Free The Archon's Assassin by D. P. Prior

match his words, and gave his spectacles a waggle instead.
    He had a point there. About digging up the secrets of the past. Nameless only wished it weren’t so easy. Perhaps then Lucius would still be alive. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have learned about the black axe and gone after it. That would’ve saved a whole heap of trouble. He gave the great helm a tap to reassure himself it was still there, and wasn’t just some lingering nightmare. Would’ve saved a lot of lives, too. Countless lives.
    “Look,” Shadrak said. There was a softening of his tone. “The whole shogging militia is after us.” He shot a quick look at Nameless. “Well, me. Long story short: Mal Vatès is dead.”
    Magwitch’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Was it a bullet?”
    “Nothing so fancy. And no, it wasn’t my idea. Just happened, is all.”
    Magwitch gave an exaggerated nod and tilted his head to one side. If he had an opinion, he wasn’t sharing it. “And psychers are involved, you say?”
    “Just the one, so far,” Shadrak said. “Tracked me to Queenie’s. They anything to do with you?”
    Magwitch guffawed. “Psychers are way below my ambulation. Leftovers from Gandaw’s experiments.”
    “But the search light was you, wasn’t it?”
    “I don’t decry it,” Magwitch said. “A wizard has to make a living somehow. But psychers! The mere suggestive is insulating.”
    “And you can’t ward us from them, except in here?” Shadrak said. “Would’ve thought that was nothing for a wizard of your ability.”
    “Psychers may be the progeny of inferior craft, but they are virtiginously impecunious to magical assailment.”
    “That a fact, laddie?” Nameless said. “But can you still split them down the middle with an axe?”
    “Dear, dear, dear,” Magwitch said. He rubbed his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “What a predicate. Or should that be pedicure? They won’t stop, you know, and even if you could stay here, which you can’t, you’d never be able to poke your nose out the front door.” A dark frown dropped over his face. “If I still had a front door. The way I see it, you have two optimates.”
    There was a long pause, as if he expected somebody to correct him.
    Finally, Shadrak said, “Well?”
    “Kill every last psycher in the city, assumptioning you can find them, that is. No, maybe it would be easier to kill every last senator, or perhaps every soldier.”
    “Why not the whole shogging city?” Nameless said. He instantly regretted saying it. Isn’t that what he’d tried back at Arx Gravis?
    “And the second option?” Shadrak said.
    “Leave and never come back. If it’s still posturable.”
    “Well, that’s kind of why we came here,” Shadrak said. “First thing the Senate would’ve done is lock down the city. Every shogger guarding the gates will be looking for me; and frankly, I ain’t had time to get used to being Shadrak the Seen, Sketched, and Wanted yet. I’m guessing you know another way out.”
    Magwitch held up a finger, and his eyes widened above his glasses. “Come with me, and prepare to be impregnated.” He pulled a white paper bag from his trouser pocket. “Chocolate truffle?”
    Nameless reached for one, but then remembered the helm. His stomach growled.
    “No?” Magwitch said. “All the more for me, then. Come on. To the roof.”
    They followed him up an extending ladder through a trap in the ceiling. The tramp of feet, the bark of orders carried on the blustering wind, and in the streets below, for as far as Nameless could see, speartips glinted, and sunlight glanced off of bronze helms and shields.
    “That’s a lot of soldiers, laddie,” he said to Shadrak.
    It looked like the entire city was teeming with them, and there wasn’t too much sign of anyone else. A few traders hung about in the squares, but most people must’ve been told to stay indoors. Here and there, militiamen herded stragglers toward heavily guarded buildings. You could say a lot of