Adrian threw his head to the left.It wasn't a plan. His neck just did it, the way a hand jerks off a hot pan.Steel hit stone. The crack sounded like a dropped plate, and chips of floor sprayed across his cheek. Something warm ran down the side of his face and dripped off his ear.Seraphina looked at the blade. Then at him."You moved.""Yeah." His voice shook. "Sorry."Her red eyes narrowed a fraction. Nobody had ever apologized to her for that before. He could see her filing it away."Don't be sorry." She wrenched the sword out of the floor. A thin trail of grey dust followed it up. "Be still."She lifted it again.His legs still weren't working. His arms were barely better. The wet shirt had gone cold against his stomach, and every breath pulled at the hole under his ribs like a thread caught on a nail. He had one more dodge in him, maybe, and she knew it. He could see it in how she stood. No hurry at all. A cat with a mouse that had run out of corners.*Think.*He was good at one

"Say that again."A thin line of heat ran down Adrian's throat. Blood, probably. The point of the sword hadn't moved, and neither had the red eyes above it."You stayed two hours," he said. His voice came out in pieces. "Next to a dead man. With the door open.""I was waiting for my money.""No, you weren't. You killed three guys in about nine seconds. Someone like that doesn't sit around for half a payment. She takes it and walks, or she walks without it."Seraphina didn't blink.**[07:52]**"You couldn't leave," Adrian said.Nothing. The candle flame stood up straight now, no draft left to bend it.Then she moved her left hand. Slowly. She hooked two fingers under the edge of her glove and peeled it back.A black band circled her wrist. It wasn't a tattoo. It looked like ink poured onto the skin and left to crawl. Tiny letters, thousands of them, shifting and rearranging under the surface like ants in a nest."Soul-ink," she said. "Client's contract. Signed it with this hand, becaus

"Probably," Adrian said."Probably?""I think I owe them money."Seraphina gave him a look that could have stripped paint. Then she crossed to the door, put her back against the frame, and listened to the house shaking.Adrian rolled onto his stomach. The room swung. His ribs lit up like a struck match, and for a few long seconds he just lay with his cheek on the cold stone, breathing through his teeth.*Eleven HP. Don't die of standing up.*He got his hands under him. Then one knee. Then the other. The shirt peeled away from his skin with a wet sound he decided not to think about.The window was six steps away. It took him nearly a minute.He lifted the iron bar. It weighed about as much as a car. He slid the shutter open a finger's width and put his eye to the gap.Below, the courtyard was full of fire.Torches. A dozen, maybe more, jammed into iron brackets or held up in fists. Light jumped off wet cobblestones. The front gate hung off one hinge like a broken jaw, and a battering r

The footsteps stopped outside the study door.Seraphina stood flat against the wall beside the frame, one hand loose at her side. She had pushed the sword into its sheath. Adrian could see the muscles in her forearm bunched up like cords.The door swung inward.A man leaned through with a torch in his fist. Level twelve, said the little blue box. Broad nose, a grey coat with brass buttons, a short sword he hadn't bothered to draw."Lord Vale?" he called, bored. "Anybody home?"He took one step into the room.Seraphina's arm snapped around his neck from behind. The torch hit the floor. Her other hand cupped his jaw and gave it a sharp little twist, the kind you'd use on a stubborn jar lid, and he went limp without a sound.She lowered him down like a sack of flour."Alive," she said, a little sourly. "As ordered.""Thank you.""Don't thank me. It's more work."Adrian grabbed the torch before it set the rug on fire, then crouched and went through the man's belt pouch. A brass whistle. A

"Who wears that mark?" Adrian asked again."Later.""Seraphina.""I said later." She yanked the collar of her coat straight and picked up her sword. "I've got a hand to save first. You said you'd find a way out. Find it."He wanted to push. Her knuckles were white on the hilt, though, and a muscle jumped in her cheek, and the black band on her wrist had begun to crawl in small tight circles like a dog before a storm.**[01:41:09 until collection.]**Adrian took the contract out of his shirt and unfolded it on the quilt.He didn't need to look. He shut his eyes and let the pages roll up behind them, clause by clause, and this time he wasn't reading for cracks. He was reading for the thing every contract has and every contract hides.*Guild law requires it,* he thought. *Every contract. It has to be in there somewhere.*He found it at the bottom of the second page, in letters half the size of the rest."Clause twenty-seven," he said."Boilerplate.""Read it to me.""I know it." She spok