The sky was beginning to lighten in the south. In her home, they called this the blue hour, but here it was more like the red hour, as the light of a new day illuminated the blood that ran in the gutters of the streets and the red embers of flames in burned-out homes.

  The footsteps faded away and Natalia banished thoughts of Riot from her mind. She filled the pathways in her body with leypower until gray light pricked her vision, then bid the leyline to retreat, feeling it fade like a great wave flowing back to the sea. She hadn’t relied on barriers for years, quickly understanding that the essence of the arcane leylines wasn’t always a pounding forward force. It ebbed and flowed like the great tides of the world, and she just learned to swim.

  She moved through the streets she knew well, like a phantom, avoiding those gangs of drunks, looters, and bandits when she could and concealing herself when she could not, flooding her skin with ley power and bending the light around her to render herself almost invisible.

  The square fort at the base of the tower was deserted. There was nothing here to loot, and the dark reputation of the tower meant it was far from a place of refuge. That was partly her doing, though; isn’t that why she was here, to right that wrong?

  Her key turned in the lock with a sharp click, and she slipped inside, letting the ley power that she held leave her body, squeezing every last drop out until the empty channels itched and ached. That was the first part of how Riot had survived, he hadn’t had any leypower for the hedron to seize. As for how he had directed it away from himself, Natalia had almost killed herself several times before she managed to give the blast direction. She had thought Riot had just been lucky, before learning that those like him, and Price who forged their own fortune have no need of anything so fickle.

  The tower had fallen into ruin, dust covered the exquisite carpets, and the rank smell of mold seeped out of the rotten furnishings. She made her way up the staircase, running her gloved hand over the smooth railing. The door to her room opened easily enough, but in the gloom it was piled high with junk, and the smell of dead rodents forced her to step back and cover her nose.

  She went higher and though her hand hovered over the door handles that led to other rooms, she didn’t open them. She was here so that they would never be opened again.

  The air on the top floor was almost suffocating, with an acrid, burned metal smell of arcane workings.

  Sumner Nixton shuffled about, thrusting papers into a satchel and muttering to himself. “Whatever you want, will have to wait, my little magpie. The wikkan are coming, and I want to be far from here when they arrive.”

  He didn’t even turn around, and Natalia clicked her tongue in annoyance and pulled out the hedron.

  Sumner stiffened and sniffed the air. He turned around now, his expression dark, his wrinkled face twisted in displeasure as he glazed at the hedron. “Well, well, my shadow, what have you brought me? Didn’t I do what your precious wikkan wanted? The fleet is gone, the war is won, huray.”

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  “I’m here to turn this tower to rubble and bury you with it.”

  Sumner's small, pointed tongue whipped across his thin lips. “A bluff, and a poor one. It will kill you too, little shade, and we both know you are not the type to make sacrifices.”

  Natalia opened the hedron; just a hairline crack, and it flared in her hand. The hedron was a hunger that she had never felt, but she had rid her body of all ley power and Nixton was a prime conduit. He hissed like a tomcat, panting slightly. “You have been training, I see. Very clever, but you always were. Give.”

  The command tugged at her willpower, but she brushed it aside, far too used to the manipulations of the old fool.

  Sumner looked grumpy, like a chastised child, and waved his hand irritably. “Destroy the tower; see if I care, it’s not mine any more, I traded it to my ungrateful son. It served its purpose, as you well know, but that is long in the past, and look how you benefited—the finest spellcraft, skills, and an education.”

  “We did terrible things, as did others: Alric Rook and Isan Wane, Antonieta.”

  Sumner gave an exasperated sigh. “Don’t lump me in with those fanatics. They wanted to create an army, but I had other aims, aims which I am close to realizing my little magpie. Take a look at the document over there.”

  He was a fool and a cunning manipulator, but he had a brilliant mind. Brilliant enough to make the core discoveries that made leybound possible. If he was working on something new, then she had to at least see it.

  The text was written in Sumner's own hand, a beautiful, flowing script that no one could imagine coming from his dirty clawed fist. It only took a moment for her to comprehend.

  “Impossible,” she whispered, resting a finger on the image that took up one half of the page. “Who else knows about this?”

  Sumner was beside her, his eyes tracing the text like a tender lover. “For now, just us two, but our enemies are many and powerful. Roveran, the wikkan, and the Faelen upstart who calls himself emperor. It will not be a secret for long. Come with me, shadow; I could use you. Resourceful, ruthless, beautiful.”

  Natalia looked at the image on the page. It would change the world. “The tower will be rubble, and I won’t be a part of any more experimentation.”

  Sumner looked scandalized. “I am a reformed man. You will be my conscience and my guide.” He made a crude salute and gave her a wicked smile that she could not help but return.

  “And I want one more thing. I believe an Erudoran sergeant came to see you recently.”

  ***

  The tower had stood for millennia, made of arts mastered and lost long before living memory. It had stood as a symbol of power and strength, and then after the great deception of Sumner Nixton and the fall of the noble house of Moran, as a place of fear and torment.

  The explosion blew out the tower base and the fortress-like structure around it, flattening the nearby abandoned houses. The tower groaned, swaying to and fro, before with a great rending and grinding of stone, it collapsed.

  The deep shudder shook the white walls of Morbian, but another, unseen ripple went beyond the hills. It carried a promise to shake the great houses of the Faelen and the towers of the Arcanum, and tossed the seas upon which the great gray ships of Erudor that now sailed to war.