Perfect Shadow: A Night Angel Novella

to hand over that ka’kari, Lord Daadrul.”
    “Why?” I ask. “You’ve already got the red.”
    He blinks.
    “And no man can bond two ka’kari at the same time,” I say.
    Yvor Vas talks. Buying time, maybe. Trying to process. “It’s for my sister. She’s dying. We have – had – the same disease. I bonded the red on accident and I got well. So I know it’ll save her. You have no idea what I’ve had to do to get this far. What it’s cost me. What I’ve done. Now hand it over. You might be impervious to blades, sir, but you’ll burn like any man.”
    “So it’s not for Gwinvere?” I say.
    A quick grimace. “What do I care about some whore?” It tells me two things. First, he knows Gwinvere. Second, she really didn’t send him after the ka’kari. To learn that fact is the whole reason I told him my story, most of it true. I figured Gwinvere had to be in the Society of the Second Sun or she never would have found me in the first place, but I didn’t know – and I needed to know – if she’d try to kill me for the ka’kari. Immortality is a tempting prize.
    “That’s really noble,” I say. “Murdering someone to save your sister, I mean.”
    “I just listened to your story. You’re the last man in the world who ought to preach to me.”
    ~He does have a point there.~
    Yvor stands and squeezes the red ka’kari in his hand. It covers his body with a slick red sheen. It burns away his clothing. He’ll have to work on that.
    “Fight me,” he says. “I don’t know how to get the ka’kari if you die while it’s still inside your body.”
    I stand, wobble. Kids these days. “You poisoned the ale,” I say. “You poisoned the ale ?”
    “Ironic, huh?”
    I fucking hate irony.
    He throws a fireball at me.
    I bring up the black ka’kari in a shield. With a whoosh, it devours the fireball.
    “That’s not the Globe of Edges,” he says.
    “And I’m not Eric Daadrul.” With a little sleight of hand, as if they’re coming out of my skin, I produce five little metallic balls: blue, green, silver, white, gold. They roll uncertainly around the tabletop.
    “You have all of the ka’kari?” he asks, terrified, but greedy too, not yet understanding.
    “Counterfeits,” I say. For just such occasions as this. I roll out my fake of the red ka’kari last.
    Fear in his eyes, despite the suit of fire on his skin. Confusion. The Society only knows about six ka’kari – and what he’s just seen doesn’t fit any of them.
    “You didn’t lure me here to take my ka’kari,” I tell him, sadly. “I lured you here to take yours.”
    A conflagration.
    I’m hurled through the back wall of my safe house into the marsh surrounding it. I knew fire might be a problem. That’s why I chose this place. No need to burn down the whole Warrens – not that they’re much worth saving. I land calf deep in marsh mud.
    The black ka’kari coats my body as Yvor comes out of the burning doorway.
    Fireballs burn smoking, hissing trenches in the marsh. I dodge, flip, disappear.
    He throws a fan of flames in a full circle.
    A splash as I land behind him.
    He whips around, throws jets of flame.
    They curl around my torso, burning the night on either side of me. What hits me is mostly absorbed. The ka’kari burns blue iridescence at every joint and curve of my body as it devours the fire.
    I ram two daggers deep into his chest.
    The torrent of fire trails off, trickles down to nothing. His ka’kari drops into the mud, leaving him naked, mostly held up by my daggers. He looks me in the eyes and says, “I should have…”
    He dies.
    I let him slide off the daggers, drop into the muck. I pick up the red ka’kari from where it’s hissing hot in the marsh mud.
    There are no words. There is no light.

    * * *
    Nigh unto seven hundred years ago, there was a great fire in Trayethell. A light so bright it burned men to pillars of ash many leagues away. That fire was Jorsin Alkestes: mad man, savior, king. The war was lost long before that last battle was fought. But fight he did, teeth bared, laughing, incandescent. A light so bright that the great men and women of an age flocked to him like moths to a flame, and burned.
    On the last day, Jorsin Alkestes, murderer and friend, took Curoch and Iures in hand at the same time. A lesser man would fear to touch one. But he, magnificent he, he bent the Blade of Power and the Staff of Law to his will.
    As krul, the twisted un-men, swarmed over the last barricades and