The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)(121)

“Fayazi?” said Ana. “You can move away now. Hurry, please.”

With a strangled cry, Fayazi Haza shot to her feet, shook off the twitch’s grip, and ran across the room. She pressed her back against the far wall and stared back at the twitch, sobbing hysterically.

Vashta looked on, stunned. Then she blinked and steeled herself. “Miljin?”

“Yes, ma’am?” said Miljin, his green blade raised.

“Arrest this person,” said Vashta. “Bind her hands and feet. Immediately.”

“Kol!” called Miljin. “Your engraver’s bonds!”

My hands shaking, I unhooked them from my belt, then tossed them to Miljin. He and the Legionnaires advanced on the twitch, blades held high. She stayed seated behind the table with her hands in her lap, totally still except for her eyes, which kept darting about, reading the room.

“There’s too many of us,” said Miljin to her. He handed the bonds off to a Legionnaire, keeping his own blade pointed at the twitch. “Too many, even for you.”

“I know,” said the twitch quietly. She raised her hands.

“Good,” said Miljin. He kept approaching, making sure his blade was angled toward her. “Keep raising them. Slowly now. Slowly. Slowly…”

I felt myself trembling. A fluttering to my eyes, and I recalled what Miljin had said: You meet a twitch, there’s no training I can offer that’d save you…They were supposed to be unbeatable in combat—for about a minute a day, mind. After that, their muscles wore out and they had to recover…

Then came the awareness of all the folk that this person had killed: Aristan, and Suberek, and poor Nusis…And perhaps Ana’s previous assistant as well, for all I knew.

“Slowly,” said Miljin. “Slowly give me your hands…”

The twitch extended her arms. Miljin nodded to the Legionnaire on his right, who took her by the arm and snapped one end of the bonds about her wrist.

Then they all froze.

A sound from out the window, out in the city, starting low and then slowly growing.

Bells. First dozens of them, then hundreds of them, their high, raucous peals falling over the countryside like a storm.

“Tocsins,” said Vashta hoarsely. “Tocsin bells. But we haven’t yet seen…”

We all looked to the window, and the east.

For a moment there was nothing but mottled clouds; but then a small, flittering green star rose in the distance; and it was joined by another and another, arcing into the darkness and leaving trails of smoke behind, until all the skies seemed swarming with bright, flickering green lights.

“Green flares,” Vashta said quietly. “A leviathan is here.”

The twitch moved.





CHAPTER 38


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I DID NOT REALLY see what the twitch did. The movement was so quick it was barely perceivable, like the flit of a moth’s wing in the shadows. But then there was a scream, and when I whirled to see, there was blood.

The Legionnaire on the twitch’s left was falling to the ground, blood pouring from her throat. The one on the twitch’s right suddenly gasped and coughed, a dark splotch spreading on his chest, and collapsed to his knees. Through the spray of blood I saw her, this dark figure with cold eyes, my engraver’s bonds swinging from one wrist and a long stiletto clutched in her hands, its blade so thin it seemed hardly more than a length of black hair. Where she had gotten her weapon from, I could not tell; she had moved too fast for me to see any of it.

Miljin brought his green blade down on the twitch, and the sword tore through the fretvine floor like it was made of straw. Yet the twitch was already gone, leaping away, her robes rippling as she moved like an acrobat. Then a flicker to her arms, and a third Legionnaire was collapsing, multiple perforations sprouting blood from her torso, like water from a decorative fountain. Fayazi’s engraver was shrieking wildly, diving for cover with his hands clapped to his ears.

The remaining Legionnaires darted after the twitch, trying to encircle her. I saw her pause, her dark eyes flicking about, counting the swords before her.

“Trap her!” bellowed Miljin. “Pin her in! Keep her from moving!”

The twitch looked to the window.

Another volley of green flares arose in the distance. The bells screamed on.

“Strike her down!” shouted Miljin. “Now, now!”

But the twitch bent low, sprinted for the window, darted about the Legionnaires, slid between two of them—and leapt out.

We all stared at the empty window, flummoxed.

“Where did she go?” cried Vashta. “Where in hell…”

Miljin and I ran to the window, peering out into the courtyard. Though the yard was flooding with figures bound up in Iudex blue, the twitch was nowhere to be seen.

“What in hell?” said Miljin. “She vanished?”

“No,” said Ana, standing slowly. “She did not run away, I believe. She went up, rather, climbing the tower.”

“Up?” said Vashta. “What the hell did she climb the tower for?”

“To get into my rooms,” said Ana. “The twitch is here for the reagents key, after all. I said just now that it was in my chest, in my rooms—but this was a lie. What the twitch will instead find there should be greatly surprising to her.”