The King's Blood

knees.
    “What in—”
    Yardem stepped close, his wide hand on Marcus’s neck. Marcus rolled, pulling his sword free as he did it, but the Tralgu’s other hand clamped on his wrist and twisted. The hand around his throat lifted, and Marcus’s feet lost the floor. As the world began to go red and hazy, he brought a knee up hard into the soft spot just under Yardem’s ribs. He felt something give way and the grip on his throat eased enough that he could draw in a sip of air. There was desperation in the way Yardem pulled at Marcus’s sword arm, working it like a lever, but Marcus went with his momentum and broke the hold.
    He swung around, blade at the defense half a heartbeat too late. The hammer he’d bought to break the lock came down gracefully on the bridge of his nose. Something cracked wetly and the world dissolved in pain. He felt his sword wrested from his grip as if it were happening to someone else. He bulled forward blind, his shoulder finding something soft and pushing Yardem back to the ground, but the Tralgu slipped to his left and got an arm around his throat. Marcus kicked, trying to twist his head down low enough to put his teeth on Yardem’s arm, but he couldn’t. His mouth tasted of blood and he couldn’t breathe through his nose. His fingers dug at the thick, strangling flesh. Something smelled like smoke. His leg kicked out from under him, and the world narrowed to a greyish point far away before him and then blinked out.
    When Marcus came to, his legs and arms were bound behind him and a cloth was pushed into his mouth and tied there with a leather thong. A sack was pulled over his head, making the process of breathing even more difficult. He was in the handcart, and its wooden wheels were rumbling against the cobblestones. His nose throbbed, sending stabbing pain back into his skull, and he tried to twist into a position where he could rise to his knees or shout for the queensmen. Anything.
    “That the package?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
    “Is,” Yardem said. “You know where to take it?”
    “Do. But I’m not going to vouch for a damned thing if he gets loose along the way. I’m no soldier.”
    “I am a soldier,” Yardem said. “He won’t get loose.”
    Something lifted him around the middle and dropped him hard against boards. Chains rattled and a wide leather strap wrapped him like a girth. The sack slipped, and Marcus saw the bed of a cart, a wide iron ring set into the planks, and Yardem fixing the chain to it. Rage and willpower lifted him to his knees, and Yardem casually pressed him back down.
    “How long are you going to take back there?” the carter asked.
    “Almost done,” Yardem rumbled. He pulled at the chain, and Marcus slid down to the boards. His shoulder and hips screamed in pain. His labored breath started the blood flowing from his nostrils. Again. If he craned his neck, he could see the Tralgu’s stoic face looming over him. There was fresh blood on Yardem’s hands and a cut on his ear that Marcus didn’t remember making. Part of Marcus still expected to be released. That it was a joke or a lesson or the start of some overblown religious statement.
    The other part of him, that part that understood, stared up and thought, I will kill you for this .
    When Yardem spoke, his voice was calm. He might have been talking about the weather or the prospects of a new recruit. He might have been talking about anything.
    “The day I throw you in a ditch and take the company, sir? It’s today.”

Geder
     
    T
    hey went underground.
    His first thought had been to follow the paths and gantries that clung to the side of the Division, working their way down until they found a passageway that led into the ruins beneath the city. The pale woman, Cithrin, had seen the problem with that: following paths that people were already using meant running across the people who were already using them. Safety meant finding places that no one went, making passageways where there had been none before. The idea seemed second nature to her. It scared him to death, but he couldn’t deny the wisdom of her words. It took the better part of a day for the actors to find an abandoned corner of the city, but they did. An old warehouse that had fallen into disuse and partly collapsed in on itself, the walls sinking into the city below.
    The building had fallen because there was something beneath it to fall into. Geder, dressed now in rough grey clothes that stank of perfume and