Sharlee kissed him on the cheek. “You never do learn about people, do you? You must punish with one hand, which makes them fear and loathe you, and with the other hand, you must lighten the punishment, which changes the loathing into love even when the lash falls. In the end, he’ll beg you to beat him. We do need more dwarfs, eventually.”
“Ah! Very good,” Hector said with a clap of his hands. “I should know better than to doubt you, my Sharlee.”
Sharlee patted back a yawn—it had been a long night—and wandered over to the pool. “How long before they come, do you think?”
“They’ll come tomorrow night,” Hector replied. “They’ve found our house by now, and are examining the place as we speak. They’ll snatch a few hours of sleep next, make another trip to see the house in the afternoon, draw up their plan in the evening, and drop by after sunset.”
“Are you sure they won’t come tonight?” Sharlee said. “I could pop down to the Docks right now and wake Captain Greenstone.”
“That can wait until tomorrow,” Hector assured her. “If Danr were working alone, I might be worried, but we’re talking about a group, and groups tend to be more cautious. It’ll be tomorrow night.”
“Then in the morning we’ll have breakfast out here in the garden by the pool, despite the storm, so we can enjoy the mermaid before she leaves us, and then I’ll go down to the docks. Captain Greenstone won’t need much persuading when I remind her what she owes us.”
The wind rose again. “Never give your enemies a choice,” Hector agreed. “Never do.”
• • •
Ranadar, minus the stupid robe, finished his circuit of the house. It was a big house, deep within Old City. Old City housed commoners who came from old money and nobility who couldn’t afford the sumptuous Diamond District, which housed the Gold Keep. It was broad daylight, if cloudy, and the street was heavily trafficked—horses with laden carts, wealthy carriages, donkeys with pannier baskets, servants in livery, slaves with bands around their necks or wrists. The noise of clopping hooves and clattering wheels and shouting people swirled about him, mingling with the manure and urine in the streets—no sewers here as there were in Palana. Disgusting. Humans had no idea how to run a city. And was that a troll out in broad daylight? Even with a hat and heavy cloak to protect it from the sun, it thundered through the streets like a falling tree, and everyone ignored it except to get out of the way. Now that the mountains had opened up, Balsia was too welcoming for its own good. He snorted to himself. Humans tolerated full-blooded Stane in their cities but spat venom at half-bloods. Ranadar wondered if he would ever understand the Kin.
Ranadar pulled the hood of his cloak a little lower and concentrated on keeping the glamour up. This was difficult with all the iron about, but he managed. When people passed him by on the street, they went around him without truly noticing him, the way they might go around a tree in the forest without paying attention to it. This wasn’t true invisibility, but it would do.
The house Ranadar was scouting had three stories and was built of carefully mortared stone, itself surrounded by a high stone wall that took up most of the block. Ranadar failed to understand the need to build with stone. Stone was dead and dull and you could not change it easily. Wood was a much better choice. It had a life and voice and if you listened to it, the wood told you how it wanted to be shaped. Iron was even worse than stone. The awful black metal poisoned everything it touched, and some things it didn’t. Ranadar could feel it everywhere in this human city, dragging at him and sapping his strength. He wasn’t a particularly powerful magician, but he was still used to using at least a bit of glamour here and there, and it was damn hard in this idiotic city the humans had built. Half the time he had a headache, and the other half his stomach felt ready to empty itself on any available surface. He refused to complain, however. Even in exile, he was an elf and a prince, far above petty problems.
Besides, he had Talfi.
Rain came and went, pattering the cobblestones with tiny ant feet before it retreated. Ranadar could feel the tension sliding in from the Iron Sea, taste the salt on the air, sense the water on his skin. When the full storm arrived, perhaps it would wash away the stink and the manure, at least temporarily. He drifted through the street traffic. In his home forests of Alfhame, he had learned to slip into a herd of deer and wander among them without their notice, a skill many of his own kind had forgotten, and it came in handy here.
Around the front of the house, the house of the Obsidia couple, he abruptly encountered an enormous iron gate. The soap bubble glamour popped, and his gorge tried to come up. A pair of human women gasped at the sudden realization that an elf clad in green and brown had been standing in front of them all the while, and Ranadar turned his head to hide his face as the women bustled away. He swallowed burning acid and crossed the stones to get some distance from the iron.
The gate was wide enough for a pair of carriages. Beside it, a smaller gate was set into the wall so individual people could come and go without having to open the main gate. Through the poison bars, Ranadar glimpsed groomed gardens and perfect lawns—nature beaten into submission. It might as well be dead. Guarding the gate was a pair of golems. That showed real wealth. Only the dwarfs could make golems—tireless, obedient, incorruptible workers who cost twenty times the most expensive slave. They were also highly alert and all but impossible to sneak past.
Ranadar chewed his lip thoughtfully. According to the mayor, this was the Obsidia house, and the mermaid lay beyond that imposing iron. Ranadar had no feelings about the mermaid one way or the other. But the mermaid was important to Aisa, and that made her important to Ranadar. Aisa and Danr had been instrumental in bringing Talfi back to life after the Battle of the Twist, so if they wanted to rescue the mermaid, Ranadar would help rescue the mermaid. If Danr and Aisa wanted Ranadar to swim to the South Pole to hunt diamonds in the ice, Ranadar would do it. That was more than a little frightening—he was used to giving orders rather than taking them—but the exhilaration of having Talfi was utterly worth it.
Ranadar kept the memory of the first time he had met Talfi close inside him like a wyrm guarding gold treasure. Talfi had been a new slave in the palace, one among several, and Ranadar had been given the task of touching each one and infecting them with glamour, the addiction that made humans adore their elven owners and give them their utmost loyalty. Talfi stood before Ranadar in bronze shackles, his eyes downcast, and Ranadar lifted his chin so he could better look into Talfi’s eyes. He had expected to meet fear, resignation, or perhaps even defiance, but when this slave’s sky-blue eyes met his, Ranadar found … intrigue. That, and an open interest that went through Ranadar like a hot poker. Ranadar inhaled sharply.
“What … what is your name, slave?” he stammered.
“Talfi,” the slave said, and the word rolled over Ranadar like silken thunder.
“Talfi,” Ranadar repeated. “You are … mine.”
And instead of sighing or weeping or begging, as most slaves did, Talfi only grinned a grin that made the skies open wide. “As you wish, my lord.”
Eventually, Ranadar took Talfi on as his personal body slave, and they were rarely apart. Talfi became Ranadar’s Talashka, and Ranadar became Talfi’s uppity elf, but only when no one could hear.
They still had to be circumspect. Elves could keep human playthings, but actual emotion toward one was considered filth. Unfortunately, as a prince who normally did as he pleased, Ranadar was unused to keeping secrets. His father even tried to warn him once. One spring while they were standing on the shore of Lake Nu, Father pointed to a swarm of insects and said, as if in idle conversation, “Look at the mayflies there. They hatch, mate, and die, all within a single day, while we remain behind. And some of them—” As if on cue, a trout rose from the depths and gulped down a number of flies at once. “—die prematurely. That is a pity indeed, especially for those left behind to watch.”
Ranadar ignored the hint. He could not imagine a world
without Talfi, and therefore such a world could not exist. One cool spring night, Talfi whispered that he could not imagine a world without Ranadar, either, and their hearts became forever one. They were young and they both knew with every fiber of their beings that love would find a way around even death.
Only a week later, the door to Ranadar’s rooms banged open and both Father and Mother strode in like a pair of thunderheads. Behind them flitted a glowing sprite named RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky. Ranadar leaped out of bed, outraged and frightened, leaving Talfi tangled in the bedclothes behind him.
Father seized Talfi by the hair and yanked him naked out of the bed. Talfi, unable to resist the touch of an elf, dropped to the floor. “RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky overheard you talking, Ranadar,” Father snapped. “This human called you uppity, and you used a term of endearment with him in return. Is that true?”
“True blue, who knew?” giggled RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky.
Ranadar opened his mouth to lie, then felt the truth glamour settle over him. Father was a powerful magician, and he had RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky to feed him power. Ranadar tried to fight the truth, but the power was too strong.
“It is true,” his mouth said.
Mother’s lips tightened and the tendons on her neck stood out. Father sighed. “Do you love him, Ranashka?”
The word caught Ranadar off guard, as did Father’s expression. Father had shown Ranadar no real affection for more than forty years now. The unexpected gesture broke Ranadar’s resistance, and words came out in a rush.
“I do, Father, and he loves me. It is the truth.”
“Truth of youth, in sooth,” said RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky.
“You know that in no time at all he will grow into a decrepit old creature,” Mother said, “with rheumy eyes and wrinkled skin and spotted hands and clawed fingers and shriveled organs. And that he is not Fae, with no real thoughts or feelings of his own.”
“That is not the truth,” Ranadar said. He looked down at Talfi, his Talashka, who was kneeling uncertainly on the wooden floor. “Talfi thinks and feels just as I do. And we will deal with the problems of age when the time comes.”
Father nodded once. “Perhaps it is best to deal with it now.”
In one quick move, he drew a bronze knife, pulled back the unresisting Talfi’s head, and slashed his throat. Before Ranadar quite understood what was happening, Talfi was falling to the floor, clutching at his neck in a growing puddle of blood. He looked at Ranadar with sky-blue eyes, shuddered hard, and died.
Ranadar left the palace, unable for decades to even share a room with his parents. He put aside the rich robes and wealthy chambers of the court and instead roamed the forests of Alfhame, looking for he knew not what. His parents showed no concern. In two or three hundred years, they were sure, he would come to his senses and return to the duties of a proper prince. Ranadar felt sure this would never happen.
But then, one hundred and forty-seven years later, on a rare and chance visit to the palace at Palana, he had heard RigTag Who Sings Over the Stormy Sky arguing with someone at the trader’s door. To his complete shock, he found an orc woman with slaves for sale, including one who looked and sounded exactly like his Talashka. Ranadar had, at first, refused to believe it. The slave must be a relative, or this was a wild coincidence. Even if Talfi had somehow survived in secret, he would still have died of old age long ago.
But no, it had been Talfi, his Talashka, back from the dead, able to return from the dead every time he died because of the Iron Axe. And Ranadar had been worried that he would outlive Talfi! Until Danr had been forced to kill Talfi a final time to free the Axe’s power and Ranadar had, once again, been forced to watch him die with no hope of return.
It was no wonder that later, when he stood before Death herself, he had immediately offered up half his remaining days to Talfi so that he could come back. Even now, a year later, his head still spun with the implications, though when he woke up next to Talfi every morning, he found it worth every day. Perhaps, in some cases, love was indeed stronger than death itself, but only after Death had collected her sacrifice.
Lightning forked across darkening clouds, and thunder boomed against Ranadar’s bones. People glanced uneasily upward. At the house, the smaller front gate opened and from it emerged that dwarf, still clad in red. Ranadar came quietly alert. Twice in one day this dwarf was out in sunlight, occluded though it was by storm clouds. What role did the dwarf have in all this? He had essentially bought the mermaid back for the Obsidia, that much was obvious, but why? Perhaps it was meant to be a fail-safe in case the bids weren’t high enough, as had turned out to be the case. If it were, Hector and Sharlee Obsidia must be master chess players. Or perhaps the Obsidia hadn’t wanted to let anyone buy the mermaid in the first place. But if that was true, why put her up for auction? To curry favor with someone? They were missing something, and Ranadar itched to know what it was.
He glanced over his shoulder at the golems, which were closing the little gate, and an idea began to form. Thinking quickly, he followed the dwarf at a slight distance. The golems recognized the dwarf. They let him come and go freely, either because he lived there or because he worked for the owners. That made the dwarf a way inside. If only—
“What are you doing?” hissed Kalessa in his ear, and Ranadar jumped. She had slipped up behind him in the crowd. “We are watching the house, not strolling toward the Merchant District.”
“I am watching, he is strolling,” Ranadar hissed back, more than a little miffed that Kalessa had managed to creep up on him. “That dwarf might get us into the house.”
Kalessa fell into step beside him. She also wore a hooded cloak, though Ranadar wondered how well the disguise would work—he still caught glimpses of her green-tinted skin and golden eyes. Orcs were unnerving under the best of circumstances, and Kalessa showed a casual love of violence that alarmed Ranadar. One would think that a people as short-lived as the orcs would hoard what little life they were given, but orcs often seemed to welcome death, and Kalessa was no different.
“How can this dwarf get us into that house?” she demanded.
The dwarf was definitely heading toward the market. Hmm. “I can’t spin a glamour that will hide all of us from everyone. But if I had a bit of that dwarf’s blood, I could spin a glamour that would hide us from the golems. Unfortunately, I fail to see how we can get his blood.”
“I see,” Kalessa said.
Another peal of thunder. They were entering the merchants’ and mongers’ section now. No simple stalls and unsightly wagons allowed here. Shops and stores were the rule, each with a wooden sign that said in words and symbols what was sold inside. The dwarf was heading toward an ironmonger’s shop, no doubt to buy something for a project.
“Wait around that corner,” Kalessa added. “I will return.”
“Wait!” Ranadar said. “Where are—”
But she had already trotted away. Swearing, Ranadar faded into a smelly alley and watched as Kalessa strode up behind the dwarf at the ironmonger’s front door just as the dark skies opened and water poured down. Kalessa’s knife, the enchanted one that could turn into any blade, leaped into her hand and with practiced speed, she slashed the back of the dwarf’s upper arm, tearing his sleeve and cutting his skin. The dwarf squawked in pain and surprise. He spun around, but Kalessa was loping away, and the people on the street were mostly trying to escape the rain. In a few seconds, Kalessa rejoined Ranadar in the alley, which was already ankle-deep in mud. She brandished the bloody end of her blade under the shelter of her cloak.
“Will this do?” she asked.
“Er … yes.” Ranadar wiped water from his face. “Why did you do that?”
“Sometimes,” she sighed, “you Fae think overmuch.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wind tore at the windows of the rooming house and rattled the shutters while water eked in around the edges. Aisa paced within the confines of her
room. Danr watched her warily.
“It is nearly midnight,” she raged. “We know where the mermaid is, but the storm traps us here.”
“It will pass,” Kalessa said philosophically. “We will find her.”
“I failed her,” Aisa said. “The tincture of foxglove and marigold made her ill, but the trick still failed. It is my fault she is still a slave.”
Danr took her hand. It was small and callused in his. “Don’t beat yourself up, Aisa,” he said. “It’s not the fault of the people who’re trying to help her.”
She looked at him. The moment stretched out, longer and longer, and he didn’t want it to end. He smelled smoke from the fire, felt the heat from her hand, saw the deep brown of her eyes. Then she took her hand back and looked away. “I know that here,” she murmured, tapping her head, “but not here.” And she tapped her heart.
Kalessa, who was still drying herself out by the fire, gave a small cough. “We still do not know why the dwarf bought the mermaid back for the Obsidia.”
“Do we know that’s what he did?” asked Talfi from his perch at the edge of the bed. “Maybe he really did buy her for himself.”
“No.” Kalessa waved a hand. “No one with enough wealth to buy and keep a mermaid would be working as a servant for someone else, and he is very much a servant.”
“It’s really obvious Hector and Sharlee Obsidia never meant to sell her in the first place,” Danr rumbled. He could still feel Aisa’s hand in his. “So what are they up to?”
“It almost certainly has something to do with the way Sharlee drugged Aisa,” put in Ranadar. “What did she learn from you, Aisa?”
“Nothing important,” Aisa said quickly. “We must move, before Hector and Sharlee move the mermaid.”
“Maybe we should go out despite the storm,” Talfi said.
Ranadar shook his head. “It will wash the dwarf’s blood away. We must simply wait until—”
The rain stopped as if a bucket had been emptied. The damp weight left the air, and the wind died down.
Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Page 13
