The Prismatic Cuirass (3/3)

A few uneasy murmurs from the crowd. I look up just in time to catch a swish of olive-green cloak disappearing between two elderly ladies. It was a man…I think.

Kathanhiel has turned away, storming back to the carriage as the light of her cuirass dims in dizzying flashes. Arkai frowns, his scouring eyes immediately catching the green cloak; his body jolts as if struck by lightning.

Never have I seen anyone move their hands so fast. Before the crowd could find their surprise two knives are already soaring through the air, fast as arrows and completely silent. In an impossible display, the man in the green cloak snatches them up by the blade without turning around, as if eyes grew on the back of his head. He then wags his finger once, twice: tut-tut, try again.

A second later the crowd reacts with exhausted panic. Not knowing why he did what he did, I put a hand on Arkai's arm before he can draw his daggers.

'Let go,' he says.

'Not now! Everyone thinks you'll hurt them!'

He throws me off hard enough to stumble an elephant, but though his hands are twitching on the grip he is not drawing. 'Here, now…well played you bastard,' he mutters.

People look scared; they are one flying knife away from finding their insanity again. Cursing under his breath, Arkai retreats to the carriage without saying another word. His right food stomps right in the middle of a puddle, drenching the tail of his coat…but he doesn't seem to have noticed.

The green cloak is gone.

I dole out half-hearted assurances to the throng that yes, everything's fine, but the lady's time is short and we really should be moving on. Soon as they relent I hurry inside, shutting all the doors and pulling curtains over the windows; would not do for others to see her like this.

Kathanhiel is pacing the room bare-legged, her crystalline greaves tossed carelessly into a corner. Her still gauntleted hands are clutching Kaishen by the blade and holding it against her chest. In the far corner sits Arkai, turning in his hands a charcoal-coloured broach shaped like a coiled dragon. He stares at it intensely, as if by doing so the little trinket might cease to exist.

'Three chevrons, the mark of their leader.' Kathanhiel says. 'And their leader is Talu. Talukiel. I saw his face. Have you been hiding this from me, Arkai? Or will you feign ignorance?'

He struggles for words. 'I didn't know he would –'

'No. It's too late for that. Just tell me.'

A flaky crunch; Arkai has crushed the broach to pieces. 'We...I...lost track of him three years ago, in the Ranges. Had I told you it would've engendered an unnecessary distraction –'

'How very kind of you to decide what I need and need not know,' Kathanhiel says. 'All this time I have waited for your word, deceiving my better judgement, thinking that you're still hunting him down, that his capture is but an inevitability, but of course I've been the fool all along and you had no idea where he was – yet you had the gall not to tell me. How come he is leading the Cult?'

'They rooted out our agents without fail,' he replies with eyes downcast. 'Even the ones only I knew about. Somehow they always figure out –'

'Grand, spymaster Arkai. Excellent,' she says softly. 'Ten years it's been since I asked you to kill him, the only favour I've ever asked of anyone, and all you can give me are excuses.'

Arkai's stands up, the right side of his face twitching. He is angry…but I know that despairing look; he is angry only at himself.

'I shall go after him at once,' he says.