Damian FINUCANE's Arc

Chapter 26 of 57

Damian rode east until the city thinned to fields. The temple lay ahead, but the sealed envelope pressed against his chest like a second heartbeat. He could not wait for his master. He stopped in the shadow of a lone office tower that rose from the flat land, all glass and clean steel, and dismounted. The mastermind was dead. His father's killers were dead. But this letter still carried orders from a hand he could not name. He crouched at the tower's base, where the morning light fell bright through the wide windows. He turned the envelope over in his hands. The seal was plain wax, no crest, no mark. The address was written in a slanted, careful hand he had never seen. He broke the seal with his thumb. Inside lay a single folded page. Damian read it slowly. The words were short. They ordered the mastermind to finish the boy with the runed blade and to report when it was done. At the bottom sat a name. Not a title. Not a mark. A name. He read it twice to be sure the letters held still. The hand above the tower had a name, and it belonged to a person he could find. His enemy was no longer a shadow giving orders through others. His enemy could be hunted like any man. Damian lowered the page. His pulse steadied. For months he had chased men who pointed to other men. Each one he beat only revealed the next. Now the chain ended in one name at the top. There was no one written above it. He glanced up at the glass wall of the tower. In its clear panels he saw his own face, calm and hard, the raven still on his shoulder. He no longer looked like a boy waiting to be attacked. He looked like a hunter who knew his mark. But the name meant something worse than he had hoped. The letter named a place with it, a city he did not know, far past the temple, past every road he had ridden. His enemy sat well guarded and warned. The mastermind's death would reach that name soon. When it did, the hand at the top would know Damian was still coming. Damian folded the page and slid it back into his coat. He mounted and turned the horse toward the temple. His master needed to see this name. She had hunted the killer for twenty years and might know the hand that had paid for it all. The hunt was no longer blind. He had a name and a place. But the man who held them knew Damian's face, his blade, and his purpose. The next attempt would come to him first, in the open, before he ever reached that distant city. Damian rode faster, racing the news of a dead master to the one who had sent him.