The flapping of wings in the trees above him drew Malthus from his thoughts. He tensed when he saw the bat, wondering if Sergei had returned. The Lemyari messenger had raped Malthus' seven-year-old niece Ros, and left her for dead with a small quantity of his venom in her blood stream. Malthus had managed to pull Ros out of the paralysis, but the child remained weakened. It enraged him, and he raised power to rip the undead soul out of the messenger.
He opened his necromantic senses and threw a low level scan into the trees. The bat up there was definitely undead and vampiric. "Come down, Sergei, and I'll rip your throat out."
The bat fluttered out of his reach to another cluster of trees, and Malthus followed, with a hand on his sword. In the shadows stood a slender mon, her lips curved into a sneer.
"Having trouble with Sergei?" Zinzi asked, taking the messenger's pouch from her shoulder.
Malthus frowned, stepping cautiously toward the slender vampire. "I heard you were dead."
She laughed low. "As dead as undeath."
"In Minnoras."
"Oh that." Zinzi extended the pouch to him. "That was someone else's head that Hoon found on his gatepost. I sent in a changeling first. I suspected that traitors had been killing my birds, so you can understand my caution."
Malthus took the pouch from Zinzi, removed the letters, and handed the pouch back. "I can indeed."
Hoon, like many of the older Lemyari, favored turning mages. Malthus wondered why he had never suspected before that Zinzi might have been a mage, but then Lemyari mages tended to hide or disguise their talents, favoring discretion over display.
"Having trouble with Sergei?" Zinzi repeated.
"He raped my niece. If he comes back, I'll kill him."
Zinzi smirked. "I'm sure you'll try. But I'll ask Hoon to keep him away."
"I would appreciate that." Malthus turned on his heel, walking toward the manor.
"My payment," Zinzi called after him.
Malthus paused and looked at her. "I don't owe you. I haven't anything going back."
After weeks of no messages, Malthus had not come prepared to pay. However, there was one payment that was always accepted. He pushed up his sleeve and extended his wrist. "A couple of sips, and no more."
Zinzi grinned then, and came to him. Her fangs descended from their sheaths with the distinctive tiny hook at the bottom that marked her as vampire. Malthus did not flinch when she took his wrist and plunged her fangs into him, although he had not fed anyone in years, except Ros when he called her back from the edge of death with his own blood. Zinzi took two strong pulls, hauling as much of his blood as she could in the sips allotted to her.
"That's enough," Malthus growled.
Zinzi withdrew, swiping her tongue over the wound to close it. "Delicious. You aren't bad looking. You could come to my bed anytime."
"I don't sleep with vampires." Malthus turned and left her.
"Rude bastard," Zinzi muttered, and changed.
Malthus walked back to the house, drawing his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. The first cool nights of autumn had arrived with the waning of summer. He let himself into the manor through a servants' door in the rear, passing with swift silence through the corridors, past the sleeping chambers of the nibari and those of the lycan servants. The guardsmyn, who might have been more alert to his passage, slept in another wing above the salle. Claw had expanded the manor over the last ten years, almost as if he were gathering his household for war.
Well, he didn't do it fast enough. The war is upon him and he's not ready or strong enough to stop us.
Malthus thought back to the increasing frequency that he saw Claw grimace and knead his left arm. The chieftain was ill. Stupid wolf, I'm killing you and you don't know it.
He crossed the broad landing of the second floor staircase, heading for the study Claw had given over to him at his request. He opened the door and locked it behind him, easing down the bar that would prevent it being opened even if the mon on the other side had a key. Removing it would give him time to hide whatever he did not wish to be seen. He knelt at the fireplace and got a blaze going there, before settling at his oaken desk with the letters that Zinzi had brought him.
Three letters. One from Hoon, one from his mother, and one from Egidius. Zinzi must have been making a circuit, picking up payments at each stop.
He slid his fingers over the seal on his mother's letter. Sidera always put a mage seal beneath the wax one. If anyone except the one for whom it was intended tried to open the letter, the missive would destroy itself. Sidera had a distinctive and powerful mage gift, which was why her father had chosen her out of all the offspring his harem had given him to be the principal inheritor of his estates. Women could not, under normal circumstances, inherit properties, titles, and great estates in Waejontor, but every rule was made to be broken with the right influence.
Malthus popped the letter open with the proper word of command.
Malthus,
I'm so very happy to learn of your marriage. I can't wait to meet her. From the description of your successes with your concubines, I expect that I'll have a legitimate grandchild soon as well.
The special chambers have been readied at Carrion Crevasse for your concubines, and I have sent talented people there to see them through their laying in times. Also, the dungeons and laboratories are finished to your specifications, stocked, and prepared. The first captives you sent have been confined per your instructions. Your cousin Tarentia has moved into quarters there to serve as your seneschal and primary assistant as she did at the previous manor.
Not a word of this place has escaped to either Hoon or the queen. I am grateful concerning your warnings. I would never have dreamed that Lord Daemon was Hoon, much less Brandrahoon.
Your loving mother,
Sidera Tyrins
Malthus smiled in satisfaction after finishing the letter. His mother never let him down. But that was to be expected, considering that he was her only child. Sidera had been Lord Feodras' toxicologist and bio-alchemist, designing poisons and antidotes on his behalf. Lord Feodras had made her his mistress against her will, got Malthus on her, and forbidden her other lovers. With her sylvan blood, she was still young enough for other children, but so far had not chosen to make any since Feodras' death. Malthus wondered what it would feel like to have a sibling from his mother. All of his paternal siblings were dead. Two of them at his own hands. The only brother he had experienced any closeness to had been Troyes. But Isranon had killed Troyes over Merissa, and then gotten his bastard child on her. The little bastard would have to die and his father also.
He folded the letter, took it to the fireplace, and shoved it into the flames. Once he had it burning well, Malthus returned to the desk and considered the final two. The one from Lord Hoon made him nervous, and he left it for last.
Malthus,
When you are ready, Laetus has his units positioned to take the village of Three Stones. That's one of the four we picked out for first strikes. Give the word and we'll take it. As per our agreement, forty percent of the women and children captured will be sent on to Carrion Crevasse to await your pleasures, the other ten percent of your share will be held in the caves to meet your needs. Four from that last steading we burned are still available for use, although I admit I'm getting very hungry for a rite.
Egidius
Malthus carried that letter to the fire and burned it also.
A rite. Yes, a rite would be so nice. I haven't felt a mon die beneath me in weeks . Malthus' cock grew hard at the thought of slipping it into a dying body. That made him think of Merissa. He put Hoon's unread letter into a secret compartment at the bottom of his quiver of arrows, and then headed for the bedroom to wake his wife.
A pleasant thought occurred to him and Malthus smiled in anticipation. This time tomorrow, Kynyr Maguire will be dead.
CHAPTER SEVEN
PLANS
The meeting room lay deep in the bowels of the renovated grain ware
house known as the Green Sheaf. It had no windows. Wards against scrying had been drawn upon all four walls, floor, the ceiling, and the door. A long table that could easily seat forty or more occupied the far end, while sofas, low tables, and chairs filled the area nearest the door.
Nine sa'necari held their seats along the sides of the great table, watching their leader, Heironim Traxton sitting at their head. Heironim privately called himself "Lord Traxton" although he had no right to the name. The sa'necari, one of Malthus' two right hand myn, had been born Heironim Calderone, one of the last Lord Traxton's many bastards. He and Malthus Tyrins who currently called himself Malthus Estrobian rited Lord Traxton when they were mere boys in retaliation for his refusal to legitimize Heironim. Traxton had died screaming with his bastard offspring's cock up his ass and a knife in his ribs.
Nine green glass jars clustered to Traxton's right hand and a rolled map lay to his left. Heironim tapped an impatient rhythm with his forefinger on a folded note.
"I called you here, because Kynyr Maguire is in town. Flavio sent word. He's looking into the death of Cullen Blackwood."
"We've been expecting that." Dorjan Calendri sat at Heironim's right hand in the place of honor as senior among Heironim's lieutenants. Average height and slight of build, his amaranthine eyes were the deepest of those present, a sign that he had tasted the fruits of death in the rites more often than the others. They showed their true eyes at these meetings, casting aside the cloaking spells that allowed them to pass for human.
A sa'necari on the far side of the table curled his left hand up as if it held something and made a hammering motion with his right. "That runt screamed like a pig when I drove the spikes through him."
Dorjan caught a glimmer of irritation in Heironim's eyes and glanced at his companion. "Shut up, Nelek."
Nelek shrugged his left shoulder and said nothing.
They had all known each other since childhood, some since birth. Sidera Tyrins and her household had raised, trained, and educated them. They were all sa'necari-born; either bastards or orphans a few of them were both of sa'necari nobility who had perished at the hands of the Sharani occupiers. Sidera called them the Band of Friends, and her iron lessons had given them surprising cohesion and discipline compared to other sa'necari groups. They had bonded and fused into a formidable force despite their small numbers or perhaps because of it Dorjan was never certain.
"The note's from Flavio?"
Heironim glanced at Dorjan with a curt nod. "This isn't a personal vendetta. Maguire called it 'clan business.' Claw has made his first move and sent Maguire to ask questions."
"He won't learn anything. The whores are all bought in one way or another."
"It isn't enough." Heironim crumpled the note and threw it at the wall. "The high and mighty Kynyr Maguire have any of you gotten a look at him?"
Nelek waved his hand at Heironim, and received permission to speak. "We got a look at all four of them. Three blonds and a red-head. I'm not certain which is him. It's the same four stopped me from taking Cullen the first time."
"Which one put the knife in your belly?" Heironim leaned forward on his elbows.
Dorjan watched Nelek's face. Sa'necari were hard to kill, especially after they had gotten fifteen or twenty rites under their belts. The wound had been easily healed with a bottle of fresh blood; however, Nelek had been the butt of the joke ever since.
"The one with the whitish hair."
"Finn MacIver." Dorjan supplied the name from a sheet of descriptions that Malthus had given them.
"Tomorrow you can return the favor, Nelek." Heironim favored Dorjan with a smile, suggesting that he might yet be forgiven for his own failure: Dorjan had failed to stop that cub of Silkie's from escaping. But who would have dreamed the cub could ride like that or that the horse Cooley had been up on could have been so fast and have had such tremendous stamina. Dorjan's mount had dropped dead trying to overtake the cub. The horse Cooley had ridden that day had been black, not sorrel, and yet the more that Dorjan thought on it, the more convinced he had become that the horse must have been Cullen Blackwood's celebrated Larkspur.
"Kill them all, Dorjan. Let them get close to home close enough to feel safe and then do it. Tie their bodies to their horses and send them across the bridge as a warning to Claw Redhand. It's time the lycans knew the road is ours."
"We get too close and we'll have the bridge guards on us."
Heironim handed the jars around. "Just shoot them and fade before the guard can catch you."
Dorjan noted the runes actually sa'necari ideograms on the nine green glass jars: Sidera had given the toxin a rating of nine, putting it a shade above curare and just below Lemyari venom on the Romilay Scale. The jars had broad mouths and cork stoppers, perfect for popping open and dipping arrowheads into the contents; although some of them preferred to pour a measure in a bowl and apply it to their weapons with a brush.
"Something new?" Dorjan inquired, breaking the long silence.
"Very. Still Devil's Silver based, but the neurotoxic elements are stronger work faster. Dorjan, you're in charge. Don't disappoint me."
"I won't." Dorjan took the jar and opened the lid, stared into the contents. The acrid odor that arose from the jar burned his nostrils. The smell would fade when the toxin dried, but it made unpleasant working.
"I want four units of five with an officer each. Black shaft arrows are to be issued to only two of the archers in each group."
"Why so few?" Nelek scowled. "Why not all of them?"
Dorjan wished that Nelek would not argue. It only irritated Heironim. The black shaft arrows were poisoned, while the red shafted ones were not. Dorjan had no idea why Malthus wanted both in play at once, but he knew better than to argue with him. So did Heironim.
"Just do as you're told." Heironim unrolled the map and pinned it flat with paperweights. He tapped a spot on the map and they all leaned in to see it better. "The road dips and bends here, just before it comes in view of the bridge. Heavy tree cover. The wagon can't move fast and he won't be able to turn it. Enfilade them from the sides. Block their retreat front and rear."
* * * *
Eideard and Ramsey were waiting in their room when Kynyr arrived with Finn trailing him. Kynyr could see the questions in their eyes as he sat down on the bed and started pulling his boots off. The room felt cramped, rather than cozy, with two large beds squeezed into it, a table that seated four, a couple of dressers and a sofa.
Silkie's words had disturbed him enough that Kynyr kept running them through his mind. He had an easy way to get Silkie out, but it involved first bringing his Gram to Hell's Widow; and he doubted that Todd would agree to risk her that way.
"How'd it go?" Eideard sat in a chair near the window, watching Kynyr.
Ramsey sat in the middle of the bed he would be sharing with Eideard, bare to the waist. Rust-colored hair bristled on his muscular chest. "I asked for Ellie, but she was booked until midnight knew Kynyr didn't want us there that late."
Kynyr tossed his boots into a corner near the bed, peeled his tunic off, and started unlacing his mail. Ramsey whistled at the blue-violet shimmer of Kynyr's armor. "When did you get that? It's kendaryl isn't it?"
"Early solstice gift from Gram. Made in Iradrim."
"That don't come cheap." Eideard went closer to get a good look at it. He tapped a small square of metal in the form of a shield near the shoulder. "Maker's mark. Eitri Nevskaya. Shit, Kynyr, he's the best out there. Your gram must have money."
Kynyr pushed Eideard away. "She's translating a book for their High Priest. Cahira got this in trade more or less."
"Ellie" Eideard moved to a chair.
"I told you to stay away from her." Kynyr paused with his fingers on the lacings to scowl at all of them. "If anyone speaks to her, it will be me."
Finn scanned their faces and tongued his lips. "You see the way she fled when Kynyr brought up Cullen?"
They all nodded.
"Looked suspicious
to me. What'd Silkie say?"
Kynyr exhaled heavily, and let his gaze drift across their faces. "Remember your promises, friends. Silkie says Ellie drugged Cullen. He was taken without a fight."
Eideard's face went livid with rage and he unleashed a string of curses. "Someone should gut that bitch."
The room went silent and everyone stared at Eideard until Kynyr spoke. "I know Cullen saved your life, but you were always the one who hated to see him coming."
"A mon changes, Kynyr. Down there on my knees, hurting so bad I could barely move knowing the next blow would kill me and Cullen shoves a blade into the asshole's kidneys. I've never seen a mon look so welcome."
"There's that," Finn interjected. "What are we going to do about Ellie?"
" We are not going to do anything. I am." Kynyr shrugged out of the padded linen shirt he wore beneath his armor. The amulet that Silkie had sensed an azure crystal with a runed band on it hung from a golden chain around his neck.
Eideard's teeth peeled back from his teeth, hair sprouting along his arms. "I say kill her before she sends another of us to the butchers if she hasn't already."
"Move too fast, Eideard, and we'll put our feet in a badger hole. We need to talk to Todd before we do anything."
Finn's gaze traced the scar on Kynyr's chest from the long silver blade that had gone completely through him. Kynyr noticed the glance and grabbed a robe. He had never felt awkward before without his clothes on, but the way people stared at the scar bothered him. There were very few things that could scar a lycan, among them silver especially runed silver and kendaryl blades.
Eideard's face began to grow a snout as he snarled at Kynyr. "You're being too cautious."
Kynyr met Eideard's gaze, calm and steady. "I'm your commander as well as your friend, Eideard, and we'll do things my way."
"Fuck your way!" Eideard spun about and headed for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm taking a walk."
"You shouldn't go alone."
"Fuck that!" Eideard ran out before anyone could stop him.
Finn grabbed his shirt and started to pull it over his head.
Janrae Frank - [Lycan Blood 02] - Fireborn Law Page 11