Shadows of Asphodel (10 page)

He strode straight down the passageway in pursuit of the stranger. He kept his head down, his hands clenched at his sides.

“Ardis,” Konstantin said. “Keep an eye on him. Report back to me.”

She nodded and followed Wendel. Her heartbeat drummed in her chest, and she double-checked that Chun Yi was at her side.

Without looking back, Wendel spoke. “Let me do this.”

“Do what?” she said.

He said nothing, and slid open the door separating this sleeper car with the next.

The stranger stood with his back to them, near the end of the car. His hand on the hilt of his scimitar, he turned to face them.

“Wendel,” he said. “There you are.”

The necromancer tilted his head. “An assassin, I presume.”

“Correct,” said the stranger. “You can call me Sven. You know who sent me.”

Silence stretched between the two of them. Shadows hid the expression on Wendel’s face.

“What do they want?” he said.

“You.” Sven slid one foot closer to Wendel, then another. “You failed to report back after the battle at Petroseni. They thought you had been killed.” He paused. “The lack of a body didn’t convince them otherwise.”

Ardis arched her eyebrows. So they thought he could have returned from the dead.

Wendel thinned his lips, then spread his arms at his sides. “Sorry to disappoint. As far as I can tell, I’m still breathing.”

Sven gave him a gravelly laugh. “Not for much longer, boy, unless you come with me.”

“That’s a pathetic threat,” Wendel said. “We both know the Order prefers me alive.”

With a sigh, the assassin rubbed the stubble on his jaw.

“A word of advice, boy,” Sven said. “You might want to work on your story before they see you. Last time I spoke to them, they were none too happy about your little stunt. Now get over here.”

Wendel sighed and held both of his hands in front of him. “The usual?”

Sven took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and advanced on the necromancer as if cornering a wounded animal.

Wendel glared venomously at Ardis. “Stop staring like that. Never seen a man arrested?”

So he wanted her to pretend like she didn’t know him? Not a great idea. She knew her weaknesses, and one of them was bluffing.

Sven sized her up. “One of your lady friends?”

One? Well, Wendel as a womanizer was hardly surprising.

“Didn’t know you went for that type,” Sven added.

Ardis narrowed her eyes and resisted the urge to reply.

Wendel shrugged. “I take what I can get.” He waved him closer impatiently. “It’s a long way from Vienna to Constantinople.”

“Then you shouldn’t have taken the wrong train,” Sven said. “Tell that to the Order.”

Wendel stared at the ceiling and waited. The assassin grabbed his wrists, roughly enough that he stumbled, then snapped the handcuffs shut.

“Where’s your fancy dagger?” Sven said. “Lose it?”

“In my pocket,” Wendel said. “I know, don’t tell me, it’s worth more than I am.”

“Damn right.”

The assassin yanked open the necromancer’s coat and patted him down. Wendel’s eyes connected with Ardis’s for a split second.

What did he want?

Sven grunted. “Here we—”

Wendel swung his arms over Sven’s head and lunged behind him in a stranglehold. The chain between the handcuffs choked the assassin’s neck. Sven ran backwards and rammed Wendel against the wall. Savagely, Wendel wrenched the handcuffs even tighter. The assassin rammed into the wall again but didn’t shake him.

His face crimson, Sven drew his scimitar.

“Wendel!” Ardis said. “His sword—”

“Disarm him,” Wendel said. “Do it!”

Ardis didn’t have time to think. She drew Chun Yi and swung at Sven. Sword clashed with scimitar. She angled her blade so it slid down his and locked at the crossguard. Sven bared his teeth and lunged, driving her back, but she twisted Chun Yi and knocked his scimitar clean out of his hands. It flew sideways and clattered on the floor.

“He’s disarmed,” Ardis said.

Wendel kept choking him. “Good.”

Sven’s face darkened to purple. He dropped to his knees and tried to throw Wendel overhead, but he was too weak. The assassin’s eyes flickered shut, and he slumped, supported only by the chain around his neck.

“He’s out cold,” Ardis said.

But the necromancer gritted his teeth and didn’t let go.

“Wendel,” she said, “you can stop.”

He looked at her with shadows in his eyes, and still he didn’t let go.

“Wendel.”

Still.

“Wendel!”

At last, he released the assassin. He pressed his fingers to Sven’s neck as he fell. Checking his pulse, she thought.

Until Sven sat upright.

“Free me,” Wendel said.

Sven grabbed a key from his pocket. His eyes looked empty as he unlocked Wendel’s handcuffs. His hands fell limply at his sides.

Wendel tossed aside the handcuffs and rubbed the welts on his wrists.

“Now,” said the necromancer. “Leave this car. There, jump off the train. Walk—crawl, I don’t care—until you can’t anymore.”

Sven climbed to his feet and shambled toward the door.

“What have you done?” Ardis said hoarsely.

Wendel said nothing. He shadowed the dead man down the passageway. Sven groped for the door, yanked it open, and lurched outside. Ardis followed them. Her heartbeat thumped with dread. Sven plodded to the platform and leaned over the railing. He teetered, then fell from the moving train and rolled into the ditch.

Ardis craned her neck and peered down the length of the train.

Sven crawled from the ditch and dragged himself away from the tracks. Wendel watched until the dead man was out of sight.

“He had to be stopped,” he said.

His eyes had lacked emotion earlier, while killing the man, but they smoldered now. He held out his hand. It was slick with blood.

“I will admit,” he muttered, “that could have been a cleaner kill.”

Ardis shook her head. “He wasn’t bleeding.”

Wendel glanced down at his shirt and saw the widening red stain. His struggle with Sven must have torn the stitches over his wound.

“Ah.” He looked at his hand again. “Now I’m starting to feel it.”

His head bowed, Wendel clutched his ribs and trudged back into the car. Ardis pursued him, her hand tight on Chun Yi’s hilt.

“You didn’t have to kill him,” she said.

He didn’t look back. “He was working for the Order.”

“Yes.
Working
. You were just another job to him.”

He shot her a glare. “And you have a moral objection to killing on the job?”

Ardis blushed and shut her mouth, afraid to admit he was right.

Wendel knocked on Konstantin’s door with his bloodied hand. When the archmage saw him, he sucked in his breath.

“God,” Konstantin said, “what happened?”

Ardis leaned around the doorway. “He killed that man.”

“Necessarily.” Wendel gestured to his wound. “How much would it cost me?”

Konstantin blinked several times. “For what?”

“For you to heal me, archmage.”

“I’m not a doctor!”

“You
do
know at least some medical magic?” Wendel curled his lip. “And I’m not talking about money as payment.”

Konstantin backed away from him, then waved them both inside his cabin.

Wendel lowered himself onto a seat and doubled over with a groan. “Make up your mind, archmage, before I look elsewhere.”

Flustered, Konstantin shook his head. “I doubt anyone else on this train can—”

“Then name your price.”

Konstantin pressed his lips together, his eyes bright, then caught the necromancer’s gaze. “A week of your time.”

Wendel glowered at him. “A week?”

“That won’t be an easy wound to treat.”

Wendel sighed. “Three days. That’s all the time I can spare.”

Konstantin nodded and folded his arms. “Then allow me to start. Ardis? Fetch that suitcase from the luggage rack.”

Ardis did as he said, but frowned. “Three days of what?”

“I can explain everything later,” Konstantin said.

The archmage knelt by his suitcase and unbuckled the clasps. When he opened it, Ardis realized it wasn’t a suitcase at all, but an apparatus built into its own carrying case. It resembled the one he had used to patch the Hex, with less in the way of knobs and more in the way of sliding switches. She wished she knew more.

“I almost didn’t bring this,” Konstantin said. “Luckily for you, I did.”

Wendel eyed the apparatus. “What does it do?”

“Temporal magic.”

“Archmages and their technomancy gadgets,” Wendel muttered. “I suppose it came to this. Making a deal with the devil.”

“And you think that
I
am the devil?” Konstantin said.

Ardis cleared her throat and stepped between the two of them. They peered around her to glare at each other, then broke eye contact.

The archmage rummaged in a bag and tugged on his leather-and-steel bracers.

He glanced at Wendel. “I need you to…” He waved his hand vaguely.

“Excuse me?”

Konstantin’s face reddened, and he cleared his throat. “This won’t work if you insist on wearing that filthy shirt of yours.”

Wendel arched his eyebrows and shrugged off his coat. “Squeamish?”

Still blushing, the archmage fiddled with the temporal magic apparatus. Ardis took Wendel’s coat from him as he unbuttoned his shirt. The cloth, wet with blood, clung to his wound. He winced as he tugged it away.

Ardis inspected his injury. She was right, the stitches had torn open in the fight.

“Do you think two weeks will be enough?” Konstantin said.

Wendel hesitated. “Make it a month.”

Konstantin looked sharply at him. “You are aware that will double the pain?”

“Pain,” Wendel said. “I understand.”

He unbuckled his belt and looped it in his hand, then lay down on the seat, breathing shallowly, blood still seeping from his injury.

Konstantin moved closer. “Ardis? You may want to hold his arms.”

Her stomach somersaulted. “Why?”

“This magic works by accelerating the healing time of the wound, but it also accelerates the sensations of that time.” Konstantin paused and adjusted his bracers. “Wendel will feel a month of pain in one instant.”

“Wonderful bedside manner,” Wendel muttered.

Ardis met his eyes, and he nodded. He put his belt between his teeth and bit down on the leather, like he had done this all before.

“Ready?” Konstantin said.

Wendel raised his arms above his head, and Ardis grabbed his wrists. His heartbeat pulsed beneath her touch, fast with fear, but the necromancer was doing an excellent job of keeping his emotions from his face.

Konstantin moved his hands as if shaping an invisible sphere. Between his fingers, a green glow flickered into a burning ball of light. He inspected the magic with care, his eyes gleaming with fierce concentration. He murmured something to himself, then carried the magic over to Wendel and poured it onto the wound.

Sizzling light dazzled Ardis’s eyes. Blinded, she blinked fast.

The moment the magic touched him, Wendel bit down on the belt to stifle a scream. Konstantin lowered his hands over the wound and drove the magic down. Wendel’s back arched, and his arms flexed beneath Ardis’s grip.

“Hold him!” Konstantin said.

Ardis put her weight into pinning Wendel, but he was still strong enough that she struggled. He threw back his head, the tendons in his neck taut, and let out a long moan. Sweat glittered on his skin, which felt feverish beneath her fingers.

“And… done.”

Konstantin lifted his hands, and Ardis released Wendel.

The necromancer collapsed on the seat, then slid onto the floor. He spat the belt from his mouth. Shaking violently, he curled sideways and wrapped his arms around himself. His breathing came in quick gasps.

“Wendel?” Ardis crouched beside him. “Are you all right?”

“What,” he panted, “does—it look—like?”

Sarcasm. That was good.

She took him by the shoulder and rolled him onto his back. Besides the blood, nothing of his wound remained except for a long white scar across his chest. He sucked in a breath, then blinked as if seeing her for the first time.

“But thank you for asking,” he said, pain still roughening his voice.

Ardis leaned away from him. “No problem.”

Konstantin tugged off his bracers and grimaced at the blood on his fingertips. He opened the door to the bathroom and washed his hands in the sink. Ardis saw his reflection in the mirror, and the curiosity in his eyes.

Wendel grabbed the edge of the seat and hauled himself to his feet. He swayed, his hair in his face, and staggered a few steps forward. Ardis caught him by the arm so he wouldn’t fall, but he shrugged off her touch.

“I should clean up all this blood,” he said. “Before anyone sees me.”

Konstantin nodded and stepped aside to let him into the bathroom. As the archmage dried his hands on a towel, he snuck a glance at Wendel.

“That didn’t go too badly,” he said, “all things considered.”

Wendel stared into the sink, his eyes distant, as he washed the blood from himself. He gave special care to his hands, picking beneath his fingernails, scrubbing at his knuckles. Long after he looked clean, he let water wash over his skin.