Page 30 of Invocation

Chapter 7

They emerged onto the dark street. When Aruna drew his sword and broke into a run, still camouflaged, Novikke hurried to keep up, still gripping his hand.

He stopped short as they rounded the corner. Two city guards waited at the end of the street, swords drawn. They were mere dark shapes in the low light, but she could make out that they were turned the other way.

Aruna turned sharply and guided them into an alley. She felt the spell over her flicker as his concentration wavered, leaving her plainly visible for an instant before it slid back into place.

They peered around the corner, watching the street that Avan’s front door was on. A few guards stood in front of her house. Novikke heard Avan’s protest as they pushed inside to search the house.

Then she saw the trio of figures standing farther back, watching everything. It was the men who’d stopped them before, a few tunnels back. They must have recognized Aruna and followed them.

She heard Aruna’s sharp exhalation—as loud an exclamation of frustration as he was willing to give. He silently ushered her back down the alley and around another corner.

“Hey! Stop!” someone shouted, and they broke into a run. They rounded another corner, only to run into another pair of guards on the next street. Two more appeared behind them, blocking their exit. The other people on the street gasped and ran out of the way, then hovered nearby to watch.

Aruna dropped Novikke’s hand, letting the spell fall away. He glanced at her as he raised his sword. Her heart was in her throat. If they arrested him, she was dead.

“Just stay back,” he said to her.

She tucked her knife against her wrist and backed against the wall.

“Put down the sword,” one of the guards said. All of them closed in. None of them were looking at Novikke.

Aruna darted forward, slashing the sword up toward one of the guards. They’d been expecting him to surrender, and didn’t react quickly enough. The guard moved to block, but Aruna’s sword speared past it, stabbing through the man’s shoulder.

As Aruna moved to block a blow from the other guard in front of him, the two behind him stepped in to strike him from behind. Novikke leapt forward and drove her knife into the closest one’s back just before her sword could come down on Aruna.

Novikke’s target shrieked. The kitchen knife stuck in her shoulder. The woman spun and her blade arced toward Novikke, who shielded her face with her arms. Pain sliced across her forearm and her chest, and she fell against the wall. Her sleeve and her collar grew wet. She braced herself against the wall, preparing for another blow, but the guard had turned back to Aruna.

He’d killed the first two, but now the third and fourth were on either side of him. There was a flurry of twisting movement that was difficult to follow in the dark. She heard Aruna shout in pain, and then a figure fell, and then another.

Aruna dropped to his knees, gasping. He’d been hit. He raised the sword and stabbed it into the chest of the only guard that was still trying to get up—healing himself with the sword’s enchantment. The fallen guard gasped, then stilled.

It was brutal. The ugly, metallic smell of blood permeated the air. It was even worse than it had been in the forest. Bloodshed here, in the middle of the city, felt all the more grotesquely out of place.

Novikke’s vision was spotting, and she grew light-headed. She looked down, and blood was coating her clothes. She clamped a hand over the cut on her arm. There wasn’t much she could do about the one on her chest.

Everything was quiet again except for the murmurs of onlookers. Aruna’s eyes went to her arms.

He ran to her, and she felt the tingle of a spell being cast over her as both their bodies faded to shadow. “I told you to stay back,” he whispered, his voice harsh with panic.

Novikke couldn’t think straight. Her mind was blank with fear. There was so much blood. Too much. “I…”

He put an arm around her. “Come on.”

Several of the onlookers, finally pulled out of their shocked silence, shouted for them to stop. Novikke and Aruna kept walking. Several people followed at a safe distance, not wanting to fight the people who’d just killed four armed guards. Aruna picked up his pace, pulling Novikke with him.

A pulse of black encroached on her vision. Blood dripped over her hand.

“Aruna—” she began, her voice shaking.

“Don’t,” Aruna said sharply.

Several people were keeping close on their tail, despite the shadow spell. Around the next corner Aruna ducked into an alley and then pulled her behind a large barrel. They stayed perfectly still as their pursuers ran past. No one spotted them.

Aruna cautiously emerged from the hiding place and looked down one way and then the other, deciding where to go next. There was nowhere to hide. There were people watching everywhere. Novikke could hear shouting on the streets all around them.

Novikke’s head was spinning. “Aruna, I—”

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