Breathe, hrast it, breathe! she shouted in her mind. You're not dead yet!
"Ziastsuianrap" she wheezed.
A dozen daggers winked into being around Ferremo, swooping in to slice his skin. They would not go deeper, but they harried the assassin and drove him back, scratching out Tennora's fury on his face.
Dareun's body shivered with the makings of a blast similar to the first. The other minion came at her, club in hand. She still couldn't feel her feet, couldn't get them to move. He hefted the club.
"Finn," Dareun ordered, "get out of the way."
The minion swung his weapon, but the interrupting order made him pull back, just enough for Tennora to dodge the heavy weapon. When Dareun released the spell, it burned over both Finn's and Tennora's skin. Finn cried out as he was thrown back toward the cage.
Nestrix caught the weight of his body as she stepped from her prison. Eyes aflame, she took him by the neck and wrenched it hard against the rest of his body. It broke with a snap.
"Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish."
Nestrix had caught the look in Tennora's eye-a desperate, panicked look. She had heard what the boy said, and something about it frightened her. She wanted Nestrix to try to pick the lock-she would distract Dareun.
Nestrix's stomach clenched. She touched the shape of the picks sitting in her pocket-if she couldn't remember, they were all doomed.
But the look on Tennora's face said she knew that and she would do whatever it was she planned to do anyway. Nestrix nodded. She leaned in close to the boy.
"Little man," she whispered, "I want you to stop your ears and close your eyes. This will be hard, but it will be over in a moment."
"What are you going to do?" he whispered back, tears still rolling down his cheeks.
"Escape," she said.
When the bugle rang out, for a moment she believed the ruse, and hope and fear overran her in equal turn. The susurrus of Tennora's whispers matching the rallying cries shook her from her thoughts, and she withdrew the picks.
"Eyes and ears, little man," she reminded Antoum. Trembling, he did as he was told.
She took up the tools and, one eye on Dareun, slipped them into the keyhole. The boy's body sheltered her from the assassin's view, but he was no fool. If Ferremo looked too closely, he was sure to figure her out.
She gripped the lockpicks hard enough to make her hands ache, as the charge within the lock shoved them away and sent a thrill of electricity through her body. She concentrated on the weight of the tools, the shape of the handles, the feel of the metal.
She remembered shaping her first lockpick, from a scrap of tin and a lava stone, shaving off the metal layer by layer, she holds it up to her eye-blue, no, brown-and studies the curve, smooth shallow Nestrix shook her head and drove the memory away. She concentrated on her hands holding the picks. She tilted the wire up into the tumblers.
She remembered using a plank of wood, wedging the end under a stone, and the little dark-haired girl, push down, Wenda, push down and the stone goes up, rolls a little more Gods hrast it! Who was Wenda? Nestrix glanced up. Dareun had cast a spell into the blackness of the passageway and was ordering his men to watch the entrance.
She remembered creeping along a dark passage, her foot coming down on the wrong tile, lightning blooms out of nothing, out of nowhere, and shakes my bones, burns my skin The crates toppled over, clipping one of the men Dareun had called. The sound drove Nestrix from her thoughts. Tennora stood, her features set in a fierce mask, her blade dancing as if she'd held it all her life. All eyes went to Tennora, Nestrix's included. She turned back to the lock, willing herself not to think about what was going to happen if she didn't break free.
Are you punishing me? Nestrix thought. You want me to die too? Without me you are lost, thief. Gone. Scattered to the four winds. Give me what we both need.
The memories shifted. A child, a girl with black hair and blue eyes, watched the desert as the Spellplague ripped across it. Her hair turns blonde and then black and then she flickers into the shape of a blue wyrmling-Wenda, and that is how she died. Or didn't die, and a hundred years spin by and the mystery remains. She is gone to her grave one way or another, but the mystery haunts the haunting…
Give me what I need and I will find out what happened to her, Nestrix thought. I don't have the time for your nonsense.
Nestrix-Nestrix the woman-with a shard of glass or bruised fists or a broken plank or the storm that rises out of her belly fighting, fighting because she is angry, because she is lonely, because she is lost, and sometimes the blood and the bruises drive the anger and the pain away and sometimes they don't. Sometimes it isn't Nestrix who gets into these fights but a woman with honey blonde hair who strangled to death a long time ago. Neither is sated. Neither knows where she's going. Neither is truly alive. Better to be dead.
You selfish beast, Nestrix thought, struggling with the lock-picks. You miss your child? Well, so do I. So does this boy's mother miss him. It doesn't entitle you to doom us all.
Nestrix taunting Dareun-What do I care? I have nothing left.
She looked up at Tennora, flicking her throwing blades across the room, her face pale.
A bolt of energy seared across the room, nearly catching Nestrix's ear. She threw herself to the side and into the boy as it passed, smacking against the wall beyond. Scraps of mold sprayed outward, as well as shattered rock. A piece the size of the boy's heart tumbled to a stop by her knees. Antoum's eyes went wide.
"Closed," Nestrix reminded him, and she picked up the rock in both hands. If the thiefs memories wouldn't help, she'd do it her way.
The edges of the rock cut her palms as she smashed it against the body of the lock. The metal didn't give as easily as she hoped, and the shock of it trembled up her arm. Again and again she slammed the stone into the lock. The body dented and twisted. She would never be able to pick the lock now.
Tennora cried out. Nestrix looked up and saw she stood close-too close-to Ferremo, clutching her stomach. Nestrix nearly cried out with her.
She slammed the rock down twice more, the shackle stretching and weakening but refusing to break. It had to break.
Dareun's curse raced across the room. Tennora gasped as it seized her. The spell that followed was colder, crueler than what he'd done before, and the power of it drove a scream from Tennora and forced her to her knees.
"No!" Nestrix shouted. She smashed the rock down again, and Here, look here, the old man says, and Nestrix-Lyra looks, and he points to the junction of the body and the shackle opposite the locking mechanism and says, here is the weak spot, this is where the lock is most vulnerable. If you cannot tease it open, break it here.
With all her strength, Nestrix brought the rock down on the corner of the lock. A spatter of electricity burst out, enough to sting the backs of her hands with a dozen tiny burns. Nestrix cast the rock aside and twisted the lock out of its latch. The door opened.
Dareun fired another bolt just as his minion stepped into its path. The man stumbled into her as she surged out the door. Breaking his neck was a matter of instinct, the way she might have snapped a camel or a marlin to stop it from flailing. Her blood pounded like thunder.
Dareun looked up at her, astonished and angry.
"Come now, wyrmling. Throwing away a piece? That was just foolish." She glanced over at Tennora, still on one knee, and at the assassin, who had regained himself and had both knives out and ready. "Ah-ah, lovac," she said in a taunting tone. "Step aside. You don't want to be caught in the middle of this."
"She bluffs," Dareun said.
"Of course not," Nestrix said. "I'm mad, remember? Mad enough to use everything in my power to make you two suffer. And I warned you I don't play xorvintaal."