Soul Weaver: A Fantasy Novel (23 page)

***

Jacin Verret tugged on his sword, the blade sliding out of a dying rioter’s guts with a sickening, squelching sound. Verret turned away before the man hit the ground. There were six more bearing down on him, waving stout clubs over their heads and spitting with hate. Jacin Verret had given up calling on Dunmir’s mercy several days ago, when he had barely escaped the small band that killed his friend Dav Hetters.

Verret had given up on just about everything. Solstice could burn to the ground and its citizens could steal and squabble and murder each other until there was nobody left. Jacin didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to stay alive long enough to get out of the way.

Wearily, Verret lifted his blood-dripping sword and stepped forward to meet his latest attackers. They were more of the same, a seemingly neverending mob of bloodthirsty peasants drawn to his golden cloak and burnished armor. These people were not soldiers, nor were they well armed. Jacin’s arms ached from chopping and slicing and stabbing until he had lost count, lost track of the rage-maddened faces that finally blended together into a limitless mass.

He was in the High Market. He wasn’t certain of the street. Thick smoke drifted through the air, limiting visibility. It seemed fires raged on every corner. The streets were littered with bodies – more than a few of which were garbed in crimson stained, golden cloaks. The mob had broken, sort of. Roving bands of as few as five or six, and as many as two dozen roamed the city and attacked any Suncloaks they found.

There was a big one in this group, Jacin noted disinterestedly. Big and tough by the look of him. A tavern brawler maybe, or just as likely a tavern bouncer. The only difference was whether or not the tavern-keeper paid him. Regardless, today the big guy worked for free.

“Jacin! Jacin Verret!” It was Rebley, fighting off two street urchins who must have been all of eight or nine years old. Dirty blonde curls framed cherubic faces twisted into nightmare masks. The children bore miniature knives that were little more than slender ice-picks. Clinging to Rebley’s legs, they stabbed again and again at his belly. Most of the frenzied strikes glanced off the Suncloak’s armor, but enough of the blows had found the chink between torso and hip plates to bring forth a slowly gushing torrent of blood that spilled down Rebley’s legs.

Verret hacked and slashed at the rioters swarming over him, unable for the moment to go to his comrade’s aid. He mowed down a snarling grandmother and found himself facing the tough guy. The brawler slapped his fists together and spread his arms to grapple with the guardsman. Jacin stabbed him quickly in the chest. Planting one boot on the big man’s stomach, Verret kicked him off the sword and spun to hamstring another.

“Where are the others?” he shouted back to Rebley, who had managed to stun one of his tiny assailants with a vicious blow to the head with the hilt of his sword.

“Dead,” Rebley said through clenched teeth, seizing the other child by the throat with his off hand. Squeezing and choking the boy, he slowly forced the child away from him. A vicious flurry of stabbing icepicks pinged against his gauntleted wrist. “But the emperor’s mobilized the Tophylax Emperia!”

“Reinforcements?” shouted Jacin Verret in a daze, chopping downward with his sword held in both hands. The blade buried itself three inches into the skull of a portly innkeeper. The innkeeper’s eyes rolled up in their sockets as blood waterfalled down his nose. The flour-crusted rolling pin fell from his hand, and when Jacin wrenched the blade free the portly man crumpled. Jacin spun to face the remaining three attackers with renewed hope.

No matter how many of the peasants stood against them, the Tophylax Emperia would put an end to the lawlessness. All Jacin had to do was stay alive until they did.

“Not likely, mate,” Rebley said with a snarl, viciously twisting his gripping hand and snapping the small child’s neck. He tossed the body away and limped forward to stand with Verret against the portly innkeeper’s three sons, all armed with heavy fire place tools. “Word is their orders is to pacify the Noble District. Ain’t nothing been said about the rest of the city. We're on our own out here. Faugh! Just kill‘em all until one of‘em gets you, mate!”

Verret swung his sword, knocking the iron fire poker ringing from one man’s hands. But his newborn sense of hope died in that instant, and he faltered on the follow up killing thrust. The innkeeper’s son dodged aside and dove to reclaim his weapon.

It figured, thought Verret. The emperor had abandoned this city a long time ago when he relocated his palace beyond the walls. What would he care if the mob tore it down brick by brick? No one could ever touch the eternal emperor, secure in his palace and guarded by the invincible Tophylax Emperia. He might deign to shelter his archons, but the rest of Solstice could burn.

Jacin Verret lost more than hope in that moment. He lost the final shred of belief that had once prompted him to join the City Watch. Why should he bleed and die for an empire that cared nothing for even its loyal citizens? Why should he stand for a system that wouldn’t stand for him?

The decision was made before Jacin Verret was even aware of it. Stepping back with one foot, Verret changed his stance. Rebely had barely a heartbeat’s time to register the new threat before Jacin skewered his former comrade. Wrenching the sword free, he shoved Rebley down and away with all his strength before jumping back three quick steps. He brought the blade to a guard position, slanting across his chest, and eyed the innkeeper’s sons warily.

“Hold!” he cried. “Hold! I won’t attack you if you leave me be. I'll even fight beside you if you'll let me. I'm with you!”

“You killed our da!” shouted the youngest son, about fifteen. He held a lead-bladed fire shovel, gripping its iron handle in both white-knuckled hands. His eldest brother spit on the ground to emphasize the lad’s words.

“No mercy, Suncloak!” added the middle brother, who carried the iron fire tongs.

“He’d've killed me,” shouted Verret. “And I'll kill all of you if you try the same. Turn away and I won’t pursue you.”

He could see they wouldn’t listen. Tiredly, Verret struck the three lads with the broad side of his sword, knocking them out. When it was done, he reached up slowly to the clasps holding his cloak in place about his shoulders. Undoing the clasps, he let the golden fabric float down to the ground. He didn’t look back as he strode away, sword held ever at the ready.

***

Hot blood trickled into her eye, stinging and half-blinding her. Kal reached up to wipe the blood away, and another invisible blow slammed into her from the side. She was lifted off the ground and hurled against the far wall of the corridor. Rez was a blurry silhouette advancing on her from the mezzanine balcony.

She was bleeding from a dozen other small cuts, and her entire body felt like one giant bruise. At least one of her ribs was broken, and Kal was pretty sure it had punctured her lung when she hit the wall. Sharp pain exploded in her chest and when she breathed the air turned to pure fire.

She still had the wooden dagger. She still had Shel’s talisman.

Trembling from more than the severity of her injuries, Kal lifted up the carved dagger and held it with both hands. She pointed the tip at Rez, a dozen feet away and closing the distance rapidly. He threw up a hand, and solidifying bands of air picked her up and held her pinned against the wall. Invisible fingers grasped and tugged at her wrists and fingers, trying to pry the wooden knife from her grip.

Kal held on desperately, squeezing tears from her eyes to mix with the blood on her cheeks. She didn’t understand how Rez could still be alive or why he would attack her. She didn’t want to use the talisman against him. Shel hadn’t even told her what the spell would do. Kal had never thought to ask; she had never thought the other weaver could be her friend.

“Rez, please…” Her voice was cracked and strained, and she felt the first tiny bubbling of blood in her lung and airway. He’d already killed her. She wasn’t pleading for her life; she was begging him to stop, begging him not to make her use the talisman. Rez kept coming, his lips twisted up in an awful sneer. He lifted his other hand and though Kal couldn’t see the invisible pattern of his energy, she knew he was weaving his killstroke.

“You're beaten,” said Rez in a low, growling voice that Kal barely recognized as his. It was a flat, emotionless rasp that hardly sounded like Rez at all. “Look at you, holding your toy knife and begging for mercy. All over the District, your comrades are being slaughtered. Thorne is dealing with Shel as easily as you might swat a fly. Tell me, worm, what did you hope to accomplish here today?”

“Justice,” answered Kal in a keening wail of mourning. There was a blinding flash of light at the tip of the midnight wood talisman. Kal dropped to the floor instantly, the bands of air holding her up winking out of existence. Rez howled in pain and surprise as he tumbled backwards and tripped to the floor.

Kal’s breath was stolen by her impact on the floor. She struggled to suck in another breath, the pain in her lung nearly forcing her to pass out. But she managed to push herself up enough to peer over at Rez where he was picking himself up. He was alive.

He was alive and furious. Snarling wordlessly, Rez flung up both hands and made a shoving motion in Kal’s direction. Nothing happened. His hate-filled grimace melted into surprise and finally fearful disbelief.

“What have you done?” he asked, then louder: “What have you
done?
”

Kal didn’t know the answer, not really. She had more than half expected the spell, whatever it was, to kill him. Shel had surprised her again, and maybe the younger woman wasn’t as consumed by vengeance as Kal had begun to fear. That thought was enough for her now. She felt a growing sense of peace.

“Beaten you,” she whispered, and then she slumped back to the floor, unconscious.

From below came the thunderous crack of splintering wood. Rez jerked his head up at the sound. He held his empty hands, palms up and fingers slightly curled in front of his face. He stared at them with growing terror in his eyes.

There was shouting now, and quieter voices he couldn’t make out. He felt Thorne’s weaving cease in the same moment that twenty other weavers began to lace their energies together. It was time to go. Scrambling to his feet, Rez ran down the corridor and as far away from those twenty unknown weavers as possible.

Twenty hulking shapes in spiky, black lacquered armor spread out in a phalanx with the open end facing Murdrek Thorne where he knelt on top of Shel. The archon looked up at the men in their insectile helmets and felt a brief shiver of doubt and fear.

“Ah,” he said, covering any trace of his true feelings with the ease of decades of practice. Releasing his clenched fist and the siphon he had woven into the urchin girl, Thorne rose smoothly to his feet and dusted off his robes before rearranging them fussily. As he did, he addressed the Tophylax Emperia as a group.

“Your timing is impeccable,” he told them, speaking to an empty point near the center of the arrowhead formation. “I have defeated the ringleader of this unrest.”

Coughing and spluttering, Shel rolled painfully over onto her stomach and pressed her palms flat against the floor tile. She drew a ragged breath and started to rise. Thorne planted a boot between her shoulders and pushed her back down, albeit gently. He left his foot resting on her back.

“You will present her to me shortly,” the emperor spoke through the mouths of twenty Tophylax Emperia, his command resonating in an echoing buzz that seemed to fill the chamber. “Two of your fellow archons yet live. Join them at the palace with all speed, Thorne.”

Thorne hid his reaction to the summons. He had expected it, of course. More or less. He quickly buried the memory of his brief moment of terror, when he had thought the black armored elite guards would simply cut him down and move on. But no, the emperor didn’t – couldn’t – know of Thorne’s own treachery. The old bugger would irritably draw the surviving archons close to him, hungry for the tribute in souls they brought.

Four of the others killed! That was victory enough for now, Thorne told himself. The idiot gutter-weaver’s futile attempt at open rebellion would have the emperor on his guard, but she had unknowingly strengthened Thorne’s position. He allowed himself the smallest hint of a smile, and bowed from the waist to the assembled company of bodyguards.

“As my exalted emperor commands,” he said, sweeping one arm out in a flourish.

“Waste no more time on theatrics,” intoned twenty disinterested voices. “Collect the girl and that other one you've got hidden in your house. Bring them to me.”

Thorne suppressed a curse. He had sensed the sudden burst of power from the corridor above. It had been impossible to miss, like a star exploding in the night. Then, all traces of soulweaving on the level above ceased. He didn’t know what it meant, but he had hoped the Tophylax hadn’t felt it. He wanted his agent free, in case he needed him again.

“Of course,” he said. The Tophylax Emperia hadn’t waited for his permission, naturally. The moment the emperor’s voice cut off, two black-armored hulks had detached themselves from one end of the formation and double-timed it up the stairs.

Thorne gritted his teeth behind a bland smile and told himself it made no difference. Today Thorne would kill the emperor, and all his precious, soul-drained bodyguards wouldn’t be enough to save the stubborn old mule this time.

***

Three giants in spiky black armor came out of nowhere and started slaughtering Alban’s team. They died shrieking in agony. Alban drew up short, the blood draining from his face as he saw the carnage wrought by the dreaded Tophylax Emperia.

Rori seized his arm and pulled him away, screaming in his ear. “Get away, Alban! It’s the Eyeless, we have to get away!”

One of the brutes tore a man in half at the waist and discarded the blood-spurting halves. Turning, it started purposefully toward where Alban still stood frozen in stunned despair.

“Come on!” shouted Rori, still tugging at him. Alban finally snapped out of it and broke into a run. Rori kept pace at his side, the both of them throwing panicked looks back over their shoulders as they fled the faceless behemoth pursuing.