It was from Malkior’s daughter, an agent of the Dark Empire, his half-sister, a sorceress and a Shadowblood assassin, perhaps the most dangerous woman he had ever encountered.

He opened it and scanned the few brief lines within.

“It’s from Tamara,” he told Asea. “She wants to meet.”

Chapter Three

Rik invoked the illumination spell. A faint ball of flame flickered within the crystal sphere Asea had given him. It was barely more than a witch light but enough to let his half-Terrarch eyes see the broken machinery and shattered glasswork around him.

Rik did not like this place. The last time he had been in this basement, he had found a vat full of undead soldiers. Now it smelled of acid and blood and death and fire. The voices in his head were uneasy too, as they should be, for if he died they lost their last desperate finger-hold on life as well.

Rik kept his back to the wall and checked the pistol. It was loaded with a truesilver bullet of the same type with which he had killed Malkior and he wondered whether he was going to have to do for the daughter as well. He would prefer not to. For all her viciousness, he had always rather liked Tamara, and the last time they had met, he thought they might have reached some sort of understanding.

He wished that he had time to find Weasel and the Barbarian and have them back him up. Then again the last time the three of them had gone up against Tamara things had not ended well. He felt uncomfortable standing in the cellar with spring mud on his boots and clinging to the cuffs of his trousers. The stairs were rickety and would not make a good escape route, and that was something he had learned early in life that you should always have. It would be easy enough to trap him here given enough men.

Why had he come, he asked himself again? He was still not entirely sure. Perhaps he was just past caring. He was tired and the Inquisition might find him at any moment and cart him off to be burned. And he was curious as to what Tamara wanted. And, if she expected him to be easy prey, she was in for a surprise. The last time they had met he had not possessed the skill in sorcery that he did now. Perhaps that would help.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, a tearing sensation ripped at his soul. A patch of shadow in the corner of the room clotted and hardened. A humanoid outline appeared in it, a shadow that no one had cast. In moments it took on three dimensions, bulged outwards and Tamara was standing there, a beautiful Terrarch girl, snub-nosed, bright big eyes alive with mischief. A blade glittered in her hand. There were runes in it, and he guessed that it was a thing of peculiar deadliness. He rested the barrel of the pistol in the crook of his arm. Not accidentally it pointed directly at her.

“I am surprised you came,” she said, a smile quirking her too-broad lips. If having the pistol sighted at her made her uncomfortable she gave no sign of it. She wore men’s clothing, dark and tight-fitting. He noticed there was no mud on her boots.

“No you are not.