Armed & Magical rb-2

by Lisa Shearin

  “Your investment is safe.” Muralin sneered the word like it was something he’d scrape off the bottom of his boot.

  “Is it?” The tiniest smile creased Tam’s lips, but the gleam in his eyes was chilling. “Are you quite certain?”

  “You dare doubt my word?”

  Tam laughed, low and dark. “Doubting your word would imply that its validity once existed.”

  Point for Tam. Painful death for me.

  Tam hadn’t looked at me, not once.

  Muralin stood utterly still, like sculpted marble. “You forget your place.”

  “My place is here. Yours is not.”

  “I have destroyed men for less than—”

  A crossbow bolt whizzed past my left ear, and I dove for the catwalk. Others wisely followed suit.

  A volley of bolts followed, pinging and ricocheting off of the metal railing. One punched through a rail and kept right on going, taking one of the temple guards in the thigh. He screamed and fell over the edge, landing with a sickening thud on the stage below.

  Crap in a bucket. Wooden bolts didn’t puncture metal. But steel did.

  They were shooting freaking armor-piercing steel bolts at us—and “us” included me. The shooters were a pair of Guardians and four fancy-looking elves in someone’s private guard livery. Finding out who didn’t take long. Carnades Silvanus pushed his way through the panicked crowd toward the stage, roaring orders at those fancy guards. I heard the word “kill” at least twice.

  I didn’t know if he meant me or the goblins, and I wasn’t sticking around to find out. The second Khrynsani guard behind me was gone. Over the railing or down the ladder, I didn’t care which exit he’d taken. My way out was wide-open.

  Until Rudra Muralin grabbed my ankle.

  I snarled, twisting from my stomach onto my back, and looked up into a blazing nightmare.

  The goblin’s entire body was alight with power, red and glowing like a bloody sun. I felt the power that was building in him and recognized it.

  It wasn’t a death curse.

  It was really going to hurt.

  Muralin tightened his grip on my ankle, his hand like a white-hot brand. I screamed in pain, then in rage. I drew back my free leg and kicked him solidly in the knee.

  He laughed.

  Not the reaction I was going for.

  “Soon,” he promised me. Then he released me and vaulted effortlessly over the railing, landing lightly on the stage.

  Impressive. Scary as hell, but impressive.

  Two of the elves turned their crossbows on him, and Muralin hissed a single dismissive word, turning the bows to molten metal slag in their hands. The elves’ agonized screams just added to the chaos. With another word, the goblin extinguished the footlights, plunging the stage into near darkness. When they came back up, Rudra Muralin was gone.

  Tam hauled me to my feet.

  I hauled off and punched him.

  His head snapped back. Not as much as I would have liked, but it was gratifying.

  Tam wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  I think my mouth fell open. “Everything!”

  A bolt fired from below barely missed us. Tam grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the same ladder I’d come up. I dug in my heels.

  “Raine, please come with me.”

  Tam rarely said “please.” I wasn’t the only one who saved certain words for special occasions. My word had four letters. Tam’s word was “please.” He’d said it to me at the rehearsal to warn me to stay away from him. Now that same word was asking me to trust him.

  Regaining my trust was going to take a lot more than one word, but it was a start. We had to get off this catwalk.

  By now the Guardians must be halfway to the citadel with Piaras. And where the hell was Phaelan?

  When I reached the bottom of the ladder, Tam took my arm and pulled me past the dressing-room area and into the back of the theatre.

  “Where the hell are we going?” I muttered between clenched teeth.

  I caught a glimpse of Sedge Rinker and two of his watchers talking with unfamiliar Guardians, and a dead Nightshade sprawled on the floor nearby, blood pooling beneath his head.

  “Do not call out to them,” Tam warned and walked faster.

  I let out a bitter laugh. “I’m safer with you than them?”

  “For now, yes. Sanura Mal’Salin unwarded her mirror to admire herself, and the Nightshades were waiting.” Tam’s voice was tight with barely contained rage. “They took Talon, Valerian’s granddaughter, and Ronan Cayle.”

  Dammit. I pulled back against Tam’s grip.

  “Nathrach!” It was Sedge Rinker. The chief watcher had seen me and was after Tam.

  Tam hissed a curse in Goblin, tossed me over his shoulder, and ran.

  The back of the theatre was dark; Tam knew it like the back of his hand, and he was a goblin. Rinker and his men were human. No night vision. There were plenty of things to trip them up, and from the thumps and swearing, the watchers had found them. But Rinker wasn’t chief watcher for nothing. He cleared his path and kept coming.

  All I could see was Tam’s ass and the floor.

  Tam opened a door and closed it behind us, and went down a flight of stairs entirely too fast for my comfort.

  “Put me—”

  “Shhh!”

  I shushed, but I wasn’t going to stay shushed for long.

  Tam stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Above us, Sedge Rinker and his men ran by and didn’t come back.

  “Put. Me. Down,” I said from behind clenched teeth.

  Tam didn’t put me down. He slid his hand under my gown and up my bare leg to my thigh sheath. Finding that one empty, he went in search of the other one.

  No way in hell.

  Tam and I had wrestled before—once with intent soon after we’d met, and a couple of other times since then for fun. He knew my moves. This probably wasn’t going to end well, but I wasn’t giving up my last dagger without a fight.

  I clasped both of my hands together into one big fist and hit Tam in the back as hard as I could. When he grunted in pain and surprise, I twisted. We both went down, and I got to be on top this time.

  A single globe offered meager light, but it was enough for me to see that Tam wasn’t fighting back.

  He held his hands up, palms out. “No weapons,” he whispered.

  “Because you didn’t get mine!” It was all I could do to keep my voice down.

  “To keep you from carving me up.”

  I sat back, still straddling him. “What the hell is going on?”

  Tam looked as tired as I felt, but he languidly moved his hips beneath me. “This is the best thing to happen to me all week.”

  I gasped at the source of the contact and the delicious shock of sensation that followed. Focus, Raine. I glared at him. “I repeat, what the hell?”

  “I’m touching you.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.” Parts of me were much more aware than others. “That doesn’t answer what—”

  I realized what he meant; I shut up and didn’t dare move.

  Tam was touching me. I was touching Tam…

  … and the Saghred wasn’t touching either one of us.

  But it was there; I could feel it, hot and coiled, ready to strike at the slightest provocation. I knew it’d be a good idea to get off of Tam, but I thought it’d be a bad idea to move.

  “How?” I whispered.

  “I haven’t used a death curse lately?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You mean no überevil black magic.”

  “Don’t act surprised.”

  “How am I supposed to act? You’re a dark mage.”

  Tam was incredulous. “I was the queen’s chief shaman. What did you think I was?”

  “Shush!” I heard, felt, or sensed something like a snake’s angry hiss.

  Tam froze and didn’t even blink. He’d heard, felt, or sensed it, too.

  Appar
ently passion ignited it—that or strong emotion. Great. That’s all Tam and I had. Ever since we’d met, either he was trying to seduce me, or I was arguing with him.

  I sat quietly and waited. Tam closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. When he opened those glorious midnight eyes, he had himself under control. Possibly. Me straddling him while wearing a slinky, black velvet gown wasn’t helping matters any.

  The pissed-off-firesnake sensation didn’t entirely go away, but it had lessened. I’d take that for now.

  “Raine, what did you think I was?” Tam asked again, softer this time.

  “I don’t know.”

  Tam hadn’t talked much about his past; I hadn’t asked him to tell me. I thought we had a fine arrangement.

  My family’s big on denial. And if we denied something long enough, we thought it’d go away. I know that’s not how it works, but we’re in denial about that, too.

  In my mind’s eye, Tam’s dark-mage nature paced restlessly on the edge of the shadows, eager and hungry. The Saghred was coiled like a fiery serpent near his feet, tongue flicking, tasting the air, searching, wanting the black magic Tam held in check.

  So long as Tam didn’t antagonize that snake, it wouldn’t bite me. Maybe.

  I didn’t feel like taking that chance. Time to leave.

  Tam’s hands tightened around my waist. “Wait.”

  “I’m helping you control yourself. You’re a fuse. I’m explosives. Remember?”

  The goblin’s lips curved into a slow, wicked grin. “Yeah, I do.”

  I just looked at him. “If the Saghred strikes a match, that fuse of yours is going to get us both into trouble.”

  “I like playing with fire.” Tam’s hands explored my velvet bodice with a mind of their own.

  “I know you do.” And after some heavy breathing in a dark alley, I did, too. “So the farther I stay from you, the better.”

  Tam ran his hands down the length of my bodice from ribs to hips, like he was memorizing the curves for later. “It would be the smart thing to do.” His breathing had taken on a ragged edge.

  I dismounted. I had to take the moral high road sometime.

  I hate moral high roads.

  I sat on a nearby crate and crossed my arms. “Now talk. What have the Khrynsani got on you, and why is Rudra Muralin your houseguest?”

  Tam sat up. “Talon.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Nightshades took Talon.” A muscle worked in Tam’s jaw. “So no one has anything on me anymore. Tonight, I’m going to make the Nightshades permanently sorry.”

  I did the math, made some assumptions, and when that got too convoluted, I just trusted the answer my gut gave me. Talon’s swagger, the bravado, the feline grace, but most of all the eyes. Tam’s eyes were black. Talon’s were aquamarine, but they had the same bad-boy sparkle—and the same intent.

  And Tam had taken on the Khrynsani to protect him.

  “Talon’s your son.”

  “Yes, he’s mine.”

  Talon obviously wasn’t a result of Tam’s only marriage to a pure-blooded Mal’Salin duchess. Tam liked elves. Tam liked me. Judging from Talon’s eyes and pale, silvery skin, I wasn’t the only elf Tam had liked.

  “And he doesn’t know.”

  “I don’t want him to. Considering who and what I used to be, it’s not safe for him to know.” Tam’s expression darkened. “Until a few days ago, no one knew. Muralin said that unless I turned you over to him, he was going have Talon kidnapped—and sold in the Nebian slave markets. The Khrynsani have a long reach, so I knew I couldn’t send Talon away to keep him safe. The closer he stayed to me, the better.”

  Tam didn’t have to spell it out for me. I knew full well what kind of slavery awaited a half-breed as beautiful as Talon.

  “If I tried to warn you, Rudra Muralin said he would kill Talon outright. I tried to keep Talon safe.” Tam’s eyes narrowed accusingly. “You were supposed to stay in the citadel.”

  The citadel. Piaras.

  Crap.

  “I’ve got to find Piaras.”

  “Then you’ll be going to the elven embassy,” came Phaelan’s voice from the dark. Lantern light flared, illuminating my cousin leaning against a closed door.

  “You were supposed to wait outside,” Tam told him.

  “You weren’t supposed to be late.”

  I was incredulous. “You knew about all this?”

  “Hey, I just found out,” Phaelan said. His dark eyes flashed in anger. “You might say Tam and I ran into each other backstage. He was kind enough to hit the high spots for me. It all sounded just crazy enough to be true.”

  “But Guardians would take Piaras to the citadel, not—”

  Phaelan snorted. “If they had made it that far. Six Guardians took Piaras out the backstage door. I couldn’t get to him without getting nabbed myself, so I hung back. Glad I did. Those Guardians were ambushed. Within a couple seconds there were six dead Guardians and one unconscious Piaras being loaded into a coach—by elves who knew which end of a crossbow was up.”

  “Were they wearing fancy livery?” If Carnades was responsible, there wasn’t a hole deep enough for him to hide in.

  “Nope, uniforms. Definitely embassy guards, and that’s the direction they were headed.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Just yours truly. And I don’t think I should go anywhere near a Guardian just now.”

  I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Is Justinius dead?”

  Tam spoke. “The last I saw, Mychael was working on the archmagus. Mychael is a fine healer, but it didn’t look like it was going well. Though Mychael didn’t look like he was giving up.”

  Oh shit.

  “Gentlemen, the Isle of Mid just got itself a new archmagus,” I said. “If Justinius dies or until he’s in a condition to take command again, Carnades Silvanus is in charge—and Mychael has to take his orders from him.”

  Chapter 20

  Carnades was probably living his dream, and Mychael had to be in a living nightmare.

  I told Tam what I knew about where the Nightshades were holding the spellsingers—and their eventual fate unless they were found.

  “The Saghred is still in the citadel’s containment rooms,” I said. “They can’t sacrifice anyone if they don’t have anything to sacrifice them to.” This was supposed to make Tam feel marginally better. It didn’t.

  “Can Carnades order Mychael to turn over the Saghred?” Phaelan asked.

  “He can. But Mychael won’t do it.”

  “Sounds like mutiny.”

  It would be mutiny, though Carnades would probably prefer to call it treason. He could have Mychael locked up in one of his own containment rooms and pick a paladin who’d give him the Saghred, and anything else he wanted.

  I couldn’t let myself think about Mychael right now. I had to get Piaras out of that embassy. One catastrophe at a time.

  “Tam, I wish we could—”

  Tam held up a hand. “I know. You’d help if you could. You have to get Piaras. I understand. I have to get my son back.” His dark eyes were hard and resolute. “Once Talon’s safe, I’m going after Rudra Muralin.” He grinned in a cold flash of fangs. “I have a busy night planned.”

  Tam sounded like he was looking forward to it. I would have, too. I guess I’d have to settle for having left my teeth marks in Muralin’s ear.

  Tam went to one of the racks against the wall and pulled off the sheet that was covering it. There were costumes zbeneath. We were in a prop room two levels below the stage. Tam selected two cloaks, one black and the other dark green. He tossed the black one to Phaelan and held the green cloak open for me. I stepped up to him and he swept the green velvet around me and I fastened the clasp.

  “I won’t be going in alone,” he assured me. “I have men I can trust. They’re good in a fight.” He almost smiled. “And they’ll love the chance to get their hands on Nightshades and Khrynsani in one night.”

  Ph
aelan opened a low door in the far wall. Beyond was a pitch-dark tunnel that Tam said emptied five blocks from Sirens, well away from the chaos that was probably still going on upstairs.

  I held out my hand and stared at my palm. I’d seen lightglobes created, but I’d never done one myself. Since the Saghred had come into my life, I’d found all kinds of new things that I could do. Lightglobe making was small magic. It should be no problem.

  After a few moments, a pinpoint of white light flickered to life from the center of my hand, beneath the skin. It was no larger than a firefly. It spun, weaving a trail of light until a globe, the size of my fist, hung suspended above my open hand, glowing steadily. It floated a few feet down the tunnel, then stopped, hovering, waiting for us. I felt a little thrill of accomplishment.

  I looked up. Tam was gone.

  Phaelan stepped into the tunnel. “We men aren’t good at good-byes.”

  “I’ve strolled past the embassy a couple of times,” Phaelan said. Even at a whisper, his voice echoed off the tunnel walls.

  I didn’t like tunnels. I liked it even less that I had never seen the elven embassy. Phaelan had scoped out the city soon after we’d docked. Pirate instincts, I guess. He’d been all around the outside of the embassy. I’d rather have a detailed floor plan of the inside, but I’d take what I could get.

  Water dripped and ran in thin rivulets down the cracked walls. Cracks weren’t good. Last year, I’d taken a contract job for the Mermeia city watch. They needed my help in finding a smuggling ring’s hideout. In my search of one of Mermeia’s many tunnels, I opened an innocent-looking metal door and a canal’s worth of water just fell on me. Though the same water that fell on me made it easy to find William Lark’s smuggling ring. My opening that door caused a tunnel wall to collapse. The canal flooded the place and shot Bill and his gang out the Dock Street sewer tunnels like rats out of a hole. I don’t know how I managed to avoid the same fate. It was a sight my night-mares wouldn’t let me soon forget.

  The only thing I wanted to know when I went into a tunnel was how soon I could get out.

  “For a place that’s supposed to be a safe haven for elves, it didn’t look like it’d be safe for me,” Phaelan was saying. “Too many guards, and too many of those magical…” He wiggled his fingers in the air.