Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The corridor ended in a door with a honeycomb carved on it.

Fel did not remember any door like that in the Lower City. But the First Bell had rearranged everything, and the Sanctum’s builders had been fond of surprises, and the alternative was to stand in a dead-end alley with a pair of iron crowns weeping light for anybody to follow. He shoved the door open.

The room was gold.

It was enormous, a great domed chamber whose walls and ceiling were covered from floor to apex in tiny hexagonal cells, thousands upon thousands of them, each glowing a soft amber. The air hummed. It smelled of honey and hot dust. There was no floor. There was only a wide, flat platform of the same hexagons, running out into a golden nothing, and in the center of it, upside down on the ceiling with her wings half open, hung Knoxia Lunore.

“Well, hello, Your Majesty,” she said, grinning. “Took you long enough.”

Fel did not wait for her to finish.

He drew both swords, Krashing Fyr in his right hand and Falling Star in his left, and he threw himself forward. Knoxia dropped off the ceiling. He never saw her land. One moment she was above him, and the next she was behind Vili with a stinger halfway out of her arm.

“Vili!”

Sand exploded. Vili spun, and a wall of gold grit slammed into the space where she had been, and she was gone again, a black-and-amber streak that left a smear of buzzing air behind it.

She’s fast. The thought was very clear in Fel’s head, and it was not comforting. She’s faster than Loria. She’s faster than the horse.

Something raked his ribs. His coat opened. He felt it a full second after it had happened, a bright hot line of pain, and he turned and cut at empty air.

“Too slow!” She was above him. She was behind him. She was on the wall, upside down, then on the floor, then everywhere. Her laughter came from all sides. “Is this what we were afraid of? The last TeneDente? The Fallen Heir?”

“Stay close,” said Vili, his back to Fel’s. His voice was calm and his silver-wired fingers were moving in tiny, quick patterns, dropping grains. “Do not try to hit her. She is not there. She is only going to be.”

“How do you know?”

“Mother Sable taught me to watch a kettle.” A long breath. “When the water is about to boil, it makes a shape.”

“That is the stupidest thing I have ever…”

“Right!”

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Fel struck right. Krashing Fyr met something hard, and Knoxia’s stinger skittered off the golden blade with a shriek of chitin on steel. He did not hesitate. He did what Gideon had taught him. The curve of the saber caught her forearm as it whipped past, and he hooked. He hauled. She came off her line with a startled yelp, and he drove his shoulder into her chest, and she hit the hexagon floor and rolled.

“That,” said Knoxia, spitting black blood, “was dirty.”

“That was a fisherman’s trick.”

“I love it!”

She came back faster than ever. But something had changed. Vili had stopped defending. His hands were a blur, and in the space between his fingertips, the air was glittering. Tiny threads of sand hung in the amber light like spider silk, so fine that Fel could barely see them, strung between the hive cells in a wide, invisible web.

“Every time she passes,” Vili said softly, “she cuts one. I only have to feel which.”

Knoxia flew straight into the web.

She should have been faster. She should have seen it. But she was too fast, and too sure, and when the first thread sliced across her wing she snarled and twisted, and the second caught her ankle, and the third her wrist. Sand poured into the honeycomb cells around her, hardening, locking. She hung in the air like a fly in a windowpane, wings pinned, one arm held at an angle.

“Now,” said Vili.

Fel was already running. Falling Star came up in his left hand, black and quiet and hungry, and the golden saber came around in his right, and he saw her amber eyes widen in the moment before the blow.

The wall burst.

It happened without warning. A great pale shape came through the honeycomb in a spray of wax and sparks, one arm dripping, coat scorched to rags. Pegoris of Flatin had come with his head down like a bull, and he did not slow.

His fist took Vili square in the chest.

There was a sound like a dropped sack of wet clay. Vili flew across the room and struck the far wall so hard that the hexagons cracked. He slid down it, gasping. Blood ran from his mouth.

Fel had never seen the seventh prince look angry. He had seen him cold. He had seen him arrogant, contemptuous, wounded. He had never seen the blue eyes go white.

“You,” said Vili, very softly, rising to one knee, “have made a mistake.”

Pegoris shrank back. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m…”

The door behind him opened.

She walked in like a shadow. She was covered in ash and soot, her coat scorched, her braid half undone, and her healed arm glowed faintly green from the elbow down. She had not been running. She had been following, and she had not been in a hurry.

“Fel,” said Loria. “Down.”

He dropped.

She raised the Three-Eyed Cerberus, and all three eyes opened at once, and the gun screamed.

It was not a shot. It was a sunrise. A black star bloomed at the muzzle, and the whole room went dark, and then the light came, a vast, hard, roaring column of infernal flame that hit Pegoris in the back and burst through him and struck Knoxia at the end of her web. The whole hive lit up. Honeycomb walls turned to charcoal. The ceiling cracked. A shockwave hit Fel like a slap from a giant.

Smoke rose in a thick, choking column. Somewhere inside it, Pegoris was screaming. Somewhere else, Knoxia was laughing, high and hoarse and half-mad.

“Fel!”

Loria’s voice cut through the smoke. He could not see her. He could only hear it, and it was the voice of someone who has decided something and will not be argued with.

“Run! Get out! Find the marble staircase! The garden! Go!”

“Loria…”

“Plan Z,” said Loria, and there was something in it he had never heard, something small and hard and fond. “Whoever is still standing gets the others out. I am telling you, TeneDente. Run.”

He ran.

He ran through the burning wall, out into the false streets, with the Crown weeping silver down his cheeks, and he did not look back, because he knew what he would see if he did.