Then vanished.
With an audible crack, the room went black.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Arista said in the dark. Her robe began to glow, revealing the room in a cold bluish radiance. She was glaring at Thranic. The pulsating light shining up from underneath lent her a fearful image. “Are you all right, Myron?”
The monk nodded as he sat wiping the oil from his face. “Just a little warm,” he replied. “And I think my eyebrows are gone.”
“You bastard!” Mauvin shouted at Thranic, getting to his feet and reaching for his sword. “You could have killed him! You could have killed all of us!”
Even Gaunt was on his feet, but Thranic took no notice. The sentinel did not move. He slouched backward, resting against the wall in an odd twisted position. Thranic’s eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but he was not breathing.
“What’s wrong with him?” Gaunt asked.
Mauvin reached out. “He’s… dead.”
Heads turned.
“I only extinguished the flames,” Arista told them.
Heads turned again.
Royce was sitting in a different place than he had been before the fire. Arista looked back at Thranic’s body. Blood dripped from a thin red line at the neck.
Mauvin let go of his sword and sat back down. “You sure you’re all right, Myron?”
“I’m fine, thank you.” Myron stood up. He walked to the sentinel’s side and knelt down. He took a moment to close Thranic’s eyes, and taking the sentinel’s hand, he bowed his head and softly sang: Unto Maribor, I beseech thee Into the hands of god, I send thee Grant him peace, I beg thee Give him rest, I ask thee May the god of men watch over your journey.
“How can you do that?” Gaunt asked. “He tried to kill you. He tried to burn you alive. Are you so ignorant that you don’t see that?”
Myron ignored Gaunt and remained beside Thranic, his head bowed, his eyes closed. A silence passed; then Myron folded Thranic’s hands over his chest and stood up. He paused before Gaunt. “ ‘More valuable than gold, more precious than life, is mercy bestowed upon he who hast not known its soft kiss’-Girard Hily, Proverbs of the Soul.”
The monk took another lantern out of Mauvin’s pack. “Starting to run low on these,” he said, opening it and reaching for the tinder kit.
“Better let me,” Hadrian said. “A stray spark could light you up instead.”
The monk handed the lantern over and looked at the rest of them. “Will anyone help me bury him?”
Degan made a sound like a laugh and limped away.
“I will.” Magnus spoke up from where he still sat on the far side of the room. “We can use the stones from the cave-in.”
Without a word, Hadrian got up and lifted Thranic’s body, which folded in the middle like a thick blanket. His arms splayed out to either side, white and limp. Arista watched as he left a trail of dark droplets on the dusty stone. She looked back at the space behind, at the clutter in the corner where Thranic had lain. Pots, cups, torn cloth, soiled blankets, trash-it reminded her of a mouse’s den. How long was he here? How long did he lie in this room alone waiting to die? How long will we?
Arista stood up and, turning away from the trash and the puddle of blood, moved to the sealed door. She touched the stone and the metal rods that held it closed. The door was cold. She pressed her palms flat against the surface and laid her head close. She heard nothing. She reminded herself that it was not a living creature and did not grow restless. She could feel it, a power radiating, pushing against her like the opposite pole of a magnet. Her encounter with the oberdaza made her sensitive to magic. The new smell that had confused her before the palace was no longer a mystery. Beyond the door lay magic, but not the vague, shifting sort that defined the oberdaza. The Ghazel witch doctors appeared in her mind as shadows that darted and whirled, pulsating irregularly, but this… this was greater. The power on the other side was clear, intense, and amazing. In it, she could detect elements of the weave. She could see it with her feelings, for there was more than magic that formed the pattern. An underlying sadness dominated and endowed the spell with incredible strength. An incomprehensible grief and the strength of self-sacrifice were bound together by a single strand of hope. It frightened her, yet at the same time, she found it beautiful.
Outside in the hallway, she could hear the clack of stones being stacked. Hadrian returned, wiping his hands against his clothes as if trying to wipe off a disease. He sat beside Royce in the shadows, away from the others.
She crossed the room, knelt down before them, and sat on her legs with the robe pooling out around her.
“Any ideas?” she asked, nodding toward the sealed door.
Royce and Hadrian exchanged glances.
“A few,” Royce said.
“I knew I could count on you.” She brightened. “You’ve always been there for us, Alric’s miracle workers.”
Hadrian grimaced. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
“You stole the treasure from the Crown Tower and put it back the next night. You broke into Avempartha, Gutaria Prison, and Drumindor- twice. How much harder can this be?”
“You only know about the successes,” Royce said.
“There’ve been failures?”
They looked at each other and smiled painfully. Then they both nodded.
“But you’re still alive. I should have thought a failure-”
“Not all failures end in death. Take our mission to steal DeWitt’s sword from Essendon Castle. You can hardly call that a success.”
“But there was no sword. It was a trap. And in the end it all worked out. I hardly call that a failure.”
“Alburn was,” Royce said, and Hadrian nodded dramatically.
“Alburn?”
“We spent more than a year in King Armand’s dungeon,” Hadrian told her. “What was that, about six years ago? Seven? Right after that bad winter. You might remember it, real cold spell. The Galewyr froze for the first time in memory.”
“I remember that. My father wanted to hold a big party for my twentieth birthday, only no one could come.”
“We stayed the whole season in Medford,” Royce said. “Safe and comfortable-it was nice, actually, but we got soft and out of practice. We were just plain sloppy.”
“We’d still be in that dungeon right now if it wasn’t for Leo and Genny,” Hadrian said.
“Leo and Genny?” Arista asked. “Not the Duke and Duchess of Rochelle?”
“Yep.”
“They’re friends of yours?”
“They are now,” Royce said.
“We got the job through Albert, who took the assignment from another middleman. A typical double-blind operation, where we don’t know the client and they don’t know us. Turns out it was the duke and duchess. Albert broke the rules in telling them who we were and they convinced Armand to let us out. I’m still not certain how.”
“They were scared we’d talk,” Royce added.
Hadrian scowled at him, then rolled his eyes. “About what? We didn’t know who hired us at the time.”
Royce shrugged and Hadrian looked back at Arista.
“Anyway, we were just lucky Armand never bothered to execute us. But yeah, we don’t always win. Even that Crown Tower job was a disaster.”
“You were an idiot for coming back,” Royce told him.
“What happened?” Arista asked.
“Two of the Patriarch’s personal guards caught Royce when we were putting the treasure back.”
“Like the two at the meeting?”
“Exactly-maybe the same two.”
“He could have gotten away,” Royce explained. “He had a clear exit, but instead the idiot came back for me. It was the first time I’d ever seen him fight, and I have to say it was impressive-and the two guards were good.”