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His face went livid; his pupils dilated wildly, black on red. He launched a blistering attack, driving me back as he hurled himself recklessly upon me. I fended myself but could do little to take advantage of his rashness. He was too quick, too powerful. But he was also tiring.

Anger is a heavy emotion to carry.

The man’s attack fizzled in a flurry of striking, clanging swords. He came to a halt, gasping for breath and trying to hide it, with sweat glistening on his ruddy face and beading in his hair. His eyes blazed, and were fearful at the same time—like a wolf finding that his easy prey has fangs. I affected a bored pose, letting the tip of my sword drop again to the floor-planks.

“Perhaps some lessons,” I said to the man, keeping my voice mild and idly waving my left hand toward his sword.

He vented an absolute shriek at my insult, and lunged again, wildly. I spun off my left heel, dropping to one knee with my back to him, my left hand slapping across, catching my sword’s hilt behind the right hand to add power to a driving thrust over my shoulder. The blade seemed to leap upward in a shining arc.

The guard officer’s upper body was too far forward. His balance was ruined and his sword was well out of defensive line over my head where my heart had been moments before. He had no chance to block my thrust as it razored in from his right side. His body seemed to draw the blade in, seemed to suck it in deep beneath the ribs until the hilt met the flesh of his belly with a wicked smacking sound.

I jerked the weapon free and, continuing my turn as I pushed up off my knee, rose to a standing position behind him. He was perfectly still, leaning so far forward that I thought he would fall. But then his head started to turn toward me. I saw the glistening of his eyes, and I swung my blade around and down, chopping through his neck right where his helmet would have protected if he hadn’t removed it. The head spun free, thunked wetly against the wall, and fell to roll quietly to a stop.

I was already plucking up the man’s scarlet cloak and wiping my sword clean. Then I slung my own cloak, the soldier-gray one, around me. Walking over to the door of the gunpowder room, I reached up and grasped the hilt of my dagger where it had buried itself deep in the wood. I jerked it free, and the corpse of the guard whose hand it still pinned slumped the rest of the way to the floor with what sounded like a sigh.

Sheathing the dagger, I bent and picked up my helmet from the floor. For a moment, in the polished gleam of that helm, I saw my face. It was cold and bitter, the eyes like chips from a jade glacier.

I glanced toward the three dead men that I shared the room with. For the first time I realized that I’d felt nothing during those killings. I’d taken their lives remorselessly. All except for the last, the officer’s. I’d felt something when I taunted him, before I took his head. It had been something like...glee.

Looking back at my face in the mirror of the helm, I thought I saw for a moment, deep within the oil-dark pupils, a blooming and shimmering of crimson.

I hurled the helmet savagely away from me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE BLACK PYRAMID

A gleam of red. Deep in my eyes.

It was a lie.What I’d seen reflected in the helmet had to have been a lie. I had not become that which I fought against. I had not! Vohanna must be stopped. Bryce must be saved. And if that meant meeting violence with more violence, so be it.

I turned, kicked open the door to the room that I knew must house the black powder for the cannons. I was right. Kegs of the stuff stood like parade-ground soldiers in the small space. And piled high in one corner were thousands of swollen-headed blast quarrels like the one Diken Graye had used days ago to bring down Rannon’s airship. All around me I smelled the hellish stench of sulphur and charcoal.

Stepping over the threshold, I sheathed my sword. A fire axe hung on one wall. I took it down. I had to work quickly. It seemed unlikely that Vohanna