Redemption's Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

THAT NIGHT, CELESTAINE woke in her cell to a quiet tapping at her door. She was reaching for her sword, which of course they had taken off her; its absence brought back sufficient reminders of her situation and she sat up on the hard bed.

Someone was at her hatch. She went over and squinted in the gloom, seeing a stout man in a Templar’s uniform. Is it time, then? But no, it was the middle of the night, no time to make a public statement. Her heart leapt with hope. Surely she would be taken to the Governor or someone else of influence, and get the chance to talk them round. Perhaps there was some resistance to the Temple’s fundamentalism, and they wanted her as a figurehead. Perhaps, perhaps…

Her visitor grinned at her and she sighed, resting her forehead against the door. “Oh, it’s you.”

“I figured you’d be wanting to make a deal about now,” said the figure who looked like a Templar.

“Did you?”

“I can get you out of here. But you’ve got to do the thing for me.” From behind that solid guard’s face, the Undefeated’s weasel cunning showed through. “Come on, Celest, what’ll it cost you?”

“My good name.”

“I’m a Guardian,” he insisted. “I did things, good things, back before you were born. And who knows what I did in the war? Would it hurt so very much, a little white lie in exchange for not going to the fire?”

Celestaine opened her mouth to turn him down, then stopped herself. Was her pride worth so much? Why not tell the story of the Undefeated standing against the Kinslayer, as he wanted? As he said, who would it hurt?

She felt the tug within her, though, like a fish feeling the hook. “We found you,” she remembered. “We came to you—it was the Wanderer and me. He asked you for help, right at the start. After all, you’d gone strong against the Kinslayer before. And you wouldn’t. You didn’t think we could win. You were scared, you with all your power. You laughed in the Wanderer’s face, Deffo. You laughed in mine. And you were in the shape of a rat at the time, so that was a feat.”

“A badger,” the Guardian muttered. “Why does nobody remember it was a badger?”

“Because I think back and I only remember a rat,” Celestaine told him.

“Ancient history,” the Undefeated whispered, plucking at his fingers. “Water under the bridge. How was I to know you’d actually pull it off? You don’t understand what it was like when the Kinslayer killed the Custodian and ate his power. Before that, none of us had ever died.”

“I’m a mortal,” Celestaine pointed out. “Don’t lecture me about having to die.” She sighed. “You want to be the noble Guardian? Save them, get them all out of here. Maybe I’ll put in a good word, after. There, that’s the deal.”

The Undefeated’s eyes flicked left and right. “There’s no way I can get them out, woman. The Aethani? The Yoggs? No, it’s you I can save, just you, come on.

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