by Isabo Kelly
“Nothing. Really.”
He grinned crookedly, and she snorted.
From the washroom, she yelled back, “Thanks, but no thanks, Jacob. I wouldn’t have anything to talk about anyway.” She reemerged wearing the velvet dress, the bundle of her black clothing tucked under one arm. “Besides, I’m not accustomed to holding casual morning visits with nobility.”
“Tiya is a bookbinder’s daughter. She’s only ranked as Lady Tiya because of the sorcery. I never tire of seeing you in that dress.”
“Thank you. But I still think I’ll pass on a friendly visit with Lord and Lady Fordin. Tiya may be new to the nobility, but Lord Fordin is the queen’s son.”
“I imagine, by now, Queen Sara will be interested in meeting you, too. Come here.”
“No. I have to go before you rope me into dinner with the entire royal family.”
Jacob rose and strode toward her.
Vic unconsciously bit her lip, the sight of his powerful, naked body igniting tiny explosions of heat from her belly to between her thighs.
“We’d have to wait for Lord Deacon to return from Breeke before we could arrange for the ‘entire’ royal family. And you’re biting your lip.”
Before she could stop him, he pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth in a possessive, hungry kiss. She felt her resolve waning under his demands. She could kiss that delicious mouth all day long. Unfortunately, she didn’t have all day. She wiggled out of his arms and, with her free hand, slapped his firm buttocks playfully. “Get dressed before I forget why I have to leave,” she commanded.
“But I want you to forget.”
Before he could kiss her again, Vic ducked under his reach and circled behind him. “Go tell the king about the second sorcerer. I’ll see you soon.”
As she headed for the sitting room, Jacob called out. “Stay standing, little thief.”
“Always, General.”
***
The city moved fast and noisy in the throes of Autumn’s End. Everywhere she looked people were chattering and singing. Even the normally stoic farmers were grinning and celebrating. The harvest had been very good.
Cold bit her face and hands when Vic stayed in the shade of buildings, but when she walked out into the sun, its waning heat warmed her skin. She spent the day wandering near Tracker’s building. As night descended, she changed into her blacks and scaled the building she’d used on previous nights’ vigils.
Despite Gip’s order that she should avoid this building until Charlie had cooled, her curiosity made accepting this particular job easy. She wanted to know what the sorcerers were doing in her city. She hated the idea of abandoning the job to someone else after being the one to spot the sorcerers in the first place. A bit of professional pride mixed with her curiosity, she supposed. Being perfectly honest with herself, she had to admit she didn’t trust anyone else with the job. She needed to solve this puzzle, for her own peace of mind. Not knowing what was going on in her city made her… uncomfortable.
When she’d seen no sign of Charlie’s men throughout the day, she began to relax, able to focus her mind on the job at hand. Charlie might not even be looking for her anymore, but she doubted that. At the least, however, he was looking in the wrong spots. If she kept wearing the velvet dress and looking like nobility, or more realistically like a noble lady’s maid, maybe she could move in more areas of the city without having to worry about Charlie. The thought appealed.
As she watched the gap between the old inn and its neighboring building, she decided to check the house where the other sorcerer lay in hiding. Maybe after she’d gotten into the inn. There was no telling what kind of information a trip to that house could produce. And information was their weapon against the sorcerers. Besides, she might as well get Jacob’s money’s worth from the magic ward.
Tracker still hadn’t made an appearance that day. But knowing there was more than one sorcerer meant that Tracker could easily be with the other. None of his men moved during the day, making it all the more likely that she wouldn’t see Tracker or Malkiney until after sunset. In the hour just before sunset, though, Vic did spy one of the purple and black clad guards disappear through the center of Upper Market. He hadn’t returned by the time she took her post across from their lair. Several of the guards came and went in the hours following sunset, but there was no sign of the sorcerer, Malkiney or Tracker.
She fingered the necklace at her throat as she studied the building, wondering if the white-faced sorcerer was still inside. As each guard moved in and out, she noted their faces and kept a mental count. By midnight, she’d counted only twenty different individuals and did a quick calculation.
Last she heard, Tracker’d had around two hundred men working for him—a small army for a smuggler. Including the men she’d seen with the other sorcerer, however, she hadn’t counted more than fifty in town. That meant that either there were more of these hiding holes throughout the city, or a large number of Tracker’s guards were still outside the city walls. Either didn’t sound good.
But something seemed—wrong. No one else in the Hole had seen any of Tracker’s men as far as she knew. Granted, neither of the hiding holes Tracker had chosen were in areas where Thief’s Hole normally traveled. If they had more burrows in the city, chances were they’d be in similar locations—places where Tracker’s people were least likely to be spotted. But it still seemed wrong that no one had seen more of the smuggler’s men. Not if there were two hundred of them scurrying around town. So either the smugglers had gotten very good at moving quietly, or they simply weren’t inside the city.
So why keep them outside? Especially if you’re smuggling something as dangerous as blood sorcerers? Maybe that was the reason. Except that Tracker never shied away from a profit, no matter the risks. The fact that no one had seen Tracker himself was what really worried her.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of the guard that had left before sunset. With him, a second man stiffly lumbered toward the gap. Vic stared closely at the second man. His movements weren’t quite right. Too stilted and jerky, as if something else moved his limbs for him, a grotesque parody of a marionette. As they neared the gap, Vic sucked in a gasp. The second man was Nathan Cap, one of the men she’d been gambling with when her troubles with Big Charlie started.
Even as the two men disappeared into the narrow alley, Vic shot across the rooftop. She was down on the street and in the shadows near the old inn by the time the door closed behind them.
During the day, she’d hunted the best way to get into the old inn, discovering a broken window near the upper floor, which saved her from having to pick a lock, but to get to it, she had to climb to the top of the trader’s building, then leap across the gap to the inn’s roof. From there, she could lower herself to the window. The danger came in leaping across the gap. If one of Tracker’s men came out and looked up at just the wrong time, she’d be in for a run across the rooftops to escape.
As she climbed to the top of the trader’s building, she silently thanked the Goddess for a moonless night. Taking a deep breath, she sailed lightly across the gap then looked back over the roof’s edge. Nothing. Her heart danced in her chest.
She allowed a second deep breath, calming her pulse, before carefully lowering her legs to the broken window’s thin sill. With one hand still on the roof’s lip, she reached through the broken glass, flipped the latch and pushed open the windows in slow, careful increments to avoid a squeak. Her hands and legs trembled with the need to hold herself perfectly balanced and immobile on the thin ledge. When the window opened enough to slide through, she dropped silently to the floor inside, remaining crouched low as she listened for any sign that her entrance had been detected.
Only silence.
The musty smell of a room long unused washed over her. A layer of dust beneath her fingers and feet would give evidence of her entrance, but it couldn’t be helped. With any luck, she’d only have to do this once.
In the day
s and nights of watching the building, Vic had never seen lights through any of the boarded windows. She’d assumed that either they’d stayed in rooms with tightly sealed drapery or they’d moved into the basement. Now, she quietly searched for the staircase, keeping her ears trained for the slightest hint of noise. Her body tingled in anticipation of any sound.
Step by careful step, she worked her way down the old inn. She stopped at every floor to listen but was met by silence each time. Her fingers began to twitch expectantly as she neared the lowest floor. At the bottom of the stairs, the first sounds reached her. She followed the noise until she came to a locked door. Pressing her ear to the wood, she heard the muffled sounds of a conversation.
“The others have arrived, Master.”
“They’ve been placed as instructed?”
“Yes. The dark one is near the eastern gate. The woman’s in the northern district.”
“Very good.”
The soft thud of footsteps alerted Vic to the approach of the two inside the room. She scurried away, taking cover in a dark nook. From the room, Malkiney emerged with the white-faced sorcerer.
Vic held her breath.
They passed and disappeared through a door leading to a stairway to the basement. She continued to breathe silent and slow even as her heartbeat raced. Torn between following and searching the room the two men had just come from, Vic decided to test the room first.
Malkiney had locked the door again, but an ear to the door confirmed that the room was now empty. She picked the lock and entered, closing the door carefully behind her. The room’s darkness was broken only by the faint afterglow on the wick of an oil lamp. Vic crossed to the lamp. It sat on the top of a large table across which maps of Karasnia and Dareelia were spread.
The single window was heavily curtained, but through a break in the boards over the window, a faint light snuck past. It didn’t give her enough light to study the room well, but it did allow her to move without bumping into anything when the afterglow of the wick finally died.
In the quiet, Vic could hear a murmuring from the basement. Though she searched the room thoroughly, she could find no reason for Malkiney to smuggle a sorcerer into Karasnia. The murmuring beneath her turned to a chant. Then she heard the movement of footsteps past the door. She pressed herself to the wall behind the door and waited, swallowing the loud throb of her pulse. No one entered.
The chanting grew louder, making the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand.
She waited, despite an irrational urge to run away. When no more footsteps passed the room, she carefully slipped back into the hall, locking the door behind her. She froze when she realized the corridor wasn’t empty. Near the door leading to the basement stairs, two guards waited, eyes forward. From her place against the wall, she was hidden by the dark shadows filling the hall, but any movement might call their attention.
She watched, her breathing slow and consciously deep, waiting for a moment when she could scurry to better cover. They never moved, never scanned the hall, never took their gazes off the torch on the wall across from their post. Her eyes narrowed as she sensed something in the way they stood, something that hinted at the same sort of wrongness she’d felt watching Nathan Cap lurching along the street with Tracker’s guard. It was unnatural, the absolute stillness of them. How could you guard a door without looking around?
The chanting grew louder, reverberating through the floorboards. She had to see what was going on in that basement. Sliding along the wall, she kept her gaze on the guards, her hearing on the corridor behind her. Only the single flickering torch on the wall opposite the guards cast any light. It helped keep her camouflaged, but her nerves jumped with the threat of being caught at any moment. Her ears almost hurt with the effort of trying to sense movement behind her over the sound of the chanting. Her body felt taut and strained as she measured each slow, soundless step closer to the guards. Her lungs burned with the effort to control her breathing so the sound wouldn’t give her away.
She was within arm’s length of the two men when she realized what was wrong with them.
They weren’t conscious. Their open eyes stared at the torch without any sign of seeing it. Vic almost looked at the torch then thought better. She didn’t know a lot about magic, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. If looking at the torchlight was what affected them, she didn’t want to fall prey also. Being immobilized in the middle of a building filled with Tracker’s men and a potentially dangerous sorcerer seemed like a bad idea.
She inhaled a long slow breath, refilling her strained lungs. When her heartbeat and breathing felt normal again, she slipped between the two comatose men, wondering why anyone would bother to set useless guards. Maybe Malkiney hadn’t counted on someone getting close enough to notice they were comatose. Either way, it made her entrance to the basement easier. She moved down the stairs, careful to test for creaking before putting her full weight on each step. Lights flickering below forced her to stop on the first landing. She hugged the rail and looked down. From where she stood, very little of the room was visible, but descending further would place her in the pool of light from below.
Gnawing at her bottom lip, she studied the parts of the room she could see. And a slow grin lifted her cheeks. The basement’s rafters were just beyond an easy arm’s length from her place on the stairs, but the thick boards were easily strong enough to hold her slight frame and wide enough to hide her from the room below. With a cat’s grace, she stepped onto the stair railing and leapt to the nearest rafter, swinging her legs onto the board in a single move.
Lying motionless, she listened. When she heard nothing that would indicate an alert to her presence, she poked her head over the side of the beam. She still couldn’t see into the room very well, but she hadn’t attracted any attention, thank the Goddess. The dust from the rafters teased her nose, forcing her to lie still until she was sure she wouldn’t sneeze. The tempo of the chanting continued to increase. When she was confident a sneeze wouldn’t betray her presence and her body was sufficiently hidden by the thick wooden beam, she shimmied across the rafters until she had a complete view of the room.
A large circle, marked by long red candles, filled the entire center of the room. Outside the circle, the walls of the room were lined with Tracker’s men. Malkiney stood prominently near the wall furthest from the stairs. Inside the circle, a triangle was chalked onto the basement’s stone floor. At each of the triangle’s points, tall candelabra bisected the angles. Three long, thin, red candles filled each candelabrum.
And in the center of the triangle, on top of a stone altar draped in black cloth, lay Nathan Cap. His eyes were wide, conscious and frantic, like the eyes of a trapped animal. But his body didn’t even twitch, despite the lack of any confining ties. At his feet and sides, three large bowls sat atop metal braziers.
The white-faced sorcerer stood at the head of the altar. His eyes were closed, his hands raised above his head. The chanting Vic had heard came from his lips, but it sounded distant, hollow, as if there were still a wall between herself and the sound. The tone was harsh and rumbled through her nerve endings. It reminded her of the sound of gravel covering a grave.
Every hair on her body stood on end.
She watched in silent shock as the chanting quickened. Along the walls, Tracker’s men stood motionless, their eyes unblinking, and she suspected they were under the same spell affecting the guards in the hall. All but Malkiney stared straight ahead, seeing nothing. Malkiney’s dark eyes glowed madly in the candlelight, his face a rapt mask of adoration.
Vic swallowed hard and looked back to the altar. The sorcerer’s chanting had reached impossible speeds. A shifting of his hands and light flickered over the surface of a silver dagger held just over his head. Then suddenly his voice fell silent. And the dagger plunged into Nathan’s chest.
Even as his eyes bulged and his mouth worked to release a scream, the man’s body remained rigidly still. The sorcerer slowly moved the
knife in a circle, cutting Nathan’s chest open.
When the sorcerer reached into the opened chest cavity, Vic squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back both the bile and the scream that threatened to give her away. Her mind chattered denials at what she saw, trying to block the memory as quickly as it tormented her. She choked back a silent sob, the air suddenly too thick to breathe. Her heart pumped painfully fast and, for an instant, she thought she would pass out.
She couldn’t watch any more. Couldn’t stand to listen to the wet sucking sounds beneath her. When she caught the first scent of burning meat, she gagged. In a near mindless panic, she slipped back across the rafters to the basement stairs. More noises, sounds she was too horrified to identify, muffled the thump she made when she hit the landing. She darted up the stairs, past the comatose guards and ran to the inn’s front door.
The lock had long been removed, but when she opened the door, it squeaked. Panic thrummed more adrenaline through her blood. She darted outside, closing the door despite the noise, and shot up the street like an arrow.
Melting into the darkened shadow of a building, she watched the inn long enough to see if anyone followed. A movement just inside the dark gap was the only warning she needed. Vic raced through a labyrinth of streets toward the castle without ever looking back.
She didn’t throw up until she reached the castle walls.
Chapter Twelve
“Jacob,” Vic whispered. She had come in through his balcony door to find him in front of the fireplace in his sitting room. When he stood and turned, she raced forward and threw herself into his arms. She clung to his waist so tightly, the guard of her wrist dagger dug into her arm. The pain was nothing to her fear.
“Victoria, what happened? Are you hurt?”
He tried to ease her away far enough to look into her face.
She only clung tighter. “Don’t let go,” she pleaded, squeezing her eyes shut.
He wrapped his arms around her again, resting his cheek on the top of her head.