Of Kings and Killers (Elder Empire Sea #3) - WIll Wight Page 0,38
smelled like rotten meat and burning refuse. What was that?
His eyes were drawn to Teach.
She still knelt in the same pose as when she had defended him: kneeling with Tyrfang braced in front of her. Now she held on to the sword with only one hand, leaning on it for support. The plates of her armor had largely been melted away, revealing scarred mail beneath.
But the armor had fared better than her head.
The memory snapped back into place: she had taken Jorin’s blow with Tyrfang. While wearing no helmet.
Her hair had burned away completely, but her skin had been blackened and tightened to her skull. She looked like a dehydrated corpse, preserved in a desert tomb for centuries. What remained of her lips had been drawn tight, revealing her teeth.
The road beneath her was the point of a wedge, inside of which the paving-stones were intact and unharmed. To either side, the street had been melted and blackened, toxic shadows spreading on the ground behind her like a pair of wings.
Calder looked down at the clean stone on which he and Cheska stood. The Head of the Imperial Guard had stood as a bulwark against the darkness for his sake.
Teach had given her life for his.
She hadn’t even liked him.
Cheska was pulling him back, away from Teach, so that he could leave without stepping on the cursed stones. He heaved himself free, moving closer to Teach.
They couldn’t leave her corpse here. If it was the only thing he accomplished as Imperial Steward, he would ensure that she was buried in the Palace, next to the other heroes of the Empire.
A faint, sudden beat, like a single strike on a drum, stopped him in his tracks.
There came another. And then a third, faster.
It sounded like a…heartbeat.
Teach’s eyes snapped open and she inhaled a breath so sharply that it resembled a scream. Her eyes were too wide and too bright in her ravaged face, and as she sucked in air, she stared sightlessly into the distance.
After a long, painful moment in which Calder stared in horror, Teach’s eyes rolled back into her head. Then she pitched backward, her armor falling apart on impact with the ground.
Calder focused his Intent on the crown. “Guards!”
A few Imperial Guards had started running for her already, but now they sprinted, leaping the black part of the street or weaving around.
He forced himself to turn away from the Guild Head. They would take care of her, if anyone could, and there was more work to be done.
Cheska’s attention was still locked on Teach, her mouth hanging open. Calder gently pulled her along with him.
“I thought she was dead,” Cheska whispered. “I’d have bet my left hand…”
“She hasn’t made it out yet. What happened?”
The Head of the Navigators steeled herself and shifted course. “The Independents escaped. Try not to be too shocked, but they had an escape plan. Melted away like dew. We would have chased them, but…”
She waved a hand to indicate their surroundings. The injured stumbled between scarred buildings, separating the dead from the dying.
“And Estyr?”
Calder tried not to swallow too hard as he asked the question. If the Regent had survived, she could come back for the rest of them at any second.
Cheska let out a long breath. “The body’s gone.”
His heart plummeted into a chasm.
“Bliss says the last Consultants to escape were carrying something, but she couldn’t stop them. Jorin covered their retreat.”
Calder wouldn’t have followed after Jorin either. Not after seeing the man blacken stone for dozens of yards.
“How’s Kern?”
Cheska staggered next to him, and he steadied her with an arm. She shivered beneath him, and he remembered she must be as exhausted as he was.
“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “Let’s find out.”
Unsteadily, she turned to the side, toward the inn the Blackwatch had been using as their headquarters. They had turned the inside into a surgery, with wounded on pallets covering every table and every inch of the floor.
The injured were tended by Watchmen without their coats, bandaged Imperial Guards, Magisters in bloodstained robes, Imperial Palace staff still in their livery…anyone who wasn’t too badly injured themselves.
Calder asked a question of one of the Watchmen and was pointed upstairs, toward the room where he had met with Bliss and his mother earlier. They were in there now, standing against the far wall and watching the man on the bed.
Baldezar Kern’s armor had been pried off of him in chunks. His bull helmet lay cracked into two pieces.