Daring to rest my head on his shoulder, I agreed. “Open secrets can’t be closed.”
“If Hishima agrees to an alliance, our clan’s trained warriors will be depleted for a time. It’s a risk the paladin is willing to take because our reputation serves us as well as blades ever have.”
“Let me guess. It’s more important to secure his allies than to secure his own people.”
“He believes the plague has done its damage and gone. He won’t spare guards to confront a threat he doesn’t believe in at a time when his resources are better used elsewhere. He swore he would pass along word to his brother, Rhys. If Paladin Chinedu visits, Vaughn said I’m welcome to speak to him as well, but I am not to talk of such matters here, now, with my own clansmen.”
The potential Vaughn had represented to me shriveled. “He is a fool for not believing you.”
“Believe what? A story he’s certain Lleu concocted to protect me from myself?” He snorted. “The paladin wanted proof, as we knew he would, and I had nothing to offer him but my word.”
“It should have been enough.”
He rolled his shoulder beneath my cheek. “It might have been, once.”
“Before me, you mean.” I lifted my head to see what truths his eyes revealed.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” His face was grave, his arms tight around the cause of his troubles.
He tightened them further still. “Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.” I had no right to be.
“Kaidi.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I need your help.”
“You do?” I sounded skeptical.
“I must have proof.” His eyes were earnest. “I am sworn to Vaughn, but in this he is wrong. My vows were to protect my clan at all costs, and his displeasure is a price I will pay with flesh.”
“No.” I choked on the implication.
“You lost everything fighting the cause I am taking up,” he said. “Don’t deny me that right.”
“You won’t find proof in Cathis.” I glanced aside. “The harbinger is finished here.”
“The harbinger?” he said slowly. “Is that what you call the winged female?”
I nodded. “You’ll have to find another town or city that has a fresh supply of corpses.”
“No. I don’t want those.” He steeled himself. “I want the harbinger.”
I understood why capturing her or one of her sisters was necessary if we wanted to sway the paladin to our cause. The harbinger was no corpse. She was far too cunning. That one was alive.
To cage one was to release all doubts about the true nature of the plague.
“Do you know where I can find her?” he pressed.
“There’s more than one,” I reminded him.
Grudgingly, he said, “I’ll take whichever one I can get.” Though I knew from experience he had the scent of a particular one in his nose.
“Remember, they are drawn to corpses. If we find a spot, then lie in wait…”
“We have no time.” He rubbed my arms as if to warm them. “Is there no other way?”
“There’s only one that I could tell you how to find, and she may not be there now.”
His grip tightened, shoving me back until he held me before him. “Where?”
I think he knew before I said, “In Titania.”
“Does Hishima know?” he asked quietly, as though he feared the walls might hear.
Her cadaverous face grinned through my memories. “It’s his chains that tie her.”
His eyes widened a fraction. “She’s his captive?”
I ran my thumb across the stump of my missing finger. “She’s his mother.”
The motion caught his eye, but he held his tongue. “That complicates things.”
“Hishima keeps her hidden away in an exhausted section of the crystal cavern beneath his manor. He has direct access to the cavern from the ground floor, and no one is allowed there. Not that there’s a reason to go. All the crystals in that section of the mine have long been harvested.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Is there another way into the cavern?”
“Several, but artisans keep odd hours. I’ve never in my life entered an empty tunnel. There’s always someone at work. The tunnel you need is best accessed through the manor or through the main tunnel. There are other ways, but they are difficult and you would be noticed taking them.”
He sounded thoughtful. “You know how to access the tunnel from the manor?”
“It was my curiosity about what drew Hishima down that staircase each night that led to my reintroduction to his mother.” I shivered. “I spied on him for days, and one night I snuck down to wait on his arrival. I followed him to where he kept her. When I saw Lailah chained…I panicked. He caught me fleeing and threw me at her feet. The flash of my betrothal ring caught her eye…”
Most of the finger was gone. All of it would be if I hadn’t been trying to work the ring off my hand when she attacked.
“Hush now.” Murdoch pulled me against his chest. “I was wrong to come to you.”
“You asked for my help, and I was happy to give it.” I assured him, “You did no wrong.”
“You don’t understand.” He kissed my temple. “I came here for more than information.”
“Oh?” I tamped down the warmth gathering in my chest.
“I want to…” His soft laughter was my undoing. “It’s harder to say than I expected.”
I felt bold in saying, “Tell me what you want.”
“You.” His embrace grew impossibly tighter. “Come with me.”
I was stunned. “What?”
“You understand these creatures as no one does. If I’m to capture the harbinger, alive, then I need your help. We have little time left. Hishima comes tonight, and the tailor sooner than that.”
“I can’t just leave.” No matter how I wished to. “Hishima would follow us. The negotiations would stall. Knowing Hishima, he would end them out of spite.” And then what? “I can’t risk it.”
“Can you risk the alternative?” He glanced toward the window. “You know what’s out there, and you know as well as I do no good will come of it. These—things—are not raising the dead to prove they can. They have a purpose. The harbingers are gathering those creatures to them. What happens when they have gathered enough? Do you think those corpses will care if they’re turned on their former clans? Do you think the one we fought last night cared that I once knew her? No. She cared only that I stood between her and the harbinger. Ignoring them now invites ruin later.”
“You’re right.” But did I dare risk my clan’s immediate future to spare them distant turmoil?
“All of the largest southland clans have lost souls to this evil. That means the harbingers are well acquainted with those locations and their fortifications. They will know there are fewer who can guard the walls or mind the roads. That is where the harbingers will strike. It’s what I’d do.”
Rubbing my eyes gave me a moment of solitude to gather my thoughts. “What about you?” The paladin struck me as the unforgiving kind, and no mercy would be shown to defectors.
“You asked me once if necessity had trapped me.” His exhale seemed an unburdening. “No. It didn’t. I could have pursued my greatfather’s trade and become a tanner. I could have owned a shop, lived in town and avoided the webs fate had spun for me. It would have been a good life.”
A simple life, a trade to be proud of, I had those things once. “Why didn’t you?”
He shrugged in answer. “As is sometimes the case with only children, Father wanted no part of his father’s trade. Untrained except for tannery, he took the coin offered him to stand guard. It was a poor fit for him and his temper.” He turned from me. “One night, not long after starting, Father picked a fight with a male who dared insult his slow response in opening the gate. A hood covered the male’s head, and Father failed to recognize him as Paladin Brynmor, Vaughn’s father, home
from a raid. There was nothing to be done. Brynmor’s justice was absolute. He had been insulted, and he took the price of his humiliation from my father’s hide. I was called to fetch his body, after. Brynmor met me at the towers and told me to come to him in six years’ time and I could challenge him for the death of my father. Or I could accept his offer of becoming a page in the towers and earn the coin my father would have. How could I deny him? I had Mother and my little sister to think of.”
“He bought your goodwill.” I understood how bitter that must have made him.
“That was impossible, and Brynmor knew it.” Murdoch exhaled. “What he did, over the span of years, was teach me loyalty to his line. They fed me and my family, clothed us and kept a roof over our heads. When grief sent my greatfather to his grave early and I inherited, the realization was made that without him or Father to finish teaching me the trade, his gift was useless. Brynmor stepped in then with an offer to put me on the wall. My mother and sister were set with the funds we made selling the tannery. I kept enough gold to start anew, but what did I know but this place and these people? I had no desire to leave, no desire to indebt myself to Brynmor, yet in the end I followed in Father’s footsteps. But this work, it suits me. I can imagine no other trade as mine.”
“I pray that loyalty protects you.” That Vaughn would not be as swift to punish as his father.
“I have seen the ruthless underbelly of the paladins of Cathis. I’m well aware who I tempt in being here and in asking this of you.” He leaned out the window and grasped the rope. “Time has run out for me. I must go before I am missed.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I said once I have no regrets, but that’s not as true as it once was.” His smile wrenched my gut. “Take care, Kaidi.”
“That’s all you have to say to me?” After all this, he meant to unburden himself then leave.
“What?” His frown made me question the sanity of all who claimed he was smitten with me.
A few kind touches, tender caresses, those I showed to favored pets, not to those I desired.
I stalked him, shoved him against the wall and pinned him there with a forearm to his chest. I drew Bram’s knife from my pocket and held its point at Murdoch’s throat. “Take me with you.”
He scowled at the blade. “I asked you to come with me.”
“Yes, well, that’s not the point. This is.” I steadied my shaking hand. “Escort me home.”
“You will not play the martyr with me.” His eyes darkened. “You will not do this.”
The blade nicked his skin when he leaned too close. He didn’t flinch from the pain.
“It’s done,” I told him. “I have a knife at your pulse and I’m forcing you to help me escape.”
“I will aid you readily,” he growled. “There is no need for this pretense.”
“You’ve sacrificed enough.” I eased up on his chest. “Let someone share the burden.”
“Share,” he said, driving the blade deeper, “implies an equal split in responsibility.”
“Fine.” I met his stare and swore I was not lost in his dark eyes. “Let someone else shoulder the burden. You have worked too long and too hard to lose your standing here. Let both paladins blame me. They will assume I am the one at fault, and I am for dragging you into this.”
He stared down his nose at me. “Equal shares or I will claim them all.”
I rolled my eyes skyward. “You’re wasting valuable time splitting hairs.”
“Yes.” He grasped my wrist and twisted it, and me with it, until my back pressed against his front and I held the knife at my own throat. I was so furious, I vibrated at his laughter. “You are.”
“Murdoch. You will either agree to my plan or I will scream and tell the guards of yours.”
“That makes sense,” he conceded, his mouth soft on my neck. “You don’t want me harmed, so you call the guards and spew enough treason to see me hanged. I do applaud your reasoning.”
With a throttled cry, I sank my elbow in his gut, breaking his hold on my wrist while he gasped at my ear. When I turned, his head was low, his neck close, and I did what I must admit I had wanted to do for some time. I bit him. Hard. I was barely venomous enough to count, but his quick indrawn breath told me he felt the tingle working through his veins. Pressed to me as he was, I felt his arousal swell against my thigh. Its firmness shocked me to my senses, and I released him with a sharp apology I doubt he heard over the sudden pounding of fists at the door.
“You still awake in there?” The guard paused, listening. “I’ve word Stefan is on his way.”
I broke from Murdoch’s embrace and shoved him behind me as if that would protect him.
“Oh good,” I called cheerily. “I’ll wash my face then and prepare for my fitting.”
“Make it quick.” Boots shuffled as he resettled himself. “He won’t be kept waiting long.”
Erratic as Stefan had been that day at his shop, I believed the guard’s warning.
“I’ll be ready,” I assured him. When he let the matter drop, I grasped Murdoch’s collar and tugged him to the window. Pocketing the knife, I patted that pant leg. “Do you need persuasion?”
He touched the side of his neck, reddened from my teeth. “You bit me.”
“I did.” I leaned out and caught the rope he’d released during our scuffle.
“I’ve never been bitten before.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “You aren’t serious.”
The ruddy smudges on his cheeks told me he was.
“Hurry up.” I put the rope in his hand. “Or else I’ll bite you again.”
“That’s hardly a threat.” He rubbed the spot.
“Fine.” I shoved him until he sat in the opening. “Hurry up and I’ll bite you again.”
Twisting around, he let his feet dangle. With practiced ease, he pulled the rope upward, crossing his torso, from his left hip to his right shoulder. The rope crossed his back from his left shoulder to his right hand. Without qualm, he pushed off the ledge and hung from his rope. Once settled, he held out his hand to me.
I try not to remember how the wind swung us or how my sweaty hands made my grip slip. It was a testament to Murdoch’s skill that we survived, that my flailing managed not to unseat him. Details of our descent are as blurry as my recollection of some dreams and just as happily forgotten.
An eternity after my feet left the stones of my chamber, they touched ground, and I sagged.
“No time for that.” Murdoch withdrew a knife and climbed several feet above the ground.
“What are you—?” I stared, wide-eyed as he cut the rope over his head.
He landed with a feline’s agility and wound the rope around his arm before affixing it to his hip. A final glance up, then around, and we were off again. Running through the garden, we beat the first cry of the guard by seconds. We took the same door Isolde had led me through, but then he twisted where she had turned and unlatched a heavier door. It swung wide over nothing. There was no light, but the stink of mildew made me sneeze. He stepped into the void with confidence I envied. I clung to him, blind. My feet hit stairs made slick with moisture, and we began a descent into what I realized must be the grotto. I was at once grateful Murdoch had spared me this place.
“Watch your step.” He reached for my hand, and I stepped beside him.
We had hit bottom. Even standing still, I had to balance or risk sliding into blackness.
“Stay close to me.” He led me past what I imagined were cells. They were not in use, and not one torch flickered to illuminate the space. I was left to my imagination, and it was far too vivid.
“How good is your eyesight?” No one should be as surefooted as he appeared to be.
He sounded amused. “My night vision is excellent, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Replaying last night’s lack of light, I understood I had been the only one at a disadvantage.
“You might have mentioned that sooner.”
“We are partners now,”
he said solemnly. “My secrets are yours for the asking.”
“You might regret those words,” I teased, to lessen the impact of his vow.
If I had thought him subtle with his affection, I found him frank with his meanings. He said I drove him insane. I had thought it an insult, though an oddly flattering one. Now I understood the mania he referenced. His body pressed to mine had driven away all thoughts but to claim him, an impulse Mother would shudder to know ever crossed my mind, a fierce desire that surprised me.
Perhaps Murdoch had been right. Perhaps I did understand force best.
After all, my teeth piercing the skin of his neck had made perfect sense to me.
“Here we are.” He placed my hand against the wall to anchor me. “Stay still.”
Metal grated and loose stone pattered the floor. Several harsh grunts later a burst of fresh air swept past me. In the distance, a shaft of pale morning light made what appeared to be the end of a tunnel glow. Running my hand along the wall, I reached Murdoch and saw he had swung open a hatch. He ushered me ahead, and I picked my way along until he sealed us out and caught me.
“Where does the tunnel end?” I peered ahead, but the morning’s light was too faint for me.
“In the forest outside Cathis.” He overcame me with ease and took the position as leader. “It would have been better to avoid this route. All guards know of the grotto, and Vaughn especially is fond of this exit when he craves escaping the city for a while. They will look for us here first.”
“Then we should have a care not to be here when they do.”
“We’ll bypass the waterfall.” He glanced back at me. “There’s a cavern there. It’s obvious. I doubt the paladin would waste time searching it, but we can hope the guards he sends might try.”
“I wondered at the noise.” It made my earring vibrate, but not in the way the harbinger did.
“I’ve heard it said there are all types of underground waterways beneath Cathis. Gods know it’s damp enough in the grotto.” He plunged through foliage into the forest without hesitation.
Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection Page 73
