He got to his feet, left his crown wherever it had rolled, and called forth starfire. It erupted from his hand, spilling out into the damaged hallway. He raised the temperature higher, until the flames flickered pure white and the blowback of the heat was so intense Javier had to curl in on himself.
Vanya walked right through it.
He wielded the core of the heat—that dangerous, metal-melting power—with expert ease, the way his mother had taught him. He pushed it outward, slamming it into the delta-class automaton, using the starfire like a cudgel to send it crashing through the window and out of the palace. Vanya didn’t hear it land over the sound of the grenades going off, the explosions making the remaining windows rattle and fracture in their frames.
The man masquerading as a star priest rolled on the floor, trying desperately to put out the flames. Vanya helped with that, drawing back the starfire, but it wouldn’t save the enemy. Starfire had burned away the stolen robes, searing flesh down to bone on his arm and torso and part of his leg. Nothing but blackened flesh remained, and if the burns wouldn’t kill him, perhaps the shock would.
Vanya looked behind him at the damage done to the hallway. The grenade had ripped a hole in the building, and half their group was now on the other side of the gaping space. Some were injured, having not been quick enough to dodge the blast. Vanya could see someone in uniform lying unmoving on the floor past the blast radius.
At least Taisiya was alive, still carried in the arms of thepraetorialegionnaire. Vanya wished there was a place in the palace he could put her, locked behind a door no revenant could get through. But nowhere was safe, not with the enemy having infiltrated the palace.
Javier stepped into the hallway, took one look at the situation, and scowled. “Someone bridge the gap.”
Apraetorialegionnaire stepped forward, wand in hand and pointed at the empty air between them where the floor used to be. Aether curled at the clarion crystal–tipped wand as trapezoid shapes snapped into place out of thin air. The shield turned bridge covered the distance between them, a temporary way out.
“Move,” Javier said, gesturing at everyone on the other side of the hole.
No one balked, hurrying across the glowing trapezoids, many refusing to look down. The wounded were carried across, and those that could still walk were set down. Vanya reached for Taisiya’s hand when she made it across, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, face washed of all color. She was too old to be at war like this. “Try Alida again.”
Vanya pulled his televox from his robe’s pocket, having not lost it like he’d lost the crown in their dive for safety. As before, Alida never answered his call. He put the televox away and focused on their situation and not any of the ones concerning his daughter his too-imaginative mind could think up.
Javier waved at him from down the hall. “He’s dying. Do you have questions, Your Imperial Majesty?”
“Deathbed confessions can never be trusted, but I want to know who he’s allied with,” Vanya replied.
Javier knelt beside the burned man, not giving aid, wand in hand and pointed at a ruined face. The man was crying out of his good eye, the other scorched to the point of bursting. For all that Vanya wouldn’t trust what the enemy would say, memory was something else entirely. He could spare the minute it took for Javier to claw information out of a dying mind.
“He’s a Blade,” Javier said, disgust dripping from his words as the aether faded from the dead man’s remaining eye. “That’s all I could get before he stopped breathing.”
The implication of that was something Vanya didn’t have time to pick apart. But Blades meant Daijal, and the fact Queen Eimarille had interfered so deeply in his country’s sovereignty made Vanyafurious.
“We’ll deal with that later. We need to move,” Vanya said. He walked past the dead man, letting thepraetorialegionnaires surround him once more. Their group hurried down the long hallway, slowing only long enough for thepraetorialegionnaires to clear the area around the corner.
Right as Vanya turned down the hallway, every gas lamp hanging from the ceiling and attached to sconces in the walls flickered ominously before guttering out, plunging the Imperial palace into darkness.
In that moment of panic, Vanya thought he heard the scrape of bone against the floor and the raspy sound of air moving through a dried throat and mouth in a parody of spore-driven breathing at the far end of the hall.
He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, sparking starfire into life. He pushed the illumination brighter, sending the flicker of flames dancing down the hallway to light the way. It pierced the shadows up ahead, reflecting dully off old jewelry the dead had been buried with, throwing into temporary high relief the small horde of revenants now standing at the end of the hallway like a nightmare no one could escape.
Waiting.
Ten
SOREN
Soren passed many broken-open tombs on his way out of the crypt but saw no revenants. He remembered the sounds they’d made during the funeral some years back—the ever-scratching noise of something trapped forever, looking for a way out.
Well.
Someone had given it to them.
The coffin covers had all been blown open by way of dynamite and magic, breaking the welded seals that kept the dead contained. Almost every single alcove of the royal dead that Soren passed on his trek out of the crypt was empty. Some had body parts scattered on the floor, the explosive charge to open the coffins too strong or the body inside not spore-riddled.
The border had been untended, and that was his fault. His failed duty.
The only way to fix that was to eradicate the revenants. Wardens should have been called for that fight, but he knew those assigned to the resupply station had left the city. He was the only warden left to stand against the dead, and the only weapon Soren had on him was his poison short sword. The Blades had stripped him of his guns, and the rest of his gear was in the palace.
