The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (24 page)

Urus looked but couldn't find Murin, Goodwyn, or Noah.
Probably knee-deep in briene corpses by now
, Urus thought. Through the thinning smoke, hundreds of panicked people ran, the women snatching up their children and making for whatever cover they could find.

Urus studied his hands, wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword. He could try to use his power, to summon the blue smoke and use it against the briene like he had against the bullies in the hostel. But what price would he pay? Could he control it? Would he hurt his friends instead of the briene?

Cailix stepped out of the smoke and grabbed his arm. "I need some of your blood."

Urus gaped. "You need
what
?"

"No time to explain, but those women and children are going to die if you don't give me some blood. It's okay, I just need a little."

"I'm not giving you any of my—"

"Now!" she demanded, pulling a dagger from her sleeve. "Or I'll take it by force!"

Urus relented, figuring that donating his blood voluntarily would be much less painful than Cailix taking it. Sheathing Hugo, he grabbed her dagger and pressed the edge of the tip into his finger just deep enough to draw a bead of blood.

Cailix snatched the knife back and gripped his hand. She squeezed his finger, forcing more blood to the surface.
 

Out of the corner of his eye, Urus could see a towering shape rushing toward him through the smoke, hands flailing. It could have been Murin, but he couldn't see through the smoke to read his lips.

Cailix rubbed each of her fingertips in the blood dripping from the wound.

Now the flailing silhouette jumped up and down as it raced toward them.
What in the hell is wrong with Murin
? Urus thought.

Each of Cailix's palms were now coated in red, as were her fingertips. She turned to the chaos in the smoke cloud, the metal birds diving and looping over the crowd like a swarm of bees over a field of flowers.

Murin finally emerged from the smoke, shouting, "…your blood!"

Cailix thrust her hands forward, and wind surged down from the mountainside, slamming into the road like a hurricane. In an instant the smoke was gone, revealing the few civilians in the road who hadn't found cover pressed face-down against the cobblestones.

"No!" Murin shouted, somehow still standing against the gale.

Cailix turned her attention to the gleaming bird machines. She flung her hands outward and, one by one, little tornados spun up out of nowhere, sucked the machines into their vortex, and flung them out over the side wall, where Urus imagined they shattered into pieces as they tumbled down the mountainside.

The tornados exploded out of pockets of air everywhere over the city, some ripping rooftops off buildings, others sucking gaping holes out of walls. Stones and debris flew in all directions, smashing into buildings and sometimes even people.

Moments later, Cailix and Urus stood by the entrance to the warrens, looking up at the road. A few puffs of smoke lingered over the stone as frightened mothers and children emerged from crevices and alleyways, escorted by Goodwyn, Corliss, and his soldiers. Thousands of little gears, springs, and chunks of metal littered the roadway, along with the rest of the debris from the tornados that Cailix had summoned.

She turned to meet Urus's eyes. "You have potent blood, Urus."

"And your aim is terrible," he answered, pointing at a group of citizens digging out of a pile of rubble. Thankfully all of them seemed to have survived with just cuts and bruises.

The others approached, all staring at Cailix. Even Corliss marveled at the girl.
Was that fear in his eyes?

"Before you boys arrived here," he began, looking at Urus, "I would have bet my mother's life that magic was nothing more than a myth. Since then I have seen men vanish into thin air, and now a girl who can use blood to summon storms. It was luck alone that kept the innocent citizens from being caught in the debris."

"I tried to warn you, Urus. You should not have let her use your blood," Murin said.

"Why?"

"Why do you think the blood mages tore this entire world apart, hunting down every last sigilord they could find during the Fulcrum War?" Murin demanded, not pausing long enough to let anyone answer. "In the hands of a blood mage, sigilord blood is a…there is no word for it. It is a super catalyst. With sigilord blood, a single blood mage can wipe an entire army from the earth. Once the blood mages discovered this, the sigilord genocide began."

"I had no idea," Urus said. He felt terrible. He saw how much power Cailix could wield and also saw how many innocent people got hurt as a result.
 

Is my power the same?
He wondered.
Will I hurt people like this if I use my magic?

"The damage here is not the worst of it, Urus," said Murin, again as though he could read his thoughts. "The Order now knows for sure that there is a sigilord here, and I'm sure they had someone watching. They know what you are now. This changes everything. The Order will stop at nothing to have your blood. They have not tasted that kind of power in three thousand years."

"What do we do now?"
 

"We must flee. Your presence here is a danger to this city. But first, we must find the vertex; our time has run out."

"I'm staying with Corliss," Goodwyn said.
 

"What? Why?" asked Urus, stunned.

"Because this is what I was meant to do. I'm a soldier, and a damn good one. I belong on the front lines with Corliss, keeping this city and these people safe. You and Murin and Cailix, you have…magic things that need doing, and to be honest, I want no part of it. I'll take my suzur over blood tornados any day, though I do hope you find the vertex and can get it away from the briene and the Order. We'll buy you as much time as we can by keeping them outside the city walls."

"But—"
 

"There is no time to argue, Urus. We must go, now," Murin urged. "Cailix, if you want to come with us you must do so under the condition that you will never ask Urus for his blood again. In fact, you must promise not to use blood magic at all. You are meddling with powers you cannot possibly comprehend."

Cailix took a step back. "I—"

The air beside Cailix warped and bent the way air shimmered above a smokeless fire. In an instant, Anderis appeared standing beside her, as quickly as he had vanished the night before. He covered Cailix's mouth, closed his eyes, and vanished.

Cailix and the blood mage were gone.

19

Cailix groped in the darkness, fumbling over wooden boxes and bits of junk she couldn't identify, her wrists and ankles bound with thick rope.

The stench of wet wood and straw assaulted her nose, her nostrils burning as they filled with the odors of soaps, spices, salted meats, and a dozen others that blended into an indecipherable stink.

She lay still, taking it all in. Movement in the pit of her stomach made her queasy, a gentle rocking that, were she not a prisoner in this foul place, might have been comforting.

I'm on a ship
, she thought.
This isn't good
.

She felt pretty confident that she could escape from just about any prison Anderis put her in. The problem with escaping from a ship was that she was surrounded by water with no way of knowing how to get to the nearest shore.

Scraping her knees on the floor and loose bits of wood and metal, she crawled through what she figured was the cargo hold. It took a moment before she realized that she was wearing a dress.
 

That bastard changed my clothes
, she thought.
When I find him, I'm going to bleed him just like he bled Brother Toyce. He'll even be alive long enough to see the spell I cast with his own blood!

Her head bounced off of something wooden, stopping her blind foraging.

"Ow!" she said aloud, regretting it instantly. Motionless and holding her breath, she waited for a guard to arrive to investigate the noise. No one came.

She probed the inky black with her hand, feeling the shape of a narrow wooden ladder, and got a splinter in her palm for the effort. This time she winced, but held back the urge to yelp.

Someone's got to come down this thing eventually
, she thought as she curled up under the back side of the ladder. As she waited for the inevitable arrival of some lackey ordered to check on the prisoner, she busied herself with untying the ropes around her ankles. With her hands still bound, it took longer than she hoped but eventually she freed her feet.

The wait seemed to take forever. To keep her muscles from cramping she stood, stretched her legs, then crouched back into position. At last a beam of light burst into the hold and Cailix finally saw the layout of the place. Barrels, stacked chests, and nets filled with unlabeled sacks littered the floor, along with tons of other junk.

The fat form of a sailor stepping down the ladder nearly eclipsed all the light of the opening, the man barely able to squeeze himself through the hatch.

She hunkered down, holding her breath. Each step the man took bowed the strained crossbars. Even his boots looked as if they were ready to burst at the seams.

She waited until he lowered his left foot, just before it would have landed on the rung in front of her. Striking with vicious speed, she reached out with her bound hands, grabbed the boot, and wrenched it to one side as hard as she could.

Bone broke as it twisted in ways the fat man's body couldn't handle. His mouth opened to scream, but she had already sprung up and around the ladder and clamped her hands over his mouth, wrapping her legs around her victim like a constricting snake.

Barely able to support his own weight and only having one good leg, the fat man pitched forward into the cargo hold with Cailix on top of him. He writhed and struggled beneath her but stopped after she rammed her elbow into his face a few times.

She searched his massive girth for a knife, digging through his pockets and coat until finally she found a small blade sheathed in the boot she had twisted. A noise overhead sent her dashing back into the darkness of the cargo hold.
 

Once out of sight of the hatch, she held the knife between her feet and sawed the rope around her wrists against it until it snapped.

She was free. Well, somewhat free, anyway. At least she could use her hands and legs. All she needed now was a little bit of blood and she might be able to get out of this mess alive.

"Baris?" called a voice from above the hatch.

Cailix crouched further into the shadows, tucked behind two large barrels.

"Baris, you big oaf, answer me."

Cailix rolled the knife's pommel in her hands, rocking back on the balls of her feet, ready to pounce.

"Oy, Baris, you fall asleep down there?" called a new voice this time.

Two men climbed down the ladder, one after the other, both much thinner and far more muscled than their predecessor.

This wasn't going to be easy.

If she had been stronger, she would have dragged the fat man's body into the darkness to buy some time, but he was just too heavy. And he smelled. Really bad.

"It's Baris!" shouted the first man down. "He's been attacked!"

There goes the element of surprise
, she thought.

"The girl's loose in the hold," the other shouted up to the deck. "Get the net!"

Cailix held her ground, knowing that moving would give away her position. All she had to do was cut one of them with her knife and the advantage would be hers. Of course, she had no idea how many men there were up on the deck, or how far away from the shore they were, but she tried to focus on one impossible hurdle at a time. She could cut herself as well, but she didn't know what other challenges lay ahead, and she needed to conserve her power.

"Come out real nice like, girl, and we won't spill your guts all over this hold," called the first man with a sadistic grin, drawing a curved, rusty blade with a hook at the tip.

"Yeah, give yourself up and we won't have to kill you," said his companion. Both men were dressed in stained leggings, boots, and equally dirty shirts. She was thankful they were too far away to smell, for they glistened from head to toe with dirty sweat and heavens only knew what else.

If she was a prisoner on this boat then someone, probably Anderis, wanted her alive. Despite their threats, these thugs wouldn't kill her. Hopefully.

Cailix dashed from her hiding spot, ducking and rolling as one of the men tossed a clay pot at her. As she stood up from the roll, she leapt at the nearest man, hands and feet ready to strike.

He was so surprised at the offensive that he took a step back and bumped into the ladder. Cailix plowed into him, wrapping around his shoulders.
 

She lifted the knife over her head and thrust it down, expecting a gusher of red liquid to come out of her victim's neck. Instead, he knocked her arm to the side with his head, then punched her in the stomach.

The knife clattered to the ground as she fell back. Before she could recover, both men were upon her, punching her in the stomach and sides.