Beautiful Destroyer

Chapter Eleven

"Let us not mince words, assassin. Neither of us have long to live, and at this point, the only question that matters is how we will die. Spare us both the indignity of questioning you, and I will grant you a quick death."

Vin sat huddled in a cell, her wrists bound by chains, alone except for the company of the royal commander. He was a large man, made larger by the armor that covered him. He had been the prince's second in command, and perhaps his brutal pragmatism had balanced out Prince Wales' lofty idealism. Now? Now he was looking to kill Vin as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Questioning. The euphemism was so polite, so clean it made her sick. It was the sort of thing thieving crews talked about in hushed whispers when they spoke about them at all. More often there was only the implication of what happened after a crew had been too sloppy or too slow, and the Steel Ministry had caught up to them.

They always break you in the end.

Maybe they did things differently in Albion. Maybe this man wouldn't peel back every layer of skin, every sinew until he revealed the truth. Maybe she would be strong enough to endure it all until Wales recovered enough to clear her name. And maybe her friends would come to rescue her.

The thought almost made her laugh. She was alone now, and she didn't have friends she could count on any more than she had the strength to persevere through torture. All she had was ... what?

She could submit to people stronger than her. She could pretend to be beaten when she was only mostly there. She could push people, not enough to stop them, but enough to point them in the right direction.

"Please, I don't ..." She swallowed. Her mouth tasted like blood from the beating she had already received. Pewter would help her work through the pain, but she didn't burn it. Some weaknesses couldn't be faked. "What do you want?"

"Names. Who hired you, who was working with you. Talk."

"I never saw his face. He wore a mask, painted white. White suit, white cloak, called himself Lord Black." She burned brass, Soothing away his suspicions. The commander didn't seem like the impulsive sort, but she needed every advantage she could get. That meant that she couldn't risk affirming her own innocence. That would make her seem desperate, and she needed to look despairing.

Fortunately, she was in a cell, beaten, alone, and waiting to die.

"He found me in La Rochelle, back in Tristain," she continued. "He said that if I killed the prince, he'd give me enough gold so I would never have to play maid servant to that little pink brat ever again." She gave a weak, bitter laugh. "I guess I don't have to worry about that anymore."

"And the others?" the commander asked. "Were they involved?"

Finally. "I didn't think so. Lord Black talked to me alone, but right when I had the prince all to myself ..."

"What?"

She Pulled on his interest, in case that was necessary. She wasn't a good story teller, but she had listened to good story tellers. "A bolt of lightning from a clear sky. Seems like Wardes got the same deal I did."

The commander gripped the bars of her cell with his steel gauntlets. "Wardes killed him?"

She nodded.

"And the others? The ambassador and the earth mage?"

Vin felt a surge of panic and hoped it didn't show on her face. She bit down against the urge to desperately deny it and feigned indifference. "I doubt it. They're old friends of the princess and royalists through and through. Valliere wouldn't even have married Wardes if the prince hadn't performed the ceremony." She shrugged as though it didn't matter to her one way or another. "But if Lord Black made either of them an offer, I didn't see them during the attack."

She Pushed down harder on his suspicion. If she could send the commander after Wardes that would be good, but the last thing she wanted was to put Louise and Guiche on the chopping block next to her.

For a moment the commander stared at her, only his gray eyes visible through his helm. Vin considered saying one last thing, tweaking one last emotion with zinc or brass, doing something to set him in the right direction, but ... but eventually the man turned, his cape whipping behind him, his armor making surprisingly little noise against the stones as he left.

And Vin was, once again, alone.

WWW

"I just thought of something," Louise said after she and Wardes had returned to their room. "Guiche doesn't know about what happened to Vin. I should tell him." There wasn't a whole lot she could do to help her familiar, but maybe he could.

"At this hour? Surely the boy is asleep. Why wake him?"

"Because he'll get worried if he doesn't know where she is when, um ..."

Wardes raised an eyebrow. "Would he be expecting her to arrive at his door?"

His tone made it clear what he was implying, and Louise latched onto that idea. "Yes! He's been interested in her since we left Albion, and Vin told me that she was starting to ... reciprocate." The idea of her own familiar falling for a skirt chaser like Guiche made her ill, but her own choices involving men weren't setting a great example.

"Well, it wouldn't do to leave him worried. Run along and inform the young man. I'll wait here."

Louise hesitated. She had intended to slip Guiche a secret message and had been wondering how to warn him not to trust Wardes with Wardes standing right behind her, but this was even better. And that ... that worried her. What could he be planning that he needed her gone for?

No, she couldn't worry about that yet. She didn't want Wardes out of her sight, but she didn't want him watching her either, and if she had to choose between the two, she'd pick the latter. She smoothed her features, left the room, and did her best to calm down.

After a few deep breaths she made her way to Guiche's room after only getting slightly lost in the old castle. She knocked on his door and he opened it smiling a moment later, only for his smile to turn into a frown.

"Isn't there ever anyone else who wants to see me?" he demanded. "My moonlit balcony, overflowing wine cabinet, and king-sized bed aren't just for show."

"Shut up and listen," she said, pushing her way in and closing the door behind her. She glanced around and continued in a whisper. "Wardes is evil."

Guiche gave her a flat look, then sighed. "Oh, Brimir, I do not want to deal with newlyweds. This is why you're not supposed to start honeymooning until after the two of you ship yourselves off to some Founder forsaken corner of the world."

"No, I'm serious! The gods told me so!"

"Uh-huh." He took a bottle off a table and poured it into a goblet. "Don't mind me. I'm just doing my part to scour Newcastle's wine cellar before the Reconquista seizes it."

Louise glared at him as he drank. "Vin got arrested for trying to assassinate Prince Wales."

Guiche coughed, sputtering wine down the front of his shirt. "Wh-what? What happened?"

"That's what I'm trying to tell you! Someone tried to kill the prince, the guards found Vin with him, and Wardes managed to convince them that Vin was the sort of person who would do that."

He dabbed at his chin with a silk handkerchief. "But that's ... keep going. At what point did the gods show up?"

"Well," she said, knowing that she shouldn't be feeling proud of herself but feeling proud anyway, "you know how the gods would speak to Founder Brimir? Brimir was a Void mage, and Wardes says that I'm one too, so ..."

"Um, I am aware that you have very little experience with men, Louise, but there's this thing we do called flattery where if there's a young lady we're interested in, we ... lie shamelessly in an effort to get them to—"

"Yes, I know! But I also know what I felt, and I felt a voice speaking right through my bones, telling me not to trust him."

Guiche blinked, not nearly as impressed as he ought to have been. "Wardes told the guards that Vin was a murderous assassin, and you needed the gods to tell you not to trust him."

She hesitated. "No! I ... figured it out on my own."

"Well? Which was it? Common sense or divine inspiration?"

"Both! Doesn't matter. What matters is that Vin is in a dungeon right now. I'd go help her myself, but if I don't get back soon my evil husband will start to get suspicious, so that's where you come in."

He frowned thoughtfully, then his eyes widened as he gazed into the distance. "So what you're saying is that Lady Vin is in her darkest hour, awaiting a dramatic rescue."

"Uh, I wouldn't use those exact words, but ... wait, Lady Vin?"

"She needs a hero to emerge from an unassuming form during her time of need!"

"Or just keep an eye on her until—"

"Enough!" he said, pushing her out of his room. "I must plan! I must design! This will be bold, this will be glorious, and most of all, it will be dramatic!"

Louise wanted to shake him by the neck, or go with him to keep him from doing something foolish, but she needed to get back to Wardes. Her husband had been too willing to be rid of her, and there was no one else who could keep an eye on him.

WWW

Louise suspected something. She was a guileless creature, inexperienced and unsuited for the real world, and her subterfuge was obvious. Wardes had no doubt that she was scurrying off to Guiche to brew some conspiracy, but when her situation grew desperate, she would believe exactly what she needed to. She would cling to him, hide behind him, and tell herself any lie in order to think she was safe with him.

He was aware, vaguely, that he was not real. The real him waited for Louise to return, a flawless alibi absolving him of any guilt the duplicate Wardes might accrue. Most of all, he was aware of the ability to destroy himself utterly and dissipate into mist.

He wanted to. Even the real Wardes wanted to end it all, and for the duplicate, it wouldn't even hurt. But he had work to do, so he resisted. For now.

Now he crept up behind a gate guard, a silence spell muffling the sound of his footsteps. The guard was vigilant and alert, but only in one direction. Wardes ended the silence spell and whispered the words of a new incantation. The guard turned at the sound, but before he could open his mouth Wardes took a blade of sharpened air and slit his throat.

WWW

They were going to kill her. They were going to kill her.

Vin had hoped that they wouldn't execute her until morning. She had been disappointed.

Vin had hoped that they would seek to behead her. Her strange power involving weapons and the iron that remained in her stomach could give her a chance to fight back. She had been disappointed about that, too.

The noose hung from the gallows in front of her. The wooden platform shifted under their weight, swinging back and forth.

There were three of them with her. Two mage-knights stood at either side of her, and a priest read a prayer out of a thick, black book. Her last rites.

"I commend you, daughter, to the gods above. May you return to them who formed you, may you return to the who made you, and may Founder Brimir greet you with the sword of justice in his hand. Amen."

Vin strained at the chains that bound her hands beneath her cloak. They hadn't taken her mistcloak from her for her execution. It was close enough to the mantles that all the nobles wore. They would execute her as a traitor and a spy, but not as a peasant.

She strained against the chains and tried to pull her hands through the manacles, but nothing worked. She didn't have enough power. Not enough time.

Could she fight? There were two of them, three counting the priest, and she had no use of her hands, no steel, and no weapons. What else? Zinc and brass? She could make them feel bad about killing her, but she couldn't—

"I object to this execution!"

Guiche marched into the courtyard as though on parade, his cape billowing behind him, flanked by seven brass golems. The golems were in the shapes of ornamental suits of armor, each one floating a foot above the ground.

Vin stared at him, too shocked to respond. What was he doing? Was he going to try to rescue her? Had he ever even been in a fight before?

Too late, she saw one of the mage knights raise his wand. Without thinking she threw herself at the man, but all the force she could muster wasn't enough to throw the armored knight off balance and he shoved her aside. A blast of wind shot out of his wand, knocking Guiche off his feet and sending pieces of his golems flying in every direction.

Was this part of his plan? Was there a plan? She didn't know, but she did know that Guiche had tried.

And now there were several brass spears scattered throughout the courtyard.

She picked one out and flared iron, stepping behind the priest. The spear shot toward her and exploded through the man's back. Her hands were still tied behind her back, so as the man stumbled backward she grabbed it with her teeth. With tin, the taste of blood was almost overpowering as she yanked it free, but she finally had a weapon.

The two knights were facing in Guiche's direction, likely thinking that he had thrown the spear at them with magic. Vin ran at them, flaring pewter and feeling the strange power from her familiar runes course through her, her neck twisted to the side. She stabbed the first knight through the eye hole of his helm just as he turned toward her, but not before he let out a scream.

The second knight turned toward her and unleashed the spell that he had been preparing for Guiche. A flurry of icicles shot at her, narrowly missing her as she dodged, tearing through the fabric of her mistcloak. She ran at him with the spear still in her teeth, but with a second spell he flew into the air, out of reach.

No. No escape. No alarm. She flared iron, Pulling not on his whole suit of armor, but on the faceplate of his helmet. She was yanked toward him and landed feet first against his chest. She continued burning iron as the two of them spun in midair, locked together, until the hinges of the faceplate gave way. It shot forward and crashed into her, hitting her square in the chest. She coughed through gritted teeth and nearly dropped her spear, but she grit her teeth, burned iron one last time, and ...

And they fell, his spell of flight terminated, and she hit the ground.

Her teeth hurt, her jaw hurt, her chest hurt, and her shoulder hurt, but she was alive. She forced herself to her knees and spat out blood. Guiche stared at her with a look of horror on his face.

"Guiche?" Her racing heart rate was starting to slow now that the fighting was over, but they couldn't stay here.

Guiche kept staring, stone still. "You killed a priest. You're not ..."

Vin took a step toward him. He didn't back away, but he didn't come forward to meet her either. "Guiche," she said again. "My ... my hands are tied. I still need help."

"Hmm? Oh, yes. Let me ... um ..." He stumbled behind her and pulled her mistcloak out of the way. Muttering a spell, he clicked something into the manacles, and Vin felt them fall free. "Your valiant hero to rescue you from the jaws of ..." His voice was distant as though he were reading words on a page until he trailed off entirely.

He had never seen war before. He had spoken of its glory and had heard stories about it, but this was likely the first time he had seen someone die. Or someone kill. He kept on looking at the three bodies lying on the cobblestones, or perhaps he was looking away from her, with her face covered in blood.

She wiped some off on her sleeve. "We need to go." That wasn't what she wanted to say. She wanted to say something that would let him know how much she appreciated him coming for her, something that would help him steel himself and struggle through the bitterness that surrounded them, but she didn't have the words. Lord Ruler, she didn't know if there were words for that. She had grown up where corpse crews took away bodies rotting in the street with the rest of the refuse, and she still didn't know how to handle it. Nearly dying. Killing to survive.

He blinked. "What?"

"We need to go," she said again, but then a horn rang out in the night. An alarm? Had someone spotted them? Were they coming for them already? No. When she flared tin, she heard a commotion from the other side of the keep. Steel on steel, the sound of screams, the scent of blood.

The siege of Newcastle had ended, and its fall had begun.

WWW

Louise ran down the stairs, heart thudding in her chest. She had kept an eye on Wardes, for all the good it had done, and now the Reconquista had broken through the gates and the courtyard was flooded with demihuman mercenaries. Why now? Why tonight, with Vin locked up in Newcastles dungeon?

"Not that way!" Wardes yelled, looking back at her. "The docks are down here!"

Louise knew where the underground docks were. The halls were full of servants and other noncombatants who weren't honorbound to stand with Newcastle as it fell, and they flowed down to them like a river. "I'm not leaving without my familiar!"

Maybe Guiche had rescued her, but it was more likely that he was locked up with her.

"There's no time! The guards would have let her go as soon as the walls were breached."

Louise pointed a finger at him. "That's a lie and you know it!"

Wardes took a breath and grit his teeth. "Yes. But this isn't: it is not your duty to die for your familiar, it is hers to die for you. I will not be made a widower tonight, Louise, and I will steal you from this place if I have to carry you myself!"

Of course he didn't want to help her rescue Vin. Founder, it was his fault she was imprisoned in the first place. But he didn't know she knew, and maybe she could use that. "Only the lowest of nobles would abandon their own familiar during a war, my dear husband, and if you do not assist me in this, you may wake up one night married to a widow!"

He didn't seem moved by her threat. Just annoyed, if anything. With a wave of his wand and a word from his mouth, Louise felt the air harden around her and she floated into his arms.

"Hey! What are you doing?" she demanded as he threw her over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

"I'm saving your life, my dear wife," he said, his voice cold. "When you see sense you will learn to forgive me."

"I'll do no such thing!" She kicked and she thrashed as he carried her down the stairs to the underground harbor, which accomplished nothing at all.

Curse my slight frame. Curse my weak magic. Curse ... curse everything!

Lousie struggled to pull out her wand in her awkward position, ready to do something truly desperate, when something crashed into her, knocking her out of Wardes' grasp and onto the ground. A blast of force? A wall of air? The second seemed more likely, because when she looked around, she saw a mage knight blocking their way.

"Commander," Wardes said, adjusting his hat which had gone askew. "I am sure you have a reason for this." He didn't sound surprised. Louise wasn't sure she had ever seen him surprised.

"I questioned your friend," he said. "She confessed to everything."

Louise stared at him, not comprehending for a moment before it clicked. Vin? But what would she even confess to? She hadn't done anything wrong.

"Glad to hear that."

"Everything," he said again. "Including your part in the affair."

"I see," Wardes said, his voice still cold. Prince Wales' warship, the Eagle, floated in the harbor in view, tied to the docks, its gangplank down. "But how far can you trust a traitor?"

"I can trust a traitor to be a traitor. But I shall hear your side of things, should you come quietly."

"I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. On board."

The mage knight shook his helmed head. "No, Viscount. I'd escort you to the dungeon with your friend if it was not at this moment being overrun, so I'll question you here."

"Wait, friend?" Louise asked. "You're talking about Vin! What do you mean, 'overrun?'"

"This seems a poor time to chase fancies as Newcastle is falling."

The commander laughed. "Newcastle fell weeks ago. We've merely persisted to spite our foes, and there is sweeter meat down here than mercenaries and demihumans."

"What about Vin?" Louise protested. "You didn't just leave her in the dungeon to be eaten by trolls, did you? Hey! Stop ignoring me! I am Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere, Ambassador of Tristain, and I demand your attention! What happened to my familiar?"

Wardes let out a long sigh. "Pardon me a moment. I must attend my wife." He drew his sword-wand—slowly—and tapped her on the head.

Everything went silent.

Again.

"Viscount bloody Wardes, I'm going to kill you for this!" she tried to shriek, but no sound came out. He smiled at her, not coldly or cruelly, just faintly, and he spun, casting a spell at the commander.

The commander blocked the spell with his own, and though Louise couldn't hear a thing, she felt the clash of wind magic like two storms crashing into each other. She backed away as far as she could, pressing her back against a wall, and the two mages began their duel.

WWW

Vin stood against a flood of monsters as Guiche worked the door. A tremendous blue creature several times her size pushed to the front of the horde, swinging a sword as long as Vin was tall. She dodged the first swing, then the back swing, then she lunged forward and impaled the creature through the eye. It fell, but the spearhead was stuck inside the creature's skull and Vin couldn't get it out.

Several smaller creatures took its place. These ones looked like tiny old men with green skin and pointed teeth.

They were also much faster. They leapt at her, chirping like a flock of birds, jagged knives in their hands. She jumped backward, planted her feet, and burned iron. The massive sword was metal down to the hilt, so when it flew toward her, she grabbed it by the handle. She swung it in a wide arc, crushing the monsters more than slashing through them, but it got the job done.

"Vin!" Guiche shouted. "Get over here!"

She Ironpulled one of the scattered knives on the ground and stuck it in her belt before running over to him. The mage guarding the door fired a tremendous blast of fire behind them before locking the door behind them.

"A bloody fine night for this," the man spat. "His royal bloody highness got bloody murdered by a bloody assassin right before the bloody assault."

"Um, yes," Guiche said. "I heard about that. I can't believe the Reconquista would stoop so low."

The man looked at Guiche with his one eye. The other side of his face was slashed open from his hairline to his jaw, but it didn't seem to be hindering him. "Reconquista? I heard it was bloody Lord Castaway when he found the bloody prince in bed with his bloody wife."

So the news hadn't spread this far yet. Or maybe the one-eyed nobleman didn't pay enough attention to such things. "Have you seen the Tristain ambassador?" Vin asked. "She's about this tall and pink."

"Can't say I have, but if she has a lick of sense, she'd be getting out of this bloody battlefield. The plan was to load everyone who wants to live onto the Eagle and sail it out of this bloody kingdom at the first sign of—"

Something loud and heavy crashed against the door, shaking it on its frame.

"Of that. A moment." He unlocked the door, swung it open, and shot a blast of fire into the courtyard as bright as the sun before shutting it. "Founder, I've been waiting for this." He glanced at them one last time. "What are you bloody waiting for? Go!"

Vin and Guiche turned and left, Vin carrying the sword over her shoulder. "They're either down there or on his griffon."

"Can a griffon fly all the way back to Tristain with two passengers?" Guiche asked. "I don't have much personal experience with those creatures."

"I have even less!" No, she couldn't snap at him. If Wardes had flown Louise away on his griffon, there wasn't a damn thing Vin could do about it. Besides, she didn't owe Louise anything. She had warned her about Wardes from the beginning, and Vin wasn't going to chase her across kingdoms just because she had only now decided to listen to her. It didn't matter that Louise had saved her life once, or that she was stuck with a strange man who wanted to use her, or that she was helpless without her, or that ...

Her vision swam and she stumbled, grabbing onto the wall for support.

"Vin, what's wrong?"

She clenched her eyes shut, then opened them. It didn't help. "I went blind in one eye."

"That doesn't sound good."

"No it doesn't!"

She held her hand in front of her. With one eye she could see it. With the other ... she could see Wardes.

He was fighting someone.

WWW

It was rare for Wardes to meet a foe who could challenge him in magecraft, even rarer for that opponent to share his element. But the commander of the royal army had survived the fall of his kingdom, and he was not to be trifled with.

It started when Wardes cast Lightning Storm at him, and went downhill from there. The commander ignored the spell and cast Air Shield on himself, warping the air around his suit of armor.

"Impossible!"

"I'm encased in metal, idiot boy. Read a book on basic electrical theory, and then cry to me about what's impossible! Blur!" The man's outline blurred, distorting his image further.

Lightning won't work on him. His air shield will absorb most other wind spells. He's too blurry to hit with anything precise.

He shouldn't have been surprised. Wardes was the only competent wind mage in all of Tristain, but the commander had been fighting other wind mages since the dawn of the revolution.

What did that leave him with? Brute force.

"Ubiquitous Wind!"

He formed himself out of air, again and again until the fight was one mage against seven. He had already used this spell once this evening, sending a copy of himself to open the gates for the Reconquista. Casting it a second time would push him to his limit.

Fire wouldn't work and the stones would be protected against what little earth magic he could cast, so each of his copies mixed wind and water, shooting the commander with shards of ice. The man stumbled backwards, taking glancing blows from spells that barely hit him, but each strike pushed him further back.

"Lightning Storm!" the commander shouted in response, and three of Wardes' copies were reduced to mist in a crackling flash of light.

Three at once! Nearly half. He had survived on a coin's toss. He spread his copies out, surrounding the commander, but that alone wouldn't save him. Think, Wardes! Between the man's armor, air shield, and blurred image, Wardes' attacks did next to nothing. He couldn't counter the first two, but he could balance the battlefield in terms of the third.

"Obscuring Mist!"

A thick fog enshrouded the harbor. The commander became nothing more than a vague outline, and Wardes knew that he would be the same to him. A wind arose, the commander's attempt to clear his vision, but one of Wardes' copies could maintain the mist while the other three hammered him down. And it was hammering. No finesse, no subtlety, just pressure, striking blow after blow, breaking his armor and tearing his flesh until the commander fell dead in a pool of his own blood.

Wardes fell to his knees at the end, feeling the exhaustion from the fight sevenfold. In a moment he would rise up, grab Louise, and—

One of his copies died. He couldn't see through their eyes or hear through their ears, but he felt the spell end once, then once again.

How? The commander was dead. How could he—

No, it wasn't him. With the copy maintaining the Obscuring Mist gone, Wardes could see the commander's corpse, his armor crushed and his body broken. And another copy died.

Damnit! He blew away the fog with a gust of wind in time to see Vin, familiar runes blazing on her hand, cut down his final duplicate. Her sword was a massive, brutish weapon made for ogres and trolls, but she held it in one hand like a rapier.

He cursed under his breath. He had fought her once before, but this was her fourth time fighting him, and he was on the verge of exhaustion. She ripped his sword-wand from his grasp with her strange magic and pulled herself toward him by his belt buckle, leaving her sword behind and pulling a dagger from her belt.

He pulled out his backup wand as she flew closer, and—

"Air Hammer!"

She dropped to the ground and leaped over both the spell and him, and he turned in time to see her throw the dagger at him.

There wasn't time to cast another spell. There wasn't even time to dodge. He blocked the dagger with his arm, feeling it stab into his flesh. He could get that healed later, if he survived.

Vin was still in front of him, but a scraping noise behind him caught his attention. He flew into the air without even knowing what it was, and he saw a colossal sword hurtle into her hand, right through the space where he had stood.

Too close. He had gotten lucky, but he had come too far and sacrificed too much to risk everything on luck. He divested himself of the metal on his person, the belt around his waist and the rusted dagger lodged in his arm, and began to plan.

WWW

Guiche pulled at Louise's wrist, gesturing toward the ship. She could guess what he was saying, probably that they should get out of the way, that he as a dot class mage and her as Louise the Zero wouldn't add much to a duel between a square class mage and her familiar.

Not that she heard anything. She couldn't hear her own voice, let alone his. That bastard Wardes still had her silenced.

Then a dagger fell from above. It was an ugly thing, like something a goblin might carry, with a yellow bone hilt and a jagged blade that was red with rust as well as blood. She stared at it, pulled away from Guiche's grasp, and stepped toward it.

She had stayed out of the first fight because neither Wardes nor the commander had been on her side. The honorable thing might have been to leave her husband and her familiar to their duel as well, but she had chosen Wardes over Vin for his perceived honor, and that honor had been a farce. Besides, she was a Valliere, and the Valliere were honorable when they needed to be, magical when they could be, but they were, at all times, steel.

Jagged, rusted, and most of all bloodied steel.

WWW

Wardes put some distance between him and Vin, ended the spell of flight, and began a new spell as Vin—no, Gandalfr, the Left Hand of God—raced toward him.

"Ice Wall!"

Air and water mixed and froze in front of him, two feet thick and twenty feet across. Gandalfr's sword crashed into it like an avalanche, turning the clear ice cracked and opaque.

But it held. He hadn't been sure what she was capable of, having only had a friendly duel with her once, but he finally had a moment to catch his breath.

The sword crashed against the wall a second time, and more cracks formed. Lightning storm? Should he prepare that spell, hold it until she shattered his wall, and end the fight with a single spell? Gamble everything on a single spell?

No. He scraped together the last vestiges of his power to cast Ubiquitous Wind one last time. He didn't have enough for six duplicates like with his fight against the commander, but if he could conjure up just one, he could—

Something sharp and jagged plunged into his back. It went deep, twisted, and was yanked out. He spun around as he staggered and found Louise standing before him. He reached for her, and she thrust the dagger into his chest.

He hadn't heard her approach. Even as she breathed, her chest heaving, eyes wide, she made no sound. Perfectly silent.

Ah, he thought, seeing his folly all too late. That's what happened.

His vision dimmed and even the pain dulled. All feeling dulled, except a vague and distant sense of betrayal.

Why? he thought as darkness enshrouded him. I would have given you the world. I would have given you ...

WWW

They let Guiche do the talking after they boarded the Eagle. He was good at that, and Vin focused on Soothing the other passengers. No, they weren't Reconquista traitors who had killed the commander, they had killed the Reconquista traitor who had killed their commander. Nevermind that the traitor had arrived with them. Nevermind that the traitor had married one of their number.

Fortunately, the rest of the refugees were complacent with anything that didn't involve them fighting for their lives. They were largely servants, content to wash the clothes and cook the food for nobles, but not to die with them.

Louise sat on the deck next to her, staring at the dagger in her lap. She had wiped off the blood from the blade and from her hands, but both maintained a faint red stain. "Do you want to talk about it?" Vin asked.

Louise's face flickered in the torchlight, the only light to see by as the ship floated downward through the tunnel that went straight to the underside of the island. "What's there to talk about? I made a mistake and I corrected it."

Liar. Vin would have bet anything that Louise, like Guiche, had never seen anyone die before. Never killed anyone. Never been betrayed.

"I never really liked him," Louise continued. "I never really knew him. I only got married to him because it was expected of me, so it's a good thing that he's ... that he's gone."

Without tin, Vin might have missed the way her voice broke, or the way her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Vin reached out and cupped Louise's hand with her own. Her body stiffened, and she almost stopped Vin when she slipped the dagger from her grasp, and when Vin interlocked her fingers with hers and squeezed her hand, Louise broke down in sobs.

"Why? Why did he do it? He was ... it wasn't supposed to be like this! He was everything I ever wanted, and then he ..." She slumped against her and buried her face in her chest. "Why?"

Vin ran her hand down Louise's back, stroking her long, wavy hair, and held her. "My brother always told me that anyone would betray you if you gave them the chance. He would beat that lesson into me time and time again, and one night he proved it by abandoning me, leaving me with nothing. No one. And ... I still miss him. I still love him, even after everything. Because ... because you don't stop loving someone just because they betray you."

"I don't love him!" Louise sobbed, her voice muffled. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!"

"You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them, either," Vin said. "It would be easier if you did, but we're not always as clever or as cruel as my brother thought we were." She thought about Louise and Guiche, of Kelsier and his entire magnificent crew, and even of herself, people who had chances to betray those close to them and didn't. Oh, Reen, I wish you could have met them. "Sometimes, instead, we're beautiful fools."

The ship emerged at the end of the tunnel, and the shining moons and the countless stars put the meager torchlight to shame. Louise's sobs died out, and she relaxed in Vin's arms.

Some time later, Guiche returned, then halted when he saw them. "Is this a bad time?"

"No," Vin said. "She's just ... sleeping."

Guiche eyed their position and muttered, "Lucky."

"What?"

"I mean, I'll see if I can requisition some bedrolls. Beds would be ideal, but this ship was built for a much smaller crew, and it was hard enough to convince the cook not to throw us overboard."

"The cook?"

He nodded. "The royal chef appointed himself acting captain in the absence of any Albion nobility. I offered myself, but the name Gramont means remarkably little to these peasant highlanders ..." He shook his head. "Anyway, the cook has two demands. One, that Tristain finds a place for the refugees on board. They refuse to serve the Reconquista, and at the moment, that's all of Albion. Two, we are not to interfere with Prince Wale's recovery."

Vin blinked. "He's alive? He's here?"

"Apparently the prince was carried on board as soon as the alarm was sounded, and is consuming healing elixirs as quickly as he can drink them in his sleep." He turned back toward Albion shrinking in the distance, a floating island in the night sky. "Was that the purpose of this mission? To rescue the prince from his certain and glorious end? I know there was a letter from the princess involved, but I know little of the ways of royalty. Was this what she wanted when she sent us here? Did we ... did we win?"

Vin let out a breath. She had been in the same room as Princess Henrietta when she had told Louise what she had wanted, and she didn't understand much of it either. "I don't know," she said. "But we're alive, and we're going home. That's enough."

WWW

A/n And that's the end of the arc. Hopefully it was a satisfying one. This chapter would not have been possible without my editor Exiled, or my Patrons Exiled, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, Janember, Yotam Bonneh, Svistka, LordXamon, Victoria Carey, and Kurkistan, and it certainly would not have been possible without viewers like you. Thank you for reading, and Merry Christmas.