The citadel rose like a crenelated dagger into the heart of the night sky, as though it meant to pierce that bleak moon overhead. Everything seemed quiet as Tzanith and I approached. The entrance to the tower was open, a portal leading us into waiting darkness.

  A visible line separated moonlight from shadow. I paused just before crossing that threshold.

  “What is it?” Tzanith asked me.

  I wasn’t sure. An instinct? Some warning from my powers?

  I leapt back just as the blade slid from the dark. It didn’t come from deeper within the castle — it came from that divide, that thinnest of spaces where shadow and light met.

  The blade missed by inches. As I backpedaled and brought my sword up into a guard, a shape followed the attack, sliding into material reality through that same doorway.

  It was the vampire woman in the skintight red outfit, the one with the missing arm and web of scars over her shorn features. The torslowan. She carried a short blade, little more than a big dagger. It looked like it’d been carved from stone, a gray fang with a serrated edge.

  “How did you know?” She asked, sounding genuinely curious. “My presence should not be detectable while I am within the Places Between.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “But I was friends with a dhampir once. She had the same ability.”

  Raania tilted her head to one side. “Friends, you say? Curious.”

  “We have already slain many of you,” Tzanith told the westerner. “Do not impede us, malcathe.”

  Raania bared her wolf teeth at the elf, her scarred features hardening. “Ah, it was worth it to travel to this land just to hunt your kind, little fae.” She tightened her grip on the stone dagger. “You will not cross this line.”

  I lifted the flat tip of my claymos to point at the torslowan, a warrior’s salute. I saw little reason to debate or parley with this enemy — she’d made her intention clear enough.

  However, something about the way her presence read to my senses made me speak. “You… You’re not like the others, are you? You’re a dhampir.”

  Surprised flickered across Raania’s face.

  “You are half human,” I continued. “Why do this? Evangeline and the rest are the same kind of monsters who made you like this.”

  The half-vampire’s eyes hardened. “Made me strong, you mean? Made me a hunter, instead of meek prey?” She studied her knife, her tone becoming musing. “My mother lacked the will to resist the Night Prince who took her while she was pregnant with me, and my father lacked the strength to fend him off. My mortal parents were weak. I consider him to be my true father.”

  Ah. I kept forgetting, that it wasn’t just fangs that made the monster.

  Raania flashed a wolfin smile. “I have angered you!”

  “Enough talk,” I said. “Have at you.”

  The dhampir kept that grin as she stepped back into the shadows. The last I saw of her were the twin glints of red eyes.

  Tzanith tensed. “Alken, neither you nor I can sense her while she is inside the Ghost Roads. And there are many shadows on this bridge.”

  “I know.” I said. “Stand back.”

  She complied, and I lifted a hand with palm extended, concentrating. My auratic senses, which normally allowed me to sense the presence of Things of Darkness, were useless here. At the speed Raania could move, she would be able to slip out of her eldritch corridors and attack before I had time to riposte.

  But I wasn’t just a paladin anymore. I brought up my will, made a blade of my voice, and spoke.

  “Expel her.”

  My words crackled with auratic command, echoing across the bridge and sinking into its very stones. The shadows where moonlight did not penetrate boiled.

  With a shocked cry, Raania flew from the deeper shadows at the top of a supporting tower to my right. She was high up, and as soon as she came free of the stone she began to fall. Black mist chased her, forming teeth and snapping like a pack of angry hounds.

  Raania slashed at them with her knife, and the ghosts scattered. Whatever that stone dagger was, it scared even spirits. The dhampir landed on an outcropping with the dexterity of a cat, crouching low so her shoulder cape fell down over her body like a shroud.

  Tzanith’s eyes were large and luminous as she stared back at the dhampir glaring at us from the castle’s masonry. Her voice, when she spoke, was calm and low. “We cannot waste time with her. She is here to stall us.”

  I knew that, but we couldn’t ignore her. She would harry us every step of the way.

  “Let me fight her,” Tzanith continued. “You go ahead. Stop Olliard. Stop Evangeline.”

  I was already shaking my head before she finished speaking. “Tzanith, she’s skilled. It’s better if we take her together.”

  Tzanith’s voice became steely. “I shamed myself before, but I shall not do it again. I am a child of warriors, mortal, and my queen has entrusted this mission to my care. I will not fail.”

  I couldn’t help but remember her words from before. I disliked it. I do not enjoy being a warrior.

  She could act confident, but Raania would kill her. This western huntress had survived countless battles, evidenced by her scars alone. Tzanith, on the other hand, had probably never fought with her life on the line until tonight.

  Tzanith took a step forward to stand between me and our enemy. She brought up her left hand, summoning that blue faerie light, and it formed into the shape of a silvery bow. She pulled back on the string, producing a gentle, musical hum as a crackling arrow formed.

  “I am no damsel, Alken.” Her voice became a viscous snarl. “Go!”

  I hated this. Sacrificing comrades, wondering who would die because I wasn’t fast or strong enough. Fighting alone had been easier, in some ways.

  But she was right, and there was more at stake than her life or mine. I turned and went into the bastion, leaving Tzanith Balesdotter to fight the torslowan alone.

  The inner halls of the Warder’s Keep had little in common with the inviting facade at the front of the palace. Evangeline had presented her new reign to the lords and ladies of the Banner as a bright, cheerful mask. She’d invited the commoners to fill their skies with light and good cheer, turned her threats into a festival.

  But the heart of the ancient castle was dim. Cold moonlight shone through gaps here and there, piercing narrow windows and giving depth to the shadows, setting windows to a gentle glow and illuminating the occasional statue or empty suit of armor.

  Like the tombs below, the citadel was a gallery. The stands of armor were not uniform in design, instead acting as a march through history. Each had an old banner draped behind it, showing the heraldry the armor’s wearer would have displayed in battle.

  I passed by ancient scale coats and drake-winged helms that were most of a millennium out of fashion. My eyes roamed over sets of chain and plate from the old crusades, where Urnic warriors had worn grim, ugly helms to terrify the heretics in Edaea. On and on, until the rows gave way to the complex, articulated platemail of more modern knights, with elaborate helms resembling exotic fruits or chimeric monsters.

  I walked by the remains of dead vampires. They’d been slain by Banesilver, some of them blown apart. None of them died in the same way, I noted. Some melted into a sickly sludge, while others simply rotted into old bones like time had caught up to them. I walked by a strangely shaped pile of dust and a shadow on the nearby wall where none should have been cast. It whispered to me as I went by, but I ignored it.

  Just like Caelfall, I thought. Would I come on the same scene as then, with Olliard facing off with our mutual enemy?

  Only this time he didn’t just carry a crossbow and angry words, but a fire that could consume all of Tall Carreweir.

  I approached an open doorway at the end of the long gallery, and saw both light and heard voices in the room within. Quick and cautious, I moved to the entry and peeked inside. Within lay the citadel’s great hall. It was nothing like the high-ceilinged opulence of the ballroom. This was a king’s court in the oldest of fashions, grimly functional, the roof supported by thick pillars like I looked into the interior of a stone forest.

  Olliard waited within. He sat on the throne at the far end of the hall, slouching there, and seemed to be toying with something in his hand. His alchecraft crossbow lay propped against the throne’s side.

  Much of the room lay in shadow, but moonlight filtered in here and there, and there was a lamp set by the doctor’s feet. In his monkish garb and apron, he looked like an old pilgrim king, weary after a long journey.

  Lisette was with him, but I didn’t see any sign of that other apprentice of his, Carus. Judging by the number of dead vampires I’d passed, he must be lurking around, probably hidden somewhere where he could safely manipulate his marions to kill at a distance.

  I stepped inside and glanced around. There were faint lines hanging in the air at steep angles, shimmering where the light caught them. Lisette’s threads.

  “Alken.” Olliard greeted me in a grandfatherly tenor, warm and tired at once. “I am glad to see you.”

  Lisette threw me a worried glance. “Alken, you shouldn’t be here! I ordered Hendry to tell you all to get out.”

  “And you expected us to leave you behind?” I asked her as I stepped forward, stopping just where the first of the near invisible threads of aura hung in the air.

  “The dear girl is very ready to punish herself for her sins,” Olliard said with a thin smile. “I suppose she hasn’t told you.”

  Lisette shot the doctor a fearful look.

  I saw then what lay in Olliard’s palm. It was a yellow crystal, small and roughly shaped, which glowed with inner heat. If Marcion had told the truth, then all he needed to do was crush it.

  “Do you know who gave that to your employer?” I asked. “This is all part of another monster’s scheme, Olliard, and if you go through with it then you’ll kill a lot of innocent people.”

  He nodded. “That is likely, yes.”

  “The man who saved me outside Vinhithe would not do this,” I insisted.

  Olliard’s voice hardened to match mine. “That man is dead. He died at Caelfall, and good riddance to him. He was weak and indecisive, and all those people died for it. The evil that dwells here could swallow the entire subcontinent. If I must sacrifice my life… indeed, even the lives of hundreds or thousands to save countless more… then how arrogant would I be to make a different choice? How cowardly?”

  He showed me the crystal, Faustus’s Folly. “This is a war, Alken. It always has been. A war between men and monsters. They eat us.”

  “I know,” I told him. “And that’s why I am here. It’s why I was at Caelfall too, what I was doing before you found me near dead in the woods. Do you remember what you said then? We will let him show us his measure before we damn him. I’ve thought often about what you said that day. About whether I deserved your mercy.”

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  Olliard nodded. “I’ve thought about it often as well. I am still not sure I made the right choice. You have done evil as well, haven’t you? Made compromises. But then, so have I.”

  He glanced down at the crystal. “I am tired of compromising with evil. It takes, and takes, and takes. It never stops. Turning the other cheek, being the better man, all it does is enable the worst of us. It has to stop.”

  “This world is full of monsters,” I said. “Destroying every vampire in this castle won’t change that.”

  Olliard’s grandfatherly features turned stern. “So you would simply let them feast?”

  “Of course not,” I snapped, then showed him my sword. “That’s why I have this.”

  Olliard snorted. “It is a nice fairy tale, but that is all it is. For every one knight in shining armor, there are a hundred butchers just as bloodthirsty as any vampire. You tell me I will kill innocents, but you saw them all out there, didn’t you? The citizens were celebrating. And the nobles, the same ones who pretend like they protect them?! How they knelt before that creature, even knowing what she was! But that’s to be expected, isn’t it? They have spent their whole lives taking. The only law they truly follow is might makes right. They deserve this just as much as Evangeline and her ilk.”

  He stood then. Olliard wasn’t a tall man, or a strong one. The years had weathered him badly, and in the scant light he looked small and frail, no great hero. But the glow in his hand held a hellish promise, which reflected in his round spectacles and made them into burning spheres.

  “I realized this the same day that I put Orson Falconer down like the mad dog he was; we cannot compromise with evil. We must simply burn it out, root and stem.”

  I glanced at Lisette. She hadn’t spoken. “And you agree with this, Lis?”

  She started, as though having forgotten I was there. “I… I’m not—”

  “Of course she does,” Olliard said dispassionately. “She understood the ugly truth of things the day that convent of nuns who raised her were raped and butchered before her eyes. She had to hide and watch while her fellow humans acted like beasts. That’s why she joined the Priory when I asked her to. It’s why she infiltrated the Empress’s inner circle when I asked her, as well — she knew that we would have to take drastic action to make a real change.”

  The blood drained from Lisette’s face. My eyes closed for a long moment.

  Olliard sounded surprised when he spoke again. “You knew?”

  “Suspected something like it,” I said. “The way she’s been acting around you struck me as odd.” She’d seemed betrayed that Olliard had taken another apprentice. “I also never got the full story about how she’d ended up as a double agent between the Empress and the Priory. You were the one who got her in the door with the inquisitors, weren’t you?”

  “I have many contacts with them, and other similar groups.” Olliard sighed. “The fact that the crowfriars had subverted the organization was a blow, I admit. I had friends inside the Priory.”

  “He told me having the ear of someone as powerful as Rosanna Silvering would be the only way to make larger changes,” Lisette said hastily, looking panicked. “That we could encourage the nobility to take the threats they’d been ignoring more seriously, make a difference.”

  “Rosanna was feuding with the Grand Prior,” I said aloud as I put facts together. “I’m guessing you planned to have Lisette assassinate her, if you thought it necessary.”

  Olliard didn’t deny it. “Lisette is very talented. She can do far more good than this old man ever could, and Rosanna is the queen of butchers. You cannot believe she doesn’t deserve it?”

  “Did you know she was my liege?” I asked in a calm voice. “Before the wars.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “I did not. That is… unfortunate.”

  Exhaling, I lifted my sword so I held it at an angle to my right, tightening my grip on the hilt. “Give me that crystal, doctor. I will kill every vampire in this castle myself.”

  He closed the thing in his fist. “And can you know for sure that you will get all of them? If even one escapes, then this nightmare will simply repeat. It will happen over and over again, all because we took half measures. I have seen it too many times.”

  I couldn’t be certain of such a thing. I was only certain of one thing. “I swore an oath to sacrifice myself to protect the people of this land, Olliard. Myself, not anyone else.”

  I thought of Tzanith, risking her own life for her own vow. That, too, I understood. I hadn’t left her behind because it was the smart or pragmatic thing, but because of that look of determination on her face. I would not infringe on her oath.

  “Maybe that makes me a fool, or a poor leader, but I’ve long since accepted that what I’m good for is using this.” I tilted my chin to the sword. “I’ve spent years trying to understand my vows, to know what is and is not evil. And you know what? I don’t give a damn about good and evil anymore. I’ll kill Evangeline because I swore to do it. The rest is air.”

  “I see.” Olliard’s shoulders slumped. The disappointment in his voice was palpable. “So you are one of the monsters, after all.”

  I’d understood it when Evangeline made her offer to the bannerfolk. That she and I weren’t so different. She was a slaver, murderer, kinslayer, usurper, and probably worse. But those were all just justifications, when all I’d really needed was to be pointed in a direction and told to kill.

  Nothing had truly changed since I murdered on Rosanna’s behalf. Whether my labors came from the lips of queens or angels, I was merely a sword.

  When Urawn Aarlu had given me my task, I hadn’t even known who my enemy was. I hadn’t cared.

  “The clans of the Banner have not been given the Headsman’s Doom,” I said in a cold voice. “Neither have its citizens. Only those responsible for incarcerating the Faen of Draubard are fated to die this night. Do not stand in my way, Olliard van Kell.”

  “I am sorry it came to this, Alken.” Olliard let out a long breath, then started to tighten his fist.

  I spoke, releasing the energy I’d been gathering. “Stop.”

  Olliard was many things. He was brave, capable, strong of will. But he was also merely mortal, and an old and exhausted one. The command struck him and he froze, gasping. His lungs had closed up.

  I didn’t know what Lisette would do, but I wasn’t leaving anything to chance. I gathered more power and swept my sword through the air, slicing through her threads. They fractured, and the rebound effect tore through the entire room with an eruption of gold light and the sound of cracking glass. The cleric let out a cry of shock and pain as the backlash of energy hit her.

  I dashed forward, advancing on Olliard and his infernal bomb.

  That was when the arrow took me in the back.

  It struck just to the left of my spine. The shock of impact came before the pain, threw me off my step and took me to the ground. I rolled into it, acting on reflex, and came up in a crouch while facing back towards the hall.

  A shadow detached itself and stepped into the light. Penric lifted his longbow, already fitting another arrow glowing hot with golden aura. The shaft in my back burned like fire. Lisette’s work.

  “Stay where you are, boss.” Penric began to nock. “I don’t want to do this.”

  Another hunch confirmed, I thought with weary resignation. “I know, Pen. It’s not your fault.”

  I glanced to Lisette, who’s fingers were moving, stretching the threads of pale golden light between them into a new pattern. She was sweating and pallid, but her hands were steady. She’d recovered from the backlash of a broken Art quicker than I’d expected.

  “That story about finding him reanimated as a dyghoul was chimera shit too, wasn’t it?” I asked without heat. “You brought him back.”

  “It wasn’t on purpose,” Lisette said. She sounded close to tears. “I tried to heal both him and Mallet that night, but they were too broken… then I found Penric later, and I just knew… I knew my power brought him back. But I didn’t mean it! I didn’t know what to do, so I went to you, and…”

  She was shaking her head, babbling. “I didn’t mean it.”

  She was a necromancer. Somehow, she’d corrupted her Art and used it to bind Penric’s soul to his corpse. Perhaps it was by accident — I had a feeling that it had something to do with the fact that her magic, the Sutures of Saint Cyprian, were a healing Art that’d been repurposed for combat. She’d killed with them.

  Aura is the emanation of the soul. Lisette had dipped hers in blood.

  That sin was also Olliard’s. My grip on Faen Orgis’s hilt tightened. Something skittered over the ceiling. It was a thing of clattering wood and metal joints. A marion. Carus. Where was he? Probably not here, or even in the castle. He would be somewhere safe, directing his creatures.

  Yes, that would be Olliard’s style. He would want to leave someone behind to carry on his crusade.

  “You don’t inspire much loyalty, do you, Headsman?” Olliard’s voice was a dry rasp as he regained control of his throat. “I found Carus in Garihelm after you killed his father.”

  “His father?” I asked in confusion. With Penric aiming at me, I didn’t dare turn my back and risk an arrow through the heart or brain.

  “Don’t remember him? The one you and that vampire whore murdered on the street?”

  It came back to me then. There had been an old puppet master who’d tried to kill me before the tournament, the same night the Vykes had spread chaos across the city through agents and third parties. I’d never gotten his name.

  “We didn’t kill him,” I said. “That was Hyperia Vyke.”

  “It doesn’t matter now. He wanted his revenge on you at Fife, but now I’m afraid I must take that from him.” Olliard grunted. I risked glancing back, and saw him trying to tighten his fist and crush the crystal. My command was still holding him, but it wouldn’t last much longer.

  “Lisette.” The girl’s sweating face flinched towards me as I spoke her name. My words were calm, measured, though they came strained as the pain from Penric’s consecrated arrow ate through my chest. “I understand why you’re here, why you’re loyal to him…. But you know this isn’t right. We have a plan. You’re part of my lance.”

  Lisette’s lips formed a thin line. Olliard responded before she could.

  “She is not yours,” the vampire hunter snapped. “She was always working for me, because she knows that I am right.”

  “She followed you because she believed you were a good man,” I said, though I wasn’t speaking to him. “Because you were a kind man who would help strangers, even when she wouldn’t. She followed the doctor who wanted to save those people at Cael Village, who grieved for the death of an old friend he hadn’t seen in half a lifetime.”

  I caught Penric’s gaze. His face was expressionless, a dead man’s in truth. His arm was steady on the bowstring.

  But it wasn’t him who would release it. He was under Lisette’s control, had been for a long time.

  “I’ve done evil!” Lisette sobbed. “I’ve hurt people, when I was a priorguard, and what I did to Penric… I have sinned, Alken, but I can make up for it!”

  “This won’t make up for it,” I told her. “You’re just trying to suicide. I’ve stood where you are now, Lis. More than once. But you can’t make up for anything when you’re dead. All it does is end your own pain.”

  “Justifications!” Olliard barked. His grip tightened a fraction, and a bead of sweat formed on his brow as he fought my power. “We can spend lifetimes repenting, and the monsters will just laugh at us.”

  “Emma and Hendry might not be far enough away,” I said, ignoring the man. “Would you sacrifice them for this?”

  Lisette’s blue eyes shimmered with unfallen tears. The marion above me rattled quietly, then dropped. It held something in its hands, a small spike of steel. It seemed that Carus wasn’t so willing to let his master cheat him on his revenge.

  Penric released his arrow. It streaked like a golden thunderbolt across the throne room. The marion dropped from above. I couldn’t avoid both attacks.

  I did not try. I’d seen the angle of the archer’s shot.

  The arrow struck the marion midair. That shot had been intended to kill, not simply to distract. The killer puppet was torn from the air, landing heavily on the ground some distance away. It thrashed, but the aura in the shaft burned at the spirit animating the body where it would have ignored an ordinary weapon. Its struggles quickly ceased, the wicked life in the construct vanishing to leave it a simple pile of carved wood.

  Olliard spat a curse, and broke my hold on him. I was too far to reach him in time.

  But nothing in that room was out of Lisette’s reach. She stretched her hands apart and her sutures, held cat’s cradle style, manifested in the air around Olliard. They wrapped around his wrist, around his fingers, threading through the thinnest of gaps, even pierced into his flesh.

  They looked different. There were barbs on them, like small thorns on rose vines. Or like barbed wire.

  Olliard let out a cry of pain. He tried to wrench his arm away, but he only succeeded in injuring himself. The threads seemed to originate from nowhere, but grew more bright as they neared their captive. With dire concentration, Lisette stretched her splayed fingers further apart and pried Olliard’s own grip from the crystal. It lay revealed in the palm of his hand, glowing like a yellow ember.

  I lunged forward and drove the pommel of my sword into his stomach. He still had one hand free and I didn’t want to risk anything. Then, with his captive arm still held up at a painful angle, I snatched the crystal out of his palm.

  It was warm to the touch, but not painfully so. To my auratic senses, it felt like holding solid slime, and it left an uncomfortable itch. I did not get the sensation that this was safe to hold with bare skin. I pocketed it, and waited until I’d turned my back to the vampire hunter before letting out a long sigh of relief. My heart pounded in my chest.

  That had been far too close.

  “You’re not going to kill me?” Olliard wheezed when he’d caught his breath.

  I glanced back at him. “I told you. I’m only here to kill Evangeline Ark and her conspirators.”

  He looked more tired than angry, and seemed to have nothing further to say. He just closed his eyes, wincing in pain as Lisette’s magic pulled at his thin arm.

  “Let him go,” I ordered.

  Lisette stared at me in surprise. “Are you sure? He might have more of those crystals on him. He had me help him place them all over the palace earlier.”

  “If he did, he would have broken it already.” I nodded to his free hand. “Let him go.”

  She did. That done, I stepped forward and placed my hand to the side of the old man’s face, covering one ear. Then, leaning close, I whispered into the other.

  “Sleep, Olliard van Kell.”

  He was already exhausted and weakened. Defeated. My will moved into him like flooding water in an empty pond, and his eyes closed as he slumped.

  “He will not stop,” Lisette told me. “He will try this again. If not here, then somewhere else.”

  She shuffled sheepishly when I turned to face her. Penric had moved over to stand behind her, watchful, guarding. He did not share her look of apology.

  “The lass thought she was doing the right thing,” the archer told me. “She didn’t betray you.”

  I didn’t care about that. Loyalty to me was never a given, anyway.

  “Would you have betrayed Rosanna?” I asked in a quiet, calm voice. “If he asked it?”

  She took a moment to answer, and hers was also in a soft voice. “No. I believe in the world she wants to build.”

  My voice hardened. "And my godson? If Olliard demanded you kill him, for what he is?"

  She gaped at me. "I... No! He is a child. What happened to him was not his fault."

  She said it steadily, even as I looked directly into her eyes. I let out a sigh of relief, and let my grip on the sword loosen. “Good. Then there’s nothing more to say.”

  “But what about—”

  “The necromancy?" I asked. "Enslaving Penric?”

  She winced. Penric’s expression darkened, and I looked to him.

  “I gave you a choice that first day after you came back. To put you to rest, or put you to work. Have you changed your mind?”

  Lisette’s sutures might direct his actions and instincts, but I did not think they controlled his words. He looked surprised, but his answer came without hesitation.

  “I have not, Ser.”

  “Then both of you shut up and fall in line. We still have work to do. And as for Olliard… the nobility of the Banner and a western alchemist gave him those crystals. He’s a tool, not the mastermind.”

  I turned to face the door. “There will be time for that later, and we’re being rude to our host.”

  They both followed my gaze to the throne room’s entrance. There, in the shadows, stood a figure. They stepped forward into the moonlight, revealing the glint of red eyes. They held a sword in their hand.

  “All of you, move aside.” The Queen of the Bannerlands lifted her sword. “You are standing between me and my throne.”