A dozen masked assailants, cloaked in deep indigo, dropped through the ruined chromaglass ceiling, daggers glinting. They moved with the silent, practiced grace of professional killers, converging on Morovan’s convulsing form.
Davorin didn’t hesitate. He was a blur of tailored midnight fabric and coiled muscle, moving before the first assassin’s boot touched the polished floor. Not towards me, not towards escape, but *towards* Morovan. His hand snatched a discarded serving platter, a heavy disc of hammered aurum, using it to deflect a descending blade meant for Morovan’s exposed neck. The clang rang out, a discordant bell in the sudden maelstrom.
“*Stay down!*” he snarled, a low, dangerous rumble that cut through the developing screams of the socialites. He didn’t look at me, his focus entirely on the onslaught. His movements were brutal, economical. A high kick snapped an assailant’s knee, a swift elbow strike crushed another’s windpipe. He was fighting like a man possessed, a whirlwind of calculated violence, all to keep my idiotic ex-husband alive. The irony was a bitter taste.
I, meanwhile, had no intention of engaging in such uncouth physical exertion. Scrambling under the nearest banquette table, a massive slab of polished obsidian laden with untouched confectioneries, I pulled out my datapad. Vex, startlingly awake, materialized from the shadows beneath my arm, purring a low, guttural vibration as he settled onto my lap, a small, furry, shadow-eating anchor amidst the chaos. He sniffed at a fallen silver spoon, then, apparently finding it uninteresting, began to groom a phantom whisker.
From my vantage point, the underside of the table was surprisingly well-equipped. A small maintenance hatch, no doubt for the table’s integrated chilling unit, was visible. My fingers flew across the datapad’s display, tracing glyphs of complex code. Every major structure in Pelagosa, especially high-value targets like this vaulted gallery, was networked with pressurized conduits, each valve a potential weapon.
Above, the fight escalated. Davorin, using his own body as a shield, was parrying, deflecting, and striking, a human bulwark against the tide of indigo cloaks. He was impossibly fast, impossibly strong, but the sheer numbers were overwhelming. Gunfire erupted, sharp cracks that echoed off the high ceiling, pulverizing ornate crystal decanters and showering the tiles in crystalline shrapnel. A bullet whizzed past my ear, embedding itself in the table’s leg with a dull thud. Vex merely twitched an ear.
“Our ambushers are overreaching,” Davorin bit out, his voice strained as he slammed an attacker’s head into the floor. “They’ll pay for this.” His gaze flickered towards Morovan’s crumpled form, then, briefly, to me. A silent command, a primal warning. *Stay put. Stay safe.*
My datapad chimed. *Connection established. Valve Override: Secure.*
I grinned, a feral flash in the dim light under the table. “Oh, they’ll pay alright,” I murmured, tapping a final command. “But not how they expect.”
With a series of deafening roars, four massive vapor valves hidden within the hall's structural pillars simultaneously detonated. Not explosive enough to collapse the building, but powerful enough to vent superheated steam and shrapnel outward. A searing blast of vapor, laced with pulverized marble and brass filings, erupted from the pillars, slamming through the ranks of the masked attackers. Shrieks of pain replaced the metallic clangs and gunshots. Bodies were flung backward, slamming into walls, their indigo cloaks steaming and singed. The air filled with the acrid stench of sulfurous residue and singed flesh.
“Clever,” Davorin grunted, seizing the momentary disarray. He spun, his hand darting into Morovan’s inner coat pocket with practiced ease. His fingers closed around something flat and bound in dark calfskin, the very volume he needed to clear his family name. He almost had it. Almost.
Lyssina, who had been cowering behind a colossal floral arrangement, chose that precise moment to resurface. Her gaze locked onto the leather-bound book in Davorin’s grasp. With a yelp, she launched herself forward, a surprising burst of speed, her manicured fingers clawing at Davorin’s arm. “Give that to me! That’s *mine*!” she shrieked, her noble pretense completely shattered. She clawed at the binding, nails tearing against the calfskin in wild desperation. It was a tug-of-war, a petty squabble over stolen goods, played out amidst steaming bodies and still-smoking pillars.
Davorin swore, abandoning his hold on the book as another hooded fighter, miraculously untouched by the blast, lunged at him. The black volume flew, tumbling end over end across the floor and landing with a soft thud near my hidden position under the table.
My eyes met Vex’s. He looked up at me, a silent question in his obsidian eyes. I gave a subtle nod. The shadow-mink sprang from my lap, a ripple of darkness across the polished floor. Before Lyssina could register its presence, Vex had reached the notebook. His jaws, impossibly wide, opened, and with a single, elegant gulp, the encrypted leather book vanished. He was back in my lap a heartbeat later, purring contentedly, a slight bulge in his tiny belly the only evidence of its consumption.
“My records!” Lyssina wailed, finally seeing. “That… that beast ate it!”
“Consider it shredded,” I mumbled from beneath the table, not bothering to address her directly. My eyes, however, fixed on Davorin. He met my gaze, a flicker of something unreadable in his own. Relief? Frustration? A begrudging admiration? It was gone before I could decipher it.
But the chaos wasn’t over. A new, far more authoritative sound reverberated through the grand chamber. A series of metallic *THUDS* that shook the very foundation, followed by a resonant, amplified voice that seemed to vibrate through the air itself.
“This facility is now under martial quarantine!”
The double-height doors, reinforced chromasteel, buckled inward with a groan of tortured metal, torn from their hinges. Standing silhouetted against the night sky, framed by the shattered entrance, was a figure in the stark, silver-trimmed robes of the Pelagosan High Inquisitor. Behind him, a phalanx of mechanized guards, their pneumatic exoskeletons whirring with lethal precision, marched into the room. Their weapon systems, massive cannon-lenses, swiveled slowly, locking onto every moving target.
“By order of the Syndicate Conclave,” the Inquisitor’s voice boomed, chillingly calm amidst the wreckage, “no one leaves the Spire of the Drowned until this attempted assassination is resolved. All exits are sealed. The investigation begins now.”
I exchanged a look with Davorin. We were trapped. Trapped with a comatose Morovan, a hysterical Lyssina, and a legion of heavily armed Enforcers. This was going to be an exceptionally long night. My meticulous plan for Morovan’s public ruin suddenly had a very unexpected, very claustrophobic, tangent. And Morovan, still twitching faintly on the floor, was a breathing liability I couldn’t afford to lose. The realization settled in my gut: I was now his reluctant, and utterly annoyed, guardian angel.