“The family is likely completely under her control.” Tommy said, coming up behind her. “Alda’s brother is definitely this little lord. He appeared in court only a week before I was taken.”
“Then find your best suits boys,” Silver smirked. “The kingling is hosting a party, and we’ll be attending.”
“How do you plan to explain away the mask?” Tommy asked, honestly curious.
“I’ll suggest a masquerade to the master of ceremonies.” Silver said, mentally debating using a helio-demon. Looking at Keenan she decided that she could, if she wanted, use this event as a way to further his training, as any good teacher would. But could he accept what she had to show him? He’d watched what happened to Leigh; perhaps he would manage. If he was going to be an enforcer he’d have to learn to interrogate people properly sooner or later.
“Keenan, you’ll come with me, Tommy, stay here.” She decided.
“Hey! I’m just as skilled as he is!” Tommy complained. “I’m faster too!”
“It isn’t a question of skill this time.” Silver replied, bluntly. “It’s about how well you can be relied upon to follow orders.” She stood from her chair and walked to the shelves on the walls where she selected two thin phials of patho-demon blood and strapped them to her belt near the small of her back. “You would not be able to stomach what I need to do.”
“If you’re talking about torturing the master of ceremonies the way you did those members of Viper’s Crew.” Tommy rightly guessed, naming the organisation that had served as a front for Kobos’ true army. “Then you don’t have to do at all! You have the power to will a demon into him, plant what you want him to do and make him forget afterwards without even touching him.”
“If Keenan could use demonic power then I would simply teach him to do it that way.” Silver defended what she was about to do. “However, in terms of his education he needs to see this. If he plans on staying with me for any extended amount of time, he needs to learn to deal with who I am and what I can do.”
“You’ll go too far.” Tommy warned.
“Will I?” She queried. “I don’t do this out of cruelty. It’s cold; I use the amount of pain necessary and then reap the rewards. It’s not something I enjoy doing, breaking a person until they belong to me. But it works.”
Tommy’s stone silence was enough evidence of what he thought of her plan while Keenan seemed to have taken up mentally conversing with a higher being. Praying wasn’t going to spare him from what she had to teach. An enforcer needed to be able to use torture as a weapon, there was no point in even training him for the thieves if he couldn’t stomach her handiwork.
“Are you coming?” Silver systematically checked her blades, “or do I have to send you back to the thieves. You have no purpose to them if you fail here.”
“I’ll come.” Keenan replied, but his tone said he wouldn’t enjoy it.
Good, he shouldn’t enjoy an enforcer’s work – it was one of the bloodiest on the face of the world – he just had to be good at it.
He stood, not going for any weapons and Silver understood the silent message – he would watch, but he was not going to help.
The run to Morendor was silent, and her stalking of the master of ceremonies was observed with careful disapproval. As much as Silver was determined not to let his accusing eyes get to her, she couldn’t help but hate her father all the more for what he had made her. But at the same time, she wouldn’t trade the strength he had forged into her for anything.
They tracked the master of ceremonies to a quiet pathway through the palace gardens, he was an old man, moving slowly and with a limp that told her every step was painful. His hair was long and pure white, tied at the base of his neck with ornate metal bands before falling to the middle of his back, displaying the epaulets of gold on his scarlet coat of office.
Silver took care not to get blood on that immaculate uniform as she snuck up behind him and knocked him out with the pommel of her sword. The job of catching and carrying him away from the well-lit, guarded gardens fell to Keenan while Silver flew above and directed him away from the patrols and into the forest beyond.
The clearing she led them to was the same one where she had first appeared to Marten all those years ago. No-one could say she wasn’t sentimental.
“To pass this test, you cannot look away.” Silver muttered. “Later there will be a quiz.”
The last comment earned her a scowl, but it was better than his passive distrustful look of before.
“Just think of him as an animal.” She replied, removing the man’s red jacket and shirt. She didn’t know why she was giving him tips, but when that one earned her a grim eye roll she relaxed slightly.
With a piece of rope she bound his hands above him to a strong tree branch, making sure his feet couldn’t touch the floor, so that already he would feel the burn of being supported by his arms when he woke.
He came-too soon enough and Silver didn’t bother with the niceties; the who, what and why of why they were there. She simply took a small blade and pressed the sharp tip to his exposed armpit.
He screamed as the blade sliced through his flesh like a hot knife through butter. She cut till the tip of the knife came into contact with bone, but slowly, oh so slowly, so as to draw out the pain.
Blood ran, dark and glossy in the night, flowing down to his trousers where it merged with the fabric, staining it.
“What do you want?” The man yelled out as Silver played, scratching the tip of the blade against bone till she found the joint. “I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Perhaps, but I need a playmate.” Silver replied, twisting the knife sharply and with force until she cracked the bone and heard an answering scream. “Play with me?”
Blood mixed with his white hair and Silver gasped theatrically. “Pretty, pretty hair! Don’t get blood on it! Here, I’ll help you.”
She took the ponytail and knotted it, dragging it upwards and securing it to the branch as well, forcing his face downwards. The pain would have been tiny in comparison to the knife still hanging from under his raised arm, but he screeched just the same.
“Oh yes! Games wouldn’t be fun if we couldn’t make any noise.” Silver mocked even as she observed Keenan’s stony stance. “We can make as much noise as we want, there’s no-one to whine at us.”
“I don’t know anything!” He protested. “I’m of no use to you!”
“Silly you! I need you to play with. You’ll be very useful.” Silver pulled his head up to look her in the eyes, making his hair pull against his scalp. His eyes squeezed shut like a child trying to ignore what was in front of them.
Taking her smaller blade – a hairpin thin one – she pinched his eyelid between two fingers and pulled it away from his skull.
“I want you to look at me.” She informed him, controlling him easily as she placed the blade by his nose and sliced.
Screams rent the night asunder as blood flowed freely from his eye. His uncontrollable urge to blink forced the wound to move and mix with his tears. He tried to swing himself away from her, but like a pendulum he only move closer to her on the return swing where she deftly pinched the second eyelid and replaced the knife by his face, running the sharp edge along the skin she touched, gently, mockingly.
In another second the skin was gone, and in each hand she pinched a piece of skin, with thin little eyelashes still attached.
She placed them side by side on the grass, “Let’s build a picture.” She suggested, once his screams had subsided to whimpers.
Her real reason for laying things out in order was so that when she had broken him she could use demon blood to reattach them and send him back looking good as new. To regrow all the things she planned to remove tonight would drain a demon dry and leave him looking twenty years younger which would make him suspicious and therefore unsuitable for the job she planned.
It took less time than usual, and Silver cursed herself for using such a weak subject for her demonstration
as she tipped demon blood onto the pieces of his body that were reattaching themselves.
“That was over relatively quickly.” She commented, avoiding Keenan’s gaze. “Sometimes it takes days.”
“The thieves,” Keenan began quietly, “Have a standing arrangement with the Guild of Death. They interrogate anyone we wish them to in exchange for information.”
Silver stopped what she was doing. “Then why not tell me that and circumvent this?” She knew his answer before he opened his lips.
“Curiosity.”
“The kingling threw up when I made him watch…” She trailed off in silent question.
He didn’t reply, and for some minutes she continued her task without pressing him, pouring demon blood into wounds so deep they had exposed marrow.
“I focused on you.” The words were so unexpected that she paused. “You looked like you were enjoying it, he believed you were. Silver, you laughed as you skinned the area between his fingers and pinned it so it looked like he had webbed hands.” He sighed loudly. “How am I to believe you didn’t enjoy it? Where did you even learn to do something like that?”
She knew that his questions were rhetorical, but she gave him an answer. “Because I watched my father do it to every courtier who hadn’t fled Elvardis when I was a girl.”
“That’s sick.” Keenan looked at her sadly. “How old were you?”
“Eight. He was driven insane by war from before the time of my birth.” Silver knew the logical reasons for what he’d become, it didn’t mean she had to feel pity for the man. “I hated him from the moment I realised what hate was. Afterwards he dragged my maid in and ordered me to do to her what he’d done to them. I was too young to realise that stabbing a dagger into that girl’s heart would have been the kinder thing to do.”
Keenan fell silent once more and she took her time patching up her handiwork. Blood and gore didn’t affect her much, so she had no reason to hurry. When she was finished, she stood back and slashed at the rope; the man fell straight to his knees and stayed there, looking up in macabre reverence.
“You will go back to the palace and suggest to the king that one of the noble families had requested a masquerade. You will advise him to appease such a powerful family and that it is a small concession to make. During the ball you will let myself and my guests into the party and you will show me where I can find…” She turned to look at Keenan who picked up where she left off.
“The first son of duchess Beatrice of Fenkirk.”
“Is that understood?” She demanded.
“Yes mistress.” The master of ceremonies looked at her serenely.
“Once I am inside you will make no move to seem like you know me,”
“Yes mistress.”
“Are any of the elven royal family attending?” She asked, just to make sure she would go unnoticed.
“The elven king and all of his brothers, except Prince Roan.”
“Why all of them?”
“King Marten wishes to make an announcement, mistress. I don’t know what it is.”
“I do.” Silver had been expecting this for some time.
Marten was a good man, and he wouldn’t allow his daughter to have the humiliation of being a bastard. This ball would no doubt be an announcement of his marriage to Romana, but Silver would bet it wouldn’t go down well. Stupid kingling – what happened to the days of quiet weddings?
“Go.” Silver said to the man. “Walk back to the palace and behave normally till you have to carry out your orders.”
“Yes mistress.” The master of ceremonies turned and wandered in the direction of the road, accepting his coat from Keenan as he did so.
“We have a secondary purpose,” Silver informed Keenan. “Protect Romana at all costs. There’s a chance after the kingling makes his announcement a few disgruntled nobles – mainly those controlled by Alda – may go for her throat. That cannot happen.”
She would assign the men to guard her sister; capturing a being of unknown capabilities would be more difficult and require a lot more control. She could, of course, simply leave the guards to deal with any of Alda’s puppets, but she didn’t believe that pack of bumbling fools remotely qualified to protect the niece of the Silver Eyed Wytch.
Keenan and Tommy, at least, had the proper training.
“Do you have appropriate clothes?” Silver asked Keenan, stepping purposely around the blood soaked grass.
“I’m a master thief.” Keenan retorted. “I can easily procure some.”
Smirking at his arrogance, Silver took to the skies. “Don’t be late.” She yelled to the ground as her wings carried her away from the dawn and into Dalmorin.
“Lena, do I still own all of those gowns?” She demanded as she entered the caves.
“No mistress, they were eaten by moths some years ago.” Lena calmly replied, her voice drifting from the kitchen.
“Moths?” Her diamond encrusted disguises had been laid to waste by insects?
“Yes mistress. However master Tommy has been shopping for you.”
“Shopping?” It appeared Silver had lost the ability to do anything other than repeat words back at Lena, but still, all of those gowns had held memories and were gifts from her brothers, and they had been destroyed while she was still growing into her immortality.
“He went to the wytch Joanna,” Lena confirmed. “I think you’ll find it very suitable; he posed as a lady-knight’s squire looking for a battle ready dress for her.”
Silver almost smiled but suppressed the urge.
“Where is it?” She asked.
“In your room,” The brownie replied with a knowing smile. “He brought a mask to match, and the fabric repels stains and is as tough as dragon hide. Not to mention the fact that there is an impenetrable glamour over it, so any weapons containing metal near to the fabric disappear.”
“I think it’s time I got dressed.” Silver hated the words even as she spoke them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
GATECRASHERS
Several hours later, her skin shining with powder, lips painted and her eyes rimmed with kohl Silver gazed down at the dress laid out on the bed. It was crimson silk, long and flowing with a thigh high slit on one side that would allow her easy access to the knives strapped invisibly to each of her thighs. Cut outs also featured around her waist, framed by a thick line of silver beading embellished with rubies which continued around to serve as the halter which kept the backless dress from falling down. Her mask was silver filigree, fashioned to seem as if flames were reaching out away from her eyes and it matched with the ruby encrusted silver hairpins, earrings and chandelier necklace that had also been purchased. No expense had been spared and Silver slipped it on, pleased with the way her wings were easily able to unmerge and spread out because of the backless state of the dress.
“You look stunning, mistress.” Lena said as she finished pinning her hair into place, “The men await your company at the carriage.”
“Thank-you,” Silver replied, moving towards the doorway with an elegance born of years of practice in the red sandals that made her three inches taller.
“Going out?” Leigh asked, her voice rough as the centaur leant against the doorframe of her room.
Silver took a moment to observe the other woman’s unsteady stance, the bandages with blood showing through and her pale pallor before she simply walked past her.
“You’re not healing as fast as you would like, I take it.” She ignored the centaur, though it was the first time she’d seen her since Theria and her brothers had attacked her.
“I questioned you, doubted you. I had no right.” Leigh admitted. “You took out the payment for such disloyalty after all you had done for me. Now all I can do is beg for forgiveness. I won’t bother asking for your trust because I’ve never had it and I doubt I ever will, but I need to be useful to someone, and I can’t be as a cripple.”
Silver smirked. “Beg, then. You said I wouldn’t make you beg, you thought I w
as soft.”
Leigh collapsed to her knees, her head falling forwards. “I beg you, please. Heal me.”
Inwardly, Silver hated to see the proud centaur reduced to this, but it was necessary. “Lena, bring her demon blood. One phial only and then take five hours to rest and let it work.” She turned on her heel and left with those parting words, not comfortable with spending more time looking at the reminder of what she had done to Leigh.
Outside the great stone gates of Dalmorin Keenan and Tommy also waited with cloaks drawn over their clothes, their faces set in a grim line.
“Your job is to make sure Romana is safe.” She informed the two, passing them two phials of liquid each. “One contains my blood, dab a little on everyone you see, just to make sure. The other is demon blood for if you are injured.”
“Are you sure you’ll be alright, taking on a being from another world on your own?” Tommy asked. “The guards, Marten, the elven royals and even the wytches will be protecting Romana; surely we should go with you?”
“I don’t want to test your skills in such an unpredictable environment. You’re both excellent soldiers, but my sister and my unborn niece need your protection more than I do.”
The grim looks on their faces told her they weren’t happy, but they accepted the blood anyway, both of them shoving them into small holders on the lining of the sword belts that, as men, they could get away with wearing and not look suspicious.
She opened a portal to the grounds of the palace, just below the marble steps that led into the entrance hall, mentally calling the master of ceremonies to them. It took the old man several minutes, but he bowed when he arrived.
“Mistress, I have done as you have said.” He informed her. “There is a servants’ entrance through which you can enter unseen.”
“Good. Show us and then return to where you are supposed to be and pretend to be none the wiser.”
“As you wish, mistress.” He began to limp along the side of the palace for some way till they reached the back wall of the kitchens, where he showed her through an open door, down a deserted corridor and into an unused banquet room. He pressed on one of the marble blocks that made up the walls, and instantly it swung away, leaving a well-lit passage way, supported by beams overhead. “Turn left at the end, then right and when you come to a junction press on the wall straight ahead of you to exit, you’ll be behind a statue in the ballroom.” The master of ceremonies looked pleased with himself. “May I take your cloak before you go in, mistress?”
Silver's Redemption (Soul Merge Saga Book 3) Page 25
