by Smith,Darian
“That’s hardly the business of a servant, is it?” Her arm ached, but she kept her face a determined mask of outrage. “I’m the Lady of Sandilar. Take your hands off me at once.”
“You don’t give the orders here,” Fressin said. “You’re not the lady of my House.”
Something about the quietness of his voice and the way he said it sent a chill to the core of her being. She could feel herself trembling. “House?” she said. Memories of history lessons in political intrigue broke the surface of her mind, bringing a kind of breathlessness with them. “Assassin House.”
“You are well educated for a familyless orphan, aren’t you?”
“I have a family,” she said. “They died as heroes defending Kalanon.”
“Well, perhaps you’ll join them soon.”
Latricia struggled, pulling her arm back as hard as she could. He twisted the grip on her wrist and she felt something warm and wet drizzle onto her head and over her shoulders. She looked up and the smelly liquid splashed onto her face. Fear burned up through her stomach into her throat. He was pouring oil from the lamp over her.
“No,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “Please, don’t.”
“You brought this on yourself,” he said.
Latricia stared up at the lamp. The last of the oil dribbled out from under the wick cap, ran along the side of the tilted glass case and trickled down onto her. Now, only the remaining oil soaked into the wick kept the flame alive. She had been lucky beyond measure that it had not caught the leaking oil alight as it fell. If she dropped the lamp now and it broke, or if she came anywhere near an open flame, she would burn. There was nothing she could do.
“Mama?” Tommy’s tousled head rose up from the pillow and looked across at them. “What’s happening?”
His voice sparked a fire inside her that could rival any flame without. She would not die here at the hands of Roydan’s assassin. And she would not let him take her son.
She flung herself forward, making full body contact with Fressin in the hope of getting some of the oil onto him as well. He gave a startled yelp and she drove her knee up into his groin. He let go.
She threw the lamp at him and ran to her son. “Help!” she screamed. “Magus! Help!”
Fressin swatted the lamp out of the air and it landed on the double bed she had been sleeping in. The still burning wick tumbled inside the glass like a trapped firefly. He shook his hand in pain and hunched over a little as he glared. “I thought there might be a bit of bitch in you,” he said.
Latricia pulled the blankets back from Tomidan and he huddled in close to her. “Stay away from him, Tommy,” she said. “He’s the one who tried to get you back in Alapra.”
Fressin sneered. “I wasn’t trying to get anyone in Alapra. The boy got in the way is all.”
“Really?” Latricia licked her lips. Where was Draeson? Surely the mage had heard her. He would protect them. That was their deal. She just had to delay things long enough for him to get here. “And what are you doing now then?”
Fressin went very still. “Now you’re the one getting in the way.”
The lamp wick had spilled out onto the bedspread and was burning a hole in the fabric, a seed of flame germinating in the spring.
Latricia pulled Tommy to his feet. “Get ready to run,” she whispered in his ear. “Find Draeson.”
“Come on, Latricia.” Fressin stepped forward slowly. He had a dagger in his hand. She hadn’t seen where it came from. “You and the Nilarian would be dead already if Sir Brannon hadn’t interfered on the road this afternoon. You might as well give in and I’ll make it painless. The boy won’t be hurt.”
She heard Tommy’s breath catch in his throat and a little sob escaped him. Her awareness seemed to sharpen and the world around her shifted. Time slowed down and, despite the darkness in the room, she could see everything with razor-edged clarity: the broken lamp and tongue of flame eating up the pattern on the bedspread, the vase of fresh flowers that had been left on the writing desk, the small gap between the table and the wardrobe that was just big enough for her son to squeeze through. And the assassin advancing on them both, who blocked any other exit.
She pushed Tommy toward the gap. “Run!”
The boy bolted like a startled rabbit, darting under the rim of the table and wriggling toward the other side. Fressin lunged, reaching out for him. Latricia grabbed the flower vase and swung it with all her might at the back of Fressin’s head. It connected hard and shattered. Shards of broken glass rained down like an ice storm, shining with orange light from the building fire on the bed.
Fressin stumbled and fell against the table. The knife dropped from his hand and skittered across the floor. “Hooded bitch!” He rubbed at the back of his head and his hand came away covered in blood.
Tomidan reached the door and paused. “Mama?”
“Go,” she yelled. “Go!” She charged forward, shoving Fressin as hard as she could, hoping he was already off balance enough that she could force her way past. He lurched but kicked back with his foot, tripping her. She stumbled, almost fell, and caught herself. She kept her eyes fixed ahead, forcing her legs to propel her forward. Tommy opened the door and ran out into the corridor.
Fressin’s hand caught the back of her nightdress and pulled her back. She screamed and flailed back at him. He caught her wrist again and this time bent it up behind her back painfully.
She struggled until it felt like her shoulder would wrench from its socket, but he was too strong. Her heart felt like a trapped animal in her chest. The smell of lamp oil filled her nostrils.
He pressed up against her, his breath hot in her ear. He held his bloody hand in front of her face. “I offered to make it painless. But for this, you can burn.”
He gripped her shoulder hard and turned her around to face the bed. The flames were growing, their light casting a cabal of dancing shadows around the room. He pulled her twisted arm up higher, forcing her to bend at the waist. His pelvis pushed against her buttocks.
“Please,” she said, stalling for time. “I’ll do anything you want. You don’t have to do this.” The heat felt like waves against her face. She could hear the fabric of the bed crackling as it burned. Soon that would be her skin searing like pigmeat. Her hair, burning like a candlewick. “Please.”
His laughter crackled like the fire. “No,” he said, and pushed her forward, his grip like stone.
The flames burned hot against her face and she bent her knees, collapsing her weight downward to avoid them, ignoring the excruciating pain in her shoulder as she did so. She felt it pop and Fressin let go of her wrist. Her arm fell to her side, dangling uselessly. She knelt beside the burning bed, unable to move.
Fressin kicked her in the small of her back. “Get up.”
Latricia took a deep breath. “No.” Her son was safe. He would have reached the mage by now. Draeson might be too late to save her, but she could manage this small defiance. “No.”
“Fine.” He lifted a piece of paper from the writing desk and held it out to the building flames. Fire flickered around the edges.
She watched as the burning paper crept closer. Here it comes, she thought. A stray part of her brain wanted to close her eyes, as if not seeing it would stop it from happening, but she couldn’t. Her vision shifted to Fressin’s face. He smiled as he thrust painful death toward her.
The smile vanished. A hand clamped down on Fressin’s shoulder and yanked him backward, away from her. She turned to see the assassin flung across the room with no more effort than a pillow. He crashed into the wall and collapsed to the floor like a broken marionette.
“Ahpra’s Tears,” she whispered, relief sagging against her bones like weights in a vendor’s scale. She was close to tears of her own. “Thank you.” She crawled back from the bed, feeling the blessedly cool air from the open door take the place of the heat of the fire.
Her rescuer rolled her over and she got a good look at his face for the first time. “Ho
w did you get in here?” she said. Then shook her head. “Never mind. Thank you for saving me. I’ll see that you get rewarded.” She wasn’t sure how, exactly, when her main source of income, Duke Roydan, had apparently hired the man who had just tried to kill her.
Her rescuer leaned in close enough that she could smell the meat on his breath. “Where’s your son?”
For a moment she didn’t understand. Then his hand gripped her around the throat, lifting her up.
“Where’s Tomidan?”
Realization struck her. “No. It’s you?”
The hand at her throat tightened, then abruptly released. Latricia blinked at the point of a blade protruding from the man’s chest. Behind him, Fressin stood like a vengeful demon in the firelight.
“Payback,” he said.
Latricia expected the stabbed man to fall. Instead, he smiled. He rose to his feet and turned to face Fressin, the long dagger still penetrating him all the way through. The handle jutted out from his back like the windup key of a clock.
Latricia ran. She stumbled into the hallway, screaming, as she hammered every door she passed. The ward-dogs growled and snarled and for the first time she began to truly believe that, even if he were to be woken in time, their master could not save her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
There were five more bodies in the courtyard. Maybe more. The lanterns had gone dark and Brannon couldn’t see very far beyond the doorsteps. The night hung like a blanket, smothering and still. Blood was an ink stain on the parchment of cobblestones. Limbs had been torn right off and lay separate to the men they belonged to.
“This had to have been the Risen,” Brannon said. He pulled the door closed again and bolted it. “It’s stronger and more vicious than before.”
Taran was draping a tablecloth over the body of the captain of the guard. “Do you think it’s inside?”
Brannon’s gut felt tight. “Why else would someone remove Ula’s spirit bags? We need to start waking people up.”
Even as he said it, the sound of dogs barking burst from the floor above like hounds just scenting their prey. The sound bit into his stomach, savaging his nerves. Those were Draeson’s wards against intruders.
He bolted for the stairs, Brother Taran barely a step behind. The wards would wake everyone, but they’d be lucky to react in time. Between what Ula had told him about Risen and what he’d seen of the guards’ bodies outside, he wasn’t sure if any reaction would be enough to save them.
At the top of the stairs, Tomidan Sandilar was screaming and beating his little fists against a door. Tears streamed down his face. “Help! Please, help my mama!”
The hallway was filled with smoke. It burned in Brannon’s nostrils and made his eyes sting. An orange glow licked hungrily in the depths of the smoke. There’d been no sign of a fire when he’d been here just a few moments ago. How had it gotten so bad, so fast?
“Where’s your mother, Tommy?” he asked, gripping the boy by the shoulders. “Where is she?”
“In the room with the bad man.”
“Okay. Stay here.” He turned to Taran. “Keep him safe.”
“Shouldn’t we evacuate the building?” Taran said.
“Not yet.” Brannon stared into the smoke. “We don’t know where the thing is yet. This could be a ruse to drive us out and separate us.”
“Oh. That’d work.”
“It has for me in the past.”
Sword point low, Brannon moved forward. The flames were concentrated in Latricia’s room, licking the corners of the door frame. It wouldn’t be long now before the other guests came to investigate the noise, smelled the smoke, and began to panic. There would be very little chance of controlling the situation after that.
There were shapes moving in the smoke. He couldn’t see for certain who they were.
Behind him, Tomidan Sandilar called out again.
“Tommy?” Latricia’s voice came from up ahead. “Tommy, run! Blood and Tears, magus!”
A door across from Brannon banged open and a woman screamed. “Fire!”
“Latricia,” Brannon called, moving toward the figures in the smoke. “Taran’s got Tommy safe. Come this way. We need to get out of here.” His mind raced over the question she had raised. Where was Draeson? Why wasn’t he helping?
Another voice slithered out of the smoke, mocking and cruel. “Don’t run, Tommy. If you want to see your mother again, you better come here and get her. I might have to kill her otherwise.”
Brannon was closer now. The wards and screams had woken all of the inn’s guests. Doors opened and people ran this way and that, like marbles on a tray. He could barely keep track of the figures of Latricia and the stranger in the chaos. Whoever was hiding in the smoke wanted Tomidan. Another member of the royal bloodline. Probably the next victim.
Jessamine appeared and grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?”
“Find Ula and send her to me,” he said. Then get yourself and everyone else out. Take your medical supplies. And be careful.”
Her eyes were wide, but she pressed her lips tight and nodded. A moment later she was gone.
Latricia stumbled toward him, hugging the wall. Even through the smoke, he could see the fear in her eyes. Her arm dangled loosely at her side as though pulled from its socket. She looked into his face. “Help me.”
Behind her was the saboteur from the boat, the man that had been in Latricia’s garden in Alapra. Brannon’s eyes widened and he felt a stab of hot guilt. He’d assured Latricia this man was dead, even when she’d told him she’d recognized him at the manor. He’d watched the man disappear beneath the water and Draeson’s ice close over the top of him. He’d been sure he was gone. Yet here he was, a predator stalking his prey.
A mocking smile flicked onto the man’s face. “Ah, Sir Brannon. Fancy meeting you again so soon.”
Brannon tried to remember what Latricia had tried to tell him yesterday afternoon. The man’s name was Fressin. He was Roydan’s new steward at the manor. But why? Why would Roydan have hired such a man? Did he even know? Or had Fressin faked his documents entirely?
“Excuse us,” Fressin said. He lunged forward and grabbed Latricia by the hair, pulling her backward into the smoke.
“No!” Brannon sprang after him, swinging the sword between them in the hope that Fressin would let go. Instead the man tugged Latricia closer, using her like a shield, forcing Brannon to pull the blow short.
“Drop the sword, Sir Brannon, or she gets my knife in her back.”
Brannon lowered it. Fressin had her too close. He could kill her before Brannon had a chance to stop him. “What is it you want?”
“I said drop it,” Fressin said. “Meaning out of your hand and onto the floor.”
Latricia whimpered.
Other guests were still emerging but they ignored what was happening in their rush toward the stairs to escape the flames. One of them bumped Brannon as he passed. Brannon didn’t think he’d even seen him.
“Okay, take it easy.” He let his sword clatter to the floor. “I’m sure we can work something out before things get too carried away. Why don’t we follow everyone outside and talk about it there?”
Fressin wrinkled his nose and nodded his head toward the stairs. “You first.”
There was a squeal from up the corridor and running footsteps. Tomidan had somehow slipped free of Brother Taran and ran toward his mother. Brannon cursed.
“Mama!”
Latricia gasped. “No, Tommy. Run!” The boy’s steps faltered and he hesitated, uncertain.
“Trade,” Fressin said and thrust Latricia toward Brannon. She stumbled a few steps and they collided. He caught her, turning to gently set her against the wall.
Fressin lunged forward to grasp Tomidan’s arm, but the boy ducked to the side and ran to his mother.
Brannon put himself between them and Fressin. “Just leave,” he said. “No one has to get hurt.” The smoke was thick and choking now. It burned his lungs with every breath.
>
“Look out behind you,” Fressin said, his voice light. He wiggled his fingers in a tiny wave.
“What?” Something hit Brannon from behind like a siege battering ram. He flew across the hallway and cracked his head against the doorjamb of an abandoned room. Pain speared into his brain and sparked down to his shoulder like hot metal chips from a blacksmith’s anvil, as he slid to the floor. “Blood and Tears, what was that?”
Battle-honed instinct was the only thing that forced his eyes upward. The pain was incapacitating, shutting down his thoughts into one tense, silent scream, but his body knew better than to close down. If he let himself be stunned by an unexpected blow, the next one would kill him.
But the next blow didn’t come. He took a deep breath, trying to focus, and coughed. The fire. He couldn’t stay still. They had to get out of the building.
He pushed himself up, using the wall as a brace. The smoke made everything difficult to see. Fressin was to his right. Latricia and Tommy a little to the left. Latricia had picked up his sword and held it out in front of her like a yardstick, measuring the distance Fressin had to stay away.
The dog wards were still barking, the noise of them amplified in Brannon’s skull.
Another figure materialized out of the thicker smoke. Latricia swung the sword to meet it but whoever it was casually batted the blade away. She hit at him with her fists but to no avail.
He grasped her chin in one hand and her shoulder in the other and tore off her head.
Blood sprayed across the corridor like warm rain on Brannon’s skin. His insides were suddenly cold.
Latricia’s head bounced when it hit the floor. It rolled, just a bit, then lay still.
Tommy was screaming.
The newcomer reached for the boy, but Fressin was there first. He thrust Tommy away from his mother’s corpse, toward the stairs, and took position to defend him.
Brannon lurched forward. His head was still ringing but he knew what he’d seen. This was the Risen. The thing was after the boy. “Ula! Draeson! By all the Hooded Nameless things, help!”