Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

that before he took three long steps forward and drove his left sword into her chest. She spat blood at him and it splattered on his shirt and over her own cobalt uniform before she slid down the wall, dead, her impaled arm still held above her.

Tal tugged his swords free. The dead woman slumped the rest of the way to the ground. He bent down and retrieved a ring of keys from her waist.

Why keys? Tal had asked during his second trip to the dungeons, when he was angry with no good outlet and not enough sense yet to hide his emotions. Why not Smith the cells to open at your touch, as they do on the train? It would save time.

The Destroyer had raised an eyebrow, then lifted the key ring and shook it. It gave a sweet tinkling sound like perverse wind chimes. The anticipation of torture is often as effective as the torture itself, she deigned to tell him. They will hear me coming, and they will have time to peruse all possible plans for escape, realize there are none that will succeed, and give me the information my sister needs before I even have to open the cell. Keys are quite practical as time-saving mechanisms.

Running footsteps stomped down the hall at his back, pulling Tal from his memories. He clamped a hand around the bloodied key ring to stop their jingling and then dropped them into a pocket, freeing his hands for his weapons again.

“You there—” started one braying voice from the far corridor, but it cut off when Tal ducked sideways, and the kick that had been aimed at his knee hid the solid wooden desk instead. Converting the momentum of his movement into a roll, Tal dove beneath the oncoming guard’s outstretched leg and swung a sword upward in the process, slicing deeply across the inside of his thigh and severing the vital artery there. Blood—tinted gold this time—sprayed across the floor and ran in rivulets toward the drain. Tal came out of the roll to drive his elbow into the jaw of the second guard who was behind him, and kneed a third hard in the stomach. These would be the guards who had already been stationed in the dungeons. If he was lucky, the guard at the desk hadn’t had time to pull the cord, and further reinforcements would be far enough behind for him to achieve his objective.

Without warning, a heavy tiredness dropped over Tal like a net, and he stumbled. The gold-blooded guard was not yet dead, and was using his power over sleep and dreams to try to render Tal unconscious. Tal sheathed one of his swords, snatched a fallen dagger from the floor, and hurled it at the gold Smith. It lodged in the man’s throat and the veil of exhaustion lifted instantly.

The ploy had given one of the guards enough time to recover from the knee Tal had planted in her gut, though, and she lashed out quickly with her falchion to catch Tal on the arm. Her weapon came back stained silver and speckled with tiny orange crystals. The sight of his forbidden blood tinted with rust phage caught her off-guard and she hesitated for half a second too long, giving Tal enough time to kick her hard in the knee. When she buckled and fell forward, he caught her in one arm and used the other to drive his blade through the slot of her ribs. She shuddered once and then went limp. He dropped her corpse and looked around.

There was still one guard left, the one Tal whose jaw Tal had broken. He was young, only a year or two older than Tal, probably a recent recruit on his first tour of duty in the dungeon. His eyes were wide, the skin around his cheekbones bloodless and taut with terror. He turned and ran.

Tal had had more than his fill of killing, but if he let this man go, he would alert the nearest soldiers and endanger Tal’s mission. Coming to a quick compromise, Tal swept up a fallen falchion from one of the guards and sent it flying after the man, taking him across the ankle and likely severing his hamstring. The man howled and fell to the ground. He would live, but he wouldn’t be moving quickly enough to summon any more guards than were already headed this way.

Tal turned to examine the cells before him. The prisoners who were under active interrogation were kept on the second level down. He strode past the stinking cells on the first level, brushing past their grasping hands, closing his ears to their shouted pleas, promising himself that if he lived long enough, he would return to free them after he had found the people he was here for.

The steps downward were slick and stained, and the smell of the dungeons soured with the scent of vomit. It was a common enough smell down here. On Tal’s fifth trip to the dungeons, he had made it only a little further than this point before he himself had thrown up. That was the day Sarai had accompanied them. She’d made Tal hold the prisoner down.

He stopped and touched a hand to the wall, pausing for a moment to take a shallow breath. How many times had he been in this forsaken place, how many times had he begged his god to release him, to let him flee, to let him fight back? And now he’d returned voluntarily, and there was still such little difference he could make. He might as well still be oath-bound. The Alloyed Empire would go on, with a mercurial empress at its head. He had saved her—maybe, possibly, depending on how one viewed the situation—but he had certainly not saved the empire either through her or from her. Only half of the Unforged God’s promise had been true. He wished now that none of it had been.

Something moved inside him, protesting