“You’re back,” yawned the dwarf. “Can’t decide what’s louder, you or the bells.” She raised her lantern to spill the light across Viv’s face.
Viv seized her by the shoulders, leaned in, and kissed her square on the mouth.
“Well, hello to you too, hon,” breathed Maylee.
“What do the bells mean?” asked Viv, and her grim tone startled any remaining drowsiness from Maylee’s expression.
“Fire, maybe? Couldn’t see from here. Nothin’ we can do anythin’ about.” She suddenly seemed to register that Viv was wearing two blades. “Hang on—”
Viv glanced over her shoulder, half expecting some shambling skeletal assailant to stumble up the boardwalk.
“I don’t think it’s a fire. You still have that mace upstairs?”
“Yeah.”
“Get it. Stay awake. Lock the door again after I leave. Don’t let anybody in.”
Maylee narrowed her eyes. “If this is about her, then I should come with you. I can still—”
“No. When was the last time you swung that thing? I just want you safe.”
“Well, I want the same.” Maylee jabbed Viv in the belly with a finger. “Where the hells are you off to anyway?”
“To get a book.”
* * *
Shouts grew more distinct as Viv sprinted toward the fortress entrance. Light bloomed above the walls in a haze of gold, but not from an uncontrolled blaze. Lanterns gleamed on the ramparts, and the bells continued their deafening peals.
At her side, the satchel jerked, and Viv did, too, as skeletal fingers reached from beneath the flap and clutched at her side.
She skidded to a stop and unslung the pack. The homunculus opened the flap himself, his skull and one arm emerging, eyes blazing blue.
“What the hells? The dust—”
“Plenty remained for this,” he said. “Quickly! You must let me out.”
“I’m heading in there, after the book.” She stabbed a finger at the walls. “You want somebody to see you and bash you to bits? You haven’t met Iridia yet. I don’t have time to explain you, and she still doesn’t like me a whole lot. I don’t think you’re going to fare much better.”
“She will not harm me. She cannot. Nor can any mortal inside those walls.” His voice was coldly certain.
The image of a spineback riddled with shards of bone sprang to mind and quelled her flourishing doubts.
“Your Lady might already be in there,” warned Viv.
“If she is, I’d much prefer to meet her on my feet.”
She paused, then dropped to a knee, quickly dusting his bones again for good measure. As he clattered into being beside her, she snatched up the satchel once more. “Let’s go.”
* * *
The entrance to the city was unguarded, and Viv’s fears transmuted to certainty. Satchel kept up with her admirably as she sprinted along the scalloped sand, breath coming harsh but steady.
A short, sharp scream punctuated the shouts and calls.
When she rounded a massive pillar on the near side of the entryway, her footsteps thudding on stone at last, she turned, and a surreal sense of doubling overcame her.
Lanky figures with osseous grins, their eyes pinpricks of blue light, crowded the market street. Gatewardens battled them down the length, and she could have been in the woods again, while Rackam’s Ravens hacked at Varine’s necromantic minions. There were dozens of wights and only half as many Gatewardens on the long thoroughfare. Who knew how many choked the side streets?
“Shit,” she breathed.
“Where is the book?” asked Satchel.
Viv unslung Blackblood and bared her teeth, ready to leap into the fray once more, to batter the wights to dust, to—
“The book?” he insisted.
She growled and shook herself. “Iridia has it. The Gatewardens.”
“We must retrieve it. First.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’re right. Can you do that thing with the bones?”
“Not with these creatures,” he replied. “They are hers.”
“Follow me, then,” she said, and dashed forward.
Doors were barred, townsfolk doubtless quailing behind them, although some hung from high windows, pointing and shouting. Iridia’s Gatewardens desperately held the revenants at bay in the streets below. She searched the melee for any sight of the tapenti but didn’t spot her.
Scanning ahead, she planned her route, and when she drew level with the closest wight, she whipped Blackblood in a diagonal strike that pulverized its ribcage. Its skull went spinning into the distance.
The elven Gatewarden it had been engaged with stared at her in frank astonishment, but she was already gone.
She threaded her way through the mess, finding targets of opportunity and obliterating them like so many rotten tree trunks.
Viv cracked bony legs, hooked her blade through ribs on every backswing, and flung wights into a chaos of gray bone. The blue lights in their eyes winked out as they disintegrated, and she roared in triumph. She didn’t bother to look for Satchel. He would follow, or he wouldn’t.
She remained dimly aware of her goal. Of the book. But present Viv—real Viv—was preoccupied with all the savagery she could deal along the way. She was smiling, exultant, and undiminished.
The last few weeks were a wilderness, but she’d found the road again.
Some part of her rebelled, but it was very, very small.
Viv shattered Varine’s minions with steel stolen from their master.
* * *
She didn’t locate Iridia, but she did find Luca the dwarf. Viv towered in the rubble of a dismantled revenant, floured with bonedust, shoulders heaving with huge indrawn breaths.
“Iridia. Where?” she demanded, while Luca quailed in her baleful shadow as though she were a wight herself.
“I … I don’t know,” he stammered, waving his short-sword vaguely in the direction of the Gatewardens’ garrison. Then his gaze landed on Satchel, and his eyes widened. “Behind you!” he cried, bringing his weapon up.
“He’s with me. Find something else to cut down,” she said.
They left him gaping amidst scattered bones, ragged armor, and gray powder.
At last, Viv spied the tapenti at the vanguard of a group of Gatewardens. They fanned out in a half circle before the entrance to their bastion.
Varine’s wights crowded close, and more poured from the alleys to join them, swelling their eerily quiet numbers. The only sounds of effort and exclamation came from the Wardens themselves, and Iridia’s voice rose above them all, urging her fellows onward. She laid about with her longsword, cleaving bony limbs, the blade trailing plumes of bonedust with every stroke.
Viv dove into the morass with a will, driving Blackblood through unprotected backs, cracking limbs long spent of marrow. For a bare instant she locked gazes with Iridia, and then they both returned their attention to the grim business at hand.
Cutting great sweeping arcs through Varine’s minions, Viv fought her way through the press until she shattered the last foe standing between her and the tapenti.
Iridia was streaked from head to toe with pearly dust, her clattering braids nearly white with it. Her eyes narrowed as she spied Satchel at Viv’s side.