Chapter Three

Thama stared across the foyer at the baby-faced man.

The intruder returned his gaze without expression, but a glint of amusement seemed to dance in his blackly shining eyes.

They came for me? Thama thought dazedly. Why? What did I do? His heart began to race. He looked at his father. “What does he mean?”

Nafar’s face was red with fury. “Do not speak to him!” he spat, staring wide-eyed at the intruder.

“Who are they, father?”

Nafar did not reply. His jaw clenched, the muscles standing out in his temple and neck.

The baby-faced man’s expression grew mournful. “Will you not introduce us to your son, Legate? No? Then allow me.” He gestured to the reed-thin man. “This is Hedric Gattis, formerly of the Academy of Vorado.”

The tall man inclined his head a fraction. He stared at Thama like a serpent watching a mouse.

The baby-faced man jerked his thumb to indicate the hooded man who stood behind him. “This is Grash. He has no country, no tribe, no title. He is my servant.”

Thama could not bring himself to look into the shadows beneath the hooded man’s face.

“And I...” the baby-faced man said, bowing deeply, “I am Adal Mettis. A Seeker in his Imperial Majesty’s Sacred Order of the Credein.”

Thama’s blood stopped in his veins. A Credein Seeker, here? “Why?” he blurted.

Mettis recovered from his bow. His absurdly red lips curved into a smile. “Why? Because that is what my mother named me.”

The tall man snorted something that might have been a laugh.

“Why are you here?” Thama squeaked. “There are no Talents—no Accursed—in this household.”

Mettis’ smile broadened. “That is amusing, coming from you.”

They think I’m a Talent, thought Thama.

Then the greater implications exploded through his mind. The Credein were agents of the Emperor of Aurdana, who collected Talents the way some monarchs collected jewels or rare paintings. The Aurdanans denied their existence, but no one would believe them if they said the sky was blue. The Credein worked in secret, even in places like Manthia, where the Talents were called Accursed and sacrificed to pagan gods. Yet Mettis had proudly claimed the title. That could only mean one thing. He did not plan to leave any witnesses.

Thama took a step back. “No,” he said.

The Residence guards, Ordan and Baris, drew their swords and moved in front of Thama’s father.

“You will leave now,” Nafar grated. “Count yourselves lucky that I do not turn you in. Credein are as unwelcome here as they would be in Vorado.”

Mettis laughed. “How little you know. You are to be commended, Legate. You hid Thama well, and he plays his part well. If I did not know better, I might almost believe that he was a normal boy—if a bit eccentric in his choice of clothing.”

Nafar said, “He...he does not know.”

An icy talon clutched at Thama’s stomach. “What do you mean, da?”

The Credein’s smile vanished. “How can he not? He is well past the age of Quickening.” He turned to Gattis. “Make sure.”

The thin man bowed his head and closed his eyes.

Thama cried out as a rippling wave of pinpricks ran across his scalp. It was more surprising than painful, and was over in an instant. He rubbed his head and stared at Gattis. “What did you do to me?”

Gattis opened his lavender eyes. “He has been blocked, but the Talent is there, and greater than we had been led to expect. Far, far greater.” He shivered and rubbed his sticklike arms.

“Blocked?” Mettis mused. Then he beamed at Nafar. “Well done, Legate. Very clever. When did you find time to visit Beradon? On your way out here from Vorado? It must’ve been before his little...mishap.”

“This man is mistaken,” Nafar said. “My son is not Accursed.”

Mettis shook his head. “Gattis was an Assayer, a pupil of Lord Boreal himself. He is never wrong.”

Nafar’s face contorted with rage. “Traitor!”

Gattis’ lips parted in a razor-edged smile. “Hardly. My true allegiance has ever been to the Emperor.”

“All of you, get out!”

“You heard him,” said Baris. He took a step forward, brandishing his sword.

Thama was staring at his father, so he did not see what happened next. He glimpsed only a streak of white light. Baris and Ordan fell, their swords clanging on the flagstone floor.

Thama stared at the motionless guards. Tiny curls of smoke rose from their heads. He ran to his father, who put a protective hand around him.

The Credein’s face was pale, and his jaw trembled. He drew something from beneath his leather vest and snapped his wrist. An instant later he was holding a sword: a thin, long, segmented length of dull black metal with a gleaming silver edge. It emitted a high, piercing squeal, and the end of the blade began to turn red.

Thama stared at the glowing sword. He could feel its heat across the width of the foyer. It was a Shaped blade, an artifact from the forges of Vorado or Aurdana. It had to be. He’d read about them in his father’s library. They were the rarest weapons of all, and costly beyond measure. That Mettis carried one spoke volumes of his rank in the Credein.

The now white-hot blade shook in Mettis’ grasp, but the Credein did not look fearful. Far from it. He looked cold. “Where is your lady wife, Legate? She would want to bid your son goodbye.”

“She left on a visit to Vorado this morning. She will not be back for two months at the least.”

Thama bit back an instinctive protest. His father was lying. She might still be in the house, or in town—or she might have escaped. Dawn Lord, please, let it be so.

Mettis sneered, “Very convenient.” His black eyes fastened on Thama’s. “Grash. Call Behastis in, and make sure.”

The hooded man swept past Mettis and went to the door.

The lean man in riding leathers came in a moment later, carrying a dripping sword. “The guards are taken care of,” he said in a matter of fact tone. He and the hooded man brushed past Thama and Nafar as they went deeper into the house.

Thama buried his face in his father’s side. “This is not happening,” he whispered as hot tears began to flow. Mother!

His father clutched him tight and said, “Do not be afraid, Thama.” His voice did not quaver, and his grip was firm.

The two men returned a few minutes later. “No one else is here,” Behastis said.

Relief swept through Thama’s veins.

“Get on with it,” Gattis said in a bored tone.

Mettis scowled at the Assayer. “Very well. Nafar. Let him go. Then you and I will go aside, and you will tell me how to unblock him. If you do not—well, my friend is eager to make your wife’s acquaintance. She has not gone to Vorado. We shall wait for her return.”

Gattis’ skeletal grin widened, and he fingered a jeweled dagger at his waist. “She must be lovely indeed, to have created such a handsome son.”

Thama stared up at his father. “What does he mean?”

A tear appeared at the corner of Nafar Mardant’s eye. “It does not matter, son. Do not fear. The Emperor will never have you.”

Mettis grated. “Say nothing more, Mardant. Let him go. The game is over.”

His father ignored the Credein. He said quickly, “Whatever happens, Thama, remember this. Salvation lies in diligence.”

Salvation lies in diligence.

The words seemed to grow louder as they reached Thama’s ears. They echoed across the chasm of his mind. Bile rose in his gullet, and the world grew misshapen and strange. His father seemed to grow taller. He was now a furious god, his tearful face swollen and massive, towering over him like a thundercloud. The room whirled, and he fell to his knees, crying out in terror.

“Salvation lies in diligence!” roared his father again.

The words grew substance as they rolled through the air. They struck Thama like hammer blows. They reverberated against his pounding skull. He scrambled away on hands and knees, whimpering. Then it was over, just like that, and the world snapped back to horrid reality. His father was just his father again, a look of infinite sorrow etched into his face.

“That’s a pity,” Mettis said.

The Credein stepped forward and swung his demonic sword. It slashed through Nafar Mardant’s body, parting wool and cloth and flesh and bone as if they were no more substantial than cobwebs.

The two halves of his father’s body toppled to the flagstone floor.

A wordless scream tore at Thama’s throat.

His father’s torso had been severed just below the rib cage. The upper half of his body lay face-up. His arms twitched and jerked, and his mouth stretched open in a breathless scream. His entrails unspooled onto the flagstones, followed by a crimson jet that arced across the foyer. Another, weaker pulse followed it. The air filled with the hot stench of iron and feces and the odor of seared flesh.

Nafar twisted his neck to look at Thama.

“Run,” he mouthed silently. His arms batted at the floor. Then, mercifully, he grew still.

“No!” Thama shrieked. He stared at Mettis, who stood above Nafar’s body, a gloating expression on his brutish, unfinished face. Blood hissed and spat as it boiled away from his white-hot blade.

The Credein met Thama’s eyes. He stretched out his hand and said, “Come, boy. Your new life awaits.”

Before he finished his sentence, Thama was flying down the hallway toward his father’s study.

He stumbled. Fear blasted through his veins. If he fell, it was over. Windmilling his arms, he managed to stay upright.

“Get him!” Mettis shouted.

“Be careful! He is unblocked!” said Gattis.

Thama got behind the heavy steelwood door, shoved it closed and shot the thick iron bolt home before the sound of running feet grew close.

The door was far too heavy for voices to penetrate it, but Thama could hear an angry pounding on the other side.

Tears blinded him. He leaned against the door, weeping. “No. Father, no. No. No.”

The hammering on the door intensified.

He tried to regain control. His heart was trying to beat its way out through his breastbone. He pressed his hand against his chest and took a deep, shuddering breath. His father was gone, his mother missing. The guards were dead, and who knew what had become of the household staff. He was the only one left. He had to get away.

He angrily wiped his eyes with his brightly checkered sleeve. The left and right walls of the large study were lined with books from floor to twenty-foot ceiling. He looked at the movable ladders that gave access to the highest shelves. Even if he could somehow get one of them free of its tracks, the skylights were well out of reach. The only way out was through the series of narrow stained-glass windows behind his father’s huge mahogany desk. On the other side was the courtyard where his fencing instructor worked him into a lather every Sixthday. The Residence grounds were vast, and four men could never keep watch over it all. If he moved quickly enough, he might be able to get out through the service gate in the rear of the grounds.

And then where? a hateful voice said from the darkest recess of his mind.

He shoved the thought away and took a step toward the desk.

Something dark fluttered past his right ear. He ducked instinctively. How did a bat get in here? He looked around in confusion. He was the only thing alive in the room.

Then he realized that the fluttering was not in the room. It was inside his head, behind his eyes, between his ears. The small hairs on his neck stood up. Before he could take another step, it became a storm of soundless wings, battering him from within. The room grew dark, and he felt himself falling. A galaxy of stars exploded around him as his temple hit something hard and unyielding. Then he struck what could only be the floor, biting his tongue as the hardwood surface slammed into his jaw. Blood filled his mouth, and the world went black.

He swam back to consciousness slowly. His mouth was thick with the taste of iron. The battering inside his head had subsided to a gentle brush of moth wings, but the pain from his temple and tongue more than made up for it. I must have hit the desk when I fell, he thought fuzzily. There was something else, too: a relentless, sharp hammering that sent waves of agony pulsing through his head with each repetition.

He opened his eyes and sat up. The room was filled with sunset light. He might have been unconscious for a long time.

The hammering continued with mechanical precision. It came from the door. Mettis was trying to break in.

Fear churned in Thama’s gut. He can’t get in, not through steelwood. Only Shapers had the craft to work the super-dense wood of the aifar tree. Ordinary tools couldn’t even scratch it. Then he remembered the Credein’s Talent-wrought blade with its white hot tip. That sword might be able to cut through anything.

He grabbed the edge of the desk and pushed himself to his feet. He had to get away.

The battering wings inside his skull grew fierce again.

Thama screamed. Clots of blood sprayed from his mouth onto his father’s desk. “Stop!” he cried, gagging. “Stop it!”

Hatred and terror boiled up inside him. Something else did, too, a new and alien and terrifying feeling. He felt a peculiar yielding dizziness inside his mind, then, like the crumbling of a wall. The new feeling surged through him, pushing aside the silent wings in his skull with an almost contemptuous ease.

It was power. Endless, endless power.

The impulse was nameless, instinctive, irresistible. He obeyed it. He lashed out with his mind at the tormentors on the other side of the wall.

The wings battering his mind stopped. The room grew bright again.

Mettis bellowed, “Gods of Night!” The hammering at the door ceased.

The power that filled him vanished, leaving a sick feeling of dread in its wake. He slumped against the desk. What have I done?

The door shuddered in its frame as the blows on the other side resumed, falling twice as fast as before.

“Lord of the Dawn, protect me,” Thama whispered.

He spat more blood, ignoring the shame that filled him at the thought of despoiling his father’s study. He rounded the desk and opened the bottom drawer. He flung the jumbled trinkets and keepsakes aside until he uncovered it: an ancient wheel lock cavalry pistol once owned by his grandfather. There was no powder or ammunition for it, but Thama did not care. At the end of its curved wooden handgrip was a steel ball studded with blunt spikes. It was used to smash in the faces of footmen after the round had been fired.

Thama grabbed the pistol by its barrel, stood on the chair behind the desk, and used the ball to smash out the stained glass of one of the narrow windows.

“Gattis!” he heard Mettis roar from the other side of the door. “Grash is dead! The boy’s trying to get out through the window!”

Thama’s blood curdled. The Credein’s voice was very clear now. He looked back as he put one foot on the windowsill. The door shuddered, and a long splinter of dark gray wood popped out and flew across the room. The blazing white tip of Mettis’ sword emerged through the crack. There was a wrenching sound and the sword vanished. Another blow fell. This time half a foot of blade came through, accompanied by a storm of sparks.

Thama dropped the gun and squeezed himself through the windowsill. At least I killed the hooded man, he thought with grim satisfaction. Somehow.

He looked out through the broken window. The blood-red sun had touched the western horizon, and the courtyard ten feet below him had fallen into shadow. It was empty.

Whispering his thanks to the Dawn Lord, Thama slipped through the narrow windowsill, turned and lowered himself down the stone outer wall of the Residence until he hung by his fingertips from the ledge. He dropped the last five feet, rolled with the impact and came up on his feet. His fencing instructor would’ve been proud.

He ducked low and ran in a half-crouch along the side of the Residence, trying to stay out of sight of the windows. The hill on the western side of the building sloped downhill so each window was higher up than the last. Soon he could walk upright. The Dawn Lord was smiling on him: so far the broad grassy expanse between the outer wall and the house was empty. He would have to cross that space when he reached the gate. His gut clenched as he realized that in his red and white checked doublet he’d stand out like a beacon, but that couldn’t be helped now.

A terrible thought struck him. Once he reached the gate, where then? He dare not seek refuge with any of the diplomats housed nearby. Their household guards would never admit him without an invitation. The Credein monsters would track him down in minutes as he ran from house to house. Even if the guards relented and let him in, Mettis would probably kill them all to get to him. His beautiful classmate Suria Theminides lived nearby. The idea of what Mettis and his men might do to her and her family was too much to bear. He would not visit that fate on anyone else. Enough people had died on his account today.

If he could get through the gate and reach the end of the service alley, he might be able to hide in the culvert that fed rainwater into the city’s ancient sewers. He’d explored the upper reaches of those tunnels once, five years ago, when he’d taken it in his childish head to run away from home. He couldn’t remember why he’d done it, but he would never forget the low, brick-lined tunnels with the deep, dank channel cut down the center, and the vile reek that had finally driven back him out into the sunlight and into Afferas’ rescuing arms.

Afferas, who lay dead on the far side of the Residence now.

He shook his head, willing the tears not to come. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to flee.

Shouts echoed along the wall from the other end of the compound. At least two of his would-be kidnappers were outside, then. If he hurried, he might be able to reach the gate after all.

“Behastis!” he heard Mettis’ distant shout. “Over there, fool! I’ll check the servant’s entrance.” The Credein’s voice sounded closer than it had before. He was coming.

Thama rounded the final corner. A cobblestone pathway led from the rear entrance of the Residence to the iron gate. Next to the path, face down in the grass, lay a motionless body in a long dark gray cloak.

“Oh, no,” Thama whispered. There was only one person here who would wear a heavy wool cloak on such a hot day.

He looked around to be sure he was still alone. Then, quick as lightning, he darted across the grass and knelt next to the body. The grass beneath it was thick with red. Though the body was face down, there was no mistaking that unruly shock of thin white hair.

“Haffray. Not you, too,” Thama whispered, choking on the words. He dashed his tears away. His mind raced. He had to have the cloak. He reached under Haffray’s chin to loosen the clasp. Something hot, thick and sticky coated his hand. Salt water flooded his mouth, and this time he couldn’t stop it. He retched into the blood-soaked grass for a seeming eternity. No, no no no! he raged silently. There’s no time for this!

At last the nausea subsided. He wiped his bloody hand on the grass and worked the cloak free of Haffray’s all-too-motionless body. Sobbing, he threw it over his back, pulled it tight across his chest and raced through the gate into the shadows of the alley.

Someone stepped out from behind the wall and seized him by the forearm.

He screamed.

It was the thin man with the lavender eyes.

Thama tried to wrench his arm free, but the thin man’s fingers were like thin bands of iron.

“Don’t,” Gattis whispered. He raised his free hand. In it was a long, curved, dripping knife.

“You killed Haffray,” Thama said, a terrible anger rising in him.

“He was in my way,” Gattis replied without rancor. He might have been talking about the weather. “Now let’s get you back to Lord Mettis, shall we?”

Rage flowed through Thama’s veins, and with it, a nameless, hungry power. He did not stop to wonder what it was. It was his, and it would kill, and that was enough. He hurled it at Gattis.

The thin man’s gloating lavender eyes rolled back. His fingers lost their grip. He stumbled and emitted a high, gurgling shriek.

Thama jerked his arm free and jumped back, staring at Gattis with growing horror.

Blood spurted from the thin man’s mouth and nostrils, cutting short his awful scream. His face reddened and blistered. Puffs of smoke boiled from his eye sockets. Then there was a heavy, wet snapping sound from somewhere deep inside him. He dropped like a felled tree.

As his body struck the cobblestones it ruptured like a burst balloon.

Thama leaped back. A hot, dank, fetid wind blew past him as chunks of dissolving flesh and bone spattered across the alley. In moments all that remained was a frothing pool of blood surrounding a sodden lump of clothes. The steaming liquid flowed downhill toward the distant opening of the culvert.

“Lord of the Dawn,” Thama breathed. He swallowed hard. Somehow he had killed two of his pursuers, but Mettis and Behastis were still out there, and the Credein had killed Ordan and Baris without raising a finger.

There was no time to weep.

He stepped over what little remained of Gattis and gathered the cloak around him. He glanced back once at the empty house where he had spent his entire life, and began to run.