Kas left her to die, but that was okay. It was okay, because he was going to rescue his brother and sister. He was going to do what she should’ve done, all those long months ago – all those lifetimes ago – and if she died because he left her, so long as they were safe, it was worth it. Mama and Papa would understand his decision.
Copperbrow poured a slick sheen of molten flame atop the surface of the Greywater, and she infused it with electricity, pulling a living lightning-bolt down from the sky and attaching one end of it to the centre of the fire-pool. The other end stayed in the clouds, and a constant series of thunderclaps – ka-boom-doom-ka-boom-doom – started pealing down from the heavens.
She noted the gnome’s jubilant body language as he started sweeping back and forth across the ranks of the river-fiends, taking them on in closer quarters now that their numbers were reduced – they were already half-dead by the time they reached the surface of the river.
“Can you hold it?” she cried. “I have to get to – to Feychilde!”
“Uhhhhh – I hope so!”
“I hope so too,” she said. “Glancefall, I’m moving to Sticktown.”
“I’ll… I’ll get Copper some cover,” the enchanter responded.
It was good enough for her. She put forth a final detonation, setting it to ripple through their foes, then she fled north-east.
The thought of Jaid and Jaroan being hurt – were Xan and Xassy in danger too? And while the prospect of Orstrum being hurt was less worrying, the old man had made an impression on her. She couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to any of them, but especially the young ones… and especially Kas’s young siblings…
They will be fine. Kas will get there before anything bad can happen to them. They’re surrounded in shields – ah, that’s how he knew. He could feel them being damaged, maybe? But he didn’t feel anything when they were being attacked by the Bertie Boys… No, he only feels a detached shield when it’s…
When it’s gone, broken…
She redoubled her speed, slashing down into the pits of Helbert’s Bend like the bolt of lightning she wielded in her hands.
And from afar she spotted it, even as Mud Lane itself came into view – the figure in his doorway, looking out. The shapeless robe of a heretic.
Was Kas trapped in there? Was he too late? Was everyone dead already?
There was no way to contain it. The sword swung itself.
“No!” she screamed, her hate propelling the blade of electric light into the figure – she sliced through him at head-height, uncertain as she was of his archmagery. She only noticed after the stroke landed and she retracted the sword that she’d cut grooves into the walls, the door, making the wood smoke and smoulder –
A small price to pay, for vengeance.
Trembling at the thought of what she might find inside, she started to sink, approaching the door warily. Her blow had been true. The head toppled, the body crumpled –
“No!” came an anguished cry – Kas’s voice, echoing her own – from inside the apartment.
She saw him thrust himself forwards with inhuman reflexes, but he nonetheless landed awkwardly on his elbows and knees, catching the body before it struck the floorboards. She came to hover near the rail, staring in shock.
Kas was lowering the heretic to the ground.
It had been a day to end all days, and now she knew it. She felt the history of these fateful events unfold about her, upon her, like a deluge of cold rain she couldn’t just turn off at will. An arch-diviner might’ve recognised it for what it was – it felt like the pull of time itself, somehow. She knew she would look back on this night in wonder and bitterness for the weeks, months, years to come.
The night it all ended.
Everything that had happened with the eolastyr, and afterwards… she’d felt she’d finally found her match. Her perfect mirror. The man she would be with forever.
And now he is this.
‘He isn’t a heretic, yet.’
Oh, Irimar… if only you knew how wrong you were about that.
When Kas met her gaze, his jaw was set in rage.
“What are you doing?” he wailed.
“Me?” She felt her lip curling in derision and fought against it, but then nausea reared its ugly head; she blinked desperately. “What? Kas! We fought the demons – while – what, Kas? I thought you were saving them? What it zis? Look at you! Get avay from it!”
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“It’s Nighteye!” he growled. “Nighteye! You killed Nighteye, Em! He’s dead.”
N-N-Nighteye? Nighteye is a heretic?
“What?” she muttered. “What? No, no, zat can’t be right, zere is no –“
Weird fey-light fell from the sorcerer’s hand to shine on the room, the corpse –
She couldn’t make out the features on the hooded face, but the hair was loose, and she knew he wasn’t lying about this.
“You killed him…”
– but I killed him I killed Nighteye I killed him and now he’s there and he’s dead and –
“… he just saved them. He was going to leave Mund, he wasn’t –“
“He voz a heretic!” she cried, as much to cut off the inner accusations as Kas’s protests. “Vot – what are you? Kas!”
The realisation on his face made it plain for her to see. Perhaps not just anyone would be able to tell, but she could. The top half of his head was obscured but it didn’t matter. The shudder that ran through him made his lips wobble, his jaw clench, and she knew.
The tears she’d been holding back started to fall.
“Ze book…” She felt sick; she was going to be sick… “He told me – zis morning – he should’ve never have let you have ze book…”
“Em –”
Then she was there, and avenues of understanding opened up; flooded highways of meaning cleared, made as dry as a bone in one second of pure sunlight. Emrelet focussed her glare on the seeress.
Tanra is a heretic.
So much clearer now.
“Oh – oh no,” Killstop whined. “Why? How did this happen, Kas? Why didn’t I see it?”
“Everseer sent him, to save them. Save me from it.” Then he growled again: “Don’t you see. It’s all over now.”
Tanra mumbled something, and she used the wind to snatch the sounds, bring them up to her level:
“She saw it, then. She could’ve come herself. She gave him a death-sentence.” Killstop turned to look up at Kas. “She did this to us.”
“I understand now,” Emrelet said quietly, floating back.
I understand what I must do. Henthae must know about this. She was right all along. I have to make a full report, in person, immediately.
But that wasn’t what she wanted to do.
She harnessed the light, and it answered. Simultaneously, she had her winds surround them, snare their spells and strip away their enhancements.
“Both of you, is it? How voz it I could have been so blind? You vere vith her, veren’t you? Last night.”
He just looked at his feet; then Killstop came to a standing position, knives in her hands.
Emrelet merely smiled inside her cocoon of light.
Try it, witch.
“No,” Emrelet said, unperturbed by the seeress’s motions but moving a bit farther away all the same. “You should know zat I have removed your flight-spells. You cannot stop me from leaving.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Killstop snapped.
“Tanra, no!” Feychilde put out his arm as if to block her.
Like he could block her.
“There’s a way to stop you without killing you; you know I would never do that,” Tanra said, heedless of his response. “You don’t need to tell them about this. You don’t need any of this. There are ways I can help you…”
People were coming out onto their balconies, even though the demons were still loose across the city. They were willing to risk death in order to witness Emrelet making this momentous decision.
Can Tanra be telling the truth? Can she help me?
No. She has to be lying. She’s a heretic, plain as day. Kastyr is no better… or just a little better. It’s my job to take her down, and bring him in. She can’t be imprisoned – diviners are too slippery – but when it comes to Kas, I can bind him without having to –
She loosed a little involuntary gasp of pain and surprise as an invisible wall struck her, punching her away through the air.
She glanced down – saw him raising his hands, shouting something at her –
Without thinking, without feeling, Emrelet struck back. She couldn’t even sense an iota of warmth on the wind as she smashed him with the ray of pure sunfire. It was all the same coolness to her.
Within mere seconds he was down to his final shields.
Instinct had taken over, and she saw an enemy.
A lover.
An enemy.
Another arch-wizard of discernment and wisdom present at the scene would’ve perhaps been able to note the way her power fluctuated, keeping the beam of furious white heat from its maximum intensities, its most awful temperatures. She knew it, but she didn’t dare sculpt her mind into that killing-aspect which had taken Nighteye’s head. Killstop, she liked and despised at once; the girl’s death would hurt, like Nighteye’s, but killing Kas… It wasn’t something she could countenance, even now.
She broke away, flipping around and using the tornado-force to send herself hurtling towards Hightown. Even as she moved she dug out her glyphstone but at first it wouldn’t respond, her thoughts too chaotic to obtain access to the network.
“Come on, damn you, si garam pestron!”
She was over Hilltown before it responded correctly. Henthae was never too busy to answer. She was in her base of operations high in the Maginox, serving as a telepathic conduit for hundreds of magisters, scores of magister-bands linked through her mind.
“M-Mistress Henthae, I have news.”
“Stormsword. Do the champions fare ill?”
She noted the coldness in Henthae’s voice, and started to cry again.
“Miss Reyd… Emrelet?” The enchantress’s stiffness slowly melted away. “What’s happened? Tell me.”
“It’s – it’s K-Kas… T-Tanra… I mean, Killstop –“
“Mmmm.” Henthae made a little non-committal noise. “Let us pretend you didn’t just say that. I haven’t been permitted to look at her record in the registry. So… he has betrayed you?”
“Yes! No, not – not that! Kas, Kas and Killstop, they’ve become heretics! Mistress – M-Mistress –“
“Calm down, Emrelet, please! You’re scaring me.” Henthae took her seat – she’d stood up to receive the communication but now, looking decidedly paler, she almost collapsed, all her usual nimbleness deserting her. “How do you know? What did you see? Speak to me – speak plainly, and I’ll see it through your eyes if I can. You are on your way to me, I assume?”
She nodded frantically, shedding her tears into the hurricane pulling her to the Maginox. “He – he left me, in Rivertown, and he said it was the twins…”
She related it all, her psychic mouth babbling away with far greater facility than her physical one would have been capable of. Memories and thoughts and worries and doubts, they all flooded from her, snagged and teased-out by the probing questions, the unblinking eyes of the powerful enchanter.
And when she landed on the Maginox grounds, Henthae was already down there to meet her, stepping off the bridge between the waywatchers in front of Zakimel, hurrying forwards to catch her up in the supple old arms and smooth her hair as she sobbed.
* * *