“Even so, you led the campaign. Yours should be the greatest reward.”
“I’m still not comfortable being a duke. The last thing I want is more money or titles,” said Will.
Master Courtney’s expression seemed to indicate he thought that to be an odd sentiment, but he didn’t argue the point. Opening the door, he wished his former student well, and then Will was on his way.
***
Martin Bradshaw opened his eyes and stared around the dark interior of his room. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it might be. His wards were still intact, and they were far more thorough than the simpler wards that the military sorcerers were putting around the walls of Klendon. Nothing could pass through them without alerting him.
Gradually, he became aware of a darkness in the corner of the room, a place harder to see than the other corners, as though his eyes didn’t want to look there. Clenching his jaw, Martin focused his attention and brought his wayward eyes under control.
His heart skipped a beat when he finally spotted two eyes staring back at him. A man sat unnoticed in the chair there. “Good evening, Martin,” said the visitor.
Martin recognized the man immediately, but that only increased his fear. “How did you get in here?”
“I walked. No one paid much heed to me for some reason.”
“The wards—”
“Are still intact, as they still will be tomorrow. You know why I’m here, don’t you?”
“No idea. Unless you blame me for what happened. I had no say in who the king appoints to govern the—”
A source-link flashed into existence, and Martin found both his voice and his body paralyzed. The man rose from his chair and walked over to stare down at him. “I’m going to return your ability to speak in a moment, and when I do I want answers, not lies. This will be your only chance to convince me you deserve to live.”
“It was the king’s idea,” said Martin the instant his voice returned. “Not mine! I never wanted to do any of it. I like you, William! If anything, I would have preferred we become allies. Now that you’ve escaped all his traps, we have an opportunity to work together.”
Will’s eyes were cold as he stared at the man he had once thought might be his friend. “A partial truth, not that it matters. I lied—I’m going to kill you whatever you say. Would you like to know why?”
“They’ll know it was you. Think it through, William! What’s the king going to do once they find your traces in this room?”
Will held up one hand. It was covered in a particular frequency of void turyn. “They’re not going to think a human did this. I can assure you of that.”
Martin’s eyes went wide with fear. “How?”
“The same way I bypassed your wards, not that it should matter to a man who is about to be dead. It’s enough that you know that the identification spells they try to use won’t show them my face, no matter who casts them. I’ve tested it to be sure. Even my lovely wife returned a blank when she tried it, and she’s closer to me than any of the king’s investigators.”
Martin started to reply, but Will paralyzed the man’s throat again and continued, “Speaking of my wife, she’s half the reason you’re dying tonight. I might have forgiven you for trying to have me killed, but she nearly died at the same time. The second reason is my friend, Bug. He died apologizing for what you forced him to do.”
“It was clever how you tried to frame Lustral, but it was also your undoing. Even after Selene figured out that one of the two of you must have approved the gold transfer, I still might have thought it was him, but after Bug brought me Lustral’s research journal, I knew that that didn’t make sense.”
Will leaned closer, his eyes burning with dark fury. “But it was talking to your other master, Grim Talek, that made everything clear to me. Until then, I didn’t realize he was also pulling the strings, and that the silver tablets were his. From there, I realized you were almost certainly the one who killed Elizabeth Sundy. You were the one who asked Lustral to uncover the workings of the silver tablet, knowing I would spy on him and see him with it.” He released Martin’s throat for a moment to hear his reply.
“William, please think about this! Why would I assume you would discover Lustral had the tablet? It makes no sense. Give me a chance to explain my side of this misunderstanding.”
The continued lies made Will even angrier. “It’s too late for you now, but in your next life, be more careful when you make deals with the fae. My grandmother may have traded you that information about my astral abilities, but she didn’t agree to keep the fact that she gave you that tidbit of knowledge a secret from me. Although I found it rather annoying that she hid the knowledge until after I slew Elthas and renegotiated the accord with her.”
Martin looked confused. “Grandmother?”
“Aislinn.”
Martin Bradshaw’s face went ashen, and his lips opened in panic. “You—!”
He paralyzed the frightened man again, then finished the sentence for him, “—don’t care. I’m sorry, Martin—not for killing you, though—I’m sorry for how I’m going to kill you. You see, in order to perfect this scene, you need to die in a way that’s consistent with story I’m creating. Fortunately, your master was kind enough to teach me one of his spells. It’s a nasty piece of work. It leaves the skin intact while grinding up your bones and internal organs.”
The older nobleman’s eyes bugged out of his head, but despite his terror, he was completely unable to move. Will released the spell he’d prepared and watched as the new governor’s skin writhed grotesquely. The room was filled with the sickening sound of bones popping and grinding as they shifted and churned through the hapless man’s flesh. While his skin remained unbroken, blood and other fluids began leaking from every orifice, staining the man’s nightclothes and bedsheets.
It was a small mercy that since Martin Bradshaw had no supernatural healing abilities, he died within the first ten or fifteen seconds, cutting short his suffering.
Despite his anger, the sights, sounds, and smells turned Will’s stomach, but he didn’t retch or vomit. Sadly, he had come a long way from the young man who had once vomited into the snow after beating a soldier to death with his staff. Turning his back on the dead man, he increased the turyn sensitivity of his eyes and reexamined the room again, making sure the traces of magic he left behind were only those he intended to leave.
It matched Grim Talek’s turyn signature fairly closely, though Will was working purely from memory. A perfect match would only be helpful if one of the investigators actually knew the lich, which was unlikely. As things stood, it would be very obvious that an undead monster had snuck in and killed Governor Bradshaw, and if Lognion happened to have knowledge of the spell used, it would essentially cinch the case that something terribly evil had done the deed.
I don’t think he’d believe I was capable of something like this, thought Will. In truth, he wished he wasn’t capable of it, but over the last two years he had been forced to change his view of himself. He wanted to do the right thing, but he was becoming less and less squeamish about how he accomplished his goals.
Will left the same way he had entered—on foot—and the guards were none the wiser. After he was out of Klendon, he walked a mile or two before calling for Tailtiu. Taking a route that once might have been too dangerous for him, they arrived in Rimberlin within a few hours.
Selene was waiting for him when he came in. “How did it go?”
He wrinkled his nose. “The spell was even more disgusting than I expected, but I didn’t leave any traces that don’t fit our story.”
She nodded. “Want some tea?” He nodded, and she called Jeremy to get the kettle heating. Then she led him to a couch and sat beside him so she could rub his shoulders. “Just relax. You’ve had a hard day.”
Will jerked away. “Stop. That’s seriously creepy.”
“Why?”
“I feel like a serial killer who just came home to his
psychotic wife who then congratulates him on a day of gruesome murders. I don’t want this to feel normal. I don’t want to relax. We should both feel bad about this.”
She studied his face for a moment, then replied, “But you don’t, do you?”
“I feel terrible,” he lied.
“No, you don’t.” She turned him around and began rubbing his shoulders again.
Despite himself, he felt the tension in his muscles fading. “Damn you. That feels good.”
“I know,” she responded. After a few minutes, she stopped, then asked, “Are you sure it was wise to point the finger at the lich?”
Will shrugged. “No one knows where he is anyway. If we had done it any other way, your father would have assumed it was me.”
She nodded. “That would have made him happy, and he would have seen you as an even worthier opponent. Whatever his plans are for you, he probably would have sped them up. This way he’ll suspect a new player in the game while also assuming you’re too weak to respond to his challenge.”
“Challenge?”
“Appointing Bradshaw instead of you or your father,” she clarified. “This way he will be less wary.”
That reminded him of another worry. “Ugh! What am I going to do if he appoints me as governor?”
“He won’t,” Selene answered confidently. “He would only do that if he decided he wanted to keep you alive longer. Moving you to Darrow and giving you more responsibility would make sense then, but you’re too popular right now. Rather than take the risk of setting the stage for a civil war, he’ll keep you here, close by, so he can see what you’re doing until he eliminates you for good.”
“That’s a relief, but I’m not sure I’ll be much happier if he appoints Mark Nerrow to the job.”
Selene’s expression turned sympathetic. “You’ve gotten a lot closer to him.”
He nodded. “He’ll want to restore Myrsta, and that’s a long trip just to visit someone. Not to mention my sisters would be expected to go with him.”
“Not until they finish their training,” said Selene.
“That’s just a year or two, probably.”
“Then we’d better make certain those city teleport beacons get built.” Leaning in, she gave him a brief kiss. “Don’t be so glum. There’s a lot to look forward to in the future. The information you gained from your grandmother will have a lot of far-reaching effects—and you are largely the one to credit for the benefits that result.”
The kiss had sent a warmth through him, and Will was eager to forget the chill of the night. “I’m tired of thinking of distant rewards,” he proclaimed.
She frowned. “What does that mean? You should always keep the future in mind—wooo!” She shouted in alarm as he stood and then picked her up without warning. As he carried her toward the stairs, she asked, “What about the tea?”
“To hell with it. For the moment all I can think about is a certain short-term reward.”
She laughed, and her laughing got louder by the time he reached the top of the stairs. Climbing the steps with her in his arms had nearly exhausted him. When he set her down at the top, she danced away on light feet. “You poor man,” she taunted. “Now that you’ve worn yourself out, I doubt you can catch me.”
Still panting, he grinned. “Start running and we’ll see.”
Keep an eye out for the next book:
The Wizard’s Crown
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Epilogue
Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4) Page 59
