by Lisa Shearin
“Perfectly.” I handed the satchel full of documents to Markus.
“What is—”
“Documents I found in Balmorlan’s office,” I told him. “Protect-with-your-life kind of documents. Promissory notes, deeds to property—I think I even saw a will—all signed by Taltek Balmorlan. He’s collecting money and anything else of value to fund his own war against the goblins and anyone else who gets in his way. I couldn’t take the time to go through the lot of them, but a couple of the documents I saw were witnessed by Carnades.”
For the first time in my life, I heard Markus Sevelien whistle.
Giles Keril picked that moment to faint.
Phaelan stepped aside to avoid Keril’s head hitting his boots. “Looks like he’s impressed, too.”
Markus raised his voice so that the entire embassy staff could hear. “Sir Vegard, I would like to formally request that your knights remain here to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition of power.”
The big Guardian grinned. “We’re here to serve, Your Grace.”
“And if you would be so kind as to select a few of your men to escort—or carry, as the case may be—ex-Ambassador Keril to a maximum security cell and see to it that he and ex-Inquisitor Balmorlan are not allowed to communicate in any way.”
Vegard inclined his head. “On behalf of the paladin and archmagus, the Conclave Guardians are honored to render any assistance we can to ensure the security of this island and the protection of its law-abiding citizens.” At the last part, he shot a dark look down at the sprawled Giles Keril.
“Nice,” I murmured.
Vegard flashed a grin. “Sounded good to me, too.”
Markus’s sharp black eyes scanned the room like he was memorizing every guilty face, at least half of which were trying to be casual while noting the nearest exits. “Raine, my apologies, but I need to remain here. I’ve found through unfortunate experience that after a person of power is removed from their post, the underlings have an annoying habit of vanishing along with evidence that may connect them to crimes their superiors may have committed.”
“There looked to be plenty of vacancies in the dungeon,” Phaelan suggested brightly.
Markus smiled. “That was to be my next request to Sir Vegard.”
The big Guardian’s eyes fell like a slab of granite on the nearest pack of bureaucrats who suddenly found the floor beneath their boots simply fascinating. “I’d recommend starting with the senior embassy staff and working our way down until we run out of cells.”
Markus nodded in approval. “Eminently practical.”
Vegard smiled in a quick flash of teeth. “I think you’ll be pleased with how many lackeys my men can fit in a cell.”
“Just leave me enough people to operate the embassy.”
“How many is that exactly?”
“More than myself.”
“Done.”
Vegard issued orders and the Guardians started herding bureaucrats in silly pseudo-military uniforms down the same stairs that Phaelan and I had sneaked up.
“There’s still a price on my head?” I asked Markus.
“Oh, yes. But I don’t believe any man who saw you right now would be foolish enough to attempt to collect.”
I snorted. “The citadel’s packed with fools.”
“You’re referring to Carnades?”
“The very one at the top of the Seat-of-Twelve heap.”
“Then you’ll want to know that when I left the citadel to come here, Carnades was being escorted to the archmagus’s office for questioning.”
“Questioning?”
Markus’s dark eyes glittered and he lowered his voice. “A result of your other cousin’s activities, I believe. Tell Mago that should he ever wish to change careers, I would gladly offer him a position in intelligence.”
As a testament to Phaelan’s determination to stick to me like glue, he did something even more terrifying than fight a werecrab.
He rode a sky dragon.
Speed was critical. Going by ground, even on the fastest horses, was out of the question. Less than five minutes versus half an hour or more equals no contest. I was on the second saddle behind Vegard, and Phaelan had a white-knuckled grip on the horn of his saddle behind a Guardian dragon pilot. My cousin sat rigidly upright, staring straight ahead, unblinking, unmoving, either from terror he was having now, or the fear of the terror he would have if he looked down. Phaelan had sailed into the teeth of the Straits of Mourning with half a crew and storm-ripped sails, but apparently taking him off the ground took away every bit of daredevil he had.
I didn’t like being on a sky dragon, either, but I liked the thought of Sarad Nukpana getting his hands on the Saghred—and thereby his hands on me—even less. Unlike Phaelan, I felt better if I kept my eyes on the ground. That’s where I wanted to be, and if I kept looking at it, maybe my stomach would believe we were actually going to make it there. The sun had not yet come up as we banked over the harbor on our approach to the citadel, and our dragons announced their landing intentions with deafening shrieks.
One of them sounded suspiciously like Phaelan.
I grinned, then started to laugh. I couldn’t help it, and I—
Choked. Did a bug fly in my—
My throat constricted as if a giant hand were tightening around it, clutching, suffocating me. I panicked and tried to pull air in. Nothing. With the pressure came a presence I instantly recognized.
The Saghred.
I felt close enough to the rock to smell it. Corruption, vile and sickening, like sour bile at the back of my throat. Ancient, rotten, and malignant.
The Saghred was me. I was the rock.
And the thief had both of us.
I didn’t see him; I didn’t have to. The bastard’s hand was wrapped around the rock, around me. He’d gotten past the guards and the wards, and had stolen the Saghred.
The rock wasn’t doing a damned thing to stop him.
It wanted to be taken.
The edges of my vision were going dark. Holy hell, I was going to pass out flying over the city. I clutched the saddle horn in front of me with one hand and pounded desperately on Vegard’s back with the other, grabbing at his shoulder.
Vegard turned, saw my face, and his eyes went wide. He shouted something I couldn’t hear. The roar I heard wasn’t the wind; it was my breath rasping, absurdly loud like I was trapped inside a box with no air, no light. I knew I wasn’t locked inside a box, and not only did I have plenty of air, I was flying through it. My body didn’t believe it, panicking, fighting to escape. My legs jerked with a mind of their own and did something very bad.
I kicked off the leg restraints, also known as the only things strapping me to a giant airborne lizard.
I fell off.
I clawed at the saddle as I slid from Kalinpar’s back. My hands, still weak from the manacles, slipped off of the smooth leather edge, my other grasping for something, anything.
Vegard’s big hand closed like a vise around my wrist.
“Shit!”
Vegard didn’t mince words. I couldn’t make them.
Vegard fought to keep Kalinpar steady, struggled to haul me back into the saddle or at the very least not drop me, while trying to keep from falling off himself. The morbid pessimist in the back of my head wondered if I fell, would I die instantly on impact, or would I get to feel myself break and/or splat into a million pieces; and if so, what would it feel like?
That made me scream, or at least try to.
“Give me your other hand!” Vegard bellowed.
My hand, arm, and the rest of me was dangling at talon level with Kalinpar. The dragon’s talons were the length of my hand. Had Kalinpar been trained to pluck a falling person out of the air without a fatal puncture?
“Raine!” Vegard screamed.
His grip was slipping.
Vegard didn’t have the leverage to pull me up, and I didn’t have the strength. The thief was on the move, carrying the boxed Saghred in a
pocket or pouch. His pace was smooth and unhurried. No, he wouldn’t want to attract attention. I had a link with a rock that did nothing but destroy, and I couldn’t so much as burn a hole in the bastard’s pocket.
I wasn’t the Saghred. I was me, and I was dangling above the city, and the only thing between me and a messy death was getting back on a flying lizard. Thick leather straps crisscrossed underneath Kalinpar’s gray-scaled belly, strong enough to hold two saddles and two men.
Strong enough to hold a desperate-not-to-die elf.
A gust of wind caught my legs; Vegard’s gloved fingers slipped again. I screamed, this time in rage, and sound actually made it out. I was not going to fall. I was not going to die. I was going to get on the ground, run down a thief, take that rock away from him, and club him over the head with it. Hard. Repeatedly. I hooked the edge of my fingers under Kalinpar’s belly strap, then up to the second knuckle, then wrapped my fist around it with a white-knuckled death grip. Which was exactly what it was going to take to get me to let that leather strap go. Death himself would have to come and pry my fingers off one at a time.
“Hang on!” Vegard shouted.
I shot him a look and got a grin in return.
The grin widened. “You’re about to get a lift.”
What?
I looked down. There weren’t any buildings or streets, just a big, broad, scaled back. Phaelan’s pilot expertly guided his dragon up beneath where my legs dangled, staying just out of the way of Kalinpar’s powerful wings. The sky dragon’s back was as good as solid ground. Phaelan’s hands steadied my legs just below the knees. Vegard got a firm grip on my arm, and between the two of them—and a pathetic amount of assistance from me—got me back in the saddle. I wasted no time strapping my legs back onto Kalinpar’s sides where they belonged.
“Let’s get you on the ground,” Vegard shouted back at me.
I gasped for breath, and the rushing wind tried to take it away. “Thief . . . has the rock . . . not in citadel.”
Vegard’s eyes narrowed in fury. “Where?”
“Moving.”
“Can you track him?”
I only felt like I was riding in his pocket. I nodded.
Vegard signaled to Phaelan’s pilot to go to the citadel and get reinforcements.
I stopped fighting the contact with the rock. I couldn’t see where the thief was, but I could feel him, like an invisible string bound me to him. As we circled back from the citadel, the string tightened. I had no clue how I could sense the rock, yet couldn’t tap one iota of magic. I’d just add it to the absurdly long list of crap I didn’t understand.
“Down!” I shouted. “Need to be closer . . . to the street.”
“Hold on.”
I’d heard that sky dragons were nimble enough to fly and land pretty much anywhere. I’d never seen it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be in the saddle of one while it happened.
Vegard sent Kalinpar into a full dive.
Kalinpar shrieked in pure joy.
I just shrieked.
The sky dragon leveled out just below the rooftops in an entirely too small street. I got an up-close look at the goblin thief wearing what I guessed was his own skin, and he got the same view of the three of us. His eyes widened, right before he darted down a too-narrow-for-Kalinpar side street and out of our reach.
Vegard pulled back hard on the dragon’s reins and banked back up into the sky. My stomach tried to do the same. He leveled off just above the rooftops.
“Still sense him?”
The only sense I had was the need to be sick. I shoved it down, literally, and focused on the rock with everything I had. I might not have magic right now, but I had something even more powerful.
Stubbornness.
That thief wasn’t getting away. He couldn’t get away. If he did I’d wish I was dead or sharing the Saghred’s link with a bunch of pervert elf mages. They’d get to share the sensation of having people slaughtered and feel like they were being slaughtered on them, feel their souls being torn out of their dying bodies, those bodies disintegrated under the Saghred’s destructive magic.
Over and over again.
Dozens or hundreds or even thousands of times. Until the Saghred was full. Until it was at full power. And Sarad Nukpana and his king could turn that power against anyone they chose. Unrelenting. Unstoppable.
“Left!” I shouted.
I followed the thief and guided Vegard to an intersection that might be big enough to land in. Not that we had a choice. The thief was there, so we were going to land.
It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was far from the best. We were less than a dozen or so blocks from the citadel, but we weren’t close enough that they’d come running if I screamed loud enough.
The sun wasn’t up, and the dregs of Mid’s society were still out. They scattered when Kalinpar swooped in for a landing, claws extended.
Vegard swung a long leg over the dragon’s neck and smoothly dismounted.
I smoothly fell off.
“You look green, ma’am.”
“Feel green.”
“You gonna make it?”
“Not if we don’t get that rock back.”
He gave me a hand up and I took it. Behind us, Kalinpar snorted.
“Stay,” Vegard told him. “Signal.”
In response, the sky dragon tossed back his head and sent a plume of blue flame straight up above the rooftops. Any Guardian pilots in the air couldn’t miss that.
The plume also lit the outlines of some less-than-scrupulous individuals closing in on Kalinpar or at least thinking about it. The dragon turned his massive head in their direction, and I swear he smiled.
Vegard saw it, too. “Signal first. Play later.”
Kalinpar stopped smiling and sent a short, miffed plume in the air, angled slightly toward the nearest thug. The thugs jumped back. The dragon smiled.
We left Kalinpar to his amusements.
We had to catch a thief.
Chapter 22
Dawn was less than an hour away. We didn’t have an hour.
“Which way?” Vegard asked.
I hesitated. I hadn’t told Vegard that my magic was gone. I especially hadn’t told him that I’d damn near taken Phaelan’s soul. That wasn’t the kind of comment you casually tossed out there before going into a place where we’d be trusting each other with our lives. I didn’t think the Saghred would try anything with Vegard. When my magic had gone, so had my soul-sucking urges. At least I thought they were gone. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be the first time that the Saghred tried to pull a fast one.
I’d hoped my magic would be back by now. It wasn’t, and we were going after a master glamourer who had a rock of cataclysmic power in his pocket. The goblin couldn’t use it, neither could I; but the rock, however, might take offense at me wanting to take it back to the citadel.
Big, messy, soul-sucking offense.
Right now, I could barely sense it, and without my magic, I couldn’t tap the thing even if our lives depended on it, and they probably would.
I gave Vegard the short and not-so-sweet version of my magicless state.
To his credit, he didn’t put his fist through the wall we were standing against, even when I told him it was all the fault of Taltek Balmorlan and his magic-sapping manacles.
Or the Saghred.
Or all three.
I had no clue and I desperately wanted one—along with my magic back.
I’d never lost my magic before, and had never heard of anyone who had lost theirs, so any reason I came up with would be nothing but a guess. But any guess I made wouldn’t alter the fact that magically speaking, I was as naked as the day I was born.
“Can you get a general direction from the Saghred?” Vegard asked.
“Think so.”
I reached out. Not with the magic I didn’t have, just with a link to a cursed rock.
The Saghred was here, close by. I knew that much. What I had no clue about wa
s which way the goblin had gone with it. Now that we were on the ground, my sense of the rock was spread thin, as if the trail had been smeared over the whole block. Naturally, it wasn’t a block with only one or two buildings; it was a rat’s warren of narrow, twisting streets and alleys, recessed doorways and darkened windows. Perfect for seeing without being seen. Perfect for a goblin who could see better in the dark than a hundred cats combined.
My life, soul, and sanity depended on going into that dark and finding that goblin and the rock he’d stolen. A diluted trail from the Saghred meant only one thing—magic of the interfering kind. That meant our thief wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see a master glamourer and thief conjuring a ward complex enough to mask an object as powerful as the Saghred.
A Khrynsani could. I already knew from the two suicide bombers in the harbor that there were Khrynsani on Mid. Well, those two particular Khrynsani weren’t anywhere anymore, but they didn’t travel only in pairs. Like rats, if you saw two, simply check the dark corners. There were more; you could count on it.
I quietly told Vegard what I’d sensed—and what I couldn’t.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he assured me. “I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve.”
“You might need more than that,” I whispered. I quickly told him about the thief’s arsenal—darts and strawberries—one eatable, both poisonous. I didn’t mention the box the poison came in or the itty-bitty portrait of me in it. If Vegard knew he’d take me back to Kalinpar and order the dragon to make me stay. At least he’d try. By not telling him, I was saving valuable time. Vegard wouldn’t have seen it that way, but then Vegard wasn’t going to know.
Ten minutes ago, the goblin thief had been wearing his own skin. For a man who could alter his appearance in the blink of an eye, ten minutes was an eternity. The goblin had the Saghred, was on his home turf, lurking in the dark, and could look like anyone by now.
I didn’t have diddly-squat.
No sleep, no strength, no magic. I’d been kidnapped, chained, choked, force-fed a mage, and fallen off of a sky dragon.
The thief had changed into a beautiful girl, had a kinkyfun evening, and an hour ago had taken an early-morning stroll into the citadel to pick up and carry out a rock.
