The courier appeared behind him and shouted something, lifting his satchel. Yanko’s attacker said something—it sounded like a question. His voice was oddly flat and monotone. Yanko squirmed, trying to twist away, but fighting only prompted the man to apply more force, more pain.
The sounds of fighting continued to the side. Yanko kept hoping Lakeo or Jhali or Arayevo would break through to help him, if only to distract this man for a moment so he could use his magic again. Or try. Why hadn’t his first attack worked? Despite the short blond hair, the man appeared Turgonian. Dak was the only Turgonian that Yanko had heard of with mage-hunter training.
“Kill him,” the courier said in Turgonian, his face flushed red. “He’s a Nurian.”
Yanko’s attacker nodded, as if he’d been asked to fetch a coffee, not end a life. Cold dark eyes looked at Yanko, heartless. Merciless.
Kei! Yanko cried, envisioning the parrot swooping in to distract the man. Help me. Biscuits!
Ferret god’s luck, Yanko would bake them himself if Kei saved him.
As the man’s grip tightened, red and blue wings appeared, flapping around the Turgonian’s head. “Jorrat, jorrat!”
The man didn’t let go of Yanko, but he did jerk his free hand up to defend himself. The courier drew a pistol, pointing it at Kei.
“No!” Yanko yelled, his throat raw and the word barely escaping. Once again, he tried flinging thoughts of fire, this time into the courier’s mind. He envisioned the flames leaping all around him, burning him. If this didn’t work, he’d throw a real fireball, damn it.
The courier shrieked, dropped his pistol, and leaped back as he flung his hands in front of his face.
Yanko’s assailant narrowed his eyes slightly, the first sign of expression from him, and turned his attention back to Yanko. He was keeping Kei’s talons from finding his face with one hand, but his other hand was still around Yanko’s throat.
“Jorrat, jorrat!” Kei cried, flapping all around the blond man’s head.
Thank you for trying, my friend, Yanko thought, tears pricking his eyes. He saw his death in the man’s cold face.
But he wouldn’t give up yet. He attempted to focus enough through the pain to summon a real fireball.
A woman spoke from the side, a question in Turgonian. Yanko barely heard her over Kei’s continuing squawks, but the man’s grip loosened slightly, and he shifted to look at the speaker. It was the dark-haired woman who had stepped off the train with him. Behind her, no fewer than ten soldiers had come to help, disarming Lakeo, Arayevo, and Jhali and holding them captive.
Yanko cringed. Not only had he been caught with the condemning evidence of his theft in his hand but he’d gotten them all caught too.
The woman spoke several more words while pointing at Kei. It was all in Turgonian, but Yanko thought he caught the name Komitopis in one sentence, a question.
Kei continued to fly around the blond-haired man, spitting his slurs about Turgonians being monkeys. Had someone actually recognized the parrot based on that? If so, was that a good thing? Or would these people think Yanko had stolen the parrot? Maybe instead of being killed instantly, he would be tortured for information first.
The blond man hauled Yanko to his feet, jerking his arms behind his back and locking them in that same steel grip of his.
“If you attempt to use magic again,” the man said in flawless Nurian, “I will break your neck.”
Yanko swallowed. It sounded like a promise, not a threat.
“If you take us to see Colonel Dak Starcrest,” Yanko said, his bruised throat aching with the words, “I can explain… I mean, he knows…”
What? Dak wasn’t going to be pleased that Yanko had tried to steal a top-secret message from one of his unit’s military couriers. Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut and hoped they took him back to the consulate and turned him over to his own people.
But as the soldiers crowded around them and the man marched Yanko off the platform and into the street, he doubted that was going to happen.
6
“This cell is more spacious than the last one,” Arayevo observed.
Yanko eyed the gray brick walls on three sides of them and the darker gray bars to the front. There weren’t any windows in the basement of the Turgonian Intelligence Headquarters, and the two gas lamps mounted on the walls in the corridor did little to illuminate the cell. Kei had stuck with Yanko and now perched on a horizontal bar between the vertical ones, much as he had on the warship. The soldiers had made a half-hearted attempt to capture him, but he’d eluded them, and they had stopped. Fortunately, nobody else had tried to shoot him.
“You always see the optimistic side of life, don’t you?” Lakeo grumbled.
“It’s better than berating people for making mistakes.”
Yanko rubbed his head where Lakeo had berated him earlier. He hadn’t tried to block the slap. He’d deserved it. That had been a foolish mission—scheme—he’d concocted for himself. He should have focused his efforts on finding a way home.
As Lakeo and Arayevo continued to argue, Yanko looked to the shadows in the back corner. Jhali leaned against the wall there, her arms folded over her chest.
“I’m sorry,” Yanko apologized quietly to her. He’d already apologized—repeatedly—to Lakeo and Arayevo, but for some reason, Jhali had been taken away from their group for an hour before being returned. Two stone-faced Turgonian guards had put her in the cell a few minutes ago, and she hadn’t said a word since. “Are you all right?”
She looked at him but didn’t speak. By now, he was accustomed to that from her.
“If you need me to magically light the soldiers who dragged you off on fire, just let me know,” he said, though he didn’t expect a reaction.
She grunted. “You would not do that.”
“I’d at least light their trousers on fire.”
“That I believe.” She surprised him by adding, “They did nothing, only questioned me. They recognized me as a mage hunter and wanted to know if I’d been sent to assassinate someone.”
“Did you tell them you were here to assassinate me?” Maybe he shouldn’t have reminded her.
Her chin lifted. “I told them nothing.”
A door creaked open. Yanko reached out with his senses to see if it was the blond man. He’d been standing guard earlier, presumably to carry out his promise if Yanko used his magic, but he was gone now, and he wasn’t the one heading their way.
Yanko’s belly flopped about like a hooked fish in the bottom of a boat. He didn’t think Dak would harm them, but he suspected Dak would be disappointed in him. Strange how that stung more than the idea of torture.
Dak came into view, carrying a lantern. His single eye locked onto Yanko right away, and he sighed.
Yanko almost said he was sorry, but would it be a lie? He regretted that he’d been caught, but he couldn’t regret that he’d tried to keep the Turgonian president and military leaders from learning about the continent before his people did.
“The ambassador promised me he was going to keep you in the consulate, scrubbing toilets and sweeping floors for months. It hasn’t even been eight hours.” Dak pushed a hand through his hair. He wore a uniform without insignia again and looked like he might have gotten out of bed recently. If he’d just arrived at the headquarters, that could explain why the local soldiers had questioned Jhali. If Dak had been here, he could have explained who she was. Assuming Dak was sharing information with his colleagues. And why wouldn’t he be?
“I can’t abandon my people, Dak,” Yanko said.
“You’re a kid. It’s not your job to steal information from foreign governments.”
“Prince Zirabo—”
“Asked you to find that lodestone, right? That’s what you told me the letter said. Nothing about starting a war with Turgonia.”
“That’s not going to happen, is it?” Yanko asked, his chest tight, scared.
By the gods, his nation had enough problems to deal with now
without having Turgonian fleets steaming over to their shores.
Dak grunted. “I don’t know, Yanko. I’m in a tenuous position right now, as I told you. I—”
The door clanged again as it opened, and Yanko sensed two people coming in. He held back a groan. One was his new friend, the blond man.
Kei stirred on his perch. “Jorrat, Jorrat!”
The blond man and dark-haired woman walked into view, the man gazing coolly through the bars. Yanko’s neck throbbed in memory of those fingers wrapped around it, and he fought the urge to take a step back and perhaps hide behind Jhali.
The woman cocked her head curiously at the parrot, then smiled at Dak and offered her hand. He nodded at her, apparently recognizing her, and accepted the warm grip. The blond man clasped his own hands behind his back and didn’t give Dak any warmer an expression than he’d given Yanko while choking him.
“Sicarius,” Dak said, nodding once.
In the back of the cell, Jhali stirred, as if she recognized the name.
“Colonel Starcrest.” The man—Sicarius—returned the nod, his impassive face never changing.
The woman spoke much more animatedly. She looked to be about thirty, with olive skin and deep brown eyes that radiated warmth and good cheer. She hadn’t spoken a word to Yanko, but he was inclined to like her, and not only because she had stopped her friend from killing him. Of course, Yanko couldn’t understand any of what she was saying in that cheerful tone. Maybe she was suggesting that torture followed by a firing squad were the appropriate punishments for someone who’d stolen a parrot from an important Kyattese family.
She did look curiously at Kei a couple of times. When she wound down, she withdrew an envelope from a satchel not much different from the one the courier had carried. At first, Yanko thought it was the same envelope, but this one was gold instead of beige. A riot of color in gray-loving Turgonia.
Dak looked at it and uttered a nondescript, “Huh.”
Yanko looked at Arayevo, wondering if she understood what they were saying.
“Jorrat, biscuits?” Kei asked.
“You don’t typically find biscuits in a Turgonian prison,” Dak said, switching to Nurian and quirking an eyebrow at Yanko. As if Yanko had anything to do with what the bird said. He’d tried several times to teach Kei his name—and to encourage him to stop using racial slurs to address people. It hadn’t worked.
“Perhaps in a Kyattese one,” Sicarius said, also switching to Nurian. “They have hammocks.”
“You’ve spent time in one?” Dak asked.
“Delivered felons to them.”
“I didn’t know the Kyattese had ever used your services.”
“This was recent, at President Starcrest’s request.”
“Ah.”
The woman said something in Turgonian. Yanko guessed she didn’t speak any Nurian and that he wouldn’t spend much time chitchatting with her. She waved the envelope.
Dak nodded but held up a finger. He pointed at his prisoners in turn and introduced them. “Lakeo, Arayevo, Jhali, and Yanko.” His name warranted another couple of sentences in Turgonian, which involved pointing at Kei and mentioning the Komitopis family again.
Yanko hoped he was explaining that the parrot had followed him and that he hadn’t stolen Kei.
“Yanko,” Dak said, “this is Amaranthe and Sicarius.” He paused, as if considering if he should give more than first names to a Nurian kid. “They are agents working for Imperial—Turgonian—Intelligence Headquarters in Stumps. Why can’t I remember that we’re not an empire anymore?”
“Because you’re still surly, stoic, and fierce like an imperial soldier?” Yanko suggested.
“Surly?” Dak didn’t protest the other adjectives.
Surprisingly, Sicarius nodded once.
Amaranthe smirked, and Yanko decided she might understand Nurian, after all. Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable speaking it. Or maybe she thought chattering Nurians would reveal more with her around if they didn’t think she understood it.
Dak continued his explanation for Yanko’s sake. “Amaranthe and Sicarius work under Tikaya Komitopis and have visited her family’s home before and recognize Kei.”
“Recently,” Sicarius said.
Dak smiled faintly, but the smile faltered as something seemed to occur to him. “How recently?”
“You should read your message.”
Dak looked down at the envelope. There wasn’t an address or name.
“Is it from Rias?” he asked. “Or Tikaya?”
“Yes,” Sicarius said.
“Ah.” Dak’s mouth twisted.
Yanko never could sense what Dak was thinking, but his expression suggested he wasn’t sure if it was good news or bad news.
Given that he was President Starcrest’s nephew, messages from home couldn’t be that surprising, but maybe this had something to do with Yanko’s mission and the new continent. The Turgonian president couldn’t know about all of that already, could he? No. The courier hadn’t made it to the capital yet. But if these agents had been on the Kyatt Islands after Yanko and Dak had been there and had spoken to Mela Komitopis, the president could know a lot.
“I’ll be back shortly, Yanko,” Dak said, moving down the corridor with Sicarius and Amaranthe. “After Colonel Grek figures out what he wants to do with you.”
Yanko grimaced, not liking that his fate would be in the hands of someone he didn’t know. Maybe, if Sicarius went away with Dak to talk, he would be distracted, and it would be safe to use his magic to escape from the cell.
“I wonder what’s in that letter,” Arayevo whispered, her eyes alight with a familiar adventurous gleam.
“Maybe Yanko should attempt to steal it so we can check,” Lakeo said. “Clearly, he needs practice.”
Yanko sighed. “I was doing all right until that man—agent—appeared out of nowhere.”
“Out of nowhere?” Lakeo asked. “He walked off the train.”
“I didn’t think I needed to worry about someone not in a uniform.”
“Do you know who that is?” Jhali asked, coming forward and peering through the bars.
Yanko could sense that Dak, Amaranthe, and Sicarius had gone through the door. They were standing outside it, talking quietly as Dak opened the envelope.
“Who?” Arayevo asked. “Sicarius?”
“Yes, Sicarius,” Jhali said. “He’s an assassin. Or was. An infamous one. He was Emperor Raumesys’s right-hand man, they say. He came to Nuria a few times to assassinate people at his emperor’s whims. Warrior mages and mage hunters both were sent to hunt him down and never succeeded. Two of the mage hunters were from my sect. They never made it back.”
“You’re saying he’s good?” Lakeo asked dryly.
“I’m saying Yanko is lucky to be alive.” Jhali looked at Kei. “That bird saved your life.”
“I’ve promised to bake him biscuits,” Yanko said.
“That might be hard, given our current lack of kitchen amenities,” Lakeo said. “Odd that Turgonians don’t include ovens in their cells.”
Yanko’s stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. He didn’t know what time it was but was certain the sun had risen, and he hadn’t slept all night.
“Try not to irk the man,” Jhali said, looking at Yanko again. “He may be an agent now—” the way her nose crinkled suggested she was skeptical Sicarius was anything but an assassin, “—but he’ll still be more dangerous than a pit of vipers. And he’s reputed to have had mage-hunter training, so magic won’t do much on him.”
“I noticed.” Yanko twitched a shoulder. Since he’d already met Dak, another Turgonian with mage-hunter training wasn’t all that surprising. It was more surprising that Jhali was making the effort to warn him. Maybe that meant she didn’t want to assassinate him herself anymore. Or maybe she wanted to make sure she was the one to do it so she got credit when she returned home. “But thank you for the warning,” he said in cas
e it was in good faith.
The door clanged, and Yanko turned, expecting Dak’s return. But two of the stone-faced soldiers walked into view.
“You come with us,” one told Yanko in broken Nurian.
“Are we going on an adventure?” Arayevo asked.
“Are we going to a firing squad?” Lakeo grumbled.
The soldier unlocked the gate without answering. “This way.” He waved at Yanko, then held a hand up when the others started after him. “The colonel wants him only.”
Jhali scowled darkly.
“Uh.” Yanko doubted anything would happen to the women down here, but they were his allies, and he didn’t want to leave them behind. Wishing he’d spent more time reading Senshoth’s book on mind magic, he gazed into the speaker’s eyes and tried to add a hint of compulsion when he said, “I’m sure the colonel meant for us all to come. They know more about the world than I do.”
“I’m sure the colonel meant for you all to come,” the man said agreeably, startling Yanko with his compliance.
His comrade blinked in surprise, but he had fewer rank bars on his pin, and he didn’t object as everyone filed out.
Yanko still found the idea of manipulating people distasteful, so the ease with which he achieved it concerned him, but his mother had suggested it could be a strength for him. He found it even more distasteful to incinerate people with fireballs, and this was admittedly less death-inducing.
“If we’re being taken to a firing squad,” Lakeo muttered, walking beside Yanko, “I’m not going to thank you for talking him into bringing us.”
“Wouldn’t you be lonely if I was shot to death without you?”
“I’d pine terribly, but then I’d rejoice that I was still alive.”
“I’m sure that’s not our fate,” Yanko said.
The guard who’d let them out gave Yanko a long look over his shoulder. Yanko hoped that wasn’t disagreement.
* * *
They weren’t taken to a firing squad. They were taken to the office of the installation commander, Colonel Grek.
Assassin’s Bond: Chains of Honor, Book 3 Page 9