Kadra dropped the corpse, paying little attention to the bolt of fire that shot down his spine at the exertion. Metal clinked as the body slid down the wall and stained it red. The moonlight slitting through the entryway glanced off the cruelly-sharp brass studs in the man’s gloves.A sellsword or a bounty hunter.The den’s owner had thrown a great deal of aurei into its operation.
He spared a cursory glance at the slick gold now oozing from the man’s mouth. Skeletal hands and tentacles with teeth wove from the liquid and carved at the eyes. Pulling his gaze away, he left the beings of worlds beyond his own to their machinations.
The door into the atrium parted under his hand. Beyond, a central courtyard opened to the night sky. The silent crowd mulling around it took no note of his entrance.
A wide fountain within the impluvium listlessly spurted flecked rainwater. Dark figures floated in the basin, irises milky white, leaking rot. Browned feather mattresses and stained pillows littered the courtyard, atop which figures curled like snails, twitching. Under the peristyle, blank-eyed nobles lounged on ornate divans.
There were no plague victims here. Only addicts.
A muscle bunched in his jaw. The softly-falling snow seemed to darken and take on the powdery guise of ash, drawing him to a night when both had rained from the sky. The past was too close tonight.
So many lives lost.The dangerous, bitter voice that kept attempting to crush his skull resurfaced.You could restore balance.
By?He ignored the shadowed courtyard’s beckoning lull, its inhabitants fusing into ink blots against a greater dark.
Butchering all who gainsay you.
Tedious. I have little interest in tyranny.His vision was black now as though he stood in a dark room. He watched wisps of smoke bloom and coil around him, prodding at his skin to send bolts of agony radiating through him and promising pain if he dared move.
Democracy is predicated upon tyranny to all who aren’t the majority. Isn’t that what you’ve been rectifying for years with vigilantism?
Amusement curved his lips.I don’t believe the solution is to terrorize the majority as well.
A familiar vise clamped around his head at the rejection. Paying no mind to his protesting nerves, he stepped forward, breaking through hissmoky bindings and absorbing the resulting fire that streaked down his nerves. He was no stranger to pain.
An irritated snap of sound from the voice before Kadra’s head quieted. Reality and the den’s atrium returned in a slow bleed. He could only imagine how he looked to any whitesleep user rousing from their stupor. Too still, too quiet. This was what had given him away to Sarai.
Lighting every sconce in the atrium with a sweep of his hand, he considered the dazed sellsword they illuminated in a corner.
Recognition dawned on the man’s face. “Fuck, they weren’t wrong. You’re alone,” he whispered reverently, sliding out a pair of daggers. “I’m going to get so much aurei for this.”
Not a sellsword.Kadra grimly took in the crest pin affixed to the man’s tunic.Bounty hunter. He raised a hand, and the man mirrored the motion, pointing his blades at the sky where icy wind met the courtyard’s warmer climate.
A familiar pressure sank into the atrium, air currents of different intensities and humidities clashing and sparking. Light flared, multiplied, until lightning sizzled along the hunter’s blades, wrapping around them like twin tongues.
He leapt forward and released both right as Kadra lazily brought his hand down. A lightning bolt slammed the daggers to the ground, metal warping in white-hot protest. Thunder rattled the pillars.
The hunter stumbled back as Kadra advanced. “Wait—” He broke off as a cage of lightning enclosed him without a hair’s breadth of mercy.
Kadra extended his palm. “Your pin.”
Swallowing, the hunter tore it off and gingerly extended it through the fiery bars.
Bronze Grade. Newly-badged hunter.His unease returned at the sight of the four safshers—ancient Urd swords—engraved in a circle on the inch-wide crest. “How much were you offered?”
“Nine thousand aurei.” The hunter’s northern twang turned thethousandinto ataysand. “The dealers promised that you’d show.”
“When were you hired?”
“Two weeks ago when the den relocated here.”
A week before he and Sarai had heard the plague case. A whitesleep den masked as an ordinary domus. Two hunters paid handsomely to watch for him. His enemy had anticipated his moves.
Eyes had begun following him from across the atrium as the battle interrupted the users’ pleasant oblivion. His gaze narrowed on a familiar pair that looked just as irritated to see him.
Harion peeled himself off a divan and a naked, comatose woman to stagger forward. “So, you’re behind the racket. Here to ruin the fun?”
Interesting.Kadra studied the younger man’s bloodshot eyes and the sweat trickling from his hairline with faint humor.Three rubs.
