I wake up to a stranger leaning against the window.
His face is half-shadowed in the moonlight, a cast of silver upon which features indescribably perfect are etched on by some divine artist. Under those perfectly manicured eyebrows his eyes are abnormally bright, brimming with bloodshot whites. His raiment of the Phalanx, too wide for his wiry shoulders, looks more like a sarcastic costume than any disguise. On his waist hangs a duelling sabre with a black blade.
'Come to the light,' he coons. His voice is eerily high.
For an eternity we look at each other...then he moves first, faster than shadow. One blink and his face, that flawless sculpture, is an inch from mine. In the dark his eyes look completely insane.
'Ah...it's too late,' he whimpers like a petulant child. 'The fire's already taken hold. What did you do, little fool?' He withdraws to the window, silent as a wraith. 'No matter. We must talk nonetheless. There is so much I want to tell you...but not here. This hole is so insufferably quiet. Shall we take a stroll?'
With monumental effort I untie my tongue. 'You...you're Talukiel.'
With a flourish he places his right hand upon his chest, wrist tented up like that of a puppeteer as his fingers tap in a rolling wave, up and down, little finger to index and back again.
'Call me Talu, for we are kindred,' he says. 'Come, let's hurry. My friends are eager to proceed.'
Incredibly, he offers me his hand.
My sword is leaning on the wall to his right, just within reach –
A metallic ding, like tinkling glass; a black shadow zooms past my outstretched hand, and my ring finger does a lazy backflip and comes away from the rest of the hand, drawing a trail of crimson as it tumbles to the ground. Then the pain comes. Breaking an arm seems like a paper cut now.
Talu's gloved hand closes around my mouth and shoves down the rising scream. The silky material had been heavily scented – lilac. 'Calm now,' he chides. 'Rarely do I sheath my blade unsated, but an exception I shall make. We're like brothers, after all.'
I mutter something pathetic through his hand.
He lets go but moves the tip of his sabre a hair's breadth from my throat. I lean back; the blade follows. I shuffle sideways; it follows, always at the same distance and not trembling at all. It could be carrying a full cup on its flat edge and not a drop would spill.
'Out the door, please,' he says, politely poking into the soft folds on my neck.
Pull yourself together. If even this little hurdle trips you up how are you supposed to face the Apex?
'If...if...'
'Pardon me?' Talu sneers.
'If...this...'Blood rushes to my head in a powerful wave. 'If this is how you'll act then we shan't speak.'
Incredulity is not a good look for him; it powders his face with an extra layer of crazy.
'What did you say?'
With each word uttered the next becomes easier. 'I feel sorry for you.'
Talu's mouth twitches. 'Such insolence,' he whispers. 'She has already perverted your mind –'
I interrupt him. This might be the first time I've ever interrupted someone. 'I can't think of a single good reason that you'd want to be here. You can't win. If you came to apologize it's ten years too late. The only thing left is that you came here to die. Is that it?'
Talu's face sinks, distorting his handsome features into the painted skin of an old crone. 'You don't know what you're talking about.'
Standing up turns out to be easy. A small warmth, the fire of a stubborn candle that refuses to go out, has taken up residence in my head; its presence is comforting, like the hand of some gentle deity. We're shuffling towards the door. There has to be guards in the corridor; Tamara said she would triple the night patrols. As soon as we're outside it'll be all over for him.
Then why does he want to leave the room?
Words are still tumbling out of my mouth, and I'm not sure if they mean anything at all. 'Explain it to me then, because I saw you four times at the Games, and you were awesome. I looked up to you. Everyone did.'
Talu grins as if his face is being torn apart. 'Ah, a fan! How I miss those days of idle bliss – she took them from me. She took from me all that I was.'
My back bumps against solid wood. The door. 'You were the one who ran away.'
His foot kicks out lightning-fast; seeing it coming makes no difference. It crushes my stomach like pestle on mortar. A loud crash. Splintered wood fly everywhere. Doesn't take much to break through the lock it seems – one flying esquire does the trick nicely.
There are dead guards on either side of my door, crumpled on the spot inside their armour.
Everything blacks out for a moment as my head meets the wall; pretty yellow stars burst into the world like so many fireworks.
Before I can blink Talu grabs my neck and coons into my face like an insane mother. 'And now I'm back! This is the night, the night of our sweet reunion.' He inhales sharply, and for a split second almost sounds sane. 'I came back. Maybe she'll forgive me now.'
'No she won't.'
He sends me flying again. This time the fall is soft, cushioned by a body lying face down. There are at least a dozen dead guards all along the corridor.
How...when...
'Up. Come now.'
The flat of a cheerful dagger slaps against my left cheek, its blue sheen ephemeral in the torchlight.
I get up, shivering uncontrollably. Cold. 'How...how did you manage...'
His dagger snakes under my chin, forcing my eyes to the ceiling. His mouth is pressed up against my ear and his breath smells like pungent roses. 'Ask me more questions, please! We've time yet before the end, so ask away!'
'You know, that's the first time anyone has ever said that to me.'
The pommel of his sabre stabs at a point just below my armpit, sending up a wave of nervous pain. 'Walk, my dear. We're going to have so much fun.'
The first person to run into us is Kathanhiel's maid. She was trotting up the stairs with a covered basket before turning around a corner into the last thing she would ever see. How brave she is, to be staying at Iborus rather than fleeing south on the ironclads like the other non-combatants; because of her care, Kathanhiel has recovered quickly.
Never caught her name. Was too timid to ask, with her always politely smiling and bowing. Now I'll never know why she chose to stay, or whether she thought this esquire of Kathanhiel was an idiot.
Talu's sabre plunges into her chest, all the way to the hilt. Her expression stays mildly surprised until the end, and as the basket falls from her slackened arm spools of colourful wool tumble to the ground, rolling down the stairs from whence she came.
I think I screamed. I hope I screamed. I hope I screamed loud and hard enough to tear out my voice so the crying afterward would be silent and unnoticeable.
'I've spared her from the dragons' wrath,' Talu says. 'She shall be thanking me from her hearth in the evergreen.'
Ah...I want to kill him.
One step at a time we descend, stepping around the thread like a line in the sand.
'You're dead.' Words are coming through my gritted teeth. 'As soon as the lady finds you it's over –'
Talu starts giggling; it sounds like the laugh of a hyena. 'Do you know about the Stone Graves, my dear?'
'What?'
'Of course not, these gutless fools would all rather pretend she's perfect. On the Elisaad campaign she killed three hundred and twenty-one of her most loyal in one night. I watched. Was there, saw it. Oh – it had to be a nightmare, it had to be; the beautiful, indomitable Kathanhiel, turning on her people? "But she wasn't herself" they said. They'd rather blind themselves than recognize the truth. We know the truth, Kastor – you and I, we know how the sword works. That's why we're so messed up.'
'What...what are you talking about?'
Talu's giddy grin runs from ear to ear. 'The Scouring. I'll show you what it's really like. All it'll take is a few choice words.' His hot breath spits onto my face. 'Watch me.'
The first landing, consisting of various archives, is completely deserted. Through the window opposite one could see the inner courtyard and the refinery behind it, both lit bright as day. If the patrols on the inner wall raise their heads by a fraction they would spot us, but their eyes, understandably, are trained on the horizon, looking for enemies from without.
Talu's dagger leans hard into my neck. 'There is a hole in her,' he whispers. 'You, me, all the fools in this little castle, we throw ourselves into it as if we could fill it, but no, doesn't work like that. She doesn't care about us.'
Down another flight of stairs we go. The next landing leads to the barracks, which is full of soldiers, yet Talu isn't slowing down, and it seems like he can't stop talking either. 'She begged me to be her esquire, did you know that? On her knees in front of the King and the court, she begged me to be her esquire. Begged. And at first I refused. I said, "the King's Marshall, the Champion of the Games, shall not be indentured under a little girl playing dragon slayer."'
He stops, the tip of his sculpted nose pressing into my ear.
'You know why I changed my mind? You want to know? You need but ask and I'll tell you.' His tongue runs away before I could reply. 'I wanted all of it I wanted her the sword the mantle of slayer the adoration the fame the cheering of a rapturous crowd as I return victorious with the head of Elisaad mounted atop my golden chariot – all of it, but you see you see the sweet tragedy of her pretty face made me blind they made her look like a saint. Without the dragon fire and her asinine prettiness she is broken! Broken because in her stubborn little head she sees only the face of the dead!'
Around a corner we turn, and the landing is directly below us, not twenty steps away. Two guards are standing by the bottom of the stairs, facing the other way. I yell for help without thinking, the cry of a lamb in the butcher's shop. They turn around and look straight at me.
Then, putting their hands upon their chests, fingers all tented up, they bow.
'To your places,' to them Talu says.
Seconds after these two disappear down the corridor, the first real soldier steps out of the barracks: a young woman with a broken arm set in a sling and a set of Phalanx raiment slung over the other shoulder.
She's moving in the opposite direction, but something – a tingling on the back of the neck, maybe – makes her look toward the stairs. Her eyes meet mine, and for the longest moment she doesn't seem to know what she's looking at.
'Kastor?'
She calls my name. It feels good to be remembered, circumstance notwithstanding. Talu doesn't stop me from speaking; I could smell the grin on his face.
'Hey uh...Talukiel's here. Mind sounding the alarm?'