“Want me to tell them to move?” Shade asked.
“They look rather determined to me,” Lord Black said. “But I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
“Okay, here we go.” Shade turned to the wizards. “We need to get inside the tower. Can I persuade you to stand aside?”
The oldest of the bunch, a Shadow Clan wizard by the black stripe in his robe, hobbled forward. The guy had to be seventy if he was a day. He leaned on a crooked staff carved with markings Shade didn’t recognize.
“The tower is taboo. None may enter lest a great catastrophe befall the world.”
Shade glanced at the boss. No way was he going to like that answer. “Unless you’re willing to die to keep us out, you need to go away. I’m a reasonable guy, but my boss, not so much.”
“Keeping the tower secure has been the duty of the four clans since the fall of the enemy. If we must die here to preserve the future, we will.”
“Well?” Lord Black asked.
“They’re not moving, Boss. It’s the usual mumbo jumbo about bad things happening if we go in. Sounds like the clans have been guarding this tower since the empire fell.”
“Pity for them. Get behind me.”
Shade knew that tone. This was no time for screwing around. He shifted back and to his right, the gathering power making his hair stand on end.
He drew his daggers, just in case anyone was dumb enough to try and jump the boss from behind. The first blast shook the ground. Pained shouts from the old men then silence indicated the battle, if you could call it that, was over.
Lord Black took a step and Shade moved back to his side. There wasn’t much left of the tower’s self-appointed guardians, just charred, barely recognizable jumbles of bone. When the boss got serious, he really got serious.
They marched up to the rune pad and Lord Black punched in the combination. The door swung open and they stepped inside.
“This is more like it,” Lord Black said.
The bottom floor was filled with book-laden shelves. The air was stale and musty. Shade choked off a sneeze by sheer force of will. Spoiling the boss’s moment of triumph wouldn’t be a good move.
Lord Black went to the nearest shelf and ran a finger down the spine of a random book. “Amazing,” he whispered.
“What’d you find, Boss?
“A Kingdom of Terra book. This one tome is worth ten thousand gold scales easily. Not that I’d ever part with such a valuable item. Look around, Shade. If all of these books are from the same era, this is a find of monumental worth even leaving aside activating the tower. Once we’ve brought this broken, miserable continent to heel, I’ll be returning for a long look around.”
Shade had seldom heard Lord Black so happy. It was almost scarier than when he was mad. “So what now?”
“Now I activate the tower and we return home.” Lord Black strode to the center of the tower. “Kranic’s been getting a little full of himself. I don’t want to be gone too long lest he grow overly ambitious.”
“Want me to have a talk with him?” Shade asked.
Lord Black looked back over his shoulder and smiled. “Generous of you, Shade, but I fear Kranic’s too much for even your considerable skills.”
As Lord Black continued on his way through the stacks to the tower’s center, Shade let out a little sigh. He hadn’t really expected the boss to take him up on his offer. Kranic was one of the few people in this world that really scared the hell out of Shade.
Of course, that was why he had to offer. His ego wouldn’t have it any other way.
Chapter 14
Yaz paced in the filthy alley, brackish water splashing as he stomped through puddles left by the previous night’s rain. His mind raced but he had no useful thoughts. Blind panic chased rage in an endless loop. They’d lost Brigid. It was the only coherent idea he could pick out.
“She’s not dead.” Silas leaned against one of the buildings, his arms crossed.
It was true that when the bounty hunters grabbed her, Brigid was still alive, but there was no way for them to know if that was still true.
“How do you know?” Yaz asked.
“You don’t kill the bait before you catch the wolf. You’re the one the Scriveners Guild really wants. You killed their man and interfered in their business. These aren’t stupid people. They have to know you’ll come to rescue Brigid. That’s their chance to get you both.”
“How will we find the hunters?” Yaz asked. His mind had calmed a fraction as he realized the truth of what Silas said.
“We won’t. The bounty hunters don’t care about guild politics. They just want to get paid. They’ll take Brigid straight to the guild’s headquarters, collect their scale, and come looking for us.”
Yaz shook his head. “You can’t know that.”
“Not one hundred percent, no. But I’ve dealt with enough bounty hunters over the years to have a fair idea how they think. If I’m wrong, we’ll have a message waiting for us at the inn with demands for your surrender in exchange for Brigid’s life. That’s the only place they can be sure to contact us. I’ll bet my gold to your copper that doesn’t happen. There’s one thing I am certain about.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“If you don’t get your head on straight, Brigid doesn’t have a chance.”
Silas was right about that. Try as he might, Yaz couldn’t focus like he needed to. He had to get his emotions under control.
“Keep watch for a few minutes,” Yaz said.
Yaz closed his eyes and entered his mental library. Much like his thoughts, the room was in chaos. Panic ran around with its arms flailing. Love sprawled on a sofa sobbing. Fear crouched in a corner and trembled. Smaller emotions wandered around in a daze, not sure what to do.
One by one, Yaz grabbed them by the scruff of the neck and dragged them to the closet. Love fought the hardest, but he finally slammed the door and imagined a bar holding it shut. Until Brigid was safe, he only needed one emotion.
He found it in the darkest part of his mind trying to smash down the door that sometimes was there and sometimes wasn’t. Wrath towered over Yaz, huge, black, and shapeless, an avatar of death. That’s what Yaz would become, death to anyone that tried to keep him from Brigid.
They were all going to die.
Something leaked out of the crack at the bottom of the door and joined with Wrath’s shifting form. Yaz had no time to worry about that. He looked up at the giant. “I need your help.”
“You won’t like it.” Wrath’s voice was as deep and cold as a frozen lake.
“I have to save her.” Yaz opened his arms wide. “Nothing else matters.”
Wrath embraced him and filled Yaz to the brim with cold certainty. A mass of black ice covered the door holding back his other emotions. With the cold came a plan.
Not a nice plan. Not the sort of plan Brigid would approve of. But a plan that might see her set free and both of them clear of the bounties on their heads.
Yaz opened his eyes and stared at Silas. “I’m ready.”
The wizard took a step back and ran into the wall. “Are you okay?”
“I’m considerably better than the Scriveners guild master is going to be when I see him. My mind is clear. I know what I need to do.”
“Great, but you sound… different.”
Yaz shrugged. How he sounded didn’t matter. “Can you use that same spell to confirm Brigid is in the guild house?”
“Sure, that’s easy enough. If she is, what then?”
“Then we convince the master to let her go.”
“I doubt it will be that easy.”
“Do not underestimate my powers of persuasion. Come on.”
Silas and Yaz stood in another dark alley two blocks from the Scriveners guild house. This one was cleaner than the one near the slave pens, though not by much. The guild house was in the merchant district which catered to a richer clientele.
Yaz hadn’t said a word the entire half-mile walk and it left Silas unnerved. The
look in his young friend’s eyes when he came out of that meditative state earlier had sent a chill down Silas’s spine. It made his reaction when he killed the man that betrayed his village seem mild in comparison. There wasn’t a hint of pity in those eyes. For the guild master’s sake, Silas hoped he was a reasonable man. If he didn’t let Brigid go, Silas shuddered to think what Yaz might do.
“Is she in there?” Yaz asked.
“Give me a minute.”
Silas took a breath, let it out slowly, and murmured the words to his spell. When he closed his eyes, he could still see clearly. His gaze flew up and over the buildings separating them from the guild. A pair of guards stood by the front door, but of course his magical eyes were invisible to them.
He flew into a richly appointed waiting room and looked around. Two merchants in silk robes waited for someone, each clutching a sheaf of paper. There was nothing useful here.
Beyond the waiting room a set of stairs went to the second floor. It was doubtful they’d keep a prisoner up there, but a quick look couldn’t hurt. He flew up and down the hall but found nothing but offices. The last one he checked held a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair dressed in the finest red silk robe Silas had ever seen. He had to be the guild master.
When he had the man’s face memorized, Silas flew on. Back downstairs he found another set of steps, this one leading to the basement. His hopes were much higher as he flew down. The first room he reached held shelf after shelf of ledgers. The second room had more supplies and a locked iron chest, most likely the guild treasury.
The last room was behind a locked door. Inside he found Brigid chained to a floor joist. Someone had put a nasty bruise on her right cheek, but otherwise she looked okay. Her presence confirmed, Silas ended the spell and found himself in the alley beside Yaz who hadn’t moved an inch.
“She’s there. Alive if a little worse for wear.”
“How much worse?” Yaz asked.
“Bumps and bruises, nothing serious. I got a look at the guild master. He’s about what you’d expect, rich and arrogant.”
Yaz nodded once.
“What now?”
“Now we find somewhere we can see the guild house and wait.”
And so they did. They sat in a little coffee house across the street from the guild. Hour after hour Yaz stared at the front door. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, seldom blinked. His whole being was focused on that door. People came and went until a little before dark when the guild master himself emerged.
“That’s him,” Silas said.
Yaz stood and headed for the exit. Silas threw a handful of silver scales on the table and hastened to follow.
“We can’t just snatch him off the street,” Silas said.
“I’m not planning to snatch him off the street,” Yaz said without looking back. He was keeping a safe distance behind the guild master at least.
“What are we going to do then?”
“Find out where he lives. Hopefully he has a large, loving family that he thinks the world of.”
Silas stopped asking questions. The truth was he didn’t really want to know any more.
Yaz had forced himself to sleep only with the greatest of efforts and the knowledge that he needed to be at his best tomorrow. He and Silas had tracked the guild master to a stunning house in the wealthy district. Made of brick and standing three stories tall, the house probably cost more than the average man made in ten lifetimes. Its value didn’t interest Yaz. What did interest him was the blond girl of perhaps fifteen years who greeted the man upon his arrival and the older but still-attractive woman behind her. The moment he saw those two hug the guild master, Yaz knew his plan would work.
Somewhere inside there was a tiny part of him that knew what he planned to do tomorrow was a horrible thing. Maybe even evil. But the bulk of him, the part that fully embraced his wrath, didn’t care if he had to murder the entire city to get Brigid back. He loved her and she was all he had left. If this failed, Yaz didn’t know what he’d do. He feared something inside him might break. And if it did…
He shook his head and rolled out of bed. No way would he fail to free Brigid. Yaz refused to even consider the possibility. Light was pouring in through the room’s sole window. He looked over at her empty bed where Brigid had slept the night before and the rage blazed brighter.
First food then they’d head across town to the guild master’s house. Yaz doubted the man got going at first light, but hopefully he’d be gone by the time they arrived. He grabbed the pack of supplies he’d put together last night and went to wake Silas.
An hour later he and the wizard were once again positioned across from the house. They’d traded their disguises for normal clothes.
Foot traffic was light but steady, mainly servants judging by their clothes. A few gave them looks, but no one could meet Yaz’s gaze for more than a second.
“What are you going to do?” Silas asked for the tenth time.
“Take hostages. It’ll be a simple trade. His family for Brigid.”
“What if he refuses?” Silas asked.
“Then they die and he dies and everyone between me and Brigid dies until she’s free or I’m dead.”
Silas’s gulp was audible, but he stopped asking questions which was all that interested Yaz. When the streets finally emptied for as far as he could see in either direction, Yaz dashed across the street and up the short flight of steps to the guild master’s porch. He rapped on the door with his staff.
Half a minute later the door opened a fraction and a stern man’s face appeared in the gap. “Can I—”
Yaz smashed him in the face with his staff and shoved the door open, sending the man sprawling into the foyer. He was dressed in a servant’s black uniform and his nose bled and bent off to one side.
“What do you think—”
Yaz kicked him in the side of the head and he fell silent, dead or unconscious, Yaz didn’t care. Silas slammed the door behind them.
“Jens?” a woman’s voice called from deeper in the house. “Who was it?”
The wife stepped into the foyer. She wore a simple red dressing gown and slippers. She looked from Yaz to Jens and back again. “Who are you?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Your husband has something precious to me,” Yaz said. “Now I have something precious to him. Where’s your daughter?”
Her mouth worked but no sound came out.
Yaz crossed the room and stopped so their noses almost touched. “I’m going to make this simple for you. Do what I say and you might live through this day, assuming your husband loves you. Make my life difficult and I promise you’ll regret the day you were born. Understand?”
She nodded, her face as white as a sheet.
“Excellent. Your daughter?”
“Upstairs with her tutor.”
“Servants?”
“Jens, two maids, and the cook.”
“Good.” That was fewer servants than Yaz feared. “You’re doing very well. I assume you have a formal dining room.”
“Of course, back the way I came.”
“Lead the way. Silas, if you’d watch the door so no one gets out, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure, no sweat.” Silas sounded only a fraction less nervous than the wife.
Yaz followed her into a huge dining room with a long maple table with seats for twenty people and a crystal chandelier overhead. A large fireplace and mantle with crystal lamps on either end that matched the chandelier dominated the far wall. On the left-hand wall was a doorway beyond which came the sound of humming. That had to be the cook.
“Call her,” Yaz said, nodding toward the doorway.
“Clara’s a good girl,” the wife said. “Please don’t hurt her.”
“If she behaves, she’ll be fine. If not…” Yaz shrugged. The servants were irrelevant to him save for how they impacted his plans.
“Clara. Come here a moment,” the wife said.
“Yes, Mrs. Saint.”
&nbs
p; The moment he heard footsteps, Yaz shifted to stand beside the doorway. The instant a stout woman in black and white appeared, he rested the butt of his staff on the back of her neck.
“Sit.” Yaz used pressure from the staff to guide her into an empty chair.
“What’s going on?” Clara asked.
“Shut up and sit still,” Yaz said. “Or I’ll smash your head in.”
Clara swallowed audibly but made no other sound.
“Where are the other servants?” Yaz asked.
“Cleaning somewhere,” Mrs. Saint said. “I don’t know exactly.”
“Call them, your daughter and the tutor as well.”
“Please.” Mrs. Saint gave him a pleading look. “Whatever your problem with my husband, surely it can be worked out some other way.”
Yaz pointed the tip of his staff at her. “It can’t. I only need you and your daughter alive. If I have to give you an order twice again, I’ll crack your cook’s skull open like an egg. Do we understand each other?”
Mrs. Saint nodded.
“Splendid. Now call them.”
“Nicole, Jaques, Sara, Nell! Could you all come to the dining room for a minute? There’s something we need to discuss.”
Two voices immediately said, “Coming, ma’am.”
A third female voice said, “We’re right in the middle of poetry. Can’t it wait?”
“No, dear, something important has come up. You need to come down right now.”
Yaz nodded. “Very good. Keep this up and you might live to have a nice dinner with your husband tonight.”
A pair of girls probably not more than sixteen dressed in uniforms identical to the cook’s arrived first, bobbed a curtsy to Mrs. Saint, and said, “What is it, ma’am?”
“Just have a seat, girls. Everything will be explained when Nicole and Jaques arrive.”
When they sat beside the cook, the girls noticed Yaz for the first time. Their eyes grew wide, but when he touched his finger to his lips they nodded. Such obedient servants. They must have been well trained.
A heavy tread announced the arrival of Nicole and her tutor from a different door. Those two spotted Yaz at once. The daughter was like a younger version of her mother, pretty in a red dress with gold earrings dangling and a matching necklace. The tutor dressed in a formal gray tunic and trousers. He carried a leather satchel over his shoulder but no weapon.
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