Conquest of Avalon

Luce VII: Half in Shadow

Luce’s face was on fire. Pulsing out of his left eye was a searing pain, every drop of the deluge hitting his face only making it worse. Instinctively, he covered it with his hand, but that only made him wince harder, and when he pulled it away, the hand was slick and red.

Charlotte was trying to lead him away, probably, but her words were drowned out by the wind, snatching them from her mouth and instead delivering the screams of Leigh’s rebels as Levian cut through them with another blade of water.

His serpentine form never stayed put long enough to get a good glimpse of, especially given that Luce wasn’t doing so great at glimpsing things in general right now, but every few seconds, his work made itself manifest: a crack through the air as another wave of water crashed over the stone, the burbling cry of a rebel struggling not to drown, the growing intensity of the rain, falling so thick in the air that moving through it felt like wading through a river.

“Luce, we need to go!” Charlotte wrapped her arm around him, tugging him back. “It’s not safe.”

No shit, I just lost an eye. “It’s not safe for anyone.” Luce blinked rapidly, trying to clear what was left of his vision. “And this is my fault.”

“What?” She yelled to be heard over the wind.

“I took over Charenton!” Luce yelled. “I made my deals with Levian’s ilk. Me. Do you believe for a second that this would be happening if I’d stayed in Fortescue?” He wasn’t sure if she could even hear all of it, but the pained look on her face told him that she’d gotten the gist.

The earth shook, a distant building collapsing into a cloud of dust ahead of the next wave.

After Malin, I was a laughingstock. After today, I’ll always be seen as a monster. The Prince of Darkness, a fitting title for the son of a king who slew the sun.

“We have to stop him.” Luce grabbed Charlotte’s hand and began walking back towards the Magister’s palace, his socks squelching in his boots. As he glanced back at her worried face, he saw her mouthing one word, drowned beneath the rain: How?

Good question. Luce’s teeth ground together. His hands clenched tight to try to push through the pain.

Simone Leigh and maybe forty of her rebels were clustered together in something still resembling a formation, drawn back into a tight half circle against the palace walls. The elevated landing above the front steps gave them all some protection against the recurring waves, but if Levian decided to collapse this building too, that would be scant comfort.

“Leigh!” he yelled, his guards falling into step behind him. “I’m calling a truce!” He made a T shape with his hands, trying to make the message clear, since he didn’t exactly have the appropriate flags for parley on hand.

She raised her gun towards him, prompting Charlotte to jump forward, but she stopped when Luce held up a hand.

One of Leigh’s rebels pulled on her arm, saying something Luce had no hope of hearing. Whatever it was, Leigh lowered the gun, then waved them closer. “Make it quick,” she spat out once they were close enough to actually communicate.

“Truce?” Luce tried to keep it succinct; Levian’s threat lurked ever-present under the beating rain. “You have pistols and numbers, we have more powerful weapons and training. None of us want this attack to continue a moment longer than it has to.”

Leigh’s face curled in on itself with disgust. “But only one of us ordered it.”

“You can’t seriously think—”

“You’re the Prince of Darkness! Heavy-handed tyrant, consorter with sorcerers and spirits, the very embodiment of Avalon’s oppression!” She let out a dismissive “Pah! Don’t act like it’s beneath you to arrange this to consolidate your grip.”

“With myself and my guards still in the city? With me losing my fucking eye?” Luce gripped Charlotte’s hand tighter, feeling his face snarl. “We could get on a ship right now and leave you to your fate. I’m instead proposing, generously, that we stay and work together for something we both want. Unless you’re happy with Levian tearing into your people and the Charentine like a Sauin feast?”

“Oh that’s right!” Leigh let out a chuckle, then turned around to face her rebels. “Listen up! There’s only one ship durable enough to get us out of here, and the Prince of Darkness has it parked in the harbor. We’re going to take it and leave. Shoot anyone who tries to stop you.” She signaled her hand down, walking down the steps in the direction of the harbor before Luce could even slightly contest it.

“Un-fucking believable.” Between the wind and rain, he was sure no one could hear him. “Charlotte—”

“On it,” she said softly, already closing one eye to aim her gun. It couldn’t be an easy shot, with all the rebels behind her, and Charlotte was clearly giving her task the care it was due.

And then what? It wasn’t like any of the other rebels would entertain a truce after Luce gunned down their leader. It wasn’t like his thirty guards had any hope of facing Levian alone. I’m not sure three-thousand could. It was looking more and more impressive that Lucien Renart had even managed to survive the White Night, let alone triumph.

But Levian wasn’t beaten there. He just left on his own, his work done.

Descended from a powerful line of binders stretching back to The Great Binder herself, Luce was letting every last one of them down with how totally at a loss he was for how to deal with this. He’d felt unsuited to politics, but Levian had really managed to put into perspective that they were comparatively a pretty good fit. Pretty much anything was, next to this.

He had nothing close to the Great Binder’s raw power, sufficient to beat Khali into submission and force her through the portal to Nocturne.

Charlotte hadn’t fired. In fact, she was lowering her gun. Luce saw the reason why a moment later.

Closer to the shore, the rebels were wading through hip-deep water, holding their guns above their heads in the hopes of keeping the gunpowder dry. In a flash, the waves swelled above their heads, then receded, running red with blood.

Simone Leigh had been cut in half at the waist, her hand squeezing the cobblestones as the life drained from her. Most of her followers were scattered, running screaming in different directions if they weren’t bleeding out on the cobblestones themselves. And they think I ordered this.

Father would know what to do. He’d slain more powerful spirits than this, with far more raw power than he could ever hope to match—even the very sun in the sky. He made the cold calculation to plunge the world into darkness to remove the most tyrannical spirit, no matter the cost. Nearly a quarter of Avalon was dead at his hand, the people he’d sworn to protect, the nation he regularly declared that he “was” more times than Luce could count. And that was with time to plan, local allies, and the element of surprise.

If he were here, it was very likely that his plan to deal with Levian wouldn’t leave a single Charentine alive. Perhaps nothing west of the Rhan. Perhaps not even me.

Do not trust Magnifico, the visions had said, he tried to kill his son. Darkness leaves traces but the light blots out all else, it had finished, using a phrase Luce had only ever heard from that treacherous imposter, Jethro. Who seems to be a binder himself, if his mastery of the Gauntlet of Eulus is anything to go by.

One of the rebels was trying to lead the survivors back towards the palace, her tied up hair glistening black in the rain. The same one that seemed to convince Leigh to parley, Luce noted, not missing how the rebels looking to her instead might change things.

“We have to go!” Charlotte yelled, pulling him down the steps by the hand. In the square, a tower of blood squirted into the air, its source quickly covered by another wave. “While he’s distracted. Especially if you’re right about him being here because of you.”

And if he sees us, he’ll sink my ship. If he doesn’t, he’ll continue to devastate Charenton.

“Every story I’ve heard from my father, every text I pored through in the Grimoire Archives, even the most ancient binders from the mists of folklore, the key is always finding the right trick. They were clever enough to make the right plan, powerful enough to execute it at the right time. Strike when their guard is down, trap them in an unfavorable deal, mislead them with technically true words…”

“There’s no doing that here.” She squeezed his hand. “Remember that advice your uncle gave? No use imagining how things might have gone differently; now you have to deal with the situation now as best you can. Get out alive.”

“That’s not what he said.” Though maybe I messed up the phrasing when I told you about it. “I made a mistake, and I can’t give up on fixing it. Cutting and running will get us no further than Leigh.”

“Us…” Charlotte nodded slowly, tucking her pistol under her armpit as she slipped on the Gloves of Teruvo. “You’re right, Luce. Nothing for it but to fight him head on for as long as I can. Long enough for you to sail away with the others.”

“Absolutely not!” He wrenched his hand away, feeling it splash in the rapidly swelling water at knee-level. His face was throbbing, blood dripping from his empty eye down his chin.

“You don’t have to worry, I can manage it. Have you ever known me to fail?”

Luce grit his teeth and wiped away his bloody tears. “No.”

What remained of Leigh’s forces were nearly back to the palace steps, backing steadily away from the worst of the slaughter as they futilely tried to fire their waterlogged pistols at any errant glimpse of Levian. Three in four didn’t fire at all, only letting out a slowly-dispersing black smoke. And the remaining might as well have malfunctioned, for all the chance they had at hitting Levian as he rapidly lunged through the water.

“I hope you’ve reconsidered,” Luce said as the rebels finally reached the steps, not wanting to waste time. “If so, lead us to your powder stores right away.”

“What?” the black-haired woman shouted, not making it clear if she hadn’t heard him or just hadn’t understood.

“You want to stop the rampaging spirit? Work with me. If you bought those guns in Malin, I’m sure you have reserves of powder and ammunition somewhere too. I need to know where.”

“You talked about a truce. Stealing our supplies is not—”

“Do you want to get cut in half too?” Charlotte asked. “No one’s stealing anything. Prince Luce simply knows how to use it better than you do. He has a plan.” As if to punctuate her comment, another wave broke on the steps beneath them, spraying red-tinted water into the air.

Of course you’d pick up on what I’m thinking without missing a step, Luce thought with a smile. “Did you stash it in the city?”

The black-haired woman paused, weighing her options. “A shed, south of the Malin-facing gate. There’s a good chance it’ll still be dry.”

From a fleeting glimpse of Levian, another sharp blade of water slashed towards them, cleaving through one of Luce’s men and two of the rebels. It also cut into several of the columns at the front of the palace, causing the roof to slide forward at an angle.

“We need to go now.” Luce spent a second surveying the flooded streets, trying to pick out the safest path south, but even the less flooded areas could still become waterlogged in an instant if Levian gave them more personal attention. And once he was among them, it would all be over.

“But how are we ever going to make it there alive?”

Charlotte aimed her pistol carefully, tracing every glimpse of Levian beneath the waves until the shot was just right, then fired. Her pistol let out a tiny puff of smoke, quickly dispersed in the rain. “Give me one of yours—No, three of them. Ones you know still work.”

“It won’t stop him! You saw us try—”

“Not for that. I can lead him away.” As Luce opened his mouth to object, Charlotte silenced him by pressing her finger against it. “Then, once you’re set up, I’ll lead him right into your trap. And we’ll both walk away.” She didn’t wait for him to grant permission, securing the offered pistols beneath her coat and breaking into a run.

The new rebel leader gestured to her remaining forces, having them fall into a loose formation around the two of them. “Does she really think she’s going to—”

“Yes.”

Charlotte lept from the landing, grabbing onto another building around the edge of the square with her gloves. Fingertips stuck to the wall, she broke into a kind of vertical four-legged run, scrabbling surprisingly fast up the building’s surface. Once atop it, she aimed her first pistol deliberately, waiting for just the right moment before firing, an earsplitting crack ringing out across the square.

Levian’s next wave was directed straight at the building she was standing on, though it wasn’t high enough to reach the roof, and the foundation held. For now.

As much as Luce wanted to see Charlotte navigate her impossible task, to make sure she wasn’t harmed doing the most dangerous thing he’d seen anyone attempt, he had to trust her to her task and do his own.

Moving briskly, he led his remaining guards after the rebel, trying to avoid any deep puddles that would overly slow their progress. Graves walked at Luce’s side, opposite where Charlotte would normally stand.

Luce heard the second shot ring through the air just as they arrived at the shed, distant enough from the city center and the coast that the water hadn’t pooled more than a few inches, ruining the crates on the bottom of the stack but leaving the rest intact.

The rebel, whose name turned out to be Madeline, followed Luce into the shed, which was small enough that none of her retinue would have fit with them. “What are you planning here? Ten thousand guns won’t help if we can’t pin him in place. Even then it might not be enough.”

“We’re not using this to shoot him,” Luce said, pulling a fuse from the innermost pocket of his coat. Much as he loathed the Tower culture’s reverence for explosives, Luce simply couldn’t ignore their utility after they’d helped him escape on Eloise’s ship. With the Red Knight afoot, especially.

The rebel’s eyes widened as Luce began fashioning a detonator from the contents of his pockets. Once the mechanism was ready, he clustered the crates of gunpowder tightly together, then made sure to shelter the entire length of the fuse from any dripping leaks in the shed roof. He had just finished securing things in place when he heard the crack of Charlotte’s final gunshot, a merciful assurance that she’d at least made it this far. Thirty seconds to light the fuse, so Charlotte can time it just right.

Though now she’s defenseless, and even in success, will be leading Levian right this way.

“Time to go.” Luce threw open the door of the shed, waved Madeline out, then lit the fuse with his tinderbox. Closing the door behind him, he emerged into the maelstrom, water already up past his shoes and only growing more intense.

A massive wave was swelling beyond the wall, barely a few feet behind the rapidly-approaching Charlotte as she dashed and jumped across the rooftops.

Luce and the combined group of guards and rebels that had made it this far were rapidly running from the city towards the woods beyond, but if that wave didn’t break soon, it still might crush them all.

Charlotte lept for the shed, jostling the metal roof when she landed on it, but the structure held. And, more importantly, it didn’t blow up yet. The wave followed her beyond the city wall, thinning out as it crested the structure before falling all at once on the shed with a massive crash, a single pair of malicious blue eyes visible for only a moment before it all came apart.

Luce barely had the time to duck behind a tree before he felt the shockwave blow through the trees, a massive geyser of water shooting into the air in all directions, entwined with dust and fire that thinned in the air as it descended back towards the earth.

Even in the rain, patches of the earth burned, the sod blasted from what was now naught but a crater. No traces of the shed remained, but Levian…

The fire was clinging to his serpentine form too, a red streak speeding by as he followed the shallow remainder of his wave back out to sea. Even with all of that force going off directly in his face, he still survived.

Luce felt his heart drop at the futility of it all, then felt it shatter as he failed to find any trace of Charlotte.

She was so close to the shed when it went off. She had to be, to properly lure Levian. And I just let her…

“What now?” Madeline asked, earning a frown from Graves.

“Now we wait a little longer, and hope that hurt him enough to get him to back off.” If it didn’t, then there is truly no saving Charenton, and that was all for nothing. Not following his own advice, Luce cautiously ventured out from the woods towards his newly-created crater, giving the patches of fire a wide berth.

That must be the powder that was waterlogged, meaning it didn’t go off all at once like the dry stuff. Then the real explosion had propelled it far away, leaving these burning scars on the ground. As an accidental byproduct of imperfect materials, its impact seemed minimal, but it suddenly seemed possible for a tailored mixture and configuration to produce this slow-burning fire on command. Best extinguish it quickly, lest anyone in Avalon take it as inspiration. Micheltaigne had been bad enough with more conventional ordinances.

Lucretia Marbury would jump at the chance to craft such a mixture in a Tower lab, Luce knew, and no doubt a hundred lesser scientists besides. Even under the sustained assault of the rain, a few patches were still ablaze, though the torrent had started to die down.

For all that he was still alive, for all that it had cost, it seemed at least that Levian had departed. Never to return, we can only hope. If it weren’t too late already.

Luce wandered in a daze towards the wall, feeling the blood stream down his face, the diminishing rain doing little for the pain. It kept him sharp, for all that he wanted only to feel numb.

I can’t... can’t think about what could have been. Have to keep moving forward. Have to—

Luce collapsed at the foot of the wall, feeling warm tears mingle with the blood. There’s so much I should have said, so much I should have done. It wasn’t worth it. I thought—

“Hey, it’s ok. It’s over now.” Sniffling, Luce looked up towards the source of the sound. “Would have been nice to kill the bastard, but I think it hurt him badly enough that he won’t be coming back any time soon. We can only hope.”

Absolutely drenched from head to toe, hair plastered totally flat against her head, Charlotte clung to the wall with the gloves, slowly descending towards Luce.

The moment she landed, Luce hugged her close without the barest hesitation. “You scared me.”

Charlotte smiled, exhaling through her nose. “You scared me. I didn’t see you clear of the blast radius until the smoke cleared. And your eye! If that physician made it out alive, we need him to look at it immediately.”

“Good idea.” The absolute last thing Luce needed right now was an infection in such close proximity to his brain. “But first, we need to plan our next move.”

I need to make sure something like this can never happen again, without falling prey to my country’s sickness. An idea began to take hold, almost absurd in its simplicity, yet something Luce felt confident that none of his countrymen would even consider.

And it might even work.