Duty Bound

by Lindsay Buroker

  He scrambled up a bank, the outline of a longboat nearby. Had they reached Iridium’s secret dock? It didn’t matter now.

  He snatched up the glowing sword, hoping the magic wouldn’t reject him. If anything, it burned more brightly. Its heat flared, warming Jev’s hand. Were those real flames? A question for another time.

  Jev couldn’t see the golem, but he heard the massive splashes. The creature had to be pummeling Lornysh, just as it had done to him.

  Swimming as quickly as he could one-handed, Jev fought against the waves their fight created. They slammed into his face, but he glimpsed the pulsating water monster, and that gave him the motivation to push on. But he didn’t see Lornysh. Had he been forced under?

  “Over here, ugly,” Jev shouted, the water filling his mouth garbling the words.

  The creature spun toward him. He hoped that didn’t mean Lornysh was finished.

  Massive watery arms reached for Jev. He treaded water, pushing his body as high as he could, and used both hands to swing the blade with all his strength. It lopped through one of those blobby appendages. Water sprayed him in the face, reminding him disturbingly of blood.

  That didn’t make him pause. He slashed again. He connected, creating another spray, and the creature made some weird indistinct moan like air blowing over an open bottle.

  A wave came out of nowhere and slammed into the back of Jev’s head. He tried to keep his grip on the sword as he was forced under, but a current like a battering ram slammed against his wrist. Pain erupted, and he couldn’t keep from dropping the weapon.

  The orange glow spiraled downward, and he would have cursed again, but he was stuck under the water once more. A heavy pressure leaned against his back, pushing him farther down, and Jev knew he was within the creature’s grasp again.

  He shifted his angle, letting it push him toward the bottom and even trying to swim in that direction. The sword, only visible due to its glow, had stopped moving. It must have hit the bottom.

  Jev drew near and reached for the sword, the oppressive weight still on his back. He realized he wasn’t close enough to touch the blade. He kicked furiously, but he only got farther away from the orange glow. The golem knew what Jev wanted and was shoving him the other way, damn it.

  With his lungs burning again, Jev feared he’d have to give up and rush to the surface. If the creature would let him. He gave one last valiant effort, twisting and kicking, hoping to evade the golem. It smashed him into the bottom, and rocks gouged his chest through his clothing.

  The orange glow of the sword moved. For a horrified second, Jev thought the creature was knocking it farther away from him. As if it needed to. But then he saw Lornysh’s face outlined by the light of the sword, his pale blue eyes reflecting its orange light. With the weapon in hand, he lunged toward the water above Jev.

  The force pressing down on Jev disappeared. He twisted, looking up as he groped for the bottom with his feet so he could push off. The orange glow highlighted the sword as Lornysh whipped it back and forth, hardly impeded by the water.

  Jev wanted to stay and help, but he no longer had a weapon that could hurt the creature. And his lungs were on the verge of spasming again. The last thing Lornysh needed was to worry about hauling Jev’s drowning body up from the bottom.

  Jev pushed away from the fight and toward the surface. Once he made it, he gasped in air and turned, hoping to see Lornysh up and the creature defeated. The water churned, and he realized his friend still battled the golem. He might be injured and running low on air.

  “Need something to help,” Jev panted and spun back toward the bank again.

  It was dark, no hint of a lantern anywhere, but if that was the room where people had been unloading crates earlier, maybe some of them were still stacked against the walls. He swam for shore, hoping to find something useful—and matches he could light so he could see.

  Jev tripped over the longboat as he climbed out of the water. He growled and started past it, annoyed he hadn’t remembered it was there, but paused. Maybe there were matches in it.

  A huge splash sounded out in the water. Orange flashed above the surface, and for a second, Jev glimpsed Lornysh flying toward the ceiling. He stopped shy of crashing into it, gravity carrying him downward again. The light of his sword revealed the golem rising up from the water again, still alive. Lornysh gave another battle cry and angled his sword downward as he tumbled toward the creature.

  That battle could go on forever. Jev leaned over the side of the longboat, patting around and hoping to chance across a safety kit, but his knuckles bashed against wood first. A crate? No, a keg of something. Alcohol? He envisioned lighting alcohol on fire and hurling it into the water. Could that help?

  Jev felt around. The longboat was loaded with kegs. Had Iridium’s people just stolen them or were they preparing to take them somewhere? To sell? Or use as a bribe? Who could be bribed with alcohol?

  He leaned close and sniffed one of the kegs, expecting to smell brandy or whiskey, but he jerked back.

  “Not alcohol, you fool. Black powder.” He knew the scent well.

  As more splashes sounded in the water, Lornysh and his sword disappearing beneath the surface again, Jev went back to hunting for matches. He brushed against a rope—a fuse. He didn’t know who or what Iridium planned to blow up, but if he could light one of those kegs and throw it, maybe the explosion would be enough to kill the golem.

  Iridium and the entire city would know he was in this cave if Jev caused an explosion, but he doubted it mattered now. Lornysh had called the golem an alarm as well as a sentinel.

  “Jev!” came a weak cry from the water.

  Lornysh. He sounded tired, maybe injured.

  “Lure it over here,” Jev yelled. “I found land. And something else.” A fit of inspiration struck. “Bring your sword.”

  Preferably with the flame still dancing along its surface. He didn’t say the words out loud, having no idea if a golem could understand human words.

  The orange glow came into view again. Jev expected to see Lornysh swimming toward him, but he was flying toward him. The golem had thrown him again.

  Lornysh hurtled through the air, arms flailing. Somehow, he managed to retain a grip on that sword.

  “Drop it here,” Jev yelled as he ducked so Lornysh wouldn’t smash into him.

  A splash sounded less than twenty feet away. The golem was following him. Could it come up on land?

  Lornysh waited until he landed, somehow spinning like a cat and coming down on his feet, but then he obeyed Jev. He tossed the sword, hilt first.

  Jev snatched it out of the air, the flames brightening the longboat and confirming what he’d felt. More than a dozen kegs of black powder, at least two of them with fuses trailing out.

  Aware of the creature closing in, rising higher and higher as the water grew shallower, Jev used the flaming blade to light the closest fuse. He considered leaving the keg in the boat to blow up the eleven others with it but feared he would bring down the ceiling—and maybe the city above it—with an explosion that large.

  He tossed the sword aside, gripped the barrel, and staggered as he hefted it over his shoulder. It was heavier than he’d anticipated, and he wouldn’t be able to throw it that far. Not that he needed to. The golem was only ten feet away.

  He glanced at the fuse, making himself wait until it burned down. If he threw the keg in the water before it exploded, it would just go out.

  Eight feet.

  “Throw it, Jev,” Lornysh said from behind him, bent over, gripping his knees. “I’ll make sure the timing is right.”

  Jev had no idea how he would do that, but he couldn’t dally any longer, anyway. The golem’s arms, reformed from the water once again, stretched toward him.

  Jev hurled the keg with all the strength he had left. It wasn’t enough.

  The keg dipped, and he knew it would splash out in front of the golem, the fuse extinguishing in the water. But then, a gust of wind battered him
from behind. Somehow, it caught the keg and hurled it farther.

  An instant before it would have slammed into the golem’s watery torso, the black powder exploded with a cacophonous roar.

  Jev staggered back, jerking his arm up to protect his face as brilliant light burned his eyes and lit every crevice in the cavern. The force of the explosion knocked him onto his butt. Pieces of wood from the keg slammed onto the bank all around him. He twisted, burying his head in his arms.

  The light faded. Wood continued to patter down, and rocks fell into the water. Jev cringed, hoping the entire ceiling wouldn’t come down.

  Fortunately, silence soon fell.

  Jev lifted his head, risking a look at the water. Once again, only the orange light of Lornysh’s blade, resting on the rocky bank where Jev had left it, illuminated the cavern. The water had grown still.

  Lornysh still gripped his knees as he stared in the same direction.

  “Please tell me it’s dead,” Jev said.

  “I believe it’s gone quiescent.”

  “Is that the same as dead?” Jev asked hopefully.

  “Not exactly. It means it’s entered a period of dormancy while it regenerates.”

  “Does that by chance take a couple thousand years?”

  “No. It could only be hours. Maybe days. But either way, I suggest we find one of the other exits.”

  “I agree.”

  A throat cleared behind them, lantern light entering the cavern.

  “My, my, what has the tide brought in?”

  8

  Butterflies cavorted in Zenia’s belly as she took the stairs toward the floor of the castle that held the king’s suite and office. She had been up there before and spoken to Targyon a few times but never without Jev being present. She’d stopped at Jev’s room and knocked on his door on the way up, thinking it would be easier to get a meeting with the king if he came, but he hadn’t answered. Since she hadn’t heard any snores or thumps, she’d assumed he was already out for the morning—or that he hadn’t come back the night before. Where he’d gone, she didn’t know. Not down to the office to start on his paperwork. She knew because she’d been there all night. She hadn’t slept, and after all she’d sifted through, she didn’t know if she would any time soon.

  As she passed a window, dawn’s light barely brightening the gardens in the courtyard below, Zenia wondered if it was too early to knock on Targyon’s door. Did he sleep late? She’d made herself wait until dawn, but she’d been antsy for hours, waiting to talk to him.

  She checked his secretary’s office first, but it was locked, nobody answering. Apparently, secretaries didn’t start work at dawn. After waffling about whether she should bother Targyon in his suite, she made herself continue to the door. Two armed bodyguards stood outside, both looking tired, as if the night shift hadn’t ended yet, but both watched her approach with sharp eyes.

  Zenia lifted her chin and did her best to appear confident, like someone who belonged there and had the right to ask them to roust the king from bed.

  “Captain Cham of the Crown Agents to see the king, please,” she said. “It’s important.”

  She recognized the men and assumed they recognized her, but she wasn’t surprised when they hesitated, sharing long looks with each other.

  “Zyndar Dharrow usually comes up to see the king,” one said. “And not before dawn.”

  “It is dawn, not before it, and Zyndar Dharrow is busy elsewhere.” Zenia hoped he hadn’t gone to see Iridium. The idea of him being gone all night with her alarmed her for more reasons than one. “Will you ask him if he’ll see me, please?”

  The guards exchanged long looks again, then turned mulish expressions toward her. Would she have to use the dragon tear to add magical power to her request? She doubted Targyon had intended her to use the gem on his own people when he’d given it to her, but this was important. She would go mad if she had to pace for another hour and ponder the questions that had been batting around in her mind all night. She couldn’t rest until she knew more, and she hoped Targyon had information beyond what was in those reports on Jev’s desk.

  “His breakfast is usually delivered in an hour,” the guard said. “Wait until then, and then I’ll ask—

  “You will ask him now,” Zenia said, imploring the dragon tear to add coercion to her words. “Or stand aside so I can ask him if he’ll see me.”

  “I’ll ask him now,” the guards said at the same time, their voices having gone monotone.

  As they turned toward the door together, almost bumping into each other, Zenia shivered at how easy this particular dragon tear made it to manipulate people. Already, she doubted her choice to employ it. These weren’t criminals she needed to interrogate for the safety of the kingdom.

  The two guards walked inside together. She hadn’t meant for both of them to go but didn’t want to risk losing her chance if she tried to alter the command.

  Thank you, she told the dragon tear silently, following the men inside.

  It vibrated with a pleased sensation. Zenia doubted it felt qualms about manipulating people.

  “What?” came Targyon’s startled voice from the bedroom.

  Both guards had entered, and Zenia winced, imagining him waking in alarm to the hulking men standing next to his bed.

  They spoke together, their words tumbling into each other. Zenia stepped up to the door, wanting to explain and not wanting Targyon to realize she’d brainwashed, however temporarily, his bodyguards.

  “Sire? It’s Captain Cham, Sire.” She didn’t presume to step in farther than the threshold, and she had to peer past the guards to glimpse Targyon. “I’m sorry it’s so early, but I really need to talk to you. I’ve been up all night going over reports from your foreign agents.”

  Targyon sat up in bed and shooed the bodyguards back a few steps. The men blinked a few times, opening their mouths and looking around as if they didn’t know how they had gotten there. She hoped they would leave without questioning her.

  “Reports from the foreign agents?” Targyon pushed a hand through his rumpled pale brown hair. “Isn’t that Jev’s domain?”

  Zenia held back a grimace, hoping he wouldn’t think she had been presumptuous for looking at the reports on his desk. Was it possible Targyon didn’t want her knowing what was going on overseas? That he’d assigned that particular aspect of the job to Jev because he trusted Jev implicitly and she was still an uncertainty to him?

  “Yes, Sire,” she said carefully. “I finished going through the paperwork on my desk and wanted to help him organize his last night. It was hard to organize without reading things, and I didn’t think there would be any problem with me seeing the reports.”

  The guards shifted farther back, and Zenia realized Targyon was naked, or at least shirtless, in bed, the blanket and sheets around his waist. She flushed with embarrassment, thinking of the conversation he’d had with Jev about the royal pajamas being too silky against his… nether regions.

  “Last night?” Targyon looked her up and down.

  She wondered if she was even more rumpled than he and if he could tell she hadn’t slept. Or changed clothes since yesterday. By the founders, what had she been thinking? She should have washed her face and put on fresh clothing before presuming to ask him for a meeting.

  Oh well. She’d make the best of it and ask before she lost her courage—or he dismissed her.

  “Yes, Sire. There was a lot to do. I couldn’t sleep, so I worked on organizing both our desks. I’m not sure where he is this morning, or I would have discussed this with him, but, Sire, I have questions for you about foreign affairs. Do you have a few minutes? I can be quick. I just need to know if you know what I now know. And what you think about it. Or if you know more than what I know, it would be extremely useful if you could tell me about it. So I know too.” Damn, had that sounded as inane to him as it had to her? She’d intended to be vague rather than speaking plainly in front of the men, but…

  “What’d she
say?” one guard muttered to the other.

  Targyon looked blearily at her, like a man who also hadn’t slept much. And who might need coffee before he could decipher her vagueness.

  “All right,” he finally said. “Give me a minute to dress. Jolf, will you find someone to send up breakfast early? And coffee. Two cups. And a large pot.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  Jolf hurried away. The second man hesitated, looking from Targyon to Zenia.

  “I’ll wait out here,” Zenia said—almost blurted—as Targyon shifted the blanket aside.

  She turned her back and rushed out before she could find out if Targyon was entirely naked. The idea of seeing her king walking around nude mortified her.

  The bodyguard walked through the sitting room, frowning at her as he passed, but he didn’t do anything more threatening, nor did he accuse her of manipulating him magically, though he must have suspected it.

  Zenia perched on the edge of a chair to wait. When Targyon came out dressed in a loose tunic and suede trousers, she lurched to her feet and curtsied. She realized she hadn’t when he’d been in bed.

  “Relax,” Targyon said and waved her toward a table with two chairs by the window. “If you’re capable of it.” He offered a half smile as he headed for one of the chairs.

  She didn’t know how to take that but decided it probably wasn’t an insult. “Yes, Sire. May I ask my questions?”

  “Before the coffee has come? Are you sure you want to risk it?”

  “Risk it, Sire?”

  “My answers might not be that coherent in a pre-caffeinated state.”

  “Oh.”

  He issued the half smile again, and she realized he was joking with her. Maybe her reaction was the wrong one, for his smile faded.

  “I speak more quickly when I’m caffeinated, Sire,” she said, attempting to respond to his humor in kind, however belatedly. “You may not find it calming.”

  “Little about my new job is calming. Go ahead.” He waved his hand. “You said foreign affairs reports? Not anything about Master Grindmor?” Was that disappointment in his eyes?