“Rally the guard,” he said. “If I don’t come back, finish the job.”
“But—” she cried, and he was already running. The Kingspire had a dozen ways in at the base, but only one direction: up. The great priest would try to stop Geder and Yardem, and that meant climbing the endless flights of stairs. Marcus moved through the empty hall, ignoring the wide and airy archways, the statues of thousands of years, the tapestries and censers and images of worked gold. For him, there was only the hunt.
He took the stairs two at a time, reaching back as he did and tugging the wrapping away from the blade. They were past all disguises now. His footsteps echoed. Far away to his left, he heard something like a woman’s wail, but he didn’t have time or attention to spend on it. He didn’t know where the priest was, how far the man had gotten, how much of a head start he’d had. It didn’t change anything. The worst that would happen was Basrahip would reach the temple, sound the alarm, and Marcus would have to hold as many of the priests from coming down as he could before they slaughtered him or the dragon came. He felt himself grinning with the effort of the run. Or maybe it was just grinning.
As the tower rose, the walls sloped gently in, each level a bit smaller than the one below, the rooms and corridors a bit less grand, the stairs to the next level up narrower and fewer. The nearer they got to the temple, the more the tower itself would push them toward each other. He’d known a butcher once, and had the sense that slaughterhouses worked in much the same way.
The priest knew the path, and Marcus was finding it as he went. The priest had a head start. The urge to sprint, to push himself up as fast as he could go, tempted him. The sense that the enemy was just beyond his reach, and that if he pushed himself a little harder, he might catch him in time, sang in his blood. Instead, he kept to a brisk, steady pace. He focused on the architecture, finding his way through the halls and corridors like it was a deer path in the wood.
Outside, beyond his senses, the signal smoke was rising. The dragon was on his way. He couldn’t think about that. Just where was there more wear on the carpets, where had steadying hands left smudges along the wall. He couldn’t hurry. If he went too fast now, he’d exhaust himself. He’d fail. If he drew the sword—and he wanted badly to feel its weight in his hands—it would cost him speed and add to his fatigue. He found another curving stair, and went up. His footsteps echoed weirdly against the jade.
Only no, they didn’t. The sound he heard complicating his steps came from above. He paused, his hands stretching wide and then tightening into fists. Footsteps retreating above him. The feral grin stretched his lips wider, and Marcus let himself run. Up the flight to a hall with half a dozen corridors converging on it. The sound was louder here. There was labored breath as well. He was close. A narrow window looked out to the southwest, offering a view of the grounds, the gaol, the Division, the sprawling city. But not a dragon. Not yet. Marcus closed his eyes, listening. The footsteps and breathing grew a degree quieter as he turned slowly, but he found which of the hallways it came from. He ran again with the long loping stride of a scout and a soldier.
The chamber at the hallway’s end was low-ceilinged and wide. Carved wooden tables stood discreetly against the walls under portraits of kings long dead. A thin white carpet covered the floor like fallen paper, and the spill of light from the shuttered window drew bright lines across it. The priest labored his way across it toward a half-open door and a fresh flight of stairs.
“Hey!” Marcus shouted as he drew the poisoned sword.
The priest turned. He was a large, broad man with flushed face and rage in his eyes. Marcus had known others like him, naturally strong even if he didn’t train. It wasn’t the only hint of Yemmu blood in the man’s history. The shape of his jaw had a bit of it too. Marcus drew the poisoned sword, holding it in a double-handed grip. He saw Basrahip understand what it was, and what it meant.
The priest held a bright steel blade in his right fist like it was a stick. Not much technique, Marcus guessed, but plenty enough power. In case it was easy, Marcus lunged, his blade cutting fast and low.
The priest parried him. A little technique, then. That was a shame.
The priest’s breath was fast and hard. It might have been the exertion of the run or mind-blanking rage. Basrahip bared his teeth and shouted in wordless, animal aggression. Marcus took an involuntary step back. Even absent meaning, the sound of his voice held power. The gift Morade had given him and his kind along with their world-killing madness.
Basrahip swung his own blade in a short, hard arc. Marcus danced back, and the priest surged forward, shouting again. The poisoned sword stank with fumes that left a foul taste in Marcus’s mouth, but the priest ignored that, striking out artlessly with his own steel blade. Marcus parried and countered. Basrahip pushed the attack aside like he was clearing weeds. Marcus felt the impact of blade against blade in his wrists and shoulders.
“Strong bastard, aren’t you?” he said. “How’s your stamina?”
For that, he thought, how’s mine? But the priest was hammering at him again, the raw fury of the attack driving Marcus slowly back. The shuttered windows was behind him. If this went on too long, he’d be driven against it. Marcus imagined himself being tossed out, spinning head over feet to the path below. It would be a stupid way to die.
The priest used the moment’s distraction. His vast howl came again, and the blade with it. Marcus shifted away, but the tip of the priest’s sword touched his arm as it passed. The pain was bright. Blood pattered against the perfect white of the floor and Marcus drew himself into a guard position and countered, driving the priest back toward the stairway. The injured arm felt numb, but it wasn’t weaker. Or not much so. As far as he could tell. There was a lot of blood, but no muscle cut through. He only needed one solid hit, and the venom would do the rest. If it meant letting Basrahip open his guts for him, it wouldn’t matter. The priest would still be dead. He wouldn’t raise the alarm. Where the hell were Yardem and Geder anyway?
The priest’s laughter began as a deep sound, like someone chopping wood, and grew.
“Something… funny?” Marcus gasped out.
“Cannot,” the priest said. “Cannot win. You cannot win.”
In Marcus’s belly, something gave way. Not fear, not despair—not yet—but the awareness of how he was vulnerable. He struck forward, pushing the priest, but Basrahip was laughing now, even as he avoided the envenomed blade.
“You have already lost,” the priest said. “Listen to my voice. Everything you love is already gone. You cannot win.”
“Heard that before,” he said, as if defiance would rob the man’s voice of the dragon’s power.
“There is no reason to go on.”
Marcus tried to pull his attention away from the words. Tried to focus on the weight of the blade in his hand, the stance of his opponent. The brightening pain in his arm, the sound of his blood pattering onto the floor like raindrops. But the words pressed through it all, taking him by the throat.
“You have lost,” Basrahip said, and even as he knew the trick of it, Marcus felt the deep, familiar darkness rising up from his mind to meet the man’s voice. “You cannot win. Everything you love is already gone. Listen to my voice. You cannot win.”
For a heartbeat—no more—he was holding Merian’s body against his. The smell of fire and death filling his nostrils, the fumes rising up from her corpse and changing who he was forever. Merian. Alys. His wife and his child, dead because he’d been loyal to the wrong man. Cithrin was already the same. Already doomed because he hadn’t been strong enough or wise enough to turn her from the path she’d chosen. Yardem was as good as dead. Kit and the players. Because he hadn’t done better.