another curse. Bladesinger followed swiftly, saltlocks streaming. Adonai came behind, Sidonius thumping to the dirt beside him last of all.
“What the ’byss was that?” Bladesinger asked, eyes back on the thoroughfare.
“Small tombstone bomb and some black wyrdglass,” Mercurio replied. “Found them in one of Drusilla’s caches. I dropped them into the sugar-floss cart while the lass was making our treats.”
“You blew that poor girl up?” Sid asked, aghast.
“Of course not, you bleeding nonce,” Mercurio growled. “It was mostly smoke and noise. But enough for a distraction. Now, if you’re done being a fucking blouse, we’ve got a daring rescue to undertake.”
The old man dragged himself upright (with Bladesinger’s help) and stole across the garden grounds, his walking stick sinking into the grass. The shrubbery was thick and lush, the fruit trees swaying in the truedark breeze. The old man knew it must have cost a fortune to maintain grounds like this, but all the greenery proved fine cover as the quartet stole toward a servant’s entrance. Bringing his crew to a halt with a raised hand, Mercurio eyed the four Luminatii sentries on duty outside.
The men guarding the door were dressed in the red cloaks and gravebone armor of their order, the triple suns of the Trinity embossed upon their breastplates. They wore the kinds of dour expressions one would expect to be wearing after drawing guard duty during the most raucous piss-up on the Republic’s calendar.
“All right,” Sidonius said. “There’s about forty feet of open ground between us and them. We need to make that distance and end them before they see us. You two stay back here, ’Singer and I will…”
The gladiatii blinked as Adonai drew a long knife from his belt.
“What’s that for?”
The speaker ignored Sid, carving a deep furrow into his wrist. Blood welled in the wound, a long slick of it pooling along Adonai’s skin. His pale brow creased in concentration, and he murmured a handful of arcane, impossible words. The blood formed itself into a long rope of scarlet, pointed like a spear, edged like a blade.
Adonai flung out his hand, sending the sluice of blood toward the Luminatii. Serpentine, glistening, it curved through the air, slicing through the throats of all four guards in quick succession. The men gasped and gargled, sinking to their knees and clutching their severed windpipes. The blood speaker wove his hands in the air like a conductor before his orchestra, and his bloodblade swung back through the air, slipping back into the wound in his wrist.
“… Or we could do that,” Sidonius said.
Bladesinger made the warding sign against evil.
Adonai smiled with bloodless lips.
Mercurio sniffed and spat. “Right, let’s be off, shall we?”
The quartet hurried across the open space and into the servants’ entrance. The gladiatii hid the bodies in a nearby storeroom, while with a wave of his hand and more whispered words of power, Adonai swept the spilled blood up into a long whip of red, which he promptly swallowed with a faint grimace.
“So quickly doth it cool,” he said sadly.
“My heart fucking bleeds,” Mercurio muttered.
The speaker glanced at him sidelong.
“Tease.”
Slipping into the storeroom and locking the door behind them, the comrades stripped off the dead soldiers’ armor and donned it with haste. The gravebone was light enough, but still uncomfortable on Mercurio’s aching shoulders. The helmets were set with long cheekguards and tall red plumes and did a decent job of hiding the wearer’s face. But still …
“You three don’t make the most convincing legionaries,” Sid said.
Looking at Bladesinger trying to squeeze the helm over her nest of saltlocks, Adonai’s lithe frame wearing a suit of armor far too big for him and his own old, withered arms and walking stick, Mercurio was forced to agree.
“Look, this is the grandest gala of the Itreyan calendar,” the bishop replied. “The cream of Godsgrave society is gathering out in that hall, and every servant and slave in this building has their minds on not losing their job or their heads. Walk tall, eyes front, Sidonius, you’re next to me. Anyone stops us, you do the talking.”
“What happens when they find those guards missing?”’Singer asked.
“I imagine an alarm gets raised and the whole Abyss breaks loose,” Mercurio said, pulling on his helm. “So we’d best get moving.”
After a quick peek into the hall and a pause for a flustered serving girl to run past, the four marched out of the storeroom and into the corridor beyond. Boots tromping, red cloaks billowing about them, they marched as if they belonged,