A predatory gleam lit his eyes. “I’ll do a damn lot more than that.”
She yielded to him, relinquishing all fears and cares for a few hours while he sank into her and drove them to bliss.
But when she fell asleep, it was to stormfall and blood. And each time she tumbled from Sidran Tower, the god’s eyes found her.
Above, Silun and Praefa slid behind a cloud. She mirrored Kadra’s footsteps, one with the shadows as they glided from street to street, sans mounts—their routine of the past two nights. They’d gone through most of the hospitals in his Quarter, finding sparse tiled hallways and rooms of pallets and screams. Narrowing down a god’s identity while an angry populace kept Noceo occupied.
Who called forth a god this vicious? And why?
She squinted at the smaller hospital at the edge of his Quarter where they’d planned to meet Cassandane and the others. A dying brazier crackled weakly by unguarded main doors. She pulled up her sleeve, confirming thatbeshazwas active on her armilla before following Kadra across the road. Snow masked their approach, giving way softly under their boots. A lone owl called to the sky.
The hospital doors swung open noiselessly under Kadra’s grip, sending forth a draft that blew out the brazier. Smoke and ash wreathed the air. He took a step into the tiled atrium. Quiet seethed around them, interrupted only by the creak of the door falling shut. Moonlight snaked past the curtains to dapple the steps of the twin staircases that led up to the patients.
Kadra moved with languid grace, broad shoulders loose and eyes alight at what he saw waiting in the dark. They had reached the landing when a blur of quiet steps launched at them.
Three men. Holding back a flinch, she gripped one’s wrist before they neared Kadra, closed her eyes and sliced. Tendons snapped beneath his skin. The knife fell from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
“What thefuck?” He snarled as a wretched gurgle came from his companion. Kadra’s sword emerged through his gut with a glide of crimson. She took advantage of the man’s brief distraction to grip his throat and limit blood flow through both carotid arteries. He slumped with a strangled moan. A thud behind her said that the third man had met his end.
“Bounty hunters.” Kadra indicated the bronze hunters’ pins on the bodies. “Noceo.”
“Anyone else?” She peered into the dark hallway ahead.
“No.”
A dull languor washed over her as he wiped his sword and sheathed it. The stretch of tile ahead seemed to grow wider. Something shifted in her chest the longer she stared, telling her to walk onward, that answers waited for her within the black.
Come closer and you’ll see it.
She stepped forward when a hoarse gasp sounded to her right. Flinching, she stared at the bounty hunter she’d just downed. His face contorted in the dim light, sweat droplets bulging at his temples.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no. There’s so many.Stay away!” He jackknifed upright with a scream. “All theseeyes! STOP!”
Chilled, she shrank back as he screamed.
Cold curiosity flared in Kadra’s eyes, something otherworldly turning them luminous. “Smoke veils him.”
Her heart thudded so hard that blood rang in her ears. “As it did me when that eye appeared above the Aequitas?”
He raised his head. “As it does now, Sarai.”
Realization struck with the force of a lightning bolt. She almost sank to her knees as it registered.
Kadra smiled darkly. “You see it too.”
Mouth dry, she swallowed. “Ibez, whitesleep, catastrophe, the only thread they have in common is unconsciousness. The moment anyone falls comatose—”
“This madness takes them,” Kadra’s piercing gaze ignored the bodies at his feet to find the dark ahead and look far beyond. “I may be killing them too quickly,” he mused. “Maiming seems the better course.”
She gave him a reproving look. Leaving the raving man to his torment, they moved down the hallway and into the wide hall where patients were kept. Their shrieks reached them first. Bound to their beds, they ranted in hoarse voices, pupils narrowed to pinpricks with fear.
She wondered if Dalvia saw a similar sight in Komis at the Am Semni Institute. Granted, her patients were lucid and would have some hope, so long as the boil beetles could be displaced from their bodies before they tunneled too deep into their organs. But there was nothing easy about seeing people in pain.
“Whythe fuckare there bodies on the godsdamned floor?” Harion’s roar came from the landing.
Sarai sighed. “He’s awful enough that I’m glad he’s on our side. But he’sloud.”
Steps came down the hallway before Cassandane entered, mouth flattening into a grim line. “Your brother’s apparently making an announcement in three days on the dissolution of the Tetrarchy.”
