“Too hot for my taste.”
“But you have a nice heavy coat of fur.”
“Another weakness. Thin skin, slow legs, weak bones. You would never survive in our wilderness.”
“You’re right about that,” Rie agreed, readily. “We managed to survive one night out on the mountain, but the shelter took forever to build. I couldn’t imagine doing that every night during travel.”
“You were supposed to be in the village that night.”
Daenor’s hand, which had been rubbing gentle circles on her back, suddenly stilled.
“Oh? And how do you know that?” he asked.
“We were told you would be.”
So that answered part of the question. The wolves had an ally in the city. Someone who would have seen or heard of Garamaen’s arrival . . . and his departure. Perhaps someone who hadn’t known that Rie and Daenor had escaped through the tunnels, delaying that departure. And maybe that same person had helped the wolves set this trap.
“Since when do the wolves work with the frost sidhe?” It had to be a frost sidhe. The barbegazi would never ally themselves with the wolves. Especially not after they had begun destroying the villages.
“Runt,” a deep voice growled from the tunnel. “No talking.”
Lil lowered her head to the side, revealing her throat in a submissive gesture. After a few heartbeats, she returned to her napping position, curled tightly into a ball of gray and black fur.
Daenor glanced at Rie and pointed his chin back at their sorry excuse for a bed. When they got there, he rolled her cloak into a sausage shaped pillow and set it up against the wall. Still not entirely comfortable, at least with his coat beneath her and the pillow at her back her legs and butt wouldn’t fall asleep.
But when her stomach growled loudly enough that even Lil looked up, Rie couldn’t wait any longer. Hopefully the other wolves had gone, or at least weren’t paying any attention. For some reason, Rie wouldn’t mind asking for things from the smallest of the wolves, but the thought of the bigger males hearing her request made her question the need. She didn’t want them to think she was begging.
“I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?” Rie asked.
Lil’s eyes closed to half-mast, and she opened her mouth in another wide yawn. A passive aggressive show of teeth, or a lack of interest, Rie couldn’t be sure. But she got up without another word and left the cavern.
Another wolf, one with darker fur and a white spot just above his nose, poked his head in the cavern entrance, as if to make sure Rie and Daenor knew they were still being watched. Sitting half in the shadow of the tunnel, Rie could hardly see the back half of his body. It made her wonder how many more wolves were sitting in that tunnel, waiting for their prisoners to do something stupid, like try to escape.
While they waited, Rie cuddled into Daenor’s side, accepting the comfort of his warmth. They didn’t say anything, knowing the wolves would hear every word, but having him at her side was enough. The wolves could have very easily decided to separate them, to chain them on opposite sides of the hot springs without enough slack in the chain to touch. It gave Rie hope that they weren’t going to be tortured or hurt indiscriminately. As bad as imprisonment was, she knew it could be so much worse.
She’d experienced it.
Movement at her back and Daenor’s positioning of their gear made sense. His thoughts must be clearer and more organized than her own. Tiny claws pricked Rie’s earlobe as Gikl made his way to her shoulder.
“Niinka flew to Garamaen,” the pixie chimed, his voice so quiet even Rie had a hard time hearing his words, and he was speaking almost directly into her eardrum. “Hiinto is watching the front. The caves are too dark for us to see much, but the wolves are restless.”
“Can you pick the lock? Set us free?”
An agitated flick of the pixie’s wings. “I’ll try, but I don’t think so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THROUGH THE ICE gates and into the city, Judith kept her wings open and arched over her shoulders and baby Bren. The guards were smart enough to keep their distance after they’d patted her all over for weapons. They’d even checked inside the cloth wrapping the child, as if Judith would keep a sharp blade next to a baby’s skin.
Pedestrians on the street watched the procession with wide eyes. Judith was fairly certain none had ever before encountered a guardian, and many pointed at her wings as if they were the most fascinating thing they’d ever seen. Perhaps they were.
Luckily, they didn’t have to walk far. The guards led her into what was clearly a military complex, not too different from the training grounds she was used to. An open courtyard for drills led up to a four-story structure built of ice and stone. Though not as impressive as the tall crystalline spires located deeper in the city, the building was obviously designed by the frost sidhe, with tall narrow doors, and geometric designs cut into the ice-covered walls.
Judith was forced to tuck her wings tight to her back to pass through the building’s entry. Even still, the wrist joint of her wing brushed the keystone of the peaked doorway, sending a shiver down her spine. An ominous sense of dread spread through her limbs as they entered the eerily silent and cold space.
Bren didn’t seem to notice or mind, however. She blew a raspberry and looked up into Judith’s eyes with adoration. Judith patted her on the back, gently reassuring them both that nothing was going to happen. She would find a way to reach the barbegazi.
A woman sat behind a desk in the receiving area, monitoring the front door. She stood as soon as Judith entered the room, her frosty blue eyes assessing. Twin blades—naked on the desk—and the scar that crossed her face from ear to chin suggested the woman was more than just a secretary.
“Cell one.” The woman’s voice was cold, colder even than her appearance. “The general will join you momentarily.”
Judith’s personal guards strode forward, still keeping their distance but herding her past the desk. The woman’s hands hovered over her knives, twitching with an obvious desire to use them. Judith glanced at her with wary eyes, but the woman wasn’t looking at her anymore. Instead, she was staring at her hands, as if they would betray her.
The guards opened a set of locked doors at the back of the room. They continued their procession through two more sets of locked doors before arriving at what could only be described as a dungeon. Stone walls, bare and frosted with ice. A single iron-studded door for entry and exit. A bucket in one corner and a narrow bench against the back wall. No water or other provisions that Judith could see.
A glance into the bucket proved that the pot hadn’t been emptied since the cell’s last occupant, and the contents had frozen over. Luckily, the cold kept the smell down.
Judith paced across the floor, from one wall to the other, rocking Bren gently in her arms. The baby had fallen asleep again, though Judith knew she would be getting hungry soon. She was getting hungry too, come to think of it. But no matter. Unlike the elves and fae, the angels of the Daemon Realm weren’t just long-lived, they were nearly immortal and could survive for months—even years—without sustenance. Bren was another matter altogether. What was she going to do?
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. None of this was her fault. There was no reason she should be here at all, except that she was still chasing and protecting Apprentice Sanyare. And now this child, a baby, had lost her family and been imprisoned like a criminal. A baby. For all that’s good in all the realms, children were innocent. She couldn’t even talk.
Yet the more time Judith spent with Apprentice Sanyare and her master, the worse things became. They couldn’t just leave well enough alone. They meddled and interfered, forcing their vision of the future on everyone else. Was it justice, to let others deal with the consequences of your own ill-informed choices? Was it truth, to discover that your past had negatively affected the future?
A clank and a groan drew Judith’s attention back to the entrance of the cell. A guar
d pushed open the door and the man from the gate strode through. The door shut behind him.
Judith wrapped a protective hand around the back of Bren’s head, her wings opening in an automatic defensive stance. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough space to do more than flare the tips a bit.
“You have no right to keep us here,” Judith stated. She would defend this child, and she would leave this realm to the whims of the frost sidhe and Sanyaro.
“What are you doing in this realm, Guardian?” The frost sidhe sneered the last word like a curse.
Judith narrowed her eyes, tilting her head to the side as she examined the man. He wore the armor of the frost sidhe, but a more ornate version, with embossed knot-work on the breastplate and heavy fur trim around the shoulders and neck. His white-blond hair had been braided away from his face to trail down his back in a long straight fall of silken locks. The blue of his eyes was a summer sky, but the arrogant curl of his lips suggested a frozen heart.
“What do you know of my kind?” Judith asked. Guardians rarely left the Daemon Realm, since the early days of man’s expansion across the Human Realm. Quite simply, with billions of souls to manage, there was too much work to allow for much travel. Only the reapers were allowed to see the realms from which they cut the threads of life, but even they were restricted to the space between.
“I know enough. But this is my interrogation, not yours. So I’ll ask you one more time, what are you doing here?”
Lying went against her nature. She wasn’t good at it. But Sanyaro and his apprentice were still considered enemies of this realm.
“I am on assignment from the Moirai.”
“Lies.” The man glared at Judith with cruel eyes.
Judith’s spine stiffened. “I am a guardian. I do not lie.”
“Have you come to claim the final survivors, then? To give the human witch a chance to claim this realm as her own?”
“Of course not. The Daemon Realm doesn’t take sides.”
“You were there. I saw you strike down one of my soldiers.”
“We were there to try to prevent the horde of the wicked from possessing the bodies of the unprotected living.”
The man’s head twitched. A nervous tic?
“What is your name?” Judith asked, a creeping suspicion wriggling its way into her conscious mind.
“I am . . . General Maethor.” The man’s spine straightened, his hands clasped behind his back. His soldier’s training was obviously rising to the front of his mind. But his lapse in posture and the hesitation with which he said his name . . . .
“How long have you been a general, sir?” Judith asked, keeping her tone level. She worried her suspicions might leak into her voice, but she needed to know. Was he dual-souled?
Unfortunately, he seemed to have caught on. His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched. After a heartbeat or more of silent challenge, he leaned forward, pushing into Judith’s space. His head twisted to the side in an almost daemonic fashion.
“As I said, I’ll be asking the questions, here.” He paused. “Where did you find the child?”
“In the village of Bjergtopp, being cared for by Sanyaro.”
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted it. She hadn’t meant to reveal her connection to Lord Garamaen and his apprentice. But she wasn’t used to hiding her thoughts and intentions.
General Maethor pursed his lips, his expression livid. “He survived?” He took a deep breath, fury in his eyes.
He knew.
Judith didn’t need to say any more.
“Then they failed,” he growled. Judith thought she could almost see the wicked soul riding the frost sidhe’s form. “No, it is too late for that. We must go up the mountain immediately.”
“What?” Judith asked.
General Maethor strode toward the door, ignoring the angel and her charge. He pounded on the wood, which immediately opened.
Bren began to wail, her voice surprisingly strong given the tiny lungs producing the sound.
The general glanced over his shoulder. “Lock them in.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JUDITH TUCKED HER legs up onto the cold, hard bench, wrapping her wings around her body and tiny Bren as best she could. She was stuck in a prison cell with a baby. Her weapons were gone. Her allies—the two she could claim in this realm—had no idea where she was, and one of them was also imprisoned.
She needed to get Bren to her people. She needed to find allies for Garamaen and find a way to free Rie.
Judith felt something wet and warm against her hand. Bren smiled up at her. Judith pressed her eyes closed. And now the baby had wet herself—or worse—and she had no way of cleaning the child or properly caring for her. She’d never even changed a baby before. Nor did she have any milk.
But what if . . . Judith smiled. The guards hadn’t been entirely unreasonable. Surely they wouldn’t allow a child to sit in its own waste. In which case, they would have to open the door.
“Guard!” she said, pounding on the steel. A small panel opened at the top, allowing the female guard to peer into the space. “The baby needs to be changed.”
The woman rolled her eyes but unlocked the door. “Give her to me, I will take care of her.”
“Not a chance.” Judith grabbed the woman’s arm, yanking her inside the cell and sweeping her wings around to knock the guard toward the back of the room, away from the door.
A male guard stood just outside the door, his eyes wide and mouth open in surprise. Before he could react, Judith stepped out into the hall. Keeping her left hand tucked around Bren, she flicked her wings in a jab toward his face, pushing him off balance. He recovered, catching his balance with a back-step toward the open cell door.
The woman meanwhile had come back toward the front, her sword bared in her hand. Judith couldn’t let her escape. A side kick into the man’s gut sent him reeling backward, knocking into the female guard and back into the cell.
Judith slammed the door shut. With the key still in the lock, it was easy enough to bar the door and walk away. No one else was in the hall. Their pounding—if heard—would be easily mistaken for the protests of the prisoners.
Which gave Judith pause. Were there other prisoners in these cells? If so, did they deserve to be there? Or, like her, were they imprisoned for the hubris and insanity of the dual-souled?
Deciding to risk the time to find out, Judith walked the length of the icy dungeon. Most of the doors were open and empty, but there were three that remained closed and locked. She peered into the first cell.
A man covered in filth and wrapped in rags, knocked on his own head with a closed fist. His gaze traveled around the room, but didn’t pause at the open grate in the door. He didn’t even seem to see it. Lacking the pale blond hair and pointed ears of the frost sidhe, he didn’t appear to be one of their own, but the wild wide eyes suggested some kind of insanity had set in.
Judith left him where he sat.
The next door-grate opened to reveal an imperious frost sidhe soldier. He wore no armor, and no weapons, but sat with his spine straight and a recalcitrant expression on his face. A bruise around his eye and raw scrape across his cheek marred the otherwise perfect pale complexion. Eyes of the winter sky assessed Judith through the hands-breadth of space in the door.
“You are not the guard.” His baritone voice was surprisingly smooth, given his injuries. Judith would have expected a gruff warrior, not princely eloquence.
“No. I’m not. What have you done to be imprisoned here?” Judith asked.
The man pursed his lips. “I disagreed with General Maethor, as you know. Everyone knows.”
“I wasn’t there. Tell me what happened and I may let you out.”
His eyes narrowed, but he complied. “The general has gone mad, chasing ghosts and seeing conspiracies where there are none. After our defeat at the arches, I tried to force his resignation to protect our people.”
“So he did this to you in punishment?”<
br />
“He calls me traitor.”
“I need to get to the barbegazi chieftain. If I let you out of this cell, will you help me?” Judith asked.
The man stood, tilting his head to the side in obvious suspicion. “You are not a frost sidhe.”
Judith’s dull gray eyes probably gave that away. It was all he would be able to see through the narrow opening in the door. “No.”
“What do you need with the barbegazi?”
“Help me, and I will let you out of this prison cell.” Judith couldn’t voice her suspicions, not yet. Nor could she explain her limitations. “Once I’ve achieved my purpose, I will help you stop the general.”
“Agreed.”
Judith questioned the quick response, but at least he didn’t appear insane. Even if he didn’t help, he didn’t seem to belong in this cell.
As soon as the door opened, the man gaped at the happily waving arms of Bren in her blanket. Judith tucked them back in as best she could, once more.
“Is that a baby?” the soldier asked.
Judith gave a single nod. “Your general shoved us both in one of these cells without supplies. Now Bren is wet and hungry, and I have no recourse. It’s part of the reason I need help.”
“And you chose to find that help in prison?” he asked, incredulous.
“Not my choice. But I’d like to check the rest of the cells for additional unwarranted prisoners.”
“I heard a woman screaming to be let out. She may have been barbegazi.”
Judith hurried to the last door on this floor, throwing open the viewing grate.
A young woman shortly out of her maturity sat hunched on the bench, her arms tucked into her lap. Dressed all in white, she was bundled up for the cold, except for the oversized bare feet that swung in the air above the floor.
“I have nothing else to tell you,” the woman murmured, barely glancing up at the door. “I don’t know anything.”
SanyareThe Winter Warrior Page 14
