William King: Shadowblood

“You have that calculating look in your eye,” she said. “What are you thinking?”

He considered his answer for a moment and then he told her.

She smiled again. “I know you find this hard to believe but you are far more useful to me alive than dead, and that’s leaving aside the fact that I would prefer that you not come to harm.”

She had a point. Like Malkior, his lost father, the Queen’s assassin, he was a Shadowblood, undetectable by normal magic, unstoppable by magical wards. With the sorcery she was teaching him, he was becoming an ever more deadly killer. And he had the ability to sense when other Shadowblood used their abilities near him. He was the perfect bodyguard against the deadliest assassins who had ever lived. And those assassins would be coming for her soon, if her fears proved correct.

He had every reason to want to keep her alive. She was one of the very few people, and the only Terrarch, who had ever actively tried to help him, who even cared what happened to him, and he was not about to turn on her. She was, in her own way, as honest with him as she was capable of being, and he appreciated that too, with the sort of appreciation that only came after a lifetime of being deceived.

And she was teaching him astonishing things, secrets of magecraft that he had no other way of acquiring and which he had to have, if he was going to survive, and that was a thing he fully intended to do, despite the presence of the voices in his mind and enemies all around him. He intended to see that Asea survived as well. He had failed Queen Kathea. He was not going to fail her.

“What shall we do?” he asked.

“There are potions I can prepare that will calm you, and help you mask the symptoms. They will take some time to acquire the ingredients and to brew. In the meantime, avoid High Inquisitor Joran.”

“Might it be better if I vanished for a while until you create the medicine?”

“Where would you go?”

“Halim is a big city. I am sure I can find a place to hide.”

“What would I tell the Inquisition?”

“That you do not know where I am, and that will be true until I contact you.”

“And how will you do that?”

“I have a talent for finding my way into places where I should not be. I might surprise you.”

“I would not want you to surprise me so much that Karim or I killed you.”

“I am sure that finding such a way is not beyond my wit.”

“I do not know, Rik. I think it would be best for you to remain in the palace for the moment. If you disappeared it would only draw attention to you and make the Inquisitor even more suspicious.”

There was a discreet knock on the door. On invitation, the servant entered. She bore a sealed letter on a silver tray. Asea automatically reached for it, inspected it and then raised an eyebrow.

“It’s addressed to you,” she said, handing it over to him.

Rik recognised the hand-writing at once. It was from Malkior’s daughter, an agent of the Dark Empire, his half-sister, a sorceress and a Shadowblood assassin, perhaps the most dangerous woman he had ever encountered.

He opened it and scanned the few brief lines within.

“It’s from Tamara,” he told Asea. “She wants to meet.”

Rik invoked the illumination spell. A faint ball of flame flickered within the crystal sphere Asea had given him. It was barely more than a witch light but enough to let his half-Terrarch eyes see the broken machinery and shattered glasswork around him.

Rik did not like this place. The last time he had been in this basement, he had found a vat full of undead soldiers. Now it smelled of acid and blood and death and fire. The voices in his head were uneasy too, as they should be, for if he died they lost their last desperate finger-hold on life as well.

Rik kept his back to the wall and checked the pistol. It was loaded with a truesilver bullet of the same type with which he had killed Malkior and he wondered whether he was going to have to do for the daughter as well. He would prefer not to. For all her viciousness, he had always rather liked Tamara, and the last time they had met, he thought they might have reached some sort of understanding.

He wished that he had time to find Weasel and the Barbarian and have them back him up. Then again the last time the three of them had gone up against Tamara things had not ended well. He felt uncomfortable standing in the cellar with spring mud on his boots and clinging to the cuffs of his trousers. The stairs were rickety and would not make a good escape route, and that was something he had learned early in life that you should always have. It would be easy enough to trap him here given enough men.

Why had he come, he asked himself again? He was still not entirely sure. Perhaps he was just past caring. He was tired and the Inquisition might find him at any moment and cart him off to be burned. And he was curious as to what Tamara wanted. And, if she expected him to be easy prey, she was in for a surprise. The last time they had met he had not possessed the skill in sorcery that he did now. Perhaps that would help.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, a tearing sensation ripped at his soul. A patch of shadow in the corner of the room clotted and hardened. A humanoid outline appeared in it, a shadow that no one had cast. In moments it took on three dimensions, bulged outwards and Tamara was standing there, a beautiful Terrarch girl, snub-nosed, bright big eyes alive with mischief. A blade glittered in her hand. There were runes in it, and he guessed that it was a thing of peculiar deadliness. He rested the barrel of the pistol in the crook of his arm. Not accidentally it pointed directly at her.

“I am surprised you came,” she said, a smile quirking her too-broad lips. If having the pistol sighted at her made her uncomfortable she gave no sign of it. She wore men’s clothing, dark and tight-fitting. He noticed there was no mud on her boots.

“No you are not. You knew I would come.”

“I suppose so.”

“What do you want?”

“Exactly what I said in my letter. I want to talk with you.”

“About your father?”

“Yes. Rumour has it that you encountered him recently.”

“I did.”

“And how is he?”

“Dead.”

“Are you sure? People have thought that before but he always returned.”

“I killed him myself.”

She laughed in a way suggested that she did not believe him. There was also something about her expression that suggested that she might want to. “You killed him?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“With a truesilver bullet just like the one in this pistol. Then Asea cut him into little pieces and buried his remains in lead lined caskets in five different places.”

She shook her head. Her expression was a little dazed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you choose. It does not alter the truth one little bit.”

“It’s not possible. He was a great sorcerer and a greater assassin. You are only a half-breed soldier.”

“He under-estimated me. You people have a habit of doing that.”

She cocked her head to one side and studied him for a long moment. “That I know. I have done it myself. Still it does not seem possible that he’s actually dead. He was one of the First. He had walked Al’Terra. He served…”

“He served the Princes of Shadow.”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“He told me. He told me a lot of things before he died.”

“And why would he do that?”

“He was my father.”

She just looked at him, then she sheathed the blade and leaned against the workbench, arms folded across her chest.

“He always wanted a son. He told me that often enough. He did not think it was possible though.”