One-Eye didn’t gloat. He was cocky, or else the Red Fingers wouldn’t have introduced themselves before attacking, but even he knew better than to give Swick a chance to act before the violence started. His men came in as a great wave, and all Swick could do was hurriedly snatch his knife from the dead man’s chest to meet them.

It was a near thing, too, because Swick wasn’t nearly as fast compared to these men as he’d been against the last. The quickest of them already had a spear at his face by the time he turned, forcing Swick to dodge into the path of an axe. He barely parried that, and while he did another bastard closed with a longsword that actually nicked his shoulder. Two more had the corpse he’d flicked blood on surrounded, ready to stab if he translocated to it, so he just danced away for the time being.

The Hand came in at Swick’s side, almost earning himself a reflexively thrown knife to the face, and parried a swing with his sword, grunting with exertion. Swick ducked another, hacking for its wielder’s arm and feeling the satisfying touch of steel against bone. He wasn’t able to even relish the sensation for an instant before more weapons came at him.

It was like trying to slice away the grains of a sandstorm, so numerous were the attacks. Each one Swick smacked aside was replaced. Vigour kept him ahead of them, moving twice or thrice by the time any of his enemies did once, but their numbers and coordination were such that he didn’t have even a single free breath. Nearly all of his wits were kept focused just on living, even as the Hand fought at his shoulder to stave off those few blows he could.

Nearly all of Swick’s wits, but not all of them entirely. It was for this reason that his mind still clicked into place, just in time. He twisted, went low and slashed, grimacing as the man who’d been sneaking up behind him fell back with a belly now spilling out slimy, pink entrails. It was a classic Red Finger tactic.

It doesn’t make sense, he thought. It was a strange idea to have bouncing around in his skull, given the circumstances, but strange ideas kept one alive in the long-term, so long as they didn’t distract a man too much from the short.

Swick felt a spear nick his leg, then slashed a man’s face down to the cheekbone. Short term was…Mixed in success, he decided.

The Fingers had plenty of reason to hate him, but not to be in this shithole of a city. Last Swick had heard, they’d been finding work far in the North and living the high life for its abundance. Something had dragged them south, and he imagined it was related to the heightened demand for his head.

The Dark Lord must’ve put a new bounty on me, one big enough to move even heavy-hitters like them against me. Which means…

He was trying to keep Shaiagrazni from gaining control of the air with the repair of Swick’s skyship. On the one hand, it was flattering to be considered such a threat. On the other…

An axe missed him by an inch, and its wielder screamed as Swick jabbed the bastard’s eye out with a dagger, then twisted aside from a crossbow bolt which looked fast enough to bury its entire length in stone.

On the other hand, he really didn’t care for the quality of killer that such a fear seemed to be sending after him.

A cry caught Swick’s ear, and he turned. The Hand was nursing a shoulder wound that hadn’t been there a few moments ago, a stab, and it looked a lot deeper than the axe-bite had been. Swick thought about his situation for a quarter-second at most, then acted.

He cut a finger, splayed his hand outwards and splashed as many of the attackers as he could. All were familiar with his powers, a disadvantage. But familiarity could bite the one who held it if played right. While they were busy flailing, panicking and trying to think of all the counters they’d practised to keep him from translocating a knife into their guts, Swick turned to grab the Hand and used his power to drag the both of them high into the air.

…Where he’d thrown his knife with the motion used to splash blood on everyone.

Swick caught the blade, caught the Hand, and twisted as they both plummeted. They hit a roof, Swick’s shoulders impacting first and smashing the fragile wood to pieces. He wasn’t a warrior, not a Knight or Paladin. His bodily resilience was more akin to a Ranger than either of them.

But, despite how close he’d come to forgetting it over the years of boozing, Swick was a damned Hero, and that meant a level of raw Vigour which forced excellence in almost everything, regardless of specialisation. They burst through the roof, ceiling, then a floor before finally coming to a stop in the bottom of the building amid a pile of debris and a cloud of dust.

For one moment, Swick just lay there and coughed. Interesting magic, translocation. He’d thrown the knife as hard as he could- hard enough to send it perhaps the better part of a mile- but that didn’t mean that he had moved that fast. He hadn’t shared his target’s momentum, just its location. Which meant that when he and the Hand had appeared beside it, they’d simply dropped right down. Good luck that there’d been a nice, soft house beneath them to break their fall, because they’d probably been over a hundred feet up.

On the other hand, these finer details weren’t something most people knew. Swick reckoned that more than one of the Red Fingers had seen his knife in flight, and they’d probably guessed that he’d translocated to it.

Which meant, if he was lucky, they’d be focusing on the area around its likely point of landing, had he not snatched it down with him. Thousands of feet away from where Swick himself currently was.

He did find it hard not to brag, sometimes. Swick couldn’t invent new magics or create giant monsters that spat toxic gas, like Shaiagrazni. And he couldn’t glance at two armies and predict exactly how their fight would turn out like Baird. But he could damned well trick a man, given half a chance. And that was good enough for the most part.

“What the bloody hell is wrong with you!?” The Hand roared, snapping Swick out of his smug stupor. The noble thrashed wildly atop him, scrambling off of Swick, then coughing and spluttering his way to a stumbling half-stand as he rocked across the inside of the room.

It was noon, thereabouts, and their surroundings were rather exposed thanks to the hole they’d left in the ceiling, but there was so much damned dust in the air that the light was scarcely even reaching the walls fifteen feet across.

Swick got to his own feet, sighing.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“You’re welcome.”

The Hand glared at him.

“For almost breaking my neck?”

That, at last, actually irritated Swick.

“For dragging you out of a death match we couldn’t win, sending the enemy a thousand yards off your trail and breaking your fall with my own damned body. Or do you think twelve stone of arsehole and another one and a half of chainmail is pleasant to feel crunching down into your chest skull-first?”

Surprisingly, the Hand actually paused. His lips thinned, nostrils flared, and then, slowly, he nodded.

“I…Apologise.” He said, stiffly.

Swick waited for more, an elaboration, some thanks perhaps, but it seemed that was all he’d get. He might have even pushed the matter had his leg not flared up in agony at that exact moment.

“Bugger!” He gasped, feeling it threaten to collapse under his weight. The Hand eyed him warily as Swick limped to lean against a wall, hastily pulling up his trouser leg and studying the wound.

It did not look good.

Swick hadn’t even felt the injury, but that was no surprise. Sometimes the frenzy of battle would leave a man numb to the most grievous of wounds. This wasn’t that, he was in no danger of losing the leg, let alone bleeding to death, but Swick could recognise a gnarly ruin when he saw it. Somewhere, somehow, he’d been gashed deep enough to almost reach the bone, and luck alone had saved him from an arterial wound. The muscle of his limb had been mangled, torn or, at best, bruised, and he could feel its enfeeblement with every movement. It was a wonder he hadn’t noticed his own slowness in the fight.

Or rather, it was evidence that he’d taken the blow right at its end. The pain was increasing with every second, and Swick knew that it wouldn’t stop any time soon. He’d live, but he wouldn’t enjoy it for a good while.

“You’ll live.” The Hand noted, suddenly beside him. Swick looked up.

He wasn’t delusional enough to think the noble was speaking out of concern, he just wanted to know whether his best chance of surviving the city would be likely to keel over. Swick could hardly blame him.

“I agree.” He grunted, standing, wincing, forcing back the waves of throbbing pain. “But I won’t be dancing for a while, best avoid any more fights with people who can actually give us a run for our money.”

“Agreed.” The Hand nodded, turning for the door. “It should be safe outside, yes? You mentioned throwing the enemy off our trail by a thousand yards.”

“Probably.” Swick replied, readying his knives just in case. “You never know, but my best guess is we’re in the clear.”

The Hand seemed far from happy with that, which Swick also couldn’t blame him for, but he was decent enough to get the door himself.

As luck would have it- or sheer probability at least- they were in the clear. For the time being. Swick was under no illusions about their chances of evading the Red Fingers for long. He’d captained most of those men long enough to know they were sharp as well as tough, and the raw brute strength they could throw around as a fighting force meant answers would be all too easily extracted from anywhere in the city they cared to check.

Swick’s count started the moment the first citizen saw him, because that was when word began to spread. He hurried to ensure that he wasn’t outraced by the deadly waves of gossip running outwards in every direction.

As he and the Hand shot through the city, Swick was finally able to test the man’s true limits. As he might have suspected, they were not so great. A powerful Ranger’s strength, and a helping more than most Knights, but his speed in mail was still worse than Swick’s with a wounded leg. The two of them nonetheless made swift progress through the city, leaving gaping faces and snarling curses well in their wake as the wind carried them on.

“Everything always goes to shit.” The Hand whispered, seemingly to himself.

“Used to this?” Swick asked him, reckoning he could do with a distraction. The noble glared.

“The worst thing about today is King Galukar has almost been proven right. He insisted all his councillors learn to fight, because that was what made a man. Well today that idiocy has saved my life.”

Swick grinned. He could very much relate, more than once stupidity had saved him, too. It made men unpredictable, and a predictable man was very hard to catch.

Somehow, he got the feeling he’d best start getting clever, all the same.

----------------------------------------

Ado’s cell was grimy. It was tight, it was tiny. Its walls were bare, jagged, untreated stone. Its cracks were numerous and wide. The ceiling leaked, the floor housed insect hives. By night it was torturously cold, by day it was torturously hot. Always it was isolating and mind-numbing, a constant, crushing pressure on her wits that threatened to squeeze away every semblance of cognition as it compressed hours into minutes, to seconds, to no time at all.

In short, it was an actual cell. The sort she’d have been thrown in from the start, had she not been carrying the blood of a monarch in her veins. The sort which would have awaited Collin Baird, who she’d always judged for his low birth.

Just as the people who’d designed her cell would have done.

The third day- or rather, after the third period of sleep which Ado had decided designated the separation between days in her timeless prison- was when Folami paid her his first visit. She might have turned him away, thirty hours earlier, but time in captivity had a way of gnawing away at all things. Will more than anything.

Her brother looked rather disgusted by Ado’s surroundings, and she’d expected that. What surprised her was to see his disgust aimed at her own self, too. Ado didn’t have access to a mirror of course, but she had a nose. She knew full well how she reeked. Washing had been a privilege not much seen to in her confinement, and apparently it showed.

“Why did you have to speak out, Ado?” He asked, face splitting for a moment to let irritation and sympathy bubble out past the revulsion. It was worse, she decided. Worse by far.

“Because what I said needed saying.” Ado lied. “And if you’re just here to remind me of my poor decisions then I’d sooner you just turn around and fuck off.”

Folami looked aghast.

“And now you curse, too. How far you’ve fallen, you were once so ladylike. So sweet, so inn-”

“Eat shit.” Ado interrupted, and relished the look of horror upon her brother’s face for the moments it lasted. “If you have something of substance to say, say it. If not then just leave me alone. I already know what my mistakes were and weren’t, I don’t need you smugly reminding me. Run off and enjoy being King, your highness. For however long you last.”

It had been petty of her, a reply Ado aimed to do nothing more than wound her brother as deeply and bitterly as she could manage in so limited a context. Still, she reckoned she’d earned herself a bit of pettiness.

“Shall I just go then?” Folami replied, thoughts apparently finished crystallising, and forming themselves into a structure of notably equal spite to Ado’s own. “Because I don’t want to be here, you know. I don’t enjoy watching my sister fucking rot away over nothing.”

Ado was so surprised to hear him swearing that she almost didn’t register the sincerity in his voice. It was a harder, deeper-sounding punch to her gut than anything he could possibly have dreamt up as a retort. She could handle chauvinism and spite, sympathy, though…That was something else.

Folami held her gaze for a long moment, then started for the door in a storm of contempt. Ado let him get a whole two steps before her thoughts galvanised, and she spoke.

“You…This isn’t all finished.” She managed, needing to fight her own convulsive throat for every damned word it formed. “I know things look bad, I know my case is poor, but it’s not finished. The King, he’s sympathetic. More so than the High Priest at least. I can reach him- I know I can. I just need to try in a private conversation, away from other people and their expectations.”

It took a precipitously long moment for Folami to turn, and that told Ado more than anything else how close he was to simply leaving her. She wondered how much he wanted to. Things would surely be much easier for him if she died, and she’d seen herself how much pleasure he took from their roles. Whatever he said.

But still, he turned.

“Ado…” His face looked torn, pained. She half-expected him to need more convincing, and wasn’t sure how she’d even go about it. But then her brother’s eyes hardened.

“I’ll do what I can.” Folami breathed, at last. “But I’m barely even a King here, outside of formality. You probably worked that out yourself already.”

She had, at that. Ado saw nothing to gain by telling him, though, and everything to lose, so she kept it to herself.