Shadow Magic (58 page)

“The only question, then, is whether we will arrive at the capital in time to save the diplomats,” Mamoru said, and turned his face toward the far wall.

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t envy them their positions; nonetheless, I wished we were with them already.

So. There I was, with my only ally, Lord Temur—someone who
hadn’t
been an ally up until a very short time ago, and maybe it said something about the state of my mind that I trusted him as much as I did, but I did. And there we were, about to be causing a whole lot of trouble for everyone, including ourselves. If Greylace had been around, he would have said something like
“Any famous last words, Alcibiades my dear?”
Or
“I’m so very happy to be sharing this moment with such dashing figures. Oh my!”
It was much nicer to be with someone who appreciated the solemnity of a moment like that one: about to go against an emperor by breaking into a veritable holding cell while all his guards, who were a whole lot better equipped than you were, came rushing at you with only one charge.

Kill
.

“You seem nervous,” Lord Temur said in such a wry tone of voice that for a moment I didn’t even believe it was him. Gallows humor, I guess they called it. Even the Ke-Han must’ve had a word for it, too.

“Just feeling practical,” I said, trying not to smash my head against the ceiling as the walkways got smaller and smaller. I’d done it twice already, and the last thing we needed was to alert our enemies to our presence because I was hitting my head on things. Places like this just
weren’t built for men like me. Little snakes like Caius Greylace were another story entirely.

“Your friend is very resourceful,” Lord Temur replied. “I would not worry about him. I think he can survive anything.”

“We’re not actually friends,” I began to explain, trying to find some patience within me. “In point of fact, I can’t stand the little bastard.”

“Hm,” Lord Temur said. “Time for that later, I suppose, if all goes well.”

He turned to look at me, and I could see his eyes in the darkness, black for the most part but with a flash of light. Sheer determination. I felt it too, coming up to knot in my belly; the way I always felt right before a fight broke out. A real fight, a fight that mattered.

“It is an honor to fight beside you,” Temur went on. They were like the words to some kind of ritual or prayer, and I felt awkward not knowing what my part in all this was, and even more awkward because of all the horseshit that had already gone down. “You are a worthy enemy; this makes you a worthy ally.”

“I don’t take stock in any of that,” I muttered. “Just so you know, I think all this honor and duty and fealty isn’t worth the ground a horse pisses on.”

“About as much as you do not consider the Lord Greylace your friend, I would wager,” Temur replied. “The door is only big enough for one. Who shall go out first?”

“Pardon me,” I said, with a little flourish that would’ve made Caius happy, “but I think I will.”

We could have done this better, maybe; more subtly, definitely. But that wasn’t the point. The point was keeping them from worrying too much about the two who were missing. The point was distraction.

So I put my shoulder against the door, which was too little for me anyway, said a hearty
fuck your mother
to the element of surprise, and flung myself out into the mirrored hallway where, as Temur had explained, at least six men would be waiting for me.

They were quick. One lunged right at me before he’d even got over looking surprised, sword raised to kill, and this was no wooden blade made to look like the real thing. I was expecting it, of course. The sneaky bastards always
had
been quick, right up until the end when they’d gone and poisoned us all without our knowing it until it was too late. Lucky for both of us—the country lord and me—it was too close
quarters for anyone to be using those murderous longbows that could punch through a
horse
, not to mention a man.

I braced my sword against the first guard, shouting bloody murder all the while because I was completely finished with sneaking around.

I heard Lord Temur directly behind me, and had a minute of feeling like we’d maybe done a terrible thing to him and his honor and whatever, getting him mixed up in our business like this. Then I couldn’t think about it anymore because the fighting had started and there wasn’t room for
any
thinking. I lunged forward while the poor bastard on the other end of my sword began defending himself in the cornered way that meant the fight was over before it had even really started. He knew it, and I knew it, but every man has the right to be stubborn.

I’d fought against Lord Temur in the training grounds. Shit, I’d even dueled with the bastion-damned Ke-Han Emperor himself, and both those fights had given me more than enough experience when it came to the Ke-Han style of man-to-man combat. The only thing the guard had over me was speed, which I was used to after the Emperor had turned out to be some kind of demon. The only thing you had to worry about when you were slower than the other guy was that when you hit him, you really had to
connect
.

Fortunately, connecting was kind of my specialty.

I hit him the next time he blocked high, throwing my weight in with the strike against his chest and sending him flying. In a neat kind of trick I couldn’t have planned even if I’d tried, he stumbled back into the next man heading toward us, blue sleeves tied back and cold duty in his eyes. I felt something knock into me from behind and realized none too soon that it was Temur, fending off an advance from yet another guard no doubt drawn there by all my noise-making.

We were in for it now. It had been a long time since I’d fought with anyone back-to-back.

“At least we know we’re in the right place,” I grunted, slamming the hilt end of my sword into some poor bastard’s face. It cracked in an ugly way that meant I’d probably got his nose, and I jerked my hand away quick before the blood started to spurt.

Temur gave a short laugh like maybe he thought I was crazy, or maybe he just enjoyed that stuff as much as I did and it was finally putting some humor into him. I almost wished I could’ve taken a break
from my own fighting just to watch him and see if he looked any different now that we’d got some trouble started.

Unfortunately for both of us, the Ke-Han were stubborn if they were anything, and just then they seemed
particularly
stubborn about making sure I had no time for breathing, let alone sightseeing.

I blocked high with my sword, and punched another man in the gut. He doubled over with a groan; I helped him with my boot.

“Are you looking forward to becoming a hero, General Alcibiades?”

Of all the times to develop a sense of humor, I thought, wheeling around to catch another guard’s sword with my own blade. I only just did, and the way my arm ached with the impact let me know I’d caught it wrong and at too awkward an angle. It couldn’t be helped. The light there was dimmer than in other areas of the palace—because who wanted to waste lanterns on a bunch of prisoners and their guards, no doubt—and if Temur hadn’t been at my back, I’d have been worried about striking out at him too. Besides, they had all those mirrors helping them out. For all I knew, they were predicting my every move.

“If we make it out of this alive,” I told him, “I expect people to be rioting at plays about
us
.”

Temur laughed in his brisk, polite way, just to humor me, before I heard the thump of a body hitting the floor. We made a good team, me and the warlord, which was something I’d never have expected in a hundred years.

“I had no idea you were such a fan of the theatre,” he said, and because I was listening and not paying attention, I didn’t notice the guard I’d punched getting up.

He charged straight at me that time with a yell of his own, the movement so sharp and unexpected that I only just stepped to one side in time. Pain flared hot in my arm, followed by a warm wetness against my sleeve that meant I’d only just dodged being skewered on someone’s sword like a fried dumpling.

Being grateful for small miracles meant that I had to be glad it was only my left arm. I shook it out and swung my sword up into a defensive position. By then I was mad.

“Hey,” I said, getting Temur’s attention while the guard circled us, and more poured in from behind sliding doors and secret compartments and bastion-only-knew where else. Six guards, my mother’s left
tit. The Emperor’d known we felt cornered, and he was throwing everything he had at us just to show us how futile it was to try to fight back. “You know where the prisoners are being kept, right?”

My only answer was the sharp screech of metal against metal and a shout that turned into a wet kind of gurgling.

“I beg your pardon,” said Temur, “but there was a situation I may have resolved too hastily. I did not hear your question.”

“Prisoners,” I grunted, keeping my eye on the son of a bitch who’d wounded me.

“Ah,” said Temur.

“I’m thinking you go and get them,” I elaborated. “I’ll hold ’em off here at Tiger Tail Pass or whichever one it was where we beat your sorry asses all the way back to the dome.”

“I do not think that I recall that battle,” Temur said. “I must not have been a part of the defense.”

I huffed and stepped in quick to attack before that guard got a taste for stabbing me again. The room we were in was built more simply than the others, no furniture save for the benches lining the walls and three lanterns hanging from the ceiling. There was a corridor just past where Temur and I had made our stand, even worse-lit than the room. That was probably the way to the prisoners.

Would’ve been nice if the secret passageways had led us straight to where we needed to be. Would’ve been all kinds of
considerate
that the Ke-Han didn’t believe in.

This time, the guard squaring off with me moved too slow and I grabbed his arm, wrenching it back so that he had to drop his sword.

“Good night,” I said and clocked him in the head.

I shook my arm out again, which was a mistake, since instead of being numb it just hurt like crazy. There were more guards in the room, too, shouting and breaking formation and coming in through the walls like they were actors in that play Caius had taken me to see. Except there wasn’t anything make-believe about those swords or the duty driving the men who wielded them.

There were more guards in the room than when we’d started, now I was sure of it. If there hadn’t been bodies on the floor, unconscious or dead, I would’ve started to get
really
disheartened.

“Look,” I said, taking a chance on talking to Temur over my shoulder, “this is a waste of time. They’re just going to tire us out here until
they can overwhelm us with sheer numbers, and then this whole thing will have been for nothing. You get it?”

“You should be the one to go on ahead since your men will trust you better,” said Temur, calm as you please.

Bastard had a point, too, but I wasn’t about to give in that easily.

“You’re the one who knows the way, remember?” I told him, before I broke a man’s jaw—and maybe my own knuckles, too, it felt like. “That’s the whole reason we brought you in the first place, so don’t go getting all
useless
on me now.”

I kicked a guard back, and when he fell, he broke through the wooden-framed screens and tore through the paper wall.

“Get going,” I said, “or I’ll break your head too and you’ll have to explain to Greylace and Josette what you were doing
sleeping
in the middle of a battle.”

“I do not know that I like the idea of explaining to Margrave Josette that I left you to fend for yourself, either,” Temur retorted. He was leaning against me a little more heavily than he had been when we’d started, and I didn’t think it was because he was preparing for a nap.

“Who’s by themselves?” I asked, insulted by the very idea. “I’m not cutting you loose, mind. I’m sending you to get the reinforcements! If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m bringing down the palace, and if you’re not sure whether I’m exaggerating or not, well then, it’s probably a good idea just to come back right away, isn’t it?”

Temur hesitated, which was his fatal error as far as I was concerned. It meant he agreed with me.

“Okay,” I said, lowering my voice, and wishing not for the first time that the walls were built of something slightly more substantial, that I could trust myself to lean against them. My arm was stinging something ferocious and dripping all down my sleeve. “Here’s how it’s going to go. I distract them while you take your chances and make a run for it, all right? Fiacre’s not an idiot, so if you explain the situation to him, I’m sure—”

An arrow whizzed past the side of my head, nicked my ear, and embedded itself in the far wall. The courtyard just beyond the wall, where the fallen guard had torn a hole in the screen, was filling with soldiers, all of whom were wielding those
damned
longbows.

I stepped abruptly away from Temur, hoping the loss of support wouldn’t leave him stumbling. I had a kind of plan, though it’d only
just come to me a moment ago—about the time I’d realized that the chances of us both getting past had been ground right down to zero, and the chances of me holding off a palace army by myself were… Well, easier to say that if our endeavor had been a play, there wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house.