by Lisa Shearin
“Of course.”
“I tried to catch up with you and Vegard, but his legs are longer than mine. And with that crazed blond berserker look he’s got going, people got out of his way. Apparently I’m not scary enough right now.” He glared at Ryn’s men who’d tried to stop him at the door. “I’ll have to work on that.”
I looked around. We were in a warehouse that looked like it’d been abandoned until recently. Uncle Ryn had been in port for nearly a week, and it looked like he’d started stocking this place the moment he dropped anchor. Food, ale, weapons, black powder-and every bit of it in ample supply.
“Looks like you’re all moved in,” I noted dryly.
Uncle Ryn nodded. “And prepared.”
I snorted. “For a war?”
“To finish whatever anyone here starts. Don’t get me wrong; I respect what Paladin Eiliesor’s trying to do, but I’m not staying on the Red Hawk when my son and niece are up to their pointy ears in trouble.”
I stood on tiptoe and gave my favorite pirate a peck on the cheek. “You know how to make a girl feel loved, Uncle Ryn.”
His smile was warm. “I do my best, Spitfire.” The smile vanished. “I heard the high points of what happened this morning. Now what were the two of you doing picking fights with demons?”
Phaelan answered before I could. “I didn’t pick a fight with anything. I couldn’t even see the things. Raine’s the one who bounced a brick off its head.”
Uncle Ryn looked at me like I was a couple arrows short of a full quiver.
I raised my hands to stave off the obvious. “I know what it sounds like. But the demons were cloaked, no one could see them, and they were killing a mage.”
“So the brick made them stop killing the mage?” Uncle Ryn asked.
“Well, unfortunately not. But it did make that one uncloak so everyone could see them.”
“And pissed it off,” Phaelan added. “And all of its friends.”
Vegard cleared his throat uneasily. “The paladin needs to know that you’re safe.”
I laughed. It made my head hurt, so I tried to stop. “Vegard, I haven’t been safe since I met Mychael. And if Carnades gets his way, I’ll be safely behind bars as soon as he can find me.”
Uncle Ryn scowled. “I’ve been hearing that name from the men working the docks. They always spit after they say it. Who and what is Carnades?”
I thought I was best qualified to answer that one. “Until the archmagus gets back on his feet, Carnades is the senior mage on the island. He thinks I’m dangerous.”
“He thinks right.”
“He also wants me locked up.”
“Only over my dead body.”
I resisted the urge to kiss him again.
Phaelan felt the need to elaborate. “Carnades thinks Raine’s a dark mage who called her demon ‘minions’ here to do her dirty work, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. He tried to arrest her for ‘practicing black magic and consorting with demons.’ ” My cousin snorted. “I think someone’s bounced a couple of bricks off his head. That or his ballast has shifted.”
Uncle Ryn’s scowl turned into something darker. “How much influence does this mage have?”
“Entirely too much,” I told him.
“He could have you imprisoned?”
“And then some.”
“Then you’re staying here with me.”
Uncle Ryn’s voice said no arguments. I didn’t want to give him any, but I had to.
“Sorry, Uncle Ryn, but I can’t.”
“And why not?” he rumbled.
“Let’s just say that something’s happened, and there’s someone I need to have a heart-to-heart talk with.” I said it through gritted teeth, and the threat of violence that came out with my words wasn’t lost on my cousin.
Phaelan knew exactly who I meant and swore. “Tam Nathrach. Raine, he’s trouble; always has been, always will be.”
“So are you,” I shot back.
“Touchй. So what kind of trouble has he gotten you into this time?” His eyes widened and then narrowed dangerously. “He didn’t get you-”
I just looked at him. “No, I am not pregnant.”
But you might be married, chuckled the pessimist in my head. My pessimist was starting to think this was funny.
“Ma’am, I’ve been told not to let that happen,” Vegard said.
I didn’t move; I didn’t even blink. “Not let what happen?”
“You get within half a mile of Tamnais Nathrach right now.”
I blew out my breath in exasperation and relief. “Let me guess. It was Mychael, and he didn’t tell you, he ordered you.”
“Right on both counts, ma’am. He said bad things would happen if the two of you got anywhere near each other.”
My little voice snorted, then chortled. If he only knew.
“Vegard, bad things have already happened, and they’re going to keep happening until I can get a handle on what’s going on. The first-and absolutely necessary-step to doing that is to see Tam.”
The Guardian looked decidedly unenthusiastic.
“Did Mychael order you to sit on me again?” I asked.
“Just to try to discourage you.”
“Next time you see him, tell Mychael I’m not easily discouraged.”
Vegard almost smiled. “I think he already knows that, ma’am.”
Chapter 9
Getting from Uncle Ryn’s hideout-excuse me, land-based headquarters-to Tam’s nightclub involved going to ground. Literally.
A rats’ warren of tunnels ran under the entire island. There was no way I could show my face on the streets right now. With Carnades running around waving a warrant for my arrest and/or execution, the quicker I got myself underground, the better. I guess it was too much to hope for that the blue demon had caught up with Carnades and eliminated him and most of my problems in one fell swoop.
I’d never liked tunnels before; I didn’t like tunnels now, and that feeling was unlikely to change in the next hour or so that we’d be spending underground.
Hours underground.
That thought made me breathe funny and put a twitch in my left eyelid. I tried telling myself that I’d just obliterated a couple of demons, one of which had been the size of a small house. We’d have lightglobes or torches, so it wouldn’t even be dark.
Most of Mid’s tunnels were natural; they’d been there for eons and weren’t likely to collapse on our heads.
I could tell myself all that, but it wasn’t going to improve how I felt. Nothing good had ever happened to me in a tunnel or cave. Multiple near-death experiences in a cave just a few days ago only further convinced me that Fate was going to finish the job the moment I set foot in the dank dark.
Think about the destination, Raine. Not the journey.
I had to get to Sirens, and when I did, Tam and I were going to talk.
I’d first met Tam at his nightclub in Mermeia. I was on a case to retrieve a client’s ring that her husband was about to gamble away at one of Tam’s high-stakes card tables. I came to Sirens that night as a customer; I conned my way upstairs as a seeker who was going to do her job come hell or high water.
Tam was overseeing the tables himself that night. He knew I hadn’t come to play, and somehow he also knew I was armed. I didn’t want any trouble, but I wasn’t leaving without that ring. Tam behaved like the perfect host, welcomed me to Sirens, and asked how he could be of service. I wanted to tell him he could serve me just fine by getting the hell out of my way. I tried to step around him; he blocked me. I had daggers strapped to my thighs under my gown and I considered using them, but I was in a high-class establishment and told myself that I could resolve this in a civilized manner. I told Tam why I was there, simply and directly.
My client got her ring back; Tam delivered it to her personally. It was a public relations coup and he knew it.
Tam told me later he did it to impress me. He needn’t have bothered. Being a Benares, I’ve always bee
n attracted to rogues. Kind of like a moth to flame. And if Tam and I had really formed an umi’atsu bond, I wasn’t just singed; I was fried.
The entrance to the tunnels was in the shipping office at the back of the warehouse. I guess if you did business with certain people and dealt in certain commodities, a trapdoor in the floor of your office that led to tunnels could come in handy. The shipping office wasn’t large. It was no more than ten paces deep and not much more than that across. It had a desk and a couple of chairs with faded ledgers and maps scattered across the desk. The musty, cloying smell of old paper and mold made the air thick. Though that could be as much from cramming so many people into such a small space as anything else.
Uncle Ryn had assured me that this tunnel, after a couple of turns-and a little over an hour-would put us directly under Mid’s entertainment district. Leave it to a pirate to find the nightclubs, bars, and brothels on his first day in port. Like father, like son. His men knew the way, so I could keep my spells to myself. Yes, I was a seeker and could have easily found my own way to Sirens, but since I didn’t know who or what Carnades had looking for me, the safe thing to do was to keep my magic under wraps.
There would be nine of us going down into those tunnels and under the city to Sirens. It sounded like an unnecessary crowd to me; to Uncle Ryn it was barely adequate security. Phaelan, Vegard, and myself had an escort of six of my uncle’s most levelheaded crewmen. Level heads were good when going into a place where heavily armed and murderous bad guys might run at you out of the dark. I hated it when that happened. My eyelid twitched again and I put my finger on it to make it stop.
“Nervous?” Phaelan asked.
My eyelid fluttered under my finger; I pressed harder. “Guess.”
“Sarcasm won’t help,” he told me.
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Tell me again why we’re going into a rotting, dark hole in the ground rather than taking our chances on the streets.”
“Carnades.”
Vegard and a crewman moved the desk in the corner of the office, exposing an iron ring attached to a trapdoor in the floor. Vegard opened it, and Phaelan and I gingerly leaned forward and looked down. Way down. It was just your basic nonthreatening, perfectly harmless, yawning black pit.
“Maybe that demon’s still chasing Carnades,” Phaelan ventured, still looking into the hole. “We’re not all that far from Sirens. I’m always up for a good sprint.”
“It’s across town and you know it,” I said. “It’s just dark and damp. There shouldn’t be anything down there, but if there is, we can handle it. There’s nothing down there. Right, Vegard?”
The big Guardian shrugged. “Just the usual. Rats, spiders, salamanders, maybe some larger-than-normal crabs-”
Phaelan stopped looking down the hole and stared at Vegard. “Define ‘larger.’ ”
“Just Guardian rumors,” Vegard assured him. “Ruben was coming off leave and a three-day drunk when he said he saw it, so we’ve never put much stock in that one.”
Phaelan didn’t bat an eye. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The big Guardian sighed. “Supposedly there’s some kind of crablike thing with pinchers the size of your head running around down there-at least in the ‘down there’ that’s closest to the waterfront.”
“Which coincidentally is exactly where we are.” My cousin did not look amused, and Uncle Ryn’s boys had become noticeably less thrilled with our choice of routes.
“Captain, it was dark and Ruben was wasted,” Vegard assured him.
“I’ve been wasted and seen plenty of things that turned out to be real,” muttered one of the elven pirates.
Time to put a stop to this. I slapped Phaelan on the shoulder. “We’ll just refill one of our water skins with melted butter and we’ll be good to go. You like seafood.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like seafood that likes me.”
He did have a point, but I chose to ignore it. I jerked the strap tighter that secured my two new short swords across my back. Uncle Ryn had replaced the ones I’d stuck up the demon’s nose. I pushed the crab out of my mind, prodigious pinchers and all. Of today’s problems, carnivorous crustaceans ranked way down on my list of worries.
Vegard and I made a pair of lightglobes and sent them through the trapdoor and into the tunnel; their pale blue light illuminated walls of packed earth that didn’t look all that stable. Vegard went down first, then the crewmen. I followed with Phaelan.
As I climbed down, the rickety wooden ladder creaked, but held. I looked around. Wooden beams supported a packed-earth tunnel. The beams had seen better days. Some had fallen away altogether leaving no visible means of support.
I shone my lightglobe down the tunnel a few yards. “I thought all the tunnels were natural-and rock.”
“Most of them are,” Vegard replied with a shrug. “Some of them aren’t.”
I had a spell in mind should this particular tunnel pick sometime in the immediate future to collapse. Considering recent events, I thought it prudent to be prepared.
“I should lead,” I told Vegard.
“That wouldn’t be wise, ma’am. I should go first.”
“Then I would have to bring up the rear, because these men are experts with steel. They don’t have enough magic between them to light a candle, let alone torch a demon-or whatever might come running at us. And, if I bring up the rear, you can’t keep an eye on me-and I know you want to do that. So, do you want to cover our backs, or spend half your time looking back at me?”
The Guardian scowled. “You lead.”
I turned to one of Ryn’s men, a young elf named Galen. “I want the most direct way to the entertainment district, no scenic routes.”
“Understood, Miss Benares.” He flashed a nervous grin.
“We know the quickest way to the best bars, including Sirens.” He looked down the dark tunnel and swallowed. “We just didn’t know there was anything down here.”
“Hopefully you won’t find out anything different this time. And if you do hear pinchers clicking, just walk faster.”
“That goes without saying.”
“Good.” I sent my lightglobe ahead of us. “Let’s go. And just tell me where to turn.”
The tunnel was damp, moldy, and had things that slithered and scurried into the dark ahead of our lights. But thankfully, there was no clicking or clacking. However, a series of white lines ran along the walls at various heights. Salt. I knew what that meant. We were close enough to the harbor that a storm or exceptionally high tide would put where we were under water. I’d just add drowning to my worry list under giant crabs.
Time was next to impossible to keep up with underground. I didn’t know how long we’d been down here, but it’d been long enough for me. I was ready to see the sky or the inside of Sirens, anything but tons of rock and packed dirt looming only a couple of inches above my head. Vegard had to walk in a perpetual hunch; I knew he was ready to get out of here.
The tunnel ended abruptly in a small chamber. It didn’t end so much as give us five more choices of tunnels. Though it did give Vegard a chance to stand up straight, which he did gratefully. While he cracked his spine and rolled his neck, I surveyed our options.
“Okay, Galen, where are we now, and which way do we go?”
“We’re under the center of town, near the college campus.”
“And which way?”
“Sirens and the other higher-class establishments are on Rathdowne Street. That would be down the tunnel to our left.”
“Where does it come out?” I asked.
“It forks after a hundred yards or so. One tunnel comes out in a drainage pipe that runs under Rathdowne Street, the other one dead-ends at a door.”
Phaelan and I exchanged hopeful glances.
“The door, what’s it look like?” I asked.
“About this tall,” Galen held his hand to the middle of his chest. “Looks like solid iron.”
“Is there a knob or ha
ndle?”
Galen thought for a moment then shook his head. “Nothing. Not even a key hole.”
Last time Phaelan and I had been down here, we’d left Sirens by a door that had a handle on one side, but not the other. It hadn’t been a problem for us; we needed to get to the elven embassy, not back into Sirens. Tam didn’t need a handle, knob, or key to open his basement door; he’d use magic. I was sure he kept it locked and warded. Tam had arranged it so that his wards in his nightclub in Mermeia always let me in. I’d find out soon enough if these wards liked me, too. Get there first, Raine. One problem at a time.
I smiled. “Things are going right. That’s the place. Let’s-”
Our lightglobes died, leaving us in the pitch dark.
Crap. Me and my big mouth.
“No one move,” Vegard ordered, keeping his voice to the barest minimum to be heard.
I felt him try to conjure another lightglobe. Not one flicker.
I tried the same. Nothing.
“Galen, do you have a torch?” Phaelan kept his voice calm.
“Yes, Captain. We all do.” He sounded scared to death.
“Get them lit. Now.”
I heard flints striking. Not one spark.
Something was down here with us and getting closer, moving at a steady pace, as if it had all the time in the world. It negated magic, smothered fire, and sure as hell wasn’t a crab. Then the bottom dropped out of the temperature, and I knew what was down here with us. It did have all the time in the world.
Death was eternal-and so were its Reapers.
I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face let alone the frost from my breath, but I could feel it. I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering, and the long muscles of my back convulsed with cold, the violence of it sending a shuddering spike of pain through my entire body.
Death sent Reapers to collect the dead and the dying. I’d never seen a Reaper, but then I’d never been dying. Battlefields supposedly swarmed with them.
It flowed over us, and around us-but not through us. We were the living.
A Reaper sought the dead.
I swallowed. “Vegard?”
“I know.” His voice was the barest whisper.
