Bane of All Things by Leo Valiquette

Author:Leo Valiquette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkshares
Published: 2021-09-07T19:52:11+00:00

Twenty-Six

Ryn discovered that Kara had left the other guards and the initiate-valet slumbering in the bath. She’d even laid low the two in the outer hall and dragged them into the foyer out of sight.

It looked like a clear run down that hallway with the vaulted ceiling and stained-glass windows.

Halfway down, a door opened. Then a bell rang. Not the measured tones that dictated life under the Clerisy’s heel, but the shrill clang of an alarm.

Ryn cursed and quickened his pace. He drew the arming sword he’d borrowed and stomped the first slippered foot that crossed the door’s threshold. His elbow took the owner in the face.

The fellow dropped without a sound. He wore the vestments of an archbishop.

Captain Tovald stood beyond. He fell back and ripped his sword from its scabbard, gaze fixed on Mordyth Ral in Ryn’s left hand. “What have you done, Lieutenant?” He carried a pistol, too, but obviously hadn’t seen any reason to have it primed and loaded.

Ryn had frozen at the sight of his former commander. His shoulder throbbed with a sudden ache. But this wasn’t the jail cell—this time, he had the upper hand. “I’ve ruined His Lordship’s plans for a delightful day.”

“Do you really think you can just walk out of here?”

The crossbow brushed Ryn’s ear as it came to bear over his shoulder. “We don’t plan to,” Kara said.

Tovald scowled. “And you are?”

“A herald of Our Goddess, of course, who brought truth to Aegias through Her angelic host,” she said.

“A witch and now a heretic—I never made you for such an easy mark, Lieutenant,” Tovald said.

Ryn refused the bait. “Drop your sword, turn around, and kneel with hands behind your back.”

Tovald threw his weapon down with a clang and complied with stiff-backed reluctance. “You are being played, son—by the Sword, the witch, and this woman, too, no doubt. Only a bad end can come of it. How many innocents will you feed to that cursed blade along the way?”

“Far fewer than Bucardas would,” Ryn said. He had to believe that. Mordyth Ral couldn’t be left to fall under the Clerisy’s control.

Ever.

The burden of that, the sheer outlandish enormity of it, left him light-headed and off-balance. He leaned back against Kara to steady himself.

We will do nothing more than Need demands, Heir of Aegias.

“The savior of us all—is that it?” Tovald snorted. “Vanity and conceit do blind you. What shameless and self-deluded arrogance. You’re not fit to—”

The absolute certainty, not the scorn, with which those words were spoken grounded Ryn—Tovald’s belief that his former second had proven himself a prideful fool, the self-destructive villain who had to be stopped. Ryn snarled and smashed the pommel of the arming sword across Tovald’s skull to shut him up. The captain slumped out. Blood welled.

Kara knelt and probed under his jaw for a pulse. A tightness in her shoulders eased. “You didn’t have to strike him so hard.”

The alarm continued to ring. Ryn desperately wanted to beat senseless whomever had their hand on the rope. “What good will it do us to be cornered in the jail?”

“We won’t be,” Kara said.

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