The Crimson Gallery

The first body did not slow me down.

An Imperial Knight lay near the eastern staircase with his sword several feet from one hand. I stepped around him without thinking, then did the same with another further along the gallery. I had spent most of the day moving past dead people.

Battles left bodies behind.

I knew that better than most.

The first two had been strangers, which made them easier to ignore.

The third man was Elias.

I recognised the patch badly sewn across one knee before I recognised his face.

He had joined the guild the previous winter and spent most training sessions complaining about his left wrist before carrying twice as much as anyone asked him to carry anyway.

I momentarily stopped, then kept moving.

The gallery narrowed towards the inner courtyard. A red-and-gold banner had fallen from the wall, and somebody had stepped across it often enough to grind blood into the fabric.

There were more bodies beyond Elias: two mercenaries I knew by face, an Imperial Knight beneath a broken table and a Rochefort Knight who had helped move medical crates at the dockyard three days ago.

The palace had become quieter the further I moved from the entrance. Fighting still echoed somewhere beyond the walls, but down here every sound arrived separately: my boots, my breathing, the faint scrape of steel whenever the sword at my hip touched my cloak.

Then I smelled smoke.

A lamp had fallen against a curtain near the next junction and burned a black mark through the bottom before somebody had stamped it out.

Pale stone became dark wood, and a body ahead wore a servant’s coat.

No.

I pressed one hand against the wall until the cold reached my palm. This was the Imperial Palace. House Valemont was thirteen years ago and many miles away.

I was twenty-one, not eight.

A sword struck something in the courtyard ahead.

The barricade near the end of the gallery had been built from benches, a cabinet and what appeared to have been a very expensive table. Most of it had collapsed towards the courtyard doors.

Marek was on the other side.

His sword was still in his hand. Dark-brown hair had fallen across his forehead, and one side of his coat was torn where the blade had gone through. He looked irritatingly normal apart from that, like he might open his eyes and complain that I had taken too long.

“Marek?”

Nothing.

I crossed the last few steps between us and put one hand against his shoulder.

“Marek.”

His coat moved beneath my fingers, but he didn’t.

In the entrance hall, he had turned beneath the archway and raised two fingers.

I had done the same.

My mind kept returning to that movement as though I had missed something between then and now.

Three paces beyond him, Tessa lay near the opposite wall. Her crimson hair had darkened where it touched the floor. One hand was still closed around her sword, while the Imperial knight beside her had fallen facing the other direction with a deep cut across the back of his armour.

She had kept fighting.

Of course she had.

I realised I was still holding Marek’s shoulder only when my fingers started to ache.

I let go and crossed the three paces.

I crouched beside her and put two fingers against her neck even though I already knew the answer.

My fingers stayed there anyway.

Of all the things I could have chosen, I thought back to the card table at the guild. Marek complaining about losing money. Tessa stealing food from somebody else’s plate and denying it while chewing. Gideon pretending not to listen from his office until one of them became loud enough to make that impossible.

I had expected to hear all of it again.

My hand slipped from Tessa’s neck. I had not sent them here. Gideon had taken the courtyard when the report came in, and Marek and Tessa had followed because they were adults who made their own decisions.

I knew that…

But still…

I should have stayed with them.

The thought arrived with nowhere to put it.

I put one hand against the floor before the hallway could tilt any further and saw my fingers beside Tessa’s open ones.

They were smaller.

I shut my eyes, but that only made it worse.

This time I had not been eight. I had been in the same building, strong enough to fight through the city, and I had still been too late.

I slammed my hand against the wall as a faint metallic sound came from beyond the courtyard doors once more.

Gideon.

I stood too quickly, caught the wall with one shoulder and kept moving forwards.

The inner courtyard was full of bodies. Most of Cedric’s reserve were there, mixed with mercenaries and Rochefort Knights. The fighting had narrowed towards the archway before ending.

Cedric stood beneath the central arch; Gideon was on his knees in front of him.

Alive.

Relief hit so hard that I nearly stumbled.

“Gideon.”

His head came up.

Blood covered one side of his coat and his left arm hung close to his body, but his eyes found mine immediately.

The expression on his face was not relief.

“No,” Gideon rasped.

The word stopped me long enough for Cedric to turn.

Thirteen years disappeared from his face far too easily.

He still held himself the same way he had in the training yard at Valemont, shoulders loose and his sword lowered as though there were no reason for anyone nearby to feel threatened.

“You came,” he said.

His voice sounded exactly the same.

Gideon shifted on one knee.

“Leon.”

Cedric’s sword moved, but not towards me.

“No—!”

The blade slashed across Gideon’s throat, and everything else stopped.

I saw his body jerk, one hand rising to his throat as Cedric finished the motion and recovered with the same controlled movement I had seen him use a thousand times while teaching me.

Then Gideon fell.