Kiersten's Arc

Chapter 29 of 33

Noble came for her at dusk. He carried his crystal-topped staff and wore the same dark robe he always did. He did not speak until they reached the round room. "He is at the outer ward," Noble said. "He crossed the stream an hour ago. He knows the door is here somewhere. He does not know exactly where." Kiersten touched the blue stone at her throat. The chain warmed under her fingers. Witness stirred inside her chest, steady as a held breath. "Do I go out to him," she asked, "or do I wait?" "Out," Noble said. "The sanctum does not fight. You do." He led her up a narrow stair to a side door she had not seen before. It opened onto a stretch of flat ground under a sky the color of iron. She stepped through. The door sealed behind her without a sound. The hunter stood twenty paces off. He was tall and thin, in a gray coat that hung wrong on his shoulders. His face was ordinary. His eyes were not. They tracked her the way a hawk tracks a mouse in grass. "Kiersten," he said. He used her name like a hook. She let the sword come to her hand. The blade filled with white light and the air near it snapped. She set her feet the way the book had drawn them. "You know my name," she said. "That is all you get." He moved fast. A blade of black smoke formed in his fist and he came at her low. She stepped inside the line and turned her wrist. Their weapons met. His smoke hissed against her light and thinned. She remembered the count. Three. Six. Nine. Breath under her ribs. She struck on the nine. Her blade cut through his guard and opened his coat across the chest. He fell back a step. His smoke blade reformed. He smiled. "You reach for him still," he said. "I felt it on the road." The old pull tried to rise. Eduardo's name, the shape of his voice. Kiersten pressed her thumb to the stone at her throat and named what she wanted out loud. "I want to stand here. On my own feet. For me." The blue light in her chest surged into her arms. She drove forward. Her sword took him through the ribs and out the back. He looked surprised. He looked, for one moment, small. He came apart in gray ash. The wind took him. Kiersten stood alone on the flat ground with her sword lowered. Her hands were steady. The pendant at her throat pulsed once and cooled. Noble opened the side door behind her. He looked at the ash. He looked at her. "One," he said. "There will be others. They will send more, now that he did not come home." Kiersten nodded. She did not lower her eyes. She walked back inside.