Miljin and the Legionnaires made a line before us, swords raised in a wall of sharp steel. “Try it,” he hissed at her. “Try it, and let me take vengeance for Nusi—”
Then the twitch leapt.
I had thought she’d been incapacitated by the dappleglass, but it seemed this was not so; for she managed to vault clear over Miljin and the Legionnaires, landed behind them, and sped straight for Ana and me.
I shoved Ana backward, putting myself in between her and the twitch. The twitch sped in at me, her eyes and nose and mouth now pouring blood.
Yet I noticed—my eyes could perceive her movements now.
She was moving slow. Too much movement, I guessed, for much too long.
I stepped forward, reading her stance, the angle of her shoulders, the bend of her wrist. She went in for the thrust, intending to spear me in my belly—yet I had expected this, for a thrust was all she could do with such a weapon.
My eyes fluttered. My muscles awoke and moved me, dancing me through one particular move…
The trick Miljin had taught me in the Iudex courtyard. His ugly little secret.
I angled my blade along her stiletto; then caught it, trapping it in my crossguard and shoving its point away, while keeping my own sword pointed at the twitch.
I saw her face change, shifting from savage joy to alarm. She was moving too fast. She could not change direction now.
My arm shook as her shoulder met the tip of my sword. She screamed, and I shoved forward, driving my blade through the flesh below her collarbone, severing the ligaments, rendering her left arm all but useless.
Her stiletto fell to the floor. She screamed aloud, shrieking, “You little son of a bitch! You little son of a bi—”
My body moved me again.
I pulled my sword from her shoulder, then raised it and hacked down at her.
My blow was clumsy. The edge did not slash open her throat as I’d intended, but instead smashed into the side of her skull, beside her temple and eye. Her bloody face changed to one of dull shock, the sword penetrating her eye socket and biting through the orb. I watched, mutely horrified, as her eye turned gelatinous and began to dribble down her cheek. She blinked once with her remaining eye, then tumbled forward, ripping my sword from my hand as she did so.
Fayazi started shrieking again, wild, hysterical screams. The tocsins rang and rang, screaming their warnings to us, to flee, to run, to panic, to pray. Vashta was shouting something, but I had no mind for it.
Then Ana’s voice: “It’s not done! Damn it, Din, the bloom’s not done! Get away, get away!”
Miljin bounded forward, picked me and Ana up like we were but toys, and dragged us clear to the Iudex tower entrance.
Then came a familiar, horrid sound, akin to thick fabric ripping. I looked over my shoulder to see a green growth sprout from the base of the twitch’s neck, then surge up about her, tearing her asunder in a burst of dark blood, and enveloping her in a veil of bloody, dark green leaves.
“Oh, Sanctum,” whispered Vashta. “Oh, holy Sanctum…”
Fayazi Haza was screaming again. Her engraver tried to comfort her, but she was having none of it.
“By the titan’s unholy taint,” panted Miljin. “By the titan’s unholy fucking taint…”
Vashta tore her face away from the body hanging in the trees. “We need to evacuate this tower, if your goddamn room’s been poisoned, Dolabra!” she spat at her.
“I left the window open,” Ana said. And the spores lose effectiveness quickly. “It should be vented clear and is now perfectly sa—”
“Shut up!” said Vashta. “For once, just shut up, woman! Miljin—I have a city to evacuate. I shall need your aid in that. But for now, you take that woman to the Legion tower!” she said, pointing at Fayazi. “And you lock her up, titan be damned! The rest of you Legionnaires, with me!”
Vashta and the Legionnaires sprinted off into the city, the sky still screaming with bells and the streets now coursing with folk trying to evacuate. Miljin grabbed Fayazi and the engraver, then turned to me and said, “Get Dolabra to the cart train! Now!”
I was still in shock from all I’d done and could barely make sense of him. “The…the cart train?” I said.
“Yes! To evacuate! Emperor’s blood, there’s a fucking titan making landfall! Go!”
CHAPTER 39
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THE EVACUATION OF THE city was, to use Vashta’s own words, nothing short of a fucking disaster.
Ana and I staggered out of the Iudex tower to find the city had erupted into utter chaos. Every street was choked with carts, with cargo, with people, with livestock, all jockeying for space on the lanes leading west. People bellowed curses over the sound of the ringing bells or cried out news that this or that distant street was clear. Only the Iyalet cart trains presented any kind of order, lined with Legionnaires bearing tall black banners and stretching along the street before the Trifecta, waiting to bear senior officers out of the city.