I needed to take the fight away from that door.
One of the Wardens engaged in combat with me took a step back, opened his palm, and brought a shimmering, purple sword into existence. The other Warden did the same, mimicking the other clone’s movements and producing a sword of his own. They grinned at me, and one of them winked at me.
When the clones came with their magic swords, our brawl turned into a swordfight. I had to use my daggers to deflect the Warden’s attacks, first blocking one, then parrying the other. Dealing with two of them made it difficult to concentrate on attacking, and I wanted to attack the one that had winked at me.
One of them swung his sword in a horizontal arc, as if to slice at my midsection. When I spotted it, I leapt into the air, pulling a backflip that saw me sailing over the path of the sword as it came around underneath me. When I landed, I took the opportunity to pull back a few steps, dragging the combat away from the door.
Sanchez and Izzy were still locked in their duels, flashes of light zipping across the corridor and smashing into walls, leaving black scorch marks wherever they struck. I had rarely seen a mage duel, but I had heard they were spectacular things. I wasn’t disappointed. I only wished I’d have been able to enjoy it, instead of having to face off against a couple of psychos wielding light swords.
“What’s the matter?” the two Wardens advancing on me asked. “Getting tired, Outsider?”
“Tired?” I asked, “This is barely a warm-up.”
“Really?” One of them pointed the tip of his sword at my arm. “Because it looks to me like you’re bleeding.”
He was right. I couldn’t remember having been cut, but there was a gash in my arm, and blood was trickling down my sleeve, droplets falling to the floor. It stung, too. But I can’t remember having been hit.
“This is a trick,” I said, “Just a hallucination.”
“Maybe. But if hallucinations can hurt, then they can kill, too.”
The Wardens came at me again, swords thrusting, and swiping, and cutting. I ducked and weaved away from one, parried another, and using my momentum, I delivered a roundhouse kick right into the jaw of the first, making him stagger to the side, clutching his jaw. His lip was bleeding. When he pulled his hand away from his face, it came away red.
“Bitch,” he snarled, “You’ll pay for that.”
I smirked at him. “I’m waiting.”
Only one of the Wardens attacked this time—the other waited like he was stuck, like he had no agency of his own without being told what to do. I had to go on the defensive again, parrying blow after blow, ducking and dodging out of the furious swings being levelled at me. I could feel the blood ebbing from my arm, the sting of it, but I couldn’t let it slow me down.
I had to keep fighting, keep moving, stay light on my feet; lighter, faster, nimbler. But the Warden was relentless, driven by the fury of having been so badly humiliated. Harrowgate had a reputation for being a fortress, impenetrable, but Izzy and I had broken into it, neutralized the threat his guards posed, and even turned some of them against him.
He was a tyrant alone, without resources, and that last swing had gone so wide past my shoulder, it put him off balance and made him stumble toward a wall. He turned around, thick veins popping around his neck, his forehead, his eyes wide with anger. The other Warden was still standing where he’d been a moment ago, unmoving, rooted to the spot—watching.
“When I’m done with you,” the first one said, “You’re going to wish you had never set foot in this place. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said, breathing a little heavily. “But I also know it’s over. You’ve lost. It’s time you saw that.”
He lunged at me, his sword cutting lazily through the air. I twirled around him, put my boot into his back, and sent him slamming into the wall opposite. The Warden smashed into it, dropping his light sword to stop from hitting the wall with his face. When he turned to look at me again, his skin was glistening with sweat.
I almost felt bad for him.
“This isn’t over,” he snarled. “You still don’t know which of us is the real me.”
Sighing, I nodded. “Sure, I do,” I said, and I grabbed one of my daggers by its tip, and I flung it at the Warden standing perfectly still in the center of the corridor.
The dagger sailed through the air, catching the standing Warden by surprise, and slipping past his fingers as it hurtled toward his neck. The dagger struck true, finding the Warden’s jugular and embedding itself in it. His eyes went wide. His instinct was to grab the dagger and yank it out of him, but as soon as he did that, a torrent of blood erupted from the wound, and he fell to his knees.
The clones, including the one I had been fighting with, became mist and disappeared, leaving no trace that they had ever been there to begin with.
“Shit,” Izzy said, “You killed him…”
I nodded. “I didn’t want to,” I said, walking over to the Warden. He was still clutching his neck, trying to stop the bleeding, but he had already fallen to his side. I looked up at Sanchez. “Can you help him?”
“I could,” she said.
A pause. “Do you want to?”
She shook her head. “No. He needs to go. He’s the reason this place is as bad as it is.”
The Warden gargled blood. I thought he was speaking, or trying to speak, but the words weren’t forming. Eventually, he stopped moving altogether, but his eyes remained open even as his blood pooled on the floor around him.
“I’d hoped we would’ve been able to talk about this,” I said, “But he didn’t give us a choice.”
“He’s had it coming for a long time,” Sanchez said. “Thanks.”
“Now what happens?” Izzy asked. “To the prison, I mean.”
Sanchez nodded, then she grabbed her radio, and said, “This is Sanchez. Code black—repeat, code black. All personnel stand down.”
“What’s code black?” I asked.
“It means the Warden’s dead, so command falls to the next in line.”
“And that’s you?”
“That’s me. I wish I’d had the courage to do something like this a long time ago, but in truth, now that you’ve done it for me, I don’t have to answer to my men for the crime of killing him.”
Izzy and I exchanged glances. “Will we?” she asked.
Sanchez shook her head. “Consider this a pardon. Come on. Let’s go get your girl out.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Six…”
My heart gave a thud in my chest, and my eyes shot open. I blinked rapidly, fighting the blanket of drowsiness that was on top of me. I couldn’t see very well. It was dark, and while darkness wasn’t usually a problem for me, my eyes were having trouble adjusting all the same. All I could see were spots of flickering light, and what felt like a figure arching over me.
I sucked in a deep breath and went to scramble upright, but whoever was there placed a hand on my bare chest and gently pressed me back into the bed. What was I doing in a bed?
“It’s alright,” came the Horseman’s voice. “There’s no need for alarm.”