darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,4

this one.” She lifted the point of one of her swords to prick the skin at the base of Kelos’s throat.

Kelos shrugged, but didn’t otherwise move. “I’ve certainly earned it. I won’t stop you.”

Faran’s arm remained perfectly still, but a drop of blood welled up on Kelos’s skin and began to roll its way down the length of the sword toward her hand. Tension hovered in the air like the bright moment before lightning rips open a stormy sky. She was a child of nine at the fall of the temple, thrown out into the world to make her own way. None of us had suffered more than she had.

“Well,” she demanded after a few long beats, “isn’t one of you going to order me to back off again?”

“No,” I said, my voice flat.

“No?” She turned her head to look at me, but kept her sword up.

“No. You know all the arguments against killing him as well as the arguments for it. If you aren’t yet convinced, demanding that you change your mind isn’t going to change anything. The goddess told me to seek justice. I say the same to you.”

I waited for the lightning to strike, vaguely relieved that I wouldn’t be the one who had to make that decision. The red drop rolled on down the sword until it finally touched the lapis oval of the guard—Namara’s all seeing eye. It clung there for a long moment, then dripped to the floor like a bloody tear.

Faran muttered a curse and flicked the blade back and up, away from Kelos’s throat. Slamming it home in the sheath on her back, she turned and stalked silently out of the room.

“Interesting play there, Aral.” Kelos raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know whether she’d go for it or not.”

“And I didn’t care,” I replied. “You’re on your own with her from now on.” I followed Faran out.

2

The dead should stay dead.

For six years after the fall of the temple I believed that Kelos had died defending our goddess and our people. Then I discovered what really happened and that he was still alive. I wish that he’d stayed dead.

I had climbed to the top of our little tower, an octagonal deck surrounded by a low wooden wall. The sun had long since set, but the moon was more than bright enough for eyes trained to the darkness, and I could see as well as I needed to. The wall stretched away east and west, its shape picked out by the magelights and oil lanterns glowing along its length, like some phosphorescent eel from the deep ocean.

“I liked him better when he was a corpse,” I said.

“It’s never too late. . . .” Faran’s voice spoke from behind me.

I turned, looking for the deeper bit of shadow I must have missed when I first came out on the rooftop. I found it in an angle of the wall not far from the stairhead. Or, at least, thought that I did—a shrouded Blade is all but invisible, especially at night. I crossed my arms and waited silently. A moment later the shadow thinned and resumed Ssithra’s phoenix shape, revealing Faran, who sat cross-legged with her back against the boards.

She lifted her chin. “It’s really not too late, you know. I could go back downstairs and kill him right now. Or . . . you could.”

“That wouldn’t solve the problem.”

“It would put an end to it.”

“No, it would only put an end to Kelos. It wouldn’t undo the fall of the temple or the death of Namara or any of the other horrors he helped perpetrate.”

And it wouldn’t salvage your memories of the man he was before he did those things, Triss said quietly into my mind. That man is already dead, and with him a part of you.

That, too.

Faran rose to face me, and her eyes were on a level with mine. “Then what is the lesson?”

“Huh?” I asked.

“You took me on as your apprentice, right?”

I nodded.

“So, teach me. How can you stand to let him live after all that he’s done? How can that be right? Namara’s Blades exist to bring justice to those who would not otherwise receive it, those who are protected by power from the results of their actions. Doesn’t Kelos fit the bill?”

“Namara’s Blades are gone.”

“That’s a dodge, Aral, and a pretty bad one at that. You’re still here and the ghost of the goddess told you herself that you should seek justice, that you should continue down the