Eighty Seven: Chaos

"Are we fucked? Serious question." Jordan stared through the window of Harkenn's private chambers at the ranks of Caelumese soldiers blocking them in. More had been arriving by the minute.

Nova was silent for a moment. She'd had a strange look about her since the Angel assassin had escaped. He had thought she was blank before, but this was worse; from merely shuttered to empty. Her throat was coming up in a deep bruise already, adding to the raw, cracked skin where her collar used to be. When she finally spoke her voice was little more than a whisper. "Always a possibility."

Jordan glanced back at the bed. Harkenn looked to be asleep, but if he was, it was restless. The sheets twisted around his thin body and he had refused to let go of the vial that might hold the key to saving his life. Then Jordan turned to watch the door, as he had been for what felt like several hours but couldn't have been more than one. The army outside grew by the minute and he still hadn't seen any sign of Harkenn's soldiers returning, nor had Yddris returned with either Nika or Grace. It was a marvel that so many soldiers had breached the Reach's defences, and at that thought he again felt the swooping in the pit of his stomach, that sick realisation that Marick hadn't lied to him about the portals. He expected to feel glad about that, but since that promise he had discovered how tightly Nictaven had tied him. He would never get out of this world alive, and it had been easier to believe that the possibility had never been there.

If Caelum could send troops with that accuracy, maybe they could get Jordan and Grace home to the right place and time. Only Grace would go alone and he would stay, bound by the magic pulsing in his blood.

He jumped as the soldiers outside pounded on the door again. A small, sorry-looking house guard had gathered in the foyer, but it felt as though the Angels were toying with them. Or waiting for orders. He hoped it was the latter. Varron was under arrest in his rooms down the hall, and Cael was still missing. Perhaps they wouldn't move before they received orders, because they would get through those doors instantly if they had a mind to.

"Weren't the demons enough?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, but Nova answered.

"Sieges are one of my uncle's specialities." She gave a humourless chuckle. "He never had much imagination. His advisers were the ones with all the ideas."

"You think he caused the demon siege?" He shuddered at the memory. The Caelumese terrified him, but nothing compared to the writhing mass of demons he had fought against months before. Had it only been months? It felt like it had been years.

"He's somehow discovered how to make portals with pinpoint accuracy after our people supposedly lost that knowledge for centuries." She shrugged. "And I never thought Cael's abilities were natural. So he could have. It was so unprecedented I would say it's likely."

"Some might say I don't have a right to it. Still saddled with it."

She glanced at him, face softening for just an instant. "It chose you. That gives you more right than any."

"You make that sound like a good thing."

She saw straight through to the point that really bothered him. "If it makes any difference to you at all, he would never agree to do it for you. Not for any price you could pay. And just because he can make portals within Nictaven with this accuracy does not necessarily mean he could replicate it on the scale of worlds. Safely, that is."

It didn't make him feel any better, but then nothing would. Nothing about his situation changed if Lucifer or Marick could do it, would do it, or any other dark-damned option. He still had the Gift. And that meant he was still contracted to Harkenn and Marick. He would still have to kill Silas.

"Will you be alright if I step out for a minute?" he asked. He forced his voice not to crack, though he doubted he fooled her. "I won't go far."

"I'll be fine."

They stared at each other for a moment longer than necessary. He wasn't sure whether to trust her, but he desperately needed air. And a piss. And some sort of outlet for his terror of everything happening. An hour ago, though, she had looked fully capable of killing Harkenn, something about the wildness in her eyes. He wasn't certain how to feel about it, but he hadn't gone through all that demonshit to save the man just for his sister's girlfriend to do him in.

He nodded and walked out, resolving not to go further than the end of the corridor. He leaned on the railing above the foyer and watched guards nervously milling about. One of them had crawled into a corner with his pike and hugged his knees, ignoring everyone around him. Jan appeared with a stack of linens and then was lost to view again. The still and the quiet were incongruous with the rattle and chatter of the waiting army.

Static ran across his whole body and he shuddered. His signal system with Yddris was far more intrusive on this end, but he leapt to it without a second thought, feeling nothing but relief. He flew down the stairs, ignoring the baffled shouts that followed. When he reached the kitchens, he found Yddris and Koen lowering Nika onto a bench. Grace hovered behind, looking pale and scared but otherwise unscathed. Ren rode on her shoulders, the first to spot him arriving. She leapt from Grace to a countertop to the floor and he snatched her up as she bounded towards him.

"What happened?" He enclosed Grace in a tight hug. "Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm alright." She tried to smile but it came out a grimace. "Getting up here was a bit hairy but I'm fine. You?"

"Managing."

She stepped back, wiping a shaking hand across her brow. "Where's Nova?"

Ah, shit. He'd left Nova alone with the lord. "Harkenn's room. He's asleep, so you should go up there. She...I don't think she's doing too great."

Grace paled and hurried away. Jordan turned to the Unspoken, trying to see between Yddris and Koen. Nika's sharp intake of breath was the only evidence he could see of an injury, but then Koen straightened and in his hand was a wad of bloody cloth.

"Nika?" Jordan asked, alarmed. Yddris turned abruptly, as if only just noticing him.

"Get me Jan, boy, he needs stitching."

"No." Nika's protest was feeble. "No, I'll stitch it. I just need someone to hold the edges together."

"Nika..."

"I can't get to all of it without taking my cloak off, Yddris. It has to be you."

"Is it deep?" Jordan asked, kneeling beside the Unspoken. Nika grasped his arm, his grip convulsing as he shifted position. "How did it happen?"

A breathy chuckle. Nika slumped lower on the bench with a sigh and let go of Jordan's arm, and where his fingers had been left pulsing points of pain. Jordan ignored it. Far sharper was the bubble of panic swelling in his throat when the firelight caught the glisten of fresh blood on Nika's cloak. The wet patch seemed far too big. "I effectively ran onto a Caelumese sword trying to get away from a blade that would cut my magic off. Our patrol ran into an ambush."

"Meant for me," Yddris muttered hoarsely. He had stripped his gloves off and now fumbled through Nika's satchel with uncharacteristically clumsy fingers. "Must have been. Fucking night take me, Nika, how much stuff is in here?!"

"Let me." Jordan tugged the satchel from his tutor's hands. Yddris gave it up without argument, snatching the cloth from Koen and pressing it almost tenderly against the slash in Nika's clothing.

"Do you need me to stay?" Koen asked.

"Go," Nika said. "You're the only one up here who can fix that net."

Koen left them. Jordan swallowed. Nika had been ambushed and something up here was capable of breaking nets. He felt a spasm of fear as he watched Koen vanish around the corner, but forced himself to keep his thoughts on task. It left the three of them alone in the kitchens; the staff had all been put to work elsewhere. Jordan found the small pouch where Nika kept his needles and sutures and plucked it out. When he looked up, Yddris and Nika sat with their foreheads almost touching, and Nika's hand had fallen over Yddris's, holding the cloth down.

"I found it," he said, and had the distinct sense that he interrupted something private.

Yddris flinched as if breaking out of a daze. "Good. Go and let Harkenn know what's happened, would you? And fetch that stuff down here so Nika can look at it. I don't think he's getting up there."

"But..."

"Oaths, boy," Yddris reminded him. "It's not personal. Close the door behind you and don't come back in without knocking."

It seemed smarter not to argue. Yddris's voice remained calm, but his aura had filled the room with a sharp crackling, stronger than Jordan had ever known it. He glanced at their hands, and wondered again how he'd ever missed what was between the two of them. "Call me back if you do need help."

He slipped out and closed the door, letting the latch drop behind him. He steeled himself, and hurried back through the throng in the foyer to the stairs.

He found Nova loitering outside the closed bedroom door, scowling. He frowned. "What's going on?"

"He wanted to speak to Grace privately." The Angel shrugged, but still looked deeply unhappy about it. "Your guess is as good as mine."

He hesitated for a moment. He didn't like the sound of it either. He knocked, and the sound echoed in the room beyond. After what seemed an interminable time, the lord's voice carried through to him. "Come in."

As soon as he opened the door Grace came out. She was very pale and hugged herself tight, but when he touched her arm she only smiled as she shuffled past. She took Nova's hand and dragged her down the corridor, and Jordan sent the Angel a silent plea that he hoped she understood. He didn't want Harkenn to start bullying Grace into anything. Not after they'd saved his fucking life.

He stepped back into the semi-gloom of the bedroom and found Harkenn sitting up, rolling the vial in his fingers. There was blood in patches on the floor on both sides of the bed and on the sheets, and window was partially broken. Nova's sword still lay where it had fallen. "Are they back?"

"Yes, sir," Jordan said, "but Nika is injured and can't get up here at the moment. He's asked me to take that down so he can study it."

"Injured?"

"They ran into an ambush, my lord."

"And the soldiers?"

"I...I don't know, sir. I can ask." God, he hated how stupid Harkenn made him feel sometimes. The lord sighed, and then to Jordan's surprise and alarm started getting himself laboriously out of the bed. Jordan hadn't seen him stand in weeks, and while his height was as monstrous as ever, the poison had devastated the lord's body, leaving him all limbs. Under the sheets he had been fully dressed, albeit not as extravagantly as normal. He slipped into the house shoes sitting beside the bed, even though there were bloodstains on them.

"Take me down to him."

"My lord, is that a good..."

"It is not your job to question me, Whisperer. Get me a robe from the wardrobe and stop talking unless I ask you something."

Jordan helped Harkenn into a robe and then offered his arm to help him out into the corridor and down the stairs. The tremor in his hands was not as noticeable as it had been, and though he had to lean harder on Jordan to do so, he managed to present a straight-backed dignity as they crossed the busy foyer once more. Once they reached the kitchen corridor he slumped again, so suddenly that Jordan almost folded from his own exhaustion. He knocked on the kitchen door hard.

Yddris opened it, and visibly startled when he saw the lord. "My lord. Hang on just one moment."

He disappeared from the gap and returned a minute later, gesturing them in. In Jordan's absence they had reinstated Jeorge Nerahardt's old bed and Nika sat at one end of it. Only his unnatural posture hinted at his injury, and the bucket of bloody wash-water and bandage offcuts still littering the benches under the washing lines. Jordan helped Harkenn hobble to the bed and set him gently down on the other end.

"How bad is it, Whisperer?" Harkenn demanded, poking the mattress with clear displeasure. Jordan wondered when he had last been down to the kitchens.

"It didn't get anything important, my lord," Nika replied. He spoke slightly stilted and appeared to be avoiding deep breaths. "But it was quite big. Thorne tells me he found something."

It was a strange sight, the Unspoken and Harkenn sitting on the bed side by side, both peering into a vial of powder.

"I know what this is," Nika said. "It's as I suspected. But I don't know how they got it into you. I've been checking your food and drink meticulously and never found anything."

"What is it?" Harkenn demanded, as some memory tickled at the back of Jordan's mind. That arsehole priest had said something about it.

"When you visited Orthan," he blurted, interrupting Nika. Everyone turned to stare at him. "The priest...Areon...he said they'd spiked your drink on some visit you made to the temple. Something called...Devilcap, I think he said." Somehow he didn't think it was the right time to invoke Usk's name.

"Of course," Nika murmured, staring at the vial in his hand. "It's almost the only time I wasn't with you."

Harkenn stared at Jordan, clenching his fists. "He said this to you?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Then I will have his head. Whisperer, is there an antidote?"

"Not as such, my lord," Nika said, and hurried on as rage suffused Harkenn's face, "but that's not as bad as it sounds. This is a drug, my lord, not a poison. A potent one, mind. For most people it would prove deadly in large doses. It will wear off by itself so long as you continue with your treatments." He audibly swallowed. "You could try a purge, but I'm not sure how much it would do for you. Possibly more harm than good."

"How long does it take to wear off?"

"As the symptoms often linger for longer than the drug itself does..."

"Just cut to the chase."

"You could regain full health in a few months, with plenty of rest and..."

"Months?" Harkenn snapped, grasping the bedpost. "Whisperer, I don't have months spare for dark-damned rest!"

Nika shrank back and hissed in pain, and both Yddris and Jordan stepped forward when Harkenn raised a hand. But the lord only ran it through his hair, leaving it a mess. Strands came away in his fingers. Before anyone had the chance to say anything, a loud splintering sounded from the front doors. The knocking had become so persistent Jordan had been paying it no heed. They all stared at each other, Harkenn's face wiped clean of emotion.

A potboy hurtled into the room and stopped with a cry when he realised who sat on the bed. He dipped into a clumsy bow that almost put him on his face. "My lord. Some of the troops have returned but can't get through to the castle. The Caelumese are breaking in."

"I heard that much." Harkenn surged to his feet and then dropped down again with a groan. He bared his teeth. "Yddris."

"My lord."

"Can you clear our soldiers a path?"

Jordan had never known Yddris to hesitate on Harkenn's orders before. When he spoke, his voice was filled with dread. "That's a huge risk, my lord."

"If my troops cannot get to us, everyone in this castle will die and they will proceed to grind the city underfoot," Harkenn snarled. "Is that not motivation enough for doing it right?"

"I'm not sure I have enough range to..."

"You have an apprentice, Yddris. There is another Unspoken currently fixing my courtyard nets. You have plenty of range."

The realisation of what Harkenn expected him to do was trickling in slowly. The memories of the food store job closed in on him like a suffocating net, reminders of the faint stench of burning skin, the sting of a sword biting through his palm. His abdomen still ached from Cael's abuse. He was exhausted. Where on earth was he going to find the control for this?

But Nika clearly couldn't do it. And he wasn't about to let Grace die here.

"I'll do it," he said. "If you help me."

"Boy, you don't know how to make light without heat. And we don't have time to teach you." Yddris scratched the back of his head and turned sharply away. "But they have us cornered."

"Aren't they wearing armour?" Jordan asked. "Aren't these exceptional circumstances?"

"There are no exceptions for that," Yddris said shortly. "I could stand trial for your mistakes, boy."

Jordan flinched. "Well, we can't just do nothing." He pursed his lips, and then dared to say, "I swear you said that rule was for use against other humans."

A stunned silence followed his words. He couldn't read Nika or Yddris's reactions, but Harkenn's drawn face had pulled into a ghastly grin. "I like the way your lad thinks, Yddris. We'll make a weapon of him yet."

That didn't make Jordan feel any better but the alternative was letting the Caelumese overrun the place, and he was inclined to believe Nova when she said that it was the last thing anyone wanted. No one had ever unsettled him more than Cael had. He didn't want more of that, not for himself or for Grace.

But they could get her a portal.

That thought gave him pause, even as Yddris visibly caved to the order and began conferring in low tones with Nika. A small part of him he wasn't proud of didn't want them to get her a portal, even if he'd been convinced that they would. If they did, she'd leave him behind. She'd have to. And then he'd be alone here for the rest of his life, a thought that filled him with sick horror. He needed that lifeline from home. That reminder that not everything always had to be about how well he could fight.

"How many blades do you have on you?" Yddris demanded. Jordan blinked, and then patted his belt. His fingers brushed over the deadly spike Marick had given him to kill Silas, tucked into the back loop. Beside them were his dagger, his hunting knife and the short sword from the Guildtown.

"Three," he said, swallowing back his guilt at the lie. "But one's a dagger."

"How good is your aim?"

"Not good. Not terrible."

"Good enough." Yddris rummaged in his cloak and drew out three tiny blades. "Have you had any practice with these?"

"No." He eyed them, fidgeting. Somehow these tiny little blades unsettled him more than a knife did. They looked deadlier. Yddris pocketed them again, and instead drew out a small pouch. Inside was a cluster of thin needles and a narrow blowpipe.

"Use these then. Don't touch them without gloves, and don't worry about accuracy." He forced Jordan's fingers closed around the bag. "They have diluted Wight venom on them. Won't kill, but will drop anyone who gets uncomfortably close."

Jordan stared in revulsion at the bag. "Is this why the Caelumese are scared of us?"

Yddris and Nika exchanged a glance. Then Nika slowly shook his head. Harkenn chuckled. "Oh no, boy. This is tame compared to the weapons of the first Annexe War. But in principle, yes. And the sight of those will probably send them running before you use a single one."

Jordan put them in his pocket. Ren licked his ear as a shudder rolled through his entire body.

The door crashed again, and this time the wood groaned. Jordan hadn't seen a battering ram through Harkenn's window; they must have brought one out. A horrible thought occurred to him. "My lord, the tomb isn't guarded, is it?"

Harkenn's eyes met his, even as Nika said, "What tomb?"

"I'll get some of the men in there to barricade the west courtyard," Harkenn said. "Those Caelumese out front will get through or they won't. If the courtyard is breached they'll come for all of you."

"There's a tomb below the west courtyard," Jordan said, to Nika's expectant stare. Harkenn motioned sharply to Yddris to help him up. "And they've been storing those walking corpses in there. Using portals."

"Portals?" Nika repeated.

"I know, it's..."

"That makes so much more sense." The Unspoken let out a shaky breath. "Yddris, you need to find Koen and warn him."

Jan appeared in the doorway and took the lord's arm from Yddris. Harkenn glared over his shoulder at both of them. "Get my troops through, Whisperer. We'll have to play this by ear after that. Jan, I need clothes brought down to me from my chambers."

The kitchen door closed. Yddris stared at it, and Jordan watched him for some cue on what to do next. His entire body hurt and he could have lain down and slept where he stood, but the door made another ominous splintering crack and he jolted back to alertness, adrenaline causing shooting pains in his bruised veins.

"I can't leave you down here alone," Yddris said to Nika. "You can barely fucking move."

"You can't stay with me either." Nika's voice was equally heated. "I got myself here. I can handle it if I need to."

"No, I..."

"Yddris. I'm not asking you."

"And you think I am?" the Unspoken snapped back. "I'm not losing you again, Nika."

The silence that followed was so weighted that Jordan almost felt crushed by it. He tried to creep to the door and slip out unnoticed, but Nika's head turned sharply to the movement.

"I'll give you two a minute," Jordan said. He had his hand on the latch and they were both staring now. Nika made a stricken noise. Yddris fidgeted. It was painful to watch. "Look, I...I know. And it doesn't bother me at all. I won't tell anyone, you have my word on it. But at least stop fucking arguing this once."

"How?" Nika's voice was a harsh whisper in contrast to Yddris's sharp, "When?"

"Does it matter? I've lived with you for months." He didn't think his face couldn't get any hotter. He was taking the exact details of how he'd found out to his grave with him. "I'll let you have some time."

He made his escape, and walked into chaos.

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Regards,

Elinor (S E Harrison)