He backed away, holding his burned hand. The man’s body slumped into the mud with a dull, wet splat. No movement. No breath. Even that ghostly whistle of steam from the torn face stopped, as if the fire inside had finally gone out.

  Nayden leaned his back against the remains of the rough wall. His legs, carried by adrenaline until now, suddenly turned to cotton. He slid down slowly until he was sitting in the dirty snow. He held his hands out in front of him. They trembled so hard he couldn’t control them. They were black with that strange, tar-like ichor. He wiped them violently on his thighs, once, twice, three times, trying to scrub off the heat, the smell of burning and death.

  “Gods...” he whispered, tilting his head back. The back of his head hit the bricks with a dull thud. He closed his eyes. His heart was still hammering against his ribs, but it was pumping living blood. He had killed the monster. It was over. The nightmare was over.

  “It’s okay...” he muttered to himself, trying to calm his breathing. “It’s all over. I’ll go back to the Order... I’ll tell them...”

  He relaxed the tense muscles of his neck. He let fatigue wash over him in a heavy, blissful wave. It was a moment of absolute, total relief. A moment when he believed he had survived.

  And then, in that blissful silence, the corpse chuckled.

  The body in the mud jerked violently. A wet, wheezing intake of breath rang out. The kind a man makes when he nearly drowns.

  Nayden froze with his mouth open. The man bent into an arc. His fingers dug into the mud, scratching the earth. He coughed, choking on his own blood. Every muscle spasm brought a grimace of pure, physical agony to his face. He grabbed the knife hilt with both hands.

  “Mother... fucker...” he ground out through clenched teeth.

  He pulled. The blade didn’t come out easily. It did so with a loud, disgusting squelch of suctioned meat. Dark blood splashed onto his tunic, steaming in the frost. The man threw the knife aside and immediately pressed a hand to his sternum. He panted shallowly, hissing with every exhale. Something unnatural was happening under his fingers. The flesh hissed. Meat was knitting together alive, defying logic and nature.

  “You have a shitty sense of humor, kid,” he growled. He looked up at Nayden. There was no death in his eyes. There was murderous irritation.

  Nayden pressed himself into the bricks as if wanting to pass through the wall. “You... you’re alive,” he stammered. “I hit the heart...”

  “I know where you hit!” the man screamed. His voice cracked with pain. He stood up slowly. His legs trembled like a newborn foal’s. He rested a hand on his knee, trying not to fall. He looked like someone who had just been put through a meat grinder.

  “Damn it...” He spat thick saliva at his feet. “I’m used to pain. A broken bone, a burn... that can be ignored. Those are just signals. You can mute them.”

  He took a shaky step toward Nayden. He was pale, sweaty, and furious. “But a hole in the heart?” He pointed at his bloody chest. “That’s not ordinary pain. That is... damn inconvenient. Everything shuts down. Blood doesn’t go where it needs to. I’m clogging up.” He grimaced, massaging his sternum.

  He stood over the boy. Rubbing his chest, wincing at every touch. “Lesson one,” he snarled. “If you want to kill someone, cut off the head. Otherwise, you just make a mess.”

  Before Nayden could shield himself with his arm, the man’s fist landed on his face. There was no magic in it. It was a heavy, technical right hook. The boy’s head snapped back and hit the wall with a dull thud. His lip split, filling his mouth with salty, warm fluid. The image before his eyes blurred into shaking spots. Damn, where did this skinny mage get so much strength?

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  The man gave him no time for analysis. He grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up, exposing his throat. With his other hand, he picked up the knife from the mud and pressed it to Nayden’s cheek, right under his left eye. The cold steel burned against the skin heated by the blow.

  “You wanted to see a face?” he hissed, leaning so close Nayden could smell copper on his breath. “Then look. Take a good look, you little shit.”

  He raised the knife. No speeches. No villain monologue. He simply tensed his muscles to drive the steel into the eye socket.

  Nayden squeezed his eyes shut. He waited for the cold, the pain, and the darkness. A heartbeat passed. Then another. He heard wheezing breath. And a quiet, furious growl. He opened one eye. The blade hung a centimeter from his pupil. But the man’s hand... was shaking. Not from fear. It was trembling violently, as if in a seizure. The forearm muscles tensed to the limit, veins stood out as if he were wrestling an invisible titan. But the arm refused to move a millimeter further.

  “Move...” the man hissed at his own hand. Sweat on his forehead mixed with blood. “Move, you pile of meat...”

  He tried. Nayden saw the struggle—the murderer’s will against the body’s blockade. Knuckles on the hilt turned white. And then they let go. Against the man’s will, the fingers straightened. The knife slipped from his hand. It fell into the mud, clinking against a stone, harmless as a spoon.

  The man stood there for a moment with his raised, limp hand, staring at it with disbelief and pure fury. “Oh, for fuck’s sake...” he ground out.

  He pushed Nayden away with a clumsy motion, as if shooing a dog, and slumped heavily against the opposite wall of the alley himself. His legs buckled under him like cotton. They sat opposite each other. Two wrecks in the mud.

  Nayden, still pressed against the wall, looked at the knife lying between them, and then at his would-be executioner. “Why...” he rasped, wiping blood from his split lip. “Why did you stop?”

  “Shut up!” the man snarled, massaging his trembling wrist. He looked at his own hand with hatred, as if it belonged to someone else. “I have no idea! The damn thing just stopped!”

  “You should be dead,” Nayden whispered, pointing at the hole in his chest.

  The man looked at him with hatred. “So should you. So we’re even. Consider yourself lucky, kid,” he muttered, leaning heavily against the wall. “Something... blocked me. My body has its own opinion about killing you today.”

  “Blocked?” Nayden laughed nervously, hysterically. “I ripped your heart open! You owe me an explanation! Did you bring these beasts? What are you doing here?!”

  The man tilted his head back, hitting the back of his skull against the dirty wall. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, there was no fear of accusation. There was weariness. Deep, bottomless exhaustion of someone pulled from a deep sleep straight into a fire.

  “Explanation?” he repeated quietly. “You, little fanatic in a dirty rag, want to hear my confession?”

  He pushed off the wall. Unsteadily, but with determination. “You tell me what I’m doing here. Fifteen minutes ago I was... elsewhere. I had peace. And now I’m standing knee-deep in mud and guts, with a hole in my chest, because some brat in a gilded can can’t watch his own backyard.”

  “I won’t tell you anything!” Nayden shot back, trying to stand, though his legs felt like jelly. “You can torture me, servant of shadow! I won’t betray the Order!”

  The man sniffed. “Torture?” He measured him with a look. From the top of his head to his shaking knees. “Boy, you reek of copper, fear, and cheap incense. Your Order isn’t a secret, it’s a parade of fools.” He pointed at the remains of Nayden’s tunic. “Who in their right mind goes to war in bright colors? Yellow and gold? At night? You shine like a lantern for every monster in the forest. Only an idiot asks for death like that.”

  Nayden opened his mouth to protest, but didn’t get the chance.

  “I was busy with something much more interesting than saving a solar moron’s ass,” he growled. “Talk, how did you pull me here? What was it? A botched spell? A poorly phrased wish to a falling star? Or maybe...” he leaned in, and the smell of iron from his chest hit Nayden in the face, “you have something inside you that stinks so bad it yanked me from the other end of the world just to ruin my evening?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Nayden backed away, but the Whisperer had no intention of finishing this conversation at a distance.

  Despite the wound, the man lunged forward and pinned him to the wall. He drove his forearm into Nayden’s throat, pressing him against the bricks so hard the boy had to stand on his toes to catch a breath.

  “Don’t lie,” the Whisperer purred. His face, still blue and wet with blood, was so close Nayden could see every burst vessel in his eye. “I really care to know whose tendons I should cut for this... inconvenience. Someone threw an anchor. Someone made me land here.”

  Nayden gasped for air in short, jagged gulps. His heart hammered against his ribs, and the Whisperer’s hand held him in a grip he couldn’t break.

  “Well?” the Whisperer urged, his voice becoming quiet and venomous. “Don’t test my patience, brat. I just want to know on whom I should unleash my gratitude for this hole in my sternum. And believe me, my gratitude can be... very creative. Who summoned me here?”