Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series

by Lindsay Buroker

  Her enhanced speed startled the elf, but he recovered immediately, rising to one knee and twisting toward her. He punched her in the face, and she gasped as pain exploded in her cheek. The dragon tear might have shielded her as she fell from the horse, but she’d let her concentration lapse. She tried to channel it once again, not just to defend herself this time, but to attack. She couldn’t let the bastard escape into the city, or Targyon might be lost to them forever.

  Zenia tucked her chin to protect her throat as the elf reached for it, and she pummeled him with punches. It had been months since she’d grappled with Rhi on the practice mat, but she tried to pretend she faced no more dangerous a foe than a sparring partner in the temple.

  The agile elf should have had the advantage and should have flung her away—or knocked her out with a well-placed blow—but energy from the dragon tear flowed into her limbs. Zenia attacked with punches far faster and more powerful than usual. Soon, the elf jerked his arms up, protecting his head. She rained blows onto his abdomen and sides.

  “I surrender!” the elf cried in accented Korvish.

  The dragon tear exuded glee as well as energy, some strange satisfaction at pummeling an elf, and Zenia struggled to gain control, struggled to stop hitting her foe. Fear coursed through her as her fists continued to land against her wishes. Her knuckles ached, bruises blossoming, and the elf did his best to curl into a ball and ward her off.

  Stop, she silently ordered the gem, throwing all of her will into the command.

  She sensed a reluctance from the dragon tear, but her fists slowed, and she regained control of her body. She knelt back from the elf, her breaths ragged. Blood smeared her throbbing knuckles. His or hers? Both?

  The elf didn’t move. He emitted faint whimpers.

  Zenia swallowed and rose to her feet, her legs shaky. The dragon tear had slipped free from her dress, and it glowed blue on her chest.

  Prisoner.

  Zenia didn’t know if the thought was hers or came from the gem, but she nodded and grabbed the elf’s arm. “Get up.”

  She hadn’t intended to put magic behind the command this time, but blue light flowed from the gem and wrapped around her prisoner in concentric tendrils. The elf rose to his feet. Under his own power? She didn’t think so. His eyes were glazed, and he barely appeared conscious.

  Zenia looked down at her chest. “You’re a lot more powerful than my old dragon tear,” she murmured.

  More than that, it seemed capable of far more than she’d ever heard of dragon tears doing. Targyon ought to have claimed it for himself and learned how to use it instead of giving it to her. She wasn’t…

  No, she decided. She was worthy. She would learn to master it, and she would use it well.

  A scream came from the direction of the tower. A man’s scream? Jev?

  “Let’s go,” she said, trying for a brusque tone and not to let any worry show, not to her prisoner.

  Though she wanted to leave him there and sprint for the front gate to check on Jev, Zenia gripped the elf’s arm firmly and marched him toward the tower.

  The creature reared up on its back legs, raising its hairy arms high, claws gleaming in the light of the fires dancing in the trees. One huge paw swiped toward Jev’s head.

  He flung himself backward, rolled, and came up on one knee, facing the creature. As it sprang after him, he fired his pistol straight at its black barrel chest.

  It did not slow down. Its yellow eyes did not even show pain. They seemed to glow with some unearthly, otherworldly hunger.

  Jev scrambled off the path and behind a tree. As it lunged after him, he fired at one of those yellow eyes, hoping they would be a more vulnerable target. But the creature dipped its head as it charged at him, and the bullet struck it in the skull. Again, not hurting it.

  The creature slammed into Jev’s tree with a massive shoulder. Jev leaped back into thick brush, and leaves and twigs rained down on him.

  “There it is!” someone cried.

  People with torches and clubs ran into view on the path, some shouting and waving uselessly, a few braver ones jumping in to strike the creature. Their efforts were equally useless.

  Jev backed farther into the brush. He held his pistol ready to fire but waited, wanting a clear view of the creature’s eyes. It shoved over a sapling, tearing the thing from its roots as it pushed closer to Jev. He darted behind two thick trees, hoping his monstrous foe wouldn’t be able to knock them over easily.

  Something brushed Jev’s shoulder. He gasped and jerked to the side, envisioning some other creature poised to attack him.

  But Lornysh stepped up beside him, his bow in hand. “Greetings, Jev.”

  “Greetings. Did you finish your meeting with the ambassador?”

  “We were at an impasse.” Lornysh fired an arrow.

  It pierced the creature’s hairy black throat, and finally, it reared back and yowled in pain.

  “Your arrows work better than my bullets?” Jev complained. “How is that possible?”

  As the creature landed, its head swung toward them, its eyes blazing with fury. For a split second, its head was still, those eyes a perfect target. Jev fired. This time, his bullet successfully slammed into one of those yellow orbs.

  The creature screamed.

  Finally.

  “No,” Lornysh said, “but the throat of the zarl has thinner skin than elsewhere on its body.”

  The creature roared and clawed at its face, ignoring the people jumping in to thump its legs with their makeshift clubs. Founders, that man from the tavern still had a broken piece of chair leg.

  The creature must have had enough because it sprang into the brush on the far side of the path. Howling and rattling the trees, it left a trail of broken foliage as it disappeared into the undergrowth.

  “Let it go,” Jev yelled when a few of his enthusiastic recruits turned to follow it.

  “Get off elven land,” came a booming cry from the direction of the front door.

  “Care to resume your chat with the ambassador?” Jev whispered to Lornysh, then pointed to his right, in the direction of the front gate. He still needed to try and catch the renegade elf. By now, he feared it would be too late.

  “Go,” Lornysh said. “I’ll do my best to distract him again.”

  Jev pushed through the brush, angling to come out near the gate. But going through the undergrowth was harder than walking along the path, and when he came out of the trees near the gate, he groaned. The ambassador stood in front of him, glowering straight at him. The gate was open, but he blocked it.

  Jev glanced over his shoulder. Lornysh stood behind him on the path, the two elven guards to either side of him. One had taken his bow. Or perhaps Lornysh had let them take his bow. Jev knew he didn’t want to fight these people.

  But Jev had no choice. He bit his lip and considered running straight at the ambassador. He couldn’t let the damn assassin elf get away.

  “Jev?” came a familiar voice from behind the ambassador.

  “Zenia!”

  When had she gotten here?

  The ambassador turned, looked through the gate for several long seconds, then sighed and stepped to the side. Zenia walked through the gate while gripping the arm of a prisoner, a spiky-haired elven prisoner with split lips and contusions all over his face.

  “Damn,” Jev said, “did Rhi do that?”

  “Not me,” Rhi said from the brush. She walked out with her bo, a contusion of her own swelling at her temple. She must have encountered the creature as well. And was that Zyndar Garlok coming out behind her?

  “It was… the dragon tear,” Zenia said quietly. She looked warily at the ambassador.

  Shoyalusa gazed at his fellow elf, but Zenia’s new prisoner appeared too dazed to realize he was there.

  “The dragon tear beat someone up?” Rhi asked.

  “It’s a long story,” Zenia said.

  “It can’t be that long. It’s only been three minutes since we parted ways.”r />
  Zenia managed a faint smile, though she looked a little dazed too. “At least six.”

  “Is that the rat that poisoned the princes?” Zyndar Garlok thrust a finger at Zenia’s prisoner. His other hand curled into a fist.

  “Yilnesh,” the ambassador said, sighing again. “My understanding is that it wasn’t a poison, but you’ll have to get the details from him. He’s been evasive, even with me.”

  “Yet you protected him,” Jev said, wondering if the ambassador might try exactly that again.

  “He is an elf,” Shoyalusa said, as if that explained everything.

  “A criminal elf. Why protect him? Don’t your people—the majority of them—want Targyon on the throne? A king that has nothing against your kind and will likely do his best to keep Kor from jumping into any new wars?”

  “It is early to judge what he will or will not do,” the ambassador said. “As for the rest, I do not turn on my own kind. Any elf who needs my help may find refuge and safety here.” He looked at Lornysh, his lips thinning. “That is the way of the embassy, the way of our people.”

  Jev shook his head but dismissed the ambassador for now. “Zenia, can you question Yilnesh?” He pointed at the dazed elf. “We need a cure for Targyon.”

  “I know, and I think so. Will you…?” She nudged the elf toward him.

  Jev jogged up and grabbed Yilnesh, turning him so he faced Zenia. He didn’t think he was overly rough, but the elf gasped in pain, and his knees buckled. Jev had to hold him up to keep him from toppling to the ground. Later, he would ask Zenia if an elephant had fallen on him. He couldn’t see how a dragon tear could have pummeled someone.

  “What do you intend to do?” the ambassador asked.

  Zenia lifted her chin. “Question him.”

  “You’ve brought him back onto embassy soil. Where you are trespassing without permission. I forbid you to interrogate an elf here.”

  Mumbles came from the growing crowd, Jev’s club-wielding recruits from the tavern. They eyed the ambassador and also Lornysh and the two elven guards while fingering their makeshift weapons.

  Jev strode toward the gate, pushing his prisoner ahead of him. The ambassador’s eyes narrowed, but he did not try to stop him. Was he giving up? Or did he have another chip to play?

  As soon as Jev passed through the gate, he turned the prisoner to face Zenia again.

  “Go ahead,” he told her. “I’ll make sure you’re not interrupted.”

  Zenia took a deep breath, glanced at the ambassador, but then focused on her prisoner.

  “Be quick,” he added quietly. “If you can.” He thought of the sweat glistening on Targyon’s forehead. “We may not have much time.”

  22

  Zenia gazed at their elven prisoner and brought her fingers to her dragon tear. After the way it had taken over during the skirmish, she was apprehensive about drawing upon its power again, and she wished she had more time to familiarize herself with it in a calm setting. But she didn’t.

  The elf—Yilnesh, she reminded herself—glowered back at her. He radiated pain and discomfort as he stood, Jev locking his arms behind his back, but he had recovered enough to appear coherent. Zenia feared he would fight her, but she believed she, with the dragon tear’s help, was his match. She just hoped the gem didn’t try to take over again. Already, she worried about explaining how the elf had come to be so battered. What would Jev think? That Cutter had been right?

  “Where did you get the lake water that you used to poison the princes?” Usually, Zenia would have started with more basic information that the prisoner wouldn’t object to answering, such as his name and where he’d been born, but Jev’s words rang in her mind, the reminder that they might not have much time.

  The elf sneered.

  “Where?” Zenia demanded, drawing upon the dragon tear’s power.

  It flowed into her without a hitch, more than she would have called for.

  “Lake Eskalade on your southern border,” Yilnesh blurted, gripping his chest and almost pitching forward.

  The ambassador stirred, frowning darkly at her.

  Easy, she silently told the dragon tear. Easy.

  “A long way from your home up north,” Zenia said.

  “I have no home anymore. They cast me out because I was sympathetic to the Xilarshyar, agreed with their concerns. But I knew my people would thank me when—” The elf choked off his words in mid-sentence.

  Zenia frowned, thinking he was fighting her, but then she sensed an outside influence. The ambassador. To anyone else, he would merely appear to be standing there with his hands clasped behind his back, but she sensed him interfering, trying to wall off Yilnesh’s mind from her.

  “Lornysh,” she said without taking her gaze from Yilnesh, afraid she would lose her touch on him if she broke eye contact. “Would you invite the ambassador to go back inside with you, please?”

  “Uh, Lornysh is imprisoned, I believe,” Jev said.

  “I know the elves would prefer to go back inside and let us handle this.” Once again, she drew upon the dragon tear to add power to the words, trying to influence the guards and the ambassador all at once. She never could have affected more than one person at a time before, but she thought it might be possible now.

  The two elven guards said something in their language, then slowly turned and walked toward the front door. They took Lornysh’s bow but did not drag him along with them.

  “Ambassador?” Zenia looked at him, knowing she would have to make eye contact. She remembered their battle of wills in the ballroom and knew it had only been the fact that her dragon tear was stronger than his that had allowed her to extract information from his mind. “Go inside. You are defending a criminal. A murderer. Do not sully your reputation this way.”

  The ambassador’s dragon tear glowed on his chest, and Zenia sensed him wrestling, not with her this time, but with himself. Did he continue to defend someone who’d committed a crime he didn’t approve of? Simply because he was an elf and they were from the same homeland?

  A branch snapped in the garden, reminding her that a creature guarded the compound. Unless her friends had slain it? She looked at Jev, hoping he would say she had nothing to worry about, but he eyed the foliage with concern. Could the ambassador telepathically call the creature forth?

  “Do not fight us further, Ambassador,” Zenia said.

  Rhi fingered her bo and stared into the garden as the leaves rustled. Garlok gripped a pistol.

  Yilnesh surprised her by speaking to the ambassador. She couldn’t understand any of the words, but they sounded defeated. Or so she hoped. If the elf begged the ambassador for help, would he sic the creature on them?

  The ambassador arched his silver eyebrows and asked a question in Elvish. It sounded like, “Are you sure?”

  A single-word response.

  The two elves locked gazes, and for a moment, the only sounds came from the crackling of the fires in the garden. Finally, the ambassador turned away from them and walked up the path toward the tower. The rustling in the foliage stilled.

  Zenia let out a slow breath and focused on her prisoner again. “Continue. Your people would thank you when what?”

  “When Abdor was dead.” The elf wasn’t fighting her anymore. He responded promptly, his shoulders slumped. “Even if it meant being an outcast, I vowed to help my people, to defend them against humanity’s tide.”

  “Abdor. Why did you kill the princes if he was your target?”

  “I had to make sure it would work. They shared their father’s blood.”

  “Why infect all three of them?”

  The elf’s shoulder twitched with indifference. “Had to make sure it worked and didn’t want to leave angry kin alive to come after me, wanting to avenge their brother’s death.” He sneered again. “I didn’t think whatever cursed cousin your people picked would care about hunting down the one responsible. He ought to be delighted to have the throne handed to him by an elf.”

  Zeni
a shivered, remembering that Lunis had said almost the same thing. Did everyone think being a king was such a wonderful thing? She couldn’t imagine wanting the responsibility.

  “Why did you come to the castle today?” she asked. “To target Targyon?”

  “Yes. He kept meddling. Kept sending you to meddle.” He glared at her and flicked his fingers toward Jev, as much as he could while he was held captive. “Why couldn’t he leave well enough alone and be glad he was king and he was safe?”

  “He didn’t know he was safe,” Jev growled. “How could he?”

  “I would have been content to leave him on the throne if he hadn’t meddled. It was far more than he deserved, the elf killer. I know he was in Taziira. That he fought with your army. He’s not the one I thought your people would choose to lead them, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Humans love elf killers, don’t they?”

  “What’s the difference between a human that kills elves and an elf that kills humans?” Zenia asked.

  Yilnesh curled his lip and gazed past her shoulder and into the distance. As if to say the interrogation was over.

  Not yet it wasn’t.

  “You poisoned him today,” Zenia said. “How do we kill your enhanced bacteria and heal him?”

  The elf’s brow furrowed as he looked back to her. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s sick. We know you poisoned him.”

  “I did not. Your agent chased me off before I could.”

  “He’s sick,” Zenia repeated.

  “Not by my hand.”

  Certain the elf was lying, Zenia channeled the power of the dragon tear into scouring Yilnesh’s memories of the day. Of how he’d prepared a new vial in his room. Of how he’d gone over one of the castle walls, slipping through the shadows as guards were distracted by arriving guests. Of how he’d slunk through the halls of the castle, avoiding notice until he tried to slip into the ballroom. Then Lunis had spotted him and given chase, ruining it all.

  Zenia frowned, going over his memories twice to be sure he wasn’t evading her somehow, keeping her from seeing a moment when he’d slipped the contents of his vial into Targyon’s drink. But it wasn’t there.