“Who is this girl that she’s worth being hunted for the rest of your short—” he stopped. “She’s Doll Girl.”
“Yes, master. I’m sorry.”
“By the Night Angels! I don’t want apologies! I want obedien—” Durzo held up a finger for silence. The footfalls were close now. Durzo blurred into the hall, inhumanly fast, his sword flashing silver in the low light.
His sword flashed silver? Retribution’s blade is black.
There was the sound of something metallic rolling across marble toward Kylar. He raised a hand and felt the ka’kari slap into his outstretched palm.
“No! No, it’s mine!” Blint yelled.
The ka’kari pooled like black oil in an instant.
What had Durzo just said? The silver was another fake. You stole my ka’kari. Not a silver ka’kari at all. A black ka’kari. The ka’kari Durzo had been carrying for years, hidden covering the blade of Retribution.
The ka’kari choose their own masters. For some reason, the black ka’kari had chosen Kylar. Maybe had chosen him years ago, the day Durzo had beaten him for seeing Doll Girl again. That day, when a blue glow had surrounded the black blade. When Durzo had shouted, “No, not that! It’s mine!” as incandescent blue fire had burned into Kylar’s fingers. Durzo had thrown it away from Kylar so Kylar couldn’t complete the bond, because once Kylar completed the bond, Kylar wouldn’t call the silver ka’kari for Durzo. Now they knew he hadn’t called it because it had been a fake. There had never been any ka’kari in the city except Durzo’s black.
And Durzo had known from that very day that if he let Kylar live, the black ka’kari was lost to him forever. Durzo had even left it for him tonight so that Kylar would have a chance.
But now it was too late.
Durzo looked like there was more he wanted to say to Kylar, some way he wanted to vent his anguish. But he’d never been a man of words.
Instead, mere paces away, he hurled the knife at Kylar’s face.
Time didn’t slow.
The world didn’t contract to the point of the spinning knife.
But despair flash-boiled in the heat of an insane hope in Kylar’s heart. He didn’t even notice his hand come up, didn’t know how it had broken free, couldn’t say how the ka’kari had gone from the blade on the floor into his hand. It was just there.
In that unslowed fraction of a second, black goo flipped from his fingertips and splattered across the knife spinning toward his chest like spit against pavement.
When Kylar looked again, the knife was just gone.
Ting.
Kylar looked down to see what had made the sound. The ka’kari was rolling across the floor coming toward him. It wobbled as it rolled and when it climbed up his boot and dissolved into his skin, Kylar felt a rush of power.
With a mental shrug, Kylar burst through the phantasmal hands holding him to the wall. Settling smoothly on his feet, he extended a hand toward his old master and released the power arcing through him.
Durzo was hurled away as if all the force of a hurricane had been unleashed in his face. He tumbled end over end, sliding and rolling across the room until he slapped against the wall.
With the Talent, Kylar caught up Retribution and brought it to his hand.
“Don’t fight when you can’t win,” Kylar said. “And don’t fight when you don’t want to win. Right?”
Durzo struggled to his feet and stood, weaponless. He took a ready position and smirked. “Sometimes you have to fight.”
“Not this time,” Kylar said. He raised the sword and came forward at a run. Durzo didn’t move; he just looked Kylar in the eye, ready. At the last second, Kylar dodged to the side and dove through the window into the moonlit air whipping the north tower.
One of those men on the boat had been Roth.
57
L ogan had no intention of letting anyone use his sack for a coin purse, much less Roth Ursuul. In fact, he intended to kill the bastard. He wasn’t worried that he was unarmed and still naked—Roth had supposed it would strip him of his dignity—rage gave him power. All the cruelty and depravity and horror Logan had seen in the last day had transformed him. He would be a man again, later. Now he was hard, crystal-clear frozen rage. Logan figured that even with his hands bound he could kill both guards. With the fury that was arcing through his body, he didn’t think there was much of anything that could