When the rune net on the outer wall fell, Jordan went blind for several agonising seconds.
Unspoken all around him groaned at the pain. They hadn't even reached the castle, and already the group had brought down more demons than he had been able to count while he watched from the safety of the rune paths. This, however, the nets couldn't save him from, and it felled him like it did everybody else.
"You alright, boy?" Yddris's voice was strained, and came from somewhere nearby, though he wasn't certain how close through the ringing in his ears. He tried to blink away the green aftershocks of the collapse to little effect. Ren's claws had dug deep tracks into his neck in her fear, and the burning on the outside joined the hollowed-out, torched feeling of the inside. It was just like he had felt after first manifesting, and the reminder wasn't a welcome one.
"Can't see," he said. His throat hurt with the urge to be sick, and he stumbled to a nearby wall to steady some of his dizziness. The pounding of Nictaven's current was all around him, inside his chest, his head, his ears.
"It'll clear," Yddris said, and his voice came from the left this time. "The headache might take a few days." At Jordan's groan, he added, "If it's any consolation, we're all stuck with it, too."
Through the fog of confusion, Jordan became dimly aware that he couldn't hear demons anymore. He could hear screaming, but it was human, and the streets had otherwise fallen eerily quiet.
"Where did they go?" he asked. His vision was returning to him, albeit slowly, and the darkened streets were regaining some shape and form. The runes all around them, which had flickered out and back on again right before the blast, had returned to their usual brightness. The only evidence that anything had happened was the scattering of groaning Unspoken around them.
"That will have killed a big proportion of those demons," Yddris said. "The bigger ones might have survived it, but they'll have at least been knocked out cold. This is our chance to get you in, boy, might not get another one. Hurry!"
Yddris led him at a near-jog the rest of the way to the castle, and a few of the other guild members trailed behind them. When they reached the wide stretch of road that led to the gatehouse, however, they all ground to a halt.
It was like a battle had been waged on the castle's entryway; demons of all shapes and varieties littered the cobbles like some huge, grotesque rockslide that had entered the city. Jordan winced as his boot heel crushed a dead thrall's skull and he skipped away, scraping it off on a clear bit of ground and trying to hold his stomach in. There were demons here he had never seen before, and an alarming number of them. Small, skinny ones with great flapping jaws, a huge titan of a thing with a face like chewed gum, and several varieties of wight he hadn't yet seen in person. And they were legion; corpses littered the ground as far as the eye could see in both directions, only absent in eerily well-defined channels where the rune paths were drawn. Beside him, Yddris took in a sharp breath.
"Nict's balls," he breathed. "Look at them all."
"That certainly is a swarm," Nika said, coming up behind them. "Night take me, I've never seen so many in one place."
"Get inside, boy," Yddris said, shaking off some of his shock and giving Jordan a rough push towards the wall where the demons had breached it, a huge hole beside the guard tower. "Knock on the gate, let them know we're here. They should let you in, but if they get mouthy, tell them I'll put a word in with Harkenn about it."
Jordan nodded, frowning. The gate was in front of them. There was no second gate. But he didn't question it, only held his breath and hurried along the nearest rune path, jumping at every movement he saw in his peripheral vision. The first few times, it was only other members of the guild arriving at the scene. Then some of the bigger demons stirred.
Then he saw the Death.
It hovered near the breach in the wall, unmoving. Up close, it seemed no more substantial than it had the first time he'd seen it on that nightmare job weeks before, but he saw details he hadn't noticed on that brief glimpse; the scabby hands, the faint suggestion of a head among the mists, the slithering mass of its other organs suspended beneath its glowing heart. It didn't move as he skidded to a stop three feet short of it, but the rune path ran right past it, and Jordan was going to have to leave the path for the last couple of yards to get through the breach.
He looked back, but could no longer see his tutor or Nika. Other Unspoken were around, but he didn't dare call out this close to the demon. Not for the first time, he wished he was further ahead with his training, at least so he could summon a distraction if needed, or signal to someone else for help. Yddris had made him promise not to use magic, however, and things were bad enough without trying to do something he already knew he couldn't.
He made himself put one foot forward. The quiet tap of his boot on the ground echoed in his ears. The demon didn't stir, except for the strange curls of its misty form caught in the breeze. The second step was a little more confident; Yddris had said the bigger demons would be stunned by the blast, and he hardly wanted to hang around to see how long that lasted. He tiptoed past the Death, and as he passed close by it, he felt a terrible cold. It stopped him short, as he had become so accustomed to never feeling cold. Near to the demon, it was like life itself shrank to a little pinprick of warmth. All he could see was the demon, for several awful seconds, before someone behind him shouted. The cold was blown away by an inferno of green roaring past his shoulder. If it had been normal fire it might have burnt him as it passed. Ren growled in his ear; he blinked and regained control of his limbs.
"I said go, boy!" Yddris was shouting, somewhere behind him. Breath like rot touched Jordan's face and made his eyes sting, and then a scabby hand twitched in the mist.
"Fuck," he said, and then ran. He hadn't known he was capable of running so fast, but the breach was behind him in seconds, and then he was brought up short by a chain-link barricade across the castle courtyard, studded with wooden posts and panels inscribed with runes. He had never seen it before, but guessed this was the gate for the second defence wall. It was rusty, and scrape-marks on the cobbles suggested it had never had to be used. It looked terribly flimsy. Guards stared at him through the links with varying degrees of relief and suspicion.
He glanced over his shoulder, but nothing had pursued him. He could sense that some battle was being waged out of sight on the other side of the wall, and occasionally the night would flash a brighter green. Someone cried out, and Jordan fervently hoped it wasn't serious.
"As many of the guild are here as we could find," he said to one of the guards, who stepped forward to greet him. "I'm supposed to come inside. Not qualified." His half-hearted joke fell on unreceptive ears, so he quickly added, "I'm Yddris's apprentice."
The guard blinked and stood to attention straight away. "Entrance is at that end. We'll unlock it for you."
Jordan hurried along the fence, running parallel to the guard, to a locked outbuilding on the edge of the makeshift defence. Behind the back wall of the outbuilding, the castle's second wall rose sheer and sturdy-looking, and it was hard to believe they had built it with such a large weak point. The courtyard itself was warded, but even that seemed insufficient in the face of the horde outside.
The guard opened the building from the inside, and Jordan stepped into the sweet musty warmth of a stable. There were no horses inside, but droppings littered the aisle between the stalls, suggesting they had been moved further inside recently. Jordan was already too tired to pick his way through the masses of dung, and it hardly seemed like such a bad thing after running through a pile of a dead demons. He kicked it off on the wall on his way out.
"You ever seen anything like this?" the soldier asked over his shoulder. A few of his fellow guards drew in to listen.
"No," Jordan said, "Yddris hasn't either. But it seems like the rune net collapsing has killed most of them."
"There'll be more," a gruff voice said. An older guard, grizzled and scarred, chewed on the end of a tobacco pipe where he squatted on a crate, glaring through the chain-link. "There are always more demons. An' if they got some kinda craze on 'em tonight, they'll be comin'."
Jordan shuddered. "Can you tell me where to find the maids' quarters?"
"The maids' quarters? You're not here to see the lord?"
Jordan thought it was better to sound official, even if he had every intention of dodging Harkenn like the plague if he could. "I am, yes, but there's someone else I also need to talk to."
The soldier didn't look altogether convinced, but forgot his suspicion as something inhuman hollered behind the wall. "The lord will be in the dinner hall to the left of the foyer. Maids' quarters are past the kitchens, carry on till the end of the corridor."
"Thanks." Jordan hurried off before they had the chance to ask more questions. Traffic into the castle was conducted through a small gap in the grand front doors, and as he passed through into the candle-lit dimness of the foyer, he saw two teams of soldiers at either door to open and close them. Wagons stacked with firewood sat all around the vast space, making it appear suddenly cramped. There was no one about who wasn't wearing armour.
He heard Harkenn's voice echoing from the hall on the left. He had no desire to put himself in the lord's path, so he walked briskly in the direction of the kitchen passage and hoped he looked purposeful rather than nervous. Guards barely glanced at him as he went past. He paused at the kitchen entrance and peered inside; a few staff sat inside, gathered around a single candle in their nightclothes in silence. It didn't feel right to disturb their vigil, so he merely scanned the room to make sure Grace wasn't among them and then turned to move on.
He looked over his shoulder as he heard tapping behind him, and found the Angel from the bed in the kitchen coming along the corridor. He was on some crutches slung together out of ropes and piping, and his wings, folded up neatly behind him, gave his shoulders a distinctly pointed appearance. Jordan couldn't help staring; despite all her strangeness, it had been hard to come to terms with the fact that Nova was an Angel. This was like finding out they were real all over again.
"Sneaking around, are we?" the Angel said, dark eyes flashing. He didn't quite smile. "Looking for your...sister?"
"How did you know?"
"It was a guess. Turns out it was a good one." The man leaned forward on his crutches. "She a maid here?"
"Yeah," Jordan said. He hesitated. Something about the Angel didn't inspire confidence. "I'm going down to the maids' quarters."
"I'll come with you," the man said. There was no room for argument in his tone. "I'm also looking for someone, and I think it likely she'll be down there. You can knock on doors for me." He wiggled his crutches and grinned. "Besides, I've always wanted to have a chat with one of you people."
"You people?" Jordan repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Unspoken are the stuff of legend back where I come from. And not the good ones. Never had the chance to talk to a demon hunter and that ignorant wart the lord hires hardly makes very good conversation."
Jordan scowled. "He's my tutor. And it doesn't surprise me that he wouldn't want to talk to a smug prick like you." He paused, surprised at himself, but he found he didn't regret it. His anxiety over finding Grace was mounting, and he could easily have said more, and worse, just to let off some steam, so he made himself turn around and keep walking.
To his annoyance, the Angel followed him, albeit at a distance. He grinned now; if Jordan's words had upset him, it didn't show.
"You're looking for Anarabelle, aren't you?" Jordan said, after a moment of taut silence. His hands couldn't stay still, and his heart was thundering. If Grace wasn't down here, he wouldn't know where else to look, and he couldn't bear the thought of going to Harkenn and seeing that self-satisfied look; that cold smile he'd had on while Jordan signed even more of his life over. "I'm fairly certain she doesn't like you, mate."
"She doesn't have to like me," the Angel said, and finally showed some sign that Jordan's words got under his skin. "She just has to work with me on a few things."
They had reached a narrower corridor lined with doors. Jordan stopped; it hadn't occurred to him that there would be more than one room. He flushed just at the thought of having to knock on each door in the middle of the night, even if he could hear that everyone behind them was awake. It would look suspicious for an Unspoken to be knocking on doors asking for a maid, and that was if they didn't just think he was some kind of creep.
The Angel knew where he was going; he limped past Jordan, heading towards the one open door on the corridor at the far end. At a loss for anything else to do, Jordan followed. As the man reached the open doorway, he swore in a language Jordan had never heard.
There was blood on the floor.
At first it wasn't clear, and then the light of the still-burning fire caught it at the right angle and it gleamed crimson.
"She's been here," the Angel hissed. "But so has that other fucker."
"What other fucker?"
"There was a break-in, a Caelumese spy. Some Orthanian baron got caught with him, by me, of course." Even in his agitation, he managed to look smug about it. "But he got away. I assumed he would have left the castle, but this room's got his stink all over it."
"You...can smell him?"
"No!" The Angel looked him up and down, offensively surprised. "Astral signature. I thought you were supposed to have magic."
Ignoring the heat rising to his cheeks, Jordan said, "What are you going to do, then?"
"What can I do?" the Angel snapped, "You think anyone's got time to look for a slave with demons at the gates?" He sighed, and then his gaze flicked upwards, trying to peer into Jordan's hood. "There's another signature here. And I think when I tell you whose it is you might want to help me out."
Jordan rocked back on his heels, fear like an icy hand around his guts. He looked at the blood on the floor and then back at the Angel, who looked as though he already had all the confirmation he needed. With a short nod, he swung himself into the room and began looking around, lifting sheets with his crutches and peering under the beds. Swallowing hard, Jordan also stepped inside. He had briefly considered denying it, but already knew there was no point.
The only unmade bed in the room had Grace's old bright blue anorak on it, folded underneath her pillow to bolster it. He stifled an urge to be sick, or it might have been a scream. He wasn't sure. Abandoned sewing lay around the place, her bedside table a jumble of clothes pegs and hairpins.
"Who are you?" Jordan asked. "Really?"
The man paused in poking at the fire in the grate. "My name is Jeorge. I'm an acquaintance of Anarabelle's."
"An old one."
Jeorge's face twitched. "Yes."
"Who she hates."
"I would amend that to strong dislike. But yes." Jeorge scowled. "Are you going to help me find them, or just ask questions about things you don't understand?"
Jordan folded his arms quickly in front of him to keep from punching the wall in frustration. He had come here to be with Grace. He hadn't expected that he would find her gone, and worse was that she was now in danger from something he hadn't even accounted for – as if he didn't have enough to worry about.
"I don't know this place very well," he said. "Do you? Where do we start?"
"Servants' passages," Jeorge said, "We should start there."
"Do you know where they are?"
Jeorge bared his teeth and looked away, "No."
Someone screamed in the direction of the kitchens. They both stared at each other for a split second, before Jordan turned and hurried that way. He barely knew what he was doing, and he was almost certain it hadn't been Grace he had heard, but just in case.... His mind raced with awful possibilities. He could hear Jeorge calling for him to wait somewhere behind him, but didn't register the words as anything that should apply to him. He had to get to Grace. He didn't know what he would do without her.
"Alright, ladies and gents," a voice called from the depths of the kitchen. Jordan skidded to a stop just short of the doorway and pressed himself against the wall, straining his ears. "No need to get hurt if you just stay out of the way, alright? This is standard procedure. You all know how robberies work. Stay on the floor and keep your traps shut and everyone comes out safe."
Jordan gestured to Jeorge to stay quiet as he approached. The Angel slowed.
Another voice spoke up that made Jordan's heart stop in his throat. "Take the pans. Pans are useful. And grab a few candlesticks while you're in there."
Usk. The Varthian brute's voice carried through the room as a low rumble, but it was still easy to recognise.
"What are you doing?" Jeorge hissed, as Jordan stuck his head around the door frame. Usk wore a hood and a bandanna that covered half his face, but his yellow eyes were still visible, sharp and wary. Three others were with him whom Jordan had never seen. One had a Devil tattoo on his scalp like Arlen did, only on the back of his head, and another had it on an exposed stretch of forearm. He couldn't see the tattoo of the third man, but he knew it would be there. He should have known something like this would attract them, though how they had made it past the demons he didn't know.
He did know he wouldn't get another chance like this one.
He ducked quickly back behind the door before Usk's sweeping gaze spotted him.
"I need you to hide," he told Jeorge.
"If that's who I think it is, and you're about to do what I think you are, you're dead meat," Jeorge told him, "I haven't been here as long as you have, and I know how dangerous they are. Isn't your sister more important?"
Jordan tried not to flinch, though he knew Jeorge saw it anyway. "If this works, I can find her faster."
The Angel narrowed his eyes. Then they widened. "You're all tangled up with that scum, aren't you?"
"No," Jordan snapped, to no avail. "Listen, I had no choice. Please, just...bear with me. Go hide. Or start searching. Something."
He turned resolutely away. After what felt like an eternity, Jeorge's tapping steps receded in the other direction. They were covered quickly under the cacophony of soldiers shouting and the growing chorus of demon cries. The guards had been right; more had arrived.
Pushing down his terror, Jordan stuck his head out from behind the frame again. He could see now a few prone forms of the kitchen staff on the ground with their hands over their heads. Their candle had been snuffed, but even in the dim light Usk saw him when he gestured.
The man looked in both directions and delivered a menacing glare to someone at ground level as he crossed the room. He ducked out of the door and looked either way, as if to check there was no one coming, and grunted, "Alright, kid? Didn't expect to see you in here."
"Didn't expect to see you, either."
Usk's eyes glinted with amusement. "Could hardly pass up an opportunity to rob that orange-eyed fancy fuck while his back was turned, could we?"
"Give Arlen this," Jordan said, deciding against asking how they'd got in. He was aware time was running out fast, and he still had no idea where Grace was. He dug in his pocket for Yddris's list of contacts. "Wasn't sure whether you meant legs or doctors so there are some of each." He pushed it into Usk's grip and let go like he'd been burned. "Listen, have you seen my sister? I can't find her. There's a Caelumese spy somewhere in this place and she.... There was blood on the floor." He choked over the words, unable to go further.
Usk hadn't looked up from the note the whole time he'd been talking, but now he met Jordan's eye. "Where was she last?"
"Maids' quarters."
The brute nodded. "We'll find her."
Jordan blinked. "What?"
"You deaf?" The Varthian chuckled, and held up the note before pocketing it. "Consider it repayment. He didn't expect you to carry through, and he hates leaving debts unpaid. We'll find her." He winked. "Just give us one moment to loot some more of his priceless silverware."