“Mithaiya’s not my lady love anymore, and Belloth suck me sideways, Gwynnleth—” he grabbed her arm to stop her walking, “you didn’t think of maybe leading with that information?”
She twisted her arm free. “I wanted to get us here first—remove all temptation to leave you to your own well-deserved fate. Now I have to help you, or the gods know how long I’ll be stranded here.”
Carian shoved hands onto his hips. “So I’m just your bloody insurance policy?”
“Exactly,” she said with icy sweetness, then started off again. “Hurry up, Islander. Something feels off here.”
You mean other than the way your head works?” he muttered, hitching up his britches.
***
Franco stepped off the leis in his study behind two men who were creeping towards his drawing room. He sensed others farther ahead, possibly already in his bedchamber. Unfortunately, most of his weapons were in the bedchamber, too.
One of the two men moved on into the next room, but the man closest to Franco must’ve sensed him, for he turned suddenly and whipped a knife at him.
Franco dodged the dagger and pulled off his towel for lack of another handy defensive weapon.
As the intruder thrust at him again, Franco trapped the other’s wrist in the towel and wrenched up on the man’s arm while using the knot of the towel to bend his hand painfully until he dropped the dagger. Then Franco elbowed him on the back of his neck, spun and slung the towel around his throat, and yanked him backwards off his feet. The intruder landed on his neck and shoulders with a satisfying crunch and lay still.
Franco loosed his towel from the downed man, stepped onto his leis-web, and vanished again.
He reappeared behind one of the men in his drawing room. He slung the towel around the man’s neck and caught the towel’s other end to pull it tight, conveniently choking off the intruder’s scream. Then he spun and slammed a fist into the man’s jaw. He went down without a whimper.
Another intruder came at him. Franco made a bar of the towel between both his hands and shoved it beneath the intruder’s chin. This forced the man’s head back while Franco simultaneously kneed him in the groin.
The intruder sort of whiplashed and then doubled over with a groan. Franco wrapped the towel fast around his throat, twisted beneath it, whipped the man around and forward and kicked him headlong into a bookcase. The intruder hit head-first and crumpled.
“Criim, he’s naked,” another man exclaimed from across the room.
His heart beating fast, Franco again loosed his towel, stepped onto a leis and vanished.
***
Gwynnleth of Elvior followed the pirate Carian vran Lea towards Franco Rohre’s townhouse, wondering what the hell she was doing.
Following your heart, her alter-ego suggested, that persona she’d contrived to contain all of the softer parts of her soul, the ones that just got in the way of things that had to be done...the ones that made her messy.
Following her heart? Like hell she was.
She was doing what had to be done!
Definitely...probably...
She hoped.
Isabel hadn’t actually told her to go with Carian when she’d visited Gwynnleth’s dreams. Gwynnleth hadn’t even been sure the dream was real at first, though she granted it had felt more real than her actual life of late. She’d gone to wait by the portal out of respect for the possibility that the Lady Isabel had really come to her, but she had been pretty sure Carian wasn’t going to show.
Until he had, proving the dream unfortunately true.
The problem was...if one part of the dream was true, did that make all of it true?
Gwynnleth wasn’t the type to take things on faith. She believed what she saw. She was all about the empirical. By the sky fathers—empirical was her damned middle name.
Not that Isabel had asked her to have faith. She hadn’t asked for anything. She hadn’t even asked Gwynnleth to go with the bloody Islander. She’d just told her some things and suggested she might think on them.
So what the hell was she doing in Illume Belliel?
Following your heart.
Gwynnleth cast a steely stare at the Islander’s back.
Damn it all—instinct. That’s what she was doing there. She was following her instincts, and her instincts were telling her this fool pirate was going to need her help.
They found the door of Franco’s townhouse ajar and let themselves in behind whoever had gotten there first. Bloody Franco Rohre. He couldn’t have been in Illume Belliel for more than an hour and he’d already gotten himself into the stew.
Gwynnleth rolled her eyes. Nodefinders!
She exchanged a look with Carian and they moved deeper inside. The pirate drew his cutlass and Gwynnleth one of her short swords, and they passed quietly across the foyer. Then they heard a thud from above. Whereupon they headed upstairs as fast as silence would allow.
The first man Gwynnleth saw was lying unconscious on the study floor. Two more had been laid flat in a drawing room, and at least one of the latter looked like he wouldn’t be getting up again.
Gwynnleth was starting to think maybe Franco Rohre could take care of himself.
The study opened onto a bedchamber, where a battle was underway.
Actually, battle might’ve been too generous a word.
Franco Rohre was flicking in and out of existence around four intruders. The bedchamber was large but felt crowded, what with the men spinning and jumping about, wildly swinging their swords, obviously trying to predict where the Espial would show up next.
“Criim, he’s naked!” one of them shouted.
“No one said he would be naked,” a second complained.
“Why is he naked?” another protested.
Carian pulled up short in the archway just as Franco popped in behind one of the men and broke his neck with a towel.
The pirate turned a bug-eyed look to Gwynnleth. “Was that...is he—”
“It appears so.” Gwynnleth’s lips formed an admiring smirk.
A very nude and slightly damp Franco Rohre vanished and reappeared in front of one of the three remaining men, who cursed and swung his sword at him. Franco stepped into his guard and wrapped his towel around the man’s sword arm. A twist of his body, and subsequently the towel, and he had the man’s arm pinned like a pretzel and the towel cinched around his throat.
Franco twisted again and whipped the man across his own body to fly into a chest of drawers. He ripped his towel free of the now unconscious man, then jumped to his left and vanished—just as another attacker was charging at him.
Franco reappeared in front of a third man. He flung one end of his towel and it caught around the man’s neck. Then he yanked down while his knee was flying up. His knee hit below the man’s jaw, and the intruder collapsed.
The last man came at Franco again. Franco pulled the towel taut as a bar and shoved the attacker’s arms up. Then he ducked and twisted the towel around the man’s leg and hauled up on it. The intruder stumbled, whereupon Franco kicked him beneath his chin, sending him sprawling.
Before the man could recover, Franco was on his chest with a knee in his sternum, the towel trapping one arm and his bare foot pinning another—Gwynnleth hadn’t even followed all the motions involved. Franco relieved the intruder of his dagger.
“His nuts are in my face!” the man wailed. He squeezed shut his eyes and turned his head away from the intimate view Franco was offering him. “Get him off! Get him off!”
Franco pressed the dagger to the intruder’s throat. “Who sent you? Niko van Amstel? Mir Arkhadi?”
“It’s just a job, man!” The intruder answered with a tortured wince, still trying to look away.
Franco punched him with a hard right cross and he went out like a light.
Whereupon the Espial turned his head to espy Gwynnleth and the pirate, each of them leaning a shoulder against opposite sides of the archway.
The Espial’s focused expression darkened with obvious vexat
ion. “You might’ve helped, Carian.”
The islander grinned. “Looked to me like you had things well in hand, Admiral. Love what you’ve done with the place, by the way—this webwork is masterful.”
“Impressive.” Gwynnleth gave Franco a meaningful smile, and by her tone she clearly didn’t just mean to compliment his fighting.
Carian turned her a black look. “You’ve seen me take down easily as many blokes.”
“Not naked.”
“If that’s all it takes, birdie—”
Franco straightened. “I’m sorry, who are you?” He stepped off the unconscious man and wrapped the towel back around his hips.
The islander was still looking peevish, while Franco Rohre had that just-out-of-the-shower-slayer-of-seven-men gleam going full tilt, which Gwynnleth found very sexy.
Carian tore his gaze away from Gwynnleth to answer, “This is Gwynnleth. She’s the avieth I told you about.”
Franco studied her briefly. “You were in T’khendar. You came across the node with Carian and the Vestal?”
“I’m flattered that you remember.”
Carian glared at her again. Then he looked back to Franco. “So, uh...Admiral?” He waggled a finger at Franco’s hand. “Is that what I think it is?”
Gwynnleth followed the islander’s gaze to see a Vestal ring on Franco’s middle finger.
“Yes.” Franco turned and started stepping over the unconscious men cluttering his floor. “Mayhap you could make yourself useful, Carian, and bind these men while I find some clothes. Then we can talk about what you’re doing in Illume Belliel.”
Carian smirked. “Ho-ho, being the boss-man already!”
Franco angled him a pointed stare.
To which the pirate threw up both hands and grinned even wider. “Don’t get me wrong. I like it, Admiral. Command suits you.”
Franco puffed a frustrated exhale. “Carian, I’d like to dress. Would you mind excusing yourself and maybe take your friend with you? The last thing I need is the Third Vestal accusing me of exposing myself to his niece.”
“That’s not what he would read from my thoughts,” Gwynnleth said with a little smile.
Carian glared at her. Then he dragged her out of the archway to see to the men in the other rooms.
***
Carian and Gwynnleth used the intruders’ boot laces to bind the ones who were still alive. They were dragging two of the felled men into a corner when Carian dropped his charge ungently and grumbled, “You don’t have to be so obvious about it.”
Gwynnleth hauled her man up beside Carian’s, released him to thump back against the wall, and leveled him a stare. “Obvious about what?”
“Being all goggle-eyed at Rohre.”
She looked him up and down with that infuriatingly superior smile she liked to give him. “What happened to your loins equating to a god in every woman’s universe?”
“A truth,” he pointed a finger at her, “and you shouldn’t forget it.”
“My universe doesn’t revolve around a man’s loins.”
“Sure looked like there were some revolutions going back there when you couldn’t take your eyes off Rohre’s privateers.”
Gwynnleth chuckled. “You’re one to talk. If I had a silver for every time I had to watch you go all moon-eyed about Mithaiya...”
Carian sucked on a tooth. The Avieth had a point.
“You know what? You should go after Rohre.” He turned and headed towards the bedchamber and the remaining unconscious men. “He’s the Second Vestal now. You’d make an excellent house-pet for him. Sing on a perch. Do his laundry. Slay the occasional intruder.”
Gwynnleth walked up close and pushed her face nearly nose to nose with his. She murmured in a silken voice, “You know you want me singing on your perch.”
Carian held her gaze, though her breath was warm on his lips and he could practically feel the heat from her body against his own. “Not when you’re all eyes for Rohre,” he complained.
She took a step back from him, wearing a smug little smile. “Hmm...this scenario seems so familiar somehow.” She tossed him a superior look and waltzed into Rohre’s bedchamber.
Carian’s hands itched to close around her throat. Oh, how sublime it would be to actually put the Avieth where she belonged—disarmed and stretched out lithe and naked beneath him.
But there were men to question, and he didn’t fancy the Admiral’s sloppy seconds, so he would play the cool cucumber until the Avieth figured out that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
Wait, that didn’t come out the way he’d intended it to.
Carian shoved fists to his sides, set his glare to you-don’t-know-what-you’re-missing-birdie, and followed Gwynnleth out of the room.
Forty-four
“The tapestry won’t support another disgruntled godling.
Let him find a different world.”
–Baelfeir, Lord of All Warlocks,
on Shailabhanáchtran
Shailabanáchtran stood studying an inert and unblinking Keil van Olmsted while ruminating on all of the gruesome ways he’d like to make Ean val Lorian suffer. Even while so many of his games were heading into their final quarter with a consequential lead on the opposition, his most important endeavor had struck a thorny snare.
The upstart prince had taken a journal he’d spent decades searching for and had only recently acquired, a pivotal work naming the location of the sacred Shaido Archives, that hidden repository belonging to the Quorum of the Sixth Truth.
Centuries of searching had culminated in the discovery of this journal, and Arion Tavestra’s impudent reincarnation had purloined it right before his eyes. Shail’s fury over this indignity sent jagged waves rippling through the currents.
How dare Tavestra—
No. Shail took a deep breath. He was too angry. He had to calm himself. Tavestra was an enemy long vanquished, and his latest iteration, Ean val Lorian, had no hope of becoming the opponent Tavestra had proven to be.
Yet...just the idea of the val Lorian boy finding Shail’s own private domain—much less entering it—made him rigid with rage.
This had to be Pelas’s doing.
How else had Ean val Lorian escaped from Shadow if not through Pelas’s hand? Who else could have been standing on the other side of the portal to Shadow, enabling Ean’s escape from Shail’s private study?
Pelas had made it very clear that his only game was stopping Shail. But his brother had no idea what he’d be doing by interfering with this work—what curse he’d be incurring upon the four of them if he succeeded in blocking Shail’s research! There might be no more important question in all of the cosmos than who created the tear.
Pelas didn’t understand. They had to discover the entity behind this!
Imagining himself the unknowing patsy of some other immortal had kept Shail tossing and turning through the centuries. This unanswered question had driven his quest while Pelas had been playing with brushes and colored mud and falling foolishly in love with mortals.
Now, after all of the excoriating trials, all of his unrelenting research, thousands of hours of sweating in half-destroyed temples, of tearing out his hair over infuriatingly missing clues, he was within moments—relative seconds—of the answer, and Pelas reappeared to stand in his path!
Shail could barely breathe through the suffocating affront of it. He had to get to the Shaido Archives first.
To that end, what was keeping Jaro?
At times, Shail suspected the Vestian Adept kept him waiting just to see if he could rouse his ire. He didn’t think the man would appreciate seeing him truly angry, but then, Jaro was a Sorceresy-trained Adept. Who knew what path he actually walked? Jaro went out of his way to conceal the nature of his path while presenting a myriad of false ones. Shail could appreciate that kind of intelligent subterfuge.
But Jaro still wasn’t there and Shail couldn’t delay forever. Hundreds had gathered and were waiting to hear Keil van Olmsted’s secret
address.
Tall, narrow windows lit the chamber where Keil stood, caught out of time, waiting for Shail to overtake his consciousness. The view looked out on the roof of a refectory, gardens in dire need of a manicure, and tall, moss-eaten walls glimpsed between the trunks of ancient elms. This seminary was one of many donated estates in Faroqhar that Shail, wearing his puppet’s persona, had secured for his charitable work.
The crowd gathering in the seminary’s grand hall were the devoted followers of a growing underground movement—misguided na’turna drawn to Keil’s shores by resentment, perceived entitlement and a failure to make themselves matter. These bereft and bedraggled souls had been driven by the subconscious fear of their innate inadequacy to seek out some way to prove their inconsequential lives had worth.
By Chaos born, these useless souls seeking their place in the broader context of the cosmos were utterly pathetic.
But very useful to his aims.
How far would his plans have progressed, after all, without the absurd fears of mortals to manipulate and capitalize upon?
“What did you do to him?”
Shail caught his surprise at the address and turned with an icy stare to greet Jaro. “You’re late.”
The Vestian was leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, dressed in his usual weirwarden’s gear and looking more assassin than Nodefinder with his belt of daggers and elbow-length gauntlets strapped tight around his forearms.
He looked Shail’s puppet up and down with one dark eyebrow notched in ironic humor. “What’d this guy do to piss you off? Pour your tea incorrectly?”
“You appear out of breath.”
Jaro pushed off the wall. “I just ran a glissando from the far side of the world to get here, Isahl. That’s twelve harmonic arches.”
Shail nodded towards a decanter of bourbon sitting on an ebony cabinet. “Help yourself to a drink.” His gaze sliced over Jaro. “Or perhaps you’d prefer a medal.”
Jaro flashed a smile, very white against his abundant raven beard. “Bourbon will do.”
Shail watched the Adept irascibly as he helped himself to the spirit. “Have you found the Shaido temple?”
“No.” Jaro turned, sipping his drink. “But I’ve found a way to get to it. I have to wait for a window—a few days at most. The nodes aren’t easily accessible.”
The Sixth Strand Page 74