Page 147 of A Crown of Lies

“But they didn’t,” she insisted.

“This time. This time, they took Saya. Next time, it could be you. Or one of the children. Someone has to do something.”

Mercia jerked her hand away. “But why does it always have to beyou?”

He didn’t have an answer, so he pulled her to him and kissed the top of her head, holding her close. Aryn showered her face with kisses before holding her head up and placing one last lingering kiss to her lips. “Keep the children safe. And look after Niro while I’m gone. He needs someone strong to lean on.”

Mercia nodded tearfully.

Aryn released her reluctantly and turned to face Niro. “You won’t be able to reach me with a message once I begin.”

Niro looked down at him sadly. “Come back to me, little bird. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”

Aryn turned his head, planting a brief kiss on the inside of Niro’s wrist before he stepped back. There was so much he wanted to say to them both, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he bowed his head briefly and left the room.

Longago,whenhefirst suspected Omashii-Kuno might one day betray him, Aryn had hidden caches of clothes and weapons around D’thallanar. His mistress’s betrayal had come and gone, but the caches remained.

Birds chirped in the trees, hopping along the rooftiles above. Leaves crunched beneath Aryn’s feet as he walked against the crowd filtering toward the Runecleaver’s district square for Niro’s speech. He walked with his head low, but studied as many faces as he could, learning something about everyone he passed.

A couple with their young son shouldered by, all smiles, but they were having financial difficulties. Their shoes were worn, their clothes not as bright as they could be. Dark circles under their eyes and an absence of jewelry told the story of their troubles.

A heavyset elf hurried by, eyes darting back and forth as if he were searching for someone. He clutched a crumpled flyer in his hand, one of Redrock’s pamphlets. He wore the colors of the Ivygrass clan, but he was no one important. Just someone who thought he was.

Aryn shouldered between two elves who worked with horses, judging by their smell, and moved into a mostly empty alleyway. He was at the edge of Runecleaver territory. Squat, worn apartments lined either side of the street with ratty curtains for doors. Dark eyes peered through the cracks in the walls at him, looking without seeing. To the Runecleaver slaves, he was just another elf.

There was an abandoned hut toward the end of the street, the ceiling so rotten half of it had caved in. Markings had been carved into the doorframe long ago, warning passersby that the house was infected with plague. The permanent marks meant no one, not even the slaves, would live there. Nothing did but ghosts.

Aryn ducked through the darkened doorway of the plague house, the stink of decaying wood and rust cloying at his nose immediately. He pushed aside the tattered remains of a cloth divider. Wet leaves and rotten wood squelched beneath his feet. Spiders, beetles, and rats scurried to flee for the safety of their crevices. Aryn paid them no mind, going to push aside a fallen beam.

The floor was made of packed dirt, but there was a shovel nearby. He dragged it over, making a mark in the dirt.

And then Aryn dug.

And dug.

Six feet into the naked earth, he drove the shovel, carving out a rectangle roughly the size of a man. Sweat ran down into his eyes and his back. He paid it no mind, his focus narrowing to the task at hand.

The Shikami had Saya. They had Niro’s secrets, his wife, Ruith’s future. Aryn’s future. It all rested on this. He had to protect the alliance they had built, even if it meant the streets of D’thallanar would run red with blood, and they almost certainly would.

Hunting Shikami was no simple task, but it couldn’t end there. Killing the ones that took Saya would not be enough. He had thought if he cut the head off of the snake, the body would die. But he’d been wrong. Now, they all had to die, and he would have to cut off the hand that fed them as well.

The shovel hit wood, and he paused, tapping out the outline of a large wooden box. Aryn tossed the shovel aside and knelt, hauling the box out. He blew dirt from the top of it and quickly broke the lock that held it closed.

Inside lay the relics of another life, the simple black tunic, pants, and headwrap of a Shikami. Two dozen daggers. Six vials of volatile orange liquid. Twenty Shikami coins, an iron fan, and a Shikami sword.

Aryn stripped and put on the clothes from the box, tying his hair up and tucking it comfortably under the wrap. He affixed as many daggers as he could, tucked the fan into his belt, carefully placed the vials in a pouch, and grabbed all the coins.

For a moment, he sat there in the dirt, his hands resting upon his knees at the edge of the hole he’d dug. The sword rested across his thighs, waiting. Time was of the essence, but he needed a moment to contemplate the task he was about to undertake.

He’d had many years to plan out the eradication of the Shikami. It had seemed impossible at first, an insurmountable task. He hadn’t even wanted to do it. Yet when he turned his back on them, he knew it would one day be an inevitability. He just didn’t expect that day to actually ever come.

The people he was about to bury had once been his family. His sisters. He’d slept beside them, broken bread with them. They had healed his wounds, taught him the way of the world.

After this, he would well and truly become the last of his kind.I am nothing but a weapon. Nothing but Niro’s sword. The last sword he will ever need. I entered this shack as Aryn Valana, but I must leave as the Shrike.

A cool calm settled in the pit of his stomach and spread through his body, filling his veins with ice.

It was dark again when he left the shack through the roof. The next time he saw the sun, for better or worse, it would rise over a world without Shikami.

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