Sworn To Secrecy: Courtlight #4

by Edun, Terah

  “And how exactly do you know all this about the princess heir?” Thanar said, repeating the same query that had echoed from Sebastian’s lips moments earlier.

  Ciardis gulped and looked over at Sebastian. “Because your father told me.”

  “Why would he do that?” he said. His voice was distant. His shoulders stiff.

  He was pouting. Well, he could take a number in line. If Sebastian didn’t have the gall to see that she was playing Thanar, that everything she did was in service of someone else, then she didn’t have the time to correct him.

  Instead she answered him with another fact. “He also told me that the princess heir had a secret project, one that was within the Ameles Forest. Something he wants to know more about. He hired me to do it. But after he hired me, he mentioned that the princess had made sure to take one person with her on every journey to the forest—a daemoni mage.”

  “Why would my father assign you to the task of ferreting out my aunt’s secrets?” said Prince Heir Sebastian frankly.

  Thanar agreed. “Yeah, Golden Eyes. You’re pretty and really good at getting into mischief, but even I’m having trouble seeing this logic through.”

  Ciardis grimaced at both of them. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  Sebastian turned away and paced in irritation. Then he came back. “What more is there?”

  She raised an eyebrow as she felt the frustration surge through him.

  “My father always has something more planned. Nothing gets past him, and he is always two steps ahead of whatever you’re thinking,” Sebastian earnestly. “There must be a reason he thinks that you’re capable of finding this information when his mages and spies can’t, and furthermore, a reason why he was able to convince you to do it.”

  “Lesser mages have died trying to obtain the imperial family’s secrets,” pointed out Thanar.

  “To answer your question, Sebastian, he knows that I have contacts and I can get my nose in anywhere I please,” Ciardis said confidently.

  Thanar narrowed his eyes at her bluster. “In other words, he blackmailed you.”

  Ciardis bit her lip but didn’t deny it. Thanar and Sebastian clenched their fists in anger. For a moment neither said anything.

  “I will speak to my father,” Sebastian said coldly. “This farce ends today.”

  “No!” Ciardis shouted. Calming down, she hurried to add, “No, please. He...he holds my mother’s life in his hands.”

  Sebastian said with some irritation, “Then I will make sure that he releases his hold on her.”

  “She killed the former empress, Sebastian. He has no reason to free her, even on request from his son. Some might say especially so. I have a plan to get her free with this information and you have to admit it makes more sense than pleading with a widower to free the murderer of his wife,” Ciardis said.

  Ire flashed across Sebastian’s face.

  Then respect.

  He released the grip on his sword pommel as he thought over her words.

  “Perhaps it’s time we try it your way then,” said Sebastian.

  “Finally,” murmured Ciardis.

  She looked over at Thanar, “Are you with us or against us? Because I don’t need to be constantly looking over my shoulder to see if you’re going to stab me in the back.”

  “I gave you my word, didn’t I?” said the offended daemoni.

  “You gave my mother your word as well.”

  “To help her wreak havoc on the imperial court,” said Thanar, “I see disrupting the relations between Algardis and Sahalia as part and parcel of that.”

  “Well, I don’t,” she said, “Knock it off.”

  Something dark flashed in his eyes but he said nothing.

  “What’s the goal?” said Sebastian.

  “I need to find out the princess heir’s secret by the start of the trial at the end of the week,” Ciardis said quietly, “or he will pronounce my mother’s death sentence. I need to not only find out what she hid in the Ameles Forest but what her plans were involving it.”

  Ciardis could feel quiet frustration in Sebastian. She knew he would follow her plan. His problem was that he wanted to protect her. Solve it for her. But she didn’t need a protector; she needed a friend, a companion, and a fighter who would stand by her side. She could protect herself.

  Sebastian nodded stiffly in acknowledgement.

  A small smile appeared on Thanar’s face. “I do believe I might be able to help with that.”

  Ciardis turned to him with a frown. He was only being obliging because she had agreed to play his game of passion. But she wasn’t stupid. Even if he was being obliging, he was still a conniving bastard. A handsome, egotistical, and evil one at that. She didn’t trust him one bit. But as of right now she needed him.

  “I’m listening,” she said carefully.

  “You once asked me what I saw in the Ameles Forest,” Thanar said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Just this morning, as I recall. You refused.” Sarcasm dripped from her words.

  He smiled. “Well, Golden Eyes, now I’m ready to commit.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Out with it.” She was getting tired of that nickname already.

  “I was tricked into the Ameles Forest by the princess heir’s henchman,” Thanar said. “But once I got there, they already had another daemoni mage doing their bidding. They didn’t need me. So they knocked me out cold on the edge of the meadow and waited for a wendigo to eat me. But before I nodded off, I saw a curious thing.”

  Sebastian and Ciardis leaned forward slightly.

  “A human with the shokra of a dragon,” Thanar said in satisfaction.

  “Shokra?” said Sebastian.

  Ciardis grinned in satisfaction. She knew this one. “The tattoo of the dragon race. Only a true dragon can bear one. If any other race is found bearing the mark, they are killed on the spot.”

  Sebastian hummed in thoughtfulness. “So what was an undeclared dragon doing in the Ameles Forest?”

  “Undeclared?” Ciardis asked.

  “Any dragon going into certain territories within the Algardis Empire must declare their intentions and place of residence with the local nobility who forwards the information on to the imperial court,” Sebastian said thoughtfully.

  “Not just dragons,” muttered Thanar spitefully.

  Sebastian ignored the comment. “There has been no record of a dragon entering Ameles for three years. I checked when I journeyed there with Lady Maree Amber.”

  “Did you notice anything else about the dragon?” Ciardis asked.

  “Yes,” said Thanar. “He looked a lot like that stupid under-dragon you killed last night.”

  “Damn,” muttered Sebastian.

  Ciardis could see another lead towards the princess heir disappear in the mist. They couldn’t question him if he was dead.

  “Nevertheless it sounds like your idea about the hire of the under-dragon with human gold wasn’t completely off base,” Sebastian said reluctantly.

  “Wasn’t it now?” Thanar said.

  Ciardis poked him in the side to stop his subtle mockery.

  Sebastian continued, “And I know just the place to find out more. If he was hired by a human, that much gold will always leave a record. Particularly with something as stupid as an under-dragon.”

  “What do you mean?” Ciardis interjected.

  “Booze and women,” Thanar said with a grin.

  Sebastian nodded with a reluctant grin of his own. “Under-dragons have no typical use for money. They hunt in the wild and sleep where they kill. They only take jobs for gold and use it on two things: drinking and whoring.”

  “And in our dead friend’s case, he must have run out of both fairly recently to take on an assassination case,” Thanar said.

  “We find the gold, we locate the buyer,” Sebastian concluded.

  “When I arrived at the city ports several groups of sailors were about and spoke freely of a new player in town. Desperate for wo
rk. They pointed him to a dealer—a person who pawns off mercenaries for cash. The more ruthless and cunning, the better.”

  Thanar’s gazed darkened. “Then perhaps we need to go see this...mercenary wrangler...for ourselves.”

  “For once we agree, Prince.”

  Chapter 12

  Thanar cocked his head with a sharp smile. “Then let’s go.”

  Thanar and Sebastian strode forward with Ciardis quickly bringing up the rear. When the men realized this they both turned around and stopped. Thanar’s slightly upraised wings practically blocked the sunlight streaming through the door, in effect creating a halo around the two males. But Ciardis could see that Sebastian’s arms were hanging loosely at his waist and Thanar’s were crossed in front of the thin vest he wore that covered his chest and little else.

  She looked at them both cockily. Their faces were shadowed with the glare of the sunlight streaming in behind them, so she couldn’t see their expressions. But she could still imagine their unconvinced looks. It didn’t matter, though, because her attendance wasn’t up for discussion.

  You want people to stop walking over you, you have to start acting like it, was her new mantra.

  “Did you think I was not coming?” Ciardis said.

  “This is my task, my fight, my battle,” she said as she sailed between them. “If anyone is going to question this mercenary wrangler about his dealings with the princess heir, it’s going to be me.”

  When she got out the door and into the courtyard, she paused. The two of them hadn’t moved.

  “Well?” she said.

  They turned toward her and she could see twin grins on their faces.

  “Just seeing if you would bow out,” Sebastian said.

  “Or force your way in,” Thanar said dryly.

  “Looks like I win,” Sebastian said cheerfully.

  Ciardis stiffened. She pointed her nose in the air and flounced off.

  “Bow out, indeed,” she said from a block away.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sebastian grab the reins of his horse tethered to the front gate and mount up. Thanar took to the air in flight.

  By the time they caught up with her, she was knee-deep in dark piles of goo that she didn’t even want to consider the contents of. The first thought that came to mind was a mixture of dense mud and sand from all the rain that had been the hitting the city. The second was stinky piles of manure from horses trotting down the street. The third was an unappetizing mixture of the two, which she nearly threw up at.

  Sebastian stopped his stallion next to her and leaned down to give her a hand up.

  “Not a word,” she said.

  “I had no intention of saying anything,” he said.

  But when she took his hand and mounted up behind him, she could hear him cackling in his mind. She slapped him on the back of his head for it, too.

  “Oww, seriously, Ciardis?” Sebastian cried.

  Twenty minutes of trotting later they had managed to make their way from the Noble Quarter of the city to the wharf of Sandrin where ships and sailors docked at the port. When they arrived, Ciardis jumped down and Sebastian followed soon after. Flipping a stable boy a coin with the promise of another shilling to follow if the stallion came to no harm, they headed into the shipyard with the daemoni prince by their side.

  After asking around, they were directed to the seediest and most dilapidated shipyard that Ciardis had ever seen. The doors of the wood-paneled warehouse were rotting and falling off. The long-forgotten anchor chains that snaked on the ground had green mold growing on every link and the place was packed with old and destitute sailors. The old sailors all had lit pipes in their mouths as they huddled over the spluttering flames of four large cast-iron barrels. Their backs to the wind, Ciardis could still see them trembling when the gusts from the ocean were especially strong.

  As they approached, she could see details of their skin from the light of the flickering orange and red flames. She wished she couldn’t. Deep scars marred their faces. While the skin of their hands over the fire were like leather, strengthened from their long journeys at sea, battling the wind and heavy salt-laden water. To a man, exhaustion lined their faces. Exhaustion and wary calculation. Ciardis muttered, “Why don’t they journey to a tavern and rest by the fire? Instead of out here in the cold and wet.”

  “You think any drinking house wants them?” Sebastian whispered back. “They have no coin and no prospects. At best they’ll start a brawl in the tavern; at worst they’d die by the fireplace and the owner would have to pay for the body’s removal.”

  Ciardis stared at him. “Rather grim, don’t you think?”

  “Look at them, Ciardis,” Sebastian said harshly. “They’re half-starved, all of them have some form of wasting disease, and none of them have any hopes of obtaining a job on the open seas. They’re too old and too weak.”

  “We wouldn’t turn away our old in Vaneis,” she murmured with a flash of sympathy. “They’re always welcome for a bite to eat and a warm place in the town hall or tavern. Even if we could only spare a blanket by the fire, we’d put them up.”

  Sebastian said, “Things are different here.” He didn’t sound happy about it.

  Thanar commented, “They came here to die. At least they managed to do it close to the thing they loved the most—the sea.”

  There was some wistfulness in his voice that made Ciardis wonder what Thanar loved most. As she stared at him, her emotions flared. Sympathy and compassion foremost among them.

  Sebastian picked up on her thoughts. He looked at her as he said, “Some people aren’t worth thinking about at all.”

  She glared at him.

  “Some people should learn to mind their own business,” she said in ire. Her thoughts, in this case, were her own.

  “If you two are done bickering,” Thanar said while nodding his head forward, “we have company.”

  Ciardis and Sebastian turned to see the doors on the ramshackle warehouse creaking open. Two burly men came into the opening they created. Between them stood a third man. He strode forward out of the darkness that cloaked him.

  He was thin, but naturally so, with a pointed chin, small head, and thin fingers. His face was clear of the disease and old age that weathered the other men surrounding them. He stood staring at them for a moment, his hands in his pockets. His demeanor was fierce but wary. When he reached them he threw his lit cigar to the ground and flashed a smile, displaying an impressive array of brown and missing teeth. To their right a scuffle broke out among the old sailors over the fresh cigar on the ground.

  The thin man’s glance barely flickered over to the rabble.

  His eyes assessed each of them in turn. He clearly didn’t recognize Sebastian, dressed as he was in plain garments, and he dismissed him with little thought except for a wary glance at his swords. His gaze lingered appreciatively over Ciardis’s assets, but her hooded face hid the telling golden gaze of a Weathervane. That left Thanar as the most prominent of their group. A winged mage of undetermined race.

  Kith were legally the equals of all humans in Algardis, in practice that meant another thing entirely. But strength-for-strength, nothing beat an inhuman mage, and when you worked with mercenaries, strength was king. His gaze settled on Thanar as the leader of their motley crew.

  “What do the three of you want?” he said.

  “Is that any way to treat a guest?” Thanar said mildly.

  “Guests are rare in these parts. For a reason.”

  “We won’t be long.”

  The thin man cocked his head. “I wouldn’t mind you staying longer if you share.”

  “Share?” Thanar’s wings ruffled a little bit.

  Ciardis felt dread on her neck as she felt the stares of the surrounding men on their backs.

  He gave a greasy smile. “You’re here for my business, right? Booty, strengths, women – whatever you fancy and we’ll split it.”

  And the feeling of dread at the back of her neck
intensified as she realized the stares were just on her back. She stepped forward, “This woman isn’t for sale, my men’s strengths aren’t yours to barter for, and my coins are the spoils of my group alone.”

  She had caught his attention. The thin man’s eyes focused directly on her hooded form.

  “And the true leader speaks.”

  “Be careful, next time I won’t be so nice about correcting your assumptions,” said Ciardis.

  She knew he had been testing them, gauging their interest when his lascivious tone wasn’t reflected in the steely gaze of his eyes.

  But will he do business with us?

  She narrowed her own eyes as she thought about it.

  You caught him off guard. He might, was the thought that came back to her from Sebastian.

  The air had dropped ten degrees around them and Ciardis was fairly sure she saw dark mist forming in the sky above. It was hard to tell with the morning fog coming in from the sea but she was fairly sure Thanar was gathering up his power.

  They didn’t have forever and the thin man wasn’t opening up.

  “We’re here for a mercenary,” Ciardis said with determination in her voice.

  “I have a lot of mercenaries here. You’ll have to more specific.” The men around them rustled as if they would step forward and volunteer for the cause—and the fat purse that came with it.

  Ciardis gave the old men in the surrounding yard a contemptuous glance. “They say you’re the man to hire if we want a person of specific skills. I guess they were wrong.”

  She turned aside as if to leave.

  Rat man raised a hand and snapped his fingers. Out of the doorway behind him poured two-dozen men armed with sabers, swords, axes, and huge muscles. They surrounded the party of three quickly and silently.

  That’s more like it, Ciardis thought to herself.

  “You were saying?” the rat man said.

  “What do you know about dragon mercenaries?” Her voice was pleased.