Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (34 page)

“I wonder how many men are down by the Solstice fire?” Nora said out loud.

“About five hundred,” Owen answered, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“You counted?”

“No. Yes. Look, there are five, six men in the first row by the gates and about ten lines of men down the length of the square. Five hundred. Give or take.”

“Worst-case scenario?”

Owen shrugged.

“The flour might be too damp. The explosion might be too high. Lots of very angry men will still be alive when it’s done. I don’t really want to think about it.”

Shade signaled from the other rooftop. He was in position, overlooking the square.

“Guess that’s my cue, then,” Garreth said, swinging a bag of flour over his broad shoulder, then a second one on the other side. He grunted and shifted them awkwardly.

“Throw them as high as you can, Garreth. And then run, understand? Run for your life,” Owen admonished him.

“Shade’ll be safe where he is?” Garreth asked one last time, knees bending under the weight of the bags.

“He should be far away enough.”

Garreth nodded and started to jog over the rooftop.

“We’ll be safe, won’t we?” Nora asked Owen.

He nodded, watching as Diaz pulled back the bowstring and readied an arrow. Across from them, Shade did the same.

“The arrows pierce the thrown bags in midair, distributing the flour.” Owen spoke more to himself than to Nora. “The Solstice fire lights the whole thing up, and then…whoosh.”

Diaz, Nora, and Owen watched Garreth’s huge figure as he made his laborious way across the rooftops.

Nora turned to Owen.

“And the people on the other side of the red gates will be safe?”

“What people?” Owen frowned.

She pointed. In the shadows a few families stood in clusters, trapped between the gates and the lines of grim men waiting on the first platform with Bashan. Owen felt the blood drain from his face and Nora grabbed hold of his arm.

“The gates will hold under the explosion?”

His mouth opened and closed.

“Oh gods.” He swallowed hard. “I, I hadn’t seen them.”

“Owen!”

Nora let go of Owen’s arm and started to run. Diaz called her name and made to follow.

Owen pushed him back. “No! I can’t shoot the arrow. You have to!”

Diaz clenched his jaw and stared after the girl chasing across the rooftops at breakneck speed, dark hair streaming behind her like a long black veil. He closed his eyes. Then planted his feet firmly and readied the arrow once more.

“If she dies—” he said, arching his eyebrows at Owen.

“I know. It’ll be my fault.” Owen felt like vomiting. “But she won’t. You know Nora.”

He watched his sister run past a surprised Garreth, and his fists curled together.

“She’s lucky,” Owen whispered.

*     *     *

Nora jumped over the gap
between the rooftops, losing her footing on a loose shingle. Not again! She steadied herself, her legs still moving, heart pounding in her ears. She whizzed past a puffing Garreth.

“Hey!” he shouted.

“Two more minutes!” she called, jumping onto the next roof—the last one before the square—her legs shuddering under the impact.

She halted and stared down at the men below. There was no way she could fight her way through them. So she had to go over the gates. That meant exposing herself to them. She judged the distance between the rooftop and the top of the gates. If she jumped—

Garreth landed on the rooftop behind her, shoulders dusty with flour.

There was no time. She just had to jump and hope she’d make it. Trust Shade to fire at anyone who’d fire at her while climbing. She ran back a few paces and took a deep breath. She fixed the handhold she was aiming for in sight and then summoned, commanded, begged, and cajoled the rest of her strength to her quivering legs.

It was seven steps to the edge. She gained speed and flung herself off the roof, tile cracking under her feet. It broke and half of the slate tile fell into the mass of men beneath her. She dropped in midair.

Then she slammed against the wood of the red gates and held fast, winded, sure her ribs had cracked, feet scrabbling for hold. She managed to hoist a leg up to the top, and an arrow thumped into the wood where it had just been. She lay on the top of the gate, catching her burning breath, when a second arrow thumped into the wood next to her head from the other direction. She sat up and stared up the steps where Bashan stood his ground and smirked. He had recognized her and allowed his men to shoot anyway.
Asshole!
Nora’s vision flooded red. She rolled off the wooden ledge and let her legs dangle over the other side. It was still a long way to the ground. She let go, banged against the stone ground, and rolled off the jarring momentum that otherwise would have seriously injured her legs. Her shoulder bloomed in red heat. She rose, aching.

There were shouts around her, children crying. Desperate fathers thrust an assortment of pointy things at her face. Nora raised both palms to show she was weaponless and not an enemy.

“Get away from the gates!” she yelled. “Get away!”

Calla rushed forward and held her tightly in an embrace. No one else moved. She scanned the faces of the small crowd over Calla’s shoulder to see if she recognized any. A skinny girl with short-cropped hair and a long skirt stepped forward.

“I know you,” the girl known as Larris said. “You’re Nora.”

“I am. Now get the fuck up those stairs before the gates come down!”

“We can’t,” Calla said, pointing up. “They won’t let us through.”

Nora pushed through the people, staring at Bashan with murder in her heart. Unfortunately, he didn’t drop down dead from her wishful thinking, so she had to come up with something else fast. She rammed an accusatory finger in his direction.

“That man is the exiled Prince Bashan. Your future emperor!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “He will let you through because he knows no emperor rules without subjects. Now come on! Away from the gates!”

Ha! Deal with that, asshole!
At least he wasn’t smirking anymore. There was general movement toward the stairs, but not enough. Nora herded the people onto the first few steps, hoisting a crying parentless child onto her hip. The area just before the gates had cleared. But they were still dangerously close. She wondered how much more time she—

The world exploded around her.

Owen had been wrong. It didn’t go whoosh. It
felt
like whoosh. She was lifted from her feet in a dazzle of white-hot pain and the shriek of the world rending. And then a quiet fell and it was warm. As though she were wrapped under the warmth of the mountain bear fur once more. With Diaz. On the Plains. Only there was no stink of bear, but one of burned toast. Her head on the cobblestones, fist-sized pieces of debris raining down around her, she sighed and finally closed her eyes.

N
ora raised her head from
the pillow as the door opened with a faint click. Light hurt her eyes. Sunlight glared from the white stone walls. She had fallen asleep again. The headache was finally gone, but whenever she moved too fast, her head throbbed painfully. With nothing to do but heal, she had taken to reading and napping. Mostly napping, though, as even the words she had just read were gone in an instant, and she reread the same short passage of the
Tales of the Tabard Inn
over and over again.

She rubbed her eyes, which were gummed shut from the fine flour dust that still seemed to be everywhere, and saw Owen creep into the quiet room.

“Hey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Bones heal, flesh seals. Face still looks like shit.”

Nora pushed herself upright. Calla had let her look into the mirror once after she had woken, her reflection spinning in the dark room, a piercing stab whipping through her head. Hair black like ebony, skin as white as snow, damage on one side of her face red with blood and burns. Her heart had sunk. None of her visitors had the courage to tell her—not Shade, not Calla, not even Owen—but she knew she looked like Lara. The Dark Twin. Half beautiful woman, half mangled corpse. It would be poetic, if it hadn’t been her face. With Master Cumi gone, Nora would bear the scars for the rest of her life.

“I’m bored mostly.”

Owen grinned as he saw the open book on Nora’s lap. It was still showing the same page it had the last time he had come by to visit. Nora snapped the book shut and put it on the small table next to the bed, re-arranging a jug of water, a cup, and a half-finished bowl of cold soup to make everything fit.

“Maybe I can find something more entertaining for you to read than stories of pilgrims,” Owen said. “There’s a thin treatise from Niccolo of Aerenfurt called
Daggers in Combat
in the library. If you’re interested…”

“I’m not.” She sighed. Daggers in combat actually sounded interesting. “I don’t want to
read
, Owen.”

“Then what do you want?”

Owen sat down on the edge of the bed. Nora shrugged.

“I want to get up and do something. I want to help in the kitchens, help with rebuilding. Even Calla is helping tend to the wounded.”

“Anyone wounded worse than you is already dead.”

“I’m just sick of staying in this room. In this bed.” She punched the blanket with her bandaged fist. “Everyone else is up and doing something. Even Bashan.”

When the red gates had exploded into nothingness, Bashan had charged down the stairs with his men and plowed through the remnants of the attackers with ruthless efficiency. The prince was the hero of the day and had taken over the rulership of the temple temporarily at the behest of the people he’d saved. He filled the position extremely well, too. It made Nora feel sick to the bone. You had to give it to the prince; he knew that it was never who you were, but who you seemed to be to others that mattered. Still.

Dust specks danced on the sunbeam across the wall. The dust was everywhere. She could taste it as a film on every cup of water she drank, gritty and slightly bitter, saturating the temple with a scent of bread and woodsmoke and blood. While he stared at the wall, Owen was fidgeting with the leather bands that bound his loose shirtsleeves together at the wrists. He was thinking.

“You took the vows, didn’t you,” Nora said.

“Hmm?” He turned toward her, seemingly oblivious to what she had just said.

“You took the pilgrim vows. You’re one of them now. Punish the wicked. Protect the innocent. Guide the lost. The road becomes my bride. No ties to family and kin. Blah, blah, blah.”

“I know you disapprove—” he started.

“I don’t, Owen. I know it’s what you wanted. What you’re suited to do. I’m just—” She shook her head, remembering Master Cumi’s words. Not her last ones, but all the ones in between. “I wish I was so sure, is all.”

“If you took the vows, too, I’m sure Master Diaz would take you on as a student.”

“Yeah…Diaz.”

She studied Owen for a trace of innuendo, but her brother’s face was empty of smirking winks. His mind was probably too pure now for those kinds of thoughts. He
was
nervous, though. His fingers intertwined with her own. They were sweaty. Why would Owen be nervous?

Realization hit her hard then. Of course he had taken the vows. Taken them and was going on his pilgrimage with Diaz and Bashan. Going alone. That was why he had come here. To leave her here. Alone. After all she had gone through to find him, to be with him again, for them to have each other. Bandits on the Ridge, mountain bears and death pits on the Plains, the long journey spent dependent on Diaz, the time here, the people here. All of it meant nothing because he would be fucking leaving her.

“Over my dead body,” she said through gritted teeth.

“What?”

“Did you come here to say goodbye, Owen Smith?”

“Er…I don’t know what you mean.” He pulled a face. Yeah, he knew exactly what she meant.

“Stop lying, because you suck at it.”

Owen took a deep breath to compose himself and glanced at her.

“I have spoken to Prince Bashan. We will move southward when spring comes to consult the prophetess at the Temple of Shinar.”

Another look at Nora. She didn’t say anything.

“So. I know you want to come along. But I also know you want to help. And you would be of great help to Calla when we’re gone. Bashan will be leaving most of the Hunted Company here for protection. But his men know and accept you more than they would Calla, for example. If you gave them an order, Bashan thinks they’d probably do it. You’re like a lucky charm, they think. You have Garreth and Shade to thank for that, by the way. Gossipers.”

He grinned weakly. He was trying to deflect the damage. She kept her mouth shut. It wore him down. It always did. Even though he knew this tactic, he stepped right into it every time, trying to fill the silence. He cleared his throat.

“The people in the courtyards have seen you with Master Cumi and Calla, too. Some of them remember you from before the gates. Some remember they would be dead, that their children would be dead, if it weren’t for you. You would be a great help. If you stayed here.”