++Back to Kyvaine.++

  I would have liked to ambush the two men fighting Gruin, too, but unfortunately you can only hope to kill so many people in a single fight before the ones still left notice that you’re doing it. Not that it made much difference this time in any case, they were hardly tourney-tier fighters.

  No, the concern wasn’t those two poor sods who died in so small a count of seconds between myself and Gruin. It was the several more outside.

  But that concern didn’t last much longer. I heard Morlo laugh and felt a rush of heat leaving the room, then flames danced outside and there was no more sound of violence. Only crackling fire. I looked around through the room, feeling my grin start to slip as the terror receded.

  “Everybody okay?” I asked, then heard a wounded man groan where he was laying across the floorboards, “shut up, not you,” I snapped.”

  “I’m okay,” Vara croaked. She was trembling from head to toe, and I wondered if the cold was getting to her.

  “I’m bloody not,” Gruin snapped. I looked over to see a large, animated mess of bleeding injuries that was haphazardly shaped into a Grynkori’s likeness. He was panting hard, lungs making a deep, scraping rattle every time air moved through them, and looked to be on the verge of falling at any moment.

  He fell.

  That brought on a moment of panic from both myself and Vara as we watched over the unconscious idiot, but found that he was still alive. At least as far as we could tell, it’s actually hard to check with Grynkori because their whole bodies are built like some big chunk of stone. By the time we’d finished confirming, Morlo was making himself known.

  “That was fun,” he chirped as he entered. The air around Morlo seemed to bristle with heat, which I imagined was some excess from the flames he’d been throwing around. If the temperature bothered him, though, he didn’t give the fact away with his face or voice.

  “What the fuck just happened!?” I snapped, looking around and jumping at shadows still. I knew I’d be like that for the rest of the day, would probably lose sleep over it until my body had finished calming itself down, but Morlo looked utterly unfucked.

  Vara found her voice then, and didn’t waste much time in speaking up to convey what was going on. I kept an eye on Gruin as she did, noting that the Grynkori’s condition didn’t seem to be growing worse, at least, but still suspecting he’d just randomly die at some point anyway. It seemed like that sort of day.

  By the time we’d finished hearing Vara babble out her report ++Vara here, since I’ve been given chance to read through these before they’re committed to record, I did not babble and was actually very dignified and controlled++ we already had a pretty complete picture of everything that had happened and, more importantly, what needed doing next.

  Of course I chose the exact wrong thing to focus on, as usual.

  “You can do Thaumaturgy?” I asked Vara. She looked at me with the sort of stunned irritation that I think now was rather appropriate for such a stupid question, but took umbrage with back then.

  “That’s your biggest concern!?” she snapped.

  Morlo spoke up before things could degenerate further into an argument.

  “Shut up or I’ll kill you both.”

  We both shut up.

  “It’s obvious what’s happened here,” Morlo grunted, “that little shit-rat you dealt with got greedy, so now I need to go and teach him what happens when you get greedy with Morlo the Great and Terrible. Vara, find a chirurgeon to make sure the oreling doesn’t die. You’re with me, Kyvaine.”

  “Why?!” I groaned.

  “Becuase I think it’s funny,” Morlo grinned, “now hurry up!”

  I did hurry up, and was as miserable as ever. Stupidly, I was still thinking of Vara as I moved out of that room, more specifically her learning Thaumaturgy. Whatever enthusiasm for magic I’d had before was growing quickly at that realisation, the urge to not let her have one up over me proving pathetically stronger than the allure of raw power for its own sake.

  “How fast can I learn Thaumaturgy?” I asked Morlo as he marched out of the rooms with as much speed as any man his age could be expected to muster, or perhaps more.

  “Depends on how much you focus and how good at it you are.”

  I chewed on that, then, reluctantly, shared some more information with him.

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  “There’s this Thaumaturge, Wyrickai, who reckons I was very talented. He thought I could become one of the best in the world.”

  Morlo grinned at that. “Wyrickai, eh? I know him of course. Little shit. Probably tried to rope you into apprenticing under him.”

  He was right of course, and snorted as he seemed to read it on my face.

  “Evidently he’s not any better at it than he used to be, look how easily I got you.” Morlo didn’t have a hint of shame in him as we went, and the total absence of anything even resembling an apology left me rather eager to keep my silence while we walked.

  It occurred to me only when we’d almost arrived at our destination that I didn’t know how Morlo was deciding what it was, but I figured that much out upon first sighting the place. It was clearly the accommodations of our new landlord, and by the iron bars over their windows and heavy reinforcements in the doors, he was well used to unsatisfied customers.

  But not ones like us.

  “How can I break down this door?” Morlo asked me as we approached.

  “With…Thaumaturgy?”

  He was not impressed.

  “Think like a Thaumaturge if you want to use it. The most critical skill any of us will ever have is knowing where to find power, so consider it. How might I break down this door?”

  “The wind,” I said with barely a thought.

  “And if there were no wind?”

  Irritably, I gave it a bit more consideration.

  “You…Can’t use heat to turn into force, right?”

  “Some can, most can’t, let’s assume no for this question.”

  “Then I don’t know,” I snapped.

  Morlo grinned, then aimed a hand at the door.

  “The answer,” he explained slowly, “is by spending our walk over here soaking up all the wasted power in my own footsteps.”

  Apparently he’d been wasting a lot of power with his steps, because at that gesture alone the door was blasted clean off its hinges. I felt scraps of wood hit my skin hard enough to draw blood, cursed as I stumbled back and, of course, heard Morlo laughing his arse off.

  “Don’t worry farm-boy, you’re safe now.”

  “I’m not a farmer,” I snapped, more stung by comparison to a commoner than I was by the splinters, “and I was just surprised.” I drew my sword and started for the door in a fury, suddenly regretting that I’d not taken the time to don my breastplate. Chainmail, at least, still hugged my delicate skin.

  “Keep that stick ready,” Morlo barked as we stepped in. The interior was surprisingly dark, windows tinted where they weren’t covered-up entirely. The Thaumaturge fixed that, too, by flexing one hand and conjuring a ball of bright flame into its palm. Really bright, actually, and pure white instead of orange. I found my eyes stinging just as I looked at it.

  Morlo grinned, something I could barely see through watery vision.

  “Trick number two, put a lot of heat in a small area and you get brighter flames. Worth remembering for situations like this.”

  I did my best to keep it in mind, but there’s something uniquely difficult about remembering information regarding Thaumaturgy so soon after you’ve discovered it. Maybe it was just me.

  ++Vara here, it’s not just him.++

  Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, I had more pressing concerns than that. The building was big and reminded me upsettingly of that cunt village elder’s home, albeit slightly brighter and striking me as a lot more dangerous. We were barely two paces in before someone came flying out at us with a scream.

  All my old reflexes took over at once, and I was moving before I knew it. My opponent here was a great deal better than the last few, maybe tourney-level. I narrowly avoided his surprise-swing and started backing up to give myself the space to work. He instantly began barrelling forwards, recognising what I was doing and savvy enough to do the exact opposite.

  So I returned the favour, reversed my momentum and closed in to him. His blade was shorter, better in close, and he hadn’t expected me to give him such an advantage for free. He certainly hadn’t expected the left hook across his jaw that sent him stumbling away and bouncing the back of his head from a far wall. By the time he’d overcome that, my sword’s tip was already resting under his chin.

  Instantly, the fight went out of him.

  “Sword, drop it,” I growled. He did of course, raised his hands slowly and splayed them to let me see there were no other weapons on his person.

  “Please don’t kill me,” he croaked. That actually surprised me for a second. Until I remembered that I was a large man with his face heavily shrouded in darkness, aiming a sword at him. He had no way of knowing how squeamish I felt about an outright execution.

  So best take advantage of that.

  ++Vara again. Kyvaine thinks not wanting to kill people makes him squeamish, did you catch that? Thought I’d just point it out.++

  “Where’s your boss?” I growled, pressing the sword closer and almost flinching back as I saw how quickly the vibrant blood started beading out where its tip dug in.

  “F-further in, he’s hiding in his bedroom, heavy door locked but…not as heavy as the one you just blew up. Please, I have a daughter!”

  I doubted that very much, but not enough that I’d kill him over it.

  “Get out of my sight,” I growled, pulling my sword down. “And sprint.”

  He did sprint, rather impressively too. But then you’d be amazed how fast you can run when every step takes you farther away from your own death. I looked over to Morlo and found him eying me with what seemed like approval.

  “Quite an Heroic thing to do,” he grinned. “Hopefully that one tells his friends about it.”

  “Shut up,” I grumbled as we headed deeper in. With the interior illuminated by Morlo’s light, it wasn’t hard to find the bedroom in question, nor to break it down with another blast of air. Before the splinters had even settled into its carpet, we were inside.

  Cowering inside the bedroom was the man I imagined Vara had bought our rooms from. He fit her description well enough, and Morlo didn’t waste any time before getting to work on encouraging a few answers out of him.

  For my part, I didn’t make myself watch. Couldn’t escape the smell of burning meat though.

  Morlo got our answers about the man’s motive and associates nice and quick, and once we had them I was surprised to see the Thaumaturge leaving him alive.

  “You’ll owe me one for this,” he told the whimpering landlord. Cheerfully enough, I noted, but—and maybe this was just the barbaric torture—it held an unmistakeable note of menace.

  Once we were out of the room, Morlo turned to me with his grin still in place.

  “Looks like we have more work to do,” he noted, “this one was working with a local gang who call themselves the Horsemen.” He spat at his feet. “Pretentious little shits, trying to rob me. Me, Morlo the Great and Terrible?! Ha! Let’s show them what kind of mark they chose.”

  I just followed after, bracing myself for the imminent destruction.

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