“And what is it you believe I want?”
As he took a step towards her he swung the sword at the floor to shake off a glop of blood. She backed up. The clock room had a second doorway to the hall, but in her gown she knew she wouldn’t make it past the display cases before he stopped her.
“You were raving about purebloods,” she said. “About the nobility. About me, even, and what you’d like to do to the queen of the island. The sentry at your cell even wrote some of it down, not that any of it sounded particularly novel. But the sentiment I can understand.”
“I doubt that, Your Majesty.”
She backed past the writing desk and rounded one corner of the wristwatch display. “Don’t you think I know what my brother, the duke, is doing to your kind? There is a breach between fel and pureblood. I work to close it. While my hand is firm, I protect my people from those who would slaughter them.”
He walked slowly after her. “I heard about your games.”
“An indulgence. A fel warrior was the victor just weeks ago.”
“The story reached the mainland. That absolves you of nothing.”
“I’m not asking for forgiveness. But think of the message we can send the duke and the rest of the stuffy nobility. Why do you think I had your stockade cell door opened in the middle of the night and the sentry sent off on an errand?”
This got him to pause. But then as if distracted, he peered into the display case at its glittering contents. As he leaned on the case, a pane of the glass cracked. He flinched before once again leveling his gaze at her.
“So it wasn’t just a careless guard,” he said.
“You harmed a pureblood on your boat. That puts you on the gallows or brings you to me. But I thought it would be so much more interesting to have a fel with such passion loose in my city.”
“For what purpose?”
“Why, to shake things up. Because even here, things can become so dull.”
A scream of terror erupted from the hallway. Footsteps echoed. But Claudia realized the footsteps were running away. She sighed and shook her head.
A cherrywood table held her prized mantle clocks. She almost grabbed a gold one but remembered how long it had taken to be repaired when one of the springs inside it had broken. Instead she picked up a shelf clock made of brass.
She felt her breathing quicken and her heart hammer. For some reason she couldn’t stop smiling as Marcus raised the sword.
“Get away from her!” Rochus shouted.
Her steward stormed through the door towards Marcus, rapier in hand, and swung his weapon in a series of mad slashes. Marcus sidestepped and dropped his stance, blocking a blow before driving the hilt of the sword into Rochus’s midsection. Rochus gasped. But he was quick enough to avoid the sword’s tip as Marcus swiped at him.
Rochus fell back as his assailant advanced, thrusting his weapon. But the steward’s retreat was short lived. The clock room had too much clutter. Rochus’s heel caught on a handwoven rug purchased from a trader who specialized in Pinnacle finery. He fell to his butt. Fought off an overhead blow that would have cleaved his neck.
Bloodstains would be difficult to get out of the rug without spoiling the fine mountain scenery woven on its face.
“Run, my queen!” Rochus cried.
He deflected another slash but it was over. Marcus stomped down on Rochus’s sword arm. His weapon tumbled.
She knew she should flee. If only she had such a fighter as Marcus in her games. The moment stretched as Marcus held his sword above the steward. Then with a roar he stabbed Rochus. Twisted the sword.
Rochus gripped the blade as it slid into him. Blood streamed down his hands and a high quavering groan escaped his lips.
Claudia slipped out the second door. Turned left into her second library and reading room, closing each door behind her until she came to a bookcase. It opened when pressed, revealing a spiral staircase leading down.
Would Marcus find it? She could only guess.
She couldn’t fight or even move fast. But somehow it would be fitting for this mad fel hunter to at least see what she had built. She hurried towards her catacombs.
Chapter Forty-Nine
“WELL, THAT’S NEW.”
Hellard was crouched at the end of a sewer tunnel and staring at a grating. Beyond the grating was a duct that led up at a steep angle. The metal appeared freshly fixed into the masonry.
Digger’s body was aching and he felt muscles protest from the relentless slog through the sewers. His sense of time and location was suspect. Had they been down there for hours? Could it be dawn already? But this was the end of the line, after a long uphill walk where the ceiling kept getting lower. He craved water to wash the taste of the place from his mouth.
“This is where you escaped from the stables?” Digger asked.
“Yeah. At least I think so.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know. We’re going to have to backtrack and find where we lost Marcus.”
“Keep your shirt on. The trolls left enough claw marks on their way out of the castle. What do you think I’ve been following? It’s not like I’m trusting your ability to track down here.”
Digger tried not to sound irritated. “I found you, didn’t I? I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah? Then how come you rangers never caught me out in the desert?”
“I don’t want to argue. Is this it or not?”
Hellard tugged on the grating a few times but it didn’t budge. “This is it. But he didn’t get through here. Go back to the last split.”
They retreated alongside the sloping culvert and found an alcove they had passed moments before. Metal rungs led up to a manhole. But Digger wasn’t waiting on the ogre.
He climbed and heaved a metal lid open with his shoulder, trying his best to be quiet. He peered out at shrubs. They were in the landscaping of the castle exterior. Night above, with no moon. Shoving the lid aside, he crawled up into a flowerbed and scanned the terrace below the castle wall.
The lantern lights shone at the top of the wall. No voices, no alarm bells. Perhaps Marcus hadn’t come this way. Or maybe Hellard leading him here was all some ruse.
But even as the ogre squeezed out through the manhole, Digger spotted a freshly crushed flower in the topsoil. A footprint. Marcus had cut through the flowerbed. Reckless. Overconfident.
Digger indicated the direction they needed to go.
They kept behind the hedges and followed Marcus’s tracks towards the wall and a side gate, which was shuttered. The gatehouse above would have guards. While the light was scant, there was enough of it that a sharp-eyed sentry would see them once they left the cover of the hedges. Further past the gate was a sloped wall that intersected an iron fence. Beyond lay the old gardens.
“If you’re here to save her,” Hellard whispered, “why not walk right up and announce yourself?”
“He’s in there already. Trying to convince the guards I’m here to help will take too long. Wait here.”
But Hellard stuck right behind him when Digger scurried to the gate. Digger scanned the ground. It didn’t take long to spot a muddy scuff at the base of the wall and another at face level. Marcus had climbed. And while his own sense of smell was scorched by the sewage, he could guess that Marcus’s recent presence could be smelled by even an untrained nose.
So Digger scaled the outside of the castle. He didn’t wait to see what Hellard would do. The wall presented enough sections of thick mortar that provided numerous fingerholds. Before he swung himself over the lip of the wall, he listened but heard no one.
Once he pulled himself up he discovered why.
Two sentries lay dead inside the gatehouse. One had a broken neck, the other was cut open. From the looks of it, neither had put up a fight. One of their swords was missing.
Marcus was inside the castle and armed.
Hellard was huffing and puffing as he made his own climb. Digger tried to wave him back, not wanting the ogre to spoil their p
resence with a noise, but Hellard made the ascent with amazing speed. Thick fingers latched on to the tiniest handholds. Once Hellard made it to the top, Digger waved to get his attention.
“Give me a sec,” Hellard said as he dropped to the stones, panting.
Digger opened a trapdoor in the gatehouse floor. A ladder led down to the opposite side of the gate where they had clear access to the bailey near the stables.
Marcus’s tracks had disappeared.
Digger hurried to the sunken fabricated demon’s head whose mouth comprised the entrance to the catacombs. From there he could see the front of the wall above the main gate. The guards were still up there, alive and clueless as to what was going on.
“If anyone had known it would be this easy to get in here...” Hellard whispered.
“Late hour. And the queen had most of her guards positioned around the theater.”
The ogre looked up at the keep. “There’s some windows we can make.”
Digger shook his head. “No one’s watching down here. The front door’s faster.”
He broke from cover. As he made for the front stairs, a woman screamed from somewhere inside the keep. The guards above responded immediately. Lantern lights illuminated the courtyard.
“Intruders!”
A bell started ringing. A soldier emerged from a door near the gate. Pointed in Digger’s direction and blew a whistle.
Digger bounded up the steps with Hellard right behind. The front doors were locked. The soldier with the whistle was running their way and having trouble clearing his sword from its scabbard. One of the guards on the wall lifted a crossbow, placed it in a battlement, and prepared the weapon to fire.
The nearest window was tilted open. Digger jumped for the sill and pushed the window wide before scrambling inside. He tumbled onto the floor of a sitting room. But Hellard would never fit. Using the butt of the spear, Digger smashed the glass. The window shattered even as Hellard took cover in the doorway. But when Hellard tried to jump for the sill, a crossbow bolt nearly pierced him as it ricocheted off the stone.
Hellard ducked back to the doorway.
The guards were shouting and more emerged from the bottom of the wall.
A crash echoed from down the hallway followed by the sound of steel striking steel. Digger ran from the sitting room. A servant lay sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.
From outside Hellard shouted, “Don’t you even think about leaving me here!”
Digger went to the front door and opened it. Three of the queen’s soldiers had gathered at the bottom of the steps with swords out.
“Your queen has an assassin out to get her!” Digger called.
A bolt fired from the wall and pierced the door. Hellard didn’t hesitate and almost trampled Digger as he ran inside. They slammed the door shut and threw the deadbolt, but there was no knowing if the guards had keys.
Digger led the way past the dead servant and down the grand hallway. “This way.”
They passed room after room until they came to one full of gaudy clocks. There Rochus lay gasping for breath, his hand clutching a wound in his chest, a rapier on the floor next to him. In the room’s faint lamplight he looked pale.
He was alone.
Digger knelt next to him. “Where’s the queen? Where’s Marcus?”
Rochus fought to speak. “Save her.” His eyes were rolling back into his head.
Hellard paused to consider the fallen steward. “Was she worth it?”
But Rochus had stopped breathing. A fresh bloody footprint led to a second door to the hall. Digger ran to a neighboring room, which was a densely packed library. Perhaps they had gone somewhere else, but Digger could smell the lingering aroma of Queen Claudia’s perfume. She had been here. Marcus couldn’t have missed her scent. But the room had no other exits. The single window had no hinges.
Hellard eyeballed the room. “They’re gone. She’s probably dead by now. We should figure out how to get out before those guards catch up with us.”
The faintest breeze came from behind one of the bookcases. It took Digger a moment of prodding before he pushed the case and it popped open, revealing stairs. Like the catacombs below, the castle appeared to have its own secrets.
Down the hallway the main door shuddered as the guards outside tried to force their way in.
“You coming?” Digger asked.
“Lead the way.”
Digger kept the spear pointing down as they descended the spiral stairway. It let out in a series of hallways that led several directions into darkness. But from one came voices and a faint yellow light.
“Marcus!” Digger called.
Marcus’s voice was dreamlike. “Down here, brother. We’re all down here together now.”
The time for stealth was done. Digger headed into the light.
Marcus stood over Queen Claudia in a furnished waiting room. A chair and small table had been knocked over. While the other hallways led further into the underbelly of the keep, this room was a dead end. The queen had been knocked to the floor and had lost one of her high-heeled shoes but otherwise appeared unharmed.
Marcus wasn’t touching her. He tapped a guard’s short sword against his leg. “So the two of you found each other. I gave the ogre a present. I see you’re holding it now.”
Digger lowered the spear. “You really expected us to fight?”
“No. Nothing so elaborate. Our kind can see through what theirs has done to us. Twisted us. Made us their weapons and their playthings. Purebloods like her need to feel our pain. We don’t need to inflict it upon ourselves.”
“Yet that’s what you’re doing. Let her go. This is no good. It’s going to get a lot of us killed.”
“Don’t you see? They’ll die anyway. Either here, out there on the streets, or in their homes. It has to get worse before it gets better. We can make it end.”
“Not by killing her.”
“And when did you become so squeamish? Didn’t we bring death down on so many? On ogres and others who were only living their lives. We called them bandits and rebels and anything else to ease our consciences. But they’ve declared war on all fel. Our duty is to fight back. It starts here.”
“He kinda makes a good point,” Hellard said.
Digger shook his head. “There’s a difference between fighting a war we can win and poking a hornet’s nest and throwing our lives away. Back off.”
But Marcus only set his jaw and grinned. Raised his sword high. A sparring stance. Ready to strike a killing blow to the pureblood noble at his feet.
Digger moved between a pair of couches. In the confined space, Digger knew the spear would prove an inferior weapon. He’d get one good thrust in before Marcus would retaliate with a counterattack.
Digger kicked the small table towards Marcus. It was easily sidestepped. Behind him, Hellard wasn’t coming any closer. Digger licked his lips.
“Even now you reconsider,” Marcus said. “Don’t we all when we realize we have one life to spend. You’d spend it on her?”
“Put the sword down.”
But before Marcus could reply, Claudia pulled out a jeweled hairpin and drove the thin spike of steel into his side. As he screamed and stumbled away, she pressed on a section of wall. Another secret door popped open, revealing another stairway leading down.
Marcus sprang up to kick the door back open as the queen dove through and tried to push it shut from the other side. Digger heard her shout a curse and run.
Digger went for him. He chopped down with the spear, trying to knock the sword away, but Marcus was too fast with a parry. Pushed Digger back. Nearly tripped him with his feet. The wound from the hairpin bled freely.
“Our commander was one for object lessons,” Marcus gasped. “You think this qualifies? Underestimating your opponent. A hairpin? Can you believe it?”
Digger didn’t respond. He maneuvered to block Marcus’s way as his one-time companion went for the secret door.
“Let her go,” Digger
said.
When Marcus moved, he was as fast as any devil hound. He hacked the shaft of the spear and with his free hand delivered an uppercut that sent Digger crashing back into one of the couches. Marcus then plucked away the spear and tossed it to Hellard.
“Can you hear?” Marcus asked. “Even now her guards are coming. It won’t matter what you tell them. You’re both assassins. It’s either fight or be killed.”
Even as Digger rose and fought to clear his head the voices of the guards came from above. Marcus kicked the secret door open and ducked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. The scrape of a bar or deadbolt followed.
Digger pushed at the door but it wouldn’t budge. “Help me with this.”
Hellard stayed where he was. He considered the spear in his hands and gave Digger a hard look. For the briefest moment Digger thought the ogre might attack him. But instead Hellard grinned.
“There’s nothing funny here,” Digger said.
“No? Ever since I came here I wanted what he wants. For fel to join me against the purebloods. Never thought I’d make it into the castle like this. Time to go out with a bang.”
“We’re not dead yet.”
“Queen Claudia?” a guard’s voice called.
Hellard peered down the hallway. “All they have to do is starve us out once they find she’s gone.”
Digger threw his shoulder at the door. There was nowhere to gain a fingerhold. He kicked it a few times. Nothing. The hushed voices of the guards carried. There must have been a half dozen or more now gathered down the corridor.
“Shut the door,” Digger said.
A crossbow bolt pierced a couch and cracked against the wall.
Hellard edged away from the doorway. “I guess they’re not going to wait for us to starve.”
Digger slid his hands along the wall for any seams to the secret door but the construction was too good. The door was flush to the wall. Then he spotted something. Further along the stone floor was the faintest wear mark. For a moment Digger was confused. It didn’t correspond to how the secret door had opened. Then he realized the marks indicated a nearby trophy case had been repeatedly moved over the same spot.
The Dragon and Rose Page 24