She had been fighting for years before anyone understood her purpose. The gods had armies. She had only a dagger and the stubborn determination of someone who had already lost what she feared most.
By the time they realized she was dangerous, she had stopped giving them time to prepare.
— Chronicle of the First Age. Ledger Archives, Marialis branch. Transcriber unknown.
The smell hit her first and, for a few seconds, suppressed every other sense. It was the kind of smell whose suffocating weight you can only understand once you've escaped it—the kind where you breathe in clean air and realize for the first time that the old air had been burning your lungs. But the smell seemed to come not from anything inside the cell so much as from the cell itself. Years of people left to rot within it, their accumulated suffering striking you full in the face.
Then she noticed the darkness. It took her eyes so long to adjust that it felt less like the door was keeping the light out and more like the darkness was being kept in. Finally, in the faint light spilling through the open door, she could make out a silhouette slumped against the far wall on the floor. As her eyes adjusted, she recognized the woman who had been left there to decay. "Here," she called toward the others, and then in the same motion plunged inside, dropping straight to her knees in front of her and taking her hands.
"You're late," said Vaelra, but her voice came out harder and more cracked than she must have intended. Kaelin said nothing. She was examining her body, trying to understand how bad it was. Veylith had taken the torch from the corridor and was walking toward the cell. As she drew closer, the torchlight slowly began to fill the space, and with it Kaelin began to see more clearly what state Vaelra was actually in.
The heavy metal shackles that had already begun to bruise her wrists. Her lacerated elbows. The deep wound on her arm where the bandage cloth had long since changed color. And finally, the thing that hit Kaelin hardest — the eyes, behind which something had begun to fade. When Kaelin looked into them she felt a physical pain. And she hadn't even needed her power to do it.
"I told you not to do something stupid," Vaelra said in her broken voice. When the others finally filed into the cell she could see all of them at once. Tivver immediately went for the shackles on her wrists while Darian crouched beside her without a word, already trying to at least begin healing the wound on her arm.
"I know," said Kaelin. She took Vaelra's face in both hands, pressed her forehead against hers, and closed her eyes. The light that began to rise from Kaelin's hands spread across Vaelra's face and outward. Veylith was holding the torch. Darian was producing his own light through his ability. But Kaelin's hands outpaced both of them, and began to fill the room. All but one of them looked at her for a brief moment with something close to wonder. Vaelra closed her eyes and smiled — as if she had always known what Kaelin was capable of. The pain had begun to ease, until she felt almost as if she were drifting in open space.
Darian might have been healing her, but Kaelin was doing something that should have been impossible — she was taking the pain itself and carrying it away, and more strangely still, leaving a warmth in its place. Vaelra was aware, though she gave nothing away, that the pain wasn't simply disappearing — it was going somewhere, being held somewhere. But she also knew that right now there was no point telling Kaelin to stop.
After a few minutes Darian released her arm and said "that'll do for now," slipping his hands back into his pockets. Tivver had already removed the shackles and wrapped the wounds on her wrists.
When Kaelin finally withdrew her hands, she whispered "better?" and Vaelra opened her eyes again. "Much better," she answered, and the life that had visibly returned to them proved it. "Will you help me up?"
Kaelin held her and helped her to her feet, but her legs had weakened from being confined for so long, and without food or drink she had very little strength left. Darian held out a small glass vial and said sharply, "drink this" — though they all knew the sharpness was only to cover the worry. Vaelra took the vial without asking what it was, said "cheers," and knocked it straight back. Then she threw the empty vial to the floor and rasped, quietly, "more." Her voice wasn't really capable of much volume. None of them laughed at this, because no amount of her usual theatrics could cover what she looked like right now.
"Is that how you behaved with them during the interrogation?" Veylith asked, and for once there was genuine astonishment on her face.
"The entire time."
"Unbelievable."
"I learned to be an asshole from the best," she said, and glanced at Tivver.
"That's my girl," Tivver replied, with unmistakable pride.
Veylith and Ravah looked at them both at almost exactly the same moment, shaking their heads slowly in the particular way reserved for lost causes. Kaelin, watching from the side, was grinning. The session she had just come out of had left her with a considerable amount of pain to carry, yet there was a different kind of ease inside her too. She knew the danger hadn't passed, but she felt less tense now than she had. For a brief moment, everything seemed to have slowed. Then a sound from the upper floor landed sharply across all their faces.
"Shit — we have to move." Veylith was the one who brought them back, turning immediately to Ravah and pointing to Vaelra. "Can you carry her?" Ravah answered with a nod before she'd even finished the question, but Vaelra, who was standing right beside her, tried to interject — "there's no need for—" Veylith cut her off. "Shut up." Then she took the torch and stepped back out into the corridor, moving toward the stairs. The others fell in behind her. Ravah came last, Vaelra held in her arms.
Halfway up the stairs, at the turn in the middle, Veylith saw them. A small unit waiting in the wide entrance hall above — at least a dozen men, some with swords, some with spears, all with weapons drawn and ready, waiting for a command. When she made out Rhoren standing at their center she called out, "Captain." The others had only just begun climbing and stopped where they were — Veylith had given the signal because she thought it was better, for the moment, that they not be seen. "I see you don't have your tail with you this time," she added.
"Cut the games," Rhoren shot back. He hadn't raised his voice, but its natural depth had given the men beside him all the motivation they needed. "You have nowhere to go, and you know that as well as I do."
"There's no reason this has to happen at all," Veylith replied, keeping one eye on Ravah as she set Vaelra down and moved to stand beside her. "We're all aware that you have far larger problems outside right now."
"One thing at a time," Rhoren said, then let his gaze move briefly over his men. They gripped their weapons tighter to show they were ready. When Ravah stepped up beside Veylith the men held back slightly — but there were only two women in front of them, after all. And the support unit they had called in from the north gate was required to report here before moving toward the square, so reinforcements would arrive shortly.
Standing beside Veylith, Ravah was quietly sizing up the men while Veylith ran through every possible scenario and exit route in her head as quickly as she could. Ravah being still not fully recovered was a fact Ravah herself chose to ignore, but it was one Veylith had to account for. Vaelra was in no condition to fight. Darian was more valuable keeping them on their feet than going down himself. Tivver could offer partial help with whatever he had in his pockets. And Kaelin — Kaelin was a complete unknown, and keeping her out of the equation was the safer choice.
Looking at the men, she could tell they had basic training, and it was doubtful most of them had seen real combat, let alone a proper fight. The two of them together wouldn't struggle to put them down — but the variable that changed everything was Rhoren. He was old, but he was a soldier who had lived through enough to reach this rank. His posture and the sharpness in his eyes told her he was running the same calculations she was. What made him genuinely dangerous was his size and his experience. She remembered his anger from the tunnels. Normally she would have left him to Ravah — but Warden officers were trained to find weaknesses and press them. She had seen it in battle more than once. And Ravah right now was full of weaknesses.
"You take the peas, leave the potato to me," she finally murmured, leaning slightly toward Ravah. Ravah looked briefly surprised, but she had learned to trust her in the field. "You know best, boss," she replied. Then, as Ravah reached for her batons, Veylith reached to her own belt — and pulled out the short daggers instead of the pistols. With the guns she could keep them at a distance and eventually take them all, but they didn't have the time for that. The sounds coming from outside were growing louder, a constant reminder of the plan's final stage. And if reinforcements arrived, getting out of here would only become harder. They had to be the ones to attack. There was no other choice.
The entire building had gone silent, and only the echo of the chaos outside was filling it. Everyone seemed to be waiting for a signal. Veylith tightened her grip on the daggers, planted her feet, and drew one long breath. Then she whispered the word.
"Go."
Ravah drove straight into the center of the group while Veylith launched herself like an arrow directly at Rhoren. She deflected his quickly drawn sword with her daggers and threw her full weight into him with a shoulder charge, driving him three or four strides back into the hall beside them. Rhoren stumbled under the impact — this slight woman, not even half his size, had hit him with enough force to make clear that this wasn't going to be as straightforward as he'd assumed. He recovered quickly, but the lightning-fast dagger strikes that followed kept him barely on the defensive, and while he tried to hold her off she was constantly circling him, looking for an opening. He hadn't managed to go on the offensive yet, and he had already been separated from his men.
Ravah, seeing Veylith drawing the captain away, had moved in the opposite direction. She swung her batons in the widest arcs she could manage to keep as many of them focused on her as possible. She had fought outnumbered before, and she knew the most sensible thing she could do was absorb incoming attacks and land the hardest blows she could find whenever a gap opened. Her batons, which shielded the entire length of her forearms, blocked sword strikes — but one of the spears had already found her. After deflecting several blades at once with her left arm she managed to turn her right baton's metal spike against an incoming spear, snapping its tip clean off. Coming back to defense she opened deep cuts on two men standing to her right simultaneously. The initial push had taken down three, but once she was fully defensive she couldn't generate the same force. She knew if she stopped moving, they would overwhelm her.
The relentless barrage had pushed Rhoren back several more steps. One of Veylith's leaping attacks from above had even forced him down onto one knee. But the moment he was on the ground he found his chance — the knife he kept in his boot. While parrying her daggers with his sword he managed a fast sweeping draw with the blade and opened a cut along Veylith's leg. It gave him the brief pause he needed to get back on his feet.
He knew he could never match her pace. And the number of times she had driven him back had made it plain that this lean woman was considerably more solid than she appeared. When he feinted with the small knife, Veylith deflected it easily — but she was a fraction late in reading it as a distraction. Rhoren brought his sword around two-handed with everything behind it, and there wasn't time to avoid it. She blocked it with her crossed daggers, but the sheer force of the blow hurled her hard backward. When she hit the ground on her back Rhoren was already coming at her with the sword leveled.
Ravah was absorbing blow after blow and still holding, and by now she had put at least six men down and wounded several more in her few offensive moments. But the real problem was her wound, which had reopened. The pain was climbing and starting to restrict her movement. She had begun to think about abandoning defense entirely and simply throwing herself at them with everything she had — one final madness. But then she felt the pain begin to cut off. The cold in her abdomen had stopped, and something warm was reaching her instead. For the briefest fraction of a second her eye caught Darian, who had appeared at the top of the stairwell. His hands were stretched out toward her — from that distance, trying to heal her, or at least prevent her from taking worse. She could no longer afford to lose.
The hammer-blow of a sword came down on her again and Veylith blocked it with her daggers, but the weight bearing down on her ground her back into the floor. She knew if she didn't get up, she wasn't leaving this fight. When Rhoren drew back for another strike she managed to drive her foot hard between his legs. While he staggered in pain she kicked him a second time — but this one was to throw herself backward. The momentum of it carried her into a backward roll that put distance between them. Coming back up on one knee she flung both daggers at him at once. Rhoren, in pain, swung his sword and just managed to deflect the one coming straight at his face — but the other buried itself in his shoulder and drove him back like a fist. When he looked up there were two pistols pointed at him.
Darian was doing what he could, but Ravah was barely holding them. Still trying to shield the others by putting herself between them and every man in the room, she was absorbing the full weight of it. Kaelin had stayed beside Vaelra throughout all of this, and the guilt of watching from the edge without being of any use had been pressing in on her. Vaelra, knowing she was the reason all of it was happening, was somewhere considerably darker. When two of the men broke from the side and turned toward Darian and the others, Ravah went for them immediately. She put both down with rapid strikes, but in doing it she had dropped her guard completely against the rest. She paused, waiting for the killing blow to come. Then a rapid series of shots rang out one after another, the sound echoing down the full length of the corridor. Ravah, who had been waiting to die, realized nothing had happened to her and turned to look. Every man was on the ground. Most were dead. Two were pressing their hands against the holes the bullets had torn through them, trying in vain to slow what couldn't be slowed.
Everyone turned to the other end of the corridor. There was Veylith, smoke still curling from the barrels of both pistols. She had emptied every round she had into the men — but Rhoren was still standing in front of her. She stared down at the guns as if genuinely surprised she hadn't shot him. "So you're sacrificing yourself to save the rest of them," he said.
There were less than ten paces between them. Veylith knew she didn't have time to reload. She looked at Ravah and Darian, standing in the middle of the corridor. Then she caught Vaelra's eyes as she came up from the stairs with Kaelin's help.
Rhoren planted his feet and coiled. He was just beginning to move when Veylith shouted, "Now!" and brought her arms up in front of her face. Before Rhoren could understand what was happening, an already burning sack appeared out of nowhere directly in front of him. Tivver, during all of this, had slipped unnoticed into one of the rooms along the way. He had waited until Veylith's signal, and then thrown the lit sack at exactly the right moment. Rhoren tried to take cover at the last second but the sack passed just beside him before exploding. The force of the blast threw him hard into the wall, and more than half the corridor disappeared instantly into dust and smoke.
Ravah and Darian moved through the blast, past the bodies, and made their way to the mouth of the corridor. Kaelin and Vaelra were already at the corner, at the edge of the corridor, looking into the smoke. When the building finally fell silent, the sounds from outside could be heard again. The crowd was getting closer. But none of them were listening — they were all staring into the smoke as if trying to see through it, as if waiting for something to resolve itself out of it.
Then Veylith and Tivver came walking out of it, and every one of them exhaled at the same moment. Vaelra, a single tear at the corner of her eye, smiled and pulled Kaelin instinctively into her arms. Tivver looked more or less unscathed, but the wounds Veylith had taken were visible. Still, apart from a slight limp she walked normally. They came together in the middle of the corridor, standing among the bodies near the building's entrance. Ravah spoke first.
"That was an insane risk you took, boss."
"That's how we fight," Tivver cut in, and he appeared to be in good spirits.
"It was the most logical move available," said Veylith.
"Why does your most logical move always have to be suicide," Vaelra shot back, though the relief in her voice was unmistakable. Kaelin felt the weight lift from her at the knowledge that everyone was still standing. But next time, she thought—
"The crowd is almost on top of us," Veylith said loudly, cutting through her thoughts. "We can't stay here — back the way we came—"
She couldn't finish the sentence. All at once she found she couldn't speak even if she'd wanted to, and a crushing weight had descended on her. All of them — at exactly the same moment — felt it too, as though a ton of stone had been placed on each of them, and they sank slowly to their knees where they stood. None of them could move. None of them could speak. None of them understood what was happening. Except one. Vaelra knew exactly what this was, and it was written plainly across her face.
Kaelin, sinking to her knees as though she were being suffocated, was suddenly thrown back to the night everything had first broken open. She felt it again — the emptiness and the darkness she had found inside Koreth's mind. And then she heard the footsteps descending the stairs beside her.