“I was thinking today about what it was like before.”
“Before . . . ?”
“Before the flare.”
He grinned. “You mean before I broke into your house and made you coffee for the first time?”
“You didn’t break into my house. I left the door unlocked.”
“Details.”
“Ghastek asked In-Shinar for forgiveness today. He didn’t know about the sahanu, and he took it personally. He didn’t want the whole me. He wanted the In-Shinar part of me. Raphael told me I was the In-Shinar. Some people will never see me as anything else.”
“I want the whole you,” he told me. “The merc, the In-Shinar, my wife, all of it. My Kate.”
“I know. I have this awful feeling that something screwed up is about to drop on us. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I can’t roll with that kind of punch, Curran.”
“Nothing will happen to me. I’ve got this.” He pulled me off the bed into a hug and kissed me. “Not going anywhere,” he whispered into my ear. “All yours. Always.”
I believed him, but the sick feeling in my stomach refused to go away.
THE PHONE WOKE me. I slipped from under Curran’s arm and dragged myself to it. The clock said 6:20 a.m. Ugh.
“Kate Daniels. I mean Lennart. Kate Lennart.”
Curran laughed under his breath.
“Hey, Kate,” Sheriff Beau Clayton said into the phone. He sounded dull, like he’d seen something he wanted to forget. I wouldn’t like this call.
“You called about Serenbe.”
“I did.”
“I might have something for you.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up. Last night, after we sorted ourselves out, Curran had called Martha and asked her to come watch Conlan today and to bring the book club. She’d asked him if he meant the whole book club, and he said yes. She told him she’d be here at nine.
If I waited until nine, the magic could drop. I needed to go now, while the magic was active.
“I have to go,” I told Curran.
“I’ll catch up,” he said.
THE SMALL SETTLEMENT of Ruby lay deep in the heart of Milton County. Two streets, seventeen houses, a post office, a small store with a gas station, and a Rural Defense Tower. Rural Defense, an extension of the National Guard, was tasked with protecting the small settlements. It was one step up from a militia.
It took Julie and me roughly two hours to get there even with Julie driving, but we’d made it while the magic was still up. Now we stood on the street, the silent houses flanking us. A dead Labrador retriever lay on my left. Someone had built a pyre at the end of the street. It was six feet tall and shaped like a cone.
Behind us, Beau Clayton and two of his deputies waited, all three still on horseback: the deputy on the right with a crossbow and the other with a shotgun. These were cautious people covering all the bases.
Beau, as big as a mountain, had lost all of his usual cheer. His eyes had gone flat and dark. A postal carrier reported the empty village last night, but Beau had been dealing with another matter and didn’t get the message until this morning. He and the deputies had swept the village and found abandoned houses, unmade beds, and dead dogs.
“What do you make of the pyre?” Beau asked me.
“I don’t know. I got a prophecy from the Witch Oracle yesterday. It had a lot of fire in it. Are you sure the locals didn’t build it themselves?”
“There is no way to tell,” Beau said. “We don’t come this way too often.”
We waited.
Finally, Julie glanced at me. “Blue.”
“Across the board?”
She nodded. “Human magic.”
They took the people. Just like Serenbe. It had to stop. It had to stop now.
A man walked into the street, tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing armor tinted with blue. The dark metal scales traced his body, following its contours, wider on his chest and smaller on his waist. The armor flowed, flexible, protecting without impeding his movement, each scale just the right size, almost as if it were custom made. I’d never seen anything like it until yesterday, when I saw that armor in Sienna’s vision.
I scrutinized the warrior. One scale on his right shoulder shimmered with gold. His helmet shielded his skull, leaving his face open, a variation of a Chalcidian helm I wasn’t familiar with. His face looked oddly blank. He was Caucasian, blue-eyed, and the locks of hair falling from under the helmet were blond. Two sword hilts protruded over his shoulders. He carried a torch in his hand. Fire danced at the end of it.
“I thought you said you did a sweep,” I said quietly.
“We did,” Beau said.
The warrior dropped the torch onto the pyre. Flames dashed up the branches.
“Did he soak it in gasoline or something?” Julie asked.
“I didn’t smell any when I looked at it,” one of the deputies told her.
The warrior stepped in front of the pyre, his back to it, and faced us.
“Sheriff’s department,” Beau called out, his voice harsh. “Get down on the ground.”
The warrior reached behind his back and drew the two swords.
Oh good. Apparently, it was cutting time.
The blades looked to be about twenty-one or twenty-two inches long with a swept profile, similar to a modern Filipino espada, a cross between a Spanish sword and a traditional garab blade. Lively and fast, while still delivering a lot of cutting power in either a slash or a thrust.
The fire behind the warrior surged up. Wait, don’t tell me.
A figure appeared in the flames, a tall man in golden scale armor. A white cloak, edged with wolf fur, rode on his shoulders, his blond hair falling on it in a combed wave. A golden torque caught his neck.
My box and Serenbe were connected.
That sonovabitch. Anger boiled inside me and solidified into dark ice. All those people, dead. I’m coming for you. Just wait.
“What the hell?” the other deputy said.
“We’re being invaded,” I said. “That’s their king and this is his champion.”
“Does he do magic?” Beau asked.
“He’s leaving a blue trail,” Julie said.
“Kenny,” Beau said, his voice calculating, “shoot that bastard.”
Kenny raised his crossbow. A small blue spark burst at the tip of the bolt. He sighted and fired. The warrior opened his mouth. Fire tore out of it. The scorched remnants of the bolt fell to the ground.
Great. He spat fire. My favorite.
“I think that’s my cue.” I unsheathed Sarrat.
“There are five of us and one of him,” Kenny pointed out.
“This isn’t about winning,” Beau said. “This is about fear. This asshole has been coming into our villages and stealing our people. He thinks he can do whatever he wants and none of us can stop him. He needs to know that one of ours can beat one of his. Have fun, Dan . . . er, Lennart.”
I walked into the middle of the street.
The warrior moved forward one light step. Toe walker. Most people stepped on their heel first. We had the cushy benefits of modern footwear, and we walked mostly paved streets. He stepped on the ball of his foot first, feeling the ground with his toes before putting his full weight on it. You almost never saw this outside cultures that still ran around barefoot.
The warrior rotated his blades, warming up his wrists. I did the same. No gauntlets. Hard to effectively hold a blade with an armored gauntlet. That left his knuckles nice and bare.
I began to circle, slowly. He was six feet tall, at least two hundred pounds, likely more with his armor. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, how thick was that armor?
Let’s see how fast you are with your two swords.