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Damon sighs. He reaches out and touches Lukas’s upper arm, Lukas jerks it away. Damon says, “I know, Lukas. I know what happened. But we are not fighting the empire. You are no longer a Mortingale Outlaw. We are trying to find out about Ur-Durik. We have a plan. ”
“We? No. Zai’s cock, Damon. You want to do that. You want to find out about your lover and all his scars. I want to fight the real enemy.”
Damon shakes his head and turns away. He walks back to his own room, closing the door.
Lukas closes his own door as a matter of principle. Since they arrived in Sanglora, he has argued with Damon many times and often long into the night while everyone else is sleeping. Damon has never been anything but infuriating.
As Lukas sits back on the bed, Elric tugs on his arm. He turns. The Lordling’s silk shirt is now completely open. He looks delicious.
“I know what you’re thinking, Bastard,” Elric says in a low tone. “You’re going to go anyway.”
Lukas replies, “You are sure about the door to the shrine?”
Elric nods. Despite Damon’s objections, Lukas has made his plan. It would be better to carry it out with Damon’s assent. But Lukas is sure he will never get it. Lukas had been willing to do what Damon wanted first, to meet with the Hare and have him look at Lyr’s strange marking. Lukas was willing to be patient. Up to a point. And he had always come here to kill Selim.
Elric has told him of a storeroom beneath Selim’s private shrine, which has a connecting door to the servants’ wine cellar. He cannot wait here any longer. Not when he is this close.
“I’ll come with you,” Elric says.
“No.”
“I can help.”
“No.”
“You can’t go alone.”
“I’m not going alone.”
Lukas slips out of the small servants gate of Sanglora in the darkest point of the night. A tall figure in a hooded cloak waits for him, leaning against a wall. Her arms folded over her chest.
It was safer, they agreed, not to leave the attic at the same time.
She nods, “You ready?” Her imperial sword glitters at her hip.
“Ready.” Lukas looks at Trysta. “Are you sure you wish to do this? You are defying Damon.”
Trysta sniffs. “There is little I would hold above my loyalty to your brother. But there is one thing. Pluma. We have an alliance. I signed your papers. The Plumians and the Mortingales are bound together. United in our mission to kill the tyrannical emperor.”
Lukas swallows. “Very well.”
“Death to Emperor Selim then, Lukas Darekul.”
At dawn, Selim always comes to his private shrine to pray alone. Unaccompanied except for his guard, who wait outside the door, while Selim makes his deepest and most sacred connection with his God.
As expected, Selim is kneeling before the altar in his shrine, shaved head bowed, bare feet sticking out from the back of his unadorned robes, as Lukas emerges from the tiny trap door in the corner. He leans down and looks at Trysta behind him on the ladder.
He nods. She nods back.
“Do it now and do it fast. I have your back,” Trysta says.
Lukas needs no more of a signal. He springs up out of the trap door and races the short distance across the shrine, crying out, “In the name of the Mortingale Outlaws and the people of Pluma: Death to Emperor Selim.”
Selim looks round. He looks right at Lukas. He doesn’t seem to know him.
Lukas raises the Blue Blade. A blade that had always promised him it would take Emperor Selim’s head.
Finally. Finally.
