Crossed Blades by Kelly McCullough Read Free Book Online

before launching myself out into the darkness beyond.
    A giant flash of lightning ripped the air between me and the tomb, temporarily blinding my unvision in midleap. The death spasm of my target’s familiar as its life spilled away with its master’s. It left a brutally painful afterimage burned into my borrowed senses; like a splintered crack in the very stuff of the universe. With no other choice, I tore aside the veil of shadow in front of my eyes so that I could see the ground.
    I touched down briefly on the balls of my feet before letting my knees go loose as I collapsed into a forward roll to bleed off some of the speed of my fall. Holding onto a pair of drawn swords added a significant element of risk to the maneuver, but with at least one more priest of the Hand about, I didn’t dare let them go. Fortunately, the turf of the royal cemetery was deep and exquisitely tended. Instead of the badly ripped up knuckles and separated shoulder I half expected, I came back to my feet with little more than grass cuts and a few fresh bruises.
    I’d taken barely two steps when a lance of white light speared past my head. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils and I felt Triss shriek in his dreams as the light tore a hole in his substance. I threw myself sidewise into a cartwheel that cost me my left-hand sword when it stuck deep in the earth and I was forced to let it go.
    More lightning hammered down from the sky, half blinding my mortal eyes at the same time that it burned away my returning unvision for a second time. Another cartwheel put the edge of a tomb between me and the source of the white beams—another Hand obviously. This one more powerful by far than the one I’d killed.
    “Faran!” I yelled. “Get Jax clear!”
    Then I turned and dashed along the wall of the tomb, sheathing my remaining sword as I went, to free my hands. The bastard clearly knew where I was, shroud or not. I needed to make my next move fast. I was just getting ready to dive into another roll when shouts came from the compound wall above, and the palace alarm bells began to ring. Not unexpected, but damned inconvenient. I froze for a moment. Go back to help Faran with Jax? Or ghost the remaining Hand and clear the field of at least one of the opposing forces?
    That’s when the wet hand of a god smashed me back against the wall of the tomb. Rain and wind as I had never even imagined them wiped away vision and unvision alike, blinding me utterly even as they deafened and washed away all scent, leaving only touch and memory to guide me. I turned back the way I had come, abandoning any hope of finding the priest as I dropped my shroud and my control over Triss.
    He let out a series of sharp hisses, swearing in Shade as he awoke.
Fire and sun but that hurts. What happened? It feels like I had a starshine chewing on my left wing.
I couldn’t see Triss in the darkness, but I imagined him stretching out on the wall beside me, obviously wincing as he extended his wings.
    One of the Hand clipped you with some kind of tightly focused lightning blast or something, but we don’t have time to go into it or go after him. We need to find our way to Ashvik’s tomb.
I pointed in the direction I’d last seen Jax.
I’m utterly blind in this, the alarms are going off, and the Crown Elite are certainly on their way.
    The Elite were warrior mages whose stone dog companions could swim through earth like a fish through water. The storm wouldn’t even slow them down, and we had minutes at best to get clear of the area before they arrived along with several hundred of the less magical but more numerous Crown Guard.
    Go.
    Trusting Triss to guide me, I began to lope in the direction I hoped was the right one, moving quickly, though I had to bend nearly double to fight the wildly shifting patterns of the buffeting winds. Through our bond, I felt my shadow stretch out ahead of me, spreading himself thin as he searched out the path. I hated to go unshrouded like