Duel of Fire (Steel and Fire Book 1) (32 page)

“Is it true?”

“Where is the king?”

“It cannot be!”

At the far end of the road a steep staircase climbed upward toward the castle. But instead of taking the royal family up, the four guards gathered in closer and shepherded them downward. Dara hurried toward them. They were too far ahead, and they were going the wrong way.

“Hey!” Siv’s voice rose on the wind. “Take us to the castle. We have to see our father.”

The lead guard shook his head.

“You must come with us.”

Dara broke into a run, drawing the Savven blade. The sheath clattered to the cobblestones.

“I said go to the castle,” Siv commanded.

Instead of obeying, the guards wrenched the princesses away from their brother. Sora screamed. Selivia sobbed and struggled against Farr, who held her by both arms. Two guards moved in closer to Siv. One drew something from his belt. Metal glinted.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Siv shouted.

“The king is dead,” the man growled. “You are next.” He raised his arm, a large knife clutched in his fist, and lunged toward the prince before he could react.

Dara hurled herself down the steps. At the last instant, she sliced her blade between Siv and his attacker. The man let out a bloodcurdling scream, and his knife dropped to the ground. His hand dropped with it.

Sora shrieked. The man whose hand Dara had cut off teetered backwards, stumbling farther down the steep stairs.

Siv wasted no time. He punched Sora’s captor and pulled her away as he fell to the ground. Siv pushed his sister up the stairs.

“Run, Sora!”

Then he tackled her captor before he could draw a weapon.

Farr was dragging Selivia farther down the winding stone steps. The hem of her skirt bloomed red with the blood of the man cradling the stump of his arm.

The final guard stalked closer to Dara, blocking her way. He had golden-brown hair, longer than the standard Castle Guard cut, and he had the lean, powerful look of a seasoned duelist. He drew a rapier from his belt. It was deadly sharp and edged with a thin, burning strip of gold. A Fire Blade.

Dara raised the Savven.

Siv swore as he slammed into the wall of a nearby greathouse, exchanging shoves and punches with Sora’s erstwhile captor, but Dara kept her focus on the man with the rapier. He moved smoothly, comfortable with the deadly weapon in his hand.

Though tired from the competition, Dara’s senses sharpened like a razor. She studied her opponent’s stance, his exploratory taps at her blade. He moved well, but his weapon was thicker than the Savven blade, heavier. She would use that.

Dara attacked. The clang of steel against Fire-infused steel rang over the mountain as the swordsman parried. His riposte missed her by a hair. Dara retreated then counter-attacked as the swordsman lunged for her again. Fast as lightning, he blocked her hit. His lip curled in contempt.

Dara had the higher ground, but it was hard to move on the steps. She held the swordsman off, jabbing at his face when he got too close. She could still see Farr beyond her opponent, holding Selivia by the arm and trying to drag her down the steps. The princess went limp, forcing him to bend down to lift her dead weight.

Dara bounced on the balls of her feet, looking for an opening in the swordsman’s defenses.

Behind her, Siv managed to subdue his man with a heavy-handed punch to the jaw. As the guardsman crumpled to the ground, Siv scrambled back down the steps and plucked the knife from the grip of the severed hand on the ground. Then, still breathing heavily from the scuffle, he took a position beside Dara. They faced the swordsman side by side.

They didn’t speak, didn’t need to. Siv edged one way, Dara the other, then they both attacked.

The Fire Blade blurred with unnatural speed. The swordsman met their combined assault, somehow managing to block both Dara’s sword and Siv’s knife. He retreated downward another step, awaiting their next move.

The man was outnumbered, but all he had to do was hold them off. Selivia and her captor were getting farther away despite her efforts to slow him down. They would be beyond reach soon. This had to end now.

“I’ll handle this guy,” Siv grunted. “Get Sel.”

“Take the Savven,” Dara said. The prince wouldn’t stand a chance if he tried to fight a true swordsman with a knife.

She retreated a few steps and moved the hilt of her blade toward the prince so he could take it from her. As soon as she opened her guard, their opponent lunged for her exposed wrist. She knew he would fall for the feint. She countered with a sudden shot to his upper arm, a pure sport dueling move. The Savven bit into him. The man cursed.

Siv took the opportunity to hurl the knife directly at his heart.

The swordsman’s eyes widened as the blade pierced his body. He dropped the sword from his injured arm and clutched at the hilt sticking out of his chest, disbelief painting his face white.

“Now get Sel,” the prince said, jumping forward to grab the fallen sword. “And keep the Savven! I’ll make sure Sora’s safe.”

Without hesitation, Dara ran headlong down the steps after the fleeing pair. She caught a glimpse of the princess’s skirt swishing around a corner as they left the stone staircase and rushed along a wooden walkway bordering a quiet row of houses. The pounding of their steps echoed across the Gorge.

They were going in the direction of the Fire Guild.
It can’t be!

Farr was taking Selivia to the Fireworkers. Farr, a known ally of Dara’s parents. Farr, the young man who had become such a big supporter of the Ruminors at the Guild of late.

The princess screamed for help. Dara ran faster, despite the shock hammering through her.

The Fire Guild was immense. They would disappear into it. Dara would never be able to save the princess unless she reached them before they got through the doors. But they were too far ahead. She had to do something.

She clutched blindly at the Spark growing inside her, the connection to the power of the mountain that she barely knew how to use. She drew on her fear, her adrenaline, every ounce of focus she had saved up for the Cup championship.

At first nothing happened. She was running on wood, with no time to gather residual power from the stones of the mountain. But the wall beside the boardwalk was lined with Fire Lanterns. Ruminor Fire Lanterns. Dara knew what she had to do. She needed a conduit. The Savven. It would have to work.

Dara stabbed the blade upward, piercing one of the Fire Lanterns as though it were the head of a practice dummy. She yanked the power contained in the core along the blade and into her body. She gasped at the prick of heat as it was injected into her blood. Then Dara curled the Fire into a tiny molten ball inside her and hurled it forward, out of her body and up the sword. It gathered a coating of molten metal as it blazed along the blade. Then she whipped it forward, like flicking a zur-wasp off the tip of her sword.

The little bead of Fire and steel struck Farr on the back of the head and stuck to his scalp, burning a ring in his hair. He cursed and stumbled in surprise. Selivia fell to the ground. Farr spun around, bewildered. He would know someone had just attacked him with Fire.

“Let her go,” Dara yelled.

“Dara?” Farr said, facing her across the walkway. “Don’t you know this is part of the plan? I have my orders from your fa—”

“No!”

Dara pulled. She wasn’t sure how she did it without direct contact with a steel conduit, but she yanked the bead of Fire and hardening steel back toward her. It passed straight through Farr’s skull on its way to her. His eyes widened for an instant, then the life went out of them like a candle being extinguished. He fell.

Dara caught the bead of Fire in her palm and dropped to her knees. She crawled across the rickety boards to the wall and forced the bead of Fire into the stones with trembling hands, leaving the steel residue behind like a thumbprint. Horror filled her. It couldn’t be true. Her father couldn’t be the one behind all this. Not Rafe Ruminor, the city’s most respected practitioner of the Fire Arts. He couldn’t have ordered the prince and princess to be kidnapped, perhaps killed. He couldn’t have been involved in the murder of the king.

Selivia was sobbing incoherently. She didn’t seem to have followed the exchange between Dara and Farr, who now lay dead beside her.
Dead.
At Dara’s hands.

Dara approached them on trembling legs. She took Selivia’s arm and helped her up.

“We have to get back to the castle,” she said urgently. “There may be more of them.”

“You stabbed him?” Selivia gasped.

“You’re safe now,” Dara said, choosing not to correct her. “That’s all that matters. Quickly.”

“Are Sora and Siv okay?”

“They’re fine. We need to move, Princess.”

“It’s not true about my father, is it?” Selivia said. “He can’t be dead.”

“I don’t know,” Dara said. Her heart constricted in her chest at the sorrow and pain on the young princess’s face. This had been Dara’s father’s doing. He had been the one all along. She made herself look down at Farr’s blank face before she walked away.

They hurried back along the boardwalk. They had to get far away from the dead Fireworker before someone spotted them. If her father found out she had been the one to thwart his plans . . . Dara was afraid to follow that line of thought.

They climbed back up the stone staircase. Siv was waiting for them, his eye turning purple from the fistfight. He held the man whose hand had been cut off in a headlock. A trail of blood splattered on the steps indicated he had tried to crawl away. He fell unconscious from Siv’s headlock as Dara and Selivia approached.

The man Siv had punched was still out cold. The swordsman with the golden-brown hair lay dead on the stairs, his comrade’s knife still sticking out of his chest. Sora sat a few steps up, knees pulled up to her chest. Siv had given her the Fire Blade, and she was pointing it at the dead man as if she was afraid he’d rise again.

Selivia cried harder when she saw her brother and sister. She dove into Sora’s arms and sobbed into her shoulder. Siv met Dara’s eyes, full of grief and gratitude. Without speaking, she lowered the Savven and sat on the stones beside him, helping him keep watch over the unconscious men.

Pool and a host of Castle Guards found them moments later. None of the more recent hires were among them. They took charge of the two living prisoners and spread out to search for additional threats.

Pool’s face was thunderous, and he had a bandage hastily wrapped around an ugly wound in his side.

“We have been betrayed!” Pool said. “The Guard is compromised. Heads will roll in the very literal sense of the word. Is that Dara Ruminor?”

“She saved me,” Selivia said.

“You are most fortunate to have such a competent protector. As for this blackguard,” Pool kicked the unconscious man, “he is one of the offending treacherous men in our cohort. When I find the remaining traitors responsible for this grievous—”

Siv stood, and Pool stopped speaking abruptly.

“Is it true?” Siv said. His face was grave, and he looked ten years older in that moment.

Pool inclined his head.

“I am sorry, my prince,” he said. “Your father is dead.”

29.

The King

SIV
walked through mist toward the castle. Twilight descended over Vertigon. Cold wind swept around the little group as they climbed and climbed. The air crackled with electricity, promising one hell of a storm.

Shouts rang over the mountain. Siv’s people were still unsure what had happened this day. The guards murmured amongst themselves, tense and wary. One of their prisoners moaned but didn’t manage to regain consciousness. It didn’t matter. There’d be time to question him later.

Siv’s sisters had stopped crying. Both were breathing in shuddering, shocked gasps. They clung to his sleeves, which were dampened with mist and the blood of his attacker. They clung as if Siv could protect them from the truth they were about to face.

He kept his eyes turned toward the castle. Lights blazed in the tall windows as night fell slowly around them.

Dara walked behind them. He could sense her, even though he didn’t turn his gaze from the castle. She was a solid, warm presence at his back. A burning torch in the darkness.

They had been betrayed. Pool explained it as they trudged onward. The new company of Castle Guards Bandobar had hired were false. The traitorous guardsmen had subdued Pool and the Hurling twins and taken over their posts at the Cup, along with additional conspirators dressed in Amintelle colors. As soon as the news of the king’s death reached the arena, they had whisked Siv and his sisters away. The news had struck Siv dumb, blinding him to the fact that some of the men escorting them were strangers. Dara hadn’t fallen for it, though.

And his father. His father had dropped dead over his noon tea. Poisoned. Siv had always known that was the greatest danger to his family. Not swordsmen. Not duelists he could best if he trained hard enough. A sneaking, treacherous drop of death.

When they reached the gates of the castle, the mists had settled in, thick like smoke. Bandobar, his father’s friend and guard, stood before them.

He dropped to his knees on the stones and held out the hilt of his sword. Siv knew what Bandobar expected him to do. Bandobar had failed. His king, his friend, had fallen. He had hired untrustworthy men. He hadn’t protected the lives in his charge.

Bandobar’s face showed no fear as Siv took the sword from his grasp.

Siv studied the blade as the mist swirled around them. It was a Fire Blade, like the one borne by the swordsman he and Dara had fought, the one he had killed. It could be wielded faster and more accurately than a cold steel weapon. Bandobar had carried it with honor for decades. But it hadn’t been enough.

“Please,” Bandobar said. He stretched out his arms, leaving his chest and throat exposed.

Selivia started crying again. A chill wind whipped across Siv’s face. He remembered what his father had said about wisdom, about the mantle of responsibility for which he should have been prepared.