The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

T
wo Immortals were waiting outside the door. They dragged me downstairs, where Darius had been tied to a chair. A blue
qarha
was wound around his mouth. At least two dozen more soldiers filled the room. Up close, the daēvas’ infirmities were more obvious. Missing ears and eyes, contorted limbs. Still, they were formidable, battle-hardened men. Then I saw Tijah.

She glanced at me, and looked quickly away. What had Ilyas told her? I couldn’t believe Tijah would turn on me, but she’d let them bind Darius and was making no effort to stop this. As usual, Myrri just stared off into space.

Ilyas walked over to Darius. He seized a fistful of hair and lifted his face up.

“I’m aware that you have a high threshold for pain,” he said. “But know this. What you feel,
she
feels. If you continue to be obstinate, we’ll try it the other way around. So I’ll ask you one last time: where’s Victor?”

Darius glared at him. Then he shut his eyes. As in the audience chamber at his trial, he seemed almost serene. I realized with terrible sadness that he’d learned a long time ago to accept this as his fate. Torture was a known quantity and he didn’t fear it.

I did though. My stomach clenched when Ilyas rolled up the left sleeve of Darius’s tunic. He unsheathed his knife—the same knife that I longed to bury in his throat—and proceeded to cut into Darius’s withered arm. A muffled groan escaped the
qarha
but I felt nothing. Even as blood ran down his arm and dripped to the floor.

What had he said?

It’s numb. Like it’s not even
there.

I released a breath and twisted my face in feigned distress, inwardly shaking with relief that Ilyas had chosen that particular spot. He probably thought the infirmity would make the pain worse. Darius made a show of straining against the ropes that held him. Tijah’s eyes were rooted to the floor, her face tight, but still she didn’t intervene.

Finally, Ilyas ripped the
qarha
off. I could see he was frustrated. That his cool façade was starting to fracture.

“Where is Victor?” he hissed.

Darius glanced down at the mess of his arm. “All right. If you must know, he said he was off to have some sport with your barbarian mother. I hear she—”

Darius’s teeth rattled in his head as Ilyas cracked him across the face. He raised the knife and I suddenly knew that Darius wanted Ilyas to kill him before Ilyas decided to put
me
in that chair.

“Please,” I begged. “Please don’t, Ilyas. Please. He didn’t mean it.”

Ilyas turned, hatred burning in his grey eyes. “Is she right, Darius?” he asked softly, not looking at him but at me. “Did you not mean it?”

I searched Ilyas’s face for some sign of humanity, although I should have known better by that point. He didn’t flinch from my gaze. He harbored no guilt, no mercy. He was
enjoying
himself. And I knew then that he planned to watch me as Darius died.

I kicked the soldier who was holding me in the shin and began to struggle wildly. He swore and lifted me off my feet in a bear hug. I saw Tijah take a small step forward, hand on the hilt of her scimitar, as the candles guttered. A breeze swept the room. It smelled strongly of the sea, and the night-blooming flowers in Kayan Zaaykar’s garden. The Immortals stiffened, half drawing their swords.

Victor appeared in the doorway, incandescent with rage. An avenging angel—or devil, I no longer cared which. Only that he slayed them all where they stood. But he didn’t move. And then I noticed the glint of metal at his wrist. The three missing fingers.

Someone gave Victor a hard shove and he stumbled into the room.

“We caught him trying to climb into an upstairs window, captain.” It was Lieutenant Kamdin, the one who had taken me to visit Darius in the dungeons. I cast him an imploring look. He seemed troubled at the scene in the room, but then his face hardened again.

“Victor’s cuffed?” Ilyas blinked in surprise.

“We set a trap. He walked right into it.” Kamdin sounded as astonished at his luck as Ilyas.

“Give it to me,” Ilyas said.

Kamdin flicked a catch and the cuff on his own arm opened. It was one of those designed for battle, to be removed at will. Ilyas snapped it on his wrist, just above Tommas’s, and Victor gritted his teeth. At least he was smart enough not to attack. They would have just beaten him senseless.

I watched a mix of emotions wash across Ilyas’s face as he registered the bond. Distaste, but also triumph and a strange sort of contentment.

“Make ready to return to Persepolae,” Kamdin told his men.

“No,” Ilyas said.

“But—”

“The King asked for Victor’s head.”

Silence greeted this statement.

“He’s too dangerous to live,” Ilyas said softly.

“We didn’t expect to take him,” Kamdin said. “Perhaps he should be returned for questioning.”

“Did the King not give me command of this hunt?”

Kamdin’s lips thinned. “Yes, captain.”

“I think his son should be the one to do it. He claimed loyalty to the empire. What better way to prove it?” Ilyas wiped his blade clean on Darius’s tunic and sheathed it. “Bring them both outside.”

The sky to the east was blushing pink as we assembled in the courtyard. Kayan Zaaykar was also dragged out from a back room. He looked a bit roughed up, but not badly injured. He held his head high, as if the Immortals trampling his garden were invited guests. A man determined to die on his own terms.

“Single combat,” Ilyas announced. “Cold iron only.” He looked at Darius. “If you think to use your weapon on anyone besides Victor, I’ll take the rest of her arm.” He moved to stand just behind me. I felt his knifepoint at my back.

“Leave the girl alone!” Kayan Zaaykar cried.

“Shut up, old man,” the soldier holding him grumbled.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We all know he’s going to kill me anyway.”

I could tell from their faces that the Immortals were uneasy with the situation. But they were the empire’s most elite soldiers, trained to obey without hesitation. This was not the first brutality they had witnessed and it wouldn’t be the last. Two of them stepped forward and laid their swords on the ground. Not as an act of protest. So Darius and Victor could pick them up.

As the first molten sliver of sun broke the horizon, I saw a white speck in that expanse of dark ocean. The
Amestris
.

Turn back, I thought, my heart a stone in my chest. Turn back or they’ll kill you too. But the captain had no way of knowing. He would make port and Immortals would be waiting for him. I knew Ilyas. Once we were disposed of, he’d tear this town apart. A large ship belonging to the traitor Kayan Zaaykar would hardly escape his notice.

“Arm yourselves,” Ilyas ordered.

“If you do this, he wins no matter what happens,” I said.

Ilyas’s knife dug deeper. Not breaking the skin, but a hairsbreadth away.

Darius went for the swords first, his face expressionless. From the moment they had seized us, he hadn’t stopped probing, trying to touch the nexus. A dozen of the Immortals in blue—the daēvas—kept their eyes on him at all times, I noticed. They were doing something to contain him. If only I could figure out what…

Victor and Darius now stood in the center of a loose ring of Immortals. Their gazes were locked but neither had raised his weapon.

“What is in it for me?” Victor asked casually. “If I win?”

“You keep your head long enough for the King to pass judgment on you. You’re one of his most prized breeding stallions. He might even spare your life.” Ilyas’s knife moved from my back to my throat. “
Fight
,” he said.

Metal rang on metal as Victor suddenly stepped forward and swept his blade in a lightning arc at Darius’s head. Darius got his own blade up just in time to parry the blow. They circled warily, testing each other’s skill. Despite his two-century-long confinement, Victor hadn’t forgotten the finer points of swordplay, I saw with a sinking heart. His missing fingers didn’t seem to hinder him the way Darius’s arm did. This was the man who had killed more Druj in the war than any other daēva, and it wasn’t just by using the power. He was an expert opponent. And Darius had lost a fair amount of blood.

The Immortals moved back to give them more room, and then the duel began in earnest. So fast I could hardly follow it. Only the clash of iron and grunts as they went at each other in a frenzy. I wanted to scream at them to stop it, but the tip of Ilyas’s knife was pressed to the tender spot just below my ear and I feared to make even the smallest movement.

The sun rose higher and still they fought. Darius staggered with exhaustion. Victor was slowing too, but he had six inches of height on his son and a longer reach. Finally, Darius lost his footing on the dew-slick stones. He fell to one knee, bringing his sword up to vertical. In an instant, Victor had hooked his own blade around it. He twisted the hilt, sliding down the outside of Darius’s blade, then jerking it in towards himself. Darius’s sword flew through the air, landing a few feet away. The tip of Victor’s own blade now rested against Darius’s heart.

“An entertaining match,” Ilyas said. “Finish it then.”

Victor turned. “Go to hell,” he said, throwing his sword to the ground.

Darius looked up in surprise. Then Victor was doubled up on the ground, writhing in pain, as Ilyas punished him with the cuff.

“Pick up your sword!” Ilyas grated at Darius. “Finish it or I’ll do it myself!”

I scanned the faces of the Immortals. Lieutenant Kamdin was scowling, but to defy Ilyas would be tantamount to mutiny. He’d be executed himself.

Darius crawled over to his father, trying to keep him from injuring himself as he flailed on the stones, jaw clenched tight. Victor didn’t want to give Ilyas the satisfaction of screaming, but every nerve in his body was alight with agony. Tears of impotent rage sprung to my eyes. There was no limit to Ilyas’s insanity. He was a rabid dog loosed among us, and no one had the courage to put him down.

And then a thin, girlish figure slipped quietly through the ranks of the Immortals. Her brown eyes were not so dreamy now. Not at all. She made a hand sign at someone behind me. Forefinger and thumb touching in a circle, followed by a quick flick of the wrist. I knew it meant
now
.

The knife at my neck drew a pinprick of blood, then fell away as a sword erupted through Ilyas’s chest. Not a regular sword. This one had a wicked curved tip. A scimitar.

Kamdin reacted instantly. “The cuff!” he bellowed. “Get it back before he dies!”

One of the Immortals, a giant of a man wearing the red, dove for Ilyas’s falling body. An invisible wall slammed him back. Myrri. My mind raced, even as my heart filled with a savage glee at Ilyas’s agonized cries. The cuff…

I threw myself on top of Ilyas, fingers fumbling for the catch.

“Hurry!” Tijah shouted. She stood over me, scimitar raised in a fighting stance. The daēva Immortals still trained their focus on Darius, holding him back. They couldn’t work the power to attack me. But the rest now stormed toward us, weapons out and teeth bared in snarls.

I felt around the rim of the cuff. It seemed smooth. Unbroken. But I had seen Kamdin open it. Ilyas twitched weakly, his grey eyes finding mine. He opened his lips and a bubble of blood escaped. He was trying to speak, but I didn’t care what he had to say.

I ran them underneath a second time. My fingers touched a slight indentation. I pressed it and the cuff popped open. What would happen when one person bonded two daēvas? I had no idea, but I was about to find out. I snapped the cuff around my own wrist just as the first wave of Immortals hit us.

Victor. He surged into me, all fury and vengeance, like a thunderstorm breaking after months of drought. The rush of power through the bond swept away whatever had been blocking Darius. He too filled with it, to bursting, and I stood trapped between them, opposing forces both sucking power through the cuffs at the same time. It was like standing amidst two oceans crashing together in a narrow strait.

I literally went blind for a moment, my senses withdrawing from the onslaught like a rabbit hiding in its burrow. Power swirled around me as Victor and Darius lashed out at the Immortals, and their daēvas retaliated in kind. My whole right arm felt frozen solid. I had the disorienting sense of being in
three places at the same time
.

I forced my eyes open just as the huge Immortal who had first tried to take the cuff loomed in front of me. He reached for my arm. I couldn’t let him take it.
I couldn’t
…If they got Victor back, we were lost. It was only his fearsome strength that was keeping their superior numbers at bay.

Without knowing exactly what I was doing, I reached though the twin bonds, through Victor and Darius both, and let go of myself just as I had in the woods when we hid from the Immortals. I reached not for the power, but for the nexus itself. The place where all things were one. The sounds of fighting faded away. I felt the cool morning air on my skin. Smelled the tang of the sea. A place of perfect calm and emptiness.

That shining pool ran into me and I understood that you could only touch it by surrendering. Victor had tried to tell me that, in his own way.

I sensed invisible lines girding the earth, a web leading north and south, and watched as a flock of geese passed overhead, following those lines as if they could see them too. I felt the movement of the sea and everything that swam within it, the quiet contentment of Kayan Zaaykar’s flowers as the sun kissed their petals. Things were solid, but not solid. The stones beneath my feet also had air, and the air contained water, and the water in turn had particles of earth. The strands of these three elements coiled and undulated, separate but weaving together in an intricate tapestry of matter as far as the eye could see.

And underneath all of that was a humming, crackling thing, like a deep ocean current. Not an element, but a
force
.

This awareness coalesced in an instant, although it seemed much longer. The Immortal’s hand still reached for the cuff. He had fine brown hairs on the backs of his fingers, and a small moon-shaped scar on his wrist. I felt his heart pumping. The ebb and flow of his blood through his veins. And with a thought, I reversed the direction of it. He made a terrible croaking sound and fell to the ground, muscles jerking. That force, whatever it was, flared like the lake at the Barbican when the High Magus tossed a torch into its volatile depths.