After the initial complaints from the salted hinges, the door closed quietly behind him, and Risens stalked into the dimly lit hallway in the bowels of Lady Myrenas’s estate.

  Risens remained alert.

  Training, instilled by the constant and brutal reminders of Vagon, was ingrained into the very fibers of his being. Away from the stale, fishy odor of the port, the air was refreshing, though obviously heavily laden with the brine of the water.

  On the beach, the quiet moan of the wind, the rustling of the grasses, and the rush of the surf against the sand merged into a harmonious cacophony. Inside the estate, the discordant notes of an unnatural song immediately severed any residual cathartic balm of the beachfront melody. The percussive drumming of hammers, each playing different rhythms and tempos, argued over each other, screaming their beating at the tops of their proverbial lungs. The audible disagreements were interrupted by shouting and the sharp cracking of wood or shattering of glass. The smell of smoke hung heavy in the air. It was thick, though not heavy enough to hide the hint of something he recognized immediately.

  Something foul.

  The unmistakable odor of death was undeniable.

  The hallway he’d entered was long and dark. The narrow path stretched on in a straight line, extending beneath the home’s main structure. Built of smoothed stone, it lacked the opulence and trappings of the upper floors and the private wing where he and Marlaine had been temporarily quartered. At the far end, it terminated in an intersection flooded with light. From the long shadows that played across the opening, the activity in the adjacent hallway was clear. He expected that the path beyond would connect to the spiraling staircase leading to the lower level and the destination of his excursion.

  The Gilded Cage.

  Several doorways existed on either side of the hall. All except the one in the middle of the right-hand wall were open, their interiors dark and quiet. Risens kept his hands on the hilts of his daggers as he stalked into the manor, his focus darting into the rooms that opened from the corridor. It didn’t take more than a casual glance to confirm that the chambers were empty, having already been thoroughly searched.

  Ransacked would have been the more appropriate word for the totality of the deconstruction.

  None of the rooms contained anything that could still be considered of any value save for scrap or kindling. Furniture had been smashed into jagged splinters. Fabric had been torn to shreds. Pottery and glass shards littered the floor. The guards had been diligent in their search, leaving nothing undisturbed.

  Risens knew that the fear of earning the King’s wrath was a potent motivator for all except fools and those who had little regard for their lives. For a moment, he considered which category he belonged to before amending his previous categorization.

  He could be counted among those who knew who the man truly was.

  The words false king flashed into his mind.

  “He’s a liar.”

  “A fraud.”

  Risens found it disconcerting that his opinions had begun to align with the Raven Talons.

  Now wasn’t the time to dwell on such things, though. Distraction could prove fatal, and he had neither intention nor desire to die.

  The reality of the dangerous game he had played his entire life wasn’t lost on him. There was definite trauma in pain, but thankfully, it was temporary. He’d suffered more than most would endure in multiple lifetimes. Having been trained to shut out the agony to a point, he could moderate the paralyzing effects of received damage to a degree.

  Risens had no doubt that his life would one day end at the edge of a blade, point of an arrow, or burn of magic. His morbid comfort was that in that fateful moment, he would not be alone. Hundreds had preceded him into Pylkev’s hungry belly—and those were just those he’d assigned such a fate.

  This night was not the night that would see him fail the most important goal of his quests.

  His own survival.

  Risens approach grew more cautious as he neared the only closed door in the hallway. The churning in his stomach increased with every step as the stench of death grew to a nauseating level. No matter how many times he’d smelled those foul odors, it never got better.

  The creaking of the door as he pushed it open was lost beneath the percussive echoes of the work upstairs. He’d killed, looked in the eyes of his victims, watched as the spark of life was snuffed out, but still, anger, white hot and bitter, swelled within him as the first images of the chamber came into focus. The source of the stench that poisoned the air was piled before him. Clothed in ill-fitting and threadbare rags, the bodies of the manor’s servants were scattered without regard. There were no scraps of uniforms mixed in among the corpses. These were not soldiers, but scullery maids, servants, errand boys, and children.

  If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  This was not justice.

  This was a massacre.

  He felt his thoughts swim as the wave of dizziness tore through him. Had he not been guilty of similar crimes?

  Stepping to the side he balanced himself with a hand against the sturdy upright of a bunk bed. The room was deeper than the others he’d seen to this point, stretching ten meters into the gloom beyond. There was no destruction of the furniture here.

  Those who perpetrated their deaths knew that there was nothing to find among the tightly packed bunks. It was doubtful that any whose heads rested on the thin pillows of these beds had much more than the clothing they wore to their deaths.

  There would be no parades to celebrate their lives and to mourn their passings. He would do what he could to honor their sacrifices.

  They died as they had lived: serving those who barely acknowledged their existence, yet were all too quick to punish them for their faults.

  Risens had no question, held no illusions of his moral character. He was evil. He was flawed. Lady Myrenas was no saint, though he doubted she deserved the death that befell her at the willing, gleeful hands of the King. Those who perpetrated these murders deserved no mercy.

  He would afford them none.

  With effort, he withdrew his eyes from the pile of dead. His gaze swept across the chamber, his curiosity mounting as he viewed the lower bunk near his shins. The thin blanket was bunched into the corner, a knotty mass of yarn peeking out from under its cover.

  Extending his hand slowly, as if preparing to dodge should it try to strike, he reached for the object. Cautiously, he pulled it from the tangle of the blanket. An oversized, misshapen, though clearly identifiable head preceded the body that followed. The eyes were made of buttons, one hanging desperately on by a single fraying thread. The body was clothed in a dress that was nearly as ratty as the corpses piled in the room.

  His focus shifted beyond the doll to the post of the bed. Weathered by use of years, the intentional scratches that decorated its face stood out as bright lines against the dark grain. A single word was etched again and again, the quality of the lettering and the carving improving with each successive attempt.

  Risens’s hand squeezed involuntarily, crushing the abdomen of the doll as the words, the name, resolved in his mind.

  Aleth.

  The girl he’d encountered during his first foray into the depths of the manor. The child the ravens had sought out on the grounds of Excelsior.

  The youth he’d saved in the alley.

  Coincidence demanded attention. This was far more consequential.

  Risens loosened his hold on the doll as his crushing grip threatened to tear it in two. He carefully stuffed it into his pocket as resolve solidified in his mind. Securing information was the original cause for his return to the Gilded Cage. His purpose had now been amended.

  None would leave this estate alive. He would turn the spacious rooms, the grand ballroom, the bloody bathrooms into a pyre to honor the deaths of those who would receive no such dignity.

  The quiet thumping of footsteps from the hall pulled his attention from the inferno that blazed within. Muffled voices seeped through the gaps between the doorway and frame. Laughter was piled atop a whine of complaints as they neared. The solid reverberations of the steps on the wood paneling felt unnaturally heavy and labored as if they carried something weighty. He expected he knew what cargo they moved.

  There was little to hide behind in the room aside from the rows of bunks. The bodies would provide ample cover, though he had no intention of going that route. He contemplated merely standing in the doorway to greet the incoming troops, but logic overruled the intensity of his ire. Thinking quickly, he scrambled up the side of the bunk closest to the door.

  The vaulted ceiling of the room allowed him almost enough space to stand atop the bedframe. With his back pressed against the wall and his opposite foot resting on the thin lip of the frame, he would be hidden by the inswing of the door. Not that it would matter. Rarely was anyone aware of the possibility of threats lurking above them.

  A thump sounded against the door, and muttered curses signaled the entrance of the soldiers. Using his shoulder as a wedge, the first man hammered his weight into the wooden panel—hands currently occupied maintaining their grip on their lifeless cargo. Stumbling into the murk and stench of the room, they hefted the body between them. Her arms—for it was the corpse of a woman—hung limp at her sides, dragging on the ground as they escorted her to her final resting place.

  “I’m not sure if they smell worse in life or in death,” one of the guards joked as they silently positioned themselves to toss the woman into the pile with the others.

  Risens had heard enough.

  Pushing off the bed with his foot. He pulled the Raven Talons from their sheets as he floated through the air. Both blades screamed for bloodshed, their wicked cheers rising like a tide in his mind. Once again, his desire mirrored their insatiable urge to kill. With a thought, he commanded the Dull Wind.

  As if moving through the windSteps, a fierce gust of air rushed against his face as he shifted from his position near the door. One moment, he was hovering by the entrance; the next, he stood a pace behind the soldiers, the blades rammed to their hilts through their backs.

  His movements were silent, and the equally quiet splatter of their blood on the floor was easily overwhelmed by the din of the continuing demolition in the upper levels. With their deaths, the burning digits that represented the countdown of the blades ticked up another digit, and they feasted on the blood of their victims.

  “More!”

  “Yes, more!”

  “My intuition tells me you will have your fill this evening,” Risens said to the blades.

  Risens didn’t linger in the rotting crypt. He didn’t bother wiping the Talons clean as he knew they’d be used again momentarily. With a flick of his wrists, he shed the excess blood from their steel, splattering it in lines across the empty bunks.

  “No!”

  “Why waste their lifeblood, you fool!”

  Ignoring their protests and diverting a step to his side, he reached out, grabbing the feather that floated silently toward the floor. As it settled into his waiting palm, he grinned, tugging up his lips.

  If he could properly time his use of the Dull Wind, the ability would be endless. If he could recollect every feather that floated in his wake, he would be able to maintain his supply indefinitely. The mask’s cool-down, which was supposed to last an hour, seemed excessive by comparison.

  Risens still wondered what would happen to the blades if they reached zero. To this point, his actions hadn’t proven unworthy in their eyes. It was rare that he drew them without feeding their insatiable need for blood and death. A dark recess of his mind worried that the lingering urges, the desire to kill, and the madness that seemed to inhabit the sentient blades would one day impact him.

  For now, he held strong.

  He would deal with the potential repercussions another time.

  Now, he had work to do, and their compulsions suited his present state of mind.