Chapter 61. Step One: Sneak. Step Two: Fall in a Hole

Chapter 61: 61. Step One: Sneak. Step Two: Fall in a Hole

Nobody spoke.

The wind pushed at the grass.

"Then we take them out," I said.

Velora turned her head. "Explain."

"There’s twenty of them... and we’ve got what, like thirteen riders plus the four of us?"

"But we don’t need to fight all of them... We just need to deal with the ones who can see the cliff and make sure none of them get away to tell anybody." I swallowed. "And we should try to avoid killing the ones who surrender."

For a moment she looked at me with an unreadable expression. Then she gave a short nod.

"A small team," she said. "Four... Myself, Elsbeth, Bryn, and you."

"The Nightclaw will wait on the ridge."

"Wait," said a small voice.

Millie had dismounted and was standing at my elbow, with her hands knotted in front of her. Her ears were flat, and she looked pale.

"I want to come."

"Millie..."

"I can help! I can move fast, and I’m quiet like a bunny."

"I know you can." I took her hands in both of mine. "But if something goes wrong... if they get hold of you, then everything we’ve done is for nothing."

"They want you more than anything right now... I can’t be the reason they get you."

She stared at me for a long moment. I could see her fighting it.

Then, slowly, her shoulders slumped.

"Okay..." she said. "But you have to come back safely."

"Hell yeah~! I’ll come back more than safely."

"Promise."

"I promise."

She leaned forward and pressed her forehead briefly against my chest. Then she let go, and she stepped back beside Bonette, with her chin up and her eyes bright, and this time... she did not cry.

Alright...

I’ll tell you how it went, and I’ll tell you how it went wrong.

It started well.

We crossed the river at the upstream bend, a good two hundred yards from the camp, moving along the frozen bank in single file.

Elsbeth’s ice ran out ahead of us in a thin, silent sheet, muffling the footsteps of the horses we’d left behind, and Bryn drifted forward like a shadow with her bow in her hand.

Velora moved at my shoulder, a tall white-and-gold shape in the starlight, so silent that I kept glancing at her to make sure she was still there.

The first guards went down without a sound. A woman on watch at the edge of the camp crumpled when Velora’s sheath tapped the back of her skull.

A man smoking a pipe by the tents collapsed over his own knees.

Bryn’s arrows hissed out of the dark and found the throat of a sentry in the nearest wagon, and he slumped across the tailboard with a soft thud.

Elsbeth raised her hand, and the frozen ground flowed outward in a pale, glittering web. The wheels of the wagons locked in place.

The horses, tied in a line near the tents, found their hooves sealed to the earth. It was the quietest... most elegant ambush I’d ever seen.

I slipped toward the nearest cage with my hand on Gate Junior, ready to open the door.

But fucking hell... I never got there.

I heard Velora’s boot hit the ground a fraction too hard, and then a sharp crack, like a pane of glass splitting.

I turned my head. A circle of thin ice had spread beneath her left foot, a perfect blue ring, and as I watched... it collapsed.

It was a trap.

A chain-mage’s snare, I realized later, was a pocket of frozen air that gave way under pressure.

Velora dropped into a narrow pit up to her thigh, and the sides of the pit slammed together like a pair of jaws around her ankle. She gasped, once... short and sharp.

I didn’t think. All that matters to me is I straight up dove.

I hit the edge of the pit on my knees and shoved my hands into the sides of it, and I felt the Bulwark Instinct flare around me like a second skin.

The ice walls screamed against it.

They ground inward, trying to crush my wrists, but the pressure held them back by just enough. I reached down with one arm, grabbed Velora around the waist, and heaved.

She came out of that hole like a cork out of a bottle. I stumbled back with her in my arms, and we both sprawled in the snow.

A whip of glowing chain cracked out of the dark and slashed across my ribs.

"NGGHH...!" I flinched.

I felt it tear open the scar from the spear. A hot, bright line of pain bloomed across my side, and I swore loudly and rolled over, putting my back between Velora and the next strike.

A second lash cracked past my ear.

"Leon!"

I froze.

Not at the whip, though that was bad enough. But at the voice.

It had come from right beneath me, and it sounded different.

It wasn’t the clipped, cold command I was used to. And it wasn’t the sneer or the flat reprimand.

But it was sharp, and fast, and it had something raw underneath it.

Velora was staring up at me, her golden eyes wide and her white coat spattered with snow. She had one hand pressed against my arm, and her lips were slightly parted, as if she hadn’t meant to say it.

’Leon... not a debtor... and not human with the lowly words.’

I think I stopped breathing for about a second and a half just by remembering that again.

Then someone screamed, and I snapped back to the fight.

The woman who came out of the nearest wagon was grinning.

She was a lynxkin, tall and rangy, with tufted ears and a pair of curved, double-hooked swords, one in each hand.

She wore a gray-and-gold tabard and a bright, delighted expression, like a child who had just been given a present.

At the base of her throat, glinting in the firelight, was a small crystal. And it was... gold.

"Oh!" she cried, in a warm, cheerful voice. "Visitors! How wonderful!"

"Master Auctioneer will be so pleased!"

I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

’Auctioneer...?’

It was the first time I’d heard the name spoken out loud, and it sat in my mind like a cold stone dropped into a well.

She came at me, smiling the whole way. I got Gate Junior up just in time to catch the first hook against my blade, and the force of it drove me back a step.

She twisted the curved sword, caught the crossguard, and tried to rip the weapon from my hand.

I yanked it free with a grunt, and she laughed, a bright, happy sound, and swung again.

I want you to understand how hard it is to fight someone who is happy. I’d fought monsters, and I’d fought crystals, and I’d fought empty-eyed people who didn’t know their own names.

But this woman... whose name I would later learn was Corra, looked at me like I was an old friend.

She chatted as she fought. She told me my footwork was sloppy, which was true.

She told me she hoped I wasn’t hurt, which was almost sweet.

And every time she said ’Master,’ I felt my stomach turn.

I didn’t want to kill her.

I’d made my decision, standing on a frozen riverbank in front of a heap of broken glass. So I fought defensively, blocking, ducking, and giving ground.

She was faster than me and a lot better.

A hook bit into my sleeve and drew a line of blood across my forearm. Another clanged off my shoulder plate and left it ringing.

"Leon, down!" Velora shouted.

I dropped.

A white blur flashed over my head. Velora had gotten to her feet, limping slightly, and she slid in front of me with her katana still sheathed.

Corra’s hooks came down in a perfect X, and Velora’s sheath whipped up and caught both blades at the crossing point.

The impact rang across the camp like a bell. Then, in the half second that Corra was off balance, Velora stepped inside her guard and drove the tip of the sheath into a spot just below her ribs.

Corra’s eyes went wide. She made a small, surprised sound, like a hiccup, and her swords fell from her fingers.

And then she crumpled forward into the snow.

Velora stood over her, breathing hard, her ponytail loose and her coat torn at the shoulder.

"Nerve cluster," she said. "She will not die... She will not wake for an hour."

"Thank you for that," I managed.

"Do not speak."

"Okay..."