The ripple of blue light faded across the quartz, but the silence it left behind was heavier than the collapsed masonry of the taproom above.
Sir Cael Ardent did not retreat toward the arched doorway. Instead, the strength seemed to spill out of him all at once, as if Signe’s words had unstrung the sinews of his knees. He sank sideways against the basalt plinth, his mail-clad shoulder hitting the dark stone with a dull clatter of iron links. He sat on the rime-frosted flagstones with his legs splayed, his back pressed against the housing of the dying machine, his fingers limp upon his thighs.
“Twelve times,” Cael whispered into the cold dark. His voice lacked even the ragged anger of his earlier outbursts; it was the dry, flat murmur of a man reading a list of debts he could never hope to pay. “Twelve times I thought I was winning.”
Jon Hale stepped closer, his left hand remaining tucked into the front of his woolen coat to balance the throbbing burden of his bandaged arm. “You weren’t winning, Cael. You were delaying.”
“No,” the knight said, slowly shaking his head. He looked down at his bloodstained leather gauntlets, turning his hands over to stare at the frayed stitching along the thumbs. “In the fourth life, we broke their center at the marsh dike. We chased their skirmishers three miles down the lower road. I stood on the bridge with my sword raised, the sun breaking through the fog, and…
