Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series

by Lindsay Buroker

  Her dragon tear glowed a soft blue, the light leaking between her fingers as she gripped it.

  “He’s not in here,” she whispered, her eyes distant. “He’s crouching on the wall surrounding the castle. The guards don’t see him. Them. There are two.”

  Jev grimaced, remembering the battle in the tower.

  “Wait, the guards are unconscious.” She grimaced. “Or dead. I can’t—”

  A clink, clink, clank came from deep within the library. Jev snatched a lamp off a wall and ran down an aisle of books toward the noise. The lamplight barely pushed back the deep night shadows.

  A sweet and acrid scent tickled his nostrils. It reminded him of his aunt grilling limes for her honey-lime shrimp recipe. He held his breath, worried it was something far more nefarious than citrus.

  At the end of the aisle, Jev spotted one of the tall windows standing open to the night. A faint smoke hazed the air in front of it, the grilled lime scent growing stronger. Something glinted on the floor, reflecting his lamplight. An odd eight-sided canister with rounded corners. It was the source of the haze—a steady stream of blue smoke wafted from a small aperture.

  Jev snatched it up, the sides icy cold in his hand, and ran to the window. As he drew his arm back to throw it, he spotted a figure crouched atop the wall on the far side of the courtyard. A figure with a bow drawn and aimed in his direction.

  “Intruder!” Jev yelled as he threw the strange canister toward the archer.

  Hoping enough guards were awake to hear the cry and investigate, he leaped aside. An arrow blurred past, almost shaving his jaw. It thudded into a bookcase, the fletching quivering.

  Jev put his back to the solid stone wall between two windows and did his best to shout again from behind cover. “Intruder in the castle!”

  His voice was hoarse, and his throat hurt. He realized he’d released his breath to yell, and that smoke still hung in the air.

  “Zenia, Lornysh,” he called. “Are you all right?”

  He was surprised Zenia hadn’t followed him, but maybe she’d wanted to stay with Lornysh since he was defenseless as long as that magic gripped him. Jev slammed the window shut—not that the glass would stop an arrow—and ran back toward them.

  “Here,” came Zenia’s voice from the table where he’d left her. It was strained. And hoarse.

  Worrying the smoke had also reached them, Jev tried to sprint the rest of the way back, but his legs felt oddly rubbery. He stumbled, his feet numb, and his shoulder smashed against shelves. The case shuddered, and several books fell to the floor.

  He growled, shaking off the strange ennui, and stumbled the rest of the way down the aisle. He passed another wide open window, but that was the least of his problems. An elf in green and brown leathers and a dark green cloak faced Zenia, a glowing silver sword held aloft.

  Jev almost barked a warning, but Zenia already faced the elf, her hand raised, blue tendrils of light emanating from her dragon tear. The magic curled up her arm and spread from her fingers toward her adversary. The elf himself was frozen in tableau.

  Lornysh was on his hands and knees on the floor between them, struggling to rise. The elf warden was poised, not to attack Zenia but to cleave him in half.

  Jev threw his knife at the intruder’s back.

  He expected some magical shield to appear around the elf and deflect the blade, but Zenia must have commanded his full attention. The knife landed point first and sank into the back of his shoulder.

  The elf screamed in surprise and pain, almost dropping his sword.

  As if the knife attack had broken some spell, Lornysh sprang to his feet, yanking his own sword free of its sheath. He barked a word in Elvish, and magical flames sprang to life along the blade.

  The intruder snarled, reached over his shoulder, and managed to grab Jev’s knife and yank it free. He threw it at Zenia.

  “No,” Jev shouted and sprang at the elf.

  The bloody knife hurtled toward Zenia’s chest, and at that range, she didn’t have time to dodge. But a shimmering blue shield flashed in the air all around her. The blade bounced off instead of hitting her.

  That didn’t keep Jev, fury flushing his body with strength, from slamming into the elf and taking him to the floor. He slammed a fist into his foe’s jaw before an icy cold power wrapped around his heart, and pain sprang from his chest.

  Jev gripped the elf and tried to stay on top of him, tried to smash him against the floor and knock him out, but the pain was too much. Numbness flooded his body, and his grip loosened. It felt like his heart was being ripped from his chest.

  The elf flung Jev off and rolled to the side an instant before Lornysh came in, aiming his sword at their foe’s head. Though Jev was in too much pain to help, he noticed Lornysh used the flat of his blade. As if he didn’t truly want to hurt the elf. What in the founders’ hells was stopping him? This elf wanted to hurt him.

  “Jev!” Zenia rushed to his side and gripped his shoulder.

  Such pain filled Jev that he couldn’t reply, couldn’t do anything except gasp, “Wall,” and wish he could telepathically convey that the elf outside was the one applying magic to him. He was certain the warden inside was too busy to be the one responsible.

  Swords clashed, the warden leaving silver streaks in the air as he swept his blade to meet Lornysh’s again and again. Lornysh defended himself, his eyes set with determination, but he never took the role of aggressor. He wasn’t the deadly killer Jev was accustomed to.

  Zenia sprinted toward the window. Jev tried to rise to follow her, but blackness was creeping into his vision. Fear followed— Was it possible this magic would stop his heart and kill him?

  “Arrows!” he blurted, reminded that the elf on the wall had a bow. “Watch out… for them.”

  A horn blew in the courtyard. Jev hoped that meant the guards were awake and would fight off the elves.

  The pain around Jev’s chest stopped so abruptly he almost blacked out. He gasped in air, his entire body trembling.

  Zenia stood at the open window, that blue shield around her again as she thrust her arm outward, more magic flowing from her fingers. Jev hoped she was knocking that elf off the wall and all the way back to Taziira.

  He grabbed the table and pulled himself up. Lornysh cried out in pain as his enemy’s blade slipped through his defenses.

  The double doors to the library banged open, and a cadre of guards charged inside. The elf hesitated, then cursed and sprinted toward the open window.

  “Look out,” Jev rasped, afraid Zenia wouldn’t see him coming up behind her.

  She turned in time and flung the window shut. The warden swung his sword at her head.

  “No!” Jev yelled.

  The silvery sword halted in midair as it struck her shield, but her dragon tear’s visible barrier disappeared as the blade collided with it.

  Zenia stumbled back, fingers tightening around her gem and alarm flashing across her face.

  The guards fired at the elf. He turned around long enough to fling a canister identical to the one Jev had seen earlier. Then he sprang through the window, glass shattering.

  He disappeared into the courtyard below. The guards charged toward the window, almost knocking Zenia aside.

  Jev snatched up the canister and ran to another window. He jerked it open and flung the smoking projectile outside. Then he rushed to Zenia, worried she’d been hurt when her barrier fell.

  Next to them, the guards fired through the broken window, aiming downward, but then shifting their aim upward, as if the elf was scaling the wall to escape. Maybe he was.

  “Are you all right?” Jev wrapped his arm around Zenia.

  “Yes, but Lornysh.” She pointed back toward the doors.

  Lornysh lay crumpled on the floor, blood pooling on the tiles around him. Cursing, Jev ran to him, chagrined that he’d worried about Zenia first and hadn’t noticed his friend had been so badly injured. By the Air Dragon, what if the warden had finished his mission befor
e fleeing? What if Lornysh was dead?

  Jev dropped to his knees, resting a hand on his friend’s shoulder. The amount of blood on the floor terrified him.

  “Lornysh, are you still… awake?” Jev spotted a dagger sticking out of Lornysh’s stomach.

  He cursed again and pulled his shirt over his head. He wadded it up and did his best to staunch the flow of the blood without disturbing the dagger. A trained healer would need to withdraw it.

  “I need a healer!” Jev hollered toward the hallway, fearing nobody would hear him.

  But the guards had stopped firing, and his voice rang out, the castle having gone disturbingly quiet.

  “Tell your king,” an accented voiced called from the courtyard, or perhaps the wall opposite the library windows, “that he harbors an assassin, a criminal, and an enemy to the Taziir. If he doesn’t send Lornysh the traitor out of your castle and your city by dawn, we will use our power to raze your kingdom to the ground.”

  “He’s going to do that with four people?” Zenia asked.

  “You have no right to be here, Vornzylar,” a feminine voice answered from somewhere below the library windows. Jev imagined the princess standing on the front steps of the castle and yelling up at the elf—or elves—on the wall. “Return to Taziira, by the king’s will. Leave this human land without doing more harm.”

  “Your will is not the king’s will. We go where we please. We are free Taziir. Hear my words, human king, wherever you are cowering. You have until dawn!”

  Rifles fired outside. Jev shook his head, knowing the guards wouldn’t hit the wardens.

  Lornysh’s eyelids fluttered but then squeezed shut again, his lips curling in pain.

  “Lornysh,” Jev said. “Why in all the world were you using the flat of your blade?”

  Zenia came up to them but took one look at the blood and said, “I’ll get a healer.”

  “Thank you,” Jev said as she raced out of the library. “Hold on, Lornysh,” he whispered. “We’ll get you fixed up. You’re not leaving the city yet.”

  Jev thought of the warden’s threat but was certain Targyon wouldn’t give in to a bully or dump an injured friend onto the street outside the castle to fend for himself.

  The courtyard fell silent again. Jev had a feeling the elves had disappeared without being captured or seriously wounded. No, at least one had taken a knife in the back. Jev hoped that would slow the elf down for a while.

  “Amuzhara?” Lornysh whispered, his eyes opening, though they were pained and unfocused. “Is that you, Amuzhara?”

  “It’s Jev.” Fresh worry thrummed through his veins. “Are you with me, Lornysh? A healer is coming to help you.”

  “I thought it might be Amuzhara,” he whispered, sounding devastated that it wasn’t. His eyes closed again.

  Afraid that his friend neared death, Jev was relieved when one of the castle healers arrived with two assistants carrying a stretcher.

  “It’s an elf,” one of the assistants blurted.

  Jev stood up, bracing himself to argue for his friend’s right to aid.

  “Get him to my infirmary,” the healer said, waving her helper to silence.

  The man clenched his jaw.

  “Help her,” came Targyon’s stern voice from the corridor. He stood there with Zenia at his side.

  The assistant jumped and blurted, “Yes, Sire.”

  The trio shifted Lornysh onto the stretcher and carried him out. Targyon strode after them, as if he meant to personally see to it that Lornysh was cared for. Good.

  Jev started to follow them but paused when Zenia stepped forward to hug him.

  “He’ll be all right,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Jev said, returning the hug and glad for her support. “Thank you for helping.”

  “I wish I could have done more.” She grimaced, and Jev had a feeling she had, for the first time, encountered people with power that was equal to or greater than that of her dragon tear.

  “We’d probably all be dead if you hadn’t done what you did,” he said.

  She didn’t appear comforted.

  12

  After Zenia washed and applied bandages to the small wounds she’d received from shards of glass flying when the elf leaped through the window, she went to the castle’s infirmary. Targyon, the princess, her two bodyguards, and Jev were all in there, standing back as the healer worked on Lornysh, her dragon tear glowing a soft yellow on her chest.

  Lornysh lay shirtless on a bed with his arms at his sides as one of the assistants finished tying a bandage around his abdomen. His pack and weapons leaned against the wall by a window. The shirt draped atop them was so saturated with blood that Zenia couldn’t imagine it ever being clean again.

  Jev looked at her when she walked in and lifted an arm in offering. He stood off to one side, not joining in whatever quiet conversation Targyon and Princess Yesleva were having.

  Zenia joined him, leaning against his side as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Before coming up here, he’d put on a pistol belt with two holsters and an ammo pouch. Zenia never would have thought they would be in danger inside the castle walls, but now she knew better. And she knew how powerful their adversaries were. The more times she ran into these elf wardens, the more amazed she was that humans had survived for a month, much less ten years over on their continent. What idiot had thought it a good idea to make war on the Taziir?

  Targyon left the princess’s side—she looked tired and sad as she stood with her hands in the voluminous sleeves of the sage-colored robe she wore—and crouched beside the healer. He murmured a few words. Zenia didn’t hear them all but got the gist, that he was asking to be kept notified of changes. Then he rested a hand on Lornysh’s arm before standing and heading for the door.

  “I don’t think he’s going to be better by dawn,” Jev said quietly.

  “So long as he gets better,” Targyon said. “We’re not kicking him out.”

  Jev nodded, probably not surprised by Targyon’s statement, but Zenia sensed relief from him. Maybe he had been a little worried that their king would decide it was too much of a risk to keep Lornysh here. Zenia hoped none of Targyon’s guards had been killed by the elves.

  She rubbed her face, hardly believing there had only been two of those wardens. There were at least two more out there somewhere, waiting to add their skills to the fight to destroy Lornysh. And what if there were even more than that? Her informant had seen four at the tower, but that didn’t mean more couldn’t be in the city.

  The princess walked out after Targyon, taking her bodyguards and leaving only Jev, Zenia, the healer, and her assistants in the room. Though her eyes were still closed, the healer murmured something to the assistants, and they also left.

  She looked over at Jev, her hair in a long gray braid that hung over one shoulder. She was the same woman who had tended to Lunis Drem a few weeks earlier. What was her name? Neena.

  “He will return to consciousness soon,” Neena told Jev. “I’ve sealed the internal organs that were punctured by the blade, but it will still take time for his body to heal. Not as long as a human body, I believe, but he’ll need to stay largely immobile for a few days. I gave him some pain potion—” she pointed to a dark brown glass bottle of Grodonol’s Pain-No-More on the bedside table, a dagger with a red X over it on the label, “—but you can give him more if he needs it. It’ll make him a little woozy, but that’s better than being in horrendous pain.”

  “Are you telling me all this because I’ve been volunteered to be his nurse?” Jev asked.

  “My assistants are afraid of him.” Neena smiled. “Most of the staff is on edge at the presence of the elf entourage, but a beautiful princess is somewhat less alarming to them than a surly elf warrior.”

  “How do you know he’s surly?”

  “He woke briefly when I removed the dagger. And he spoke.”

  “A dagger being pulled out of one’s gut does have a tendency to make one snippy,” Jev said.


  Zenia was amused that he was defending Lornysh’s surliness. She had spoken to the elf enough times to believe the adjective applied well, even without daggers and injuries involved.

  Neena rose to her feet, poured water from a pitcher into a glass on the bedside table, then headed for the door. “My room is just down the hall.” She pointed in the direction Targyon and the others had gone. “Second door there. Please come get me if he’s in pain or needs anything.”

  She yawned, no doubt drained from healing Lornysh. As Zenia well knew, the dragon tear held the power, but it was funneled through its human handler, and it was a tiring experience. She inadvertently mirrored the yawn, but she turned it into a smile when Jev looked at her.

  “It looks like you have a new roommate,” she observed.

  “There’s only one bed in my room.”

  “Then I hope you two grew very close during the war.”

  Jev’s mouth twisted. “Not that close.”

  Zenia patted him on the stomach. She was about to ask if he would mind if she went to bed—it had to be after midnight by now, and they still had an assignment, to find where those elves were staying. She doubted the two who had come to the castle had left address cards.

  “But he can have my bed,” Jev added. “I can sleep on the floor.”

  “Not under the window, I hope,” Zenia said. “That seems to be the preferred method of entry for elves.”

  Jev snorted. “I’ll have to talk to Targyon about bars for the windows. Magical elf-proof bars.”

  “Do such things exist?” Zenia had no trouble imagining those magical swords slicing through metal bars like butter.

  “Maybe Master Grindmor can make some. I sent word to her shop that Lornysh was injured. I think Cutter has been sleeping there. If he’s sleeping at all. She’s quite the slave driver. But he seems to like it.”

  “Maybe he’s sleeping on her floor under a window.”

  “Possibly. Dwarves think mattresses are too soft and squishy. A good slab of stone keeps one’s back healthy, Cutter tells me.”

  “Jev,” came a wan whisper from the bed.