“You sounded completely different back there,” Rhonin says as we walk.
I shrug. “Sometimes it’s necessary that I play Alexi of Ghent. That was a kindness, though. I was far more agreeable than he ever was in situations like these. Believe me.”
Rhonin huffs a breath. “Glad I never met him.”
I stare out over the sea, remembering. “Me too.”
It isn’t until we turn toward the back streets that I feel someone behind us. Rhonin notices too, slipping a glance over his shoulder.
“Two Northland Watch guards,” he says. “Not as big as us, but close. They look curious.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re giants,” I tell him under my breath. “This will end badly for them if they play the moment wrong. Just keep walking. We’re simply two men among many strolling the Merchant Quarter.”
We stop by Emory’s shop, trying to appear as normal as possible. Unfortunately, he has a patron, so he slips me a folded note with the information I requested about Admiral Rooke’s dinner party scrolled inside and glances toward the door. It’s clear he doesn’t want trouble or attention, so we leave as he so silently requested.
The bell above the door clangs as we step outside. I lock eyes with one of the guards, a Witch Walker. The tan skin at his throat is decorated with witch’s marks of indeterminate colors. Many of those enlisted in the Watch are Witch Walkers, so it’s nothing unusual. But I can’t tell if he recognizes me or not. Is that look on his face because he knows he’s spied the Witch Collector? Or because he only knows that I’m a foreign face?
I shove Emory’s note in my pocket with Zahira’s offered passage papers and guide Rhonin deeper into the Merchant’s Quarter, circling back toward the shipyard. If things go badly, and they very well could, it’s easier to kill two men in the shadows of abandoned warehouses than in the middle of Village Hill. It’s also easier to lose them here, which is what I try to do as we pick up our pace.
Rhonin and I turn down the cobbled path into a narrow alley, heading toward the wharf, but it’s a wrong fucking turn. We don’t make it ten steps before we look up and pause. We’re standing between two massive living quarters, not warehouses, the buildings replete with external stairs and balconies, the alley opening to a people-filled street in the near distance.
“Shit, turn around,” I say, but when we do, the two guards are there, and a sudden, foreign power folds around me like an invisible hand.
At my side, Rhonin tries to lift his arm to reach for the sword crossed over his back to no avail. I could break through this magick easily, but I allow it for now, willing to play this game of cat and mouse with an unworthy opponent.
“Witch Collector,” one of the men says. The one with the witch’s marks, the one binding me. His hands are behind his back, and he wears a smug look, as though this is a trick of grandest magick. “I couldn’t resist a trap,” he adds with a smug expression.
“Bad decision,” I tell him, my skin bristling as the air around us sparks. “Very bad.”
Rhonin looks at me with wide eyes, shaking his head with infinitesimal movements. His face says Don’t do it in about ten different ways.
As for the guard, he shows no fear. Instead, he laughs. “Is it, though? Do you know how many of our guard are at the wall waiting for your arrival? And yet here you are, already walking our city streets.” He cocks his head. “At first, I wasn’t sure it was you, what with the new look and all. But those eyes are unforgettable, and on top of that, I could sense something odd about you. A glamour, perhaps? How’d you manage that?”
The Admiral likely hasn’t informed his men that my power has returned. Less fear among the masses that way. Foolish. That’s like sending unwitting children to fish for a shark.
“Just tell me what the fuck you want,” I grit out. “Make it fast. You’re wasting my time.”
The guard narrows his eyes. “The Admiral is looking for you. And we’re going to take you to him.”
The air sizzles with my power, and Rhonin groans. “Shit, that was either the worst thing you could’ve possibly said or the absolute best.”
The answer is the worst if we’re talking about what this means for the existence of these two men. If I let them take us, then yes, we’ll be carried straight into the admiral’s hive where I can destroy from within. But if Vexx isn’t there, then I could hurt many people and still lose him, and that cannot happen. Once he hears of his fallen brethren, he’ll likely leave these shores, and I might not be able to stop him. I need to happen upon Rooke and Vexx on my own terms, the party tomorrow night, but unfortunately, that means these two men cannot walk out of here alive with a story to tell.
It happens fast. Faster than when I destroyed those Eastlanders in Frostwater Wood. I summon forth all the energy that I can, sending power rushing through me, more controlled now, ready to be concentrated where I direct it.
I can feel my body changing, the surge of blood to my skin, the quick swelling of my veins, the electric haze that floods my vision. With my mind, I punch all that power straight into the pounding hearts of the two men standing before me.
The magick holding me and Rhonin vanishes as a cracking, squelching sound fills the alley. The men don’t even get a chance to scream before their chests explode.
I manage to shield my face with my arm in time, but Rhonin is not so lucky.
“What the fucking fuck, Alexus!” he cries out as he looks down at himself, then at the fallen guards a few feet away, their chest cavities blown open. “Fuck, fuck, holy fucking fuck!”
He stands with his hands spread wide, his face masked with shock, his body frozen. I clamp my hand over his mouth and scan the alley. The balconies. The street ahead. No one has noticed us. Yet.
Quickly, I do my best to clean the bits of viscera from his tunic, to wipe the splattered blood from his face with my sleeve, but he’s a bloody fucking mess. So am I, just not quite as bad. It will require two tightly woven glamours to get our asses back to the tor.
Rhonin picks away a sliver of bone stuck to his face. One look at it, and he vomits. While he’s throwing up his guts, I stalk to a set of stairs leading to the top floor of one of the living quarters and take the treads two at a time. We need to get out of here and buy all the time we can.
