The newcomer was not, in the end, a rescue. And he was only the first of many who came pooling into the building to, apparently, leer at Emma while she kicked and jerked as the blood went out of her. That seemed about right, given how things had been going so far.
As far as Emma could tell, most of the people watching were higher in social standing than the warriors she’d been spending most of her time among Sculds around. Better dressed, warmer dressed, and carrying some sneering, smug look of self-satisfaction she recognised from pretty much everyone back in her homeless days.
Emma catalogued that, and a dozen other things, without quite even realising it herself. Somewhere along the way her brain had gotten moving again, started churning away. She was focusing, pushing on. She wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure how.
And she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It hadn’t taken Emma long to figure out that the best-dressed, most important looking of the newcomers, the one that the priest was actually deferring to, seemed to be the one called Earl Ragni. Most of the other faces, she couldn’t identify by name. But she gathered they were his close friends, and most were warriors of some kind of another. Most Sculds in general were.
Not that they cared about a fight now, as far as she could see these ones were all perfectly content to watch Emma just get stabbed without a struggle. Apparently honour and nobility were secondary when god wanted you to kill somebody.
But the people weren’t all that Emma picked up on. Now that she was paying attention, actually looking around, she noticed just how lacking the surroundings really were. At least compared to the pomp and prestige their occupants ought to have called for.
And the priest was wrong, too. Emma had heard mention of a high-priest, or the high-priest. Never referring to Guldin. In fact, people often sent darting gazes to Guldin when referring to that other, apparently superior figure. As if Guldin were going behind his back to do something, and they all knew it.
That got her thinking, of course.
Guldin the Friendly Priest was, fortunately, still busy sharpening his dagger. He was making a show of it, Emma thought. But hurrying despite himself. Eager to get this done. What had he said before? Something about her being valuable to the gods, same as Aexilica.
Was that really what this was all about? Him poaching sacrifices from his boss to gain clout with their deities? It all seemed so pedestrian, so trivial.
But then, when did people not?
“Oi.” Emma called out, more on a whim than anything. More out of desperation, out of knowing that, hey, she was going to die anyway, so who the fuck cared what went wrong if she gave this a go? It was amazing how much imminent death could simplify a situation.
Earl Ragni seemed surprised, somehow, to be having her call out to him. He looked very much the same way Emma always imagined she would if some of the food on her plate started speaking. Oddly appropriate, that. Still, fuck him all the same.
“You’re talking to me?” He seemed baffled, then offended, and some of the men around him shared that emotion. Emma decided to talk fast. She may not, after all, be allowed to talk for long, and had a lot to say.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you.” Emma shot back, mouth moving just a little bit faster than her brain all of a sudden. “What, you’re allowed to cut me open but I don’t get to have a few words about it? Is that it?”
A pause, one long and heavy enough that Emma almost found herself wincing at it.
Then the Sculds were laughing. Actually laughing, full-on. Heads thrown back, eyes wide, chortling, snorting—one or two actually drooling. Emma was not relieved. One did not survive into one’s twenties as a below-average-sized woman without learning better than to relax around emotionally unpredictable men. Fortunately, these ones soon followed their laughter up with actual words. From the Earl no less.
“Fair enough.” He laughed. “Fair enough, speak away then woman.”
Woman. I’ll jab my thumb in your eye you fucking ape.
But that would be unconstructive. Or, more specifically if one happened to be Emma’s major blood vessels, actively destructive. So she bit her tongue, swallowed her words, and tried a more diplomatic response.
“You’re killing me here, in this hurry, because you have a deal with Guldin to make sure that he gets to send me to the gods rather than his boss, right?”
All of the humour and levity vanished instantly, room seeming to actually chill. Emma glanced over to where Aexilica was tied down, and saw, with dawning horror, that even she seemed to be lost for words.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Apparently, Emma had committed some kind of faux pas. Well, nothing to do now but dig her heels in and blindly push back against whatever came next.
“This high priest fellow, I’m guessing you don’t like him very much. Or he doesn’t like you. Maybe you’re agreeing to this because you don’t want him getting any more pull upstairs than he has already, something like that? Well I can offer you a way to avoid that while also keeping things better for yourself too.”
“That’s enough.” Came Guldin’s voice, and Emma was very satisfied to detect a note of panic in it. She looked over, seeing the priest making his way towards her. All the smugness disappeared as she realised he was holding the knife, body tense, eyes wide. Ready to use it.
Of course he wasn’t going to gag her, or threaten her, or hit her. Why would he silence a woman he planned on stabbing in any other way than the blade?
Idiot.
“He’s trying to kill me because he knows I can make you a better offer than he can!” Emma yelped, watching as the priest came closer one step at a time. In a single second more he was within paces of her.
But stopped as Earl Ragni’s voice came out again.
“Halt!”
Emma thought the priest might continue. Actually, it was probably best for him if he did. Kill her and she really would stop being a better option for Ragni, regardless of what she might have offered. Couldn’t out-bid him if she were dead. Sure, the Earl would be pissed. But that wouldn’t change much if his options were cut off.
But for some reason, the priest didn’t bring his knife down. Maybe deference to authority was too comfortable, maybe Ragni was less rational—more temper-driven—than Emma knew. Maybe he was just stupid. Whatever the cause, the knife remained where it was and Emma’s heart kept beating. For now.
Emma turned back to the Earl, found him eying her. He was far from friendly, far from open even. Maybe she’d earned herself a few more sentences to try and win him over, but it didn’t look like the murderous fuck had much confidence that she’d manage it. Fine. An uphill battle was better than an execution.
“My magic—” Emma did not get any farther than that before the door burst in.
No, not in. Apart. Like someone had smashed a car into it, splinters flying everywhere and giant, armoured men pouring in with an attitude usually found in rabies-infested dogs rather than humans.
The men already in the room, armed and armoured all of them, responded as Emma might have if her hands were free.
By freaking out and fighting back. In mere seconds, everything in the room degenerated into a messy tangle of limbs and flashing steel.
It was one of the more terrifying things she’d ever been in such close proximity to. Those weapons seemed awfully haphazard as they swept around, wide arcs bringing some of them to within a foot or two of Emma’s delicate, cuttable skin. More than once, she screamed. But she focused, too. The entire time, desperately, fearfully. She’d been pinned down helplessly before. Not now.
Think, use that shitty brain for once in your life and think Emma.
What options did she have available?
Well, not breaking the shackles. She just couldn’t muster the force to do that. Melting them? Not a bad idea, just a shame that several ounces of molten stee dripping over her wristsl would do to her what it did to everyone…
Oh, but hang on.
Emma encased her fingertips in hardened energy, then the fingers, then the hands, wrists and forearms for good measure. She made it as thick as she could—which was not that thick with the mere centimetre or so of clearance she had on each side of the shackles. Then, once formed, she simply disintegrated half the interior of her new energy gauntlets.
She pressed their tips to the shackles, and began transferring heat.
Whatever this energy stuff was, it reacted to Emma’s will and let her transfer her magic through it even when she wasn’t touching the energy itself. That wouldn’t have helped much if it couldn’t protect her from the heat of course, but that was where the really clever part came in.
Most of the interior of her energy gauntlets were now completely empty space. Vacuum, or as close to it as Emma could manage by filling up space and suddenly removing the hardened energy occupying it. Vacuums, for reasons she’d know if she’d paid more attention in school, just didn’t transfer heat the same way. Something about conduction and that other thing nobody knew the name of not working through them—only radiation allowed.
If she was remembering right, radiation didn’t make up most of a heated object’s energy output until you got into the multi-thousands of degrees. Probably. Hopefully. Damn, she really did hope that was right. The shackle was actually orange now and, dear god it was getting a bit warm around her wrist, what if—
It melted, molten iron sloughing all over her protective wear. The heat was painful, but not as bad as even scalding water. Emma considered it a success as she got to work on her other limbs.
She’d just freed her right arm when someone took note of what she was doing and, of course, ran over to try and cut her arm off or something. Actually Emma never found out what his plan was for her limb, or any other bodypart. Just then her arm was freed, the molten iron still pooling over it, and panic took over. She flailed her arm out, splashed the globules of liquid metal onto him—still shockingly heavy despite their change in state—and winced as he promptly caught fire and started screaming.
Emma rolled off the table as he got to work burning to death, and started carefully making her way through the chaos to Aexilica.
It was actually a fair amount easier to free her, essentially just the act of improvising a pair of very thick bolt-cutters made of hardened energy and then applying leverage. Even still, the head of Emma’s new tool was mangled by the effort of getting through iron. Aexilica exploded from the table and caught one attacking enemy—someone Emma hadn’t even seen coming—across the jaw. Teeth went flying, blood joined it. He crumpled, weapon in the woman’s hand before he even touched ground. Aexilica spun to Emma, eyes wide and darting around like some wild animal. Probably, Emma had a similar look. Adrenaline was a hell of a drug.
She looked around, studied the chaos. Got nothing from it. It was impenetrable, impossible. It just didn’t make sense. Too many moving parts, none of them communicating, none working together. Everything was an independent entity moved only by madness and panic. It was like looking at the inside of a car’s engine, after all its components had been randomly twisted out of place and the pressure doubled.
What the fuck do I do with this?
But that question, at least, was moot. That at least Emma had an answer for. She continued looking around until she’d picked out the Earl, then she started for him.