Page 71 of Play of Shadows

I’m dead, I thought, catching the flash of Pierzi’s curved falchion. But instead of steel piercing my chest, it was Pierzi’s boot that struck, hooking my knee, taking my feet out from under me to send me tumbling to the ground. The windwhoomphedout of me as I landed on my back against the hard stone floor, looking on helplessly as the falchion blade swept above me.

Twin sprays of blood arched through the air.

Ajelaine’s scream was earth-shattering– but only for an instant, for Pierzi, seeing her coming at him with a dagger in her hand, had knocked it aside– and his blade found a new sheath in her soft belly.

‘Oh ye gods—’ Pierzi cried like a man who’d regained his sensestoo late. ‘What have I done?’

My head turned and I looked at the little boys, still clutching their throats where the blade had parted flesh. Ajelaine was on her knees, the falchion buried to its hilt in her belly. She was reaching a hand towards Corbier, but it wasn’t love I saw in her eyes now, only crushing despair.

‘Fly, you foolish Raven,’ she whispered, blood dripping from her mouth. ‘Let me die knowing some part of my heart still lives.’

Her soft words drove Corbier to action. He rose to his feet, pulled down the curtain from the bed and threw it over Pierzi and his men like the shroud he swore would soon clothe them for eternity. Without looking back, he leaped through the window, his hand clutching the rope he’d used to climb up less than an hour before, when the world was still a place of daring and mischief, where joy was more than a jester’s false trick.

He slid down the rope and my palms burned from the friction, though Corbier felt nothing. He’d left behind any shred of the man he’d once hoped to be.

As his heels struck the flagstones of the courtyard below, Pierzi’s voice followed. ‘Fly away then, Raven. Let the price she paid purchase a few years more of misery for you. Close the door on the past once and for all and leave this place for ever.’

Corbier gazed up at his former friend, who was looking down on him, still as a statue, even as his lieutenants more carefully climbed down to give chase.

Was that regret in the prince’s gaze, or pity– or shame, perhaps? It no longer mattered.

‘A generous offer,’ Corbier called up to him, ‘but as you see, I have no wings, only these red eyes of mine you have mocked for so long.’ He laughed then, a bitter sound. ‘My whole life I have sought a cure, that my eyes might be as blue as when we were boys together. Yet now I find I do like the red tinge they lend to all within my sight; they show me the world as it truly is: a placewhere blood reigns everywhere, even when we do not see it.’

‘Will you lead your army to Mount Cruxia, then?’ Pierzi asked. ‘My forces are twice your number. Your treason will bring death to your followers and misery upon this duchy, as even now, enemies gather on our border, seeking to steal the lands of our ancestors for their own.’

‘What cares the crow for borders? What cares the rook for armies? Ajelaine is dead. The children I never knew were mine are dead.’ He slammed a fist against his heart. ‘And here I find Corbier too is dead. Only the Red-Eyed Raven remains.’

Before the two lieutenants had reached the ground, Corbier had fled across the courtyard. When he reached the gate, he turned and raised a hand in salute. ‘Where the raven flies, death always follows.’

Those words must have haunted Pierzi as they had haunted Pertine for a century, but it was Corbier’s final glance at the two lieutenants that chilled me to the core. The distance should have been too great, the night too dark, but perhaps Corbier’s famed red eyes were more acute than my own, for in that moment I finally recognised the glinting emblems attached to the smirking men’s collars.

They were iron brooches, fashioned in the shape of orchids.

Chapter 35

Ticket Sales

The curtain dropped.

The sudden shock sent me reeling backwards, and only Beretto’s steadying hand kept me from falling.

‘Tits up, brother,’ he said encouragingly. ‘The real show’s about to start.’

A riotous clamour filled the theatre, confounding my senses. My head was spinning and I couldn’t focus my eyes; all I could see in front of me was a waterfall of crimson blocking out the world.

‘Beretto, something’s wrong,’ I whispered loudly, panic tightening my chest. ‘I’ve got Corbier’s affliction– everything looks red as blood—’

Beretto smacked the back of my head. ‘You’re staring at the curtain.’

I rubbed at my eyes. My galloping breath slowed to a canter and I could see clearly again.

Beyond the velvet wall, the notoriously reserved upper crust of Pertine society sounded as if they were losing their collective minds, judging by the incoherent shouting and arguments echoing around the hall. On this side, everyone was staring at me, apparently waiting for some signal as to whether theyshould hoist the curtain to take a bow or sneak out of the stage door and make a run for it.

Stage door,I thought.We should all definitely be making a run for it.

But Beretto had other ideas. ‘Rejoice, my sisters and brothers,’ he boomed, his deep baritone cresting over the furore, ‘thatwas the show of a lifetime! For a moment there, I would have sworn I felt inside me the very spirit of the miscreant I was playing!’ A fresh trumpeting outburst pierced the curtain, but he ignored the clamour. ‘Although I grant you, our performance was not, perhaps, the one our esteemed patrons were expecting—’

He ducked away from those attempting to pummel him to silence and I took over.

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