Marked for Death

Chapter 59

High above, the airship had stopped bumping around. As Esprл fought to regain control of the ship’s wheel, she saw Te’oma slip her hands from the leather safety straps and walk across the bridge to deal with Xalt.

“You’re tenacious,” the changeling said to the warforged. “I never see most of my victims again.”

She reached out with her foot and kicked the artificer’s hand that clutched the edge of the ship’s deck. Xalt cried out in pain.

“Is it because you’re a warforged?” Te’oma asked. “Are your kind harder to kill?”

She ground her boot down on the Xalt’s fingers, then stomped down on them again. The warforged shouted in agony.

“You are durable,” Te’oma said. As she spoke, she drew her black knife and got on one knee next to where the artificer’s battered fingers still clung to the airship’s bridge.

“No!” Esprл screamed. She had had enough. She grabbed the airship’s wheel and gave the elemental trapped in the ring of fire a nudge. The ship lurched forward.

The changeling howled as she pitched over the aft of the ship. Her black knife tumbled from her hand and spun end-over-end down to the arena floor. Te’oma reached and grabbed at the edge of the shattered railing. The tips of her fingers latched on the last spindle there.

“Don’t do this!” Te’oma shouted at Esprл.

“Drop him!” Sallah yelled from below.

Hope leaped in Esprл’s chest at the sound of the lady knight’s voice. Then, when she heard her stepfather speak, that hope grew tenfold.

“Drop Brendis!” Kandler said. “We’ll catch him!”

“I won’t let you kill him!” Esprл shouted at Te’oma from the wheel. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Over the past few weeks, she’d seen more than enough death. She couldn’t let the changeling hurt anyone else again. She still remembered the look on the warforged’s face when the black knife had slipped into his back, and she was ready to do everything she could to stop anything like that from happening again.

The ship bounced just a bit into the air, and Esprл heard something crash to the floor below. Kandler cried out in pain.

“To stop me, you’ll have to kill me,” the changeling said. “And you’re no killer. You’re-No!”

The railing from which Te’oma hung cracked and gave way. The changeling cascaded back from the airship, the spindle she’d been clutching still in her hand.

“No!” Esprл screamed as Te’oma fell out of sight. She let go of the airship’s wheel, stretching out her hands in a feeble hope of somehow being able to stop it.

The warforged reached up and pulled himself up onto the bridge. Still on his belly, he scrambled across the deck to where Esprл knelt, crying into her hands. He reached out and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No,” Esprл said between sobs. “Did-did you do that? Pull her off the ship?”

The warforged hesitated, then nodded slowly. Esprл felt a terrible mixture of hatred and gratitude toward the warforged. She reached out to hold him and wept into his arms.

“Don’t cry for me, little one,” Te’oma’s voice said from above.

Esprл uncovered her eyes, and she and the warforged looked up to see the changeling hovering over the edge of the bridge on her bat-winged cloak. The girl gasped. The war-forged scrambled up and put his arm around her shoulders and their backs to the bridge’s console.

The changeling glared at the warforged. “Now,” she said, “where were we?”

The warforged stood between Esprл and the changeling. “I will not allow you to harm this child,” he said, his raspy voice trembling with emotion.

Te’oma threw back her head and laughed. She executed a sharp loop with her batwinged cloak and came back to where she’d been before. “You silly suit of armor,” she said. “She’s never been in any danger from me.”

The changeling’s smile faded from her thin, white lips. Esprл shuddered at the sight.

“You, though…” Te’oma said. “What’s your name?”

“I am called Xalt.”

“Well, Xalt, your time is now.”

Xalt reached back to squeeze Esprл’s shoulder and then sprinted toward the edge of the bridge. When he reached the damaged railing, he leaped into the air, pushing off hard, and spread his arms wide like a bird of prey soaring down out of the sky at a hapless meal.

Xalt smashed into Te’oma and wrapped his arms around the hovering changeling. Te’oma screeched with frustration and clawed at the warforged’s back, but he refused to let go, and the pair plummeted to the arena floor like a meteor from the Mournland’s gray sky.