"Leesil!" Magiere said angrily.
He lifted the tip of his left blade across his lips as if it were a finger, signaling her to silence.
"It's too wide," he whispered, and pointed to the left side of the building.
He reached his hands into the doorway's left side, extending one blade on the inside and the other outside. When he pulled them back, she could see the doorway wall's width was less than the length of his arm. Then he stepped out, looked to the left side of the building, and spread his arms, widening the measure he'd just shown her.
She stepped out with him to stare at the left side of the building.
Although the door's wall on the inside ran directly to the left side of the foyer, the outside wall was three or four times wider by the measure Leesil had just shown her. She could think of no reason why one stone wall of an old house would be so much thicker than the others.
Magiere looked to Leesil in puzzlement. What was he was trying to tell her in silence? He carefully pointed the tip of his blade at her chest, and she looked down.
Before she even saw the growing glow of the topaz, Magiere felt twinges of burning hunger roll in her stomach.
There came a soft grating of stone from inside the foyer. The wall at the bottom of the stairs slowly inched outward.
Dark-blond curls and the profile of a round face peeked out of the exit. The one called Sapphire scanned the parlor room across the hall. She smiled with relief and stepped out.
As she turned to the front door, Sapphire sucked in air and screamed out in panic: "Toret!"
Magiere flinched, almost turning about at Sapphire's cry, suddenly wary. She assumed Ratboy had run out the door in search of a sewer, but perhaps he was still in the house as well. Why else would this painted doxy wail for help?
Sapphire lunged back for the opening, and Magiere kicked out against it.
The hidden door slammed closed on Sapphire's arm, and Magiere leveled her falchion as she swung for the woman's neck. Squealing, Sapphire ducked and wrenched her hand free. Magiere's blade clanged against stone.
This was the little harlot who'd been sitting in Leesil's lap.
"Search the upper floors," Magiere snapped at Leesil. "She's not alone in here."
"But Chane-" Leesil began.
"I want no one at our backs," she shouted, and rushed after Sapphire fleeing down the hallway.
The undead scurried along the railing of the stairs leading below. Magiere slashed at her from behind, but she ducked aside and as the falchion shattered through the railing. Sapphire darted into the parlor along the far wall around a velvet divan. Magiere followed rapidly and swung down. The blade split through the back of a divan.
As she wrenched her blade free, Sapphire tried to dash out the parlor archway, but Magiere kicked her in the stomach. Sapphire stumbled away in her heavy gown. She grabbed a cream porcelain vase from an end table and threw it.
Magiere side-stepped, as the vase shattered against Sapphire's own portrait, and steadily closed in on Sapphire with purpose. The undead squealed again and ran behind another divan. Magiere smashed this one as well, sending Sapphire scurrying to the far corner of the room.
The familiar ache grew in Magiere's jaw, but she swallowed down the pain. There would be no mindless rage this time, no loss of self to hunger. She wanted full awareness of every moment. She let hunger creep into her head just enough so that her night vision sharpened.
This creature had been sitting in Leesil's lap.
Sapphire looked around wildly.
Magiere swung down, the falchion shattering the light oak table to Sapphire's right as she cringed back, crying out.
Magiere felt no pity. For certain, Sapphire felt no pity for her victims. She'd killed an unarmed house guard at the Rowanwood without a thought. Now she pleaded for help as her victims had surely done. How had this pathetic creature survived in the night?
Sapphire kicked up the table remains at Magiere, but the gown fouled her attempt, and Magiere swatted the fragments aside. As Sapphire made one last dash toward the parlor entrance, Magiere snarled her free hand in the woman's hair. Sapphire's head snapped back as she was jerked to a stop.
"Turn around," Magiere demanded. "Look at me."
Sapphire stared into Magiere's black irises, sobbing with quivering red lips. And yet, strangely, no tears fell from the dead woman's eyes.
Magiere let the falchion pendulum down in front of her and up under her other arm, her grip tight in Sapphire's hair.
No! Sapphire mouthed, as she raised a hand to shield herself.
Magiere slashed crosswise, pulling on the woman's hair at the same time. As her arms scissored outward and apart, the falchion swung level through the dark room.
One final sob from Sapphire ended halfway as the blade passed cleanly through the forearm of her raised hand-and then her neck. The hand spun and dropped to the floor first.
Magiere's gaze never left the pale, painted face as the body collapsed and the head hung suspended in her grip, draining black fluids onto the carpet.
She stood a moment longer before realizing she was panting. Her grip had tightened so severely that the dark-blond hair began to tear out between her fingers.
This thing had tried to take Leesil.
The room dimmed around her, though her settling vision still picked up details in the dark. She looked down to see the topaz dim and lifeless against her hauberk.
Magiere dropped the head onto the rumpled folds of the corpse's gown.
Running footsteps on the stairs broke her fixation as Leesil hurried into the room with Chap close behind. He crouched down immediately by the corpse, stared but a moment, and reached for the head.
Magiere was about to stop him. It wasn't time to collect proof for the council, but he waved her off.
"I may need this," he said simply.
He took a dark blue drawstring bag from the corpse, placed the head inside, and tied it to his belt. Taking out flint, he struck it several times with his blade until he ignited the torches he'd brought with them. He handed one to Magiere.
"Find Chane and get Wynn back," he said. "Chap's already tracked him to the first sewer grate up the street. I know where Ratboy has gone."
Before she could ask, he stepped out of the parlor toward the foyer. Magiere followed him to the opening in the wall. Inside were narrow stone steps leading both up and down.
"Chap's already confirmed it," Leesil said, staring at the steps leading downward. "Ratboy is mine."
"Take Chap," Magiere told him. "And this."
She unhooked the topaz amulet's chain and went to fasten it about his neck. Leesil was about to stop her, but she shook her head.
"I don't think I need it anymore," she explained with a glance back toward the parlor. "I can feel them now when they're close. If we can't find each other later, we'll meet back at the sages' barracks."
Leesil nodded and motioned Chap into the passage. As Magiere was about to head for the front door, he grabbed her by the arm.
When she looked at him, all the warmth and wry humor she'd become accustomed to finding in his face, his eyes, his smile was gone without a trace.
"You stay alive," he said.
Magiere felt cold inside.
Leesil wasn't just hunting anymore. This was vengeance. Or some fool's need to rectify what he thought was a failure from the past. Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd probably always known this, and now there was no time to stop him.
"And you," she said.
Magiere slipped out the front door, down the steps, and into the cobble street, running for the first grate she saw.
From the shadows between two houses across the street, Sgaile watched the unfolding events with an unsettling ambivalence. He had followed the renegade and majay-hi all day as they looked at houses in the city's wealthier districts. He did not know why.