Soulwoven

Chapter Fifteen

~15~

Litnig felt a crushing sensation followed by a horrible release, and he was thrown off of the man and into the air. He hit the ground hard, skidded across rough flagstone until he slid into the side of a building. He couldn’t breathe. His arms and legs flailed madly when he tried to get them underneath his body. His chest felt like an anvil had fallen on it.

He managed to get his hands under control, grabbed the sharp white stones of the wall behind him and pulled himself to his feet. The shadows swam in front of him. The soulweaver—he had to find the soulweaver before—

An arm encircled his shoulders.

“Just breathe, Lit, breathe…”

Cole.

No—he thought, but he could not speak. His brother began to rub his back.

“Yenor’s eye, Lit, what happened? Did you get jumped or—”

Litnig shook his head and gestured violently toward the alley.

“Nothing there, Lit. Relax. Just breathe.”

Litnig stood and watched the darkness. His eyes cleared. Nothing moved in the shadows.

Relief sank into his bones like a lead weight. He was in no shape to fight a soulweaver. He didn’t even really know how to. Stupid. So stupid not to have realized what was happening in the inn and turned back then. So, so stupid.

Cole slipped his head under Litnig’s arm and took his weight. Litnig’s legs buckled underneath him. Every breath felt like sucking down a gob of fire.

“C’mon, Lit. Hells!”

Cole dropped him, and Litnig fell to his hands and knees. The pavement swam in front of him. He realized he was coughing.

“What in Yenor’s bloody name happened?”

Litnig took a few, halting gasps.

“The waiter,” he rasped when he trusted his voice enough to speak. He took another breath in three parts, sat down, and leaned against the side of the building. Cole’s face looked ashen in the shadows. It occurred to Litnig that his brother had chased after him without understanding why he was running.

“That waiter—” His breath came a little easier. He found the sorest spot on his chest and rubbed. “He was spying on us. And he was a soulweaver.”

Cole went stone still.

A warm breeze kicked up along the street and whirled dust and grit into Litnig’s face. The plate dripped nameless muck onto the street from above. A rat scurried by somewhere in the shadows.

And Litnig continued to breathe.

“Yenor’s eye, Lit.” Cole swallowed. He put both hands on the back of his head and stared at the ground, then the plate, then the alley, and finally back at Litnig. “He could have killed you.”

A denial reached Litnig’s lips, but he didn’t voice it. There was real, solid fear in his brother’s eyes. Fear he had never seen there before.

Litnig took his hand off of his chest and stared at his palm. Gravel from the street had lodged in it. He was bleeding.

He hadn’t even felt the pain.

#

Ryse Lethien faced a wretched excuse for a fire in a wretched room in a wretched inn in a wretched city and felt utterly wretched. She sat in an old, splintering chair that creaked under her weight. Dil, Quay, and Len stood around her in a semicircle.

She had known—the shaved heads, the unusual quietness, the way the River had bent around them—she had known what their waiters were, but she had not wanted to believe it, had not wanted to fight two necromancers in close quarters in the middle of Nutharion City. And because of that fear, she had failed. Again.

That was new, the fear. A few weeks before, she would have faced any threat calmly, with the knowledge that Yenor was behind her. But after the Old Temple, she could think only of the dead, of the dragon’s horrible, smiling face, of her training and how it had failed her, and of how she had been so wrong about so many things.

And now she had told Litnig and Cole that she could protect them, and she had been wrong about that, too.

Her pale hands gripped the black limbs of the chair. She trusted nothing the Temple had taught her, she realized.

Not even my own power.

She took a shaky breath. A mug of tea that had long grown cold sat on the floor next to her. Dil had made it for her after the others had helped her into the chair.

Ryse shut her eyes. She was supposed to be strong. Yenor was her ally.

For a moment, she doubted.

And even as she did, the placid, loved feeling she had always associated with her god’s presence washed over her. Her fear melted away. Her breathing slowed down. She looked up from the flames and heard heavy footsteps, was unsurprised when the brothers Jin entered the room a moment later.

They looked terrible. Cole’s face was a color of gray she had seen only in the rawest recruits of the Academy. Litnig’s was little better. His left hand was rubbing his chest.

She frowned. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine, Ryse, it’s just a bru—”

She rose and put her hand on his chest. His skin felt hot through the fabric of his shirt.

“Let me see,” she said.

His hand wrapped lightly around her wrist. “It’s fine, Ryse. Really.” His voice was quiet, filled with more concern for her than for himself.

She turned away from him before he could see her frustration. She wanted to scream at him to just let her help him, that all she wanted was to bloody well make up for the mistake that had gotten him hurt in the first place.

Instead, she turned to Cole. The younger Jin brother’s eyes were fixed on the wall.

“And you?” she asked.

Cole jerked as if he was surprised to find her in front of him. His voice sounded far away. “Fine,” he mumbled. “I wasn’t even there.”

Ryse returned to her seat before the fire unused, unwanted. She heard the brothers telling their story to Quay, heard the prince and Len discussing what it meant, but she knew already.

Necromancers. It was the only explanation. While she had been worrying about Len, necromancers had been looking for them and necromancers had found them.

The words of the others filtered through her mind.

“Then we race to Du Fenlan as quickly as possible.”

“We could go home instead—”

“It is a good plan, princeling. We should leave now, if the others can manage it.”

There was a moment of silence, and Ryse flushed.

“I can handle it,” she whispered.

More silence followed, and she wondered for a second if Len had been talking about someone else. Feet scuffed the stone floor. Quay spoke slow and heavy.

“Good,” he said.

She heard packs opened, stuffed, closed.

“Get your things,” said the prince. “We will not rest again until we reach Du Hardt.”

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