The room moved to action. Many of these dinner guests were warriors, and they swarmed the scene, hands reaching for Ellina’s arms, her hair, yanking her away. Ellina dug her nails into forearms, mouthing helplessly. She was not the enemy—it was the blow dart assassin, please—he was rightthere.More hands, then, more soldiers. Ellina’s scalp seared painfully. A sound filled her ears. If Ellina had to name the noise, she would say it was like the ambient ringing of a piano after the final note is struck and the key is released. And on the tail of that sound: a fresh swell of memories.
No,Ellina thought furiously. She would not give in to panic. She would not be overwhelmed by past traumas. She was stronger than that.
She had to be stronger than that.
The memories ebbed, the ringing fading in time for her to hear Venick’s voice, a hard command. Her arms were released. She staggered, felt a new hand at her side. This one was warmer, steadying. Callused.
The scene snapped back. Venick at her elbow, offering support. Harmon’s gaping eyes. And there between them, several men subduing the correct attacker this time, pinning him to the floor. The blow-darter appeared to be one of their own soldiers, dressed in the green and gold livery favored by the lowlanders. Though…not quite one of their own.
Ellina’s fingers dug into Venick’s sleeve.
The attacker looked like one of their troopers, but there was something wrong with him. This was what Ellina had seen earlier, before she understood what she was seeing.
The soldier was one of the undead.
SIX
There was a cry. Theshithof swords being drawn from their sheaths, theshoopof axes from their belt loops. Men began hacking at the creature, bludgeoning the body in synchronized gives and takes, like this was one of their customary human dances, like the violence had a natural place there in the ballroom. Gore began to fly. The corpse came apart. Onlookers cringed and drew back, but Ellina did not. She stared hard at the carnage, the blood. Bright red and fresh, which meant the attacker had not been dead long. Then Ellina remembered that the corpse was not the realattacker, merely a vessel.
And, apparently, a distraction.
She hauled her eyes up, swept a look around the room. A sea of faces, the tables, the doors. Of that last there were two sets, a main entrance at the back and a second pair towards the front, plus all the windows. Yet each of these was secured by a guard, with no sign of anyone slipping away, no open exit routes, nothing but a frozen audience, and the rhythmic crunching of a body being dismembered.
Venick was giving orders to someone at his side. Lin Lill’s furious face swam out of the crowd. Behind them, Erol watched the mayhem, flinching at every blow. His white robes were spotless. He was too far back to catch any blood splatter. Yet he seemed somehow off-color, and Ellina had the fleeting thought that he hadsomehow stepped too close, that he had been compromised by proximity.
The floor was a wet mirror of red. Seemingly far off, the sounds of chopping continued. Ellina’s neck prickled, and she realized that Erol had indeedbeen compromised. That was not a trick of the light, the discoloration, the way he seemed smudged at the edges.
That was shadow-binding.
As if sensing her discovery, Erol’s shadow twitched, then promptly departed his body. Ellina watched the dark form slip across the floor towards a window, and yes, there: a face behind that window. A flicker of black against black.
She took off. She ignored the sound of Venick’s surprisedEllina?,the protest of guests as she shoved roughly past. She gained speed, leapt, and dove straight through the window.
A crash. A shower of glass. It was Ellina’s luck that the frame’s crossbeams were elf-sized, that the glass was not double paned. She sailed through the air and tumbled into a courtyard on the other side, bringing a spray of debris with her. She remembered wishing earlier for this very thing and tried not to choke on the irony.
Ellina lifted her head just in time to see a dark-haired figure fleeing around a corner and out of sight.
She gave chase. Her lungs felt like they had been filled with salt. Her legs were sluggish, her skin fiery with a constellation of cuts. And somehow, even though Venick had just been attacked, even though a conjuror had managed to sneak a corpse into their midstagain,Ellina felt buoyant, like a balloon had been inflated inside her.
She ran. It felt good to run, to pursue, to do something other than think or fret or avoid. This was as liberating as a freezing dip in a winter river, the way pain and pressure drove out all other thoughts.
Igor’s streets had mostly emptied for the night, everyone wanting inside where it was warm. The people Ellina did pass were useless to her, ignorant of the conjuror, the attack, this chase. Had Ellina had a voice, she might have called out to them, roped them to her mission, but Ellina did not have a voice, and she was tired of stewing over that fact. Her blood was pumping now. Her legs were gaining momentum. She could see the conjuror—smallish, female—up ahead, swinging another corner out of sight.
She would not get far. Ellina had caught the conjuror’s scent like a hound on a rabbit. More than that, Ellina could hear her, crisscrossing through an alley to the left, quick-pattering down the adjacent street. The female was trapped between buildings and growing frantic: a mouse in a maze.
And then, a new sound. Boots on pavement. Distant hollers. This was one of those times when Ellina could be glad for Venick’s perceptiveness—he must have figured the reason for her dash and ordered his soldiers to join the chase.
Ellina changed direction. Runnels of snow-slush churned along the roads, kicked up with her feet. A roaring barrel fire showed closed doors and roughly nailed window frames, a line of storefronts. Ellina knew this section of streets from her earlier survey of the city, the map of them clear in her mind. She calculated which direction the conjuror had gone, how many turns it would take to head her off. She reached a fork in the road and went left, pressed through a plaza, turned a final corner between two buildings—
And was nearly decapitated.
The conjuror materialized, wielding a slice of metal. It was not a sword but a broken segment of barrel ring, the kind used to seal together casks of wine.
Ellina slammed to the wet ground, heard the metal whistle overhead. Her mind iced over as she rolled swiftly out of range, andwherehad the female found that weapon? Conjurors did not often carry blades, believing themselves above such crude methods of violence. If the elf was resorting to this—a discarded piece of junk she must have picked up in the streets—it could only mean that she was fully sapped of strength, and therefore too weak to wield magic.
Ellina shoved to her feet. The female’s hood had fallen back to reveal a crop of black hair, skin like goat milk, the chin a sharp little point. Blood ran down her wrist, dripped off her bare elbow. It took Ellina a moment to understand—the sharp edges of the barrel ring had punctured the elf’s palm. She was cutting herself with her own weapon.
Ellina unsheathed her dagger. Out of sight, she could hear Venick’s reinforcements sweeping the city, closer now.
