darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,75
much sway he has in this part of Varya, but I’m guessing we’re going to have most of an army to play tag with all the way from that falls down to the sacred lake. Two armies, if you count whatever the Caeni park on their side of the river. That could make for very slow going.”
“And you think you have some way to speed things up?” asked Triss, who had surfaced to listen shortly after Kelos arrived.
“I do,” said Siri. “Between the Demon’s Brew and, lower down, the Yellowtide, the Evindine runs fast and fairly warm all the way from here to the sacred lake. Given that, why don’t we play at being Vesh’An?”
“That’s got a lot of potential,” said Faran.
The Vesh’An were aquatic cousins of the Sylvani, Others who had forsaken magic after the godwar instead of returning from their ocean halls to the area warded in by the Wall of the Sylvain. We couldn’t change our shapes the way the Vesh’An did—assuming the form of dolphins—but with the right spells we might well use the river as our road west. Breathing water and hugging the bottom could take us far and fast. It wasn’t something I’d have tried on my own—the magic was far too intricate for me. But with Siri and Kelos sorting out the spell work, the chances of us all drowning went down dramatically. . . .
* * *
“Fucking dukes of Seldan!” Jax snarled as soon as she’d finished coughing the water out of her lungs. “Always neck deep in anything rotten in Varya. I still think you should have let me slip out of the river and add a third Seldan to my total back there.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, pointing back up the Evindine. “The duke’s tent was within spitting distance of the river. I could have done it with no one the wiser.”
I shook my head, just as I had earlier when she tried to convince me of the idea via underwater charades. “However clean you got in and out, leaving a dead duke in the middle of an army encampment pretty much screams Blade.”
Siri added, “And not just any Blade, Madam Seldansbane. The fact that you already racked up the father and uncle of the one currently warming the ducal seat is not something that would be missed by anyone thinking about who exactly might have made a corpse of this one.”
“Hey,” said Jax, “I’m not the only Blade ever to kill a Seldan. At least nine of that name have fallen to the order over the years. The Seldan family tree is a poison oak.” She nodded toward Kelos. “Hell, I’m not the only Blade standing on this riverbank who has killed a Seldan.”
“It’s been nearly two centuries since I bagged mine,” said Kelos. “With the seven who’ve fallen since, I doubt they even think of me that way anymore. Especially after the manner in which you left the last one you ended for Namara.”
Jax grinned—a thoroughly bloodthirsty expression. “The goddess told me to: ‘Make of this one an example they will not forget for a generation.’ So, I did.”
“You don’t think that hanging him naked from the bell tower of Shan was a touch beyond the scope of your assignment?” I asked mildly.
“Do they remember his death a generation later?” asked Jax. “Oh yes, I think that they do. Given how much of his history involved rape and murder, I think that stuffing his dick halfway down his throat was an inspired touch. Don’t give me that look! I killed him clean and quick. The nastier bits all happened to the corpse. Now, if you’re all sure you’re not going to let me go back and make this one into my third-time good luck charm, we should probably get moving.”
Jax pointed across the broad lake toward the far shore—invisible at this distance. There lay the ruins of the temple and our order’s best chance of rising from its own ashes. We had a long hike ahead of us. While a straight shot across the bottom of the lake might have served us better in terms of concealment, we had actually crawled out of the river a few yards shy of its mouth. There were things that swam in the deep waters of Lake Evinduin that we had chosen not to disturb just yet. Historically, they had avoided taking Blades, but the goddess was dead, and we did not want to tempt them before we had