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

He came to the landing. Another guard was there and Tal took him by surprise, sweeping his legs out from under him and then cleanly breaking his neck before he had a chance to draw his sword, or to feel pain. He let the body sag out of his hands and kept moving.

This level was bright. The floor was plated in platinum, Smithed by the magic of light to give off a harsh glow that threw bizarre shadows across the prisoners’ faces and on the ceiling. The light was more merciless than darkness would be—it gave these people nowhere to hide their despair. Cell after cell was filled with men and women who stared hopelessly at him as he passed, shadows carved into their features, stretching the lines of misery around their mouths into a mockery.

At the end of the third row, he found the people he was looking for.

Dark brown hands wrapped around the bars ahead of him. Steely eyes watched him come, as if she had given him an order and he was late in following it. Her short halo of curls was matted and tangled but she still managed to make it look regal.

“Saasha,” he greeted her.

“Tal.” Her voice cracked—with pride, he thought, noticing how her eyes changed and shone. He wondered if her plan had extended this far. If, as she was concocting the poison for Nyx, she had imagined that she would end up here and he would rescue her. Or had she considered her own life as forfeit as her daughter’s? Saasha raised her on those gruesome texts of the ancient Saints’ martyrdoms, he remembered Helenia saying, and he realized then that Saasha had expected all of them to die.

He found he could not quite resent her for it. He had always been willing to sacrifice to save those who needed him, after all. He was not, however, prepared to sacrifice Nyx. For that, he could fault Saasha. He leveled a look at her and saw her recognize the censure in it. The shadows lining her face shifted, painting her expression in unfamiliar lines and ashen hues, and then she spotted his injury and the rust-colored crystals staining it and her expression turned into something complex and unnamable.

“Does she live?” Saasha asked then, quietly.

“Nyx is well,” Tal said, taking pity on her.

“And the Destroyer?”

“Her too. And,” he added, as if the words were being pulled out of him by her relentless gaze, “she will be crowned soon.”

Saasha’s lips thinned, and behind her, one of the other Saint prisoners let out a half-muffled wail. “Then we’ve failed.”

A tumult of footsteps sounded overhead. Distant shouts and cries filtered down as the carnage he’d left behind was discovered.

Tal lifted the key ring so Saasha could see it. They chimed sweetly, silver against bronze against copper. “Which one?” he asked.

“Tell me first: where is Nyx? And when will the Destroyer be crowned?”

Footsteps clattered on the stairs. “It’s not the time for planning more assassinations, Saasha,” he replied, his voice taut.

“The tin one with the crooked teeth,” she said, nodding at the keys. He set it into the lock and opened the door. The Saints gathered themselves up and hurried into the hall.

“Go out the south entrance, down this hall and then to the right,” he told them. “The guards there will be distracted right now by…some things happening on the zeppelin landing towers. I’ll distract the guards here long enough for you to get across the southern bridge over the Entengre; there’s a sled and dogs ready to go at the edge of the scorch woodlands there.”

Saasha was still in the cell. She let go of the bars and backed away, shaking her head, her arms wrapping around herself in a way that made her look uncharacteristically uncertain. “Tell me where my daughter is.”

The guards’ footsteps were growing closer. He stepped into the cell, hissing a breath out through his teeth, and grabbed her by the shoulder to pull her bodily into the hall. She resisted. “Nyx is probably on her way to the palace right now,” he said, since it was apparently the quickest way to get his stepmother free. “Perhaps half a day behind me if I had to guess, and she will likely come here even though she is supposed to be warning the mountain base of impending attack. As for the Destroyer, I don’t know when her coronation will be, but it’ll be soon. Find Nyx and get out of the city before it happens. Your freedom is my parting gift to her.”

Saasha bowed her head. “What will you do?”

“I will get you away from here or die in the attempt. After that…” He hesitated, glanced at the stairs where the first few soldiers were hurrying into the corridor. He hadn’t thought much about what he would do if he lived through this plan. “I will try to find Nyx myself. I want to be with her at the end, if I can.”

Saasha reached out her arms and folded Tal into a hug. Then, suddenly, she spun around and shoved Tal backwards. Caught off guard, he stumbled. By the time he righted himself she was on the other side of the bars. The cell door shut with a thud and the lock slid closed. She tossed the keys down the hall. They skittered and clinked against the glowing floor plates.

He stared at her, wordless. She stepped back. “I’m sorry, Tal,” she said, her voice full of the fierce certainty she had always worn, “but the scriptures are clear. Great victory never comes without great sacrifice, and if Nyx is not an exception, you are not either.”

She turned her back, leaving him locked in the empress’s dungeons with only his ghosts and his god.

THERE WAS A HOLLOW SPACE AT ELODIE’S BACK. It resonated with the melody of missing footsteps, with the way the air moved differently around her now that no one was