Page 23 of A Kiss of Hammer and Flame

‘We knew that Steward Atriposte shared precious little with those of Cahra’s social class. Information is power in Kolyath.’ Terryl couldn’t keep the disdain from edging his voice, again thankful for the benign workings of his own kingdom. ‘We were fortunate to learn what we could from Atriposte’s court, while we were able.’

‘Before they outed us as foreign spies, tortured us and hanged us in the Red Square, you mean?’ Raiden jerked his head at Cahra’s sleeping form, scowl deepening. ‘She nearly cost us everything. Including your life.’

‘She also saved it,’ Terryl reminded Raiden quietly. The sharp edge to Raiden’s voice, his clenched jaw, the brief, uneasy glances – Raiden might mask his consternation as anger, but Terryl knew fear when he saw it, especially when it pertained to him. Raiden felt it keenly, not only as the Captain of Terryl’s detail, but also as his oldest friend. ‘Besides, our time in Kolyath was always temporary,’ Terryl went on. ‘At long last, we may go home and I, for one, am delighted. It has been too long.’

Raiden didn’t miss a beat. ‘So long,’ he said, ‘that Tyne’s latest correspondence was a raft of reports, which you’ll be expected to have memorised.’

Terryl groaned as his Captain reached for the stack of documents beside their napping guest. He was still contemplating Cahra, who was making tiny snuffles as she snored.

‘What if she truly is the bearer of the prophecy, and of the first omen?’ Her hair was tousled, serving as a pillow beneath her rosy cheek. Terryl sat, curious as to how this young woman, so different from anyone he had ever met, fit into the Oracles’ designs.

Raiden exhaled, glancing at the girl. ‘If she is, it’s one Hael of a feat. Who would have guessed a humble blacksmith from Kolyath?’

‘Who, indeed,’ Terryl murmured, as Raiden handed him the first document.

Terryl leaned back in his seat, twiddling a silver quill between his fingers, trying to focus. There was much news from Luminaux and Commander Tyne’s accounts were brief, which typically meant that things were worse than the man let on. Terryl had also spotted a letter from his sister in the sundry papers and he yearned to tear it open for Sylvie’s candid account. However, Raiden had made him promise to finish the Commander’s reports before Terryl partook in anything else, knowing that he would be expected to be up-to-the-moment on everything concerning the kingdom. Even if he had not set foot in it in years.

It was two years, to be exact, since Terryl and Raiden had arrived in Kolyath following a series of painstaking negotiations with Steward Atriposte’s court. Admittance from outside the kingdom was not entirely banned, as the Steward led his subjects to believe, simply scrutinised given the ongoing war. Yet Terryl’s diplomacy and lucrative offerings from his northern mining operations piqued the interest of the Steward’s court advisors, and over time such calculated overtures led them to permit him entry for a meeting. When things went smoothly, it was not long before Terryl received an official request to supply Kolyath with materials. And so, his people’s subterfuge began.

A tiny shaft of daylight flickered through the window then, catching Cahra’s hair and lighting its strawberry blonde with auburn fire. Terryl studied her, a welcome distraction, surprised to note the soft curves of her face in lieu of her waking vigilance.

He smiled, the thought of Cahra free gladdening him. At least her trade had skimmed good coin from Steward Atriposte’s foul nobility. Her profession, her artistry with weapons, was a defiance in itself, and the thought moved him as he glanced from her to the exceptional longsword that she had bestowed upon him. How had such a talent bloomed in as wretched a kingdom as Kolyath? The question had him flummoxed. But then, the most genuine souls he encountered in the castle city had dwelled far from Atriposte’s mercurial court. Among them, Cahra held a unique place. He found himself ruminating on that. On her.

Such thoughts swiftly prised the tightness from his chest.

Terryl blew out a breath, shuffling his papers, and tried to focus as he retrieved the next report. According to Commander Tyne, the kingdom of Ozumbre had been testing Luminaux’s defences, poking and prodding and gauging reactions, unquestionably sending intelligence back to Ozumbre’s King Decimus. Meanwhile, Luminaux had prospered, but morale was always a fine line in wartime. And his father and sister had endured another colossal clash of egos, this time not about marriage suitors, but Sylvie’s abject refusal to entertain their parents’ matchmaking at all, citing it an ‘idiotic distraction’ from her duties as General of Luminaux’s Royal Army and Commander Tyne’s deputy in charge. Terryl could practically hear Tyne grumbling about being dragged into another family quarrel as he finished reading the Commander’s update.

Terryl pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Honestly,’ he muttered, tossing Tyne’s latest communication to Raiden.

His Captain just chuckled, casting his eyes across it. ‘Welcome home.’

Yet Terryl knew he would not be the only one subject to a scene upon arrival in his native kingdom. Raiden was undoubtedly going to have a punishing time explaining what had transpired today to Commander Tyne. But if Terryl thought that Raiden was overprotective, the Oracles help them once his father got wind of their exploits.

Terryl ploughed his way through the rest of Tyne’s reports, knowing that the faster he digested the information, the faster he would get to Sylvie’s letter. Handing Raiden the last of the documents, Terryl’s fingers clasped the envelope, his sister’s swirling script a comfort given his distance from home still. Raiden handed Terryl a dagger to open it.

As Terryl’s fingers grazed the edge of the envelope, a sudden motion caught his eye. Cahra, still fast asleep, had started twitching.

CHAPTER 11

No, no, no, not again!

Cahra was back, in that place, with the blackness and its chink of light, and the biting stone beneath her fingertips, icy raw, and thatsmell, that reminded her of the tannery in Kolyath, with its acrid reek of curing skin—

She crammed her eyes shut and forced one ravaged breath after another. She was here, in the echoing emptiness of this room that confined her with the terror seeping into her soul at being trapped in the dark forever. Then she remembered the bone piles, trembling. This was no room, or vault, or even dungeon.

It was a tomb.

And she was not alone. Cahra was on her feet now, her muscles tensed to fight, to run, but unlike when fleeing the Steward and Kolyath, there was no escape. She stood, listening but hearing nothing at all. Yet she sensed silent feet padding towards her. Something was coming.

The whisker of light between the doors may as well have been a horizon away in the pitch distance, offering no answers as she begged her eyes to adjust to the dark. She assumed it to be a torch’s flame, and she searched for another, only to glimpse the harrowing bones. Her breath snagged in her chest as Cahra really noticed for the first time how dank, how stale, how positivelyancienteverything felt here.

Then she saw it. A silhouette. She could just make out its tattered garments, swaying as it advanced upon her step by step. Like a cat, with grace, intention, an animal’s gait. Only with the height, the contours of a man. But this was no man, no soldier, no Kolyath guard.

No. This was a predator.

A predator… With fire for eyes.

Fists raised, Cahra leapt back over the dusty, crusty bones that crunched and clattered, and snatched a leg bone from the floor. Those eyes – by the Seers, thoseeyes– they wereburning! And she was going to die here, in this Hael-forsaken place—

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