The Labyrinth of the Dead by Sara M. Harvey

distance from
the water’s edge. He was alone and still smirking. Her trousers stuck to her
blood-slicked legs and reapers insistently clawed at her, hindering her
progress. The reek of their bubbling, melting flesh gagged her.
    The commander strolled to the stream
bank and raised his fist once more.
    The reserve came crashing through the
gates: reapers and herders with their dire hounds. The queen had sent an army.
    They hit her like a wave, knocking her
back into the pile of dead and dying reapers, impaling her on all sides with
their damned spikes. She cried out and lightning flashed. They did not stop.
    Portia called on her last caches of
power, letting white hot light surge through her. Where her renewed blood
touched them, they burned, some turning to cinders in the span of heartbeats.
Others fell back, but most kept reaching for her. Water sloshed over her head
and she sputtered. She was pulled into the air only to be dropped into the
stream once more. Rank steam rose from the hands that held her, dissolving
their flesh down to the bone, but never letting her go. A bubble of pain and
terror burst within her and for a blissful moment, the attackers were blown
back. Portia leaped for the grass, struggling free of the waterlogged bodies that
threatened to drag her down with them.
    On her knees, she coughed up water and
blood. The axe was gone and she felt the lack of it keenly. A dark smear of
blood slowly saturated her corset. The power within her was no longer a ranging fire, but a small candle, flickering.
    She saw the commander’s boots as he
came to stand before her.
    "Brava." His voice was dry and grating.
"We knew you’d be a challenge to catch. I’ll get a fine reward for this."
    Portia spat at him and he backhanded
her, driving his own barbed spikes deep into the flesh of her cheeks,
penetrating slightly into her skull. He dragged her to her feet and took hold
of the busk at the center of her corset. When he
yanked his hand loose from her, her teeth rattled and she saw stars.
    "Take her. The queen wishes an audience
with her." He released her into the clutches of five herders. They were gloved
and cloaked in leather; neither her blood nor the water could hurt them. Like
the handle of the axe, it felt disconcerting and familiar. "Do you like it?"
The commander petted the cloak of the herder beside him. "It is the finest
angel-flesh imaginable. And the only thing able to protect us from the likes of
you." He glared at the shimmering blood that clotted on her skin. "We usually
take an Aldias vintage; thus far they’ve been the only ones fool enough to come
here. But now we shall see if the rumors are true, if Gyony hide makes superior
impenetrable leather. As soon as the queen has had her way with you, then it
will be our turn. Our leathersmiths are honing their
blades as we speak." He pinched her arm and tugged on the skin. "Do not fret,
little dear, you can endure quite well here without your skin."
    Laughing, he turned on his heel and,
leaving his fallen reapers behind him, dragged Portia into the wretched streets
of Salus.
    The garden had been trampled and the
wall crushed. The reapers pulled Portia through the wreckage, whistling and
clicking among themselves. The road leading to the sanctuary was familiar,
bordered as it was by bleak gardens filled with skeletal trees that shrank back
from the captain and his sea of troops.
    A group of reapers
called out in some kind of code, and the captain replied gruffly, sending them
off into a side street. They flushed the ghost of a young man from the porch of
one of the creaking old houses and took off after him like a pack of hounds.
Portia pulled against her captors, but they held her tightly, whirring in
chastisement.
     The reapers ran down the young man, catching him as
he sought to scale a garden wall. Their barbs sank into him, and as he howled
in pain, they descended. Portia cried out and the ghost looked at her. His eyes
went wide with fearful awe as the