Kreya saw the room in a flash: books and papers shoved to the floor to clear the desk for row after row of silver cups, each half-full with ruby-black blood. Eklor behind the glasses. Lorn in front, crouched in a protective stance with a knife in his right hand.
But as Zera’s words penetrated, Lorn lowered his weapon. He blinked as if waking up from a dream. “Eklor, is this true—”
“Literally no time to deal with lengthy explanations,” Zera said. “Army. Outside. Lots of dying. And they need the grand master of the Bone Workers Guild to do his job and defend this city.” She darted in and yanked him out by his robes. As he resisted, she added, “Your son is somewhere out there, in danger.”
Thatgot through to him.
Pulling Lorn out of the room, she said to Kreya, “Kick his ass.”
Sparking a nod to Zera, Kreya pushed inside the office, kicking aside the shattered remains of the door. “Eklor, stop!”
But Eklor was leaning over the silver cups, chanting faster and faster. He plunged his fingers into the blood of one and pulled out a knuckle bone. He slammed it against his already blood-soaked chest and continued to chant a mix of familiar and unfamiliar words, a warping of the spell that Kreya had studied and used for so long.
“Silence him,” Kreya ordered.
Her three rag dolls crawled out of her coat pockets. Fast, they scurried across the room and climbed his coat. One swarmed up his bloody chest and crammed itself into his mouth, cutting off the spell. He reached up and yanked the doll out, and another rag doll wrapped itself around his wrists. The third wormed itself through his fingers, forcing him to drop the knuckle bone, as the one that had been in his mouth tied itself around his ankles.
He struggled against them but then stilled. “Master Kreya,” he greeted her, urbane as always. “Glad you could join me. A pity you were too late to participate in the spell.”
“You’re taking their years for yourself,” Kreya said. There was no question in her mind about what was happening here: each cup held the blood of a bone worker. Stepping forward, she plucked the persuasion talisman out of one of his pockets.
Such a little thing that had done so much harm. Opening one of the sconces, she dropped the bone into the flame. It began to burn. Whatever power remained within it would be leached away. And then she checked his other pockets, relieving him of six more persuasion talismans and destroying them as well.
“So thorough. I see you have at last learned not to underestimate me.” He sounded like a proud teacher, and she’d never wanted to punch someone in the throat so badly. “Grand Master Lorn never did figure it out, you know. But then he was such easy prey for my talisman that I barely had to waste any of its power on him. He wanted so badly to believe that I’d conquered death that he refused to believe that time is finite—for anyone to have more, another must have less.”
“And this is how you survived your own death. You stole from others?”
“I only took from those who didn’t deserve the time they were given,” Eklor said. “From those whose existence put more evil into the world than good.”
And she thought her years alone in a tower had messed with her mind. Being alone had not been good for him. “You thinkyouare the best judge of who adds evil to the world.You.How can you be so stunningly deluded as to believe you aren’t the villain in all this? You killed innocents. In a hospital. In their sleep! You unleashed an army on civilians who never hurt you, who only know your name through ballads and plays. You have no right to say who lives and who dies.”
“Neither do you. And neither did Grand Master Lorn, when he issued the order to have my wife and daughter’s bodies burned. Neither did all the bone workers when they condemned my apprentice to die. Neither did the ‘good’ citizens of Cerre when they celebrated that boy’s death. He was a child!”
A thought occurred to her. “Was he the one who resurrected you? He was nowhere near the tower when you died. He was caught miles from the battlefield—”
“He was caught miles awayafterhe saved me. In case of disaster, he had the blood and bones ready and stayed hidden untilyou’d confirmed your handiwork. When you left, he saved me, as he’d been taught. He was then supposed to escape and live a long and happy life. But the ‘innocent’ people of Cerre saw fit to make an example of him. Because they couldn’t punish me, they settled for him, a child who had done no wrong, a child who grew up without a mother and a sister.”
And was about to live without a father,she realized.The boy... he was Eklor’s son...
She’d known he wouldn’t trust just anyone, but she hadn’t guessed he’d had a son. And Lorn had ordered his son’s execution. No wonder...
Stop. Do not feel pity for him.There was no purpose in understanding why he had done what he’d done. Only in stopping him from ever doing evil again. “Are we really playing who-is-more-evil? Your army is slaughtering children right now! If you’re the hero, stop your war. Order your army to withdraw.”
He smiled. “Let me complete the spell, and I will stop my army and tell the good people of Cerre who saved them: thenewgrand master of the Bone Workers Guild, who foiled a plot by the Five Heroes of Vos to—”
Kreya held up her hands. “I am going to cut you off right there because that’s absurd. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your plan is to make yourself essentially immortal by stealing the lives of all the bone workers, slaughter as many people as you can, and then announce that you’re actually the hero? And you expect people—meaning the ones you haven’t killed—to believe you?”
“They will when I use that stolen immortality to bring their loved ones back to life.”
“Except the bone workers, because they’ll all be dead. And whoever else you need to kill to give the select few life. You’ll be the one who says who gets to live and who gets to die. Basically,your plan is to become a god.” It was an awe-inspiring plan, both in its arrogance and in how close Eklor was to pulling it off.
She spared a thought for Jentt and Stran and the people in the thick of the battle.
“The good will live, and the evil will die,” Eklor said placidly, as if his whole explanation weren’t enough to make her feel ill. “I am so pleased you understand me. And I am equally pleased that I understand you.” His eyes flickered to the shadows on either side of the office, and she heard the whirr of gears as his mechanical constructs lurched forward.
One was as Amurra had described: with wire tentacles emanating from its back. The other was a grotesque human-shaped soldier, with a skull that was half metal and half bone. It held a rusty sword in each hand. She took a step backward and lifted her own knife in front of her chest, blade out.
“Oh, Kreya, always so angry, always so unbending,” Eklor said, his voice dripping with false pity. “Once again, you have come alone to defeat me. And once again, you will fail.”
