The Queen of Death

6

Kandler launched himself out of his chair and dashed for the door, but Burch got there before him. The shifter reached out and snatched Esprë back through the doorway by the back of her shirt. He tossed her back to Kandler, who wrapped her in his arms.

“What is it?” the justicar said. As he spoke, he saw Te’oma’s winged form plummet past the Phoenix’s far railing as if she’d been flung from a catapult pointed straight down. The changeling had turned on them, just as he’d expected her to.

Kandler set Esprë down on one of the chairs, right next to where Duro stood. “Guard her with your life,” he told the dwarf.

Duro wiped the soup from his beard with one sleeved arm then hefted his axe with the other. A sharp nod told Kandler he understood. The other dwarves pulled weapons of their own from various stashes located around the room. They hadn’t looked armed when Kandler and the others had entered the place, but the justicar had suspected that they wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave themselves defenseless.

Kandler drew the dragonfang sword and made for the door, but a signal from Burch held him up short. The shifter had already stopped Sallah as well, despite the fact that the knight’s eyes burned at least as hot at the blazing sword now crackling in her fist.

Using the complex set of handsigns they’d employed on the battlefield during the Last War, Burch told Kandler there were people on the roof—at least three, maybe more. In battle, they’d used the signs because the clash and clang of such conflicts made it hard to hear anyone do more than howl. Since then, though, they’d often used the signals to communicate when they didn’t want to disturb the surrounding silence.

Kandler pointed to the two, wide unshuttered windows that stood to either side of the doorway. Burch winked then slipped over the sill of the one to the right. Kandler headed for the one on the left. As he went, he gestured for Sallah to walk straight out through the door.

“Of course,” she said, understanding. “I’m the one wearing all the armor.”

The tension between the two of them had disappeared, rent to pieces by Esprë’s scream, the fragments displaced by the current crisis, whatever it might be. Kandler found himself feeling grateful for that and then hating himself just a bit for finding he preferred facing danger alongside Sallah rather than dealing with her head-on.

There was no time for that now. He slipped over the windowsill and peered out at the Phoenix. He couldn’t see Xalt or Monja, and the realization made him ill. He thought he heard a scream being carried farther away, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just a trick of the winds rushing through the canyon.

Sallah strode out through the doorway and stood there under the eaves, her armor clanking and scraping as she moved. Even as well built as the armor of the Knights of the Silver Flame might be, it sounded as loud as a military marching band compared to the movements of Kandler and Burch. When Sallah stopped, though, Kandler heard nothing but the soft whispers of the whirling winds and the hungry crackle of the knight’s blazing blade.

Burch waved for the other two to freeze. The shifter cracked his neck, the pupils of his yellow eyes squeezing together into slits as he let the animalistic part of his nature take over. He pulled back his lips in a silent snarl and stretched his neck back and up until his nose pointed straight up at the eaves overhead.

The shifter raised his crossbow, moved one step to the right, and pointed it toward the eaves. Then he pulled the trigger.

The bolt slammed through the shingles overhead and stuck there, embedded halfway. From above, someone shouted in pain.

Kandler gripped his sword tighter and watched Burch slap another bolt into his crossbow as he slipped back over the windowsill. Sallah looked at him, a question on her lips. Before she could ask it, though, a figure swung down from the edge of the roof and slammed into her, knocking her back into the inn.

Kandler only got a glimpse at the figure, but what he saw was horrible. It was shaped like a man, but its skin was as pale and drawn as that of a long-dead corpse. Kandler turned to charge after Sallah and her attacker, who’d already gotten closer to Esprë than he would have liked. Before he got three steps, though, two more of the ghost-faced intruders flipped down from the roof and landed in front of him.

Both of the newcomers looked like the one who had just flitted past. They wore identical outfits, loose-fitting clothes the color of wet ash, with a headpiece that wrapped around the skull, exposing faces that looked to have been painted to resemble grotesque skulls.

Ready for battle, Kandler slashed out with the sword he’d taken from Ibrido. The serrated blade passed through the nearest intruder’s chest like a scythe through wheat. Kandler expected the creature to ignore the wound and come howling at him, but instead it fell over with a soft gurgle, clutching at the blood pouring from the open wound as if it held some hope of keeping it from spilling from its body.

Kandler brought his sword back up and saw the other creature lying next to its compatriot, a crossbow bolt jammed through the front of its throat and jabbed out of the back of its neck.

Burch was already reloading his weapon. The shifter scowled down at the two cooling corpses as growing pools of blood stained the decking around them. “Bleed better than any undead I’ve ever—”

Three bodies swung down from the roof. The first hit Burch in the head as he tried to duck away. The momentum knocked them both through the window behind the shifter and into the inn. Then the second and third followed close behind, tumbling after the others.

Kandler started after them as three more of the attackers swept down from the roof at him. His lurch toward the open portal put them behind him, and they landed on the decking like a giant knocking on a door: bam, bam, bam.

Kandler turned and glared at the three assassins as they fanned out to try to surround him. They meant to cut him off from the others inside.

The justicar glared at his attackers—and heard the sounds of battle erupt from within the inn—when he realized that the people facing him were not some Karrnathi nightmares forged in a necromancer’s terrible lab. He could see their eyes—blue, brown, and gray—and he could hear their panting breath. While they looked like some sort of undead, they were as alive as he was.

Kandler knew then that Esprë could handle herself in the inn. With Sallah, Duro, and Burch by her side, not to mention the dwarves who ran the place, she had little to fear. Monja and Xalt, however, were another question.

One of the assassins’ blades licked out at Kandler. Instead of charging the attacker and being forced into taking on three blades at once, Kandler spun on his heel and raced straight for the Phoenix. He smiled as he heard the footsteps of his attackers pursuing.

As Kandler dashed up the gangplank that led to the Phoenix’s main deck, however, his grin vanished. Just as his feet left the dock, one of the assassins leaped at the justicar. Long, spindly arms wrapped around Kandler’s legs and brought him to the plank. His fangsword spun out of his hands and landed on the ship’s deck.