I slumped down on the mattress. Hands clasped behind my head, I gazed up at my little light bobbing just below the thick beams of the ceiling. I was pretty much out of options here. If the bucket had been wooden, maybe I could have used it as a weapon against the first person who opened the door, but I could hardly beat anyone to death with a piece of flimsy plastic.
Ash had taken my gun, of course—not that it had done me any good. Celebrach had also confiscated my backpack, which held my knife. They’d left me my phone, which was no more than a useless hunk of metal and plastic here. Unlike Willow’s comfortable sith, this one wasn’t rigged for phone signal. I had the clothes I was wearing and my wallet. Not much to work with.
I lay there for a while, feeling sorry for myself, but it was so damn cold in the cell I eventually had to stand up and pace around just to keep warm. My movement startled a mouse I hadn’t noticed, and it skittered out underneath the door. There wasn’t even room to pace properly. Three steps one way, three steps back again, bringing me so close to the door my nose was almost touching it. I’d checked it out in my initial examination of the cell, but it was way too heavy and thick to even contemplate kicking my way through it.
And what if I did? I still couldn’t get out of the damn sith. If only I had my father’s power—why the hell couldn’t I have scored a few more of his genes? I clenched my fists, the familiar frustration swelling in my chest. What use was being half-fairy if you had no more magic than a baby?
What were my choices? I could wait here like a good girl until my fate was decided by Ash, or …
I couldn’t really come up with an alternative. If I could get out, I could go find myself a weapon. At least that way, if it was a thumbs down from Ash, I might be able to take him out before I died. But getting out was the problem.
There was a fair gap at the bottom of the door, perhaps an inch. Plenty big enough for my mouse friend, but no real use to me. Rubbing my cold arms, I crouched down to peek through the keyhole, but he’d left the key in the lock on the outside and I couldn’t see a thing.
I rose slowly, my brain racing. He’d left the key in the lock. Well, well. Suddenly I had options.
I pulled out my wallet and considered its contents, the cold forgotten. A credit card, a bank key card. Driver’s licence, various loyalty cards to the stores I frequented. Not a lot of cash, which was nothing new. I spent it almost as fast as I earned it. A bunch of receipts and one folded piece of paper. Aha! I’d hoped that was still there.
I pulled it out and unfolded it. It was my shopping list from last week, only small, but big enough for my purposes. Now all I needed was something long and thin.
If only I had Willow’s long hair; she always had a clip or bobby pin handy. Mine was so short I needed neither. I considered the plastic cards from my wallet. Perhaps I could snap a piece off. But then my eye fell on the bucket and its thin, white plastic handle. Even better. It was the work of a moment to detach it from the bucket, and then I was ready.
Carefully, I smoothed the paper and slid it under the door, leaving only a small amount of it showing on this side. Then I shoved my plastic bucket handle into the keyhole, which was one of those large and primitive ones that took an enormous old-fashioned key. It took hardly any jiggling at all before a satisfying thunk from the corridor told me that the key had landed on my piece of paper.
Eagerly, I slid the paper back toward me, and voilà! The key came with it. Simple. I fitted it to the lock on this side, and in a moment, I was free.
I doused my faelight and stood listening for a long time, to assure myself that there was no one else left in the building. There were no sounds from the shower room, so I hoped that meant that I had the place to myself. Moving as quietly as I could, I headed for the exit.
Outside, I slipped into the cover of a small stand of trees and considered my next moves. I could go back for my own knife, which was probably still in Celebrach’s office. That seemed the quickest way to find a weapon. There were probably dozens—if not hundreds—here, but I didn’t know where any of them were kept, and the longer I had to search, the higher my chances of being caught again.
The downside to that plan was that I would have to evade perhaps several people in the main building, and there was no guarantee that Celebrach’s office would even be empty. For all I knew, Celebrach himself would still be there, which kind of cruelled my chances of getting my knife back.
Option B was wandering around looking for someone else’s weapon to steal. If only all those practice swords and knives on the walls of the building I’d been imprisoned in were real. That would have made my life a lot simpler. But assuming I could find a weapon, what then? Go back to my cell to await my doom, ready to make sure Ash shared it with me if it wasn’t good news?
It seemed like a pretty sad plan. I’d much prefer one where winning wasn’t defined as taking someone into death with me. Really winning would be getting out of here. Ash had warned that I’d be hunted down and killed if I escaped—but he didn’t know I had the king as my trump card. The assassins wouldn’t be able to hunt me if we hunted them first.
Someone was passing my hiding place, and I held my breath. As their footsteps receded, I risked a glance. It was a woman, dressed in the grey livery of the servants, gliding along the path and staring straight ahead.
And then it came to me. Once I had a weapon, I could pull the same stunt that the Vipers had pulled on Nevith. Talk about poetic justice. All these servants must be able to open the gate to the sith, and presumably, they were servants because their magic wasn’t very strong. I should be a match for them. All I had to do was capture one and force them to open the gate for me.
I took a deep breath. I liked this plan much better. If it worked, I could be reunited with my friends inside the hour. I smiled; I did so like a happy ending.
With renewed enthusiasm, I began my search for a weapon. The first cottage I came to was lit up. A peek inside showed a man and woman and two small children seated at a table, eating together. I passed that one by, hoping to find one that was empty.
Further on through the trees, another cottage stood alone, surrounded by tall pines that almost completely cut it off from its neighbours. Whoever lived here obviously enjoyed their solitude. The place was dark but for a faint glow from one window, and I crept closer, careful to make as little noise as possible as I pushed through the bushes and peered through the glass.
The glow came from the small fire that burned in the hearth. The room was a sparsely furnished lounge with only two large wing-backed chairs set before the fireplace, a couple of small side tables, and a long sideboard.
I thought it was empty until someone moved in the armchair that faced away from me.
It was Ash, and he leapt from the chair and strode across to the sideboard, which groaned under the weight of the array of bottles clustered on it. He took a decanter from a tray and poured himself a glass of something that glowed amber in the firelight. Whiskey, probably. He tossed it back as if it were water, then contemplated the empty glass, turning it in his hand.
In a move that shocked me with its suddenness, he hurled the glass into the fireplace. The smash and tinkle of glass was loud in the stillness. What was his problem?
I dragged my gaze from the pieces of glass littered like chips of ice on the bricks and looked at him. His expression was bleak, but that seemed fairly standard for him.
He raked his hair back, the long strands falling forward straight away to shade his eyes again. Then he pinched the bridge of his nose in between thumb and forefinger in a gesture familiar to tired people the world over. Both worlds, in fact.
Was he struggling with his decision? If that was the case, I was even happier that I’d come up with an escape plan. Leaving my fate in the hands of someone else, particularly someone who had no interest in my continued survival, was not in my nature. And if the decision was causing him this much grief, the chances of my living past dawn were looking pretty slim. The only questi
on was why a man like him would feel any remorse at the thought of taking yet another life.
He yanked the door open and left the room in another abrupt movement. A moment later, the front door of the little cottage slammed.
I kept still, flattening myself against the wall behind the bushes, but he didn’t come my way. I gave him a good few minutes to get clear, then I slipped around the corner and let myself in. Once inside, I conjured the tiniest faelight, shrinking it down to almost nothing to stop the light showing through the windows. He was bound to have weapons I could steal, but I’d need a little light to find them.
The cottage was small, containing only four rooms—the lounge room I’d already seen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. No kitchen, which seemed a little odd, but I guessed he took his meals at the main building in the austere dining room I’d seen. Assassins were probably too important to bother with cooking.
I checked the drawers of the sideboard and the cupboards below them but found only papers and yet more bottles of booze. This guy had a serious drinking problem. Did he drink so much to forget the ugly deeds he’d committed?
One of the bedrooms seemed unoccupied. Though the bed was made, there were no ornaments or personal effects around the room, and a peek inside the wardrobe showed it was bare. The other bedroom was clearly Ash’s. Furnished in a dark, sombre style, there wasn’t much personality on show, beyond a couple of photos in silver frames and half a dozen books stacked on the bedside table. The drawers held only clothes; I felt around underneath them to make sure.
I was coming up blank until my gaze fell on the carved wooden chest that sat at the foot of the bed. Sure enough, when I opened the heavy lid, I hit pay dirt.
The gleam of fairy steel greeted me. Three swords of different types—including one rather exotic one with a curved blade—half a dozen daggers and throwing knives, throwing stars, a garotte, and a couple of other things whose purpose I could only guess at. Gingerly, I picked out a short, straight dagger and drew it from its sheath. The blade’s edge gleamed in the soft glow of my faelight. It was a nice weight and fit comfortably in my hand. Hurriedly, I closed the wooden lid and left the house with my prize.
All I had to do was find a servant and take them prisoner. The main building was the obvious place to start, since I’d already seen several servants there, though my heart quailed a little at the thought of going back in there without the protection of the light-weaver candle. I’d have to find and capture one person without being seen by anyone else.
I took a deep, calming breath. No use putting it off; it wasn’t going to get any easier if I delayed, and every minute I wasted was another minute in which my escape could be discovered. My watch showed four o’clock in the morning, which meant that dawn was barely two hours away. I had better get cracking.
Moving as quietly as I could, I crept down the path towards the main building. At one point, I had to slip into the trees to allow two grey-clad servants to pass. They were carrying a large box between them and never spoke or even looked at each other. Only their laboured breathing had alerted me in time to leave the path.
After that, I moved even more carefully. Fae had an uncanny knack of making barely any noise when they walked, moving like shadows on the wind. But I saw no one else.
Approaching the building from the rear, I hurried through the large herb garden I’d seen from the window, feeling exposed with no trees to hide behind. I breathed a little more freely once I’d gained the shelter of the building, though my troubles didn’t end once I was inside.
The thick carpets that muffled my footsteps also hid the approach of any others, and I was almost discovered by more of the grey-clad servants, two women who were dusting. They appeared from a hidden staircase with barely any warning. It was only because the first one sneezed just before she stepped off the stairs into the corridor that I had any warning at all.
As it happened, a door was within arm’s reach, and I thrust it open and hurled myself inside just in the nick of time. Fortunately for me, the room was empty. I held the door open a crack and watched the corridor. I thought I was in luck when the first woman appeared, but then her companion followed her. I couldn’t take two prisoners; I needed to find someone on their own.
But perhaps the dusting would take these two in different directions. I waited until they’d gone past, then I eased the door open and stuck my head out, watching their progress.
For once, the Lady smiled on me. One of them opened a door further down the corridor and went inside, while the other kept walking. I waited until she was out of sight, then slipped out into the hallway and hurried to the room the first woman had entered.
She didn’t see me come in. The room was a library, and she was standing at one of the windows, one arm braced on the window frame while she stood on tiptoes, reaching up as high as she could to dust along the top of it. I was across the room in a flash and pressed the tip of the knife to her neck in the soft, vulnerable spot just behind the curve of her jaw.
“Don’t move,” I whispered. “Don’t even breathe, or I’ll slash your throat.”
To my astonishment, the woman continued dusting as if I wasn’t even there. Surprise held me frozen for a second, then I applied a little pressure to the knife so that the blade bit into her neck. Blood welled from the shallow slice, bright against her pale skin.
I grabbed her around the throat and hauled her away from her task. Maybe she was strange, like the people in the kitchen, but surely self-preservation must kick in eventually? “Are you deaf? Do you think I won’t hurt you?”
The feather duster drooped to her side, but that was all the reaction I got. I may as well not even have been there.
In desperation, I tightened my grip, and her blood smeared across my skin. “You will open the gates of this sith for me.”
“You’re wasting your breath.” Ash slouched against the doorframe, arms folded across his chest. “She won’t take orders from an outsider.”
Those damn carpets! I hadn’t heard him at all. Had he been following me this whole time?
I hauled the girl around in front of me so that we both faced him, my knife still at her throat. “Then maybe you will. Otherwise, I’ll slit her throat.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead. Servants are easy to come by.”
I glared at him, at a loss for what to do next. The girl wasn’t even struggling; she stood calmly while I half strangled her, the blade of my stolen knife nipping at her skin.
I made a noise of disgust and thrust her away from me. I was not altogether surprised when she calmly went back to dusting, the smear of bright blood staining her throat and the neck of her dress the only sign that anything had happened at all. Something was very wrong with her.
“Is she under a spell?”
“She is compelled by the Blade.”
“Compelled by which blade? Most people would find it compelling enough to have a dagger at their throat.”
“We do things a little differently here among the Vipers.” He straightened, a frown creasing his brow as he eyed the knife. He held out an imperious hand. “I’ll take that now.”
“I don’t think so.” If I couldn’t blackmail him by using the knife on the girl, perhaps I could use it on him instead. I eyed his tall, muscled form, sizing him up. It would be a stretch, but I might be able to do it. I certainly had nothing to lose by trying. It still seemed like a better option than casting myself on his mercy. Even if he had been going to take me as an apprentice, this had probably changed his mind.
“That’s my knife, isn’t it?” The frown became a scowl. “You stole it from my house.”
“Yes, I did, and I also booby-trapped your bedroom while I was there.” I hadn’t, of course, but the idea of him creeping around his own house waiting for the axe to fall amused me greatly.
He sneered. “With what, your mighty magic?”
Low blow. I straightened my shoulders against the familiar sense of frustration. “No, with my brains. I know you fae d
on’t use them much, but you should try it some time. You might find that they’re actually pretty handy.”
He advanced into the room. There was ice in those grey eyes, a hard look that promised a world of pain if I didn’t immediately fall in with his wishes. Pity for him I wasn’t the falling-in kind of girl. “Give me the knife.”
“Where would you prefer it? Heart or spleen?”
“Nobody steals from me.”
“Well, that’s demonstrably not true.” I waggled the blade at him tauntingly. If I could get him to lose his temper, I had a better chance in a fight. People in the grip of high emotions didn’t fight as well as those who kept their heads. “If you want it, come and get it.”
He took a step closer, then another, his eyes never leaving mine. My heart raced at the promise of action, but my body was loose, ready for anything. My hope was that he would assume I wasn’t enough of a challenge to bother using magic against me—fae liked to conserve their energy wherever possible, and magic was draining. Then I could make him pay for his fae arrogance.
I watched closely for any sign that he was about to attack—any little twitch, any tell-tale movement of the eyes. He held no weapon, but that meant very little. I’d seen those assassins wrestling outside. Unarmed combat was clearly nothing new to them, despite Ash’s insistence that assassins never resorted to it.
“Last chance,” he said. “Give me the knife.”
Was he going to talk all night or was he going to fight?
“Sure.” I smiled and took a step forward, holding out the knife. He relaxed, ever so slightly, and I launched myself at him. Surprise and speed were my best chance.
Well, surprise was on my side, but speed was on his. I slashed at him, but he danced away, moving faster than anyone I’d ever seen.
Damn. I’d lost surprise, and there wasn’t much else in my arsenal.
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