Warrior

by Jennifer Fallon

  “Be careful,” she warned, standing on her toes to kiss her brother’s cheek. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to make such a gesture. It just seemed the right thing to do. “Mahkas is still regent here, Damin. You have no real power other than your name.”

  “Then perhaps it’s time Mahkas learned the power in the name of Wolfblade. I’ll send word to the Pickpocket’s Retreat when I’ve spoken to my uncle,” he said, turning to Almodavar, as if it would take nothing more than a few simple words to clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding. “And I won’t forget your loyalty,” he added to the Raiders who had just chosen to follow the orders of their young prince rather than the rightful ruler of Krakandar.

  “Damin . . .,” Kalan began, certain there must be something more she should say, but he didn’t answer her. He turned away instead and suggested to Almodavar and Sergeant Clayne that they tell the guard on the inner gate that the man they carried had fallen victim to the plague, which should ensure no one examined the body on the stretcher too closely.

  Then, without another word, Damin turned on his heel, pushed past the men and the stretcher and headed out of the cells to confront Mahkas.

  Chapter 69

  Orleon was on the landing with Rorin when Damin returned to the palace. Luciena, Xanda and Adham, along with the children and most of the Raiders, were gone. As he walked, Damin went over in his mind all the things he wanted to say to his uncle, discarding those involving curses and impossible threats. It seemed hours since he’d bluffed his way past Sergeant Clayne, when in fact it probably wasn’t much more than ten or fifteen minutes.

  The two men looked up at his approach. Orleon bowed, his expression grave.

  “What happened?” Damin demanded, as he reached the top step.

  “Your uncle discovered Lady Leila and Starros together in his room,” the old steward explained.

  “They were in a somewhat . . . compromising . . . embrace. That was six, nearly seven days ago.”

  “He had Starros arrested,” Rorin added. “Accused of rape. He locked Leila in her room, worked himself into a frenzy, and then beat her like a dog. In between times, he’s been trying to extract a confession from Starros. At least, that’s what he’s calling it.”

  Almost overwhelmed by the need to lash out at something, Damin slammed one gauntleted fist into the other, appalled that such a situation had been allowed to continue. “Didn’t somebody try to stop him?”

  Orleon looked away, unable to answer him, but Rorin—nowhere near as shy of his common-born rank as the steward—wasn’t as reticent. “How, Damin? Your uncle is the ultimate authority in this city. Just who exactly was supposed to walk up to him and point out the error of his ways?”

  Damin’s expression darkened ominously. “Well, never fear, Rorin. I intend to point out more than the damned error of his ways, I can promise you that.”

  The young man nodded his agreement, but laid a restraining hand on his arm. “Just don’t lose your temper with him.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I know,” Rorin agreed. “But look at you, Damin. You’re already shaking with fury. You can’t achieve anything by—”

  Rorin’s warning was cut off by a scream. A cry of pure anguish tore through the night like a sharp sword through a silk scarf. Orleon and Rorin glanced back towards the palace at the sound, puzzled by its source. Damin suffered no such uncertainty. That was his Aunt Bylinda screaming and there was only one thing that would evoke such an extreme reaction in his aunt.

  “Leila!”

  Damin was through the palace doors and pounding up the staircase before the first screams subsided. He heard someone behind him and guessed it was Rorin. There was a moment of abrupt silence and then, as if she had gained a second wind, the screams began again, even more tormented than the first round. Everyone in the palace seemed frozen in place by the sound, even the Raiders standing watch at the door to Leila’s room. They stood looking at the closed door uncertainly, as if they didn’t understand how such a dreadful sound could be coming from inside.

  Damin’s approach seemed to galvanise the men into action. One of them turned and began banging on the door. The screams were unrelenting. Damin reached the door and turned the knob, only to discover it locked.

  He bashed on it with his gauntleted fist, the metal spikes on his gloves gouging the woodwork.

  “Leila! Bylinda!”

  The tormented screams kept on, but there was no other answer.

  “Open the damn thing!”

  “I’m sorry, your highness, but Lord Damaran has the key.”

  The door was solid oak and wouldn’t give way easily, Damin thought, even if they tried to kick it down.

  “What about the slaveways?” Rorin asked breathlessly, as he caught up with Damin.

  “It would take too long,” he replied, looking for anything that might aid them. He spied a granite pedestal in the alcove between Leila’s door and the next suite. The sergeant in charge of the guard detail saw it at almost the same time and looked at Damin questioningly.

  “Break it down!” Damin ordered, wishing he could put his hands over his ears to block out Bylinda’s cries of anguish. A priceless vase smashed to the floor as two of the Raiders picked up the pedestal, turned and rammed the door with it at a run. It didn’t budge. They backed up and ran at it again. And again. On the third hit, the wood around the lock splintered and they could finally kick the door open.

  Damin overtook them before they were through the outer room. The bedroom was empty, but the screams were louder, coming from the bathroom. In the time it had taken Damin to get there, it seemed as if Bylinda had barely drawn breath.

  It took a moment or two for Damin to take in the sight that greeted him as he burst through the bathroom door. The stopcock was still open and the deep pool had overflowed, splashing onto the blue tiled floor. Bylinda stood just inside, her hands on her face, the screams coming from her as if she’d tapped some wellspring of anguish that might never be staunched.

  But it was the bath that drew Damin’s eye and tore the screams from his aunt. The water that splashed onto the tiles was red with blood. Leila floated facedown in the water, her hair splayed out around her battered, naked body that slapped against the side of the bath as the overflowing stopcock created tiny waves in the deep pool. Around each of her wrists the water ran a darker red, the blood from Leila’s open veins feeding the pool, adding her life essence to the overflowing bathwater that escaped the confines of the tub with careless disregard.

  It must have been only a moment between Damin bursting into Leila’s bathroom and him plunging into the tepid water to drag her free, but he had time to notice the shattered mirror over the washstand. And the broken footstool. She must have smashed the glass with the stool and then used the shards to slit her wrists. Bylinda had probably come in through the slaveways to tend to her daughter, only to find Leila had already taken matters into her own hands.

  Rorin was right behind him as Damin dragged Leila from the water, his leather armour weighing him down as it became waterlogged. The young sorcerer pulled Bylinda away as Damin lifted Leila out of the tub, holding the distraught mother back forcibly to allow Damin a chance to lift Leila clear.

  Rorin was trying to calm her, without much success. There was nothing to be said that would make this ghastly scene any easier to bear. Nothing anybody could do that would make this awful thing better.

  “No . . . please, Leila, no . . . not this . . .,” Damin whispered desperately to his cousin, over and over, oblivious of the soaking he received in the process from both the bathwater and her blood. She weighed nothing, as if her soul had taken all the weight of her body with it when it departed.

  Dripping and distraught, he lowered Leila’s body to the tiled floor, looking for some sign of life, but his cousin had been both determined and efficient. This was no feeble attention-grabbing exercise, no fake suicide attempt to let people know the depth of her despair. Leila had wanted to die an
d meant to succeed. She’d gone to meet her lover, slicing the veins on both arms lengthwise, halfway to the elbow. Her body was already cooling, the blood no longer spurting from her veins.

  Damin stared at Leila in numb disbelief, holding her against him as if his mere presence might do something to restore her blue lips to a more life-like sheen, as if he held her long enough, she might gain from his strength. Her sightless eyes might flutter and blink and she would smile at him and say, “Ha!

  That got you, didn’t it?”

  But there was nothing. Leila was probably dead before Bylinda found her and no amount of wishing, hoping or praying on Damin’s part was going to bring her back.

  “Damin?”

  It was Rorin who spoke. There was a strange edge to his voice, the mere mention of Damin’s name a question laden with caution.

  Damin looked up at him, with no concept of the menacing spectre he presented, kneeling there on the floor, Leila’s lifeless body in his arms, dripping with the bloody water of his cousin’s final bath.

  Bylinda tore herself free from Rorin’s hold and threw herself at them. Numb with shock, Damin let her take Leila from him without resistance.

  “Leila! Oh, my baby! What have you done?” Bylinda wailed. “Leila! Leila!”

  “Damin?” Rorin repeated, clearly concerned about something, but the words seemed distant, somehow, as if the blood rushing through Damin’s veins and pounding in his ears filtered out the sounds of the real world.

  In all his life, Damin Wolfblade had never lost his temper. He’d been angry on occasion, riled, irritated, even furious. But never had he stepped across the threshold into true rage. And even now, he wasn’t sure if the icy calm he felt was rage or grief. Whatever it was, Damin knew it needed an outlet. It needed a focus, and the focus was the man who had beaten his best friend to a pulp, the man who had driven his own daughter to suicide.

  “Damin!”

  Rorin’s voice followed him from the room, clearly panicked by the thought of what the young prince intended to do next. The outer room had filled with people—slaves, more Raiders and Tejay Lionsclaw. Damin strode straight past them all, without even registering they were there. His mind was filled with nothing but the need to confront Mahkas. To make his uncle answer for what had been done to his cousin and his friend. He wasn’t driven by any of the noble, rational arguments Kalan had been hoping he’d use to convince their uncle that he was being unreasonable.

  Damin wanted vengeance.

  Blood for blood. He intended to open Mahkas up from neck to navel, to watch his life spill out the way Leila’s had done.

  Poor Leila, whose only crime was the misfortune of having a father who couldn’t see past his own ambition.

  They had all laughed about it so many times when they were children. And it had seemed funny, because never had two children desired a union less than Damin and his cousin. They all knew what Mahkas expected and thought it was hilarious, because even when they were small children, they understood how unlikely it was that Marla would ever permit such a marriage to go ahead.

  It had gone beyond a joke, however. There was nothing to laugh about now. For Leila, there would be nothing to laugh about ever again.

  Rorin was still calling after him urgently when he reached the bottom of the grand staircase and headed along the hall to the east wing, where he knew Mahkas would be waiting to welcome him home.

  Chapter 70

  As Damin had expected, Mahkas was waiting for him in his study, sitting behind his desk engrossed in his work, apparently unconcerned by his wife’s desperate screams. Admittedly, they had stopped now, but when he looked up from the papers he was working on, the Regent of Krakandar was smiling warmly, as if nothing was amiss. The candles flickered and the fireplace flared in the draught as the door slammed open against the wall.

  “Damin! You’re home!”

  In reply, too full of vengeful rage to speak, Damin drew his sword and advanced on his uncle, dripping wet with Leila’s blood and bathwater, consumed only by the need to do something—

  anything—to right the terrible wrong that had happened in this place.

  Mahkas’s smile faded as he rose cautiously to his feet, staring at the naked steel in his nephew’s gauntleted hand. He seemed only then to notice that Damin was soaked to the skin and that there was as much blood as there was water staining his nephew’s leather armour. “Damin? Is something wrong?”

  His feigned ignorance infuriated Damin, that he had sat here, unmoving, listening to the tormented screams of his own wife echoing through the palace, that he had done nothing while his daughter bled to death in despair, shredded what little reason Damin had left.

  With a wordless cry of fury, he drew back his arm ready to drive the sword through his uncle’s heart and pin Mahkas by the chest to his damned gilded would-be throne. He saw the shock in his uncle’s eyes as Mahkas realised what Damin intended, saw the miserable, black-hearted coward draw back in fear . . . and thrust the blade forward . . .

  Only to discover his hand suddenly empty.

  Stunned, Damin spun around with a furious cry to discover Rorin standing behind him, his eyes black with the power he was drawing, the sword intended for Mahkas’s heart now firmly and inexplicably embedded in the panelling near the door by Rorin’s head.

  “Damin!” Rorin cried warily, taking a step backward, as if he’d just realised that in saving Mahkas by ripping the sword magically from Damin’s furious grasp and sending it harmlessly into the panelling, he’d brought the young prince’s wrath down on himself. “Think about this!”

  Still too enraged to form a coherent sentence, Damin let out a yell of frustration and turned back to face his uncle. He was angry with Mahkas, not Rorin. Besides, Rorin may well have done him a favour. It would be far more satisfying to rip Mahkas’s black heart out with his bare hands, than the quick, relatively painless release a sharp blade offered.

  His eyes full of fear, Mahkas had scrambled clear of the desk and his heavy, throne-like chair and backed up against the wall, against the beautifully embroidered map of Hythria. In three strides, Damin was on him. He slammed Mahkas backwards with his forearm pressed across his uncle’s throat, the sharp metal scales of his gauntlet cutting into the soft skin of the older man’s neck.

  Mahkas gasped for breath, unable to speak because of the pressure on his throat, blood beading around the tips of the spiked scales of Damin’s gauntlet where they cut his flesh. Damin could smell his uncle’s fear, although it was clear, even now, that Mahkas could not quite comprehend the reason for it.

  “Damin, no!” another voice cried desperately, female this time.

  Damin glanced over his shoulder. Tejay had burst into the room, followed by a clutch of Raiders who crowded behind her in the doorway, torn with indecision. These men were sworn to protect Krakandar’s regent, but, more importantly, they lived to serve Krakandar’s prince. The men hesitated on the threshold, unsure about whom they should be protecting. Tejay solved their dilemma for them by the simple expedient of slamming the door on the Raiders with her foot and then she turned to confront Damin.

  “This is none of your concern, Tejay,” he told her, surprised at how icily calm he sounded. A few moments ago, he’d been too angry to speak. But now, with Mahkas pinned against the wall and the breath slowly being squeezed out of him by the sharp spikes that encircled Damin’s forearm, the young prince found his voice, unaware of the chilling, terrible timbre of his words. “This is a family matter.”

  “Damin,” Tejay repeated, taking a step closer, speaking in a voice that sounded as if she was fighting to keep a level, reasonable tone. “Let him go. Please.”

  He didn’t answer her. Instead, he turned back to glare at Mahkas, to breathe in the stench of his fear. Leila must have felt something of the same fear. What else would have driven her to suicide? And Starros? Had he hung in those dreadful chains, awaiting the next blow, never sure where it would fall, or when? Had Mahkas revelled in their fear th
e way Damin was drinking in his uncle’s terror now?

  Mahkas’s eyes were wide, he was gasping for breath and his face was turning blue.

  Damin’s eyes never left his uncle’s suffocating face as he answered Tejay. “He killed Leila, my lady. He damn near killed Starros. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill him.”

  “One Warlord,” Tejay said.

  Those two simple words struck a note somewhere in Damin, something that pierced his veil of rage. He eased the pressure on Mahkas’s throat a little and turned to her. “What?”

  “We’re one Warlord away from Alija Eaglespike gaining control of the Convocation of Warlords, Damin,” Rorin reminded him in a voice devoid of all emotion.

  Damin glared at them both. The young sorcerer’s eyes were still dark, the whites consumed completely, as if he held onto his magical power as some form of protection against Damin’s fury.

  Tejay nodded her agreement. “No matter how satisfying it might feel, Damin, kill Mahkas now, while you’re still six years away from inheriting your seat, and Krakandar will be in the hands of the Sorcerers’ Collective before the sun rises tomorrow morning.”

  Damin turned to stare at Mahkas, knowing Rorin and Tejay were right. That one reason alone was enough for him to spare his uncle’s life. The fact that he could see their point, and appreciate its significance, infuriated the young prince even more. He wanted blood. That he could hesitate on the brink of wreaking righteous vengeance for Leila’s death and Starros’s brutal torture, for something as cold and impersonal as politics, made Damin disgusted with himself.

  But it stayed his hand.

  Slowly, he lifted his forearm from Mahkas’s throat and took a step back. His uncle collapsed against the wall, barely able to stand, his fear abating a little as it occurred to him that his nephew didn’t plan to kill him after all.

  “Damin . . .,” Mahkas gasped. “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but Leila’s waiting for you . .