hen why not kill me, Excellency?” Noret sneered.

“I’m not impressed by vulgar offers of blood money, Noret. For all their pretended subterfuge, the Topaz Sparrow is about as subtle as a cavalry charge, and I’ve seen finer gemwork left behind by drunken card players on the wharf,” Reina took hold of her staff with her other hand and leaned confidently. “I have no trouble whatsoever finding people so desperate to be found.”

“If everything is so easy for you, Excellency, why wait so long for your vengeance?” Noret spat.

The cowled woman did not respond.

“The truth you find so hard to face is that you need me,” Noret said haughtily. Then he directed his words at Cici again. “The choice remains, orphan. Relinquish the Lantern and your friends live.”

Cici looked back and forth between Reina and Noret, unsure who to trust.

“Have you had that scar long?” Reina asked. Cici noticed one of the spectacularly expensive-looking rings on Reina’s right hand suddenly darken to a pitch black color. Instinctively, Noret moved his hand towards his left side.

“It’s been healed since I was but a lad.” As he spoke the last word, he sucked in a sharp breath and clutched his side. He stumbled forward and the club slipped from his grasp.

“How very fortunate,” Reina said sarcastically as the ring’s silvery color returned.

Noret dropped to his knees, eyes wide, clutching his side with whitened fingers.

“She’s a sorceress!” Clenick shouted.

“By all that lives!” Phileo wailed. “Flee for your lives!”

The other men dropped everything and scattered. The fat man crashed through a small pile of supplies and fell before scrambling to his feet and chugging his way down an alley between two warehouses. An act of heroic stumbling luck narrowly prevented Clenick from pitching off the dock into the water. He disappeared into the mist.

Reina ignored them. She patiently watched as Noret gasped for air, then planted her staff next to his shoulder and reached down slowly. She gathered the collar of his greasy shirt in her slender gray-skinned hand and slowly lifted him up. As she pulled his weight up to her eye level he sucked in one more breath. He held his eyes closed for a moment, then blinked through the beads of sweat. He tried to focus as Reina’s face leaned within inches of his own.

“It’s a pity to see such healthy vermin sicken,” Reina hissed through clenched teeth, then yanked his collar, pulling him closer. The bird opened its beak with a challenging frown as the interloper’s nose infringed on its space.

Noret became dizzy and closed his eyes to avoid the nauseating illusion of the ship’s ropes slowly circling the dock. He tried to focus on the golden irises of the Vicereine’s eyes, but the burning sensation around the fresh open wound in his side was becoming unbearable. Reina’s voice made Noret shiver.

“You must be the last human survivor of Rotensha Nox.”

“Nobody survived that battle!” Noret cried, then he winced and groaned again at a fresh wave of agony.

Reina paused for a moment, then dropped him in a heap on the dock. As he gasped for breath she turned away.

“I have sought the destinies of a thousand crowns and where does it lead me?” Reina asked rhetorically. “To a liar washed up like so much pirated cloth on a Gacenar dock. I suppose you mean to sweep into the bazaar like some drunken fop and trade your ransom for trinkets and beads?”

“I was tricked!” the man snapped. Then he sucked in a sharp breath and leaned back, clutching his side and grimacing. “My reward was nothing but poisoned land. I would have done anything to escape.”

Reina’s shoulders trembled with a barely suppressed rage.

“Escape if that is your wish,” she sighed finally. “Take whatever you believe is yours and flee. Flee to the Rift. Flee to the Shales. Flee to the swamps and dig yourself a sanctuary in the bog. Perhaps you are clever enough to mislead a Legion Cryptic for a time.”

Noret’s face paled as Reina turned.

“But none of your craven schemes will save you on the day I discover you have twice betrayed me.” The blank shadow of her cowl absorbed the gaze of Noret’s horrified face as she loomed over him and spoke with a cold and deliberate hostility.

“There are fates in Aventar worse than death.”

The Vicereine’s words cut through Noret’s heart like needles of ice. He felt as if his feet were ten times their normal weight but somehow he managed to crawl out from under Reina’s accusing gaze and scramble towards the night. Moments later, the last sounds of his escape faded into the gloom.

It was then Reina noticed that Cici had fled with the Chronicler’s Lantern.

Continue to Chapter Thirteen

enesh swallowed, desperately trying to keep his teeth from chattering. He watched her breath freeze and float to the ground. The cloth of her cowl resembled a rotted burial shroud: dusty and threadbare. A shadow obscured all but her chin.

“I was inventing poisons four hundred years before your grandfather learned to walk.” Reina spoke as if impatiently lecturing a lesser being. Kenesh didn’t notice the shadowy tendrils seeping into the dock around her feet. The wood planks first lost their color, and then rotted to a scorched, mangled ash.

The Vicereine turned her back on the assassin and dropped the useless pieces of his knife. “Do you know what it feels like to have a part of your body die while still attached to living flesh?” By now Reina was standing in a huge expanding slough of foulness.

Several of the tendrils rose from the swirling edges of the pestilence surrounding Reina’s feet and coiled back, growing eyes and fangs. Kenesh noticed and desperately tried to push his way up the wall with his hands. One by one the viper’s heads struck his left foot. The very real sharpness of otherworldly fangs pierced his boots, skin and leg.

Kenesh felt as if every nerve in his body was being drained through the sole of his left boot. A cold, burrowing agony invaded the entire left side of his body. Pain exploded from every joint as his collapsing weight forced his frozen bones to bend at unnatural angles.

He slammed against the blackened wood of the dock and made an inhuman sound that nearly burst the inside of his throat. Rivulets of icy sweat scraped his face, chest and arms. He banged the back of his head against the corner of the warehose as his body convulsed, leaving the wood smashed and frozen blood caked across the back of his head. Within moments, all that was left of his left foot was a putrified weight attached to a limb so infected that the very thought of moving it made his nerves boil over with pain.

“Now you know.”

Kenesh panted as he failed to regain his balance. He rolled against the door, the cruel cold sweat tormenting his parched tongue with a salty tang.

“Who sent you?” Reina asked. Kenesh did not answer. He could scarcely breathe.

“Answer me, or I will infect every limb of your being with dessication that will see two harvests before death releases you from it.” The Vicereine stood resolute, her staff looming over the platform. No light remained. Kenesh drew a choked breath that covered his teeth with rime.

Reina reached down and picked up a small medallion from the dock.

“The Escator Merchants Guild?” Reina said. Her glowing red eyes narrowed as she examined it. “What plan did you hatch with those overfed hyenas? Did you expect to waylay me with your robber’s club like some sweeper of porches?” Reina turned the medallion over. “Pity. I was in a fine mood before all this, too. I had a nice meal this evening. They served me cornbread.”

She glanced back to Kenesh. “I like cornbread, don’t you?”

Kenesh sputtered and inhaled reflexively.

“Do you wish to be free of this curse?”

Kenesh attempted to nod his head, but instead his shoulders convulsed. His face was frostbitten almost to the point of paralysis.

“You will return to whichever of those fattened vermin drank enough courage to hire you and inform them the Vicereine sends her regards.” Reina turned the medallion over in her hand as she lowered her voice to a menacing tone. “You will also inform them the blood of the next assassin sent after me will be used to boil their skulls.”

Reina turned towards the end of the dock.

“You have one hour.”

Kenesh’s next cough rattled alarmingly and with immense trembling effort he rasped a response.

“But it is two days ride.”

Slithering fingers of black vapor climbed the back of Reina’s robes, crossing over each other and thickening as they crawled upwards. They gathered at her shoulder and formed the shape of a perched black bird. The mangy fowl solidified just before the Vicereine offered a piece of dried plum, which it devoured hungrily before shivering its feathers.

Reina dropped the medallion on the dock.

“You have one hour.”

Continue to Chapter Eleven