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  “We have this sword to trade,” Tylar said, stepping up.

  Rogger shook his head at the offer.

  Krevan leaned back. “He is amusing. Wherever did you find him?”

  Rogger shrugged. “Dungeons.”

  “Ah, same as the blood witch.”

  The thief scratched his beard thoughtfully. “You’d be surprised what can be found abandoned with the rats and chains.”

  Tylar flipped the sword hilt up. “What about this diamond on the pommel? It must be worth a handful of gold marches.”

  Krevan sighed. “Aye, but you’ll need ten times that to press the proper palms.”

  Tylar’s eyes widened.

  Rogger explained,“To silence the passage of someone of… well, of your reputation, does not come cheaply. We’ll need to hide your trail in gold.” He turned to Delia. “But luckily we brought with us something of considerable worth.”

  Delia paled and backed up a step.

  Tylar put up a protective arm. “I will not trade in flesh.”

  Rogger raised an eyebrow. “Do I look a slave trader? Remember I’m a thief… specializing in certain sacred objects.”

  Tylar suddenly understood, remembering what Rogger had been caught stealing in Foulsham Dell. “Repostilaries.”

  Delia gasped, growing even more pale.

  Tylar remembered the crystal vial she had used to douse her hand and send the daemon back inside Tylar. A repostilary bearing the blood of Meeryn.

  “I cannot give it up,” Delia said, clutching the vial hidden in a pocket over her heart. “It holds the last drops of her blood.”

  “Can you just imagine its worth?” Rogger said to Krevan. “The blood of a dead god?”

  The pirate’s eyes had grown large, plainly yearning for such a prize. “The price it would fetch among the Gray Traders…”

  “Enough to book passage safely away?” Rogger asked.

  Krevan slowly nodded, unblinking.

  Delia still clasped tightly to the pocketed vial.

  Sighing, Tylar knew the trade was the only way. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to her. “But if we’re to ever solve the mystery of what’s inside me… ever to learn the truth about Meeryn, we’ll all have to pay a stiff price.” He parted his cloak to reveal the black palm print. “If you would serve your god still, then it must be done.”

  She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Her fingers reached into her pocket and removed the single repostilary. She held it out to Rogger.

  He gently took it and passed it to Krevan, who handled it as if it were the most precious jewel.

  “I will arrange everything,” the pirate said. He held the vial up to the flame of a wall torch. Fingers gently touched the crystal. Oddly, tears rose in his eyes. His next words were softly spoken but as hard as iron. “If I thought you had really slain Meeryn, Tylar de Noche, you would not be walking out of here.”

  Krevan rose and crossed to a glass cabinet shelved with books, a few scrolls, and several boxes.

  As he hid away the repostilary, Tylar whispered to Rogger, “Can this fellow be trusted?”

  The pirate heard him. “I am not the one who broke my vow. I know how to swear an oath.” Krevan turned back to the torchlight and used his wrist to rub at the corner of an eye, smearing away the ash.

  Three dark stripes were tatooed on his skin, the same as on Tylar’s face.

  Tylar choked on his words. “You… you’re a knight.”

  Krevan turned away. “Rogger, take your guests to the east wing. They can rest until the morning tide, when your boat will be leaving.”

  Rogger waved them back toward the two loam-giants.

  Tylar whispered to Rogger. “A fallen knight heads the Black Flaggers?”

  Rogger glanced back to the tall figure. “Who said he had fallen?”

  Tylar cast a sharp look at the thief.

  “Not every knight breaks his vow,” Rogger said firmly, staring Tylar in the eye. “Some simply walk away.”

  With his brow pinched in thought, Tylar left the room, bearing more questions than when he entered. He had thought himself wise, but now he felt like a swaddling babe, new to the world.

  As the sun rose over the Summering Isles, Tylar stood at the rails of the deepwhaler. The ship had ridden the tide out and now swept toward the deeper seas. At midnight, they were to change ships in the waters off Tempest Sound, then again at Yi River, hoping to shake any hunters from their trail.

  A scrape of boot heel sounded behind him. Rogger stepped to the rail. He looked a new man, in the fresh clean clothes of a whaler and his beard neatly trimmed.

  He noted Tylar’s attention and ran a hand through his clean beard. “That Delia knows a thing or two about brushes and shears. Makes me almost want to lead a better life.”

  In silence, the pair watched as the ship escaped the morning fog and sailed under open skies. Behind them, the misty isles appeared ghostly, more a dream of land than real.

  “What now?” Tylar asked.

  Rogger shrugged.

  Delia was belowdecks, ill already from the roll of the ship in the swells. She had refused to remain behind, casting her fate along with Tylar, sensing in him a way to still serve her god. Tylar wasn’t sure why he had allowed her to come. It was something in her eyes, a pain and longing he could not deny.

  Rogger’s motivation for accompanying them had been far simpler: “I have nothing better to do.” Sentenced as a pilgrim, he had been punished to wander the lands until he had collected all the branded sigils. But now, tied to the story of the godslayer, he figured his best chance of survival was to “walk beside the fellow with the big black daemon.” Still, despite his flippancies, Tylar sensed Rogger, like Delia, left much unspoken and unexplained.

  Like that snippet in ancient Littick.

  Tylar repeated it now, fingering his chest. “Agee wan clyy nee wan dred ghawl.”

  “Break the bone,” Rogger whispered to the waves, “and free the dred ghawl, the dark spirit. I think that’s an apt enough description of the beastie.”

  “What was it? A daemon? Some naether-spawn? Its attack was similar to the creature that killed Meeryn and her Shadowknights.”

  “Outward appearances can fool the eye. As you well know, Godslayer.” He stressed the last word but offered nothing more.

  The silence grew heavy between them.

  Sighing, Tylar flexed his sword hand and held it up. “Break the bone,” he mumbled, switching to the first part of the phrase, to something easier. “What about that?”

  “Aye, it seems I was right back in the dungeon. Clyy means bone, not merely body. The dred ghawl appeared only when the bones of your hand were crushed, not while you were whipped to the edge of your life. I find it interesting that Meeryn healed all your bones at the same time she blessed you with the spirit creature. It was as if she had made a cage out of your healthy bones, requiring only one crack, one broken bone, to set it free.”

  “Leaving me crippled again until it returned,” he added sourly.

  “There’s always a price… I seem to recall you saying that to young Delia earlier.”

  Tylar shook his head. So much remained a mystery. Again silence settled around them. The deepwhaler caught a stiffer breeze, sails swelling. The islands faded behind them, sinking into the horizon.

  After a long while, Tylar quietly asked, “Do you think we’ll make it?”

  “Not a chance,” Rogger answered, pulling a pipe from a pocket.

  Tylar turned, leaning an elbow on the rail.

  Rogger filled his pipe from a pouch of blackleaf. “Don’t look so surprised. The Summering Isles will never let you rest. That Shadowknight, Darjon ser Hightower, will hunt you throughout the Nine Lands. And then there are all those other gods out there. Ninety-nine, at last count. They’re not going to let the murder of one of their own go uncontested. They’ll pool all their Graces into finding you. But even they’re not the worst threat.”

  “What do you mean?”

&nb
sp; Rogger paused to light a taper from a lamp on the deck, then set the flame to his pipe, puffing in and out until he had a good fire to the leaf.

  “What could be worse than vengeful gods?” Tylar asked.

  Rogger perked one brow. “Whoever really slew Meeryn, of course. The true godslayer. He’ll need you dead lest you prove your innocence. And whoever could kill a god…?” He shrugged and chewed on his pipe, leaving the obvious unsaid.

  He could surely hunt a lone man.

  “So what do you plan to do?” Rogger finally asked, eyeing him.

  Tylar rubbed his brow. “The only thing I can, I guess.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Follow the one clue left to me. Meeryn’s final word.”

  Rogger glanced to him. “Rivenscryr?”

  He nodded. “Meeryn healed me, gave me a daemon to protect me. All to deliver one word, a riddle I must solve if I ever hope to prove my innocence.”

  “So where are we headed first?”

  “To a place where I’m even less welcome than those cursed islands.” Tylar turned his back on the Summering Isles and stared far to the north, half a world away. “To Tashijan… the Citadel of the Shadowknights.”

  SECOND

  TANGLED KNOT

  god-realm, god-relm, n. [old Littick king-land] a region, domain, or land settled by one of the hundred Myrillian gods; a section of territory into which the unique Graces of a God are imbued and blessed; as the humours of a body course through a god, so they do its land.

  — Annals of Physique Primer, ann. 2593

  6

  FIERY CROSS

  She had never thought to hear his name again.

  Kathryn ser Vail stood near the mooring docks that topped the highest tower of Tashijan. Though it was mid-morning, the light remained a twilight gloaming. Black clouds stacked to the horizons on all sides, whipping and rolling in from the seas to the south.

  Tylar…

  As she waited, cold winds flapped her cloak and tugged at the masklin pinned across her face. As a Shadowknight, she had to keep her face hidden from the laborers here. Her breath blew white into the frigid, thin air. Ice frosted the parapet stones and made the mooring ropes crack as they were run across the stones by line handlers and dockmen.

  Clutching her arms around her, she fought to trap the fleeting warmth carried up with her from the bowels of Tashijan. The mooring tower of the Citadel thrust fifty floors into the sky, a thin spire built three millennia ago under the guidance of Warden Bellsephere. Aptly named Stormwatch, it took the humours of a hundred gods to build this one tower.

  “There she is!” her companion shouted into the teeth of the wind.

  Gerrod Rothkild was encased in bronze from head to toe, oblivious of the wind. He was squat of form, typical for a hill-man from Bitter Heap. But unlike his barbarous, uneducated countrymen, he was of sharp intellect and even sharper wit. Under his helmet, he bore the tattoos of fifteen disciplines, all masterfields. “That tub’d better have a skilled pilot to strike the docks in this gale.”

  Kathryn watched the salt-scarred flippercraft lower out of the sea of clouds overhead. It was a wooden whale, blunt at both ends but flaring into a wide keel at the stern. At the prow, a thick window of blessed glass stared down at the mooring docks. Shadowy movement could be seen behind the glass: the ship’s frantic landing crew.

  On the port and starboard sides, the score of balancing paddles battled the winds, some turning, others stationary, some extending out from the ship, others retracting. It took an experienced pilot, one ripe with air, to finesse the craft.

  “He’s burning blood,” Gerrod commented.

  Kathryn saw he was right. From the top of the flippercraft gouts of smoke choked into the skies from the exhaust flue, furthering the craft’s image of a flying whale. “Why does he hazard the storm? Why waste humour on such a risky landing?”

  “His need must be urgent,” Gerrod answered gruffly. “And such urgency seldom heralds fair tidings.”

  Kathryn suspected the same. Could the news be anything but foul, especially as of late? The sudden death of Ser Henri, the warden of Tashijan, had left a hole in the Order. And like a drain plug pulled from a tub, the warden’s vacancy had created a maelstrom of opposing factions seeking to fill it, whirling and churning the once calm waters.

  And now worse tidings still: the slaying of a god. An impossible death. And tied to such a tragedy, a name from her past, a name that both stirred her and quickened a pain long since buried.

  Tylar…

  She shuddered and concentrated on the skies, pulling her cloak tighter about her shoulders.

  Overhead, the ship foundered in the crosswinds that swept around the tower. Its bulk rocked and teetered, lowering toward the waiting mooring cradle, paddles flapping frantically. The stern planks glowed from the overworked aeroskimmers. Kathryn could imagine the mekanism’s brass pipes and mica-glass tubes shining as bright as the sun, channeling and pumping raw humour through its belly, an alchemy of blood from one of the air gods. She watched the tortuous twist of inky smoke from the stern flue.

  “It’s madness,” she whispered.

  Steel fingers touched her hand. “There must be a reason-” Suddenly those same fingers clamped on her wrist and tugged. “Down!”

  Overhead, the ship dropped like a stone. It heeled over on one side, paddles sweeping toward the tower top. The line handlers and dockmen dove and scattered.

  Kathryn and Gerrod flattened to the ground.

  The flippercraft righted with a scream of wind and crack of wood as one paddle struck a parapet and shattered into splinters. The ship tilted nose first, plunging for a sure crash into the granite mooring cradle.

  Then miraculously it bucked up at the last moment, and the ship’s keel slammed roughly but securely into the cradle. The jarring impact popped a few rib planks and a tracery of fractures skittered across the glass eye of the wooden whale.

  Immediately the mooring crews were back on their legs, yelling into the winds, tossing ropes and tethers about the grounded flippercraft. A few cheers of appreciation rose from the workers.

  Kathryn rolled back to her feet smoothly and quickly, sharing no such appreciation. “Nothing is worth such a risk of vessel and folk.”

  The rear hatch of the flippercraft winched open. A single figure leaped out before the hatch even thudded against the stone. He was a swirl of darkness, a shred of shadow cast into the wind.

  “I believe that would be young Perryl,” Gerrod said at Kathryn’s side.

  Perryl hurried toward them. His eyes were sparks of fury, his manner full of wildness. He reached them as the first mooring line was secure-and didn’t stop.

  He offered only one word as he passed: “Below.”

  Caught in his wake, Kathryn’s rebuke for his reckless haste died in her throat. She and Gerrod Rothkild followed at his heels. Perryl strode to the tower door and fought the storm winds to open the way. He calmed enough to wave them through first.

  Kathryn ducked past the threshold to the stairs beyond. As Gerrod followed, a spat of hail burst out of the sky, pelting stone and wood with balls of ice the size of goose eggs. Yells and shouts echoed. Perryl caught a blow to his cheek, ripping his masklin loose.

  He slammed the door and turned to them. His face was deathly pale. “Tylar’s escaped… fled…”

  The silence that followed was punctuated by a barrage of hail against the wooden door, sounding like the strikes of a hundred mailed fists.

  Kathryn attempted to digest this information. She unpinned her masklin and shook back her cloak’s hood. She had failed to braid her hair into its usual fiery tail and finger-combed it away from her pale face. Never a beauty, she was still considered fair of feature, though nowadays a certain hard edge frosted her blue eyes. She stared stolidly at Perryl, demanding elaboration.

  “A raven reached the flippercraft while I was en route,” Perryl continued. His eyes would not meet Kathryn’s, and his tongue stammered. “
Against my orders, the fools attempted to execute Tylar, but he somehow called forth a daemon. Several guards were killed as he fled.”

  “A daemon?” Kathryn asked.

  “That is all I know. But the message was sealed with the mark of the Order. Darjon ser Hightower. The only Shadowknight to survive the slaughter.” Perryl finally met Kathryn’s eyes. “I didn’t know there were any of Meeryn’s Shadowknights still alive after the attack upon her. Our brother leads a force in pursuit. Word suggests the Black Flaggers abetted Tylar’s escape to the sea.”

  Kathryn turned. “Pirates and daemons…” As she stood on the steps, time slipped backward. She had watched the man she once loved hauled in chains onto a slave barge, headed across the Deep, a knight no longer, face bared to all, an oath breaker and a murderer. Tylar’s eyes had searched for her on the river docks, but she had remained hidden in the shadows of an alley, ashamed that her own words had doomed him. But she could not lie to the court, not even if soothmancers hadn’t been present. He had to know this. Then he was dragged onto the barge, gone from sight-but not from her heart, never her heart.

  “I thought him innocent,” Perryl said from the top of the stairs.

  Kathryn started down the stairs. As did I once… long ago.. She cleared her throat. “Castellan Mirra must be informed of all that transpired. She awaits your attendance.” They began the long hike down to the main keep of Tashijan. Ser Henri’s old castellan had assumed the duty of governing the Citadel until this evening’s winnowing, when a new warden would be chosen by a casting of ballot stones.

  Gerrod Rothkild kept pace with her down the stairs. His voice was soft, meant for only her ears. “Save judgment for now. Not all is as plain as it first appears, little Kat.”

  “Then again, some is,” Kathryn answered. She had to bite back a sharper retort. She knew Gerrod sought only to comfort her. But even Gerrod, with all his mastered disciplines, could not fathom the emotion that welled through her with Perryl’s damning testimony.

  It was not despair that filled her-only relief.