Shadows of Asphodel (5 page)

Ardis grabbed the first aid kit from the counter. “That’s it. I’m taking over.”

“I said, I’ll—”

“Shut up and let me do this before you pass out.”

“I’m not going to—”

Ardis dabbed at the wound with a damp towel, and he sucked in his breath. He wasn’t bleeding too badly, but she wasn’t sure he had any more blood to spare. She was impressed he had lasted this long without keeling over.

“Hold still,” she said.

“I am,” he said. “It’s this train swaying back and forth.”

Ardis finished cleaning the blood, then washed her hands and unwrapped the gauze. She tore off a piece, then taped it over the wound. Wendel clenched his hands when she touched him, but he let her continue. She reached around him to wrap a bandage around his chest, and he grimaced when she tugged it tight.

“Are you always this sadistic?” he said.

She glanced at him. “Are you always this delicate?”

He scowled. “I’m so glad you aren’t a nurse.”

“Me, too.”

Ardis fastened the bandage and stepped back to inspect her work. Wendel looked at himself in the mirror, his face white.

“Damn cold in here,” he muttered.

The train jolted on the tracks, and Wendel stumbled forward, catching himself on the edge of the sink. He didn’t look like he was going to stay upright much longer, so Ardis grabbed him by the arm and hauled him out of the bathroom. She let him drop onto his berth. He fell back in a slump, propping himself with his elbows.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not going to pass out?” she said, though her voice didn’t have as much bite in it.

He mustered enough strength for a sarcastic smile. “God, maybe I will. This berth is comfortable. And look, two pillows.”

Ardis raised her eyebrows. She was
not
going to go there.

Wendel’s smile twisted into something nasty. “How was dinner with the archmage?”

“Do you know him?” she said.

He snorted. “I think not.”

“Then how could you tell—?”

“Anyone who stinks of so much foul magic must be at least an archmage.”

Ardis stifled a laugh. “A necromancer, complaining of foul magic?”

Wendel gave the ceiling a look of cool disdain.

“Necromancy,” he said, “is a natural magic. The archmages toy around with spells and tricks memorized from books.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think there’s anything natural about raising the dead.”

He glanced sideways at her. “Natural meaning inborn. Inherited.”

“Ah.”

“I know you think necromancers are monsters,” he said.

Ardis’s throat tightened, and she couldn’t meet his eyes. Yes, that was what she thought, but hearing him say it sounded… unfair?

“But believe me,” he said, “that’s a fraction of the hatred archmages have for us.”

“Is Konstantin your enemy?” she said.

“Konstantin? Is that his name?”

She nodded.

Wendel let himself fall back on the berth. “Perhaps all this blood loss is a good thing. It will make me that much harder to find.”

Ardis made an impatient noise. “Why?”

“My magic is very weak now,” he muttered. “But that won’t stop Konstantin if he blunders too near to me. I should lie low until we arrive in Vienna. Hell, why did that bastard have to take the same train?”

“What happens if he finds you?” she said.

But Wendel didn’t reply, a distant look in his eyes.

“Great,” she said, “two days on a train with a necromancer and an archmage. And I don’t even know why you hate him so much.”

He looked at her, finally, and there was a strange questioning look in his eyes.

“There is a lot to tell you,” he said, “that I would rather not.”

~

The train rattled further into the forest and deeper into the gathering night. Ardis rested in her berth with her pillow against the wall, watching Wendel sleep. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he had tossed off his blankets despite the chilly air. She wondered if he felt feverish. His skin looked ghostly in the weak moonlight.

Ardis rolled over in her berth and stared at the ceiling.

In the back of her mind, a thought lingered like a primitive fear. Don’t close your eyes with a necromancer so near. She knew too little about Wendel, and she never liked the unknown. She should question him in the morning.

Although she had liked their earlier banter.

Damn, had she been alone for so long? Was she that desperate for camaraderie? Sometimes, on her missions, she had gone for days without speaking to another soul. It scared her. Like being a mercenary had made her less human, but she hadn’t noticed until now. Until the necromancer.

Exhaustion muddled her thoughts, and her eyelids drifted lower.

“Ardis.”

There was a great lurch, and a screeching that hurt her ears.

“Ardis!”

She opened her eyes and jolted upright. Wendel stood by the window, a handful of curtains clenched in his hand, and stared outside at the gray forest. Then she identified the screeching as the brakes of the train.

“Why are we stopping?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

Ardis leapt out of her berth and yanked on her jacket. The train shuddered, and she stumbled toward Wendel. He caught her by the arm to steady her. Momentum swung her against him, and her shoulder hit him in the chest.

“Sorry!” she said.

He released her and backed away. “I’ll live.”

Ardis hadn’t meant to be so clumsy, or to sound so concerned. But judging by the roughness in his voice, she
had
hurt him.

“What’s happening outside?” she said.

Wendel looked back out the window, one hand pressed above his bandage. “We must have found one of the holes in the Hex.”

“Holes?” she said. “I thought those didn’t exist.”

He looked at her with a thin smile. “Ah, but I heard gunshots.”

There was a definite note of satisfaction in his voice, like he was pleased that the magic of the archmages had failed in this area.

“Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going outside.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said sardonically.

Ardis tugged on a pair of trousers and yanked on her boots, then grabbed Chun Yi and hurried out the door. She glanced back and saw Wendel slipping that strange black dagger of his into the pocket of his borrowed long coat.

In the hallway, a conductor stopped them. “Ma’am, sir, there’s no cause for alarm.”

“Gunshots?” Wendel said, and he sounded gleeful.

“I’m a mercenary with the archmages,” Ardis said, “and it sounds like there’s been a problem with the Hex here. Let me take a look.”

The conductor hesitated, then nodded and stepped out of their way.

“Impressive,” Wendel said. “You pull off the voice of authority thing well.”

Ardis marched down the hallway and entered the swaying passageway between cars. She slid open the door and walked onto the narrow steel platform just as the train chugged to a halt, hissing and puffing diesel smoke.

Beside her, Wendel leaned over the railing. “So that’s why we stopped.”

Ardis peered into the darkness and saw a truck illuminated in the headlights of the train. It was parked directly across the tracks. A scattering of people stood around the truck, the unmistakable silhouettes of guns in their hands. The beams of their flashlights and lanterns crisscrossed the chilly fog.

“Rebels,” Ardis said. “Do they think they can hijack this train?”

“Apparently,” Wendel said. “There
are
a lot of wealthy passengers.”

Her stomach squirmed. “And the archmage.”

“Oh?” He gave her a look. “Don’t tell me you plan to protect him from those—”

“
We
are,” she said. “You work for me now, remember? And you better be good for a fight, because it looks like they want one.”

He sighed a long-suffering sigh. “Whatever you say.”

One of the conductors hopped off the train and landed in the snow. He approached the rebels with his hands held high. His words were unintelligible to Ardis. The rebels aimed their lights at the conductor’s face. Then their guns.

“What is he doing?” she muttered.

“Negotiating?” Wendel suggested.

“I count seven rebels. And it looks like all of them have guns.”

“Seven?” The necromancer shrugged. “Just signal when you plan to attack them.”

“What do you propose?” She stared sideways at him. “Show ourselves and get shot?”

“Who said anything about showing ourselves?”

There was a shout, and a gunshot cracked in the night. The conductor crumpled in the snow, his blood widening beneath him.

“That sounds like a signal to me,” Wendel said.

Before Ardis could reply, he leapt over the railing and hit the ground running. He loped across the snow, straight into the darkness of the trees. Ardis unsheathed Chun Yi and jumped after him. Her boots fractured the hard crust of ice on the snow, and she dropped into a crouch, but the rebels didn’t seem to hear her.

The rebels were walking nearer, though, along the length of the train.

Wendel reached into his coat and drew the black dagger. With a hissing whisper, tendrils of smoke crawled from Amarant and curled around his arm, his body, his face. His outline faded to nothing more than a shadow.

Ardis’s breath snagged in her throat. She had never seen such dark magic.

Nearly invisible, the necromancer stole along the edge of the trees. She lost sight of him, and followed the creation of his footprints in the snow. He circled around behind the rebels and crept nearer through the forest.

What was he doing? Did he think he could outmatch seven men with guns?

Ardis tightened her grip on Chun Yi and readied herself to fight—or to flee, if the rebels came too close to cornering her. Flashlights swung toward her, and she pressed against the train, holding her breath so it wouldn’t steam the air.

Wendel crouched beneath a tree, lurking behind a rebel man with two pistols. The rebel turned his head. In one sweeping lunge, Wendel smothered his mouth and slit his throat. Blood spurted from the rebel’s neck, and he collapsed in the snow. Wendel dropped, never lifting his hand from the rebel’s mouth.

Shadows from the black dagger swarmed thick and dark over the necromancer’s skin.

At last, he raised his hand. And he raised the dead man with it.

The corpse staggered to his feet, blood slicking his chest, his limbs not yet stiff. His pistols thudded in the snow. The necromancer snatched both guns, then retreated into the shadows. The dead man stood waiting.

Ardis’s heart beat hard and fast in her ribcage. She lost sight of Wendel in the darkness.

The rebel captain’s shout sliced the clear night. He spoke Romanian. Ardis’s mind whirred as she translated the words.

“Search the train,” the captain said. “Take no prisoners.”

Then perhaps they didn’t know about Konstantin, and only wanted to send a message to Austria-Hungary at the cost of innocent lives.

“Ardis.”

She heard Wendel’s hushed voice, and his footsteps behind her. She turned to see the shadow-cloaked necromancer near enough to touch.

“Are you a good shot?” he said.

“I’m American, remember?” she said.

The unnatural shadows gave his smile a sinister beauty. He tossed her a pistol. She caught it, then sheathed Chun Yi.

“Only six rebels left,” Wendel said, “now that one of them is mine.”

Ardis grimaced. She supposed it was efficient, turning your defeated enemies into temporary allies, but it soured her stomach.

“We’re still outnumbered,” she said.

“They won’t see us if you stay close to me.”

She eyed Amarant warily. “How close?”

Before he could reply, a rebel raised a lantern in the face of the dead man. Light revealed red on white, blood dripping into snow.

The rebel stumbled back. “Captain! Luca is hurt!”

Wendel let out his breath in a slow hiss.

The dead man—Luca—swung his arm at the rebel, caught him off guard, and knocked him off his feet. The rebel flew back, skidding across the snow, and the lantern flickered out. The five other rebels ran to his side.

“Keep back,” their captain commanded. “Luca isn’t hurt. He’s dead. Walking dead.”

Ardis glanced at Wendel, and saw his eyes narrow into slits.

Luca swayed on his feet, then charged the rebel captain. Three gunshots to the chest didn’t stop the undead man. He plowed onward as the rebels shouted and scrambled out of his way. At last the captain had the idea to unsheathe a brutish saber. Without ceremony, he severed Luca’s spine.

The dead man thudded on the ground and was silent.

“Necromancy,” said the captain.

Ardis looked back at Wendel. Sweat dotted his brow.

“Don’t overdo it,” she whispered. “You’re wounded.”

“I won’t,” he whispered back.

She felt the heft of the pistol in her hand and judged the distance to the rebels. They clustered together now, watching the shadows, their guns cocked and loaded. She wasn’t sure that killing Luca had been a good idea.

“Take out as many as you can,” she said. “When they return fire, we take cover.”

Wendel nodded and swapped his dagger and his pistol in his hands. The shadows hiding him swirled like storm clouds.

“After you,” he said.

Ardis leaned out from behind the train, her pistol raised, and sighted down the barrel. She aimed for the captain’s head.

A thought flashed in her mind. It had been a year since she had fired a gun. How strange.

She squeezed the trigger.

Her shot went wide, hitting the captain in his shoulder, but it was enough to stagger him. Wendel shot twice. A miss, then a crippling hit. The remaining five rebels returned fire. Bullets ricocheted off the sides of the train and buried into tree bark. Ardis dove into the snow and crawled under the train.

Wendel slid in after her, and dropped his gun.

“What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Take my hand,” he said. “Trust me.”

Ardis wasn’t sure she did, but she took the chance and grabbed his right hand.

Shadows crawled from his skin to hers and slithered over her body. They felt like icy fire. The shadows covered her face, and she gasped, claustrophobic for a second. Her vision rippled before returning grayer than before.