Twenty soldiers filled a corridor built for six.
They did not shout. They did not stamp their boots or strike their shields. They came out of the dark in two disciplined lines and sealed both ends of the detention wing while Kavie remained seated beyond them, one ankle resting upon his knee.
He looked as if he had been waiting for a late guest.
Valerie looked at his hands.
Those hands had held Mira by the hair.
Those hands had turned a sword in her sister's body.
The memory arrived without distance: the wet catch in Mira's breath, Marrek falling, sunlight on the broken kitchen glass. Valerie's fingers closed around Saughtrick's sword until the leather grip complained.
K shifted half a step in front of her.
It was not enough to block her view. It was enough to interrupt it.
"There you are," Kavie said.
K's borrowed guard coat hung crookedly from one shoulder. Blood had soaked through the bandage around his palm, and a tremor moved from that hand into his forearm. He gave the soldiers one slow inspection, counting shields, distances, hinges, lamps.
"You spent twenty men on a greeting," he said. "I expected better manners."
Kavie's smile warmed by a degree. "I spent twenty men to make certain you arrived tired. The greeting is mine."
The front rank advanced.
K kicked the open cell door beside him. Iron struck the first shield and jammed sideways across the narrow passage. Valerie moved before the echo died. She planted a foot against the door, drove it harder, and caught the soldier behind it between shield and wall. K seized the lip of the man's shield with his good hand and pulled. The soldier stumbled forward.
Valerie struck him with the sword's pommel.
A spear came over his shoulder.
"Down," K said.
She dropped. The spear scraped sparks from the wall above her. K wound his borrowed coat around the shaft, turned beneath it, and dragged the spearman into the cell. Valerie slammed the door on the man's arm. Bone cracked. The spear fell.
Someone behind them shouted, "Take the woman alive!"
"An inspiring distinction," K murmured.
He caught the spear with his injured hand.
Pain emptied his face.
For one dangerous instant he stood perfectly still. Then he passed the weapon to Valerie and braced his shoulder against hers as the rear line drove forward.
They gave ground together.
Shield rims battered the spear. Valerie shortened her grip and used the weapon like a bar across the corridor. K stepped into every gap she made. He struck throats, knees, wrists—nothing wasted, nothing strong enough. Each movement ended a fraction later than it should have. Each recovery cost him more.
A soldier's shield caught him in the ribs.
K hit the wall hard enough to lose the air in his lungs.
Valerie slashed across the shield hand, turned, and drove the spear butt into another man's mouth. A sword came for her neck. K caught the attack at the soldier's wrist and redirected it into the stone.
Black veins showed beneath the skin at his temple.
No flame came with them.
Kavie lifted two fingers.
Every soldier stopped.
The silence was so immediate that Valerie heard blood pattering from K's bandage onto the floor.
Eight soldiers had been forced back or down. None were dead. The others closed ranks around them, breathing hard behind their shields.
K remained upright by leaning against the wall in a manner that pretended to be casual.
Kavie rose from his chair.
He was dressed in plain travelling black beneath a long grey coat. No armour. No visible crystal. His sword remained in its sheath.
"The reports diminished you," he told K. "Reports usually enlarge a man. It is pleasant to be surprised."
K wiped blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve. "You should read better reports."
Kavie laughed softly.
Valerie had heard that laugh in her home.
Her body leaned toward it before her mind caught up. K's elbow touched hers—not a restraint, only a reminder that he knew.
"Where is my father?" she asked.
Kavie's gaze settled on her. His smile did not change, but she felt its attention like the edge of a knife.
"Captain Ulkhander is enjoying royal hospitality."
"Where?"
"Beyond your reach. Temporarily."
Valerie raised the spear point. "You have mistaken distance for safety before."
"No." Kavie glanced at the disabled soldiers around her. "Other people have mistaken your anger for incompetence. I never have."
He said it almost kindly. That made it fouler.
K pushed himself away from the wall. "The northern border of Welhemdor."
Kavie looked back at him.
"That is an abrupt change of subject."
"An entire nation beyond that border was erased." K's voice had lost its humour. "Villages, garrisons, records. The Gauntlet investigation concluded one man led it and Church authority buried it."
One of Kavie's eyebrows rose.
"The investigation was sealed," he said.
"Seals interest thieves and investigators for the same reason."
"And which are you?"
"Underpaid."
Kavie's gaze dropped briefly to the crystal device beneath K's torn shirt. The look was quick, but not quick enough to hide recognition.
K continued. "The Church was searching for an artifact. You were its sword."
"I was one of its swords."
"Did you find it?"
Kavie considered the question as if judging the quality of a meal. "No."
"Then why stop?"
For the first time, irritation disturbed his expression.
It was small. A tightening beside the mouth. A brief pressure of tongue against tooth. Valerie might have missed it if she had not spent years questioning men who believed calmness made them honest.
"Because that is no longer our objective," Kavie said.
K nodded toward Valerie. "She is."
"Alive."
"The Church changed its mind?"
Kavie's smile returned, polished over the annoyance. "The Father changed it for the Church."
The way he gave the title made it sound like a command he had swallowed badly.
"The Father," Valerie repeated.
"The hand upon ten swords," Kavie said. "The voice lesser voices call obedience. He has taken an interest in you. You should be flattered."
"Tell him to lose it."
"I have offered him similar counsel with more diplomatic phrasing."
K watched him carefully. "Yet here you are."
"Here I am." Kavie's eyes brightened. "Because the command brings me something I have wanted for years."
He drew his sword.
The sound of steel leaving leather passed through the corridor like a held breath released.
Kavie pointed the blade at K.
"The black flame," he said. "Unhidden at last."
K's injured hand closed once. The tremor worsened.
"You crossed a great deal of country to be disappointed," K said.
"Disappointment requires certainty. You are still standing."
Kavie turned his head toward the soldiers without taking his eyes from K.
"Lieutenant."
The officer in the rear rank struck his fist to his chest. "Sir."
"Captain Ulkhander's remaining unit failed to report to its barracks after the arena breach. The names are in your packet. Find them."
Valerie's spear lowered by an inch.
Kavie noticed.
"Alive if practical," he continued. "Practicality may be reassessed after the first question."
The lieutenant hesitated. Several of the soldiers looked toward Valerie.
"All of us, sir?"
"All twenty."
"And the prisoners?"
Kavie rolled his sword once in his hand. "Are mine."
Valerie stepped forward. Three shields lifted.
"Their crime was obeying my father."
"Then they should have chosen a safer man to obey."
"Kavie!."
He looked pleased to hear his name from her.
"Touch them," Valerie said, "and I will make whatever your Father wants from me impossible."
"No, you will try." He reached inside his coat and removed a small brass relay crystal set in a cage of black wire. "The difference between us is that I enjoy watching people discover the limits of trying."
He tossed the relay to the lieutenant.
"Leave the line open."
The lieutenant caught it. His face had gone carefully blank.
Then the soldiers withdrew.
They did it with the same discipline with which they had arrived: lifting the injured, resetting formation, leaving neither shield nor sword behind. Boots receded up the corridor until only three people remained beneath the bright lamps.
Kavie picked up a second relay from the chair.
Its crystal was already glowing.
"Shall we begin?" he asked.