Chapter 12

I

I spoke with Vasha late into the evening. He was a smart man, if rather eccentric, and if there was one thing he knew, it was killing. By the time I felt the need for sleep, I was convinced we’d devised a plan that stood a chance of success come the morrow. I wasn’t as certain of his loyalty, but I had no other choice than to trust him. He took his leave a few hours before midnight, to summon his men and place them into position. I went to bed.

Hanna led me to the bedroom on the second floor, where a massive bed larger than my bedroom in the prison was ready to receive me. Cat was already asleep on its right side; Hanna helped me strip – as if I couldn’t do it by myself – before taking her own clothes off, her every motion inviting me to use her body to my pleasure. I refused to partake. My mind was on tomorrow’s possibilities, ruminating on what could and would happen, and what my fate would be at the end of it. My success wasn’t assured, and even I did succeed, the victory wouldn’t mean much unless more triumphs followed it. I didn’t expect to fall asleep till the morning, yet, strangely, consciousness left me sometime before midnight.

My fortune didn’t last long. Troubled dreams woke me a few hours late. It was early in the morning, the autumn sky still black as tar, decorated with sparkling stars but no moon. I remembered my dreams clearly, and they were strange. Memories of war, of standing in the middle of a battlefield, facing the enemy army. I’d been wearing steel gauntlets and holding a massive mace, my view constricted by a helmet. Heavily armoured fighters, dwarfing the other soldiers in the field, surrounded me. I’d had a goal, to break the enemy’s centre. It’d been the emperor’s command to my master, and he’d given us the responsibility. I’d charged at the shriek of the war horns, leading the spearhead towards the enemy line, nine other Wardens forming the rest of the wedge. The dream ended when the charge met its target.

I lay in my bed for a while, listening to Hannah breathe beside me. Trying to ascertain the strange dream’s source. It certainly hadn’t been mine, for one thing, I’d never seen half the weapons on the battlefield. How could I dream of something I didn’t know about? No, the dream had come from someone else.

Disturbed by the invasion of my mind, but reluctant to wake the sleeping women in the room by my pacing, I decided to go downstairs, where within seconds, I realized the source of my dream and why it’d been bothering me so much. The armoured figures accompanying me had looked suspiciously similar to Leviathan, and I was certain I would’ve looked exactly like Levi had I been able to look at myself in a mirror.

I found Levi where I’d left it last, in a corner of the game room, standing motionless.

“Are you in my head?” I muttered, looking it over, trying to order my thoughts.

It responded, raising one gauntleted hand and tapping a finger against its forehead.

“You’re in my head.” I stated, shocked.

It shrugged, pointed to its chest.

“I’m in your head.”

A nod.

“And by the dream I just had, you’re in mine.”

It shrugged again. The thing’s shrugs shook the building.

I sank into the soft couch, turning my focus inward, trying to discern whether there was an alien presence inside me.

I didn’t sleep till morning, but by the time the sun was rising, I could easily and quickly identify the bundle of images and emotions within my mind that was Levi. The success didn’t feel good, because Leviathan was hungry, and its hunger seeped into my own psyche if I focused on it too much.

Its hunger made me want to kill.

II

Hanna found me sitting cross-legged on the couch an hour after dawn. She coaxed me awake from my half-asleep, half meditating state and guided me, holding my hand, to the kitchen, where Cat was preparing food. I ate, though I don’t remember the food or anything else that happened in that kitchen. I was focused on the impending fight, every fibre of my being directed towards controlling my fear and excitement. There would be no room for mistakes, not today, and certainly not when I met Qoura herself.

Which reminded me of something I’d thought of while meditating. I caught Cat’s attention, “the man who summoned you for Qoura every week, was he a Guardsman?”

She nodded confirmation.

“What about those guarding her door?”

“Yes.”

It didn’t make sense, not at all.

I finished my breakfast in silence.

A dozen of Vasha’s men, dressed in tight leather and armed with gleaming steel, escorted us through Braka to a boat Vasha and I had agreed on last night. It was an old thing, its wood rotten to the core. It would’ve been completely useless, except that it’d ran aground on a particularly large rock, elevating its old cabin above almost everything else in Braka, high enough to give me a view of the battlefield, where the Guard were gathering even now.

A couple of the leather-clad fellows helped me climb onto the cabin, another handed me a spyglass, courtesy of One-eye Vasha. I used it to survey the shore where Sack’s Way ended, trying to find the coated figure of Curia, or the horse she’d be riding. To kill her, I’d need to find her, and to find her within the dreamscape I had to know her location in the real world. Which was a great idea in theory, but became complicated once one tried to implement it. For one thing, how would an escaped prisoner manipulate his much more powerful enemy into a situation where he knows her location but she doesn’t know what has happened?

Well, I’d had a few ideas of my own, but none had been as good as Hanna’s plan of giving the powerful opposition exactly what they wanted. Make the exchange expensive enough that the enemy won’t suspect treachery, do it through an intermediary the enemy will expect such actions from, and then spring your trap. I’d approved the idea when she first suggested it, and I’d had my doubts when she proposed Yayim’s murder and the use of his organization as the intermediary. Now, my doubts were being laid to rest. The only remaining variable was the limitations of my power; whether I could kill Curia from afar before her sorcery won the day.

As time passed, the milling forms of the Guardsmen were solidified into a cohesive formation, a square with only three sides, with men facing forward and towards both flanks, while the rear of the formation was left unprotected. There was no logical reason they should guard their backsides; who would attack them from within the city?

Still, there was no sign of Curia.

It crossed my mind that there was no guarantee the apprentice sorcerer would appear in the field today. After all, there was a twenty-five hundred strong contingent of the Guard amassed in front of me; surely, they’d be enough escort for anyone, escaped insane sorcerer or not. If she didn’t appear, I’d be left at the end of the day with nothing more than I woke up with, and Qoura, not having received me according to the agreement with Yayim, would know something was amiss in Braka. My ace would be nullified, and my only options would be the bad ones I’d been able to come up with by myself, one of which was the preposterous notion of infiltrating the prince’s palace and walking to Qoura’s bedroom.

That plan’s odds of success were considerably less than the current one, so I waited, hopefully, checking the formation every few minutes. In between, I checked on Levi, who was waiting patiently under water, on its hands and knees, concealed by a particularly large ferry. It was fifteen steps from the shore, hungering for death. I also tried to spot the men Vasha had promised me, who’d be doing the bulk of the work should the first part of my plan fail. I failed at this task; as expected, the professional killers were conspicuous.

The fellows waiting with me were silent most of the time, except for the occasional small talk and a few jokes, muttered in tones too low for me to hear. They stood in a clump, as far away from Hanna as they could, and they eyed both Hanna and me with unrestrained discomfort. They’d heard of the massacre at Yayim’s compound, and put two-and-two together.

A few minutes before noon, my fears were put to bed. Curia, in the same blue coat and trousers, rode into the square. Her golden hair and face were clearly visible through the spyglass. She was older than I’d imagined, her middle-aged feature contradicted her title of apprentice. She was leading a horse, which was carrying two chests.

The gold was here.

I closed my eyes, seeking the trance.

III

The first thing I noticed upon entering the dreamscape was Leviathan’s hunger. It surrounded me, assaulting my senses with an all consuming rage that threatened to overwhelm my mind. The desire for feeding was far more prominent now than it had been when I focused on the thing’s emotions while awake. The connection was stronger in this world, and stronger than it had been upon my first contact; as if the first morsel had simply wet its appetite.

Dragging my attention away from the hulking behemoth, I surveyed the rest of shoreline ahead. The shore itself was simple to find in the twisted world; the same was true regarding the Guard contingent, their souls were perfect guides. But my luck didn’t last. Even though I knew exactly where in the formation she was, I could not find her in the geography of dreamscape. Perhaps I could’ve found her if she’d been alone on the beach, but the souls of so many men clumped together confused things, concealing the sorceress’s location further.

I brought the face I’d seen in the spyglass, concentrated on it, trying to use the method I’d used to find Catherine and Hanna to detect the enemy, but I didn’t succeed. Apparently, only knowing the woman’s face wasn’t enough. Or maybe the crowd around her was at fault again.

Regardless, I was in trouble.

I could give up, go home, and plan another heist. Or I could trigger the desperate version of the original scheme. I thought it was likely to succeed, but its failure would leave no doubt regarding what today’s spectacle had been all about, and most probably leave me without my most potent protector.

Finally, simple logic made the decision for me. If this plan failed, Yayim’s entire organization would become useless to me; without a criminals to subdue, Levi’s role as protector and enforcer was unimportant. At the same time, any idiot would know something was wrong in Braka once Vasha didn’t appear with my bound form to give me up. Therefore, the additional knowledge Qoura would gain wasn’t important.

I ordered Levi to attack.

Less than half a minute later, lights in the clump started dying. A few at first, more as each second passed.

Leviathan’s orders were to attack Curia. I didn’t think he’d successfully punch through five lines or armoured soldiers and kill her, despite his apparent invincibility. She was wearing a horse, and whatever I wanted to believe, Levi was too heavy to catch the animal. What I did expect was the fear his sheer primordial power would invoke in the sorceress and the soldiers around her.

A man’s first reaction to what he fears is to reach for a weapon. The soldiers would level their spears and bring up shields, a sorceress does magic.

I felt more than saw Curia’s third eye open. It trumpeted her exact location. My fingers reached into the mass of light and grabbed her soul. I fed its impressive light to Levi, who swallowed the impressively bright spark in one figurative gulp, without a hiccup.

My second assumption, that the sorceress’s magic would reveal her location, had been correct.

IV

I opened my eyes to find Hanna standing by my side on the improvised watchtower, staring through the spyglass.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

She jumped at my words. “Your monster is wreaking havoc in their centre. The flanks saw his work from afar; they’re already running away like the Lady’s eyes are on them. The ones in the middle ... there aren’t many of them left standing.”