Soulbinder (Book 3) (21 page)

“
See
her?” Maklavir fumbled with his sword for a moment, trying to pick it up off the ground. “I didn’t even see
you
until you crashed into me. How—”

Kendril jerked back as two more spinning disks slashed into the books near his head.

Two torn volumes toppled to the ground.

“She’s launching them somehow,” he spat. “A spring or tension weapon of some kind. Vesuna’s blood, she’s too fast. I can’t even
see
her!”

Maklavir pushed his back up against the shelves behind him. He turned his head to look between the books. “Neither can I. Tuldor’s beard, I never thought I‘d die like this. Not in a library, of all places.”

“Shut up,” Kendril snapped. He leaned his head out for a quick look, then pulled it back in quickly. “You’ll need to blow the door.”

“Blow the door?” Maklavir glanced nervously around the other end of the bookshelves. “With what?”

Kendril shot out a curse as two more metal blades cut into the side of the shelf.

Loose pages fluttered to the floor.

“Don’t you have your explosive charges?”

“I don’t usually take them with me to the library,” the diplomat responded.

“
Ashes
,” Kendril swore. “Not even one of those grenades of yours?”

Maklavir gave his friend a pained look. “Why in Eru’s name would I need a grenade in a library?”

They both flinched instinctively as three metal disks pummeled into the other side of the bookshelf in steady succession.

One shot tore all the way through. It sliced hard into the opposite wall.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Kendril in a sardonic tone, “maybe for something like
this
?” He fumbled in his pocket for a moment, then yanked out a small bag and tossed it to his companion. “Here, use these.”

Maklavir caught the packet awkwardly in his free hand. He gave it a quick look. “These are bullet cartridges.”

“They have gunpowder in them, don’t they?” Kendril shot back.

Maklavir grabbed several out, ripping the tops off two or three and pulling the bullets out. “I might be able to combine a couple of these, enough to blow the lock…” He looked up at his dark-clad friend. “But even if I do, I’ll get cut down the moment I step out there.”

Two more blades hammered into the bookshelf, knocking several books off the top shelf.

They crashed down onto Maklavir’s head and shoulders, causing the diplomat to swear in an ungentlemanly manner.

“You worry about blowing the door,” said Kendril. “I’ll handle Lady Death.” He spun around the corner of the bookshelf and blasted away with his pistol, then lurched back again.

“Did you get her?” Maklavir asked hopefully.

“Wouldn’t that be just so easy?” Kendril replied, already reloading the firearm. “I’m shooting blind, Maklavir.”

“Well
she’s
certainly not,” the diplomat breathed. “Wherever she is, she has a capital view of us, that’s for sure.” He looped two cartridges together and pinched the ends down. “There, best I can do. It should blow the lock out, if I can get it in there.”

Kendril took a quick look up at the ceiling. He snapped his pistol back into place. “Good. Ready?”

The diplomat stared at him blankly. “For what? I can’t—”

Kendril whirled suddenly out from his hiding place, then fired his pistol up towards the wall above the librarian’s desk.

There was a resounding
clang
as the bullet hammered into the central steam pipe that hung off the ceiling.

The next instant the pipe burst, letting out a roar of steam that spilled out in all directions like a blossoming white flower.

Kendril dove down by a pile of books across the aisle.

Two metal disks barely missed him, slapping into the floor just behind him.

“
Go
!” he shouted back at Maklavir.

“What are you doing?” the diplomat shouted back. “That won’t—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

The glow-globe lights flickered, their white light dimming across the length of the first floor. Steam continued to pour out of the central pipe where Kendril had shot it, dissipating into the cold library air. One by one, the glow-globe lights began to flutter out, first those nearby, and then those further away, all the way down to the far end of the first floor.

In seconds Maklavir and Kendril were standing in almost total darkness.

Maklavir stared blankly up into the shadows around him. “Oh.”

“The
door
, Maklavir,” Kendril urged.

“Right,” the diplomat responded, jumping out from his hiding place. He kicked a fallen book in the dark, almost tripping over it as he crashed into the front door of the library.

Kendril rolled over to the side, then jumped to his feet and slid up alongside another bookshelf.

With night already fallen the first floor of the library was as dark and quiet as a tomb, the glow-globe lights dead without the steam to power them.

Kendril tightened his hand around the handle of his pistol, then glanced back around the other side of the bookshelf through the labyrinth of shadowy bookcases. “Hurry up,” he said in a low voice. The words were almost lost in the continuous throb of escaping steam.

“I’m trying,” Maklavir said irritably. “I can barely see what I’m doing here. This is not easy, you know—”

The assassin appeared suddenly, materializing out of the darkness like a ghost.

Kendril had been watching for her, expecting her, yet even still he was momentarily startled.

She moved with unearthly quickness, her dark cloak flapping behind her.

Kendril fired off a hurried shot, knowing it would never hit.

Still, it came closer than he had any right to expect, burrowing into a bookshelf just in front of the woman’s head.

Kendril took two quick steps back. He drew his sword with his free hand. “
Maklavir
—”

She was on him in a heartbeat, a long dagger in each hand.

He met her halfway, coming at her with the best opening swing he knew.

The assassin parried it with almost effortless ease, then feinted easily to one side before lilting back again.

Kendril stupidly fell for the maneuver, and threw himself off balance for a moment. It was all he could do to block her twisting knife thrust before it caught him in the side.

There were several more quick blows, placed almost more by instinct than sight in the near total darkness.

Kendril found himself pushed back several steps, almost into the librarian’s desk. He set his face, trying hard not to slacken his responses against the woman’s lightning quick blows. One last strike almost sent him stumbling back into the gout of steam.

Like a serpent, the assassin twisted around to slash at Maklavir.

Kendril lunged forward. He blocked the attack with the edge of his short sword just in time.

The assassin snarled through her half-mask. She whipped around again and pummeled the Ghostwalker backwards.

Kendril was just edging around the desk again when he saw Maklavir dodge off to one side.

There was a sharp, sudden flare by the handle of the front door.

A half-second later there was a clattering sound and the door cracked open, letting in a sliver of cold light from the glow-globes outside on the street.

“Got it!” shouted Maklavir triumphantly. He turned to the open doorway.

The assassin spun around and lowered her center of gravity, then swiped at Kendril’s kneecaps.

He tried to parry, but the unexpected swiftness of her move caused him to jump further back then he had intended. He caught his leg on the corner of the desk, toppled backwards, then crashed back into a nearby bookshelf.

He slid unglamorously to the floor as the massive shelf began to topple with an uncertain groan. Books began to pelt down from the top.

Kendril rolled hard, pushing himself back to his feet just as the falling bookcase slammed into the next.

Books poured onto the ground in a gigantic cascade. Dust and pages flew everywhere as the bookcases began to domino, each falling and crashing into the next in line. The crinkling roar of falling books penetrated every corner of the darkened library.

Kendril choked in the swirling dust, dashing back from the pounding disaster zone.

He had lost sight of the assassin. It was only too much to hope that she was under one of those mountainous piles of fallen books.

Kendril ran back towards the front door. He ducked under the gushing steam even as the last shelf was still falling. “Let’s go, Mak—”

He stopped short.

The assassin stood fifteen feet away, the masked half of her face peering over the back of Maklavir’s shoulder.

The diplomat stood completely still, his sword lying on the ground by his feet.

In the small gleam of light from the partially open door, Kendril could just see the faintest flash of a blade pressed to his friend’s neck.

“Give it to me now,” the assassin said in a deathly still voice, “or I cut his throat.”

Chapter 13

“Give you what?” Kendril took a cautious step to the side, his sword at the ready.

“Don’t play me for a fool.” The woman’s voice was flat, almost lifeless. “Give it to me now or he dies.”

Kendril’s left hand disappeared beneath his cloak for a fraction of a second, then reappeared with the golden pendant clenched in his gloved fist.

“You mean the Soulbinder?” His voice was cold now, matching the assassin’s. “I don‘t think so.”

The woman pushed her knife blade closer to Maklavir’s throat. “Then you can watch him die.”

Maklavir straightened, his face white and his eyes wide. “
Kendril
—”

“Nice mask,” said Kendril mockingly. He crossed over towards the center of the aisle. “So what are you? Daughters of Desire? Order of the Turned Face? There’s so many of these little pagan cults popping up or changing names that I lose track of them all. Which pathetic little deity are you sacrificing chickens to?”

“
Blasphemer
,” the woman hissed. “When the Goddess comes your cities will burn and the skies will be covered with darkness. Despair will howl at the doors to your houses.”

“Goddess, eh?” Kendril said as he paced carefully around her. “That would mean Indigoru, then? Or Yaganthru, perhaps? Or maybe one of the minor goddesses? Jakeru? Ulenlenu? The Severed Maiden?”

The assassin glared at Kendril, her eyes glimmering from beneath her bone-white mask. She notched the blade closer to Maklavir’s neck, drawing a small line of blood at the razor tip.

“Give it to me,” she repeated, “
now
.”

Kendril stopped short. His eyes flickered between Maklavir and the woman behind him. He gripped the Soulbinder hard for a moment, his hand clenching on the golden chain.

Without warning, he tossed it forward.

It hit the ground between them, and slid to a halt a few feet away from Maklavir’s boots.

“Get it yourself,” Kendril said coolly.

The half of the assassin’s face that was visible curled up into a snarl. “You’re in over your head, Ghostwalker.”

Kendril shrugged, never taking his eyes off the woman. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

The assassin threw Maklavir forward.

He crashed into the side of a bookshelf, swearing and sputtering as his purple cape spilled up over his head.

No one, however, was watching him.

With a diving tumble the woman shot forward and snatched the Soulbinder off the ground.

Kendril whipped out a flintlock pistol from beneath his cloak and fired.

The bullet skinned across the top of the assassin’s cloak, tearing through the fabric just above her left shoulder, then punched into a bookcase behind her.

She was up in a heartbeat, heading right towards the door.

Kendril was right on her heels, his sword still in hand.

The assassin kicked the door open, rushing outside onto the sloping steps of the library. Without turning she lashed one of her hands back towards the door.

Two small black objects flew back through the air and hit the ground by the doorway just as Kendril arrived.

There were two sharp
bangs
, then two flashes of brilliant light followed by clouds of smoke.

Kendril swore, falling back through the entrance and rubbing his eyes. He tripped back a few feet, then instinctively threw himself off to one side.

It was not a moment too soon.

Two circular steel blades came whistling through the entrance, barely missing him. They skittered off down the floor of the library’s central aisle.

Kendril staggered back to the door, still trying to blink away the spots from his eyes. He stumbled out onto the front steps of the library, the cold night air slapping him in the face.

The street was completely empty.

He glanced down at the ground, and swore again.

The snow was crisscrossed with hundreds of footprints, melding into a muddy frozen mess in the middle of the street.

Maybe Joseph could have found the assassin’s tracks, but Kendril didn’t have the slightest clue where to start.

He dashed down a few of the stairs, blinking the last blotches from his vision as he looked wildly around.

It was as if the assassin had vanished into thin air.

Balancing the sword in his hand, Kendril gritted his teeth and ran back up into the library.

Maklavir was on his feet. He grabbed his sword off the ground and rubbed at the small red line on his neck. “Well that was fun. I always enjoy a nice quiet visit to the library.”

“She’s gone.”

“Hmm. Can’t say I’m very surprised.” The diplomat poked tenderly at his throat. “I think I deserve to know what’s going on here. Are you going to tell me or not?”

“Yes,” said Kendril as he sheathed his sword. He glanced back one more time at the row of fallen shelves and piles of books, then at the broken steam pipe right across from them.

“But not here, and not now. All that noise is going to bring the gendarmes. We don’t want to be here when they arrive.”

Maklavir paled a bit. “No, I suppose not.” He smoothed out his cape, and sheathed his own sword. “Thank you, by the way. For giving the assassin that pendant, I mean. I know it sounds silly, but frankly, with all that talk of yours before, I was rather wondering if you were going to.”