The Trouble With Demons rb-3

by Lisa Shearin

  Piaras’s first kill.

  It was self-defense, I told myself. It had to have been. Piaras was not a murderer. He’d been forced to kill and it was my fault. Mine. Mine and the bastards who wanted me and the power I had. They were the reason why I was here; they were the reason Piaras had no choice but to come with me.

  The reason he’d had no choice but to kill that embassy guard.

  There was nothing awkward or hesitant in the way Piaras fought. Phaelan had taught him to fight with two rapiers, two men on one. Practicing with friends who didn’t want to skewer you was one thing, fighting for your life against trained solders was something else entirely. I’d seen trained men panic in Piaras’s situation. Not only did Piaras not panic, he fought like a sword master, not the student he was, moving like a hungry Nebian panther stalking dinner.

  The embassy guards knew their business. They attacked together, then separately, one elf trying to get behind Piaras, the other intensifying his attack to force Piaras to focus all his attention on him. It didn’t work. It was like the kid had eyes in the back of his head. He didn’t, but Sarad Nukpana wasn’t restricted by eyes. I hated that goblin shaman, but right now I was grateful. His skill was keeping Piaras alive.

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach. That same preternatural skill would condemn him.

  This might have started out as a kidnapping, but it’d turned into a setup. The embassy guards were no longer wearing Guardian uniforms. For anyone who saw them now, they were elven embassy guards under attack and defending themselves. One of the bastards was even standing off to the side, bearing witness to the whole thing. Balmorlan knew that Piaras was capable of defending himself. Taltek Balmorlan would call it an act of revenge and murder. Piaras was a subject of the elven crown attacking elven embassy guards. Balmorlan could have him arrested and extradited before the ink was dry on the paperwork.

  The first squad of Guardians had arrived; their job was to deal with Piaras’s bukas. I wished them luck.

  Mychael and I drew blades. Before mine had cleared its scabbard, Mychael was halfway to the Guardian impostors.

  One embassy guard risked a backward glance and Mychael’s armored fist punched him squarely in the face. That was the distraction Piaras/Nukpana was waiting for. With a quick twist of his wrist and flick of his blade, Piaras easily disarmed the remaining elf and pinned him to the wall, the tip of his blade resting in the hollow of his throat. Both young men were breathing heavily, and Piaras’s dark eyes were blazing.

  “Piaras, stand down.” Mychael kept his voice low and even.

  Piaras didn’t move.

  The elf who Piaras had pinned to the wall swallowed, and a thin stream of blood ran down his throat where Piaras’s rapier had pierced the skin. “Sir, I can explain,” the elf whispered to Mychael.

  “Jari, nothing explains or justifies this.” Mychael’s voice was tight with restrained fury. “Piaras, stand down. I’ve got him.”

  The tip of Piaras’s blade was unwavering.

  I slowly moved along the wall, closer to the young elven Guardian. I needed for Piaras to see me, to remember me. To remember himself.

  “Piaras,” I said. “Mychael can’t question him if he’s dead. If he dies, Balmorlan will never have to answer for anything he’s done to you. Let him go. Please. Lower your blade; Mychael can take it from here.”

  I could see the struggle on Piaras’s face, and I could feel the battle raging in Piaras’s mind. He was fighting back, with everything he had he was fighting back. All Piaras had to do was extend his arm and that young elven Guardian would be dead, and this time it wouldn’t be self-defense. It would be murder, cold and calculated. Sarad Nukpana wanted that murder, so did Taltek Balmorlan. Piaras wanted it to stop. He wanted to lower that blade, but he couldn’t.

  “Piaras, you’re stronger than he is.” I said it quietly, simply. I said it like it was the truth, willing Piaras to believe it. I was talking about Nukpana’s strength, but the Guardian held captive at the tip of Piaras’s rapier didn’t know that; the Guardians within hearing didn’t know that-and I didn’t want them to. “Let him go; it’s over.”

  Piaras swallowed, his breath hissing in and out between clenched teeth. His knuckles were white on the rapier’s grip. Then he took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering exhale, and with visible effort, lowered the bloodied blade.

  Piaras was back with us and in control of himself. For now.

  Mychael stepped up next to him, but made no move to disarm him. “Clean your blade and sheath your weapon.”

  Piaras did.

  For Sarad Nukpana, this was just a demonstration, a taste of what he could make Piaras do-and how he could force me to find the Scythe of Nen and let him out of the Saghred.

  “When the lower hells freeze over,” I said in my mind. I was sure Sarad Nukpana heard me. To him, this was but the first move in a game he intended to play until he got what he wanted. Like I said, when hell froze over.

  A pair of Guardians stood nearby, awaiting Mychael’s orders.

  “Take this traitor into custody.” Mychael never took his eyes off of the disgraced elf.

  The two Guardians chained Jari Devent’s hands behind his back.

  “My brother ordered me and I had no choice-” The elf’s voice had an edge of panicked desperation.

  “You had every choice,” Mychael’s voice slashed through the air. “You made the wrong one.”

  Devent’s pale eyes flashed with defiance. Big mistake. “My obligations to my family-”

  Mychael took two strides and was in the young elf’s face, his rage a living thing in the air, his voice low and furious. “As a knighted Guardian, you have duty and loyalty to the archmagus, the Conclave, and to me. You betrayed us all.”

  The elf’s chin came up. “You’re going to kill me.” He was trying for brave, the tremble in his voice said otherwise.

  “No, we’re going back to the citadel, and we are going talk. I will ask questions and you will answer every one of them-truthfully and completely.”

  The Guardians took Devent away, and Piaras cleared his throat.

  “Thank you, sir.” Piaras’s voice was quiet, but firm. “I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “We do,” I told him. “And we’re going to fix it so that it never happens again.”

  “Sir!” An out-of-breath Guardian ran up to Mychael. The armor on his sword arm had been ripped away.

  A buka’s roar told us exactly what had done the ripping.

  I swore. The Guardians and watchers couldn’t kill those bukas, because even though they were solid, they weren’t real. Piaras’s voice had made them; Piaras’s voice was the only thing that could unmake them. As if the kid hadn’t endured enough tonight.

  “You have to dispel them,” Mychael told Piaras.

  Another roar joined the first as a watcher and a Guardian tried a divide-and-contain tactic. It didn’t work.

  “I tried, sir,” Piaras said. “When the second one materialized, I-”

  “They’re still here,” Phaelan pointed out in a singsong voice, eyes wide and disbelieving, blades in both hands.

  “I know that!” Piaras snapped in desperation.

  Mychael was the calm in the middle of furry chaos. “What did you use?”

  Piaras told him. I didn’t know what the hell he’d just said, but Mychael did.

  “That’s not strong enough,” Mychael said. Then he told him what to use; I didn’t recognize those as words, either. “And be firm with them,” he ordered.

  “Got it. I think.”

  “Don’t think, do!” Mychael barked like a drill sergeant to a new recruit. “You’re banishing them! They’re not going unless you force them. Do it! Now!”

  Piaras did. He didn’t think; he just reacted to that order. Mychael’s voice gave him no choice. It wasn’t Mychael’s spellsinger voice. It wasn’t magic. It was the voice of a commander of men, a leader on the battlefield, a voice you obeyed without question or faced cons
equences that might be worse than getting squashed by a buka.

  Piaras squared his shoulders, braced his feet, and let the bukas have the full force of his voice. It rang like a bright battle horn in the night, the volume magnified by the marble buildings. It was majestic and compelling, commanding the bukas, forcing them to do his will.

  I’m glad the kid wasn’t aiming at me.

  The bukas were becoming less substantial. One of them had a watcher by the leg and was dragging him closer; he lost his grip, his hand becoming translucent in the lamplight. The bukas were going, but they weren’t going quietly. One roar shattered a row of windows on a pristine government building before becoming a mere echo, a distant cry. Then the monsters simply winked out of existence. Piaras’s ragged breathing said there was nothing simple about it. He was bent over, hands on his knees, looking a little green around the gills. But he was still upright. Unbelievable. And the bukas were gone without a trace, not even a smell remained. Good work. Scary, but good.

  And I think Piaras had done that all by himself. Sarad Nukpana had nothing to do with it. That was the scary part.

  “Bravo, kid,” Vegard whispered in awe. The big Guardian’s grin was fierce.

  There was a smattering of applause from the Guardians and watchers. The applause grew and with it came whistles.

  Great. Once word got around, Piaras would be even more of a magical must-have than he already was.

  I put an arm around his shoulders as he pulled himself upright. “Raine, I couldn’t stop myself,” he whispered, looking down at the dead elf sprawled in the street. “Once I started, I couldn’t stop.”

  “I know,” I told him, resisting the urge to hug him. Later, not here, not now in front of dozens of Guardians and half the watchers in town. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Piaras’s brow creased in confusion. “How?”

  “Not now. Let’s get off the streets first.”

  “Sir Jari said you needed to talk to me,” Piaras told Mychael. “That’s why I went with them.”

  “I know,” Mychael said. “I didn’t need to speak with you then, but I do now-and so does the archmagus.”

  Chapter 16

  “You are not dragging him in front of that old man for judgment!” I was surprised at how vicious my voice sounded. I also didn’t care. I was too tired and angry and scared and a dozen other emotions to care what I said or how I said it.

  We were in Mychael’s office in the citadel; Piaras was in the next room getting some cuts and scrapes taken care of by a Guardian healer.

  “I’m not dragging him anywhere,” Mychael told me. “And Justinius is not going to judge him. He’s going to help him.”

  “The man’s flat on his back and weak as a kitten. What help-”

  Mychael’s sea blue eyes were on mine. “Raine, trust me.”

  Trust was in short supply for me just now, as was patience and much-needed sleep. And I wasn’t about to let go of perfectly good anger that easily. All the fighting I’d done today was with magic-sometimes a woman just needed to hit something. An embassy guard would have been perfect. But there wasn’t one in the room with us, and if there had been, I was so tired I probably couldn’t have made a decent fist.

  I swore and sighed. “Sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “Taking your head off. I just-”

  Mychael’s lips creased in a smile. “I think it’s still attached, no apologies needed. You haven’t been given much reason to trust anyone, myself included. When I asked you to come here with me from Mermeia, I told you there were mages here who could help. Apparently those mages are in a smaller minority than I thought.”

  “A minority of two,” I said. “You and the old man. And seeing that the two of you are the strongest mages on this island-that is, when the old man gets back on his feet-that’s two I’m grateful to have. Don’t think that I’m not grateful for everything you’ve done for me-or at least tried to do.”

  “I knew there would be some who would want your power. I just didn’t think it would be-”

  “Damned near every mage on the island,” I finished for him. I shrugged a shoulder. “Hey, I’m a Benares. If we’re not on the receiving end of trouble, we’re dishing it out. Trouble’s nothing new for me; I’ve just got more of it than usual right now.”

  “I’ve been promising that I’ll get you out of this entire mess.” He paused. “I shouldn’t do that.”

  I froze. “You shouldn’t get me out of this mess?”

  “No, make the promise to do it. I’m going to do everything I can to keep that promise-”

  “But it might not be enough,” I finished.

  “No, it might not,” Mychael admitted. He ran his hand over the back of his neck and winced, rubbing what I knew had to be some tired and tense muscles. It’d been over a week since he’d declared martial law. Mychael was burning the candle at both ends and had to be running out of wick. “You’re still linked to the Saghred, and now you’re linked to Tam.”

  “And to you,” I said quietly. “Mychael, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  His hand stopped midrub, and he looked over at me. “No one forced me. I said I would do whatever I could to keep you safe; posting a sentry was one of those things. I swore to protect you.” He paused, and when he spoke his words were softer. “More important, I want to protect you.”

  “And you could lose everything doing it. Literally. Your head included.”

  “It was my choice, and regardless of what happens, I know I made the right one.” A shadow of a smile curved his lips. “That being said, I’d very much like to keep my head, and I have no intention of putting it on a chopping block. If someone wants my head separated from the rest of me, they’ll have to fight me for the privilege.”

  “Uh, wasn’t what you did against the law? And don’t you uphold the law and all that?”

  “Raine, I acted to prevent a worse crime from happening-actually it would have been a catastrophe. The Saghred cannot gain control of you or Tam. What I did to prevent that broke a law; but for the greater good some laws have to be broken. I acted for the greater good.” He grinned. The man actually looked relieved. “My conscience is clear.”

  “Your record won’t be if someone finds out,” I shot back. “Mychael, listen to me. For your own good, at least distance yourself from me. Even a little bit might help. It’s like they say: if you don’t want to be accused to being a criminal, don’t be seen with one.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. One, you’re not a criminal. And two, I’ve found when it comes to protecting you, the closer I am, the better.” He shook his head in amazement. “You can get into trouble faster than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “Then you must be talented beyond measure. You almost got yourself killed how many times today?”

  I did a quick tally and winced. It wasn’t a good number. “Five definitely, but there might have been more.” I tried an apologetic grin. “There were a lot of demons in that street.”

  “At least five.” Mychael just looked at me. “Raine, a man doesn’t face certain death that many times on a battlefield, and today was just you walking around town.” He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’m going to do everything that I can to keep you safe; there’s just the possibility that I may not succeed. When it comes to you, there’s only so much a mere man can do. If I don’t succeed, know that I did my best.”

  A slow smile spread across my face, then I chuckled. “It’s about time.”

  Mychael looked completely baffled. “For what? Failure?”

  “For finally letting the paladin get off of his white horse.”

  One corner of his mouth tipped upward. “He has to sometime. Risk of saddle sores.”

  “So, while he’s being just as fallible as the rest of us, does he also put on his boots one foot at a time?”

  “He does.” Mychael’s eyes gleamed, and he lowere
d his voice. “Just don’t let that get around. It’d be bad for his reputation.”

  “His secret’s safe. And by the way, tell him that he’s the last person who needs to be sorry for anything. In case you’ve forgotten, I put that amulet around my own neck; you had nothing to do with it. And I’ve realized that my doing that was no accident-even then the Saghred was manipulating me. My father had the amulet made so he could hide the rock and still guard it without keeping it with him.” I snorted. “I mean, what are the odds that nine hundred years later, his daughter ends up with the necklace?”

  “Extremely remote.”

  “To say the least. I knew Sarad Nukpana wanted that amulet. If Nukpana wanted it, it stood to reason that it was a bad piece of jewelry. So I should stay away from it, right? Nope, not me. When I got my hands on it, did I do the safe and sane thing and put it in my pocket? No. I hung the damned thing around my neck. I didn’t even think about it; I just did it. Then I couldn’t take it off.”

  “Temptation is what the Saghred does best,” Mychael said.

  “It can destroy cities-but it also possesses magic most subtle.”

  “And most potent.” I tossed his words from watcher headquarters back at him. “Mychael, what happened between us in that conference room? Was that the Saghred laying the groundwork for bringing you into our umi’atsu bond… or was it something else? I’m almost hoping it was the rock; we don’t need anything else.”

  Mychael studied my face for a long moment. “Did you feel the Saghred between us during what happened this morning?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t, either,” he murmured. “But it was there in Sirens, with the two of us and Tam. I felt it then, but not this morning.”

  I swallowed. “There was definitely a difference for me, too.”

  “Raine, whatever happened between us was triggered by me,” Mychael said quietly. “The Saghred had nothing to do with it.”

  I stood very still. “What did you do?”