focused on the specifics, the sounds and the distance. "Tumtiespurelupwol" The air before her seemed to thicken.

"Not I, master. I merely meant they are not fools. If we have left anything-"

"Have we left anything?" Dareun said. "You seem awfully concerned-"

The sound of a bugle blast rang through the sewers-distant, but not distant enough to stop Dareun from seizing Ferremo by the shirtfront.

"What is that?" he snarled.

"The Watch horns," Ferremo said. "I warned you."

"Turn to, my boys," Tennora said, and a man's voice boomed the same words out of the sewer tunnels. "We have them cornered. Weapons ready! On my word!"

Dareun dropped Ferremo and stormed to the open tunnel, his hands swarming with fluttering shadows. Tennora darted her eyes to Nestrix, who had pulled loose the picks and was furiously working at the lock. The look in her eyes was distant and vaguely pained.

Before the entrance to the tunnel, Dareun raised his hands and cast a stream of dark magic into the passageway with the roar of an enchantment. "Finn, Aenotis-you guard this way. The darkness will slow them down. Take them down as they enter."

The man closest to Tennora started to move, just as she stood, knocking the stack of crates over. He fell back, out of the way of the falling boxes but into the reach of Tennora's ready dagger. She slid the blade up into the man's rib cage, careful to avoid his bones. The dagger slid back out with ease.

She sprang over the minion's body, pulse pounding, senses screaming. Ferremo stepped back, stunned at her sudden appearance. Dareun too looked surprised, but only for a moment before rage overtook his features.

The carvestar flew from Tennora's fingers toward the soft part of his throat; it missed and sank into his shoulder instead. She cursed and took up another, but Dareun had taken up his cane. The circular blade still protruding from his body, he raised up the cane and released a blast of crackling purple fire.

Tennora felt the spell as it began to build and, trusting her instincts, leaped out of the way. The stream of eldritch power coursed past her, through the bars of the cage, and shattered against the wall. Mold sprayed across the room at the impact.

Tennora hardly noticed. She had stepped out of Dareun's spell and into the arms of Ferremo Magli. Whatever surprise she had given him, he had shaken it off and drawn his quick, vicious knives.

"You're supposed to be dead," he said.

"That's what comes of being sloppy," she replied. She twisted around the strike of the first knife, forcing it off her armor.

The second caught her between the harness and the cuirass and slipped through the muscles of her abdomen, piercing her belly. Pain raced across her nerves, and she clutched her belly around the blade.

She looked up into Ferremo's laughing eyes, all too aware that a wound to the gut would fester and rot. She slid off his blade. Blood seeped into the space between her skin and her armor.

I am dead, she thought.

"Little lovac," Dareun chided. He pulled the carvestar from his shoulder and threw it to the ground. "You shouldn't have returned. By the cold and endless void, by the fires unimaginable that pierce it, so shall the powers of Sualocin pierce your eternal soul."

A searing cold gripped Tennora's bones, colder than the water of the harbor, and a unfeeling voice seemed to lick her ears with a whispered, alien tongue whose foul promises sank right into her brain. A pounding like a forgeworks rang in her ears. It took only a moment, but an eternity seemed to wrap itself around her, holding her in place.

The spell that chased Dareun's curse sent waves of blinding white light searing across her skin-not hot, but unspeakably cold. It froze her to the spot, muscles aching, leather stiff-and worst, her lungs were too cold to draw a deep breath.

Ferremo took one of his blades and ran its edge along the stays of her collar, severing them one by one, his eyes dancing with impending violence. She shivered but could not move.

Breathe, hrast it, breathe! she shouted in her mind. You're not dead yet!

"Ziastsuianrap" she wheezed.

A dozen daggers winked into being around Ferremo, swooping in to slice his skin. They would not go deeper, but they harried the assassin and drove him back, scratching out Tennora's fury on his face.

Dareun's body shivered with the makings of a blast similar to the first. The other minion came at her, club in hand. She still couldn't feel her feet, couldn't get them to move. He hefted the club.

"Finn," Dareun ordered, "get out of the way."

The minion swung his weapon, but the interrupting order made him pull back, just enough for Tennora to dodge the heavy weapon. When Dareun released the spell, it burned over both Finn's and Tennora's skin. Finn cried out as he was thrown back toward the cage.

Nestrix caught the weight of his body as she stepped from her prison. Eyes aflame, she took him by the neck and wrenched it hard against the rest of his body. It broke with a snap.

"Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish."

Nestrix had caught the look in Tennora's eye-a desperate, panicked look. She had heard what the boy said, and something about it frightened her. She wanted Nestrix to try to pick the lock-she would distract Dareun.