He pressed the hurlant against her back and growled. “Twitch and yer dead, sweets.”
She stiffened, and Artus wrapped his hand over her mouth. The words tumbled out of his mouth automatically, pitched low and gravely to hide his age, all of it part of a routine he had made second nature on the streets of Ayventry. “You scream, you blink, you say one bloody word, and I’ll have you laid out for the priests, unnerstand?”
The Hanim was very still. Artus pressed the hurlant harder against her back. “Trigger’s getting itchy, love!”
The Hanim nodded.
“Walk,” Artus growled.
From the rotunda floor below there was a sudden quiet. “Why isn’t anybody moving?” Myreon asked.
“Something’s wrong.” Jaevis said.
“Yes, very good Jaevis, thank you,” Tyvian sneered.
Artus maneuvered the Hanim to the stairs, one arm still wrapped over her mouth, the other pressing the hurlant into her kidneys. “Open the gate, love.”
The Hanim flicked a finger and the gate sank out of view. Artus pushed her into the light, and the entire rotunda was suddenly struck speechless. All of it except, of course, Tyvian. “Ah, Artus—it’s about time.”
The two mark-slaves flanking the fake Hanim, having regained their senses from the enchantment, bellowed in dismay at the sight of their mistress being thusly waylaid, but Artus shouted back at them. “You hold fast, boys, or I airs out her guts!” He pulled her closer, so his hand slipped from her mouth to her neck.
“Who sent you, assassin?” the Hanim screeched, her voice suddenly hoarse. “I’ll double your price!”
Tyvian grinned broadly. “That is not an assassin, Hanim, but my young associate. He’s really more of a thug and a murderer.”
The two mark-slaves were moving around the gallery, closing in on Artus. They hadn’t stopped! He had a moment of panic—should he shoot her? Could he shoot her? Why didn’t she tell them to stop? Oh Saints, he was doomed! He saw Myreon’s face fall—another few seconds and they’d be on top of him. How could he make her stop them without killing her?
Suddenly Artus remembered his sisters, and he knew exactly what to do. He grabbed a big handful of the Hanim’s long, thick hair, right down by the roots, and gave it a twist and a yank that used to make Kestra squeal like a pig. To his surprise and amazement, the mighty Angharad tin’Theliara Hanim did the exact same thing. She even fell to her knees. Artus pressed the hurlant to the side of her neck. “What, you fink I’m kiddin’ or some such?”
At the sound of their mistress in pain, the mark-slaves slowed. When the Hanim held up her hand, they stopped cold. “Ah! Let go! Let go, you horrible—”
Artus gave her hair another good yank, bringing tears to her eyes. “You ain’t running this show no more, sweets. You gimme what I want and we all walks away, right?”
Myreon leaned over to Tyvian. “What’s with the phony accent?”
Tyvian shook his head. “Don’t ruin it now.” He then turned back to the Hanim and moved to go up the stairs. The slaves pressed spears against his chest. “Can we dispense with these now?”
“What are you talking about?” the Hanim growled through clenched teeth.
Artus increased the torsion on her hair by wrapping it around his fingers. “Do what he says!”
The Hanim waved her hand and four out of every five slaves vanished in a puff of smoke. Tyvian then stepped between two of the eight or nine remaining and came up the stairs. “Well, now, Hanim—we have ourselves a predicament, don’t we?”
“I will hunt you to the ends of the earth, smuggler! I’ll see you all suffer before you die!”
Tyvian tsked and shook his head. “Let me be more clear. My associate here has a particularly nasty enchanted rock pointed at your lovely neck and seems likely to tear your scalp clean off in another few moments—bad for you. You, on the other hand, have us lost in this lovely maze of a palace and still, no doubt, have a couple more dangerous tricks up your well-tailored sleeves—bad for us. It seems to me that we ought to cut a deal.”
“No deal!” Jaevis growled, eyeing the remaining slaves like a dog eyeing meat. “Cut her ugly throat.”
“Stay out of this, Jaevis,” Tyvian snapped. “So, can we deal?”
“Ma’am?” The Sergeant Defender glanced at Myreon.
Myreon held up a hand. “Steady . . .”
The Hanim’s face was twisted in a dirty scowl. “Release me first?”
Tyvian shook his head and smiled at Artus. “Not a chance in hell. Deal first, then we talk about releasing people. Here’s what I want—you show all three of us the way out. Once we are breathing real, actual night air, Artus here lets you go.”
“Tyvian,” Myreon said, “there are seven of us. And why are you making deals anyway? You are my prisoner!”
Jaevis snorted. “No, he is my prisoner.”
Myreon rolled her eyes. “Who you will be turning over to me as soon as I furnish the proper reward. Need we be this technical?”
“I do not turn Reldamar over to you. There is higher bidder.”
Myreon’s mouth dropped open. “What! Who?”
The Hanim, tears marring her mascara, snickered softly. “The red-haired young man, isn’t it?”
Myreon looked at the Hanim. “Who is that?”
Artus saw Tyvian’s mouth pop open for a split second, but then the smuggler closed it and composed himself. “Look, it really doesn’t matter who Jaevis works for, since I’m not bargaining for his release at all, so he won’t be getting paid.” He faced the Hanim. “When I said ‘all three of us’ I meant Artus, myself, and Myreon here. You can keep the Illini and the Defenders, for all I care. They’re exhausted and injured, and I doubt that those firepikes have much more than a charge or two left in them—those two mark-slaves and your remaining retainers can handle them, I’m sure.”
“You dog!” Jaevis screamed, “Death to you!” He rushed the stairs, but the mark-slaves intercepted, pushing him back with casual ease.
“Reldamar, you scum!” Myreon snarled. “I’ll not let you abandon my men here!”
Tyvian nodded. “Thank you, Myreon—right on cue. I, as it turns out, am not entirely heartless. I am willing to negotiate the release of your mirrored cohorts, provided you do one thing for me.”
Artus watched the Mage Defender stew for a second, then she heaved a heavy sigh. “What is it?”
Tyvian held up his wrists. “Take these shackles off of me, please.”
Myreon’s face screwed itself up into a bitter grimace. “Done.” She waved her hand and Tyvian’s shackles fell to the floor.
Tyvian nodded, rubbing his wrists, and looked to the Hanim. “Well? The use of your scalp and the continuation of your life in exchange for the release of myself, Artus here, Myreon, and her three flunkies. Deal?”
“You have a deal, Reldamar,” the Hanim growled. “Tell your brat to let me up.”
“Artus, help the lady up.”
Artus yanked her up by her hair, causing her to scream again.
“When this is over, your time will be short, Reldamar. I’ll see to it that every knife from here to distant Sandris will be hunting you.”
Tyvian gave the Hanim a kiss on the lips. “Until then, my desert flower. Come Myreon, Artus, stooges—let’s get out of here.”
The Hanim waved a hand to open a hidden doorway, and the awkward party moved through, a few slaves following them at a respectful distance. The last things Artus heard as the door slammed closed behind him were the screams of Hacklar Jaevis as the mark-slaves broke his bones.
CHAPTER 10
REWARDS DUE
The storehouse was a short tower in the far corner of the keep, built on a narrow strip of land that jutted out into Arble Brook. It had only one entrance—a door on the ground floor that opened
into the courtyard. Pressing her ear against this door, Hool heard Brana’s whine. Several minutes later she could still hear it, echoing in her head: a pathetic whimper in Hool’s native tongue, squeaking out through an echoing chamber, quavering as though barely strong enough to speak.
“Mama? Come get me, Mama. Please . . . come get me . . .”
At that sound, Tyvian’s plan had been erased in a holocaust of maternal rage. Breathlessly, tears running down her snout, Hool softly called back to her long-lost pup. “Mama’s coming, Brana. Mama loves you.”
The Dellorans inside the keep were drinking and celebrating, so they did not hear her kill the courtyard guards or capture the one inside. The guard inside the tower had been watching the river when she came upon him in the dark and broke his hip. She hung him upside down from the rafters.
She found Brana in a small cage of wire and steel, held in a deep, dark room full of animal cages that had been his prison for months. It stank of blood, fear, and filth and she tore it apart with her bare, bleeding hands. They had injured her pup. They had filled him with foul magicks. They had shaved patches of his fur away so they could burn him with horrible devices. They had made him howl with pain and threw him in a dark hole alone. They had left him to starve and taunted him when he was sleeping or awake. All this Brana had told her when he was, at last, nestled in her arms again.
Hool’s heart felt as though it were being ripped, stretched to the breaking point between two extremes. One of her pups, one of her babies, was back with her and safe. Brana clung to her chest, just as he had when he was brand new and still suckling at her breasts. Still whimpering, he nuzzled his fuzzy snout against her warmth. Her love was like a sunrise, setting her world afire. But the hatred was there, too—hatred for the beasts who had done this to her pup. Where her love was bright and hot, the hatred was dark and hard and cold as the ice of deep winter.
She would make them pay. The guard hanging from the rafters would be first.
Even before Hool began, the man wept and begged and called out for his mother. The irony of it filled Hool with a blinding, white-hot anger that could only be released by dragging the man’s own knife across his naked skin, peeling him like a grape. Hool pressed the bloody edge of it against the meaty inside part of his thigh, and the guard shrieked. “Sweet Hann’s mercy! Don’t don’t don’t . . .” His voice melted into a garbled howl as she stripped a section of skin three inches wide off his body.
Taking her time, Hool methodically stripped him of his skin. Listening to him plead for mercy produced a deep satisfaction that could not be accurately measured, all while his comrades drank poison and rutted with dirty women no more than a few dozen yards away.
The guard eventually died, and Hool completed dressing the corpse like a hunting kill, hanging the hides from the rafters to dry. She tossed Brana parts that looked good to eat—meatier parts like the arms and buttocks—so he could gain back some strength. She had left his organs in the courtyard to be found—those contained his spirits, his wretched essence, and she wanted no part of such a foul and tainted soul.
There were more Dellorans, though. There was more vengeance to visit upon them. There was her other pup—her darling Api, brave and daring—to find. She wanted them to know she was coming for them. She wanted to fill them with the same terror they had filled her pups with all this time. At the top of the tower, her fur stained maroon from the blood of the skinned Delloran, she poured herself into a howl that would freeze fire and blacken the sun itself.
Hendrieux was sitting on a chair set atop a table, two slave girls at his feet, competing for attention by removing more and more of their clothing, while around him Sahand’s Delloran soldiers drank and whored their way through their lord’s reward. Hendrieux flipped each of the women a half-mark apiece, and smiled. “Keep it up, ladies. Winner gets a very special present.”
Sahand’s appreciation for acquiring the Artificer from the Kalsaaris and not screwing it up overly much had come in the form of a massive chest of gold coins and the orders to simply “lay low” for a couple of days while the final touches on the prince’s plan were put in place. To Hendrieux and the men, that meant being cooped up in a fortified keep that no one but the Phantoms knew they occupied. It also meant being cooped up in a fortified keep full of slaves placed there for their exclusive use. Things couldn’t have been better if Tyvian Reldamar’s head had been delivered on a silver plate
The slave girls grinned weakly at him—one of them was missing a tooth—and pawed at their bodice laces. Hendrieux watched with heavy-lidded eyes and dipped his little finger into the pot of Cool Blue in his lap. He had done it. He, Zazlar Hendrieux, had earned the respect and praise of the most powerful, most dangerous ruler in the West. He would be a rich man. Leaping up from his seat, he raised his hands above his head and shouted to gain his men’s attention. “Lads! Lads! Let’s have a toast, shall we?”
Tankards were immediately raised as the wine and ale was passed around. Hendrieux, smiling more broadly than he had in weeks, snatched a cup from another man and said, “To Prince Sahand, long may he live, and to all the bloody gold he’s gonna rain on our heads! To riches, lads! To riches!”
The men met the toast with cheers. Hendrieux was declared the man of the hour, hoisted atop their shoulders and carried about in triumph. After a score of minutes and two cups of ale, he was dancing on a table when Gallo appeared at the door to the hall, a cold wind entering with him.
The revelry died immediately, and all eyes went to Gallo and what he had in his hand.
“What have you got there, Gallo?” Hendrieux asked, trying to keep the levity from dying down. “More meat for the fire?”
Gallo held up a bloody lump of flesh and threw it onto the floor. “All I could find of Jenner.”
“He was the guard at the storage tower.” Hendrieux said, his voice calm only from the ink he’d taken. Silence blanketed the hall, and men reached for their swords. Hendrieux looked at the bloody pile of flesh on the floor and felt suddenly queasy. “Who . . . who . . .”
Just then, a bestial howl echoed from somewhere outside. It persisted for several seconds before finally wearing away to nothing, but the sound left a mark that remained long after it was gone. Hendrieux looked around and saw every face as drained of color as his own.
Every face, that was, except Gallo’s. “The gnoll’s here,” the fish-eyed man rasped. “She’s not happy.”
There was no escape from the storage tower without being exposed to fire from the sentries atop the keep. Hool knew they were inattentive for now but would not be for long, and then she would have to figure out how to get them without being shot. From the top of the tower, now sticky with the drying blood of Brana’s torturer, Hool could easily see the catwalks atop other parts of the curtain wall surrounding the fortress, but those catwalks did not connect to the tower itself. She could make the leap and escape, but not with Brana, and she could not leave him. The space from the storage tower to the main building was shorter—ten yards maybe—but not short enough for a leap with her pup. The closest door at the back was thick oak studded with iron, and had been barred against her. They knew she was here now. She wanted them to know. Nothing would save them.
“Mama,” Brana whimpered, nestling closer to her bosom, “Can we leave now? I don’t like it here.”
“We need to find your sister, Brana. Hush,” Hool told him, running a hand gently through his fluffy cream-colored mane. It was tangled with mats and she could feel the scars beneath it. Again her heart exploded with the feelings of rage and elation. Her baby was safe, but she had another pup. Another pup these monsters were hurting somewhere at that very moment.
“They took Api away, Mama.” Brana said softly. “They said I would never see her again.”
“They were liars, Brana. Hush, now.” She laid a hand along the top of his head and scratched his ears the
way he liked, and Brana let loose a deep sigh.
The sound of human voices came from within the fortress building and from the turrets that overlooked the tower Hool controlled. They were doing something. The strong one, Gallo, must have returned. They must be regrouping. This was bad. Hool could take any four of them at a time, but she needed them to be disorganized. She needed them to be afraid. She cursed herself for howling—that had been foolish. She was acting stupid, like a human.
Gathering up the clothing of the dead guards, Hool painstakingly crafted a nest for her pup. Setting him gently within it and covering him so he would not be seen, she whispered. “Brana, I have to go find your sister now.”
“I want to come, Mama. I can help.”
“Rabbits don’t help wolves, little one.”
Brana nodded, understanding. “I’m the rabbit.”
“And what do rabbits do?”
“Hide in their holes.”
Hool scratched his ears. “Good boy, and what else?”
“Run like the wind.”
“You be a good rabbit, Brana. Mama has to be a wolf.”
“Will you come back?” Brana asked, big yellow eyes gleaming in the lamplight.
“Always,” Hool said, her voice trembling.
“Don’t cry, Mama.”
Hool licked him on the nose. “Mama loves you, Brana.”
Turning away from her pup, her precious Brana, Hool ran and took a flying leap from the top of the tower, sailing across the thirty feet of open air between it and the keep, and landed against the rough stone wall. Gaining purchase in an arrow slit, she began to climb.
CHAPTER 11
TWO STEPS AHEAD
“I don’t get it.” Artus said, his eyes crossed so he could focus on the glowing tip of a firepike that floated no more than six inches from his nose. “How is this better than where we just were?”
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