The Silenced Tale, стр. 58

“Found you,” a voice made of honey and poison hisses into the quiet. “I wondered what it would take to lure you out, Shadow Hand.”

Choking on the swell of terror that rises up in my throat, I rise to my feet, ready to strike however I may. I am not proficient in unarmed grappling, but the adrenaline coursing through me will, I hope, help. But Elgar is between us, and I am unsure if I can reach the Viceroy before he can swing his upraised knife down.

A brief glance about the room provides me with no weapon of my own, but at the foot of Elgar’s bed, a table on wheels arcs over his calves. And on that lays a half-finished meal on a metal tray.

“Do not do this thing,” I say, and my voice sounds harsh in the muffled silence of what feels like a secrecy spell. “Harm him, and who knows what will become of the world we left behind.”

“I care not,” the Viceroy snarls.

“Your mother lives there still—”

“She died so that I may regain my magic! Do you know how I suffered? How it feels to be a magical being who is denied that magic? How it hurts? How it burns! Incessant! Never-ending!”

I realize that Elgar is not quite so oblivious as I thought. His eyes are open, wide and bulbous in his fear, and he is repeatedly jamming the emergency buzzer on the side of his bed.

“If you must take your vengeance on us for what we took from you, then do so. But leave him alone,” I command, sounding far more confident than I feel and cursing myself a fool for leaving Smoke in Victoria. For failing to obtain a gun of my own, as I suggested to Pip.

I have a vague thought of trying to snatch Riletti’s out of her holster, but I dare not turn my back on the Viceroy.

“Oh, I will have my revenge on you, and your whore,” the Viceroy sneers. “But first, I will have it on the man who is the Author of all my misfortunes and sorrows.”

Elgar makes a pained sound, and jerks his head around. “Forsyth!”

“Look at you. So small,” the Viceroy says to him, and it is nearly sorrowful, nearly gentle. Nearly. “You are human, after all. And I am more.”

His knife begins its downward swing, and I leap forward, grabbing the tray and sliding it over Elgar’s heart, hoping that it is thick enough to stop the blade. The scattered remains of Elgar’s meal—dirty dishes, old rice, cold tea—fly at the Viceroy’s face, and he rears back, indignant. His blade skids along the tray, no longer strongly wielded, and I am able to knock my hand hard enough against his wrist to send it flipping end over end into a shadow-laden corner.

Within seconds, the sound of feet running up the corridor and toward this room rings out in the hall.

“Riletti!” I hear Jackson shout. “What the hell is—why are you just standing there?”

The Viceroy turns on the balls of his feet, snarling as he comes back around toward me, and I shout a Word of Protection, just in case the room is saturated with enough magic for it to work.

It does.

The Viceroy rears back again, hands over his face as if the mere sound of the Word is dazzling to his eyes. He hisses again, wordless and infuriated. Then he seems to fold in on himself, shadow curling in upon shadow, and is gone.

Riletti, Jackson, and the two officers fall through the door like spilled water, whatever spell the Viceroy had placed on the entryway to keep them out suddenly vanished. The latter three shake their heads, pushing off the compulsion, while the nurse shoulders her way through them to check first on Juan, who is now bolt upright in his bed, eyes round with terror, and then to the obviously panicking Elgar.

“It’s him,” Elgar says over the din of doctors arriving and Juan loudly demanding an explanation, the officers speaking into their radios and shouting at one another. But Elgar’s words, his desperate, teary gaze, those are for me alone.

“Oh my god, Forsyth,” he says again, a tremulous whisper. “That was him. He’s here. He’s really here.”