Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)

One of the Black Palace servants took me to a small room on the main level. The room reeked of herbs and dried lavender from hanging bunches of seasonings over the door.

I looked out one window to the sky. The position of the moon hinted we were down to the last toll. At the stroke of midnight, the masquerade would fade away for another turn.

Not to mention the elixir keeping Niall in a bit of a dreamy haze would be wearing off.

I needed to retrieve Hagen and find Malin or I would start drawing blood.

What was taking so bleeding long? To bring a purchased Alver should not take half my life.

I shook out my hands. Paced the room. It felt like turns before the click snapped and the same servant who’d brought me returned, a thin, magisk-chained Hagen at his back.

″Your lady’s serf,” said the servant. He bowed his head and slipped out the room.

I’d played this moment out in my head. It was meant to be strategic. Take the mark to the boathouse, get him to freedom, take the penge and satisfaction Gunnar had his family restored.

But like a thief, emotion stole my indifference and replaced it with pain, relief, and—gods—something hopeful. My head was not right. This was not strategic. This was personal.

Hagen had not lifted his eyes. He looked defeated. “Where shall I go, Herr?”

I scoffed. “I expected a little more fight in you.”

A muscle popped in Hagen’s jaw, but his eyes remained trained on the ground. “There are consequences for fighting, Herr.”

″Yes. Consequences that might fall back on your family in the north, no doubt.”

Ah, that was what spurred Hagen to life.

He lifted his eyes, darkness in his glare. “I do not know how you know of them, but do not threaten them again. Unless you do wish for a fight, Herr.”

″I would never threaten them. Don’t tell them, for it would ruin my hard-fought reputation, but I like them too much.”

Hagen’s face paled. “You pretend to know them to taunt me. It will not work.”

″Why? Because you think your family is still imprisoned? So, how could I possibly be acquainted with them? Is that what you’re thinking?”

Hagen shifted on his feet, eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”

Time for pretenses to end. I did not anticipate the tightness of nerves to take hold. But as I lifted the raven mask, my heart raced in my chest. My tongue stuck to the top of my mouth.

It had been ten turns. I looked different and wasn’t surprised when he studied me as if he could still not place my face in his memory.

″Time to go, Hagen. Your freedom is waiting.” I turned for the door.

″Who are you?” he asked again.

″Just a man keeping a boy’s promise to always look after her. You were purchased by your sister.”

A rough breath scraped out of his throat. “Malin is here? No. No, she can’t be.” He hurried to my side. This close, it was not long before his eyes widened in recognition. “By the hells. Kase.”

The knot in my throat was unwelcome. I cleared it away and blinked shadows over my eyes. “We need to go. Our time is short.”

″Kase—”

″Hagen,” I snapped. “We can embrace and tell each other all about our wretched lives later. We need to go. You’ll need to wait to remove your magisk shackles but take this.” I handed him a dagger sheathed to my ribs. “Be ready to fight.”

I hoped it wouldn’t come to that. We’d had little disruptions so far, and I’d like to keep it that way. In as a whisper, out like a shadow.

The layout plans Malin had recited to me reeled in my head. Make our way to the next floor up. Find the third chamber on the left. Climb down the trellis out the window. We’d slip out through the back gate, take a two-level staircase into the underground boathouse. Cross the river. Done. Survival.

Fate had little affection for me. I suspected it was because I often spread nonbelief for the Norns. We’d hardly made it out of our room before a door slammed open and a bloodied Lynx, Niklas, and Fiske appeared, blades in hand.

″Kase,” Lynx shouted. “They knew we were here.”

My stomach turned. He was supposed to be with Malin. Niklas handed me my blacksteel in the next breath. “Where is she?”

Lynx shook his head. “Eero came, said there was a change, and he went with Malin.”

″And you bleeding left her?”

″Malin is gone?” Hagen said in a rough voice.

Lynx ignored him and looked to me. “The Lord Magnate called me. I could not refuse and keep our façade. She was with Eero, but—”

″The bastard betrayed us.” Niklas wiped blood off his nose with his sleeve. “He told them our marks. Kase, he told them where Junie was taking the rest of those Alvers from the trade.”

″How?” I gripped his arm. “No one but us three knew we’d smuggle them out.”

Niklas held the sides of his head. “I don’t know. Dammit. I don’t know how he knew anything. How did he hide his lies? Junie would’ve tasted them.”

If Eero had planned on deceit tonight, no doubt he took precautions around Junius. Niklas had dozens of Elixirs that hid intentions, concealed thoughts, for all I knew, Eero could’ve used the Falkyn’s own mesmer against his guild.

The Alvers in the trade with Hagen would’ve been met with Falkyns after they were not selected. It was not out of goodness that we made plans to free them on the side. More to cause Ivar discomfort. I had expected Malin to give me grief about being a good person when she found out. But if she was gone . . .

I wouldn’t allow the thought to form and focused again on Niklas.

″Eero told them,” he raged. “A unit went for the canals, and I tried to chase them, but more came. They blocked us off. I won’t lose her again. I won’t.”

I gripped the side of his neck. Niklas was spiraling in memories of a time his wife had been captured and shipped to the Northern Kingdom. Junie’s connection to the distant kingdom was how we came to know Gunnar’s folk. How we all ended up here.

My voice darkened. “Where is Eero?”

I’d peel his skin off his bones. Slowly.

″He took her into a tent,” Lynx told me. “But we’ll be hard pressed to reach it without fighting through Black Palace guards.”

Fiske looked at me. “Remember what I said.”

Dammit. I’d nearly forgotten his bleeding premonition about the night not going to plan. If a traitor had Malin, not even fate would stop me from reaching her and burning Eero where he stood.

I turned my dark glare to Hagen. “As I said. Be ready to fight. Niklas, release him.”

The Falkyn didn’t hesitate and tossed a stone at Hagen, directing him to rub the mesmerized rune stone against the collar. Hagen drew a breath of relief when the eldrish poison inside the silver band absorbed into Niklas’s tricky stone.

Without another word I shoved through them and raced out the doors of the palace.

Wild yells already rose from the courtyard, the sweet aromas of the masquerade were buried under the scent of smoke and blood.

I bit the inside of my cheek, heart throbbing, and entered the festival, overturned by mesmer and blades.

Bitter smoke burned my throat. One tent was set aflame, the rainbow ribbon pole too. Every ribbon hissed and cracked as the vibrant colors scorched black. At the east gates, a few Falkyns forced out young ones screaming in the arms of ammas and their mothers.

We came for blood, but not the innocent kind.

I had only stepped outside when a frenzied skydguard chopped his blade against my blacksteel. Pressure burned. I jabbed at his side, missed, but a different dagger took the guard from behind.

Hagen wrenched the blade from the neck of the skydguard. He spun the dagger in hand, a fierceness in his gaunt face he hadn’t had before.

Blades sliced and stabbed in the courtyard. I took it in. Kryv and Falkyn battled skydguard and inner palace warriors. Raum and Vali fought nearby like an underwater dance. It was how we usually survived. Together in pairs, playing off the skills of another.

When a guard made a swipe for Vali’s face, Raum jumped in front and rammed his dagger up through the man’s chin.

A breathy ffftt, ffftt brushed past my head. Two arrow points gouged the chest of a skydguard in my path. On the roof, Gunnar raised his bow for a new round. He fired, loaded, repeated, Tova at his side acting as a mirror.

″Kase.” Hagen noticed. His face turned to steel. “Kase Eriksson is that my bleeding son?”

″Yes.” I wouldn’t explain more and jumped into the fray. Steel met steel as a guard was tossed into my path. He dodged my strike, kicked at my knee. He stumbled, and I slammed the pommel of my sword against his skull.

I made quick work of running him through and moving onto the next.

The two guilds chased back the skydguard; calls for evacuations of the noble folk rose over the screams. The common people in attendance were scattered. No guards cared if they lived or died.

Near the back gates, Isak and Fiske fought together. Isak bent forward, Fiske rolled over his back, slitting an exchanger’s throat as he went. Lynx worked with Niklas. The Falkyn was a fine Elixist, a brilliant smuggler, and a deadly fighter. Those who came too close, didn’t live long.

″I’ll kill you!” Dagny’s screams drew me into the hue and cry. I squinted through the smoke. A Falkyn dragged her by the waist to the stables where the coaches better have been waiting for half our people to escape. She kicked and flailed; rage pointed at a group of skydguard. “Give him to me!”

Between the guard, Niall, who no longer was locked in a wistful trance, laughed a wicked sort, and disappeared into the protection of an armored coach.

I’d found nearly everyone but Malin Strom. This festival would burn to the ground until I did.

Like a bloody waltz, I dropped men at my feet. A daring guard grabbed my arm. I cracked my forehead into the soldier’s nose, then opened his chest. Blacksteel in one hand, my palm opened at my side.

Three men in front of me, donned in simple, feathered masks fell to their knees. They grasped for their throats. The fear of death opened the doors for creativity, but tonight they would simply break.

One wave of my hand and their necks snapped.

Skydguard with pelts and animal heads over their skulls emerged through the iron gates in boxy units. The Lord Magnate’s personal armies.

But I wasn’t looking at the new guards. My gaze trained at a covered podium near the front wall. As if no one else stood between us, I stared unblinking at the Lord Magnate.

The flames tinted the blackness of Ivar’s eyes eerily red.

Walls of inky filaments erupted from the soil. I pulled mesmer from every crevice. Hatred boiled inside and it made everything simpler.

Shadows devoured the courtyard. Guards were pummeled, others swallowed by darkness. Ivar hissed at his forces to keep steady and signaled to someone over his back.

Bleeding gods.

A familiar face split the darkness with glimmers of precious gold and ribbons of light spilling from his fingers. He stepped forward in his pearl-white robes.

A staggering violence overtook me as I raised my hands. “Sabain!”

The Benevolent of the Black Palace. My opposite. There was something off in his head. I’d never met a soul so dark who could create such light.

Sabain matched my stance. He spread his palms. A shocking white shimmer was all I saw before our destruction collided. His brightness tangled with the shadows. With ropes of gold, Sabain flung the destruction we’d caused back at the guilds. Where they stepped, they would stumble over tent poles and broken stones until skydguard moved in, ready to strike them down.

I took the fire. The fear of burning alive filled the courtyard, and was easily spread as I tossed ashes and embers throughout the skydguard lines, shoving them back from the Kryv and Falkyns.

Matched in power, I stumbled when Sabain tossed his misty light at me. But I flung darkness back in the next breath.

Hope and fear twisted across the burning masquerade.

My heart burned in exhaustion. A little more. I needed to find Malin. To find her meant staying alive. A little more.

Darkness grew. Sabain gasped, but narrowed his glare at me. With furious cries, we reeled our opposing magicks once more.

In a flash of gold and pitch, the two veins of mesmer erupted in a deafening boom that rattled the cobblestones at our feet. I was knocked back, coughing against the rotten taste of Alver blood between my teeth. I reached for my blacksteel.

″Take him!” Ivar shrieked, pointing at me. “Take him, damn you!”

I wouldn’t go. I’d send myself to the hells before I left without seeing Malin and my guild to safety.

Like his had done to me, my mesmer had pummeled Sabain to the ground. But he stood first, raised a hand to deliver what I expected was a killing blow. In the next breath, Hagen lunged in front of me. His hands out, muscles tense.

At once, Sabain’s light died.

″Go, Kase!” Hagen shouted. “They spotted her near the ring tent. She’s being led away by the Master of Ceremonies.”

He gave me a significant look. My heart pounded. Would she be safe then? Or what was the master planning?

″I can’t leave you here. You were the mark, the job.”

″Go get my sister.” He gripped my shoulder. “For all our sakes.”

Sabain unsheathed a blade. He would fight Hagen. Perhaps he’d win and I would fail to finish the job successfully. But choices needed to be made, and Hagen had made one. Sabain would fight our mark, but he’d do it without mesmer. Hagen would make sure his power was numb and deadened.

Arrows spilled over our heads, aimed at Sabain. The Benevolent dodged, and he was fortunate he was just out of range of Gunnar’s shot.

Hagen would have defenses, and he was right—Malin needed to be taken from here more than anyone.

In the distance, from the Black Palace, the great bell tower boomed the twelfth hour.

Time was up.

At the sound, the guilds folded their weapons, and joined the rush of those fleeing through the stone walls.

Ivar roared commands, but even his personal guards tugged him and the Lady Magnate off the dais, dragging them to safety. I didn’t see Luca. Hopefully, he’d disappeared before the fighting broke out.

I had to trust the others would get Hagen to the boathouse. That the rest would hit their marks of escape. We all couldn’t go by boat. Some would leave through the gates with sleeping guards, or the canals if Eero had not destroyed our plans there too.

I winced with each step. Bruises and open wounds were across my body from Sabain’s attack. None of it mattered.

I sprinted for the back tents. I’d get Malin back.

Not even the gods could stop me.