Blood for Wolves (29 page)

Dunstan Hood sat at the head of the
table, wearing a fur-lined cape and a serpentine smile. I went on the defensive
again. Did he have poison tasters? He wanted to know where Marianne was—would
he try something here?

“Sit,” he said, gesturing toward
the seat at his right. A Sentry pulled the chair out for me and then pushed it
in again once I sat. Being this close to Dunstan made me want to squirm, but I
held my composure.

“He eats with me,” I said,
indicating toward Alex. Dunstan nodded judiciously and the chair beside me was
removed to Alex could stand in its place. I felt rather like the princess with
the frog when he demanded he eat with her. Too many fairy tales in one place
and not enough of them telling girls what to do with werewolves around.

“Aren’t you a vision,” Dunstan
said, locking his fingers together.

“Thank you,” I said stiffly.

His eyes roved over my figure in a
way that made me want to smash my fist into his face. Who the hell put this
asshole in charge, anyway? I glanced over to the far end of the table where
Martock stood like a butler. He stared at the floor.

“So,” Dunstan began, reaching
forward and dumping food onto his plate, “tell me about these werewolves you
encountered. Where did you find them?”

Alex was eyeing the soup hungrily,
so I ladled some out into a bowl for him and then myself. Dunstan ate without
any reservations; if he wanted information from me, poison wouldn’t be the
right way to go.

“There’s a fortress out by the
sea,” I said, “the place where the wolves are impounded. There’s a female
werewolf who knows the art of magic working out of there now. She liberated the
wolves there and uses it as her base.”

I took a sip of the frothy amber
beverage and almost groaned in delight. Sweetness like caramel and butterscotch
danced over my tongue with the sharp burn of alcohol rolled down my throat to
curl in my belly. I licked foam from my lip and caught Dunstan eyeing me.

“Taken over the Impound, you say?”
he said, though he didn’t sound the least bit worried.

“Yes. She marked all the wolves
there with ankle collars. They allow her to communicate with them over great
distances.”

“Wolves can’t perform magic, my
dear.”

Goddamn senile old goat.
“I
beg to differ, sir, but they can. I’ve seen it. As the girl’s Guardian, she
intended to lock both of us away using magic. And she’s protected herself with
it as well. I’m not sure how well versed in it she is, but it’s effective
enough.”

He grunted. He didn’t believe me. I
swallowed a warm spoonful of soup, momentarily relishing the creamy texture and
bold flavor. Beside me, Alex greedily ate up the contents of his bowl. He was
doing remarkably well when it came to not spilling.

“And why is it that everyone
believes wolves are incapable of doing magic?” I asked, doing everything in my
power not to wolf down my food out of sheer greed.

“It’s a simple truth,” Dunstan
said. “They tend to…react poorly. Some say it’s because they’re already
cursed.”

He didn’t sound like he cared
either way. But his words made sense. The wolves were cursed here, whether or
not anyone knew it. Still, the Mistress had found a way around that. Werewolves
were already severely twisted wolves. Maybe that made it easier.

“You told my Sentries that you were
a sorceress as well,” he continued. “They said you produced fire from your
fingers.”

“Something like that. I know what I
need to be a sufficient Guardian.” I gestured to Alex with a piece of bread. “Obviously
some spells are beyond me.”

“Indeed. So where are these
werewolves now?”

“I don’t know. Still out there
looking for us I suppose, though I can’t be sure. I’m inclined to think that if
they really wanted to find us, they could have.”

I left out the fact that we’d been
looked after by a few wolf packs. I still wasn’t comfortable not knowing what
the werewolves’ plans were, but I figured the Sentries could deal with them
should they show up.

“I find it amusing that they
believe they could overtake me and my Sentries with their inferior numbers,” Dunstan
said, tossing a bone onto a separate plate.

“They invaded your impound and set
all those wolves free. You don’t think they’d willingly join her ranks after
that?”

He grunted. “They’d have to become
werewolf.”

“So? They’ve been hunted by people,
condemned to death by people. You don’t think they’d gladly do what is
necessary to become werewolves?”

Alex huffed in agreement and then
stole my bread from my plate. I frowned at him and broke off another piece from
the loaf.

“Very insightful thinking for a
young lady who claims not to be a part of my kingdom.”

“It’s common sense,” I countered. I
decided it was time for a few questions of my own. “Why don’t you have any
magic users of your own here?”

He didn’t respond. I pressed on.

“I would think that having one or
two people skilled in magic would be useful to have on hand.”

This time he cleared his throat
loudly. “I don’t have any sorcery in my keep because magic is unstable and
corruptive. Everything that needs to be done is done through hard work.” Then
he glanced at Alex. “And obviously it doesn’t always have beneficial uses.”

Point taken. But it still struck me
as weird. Especially with the strange, latent magic that lurked in this place,
always seeming to be under my feet.

“What do you intend to do with
Marianne when she arrives?”

Suddenly his interest skyrocketed
and he stopped eating for a moment. “Is she coming?”

I took a long drink, gauging his
reaction as I made him wait. I wiped away the foam with a napkin. “She will
come when I summon her, and not before. I want to make sure she won’t be in
harm’s way when she does.”

“I assure you miss, she will be
guarded with the utmost care when she arrives.”

My ass.
“I’ll be the judge
of that.”

He tried to hide a twitch of his
eye by turning back to his meal. I snuck a few furtive glances around the hall.
The Sentry that had seated me was no longer behind me. A few stood off near the
wall, but were too far to see anything. Martock still stared at the ground, but
I got the distinct impression he was listening to every word we said. I slid my
hand over the table, grasped the sharp knife that lay beside my plate, and
slipped it over the side, lifting my leg just high enough to slip the blade
into my boot.

“I fail to see,” Dunstan said once
he recovered, “why you are so intent on keeping her from this place. This is
her rightful home, as you must know.”

So Marianne
was
from the
House of Red.

“Then I would have thought that
your Sentries would have gone down to her village to protect her family as they
made their way up there.”

“That would have drawn attention to
her.”

“And you already knew that the
werewoman was searching for Marianne?”

“Precisely.”

“All the more reason to send as
many Sentries as you had to secure her.”

He closed his mouth, his face
flushing in embarrassment. I tried not to smile. I’d just one-upped the Steward
of the Kingdom of Red.

“Why don’t you just tell us where
she is?” he said, exasperation coating his words.

“I will when I feel it’s safe
enough.”

We spent the remainder of the meal
in relative silence. A few times I caught Martock stealing glances at me, an
intense look in his eyes.

Once dinner was over, we were
escorted back to the room. The sun had set during our meal, only a grim light
filtering through the window, leaving the room to be lit mostly by the
fireplace. Wolf’s coat was nice and dry, and I put all the objects back into
their respective pockets, lingering for a moment when I touched the vial of
lavawort flower extract. Then I turned my attention to the fire and stoked the
flames so they rose higher, then began pacing the room.

“There’s something wrong here,
Alex,” I muttered.

From his place on the ground, Alex
watched me as I stalked back and forth, swinging the fire poker while I
thought.

“There aren’t enough people here. The
Sentries look cowed. That Martock guy might actually be okay, but it’s like
he’s the Steward’s butler or something.”

I considered the things men always
did while under orders. A lame excuse in my book, but they did it anyway. It’s
what soldiers did. What workers did. Even if they knew the things they were
doing were wrong.

“He’s lying about the magicians.” I
shook the poker in Alex’s direction. “I can feel the magic in this place. It’s…God
it’s so frustrating! It’s all over the ground or something. And it’s weird. It’s
protective or…something.” I grumbled at my own inadequacies when it came to
ferreting out the magic, or putting it into words.

The day disappeared completely,
leaving the window black and the room coated in the flickering firelight. I
continued to pace, too worked up to even think about sleeping, as amazing as
the bed looked. Everyone in this place simply acted too bizarre. But how the
hell was I supposed to figure out what their problem was? The place crawled
with nothing but Sentries who watched my every move. At least I’d managed to
pilfer a knife. I carefully reached inside my boot to extract it. Sharp and
serrated. It would do if I had to protect myself.

Alex had his head resting on his
forelegs, his eyes still watching me move back and forth. I wished he could at
least talk. Then we could exchange ideas and try to figure out what to do. Maybe
if I got Martock on his own and grilled him with questions, he’d let me in on
the secret of this place. They obviously wanted Marianne, but their desire for
her felt misplaced. Like they wanted her for all the wrong reasons. If she was
a descendent of the House of Red, shouldn’t she be here to rule? Or at the very
least, rule in the future? I looked to Alex.

“What do you think?”

Suddenly his head rose and he faced
the door. I was about to ask, “What?” but kept quiet and listened instead.

Soft footsteps down the hall. Men
whispering.

I pointed at the window. Thank God
we had a room on the first floor. Alex leaped to his feet as I threw open the
latch. He nudged open the glass, and I ruffled up the bed, throwing pillows
under it to look like a body. With a few sharp pokes at the fire, I scattered
the logs enough to darken the room, snatched up Wolf’s coat, and then turned
and jumped out the window, landing on a flower bed a few feet below and
scuttling around to hide under the slight ledge where the shadows were darkest.

I couldn’t see where Alex had run
to in the dark, but had the feeling he wasn’t far away. I held the knife ready.
If anyone followed us out the window, I’d bury it in his back. In the room, the
door latch clinked open and two or more men came into the room. They stepped
lightly on the stone, whispering to one another. Fabric rustled. Wood creaked
from time to time.

“What are we looking for?” someone
muttered. He received an unintelligible answer.

“You don’t really think she’d leave
something that important hidden in here, do you?”

More responses I couldn’t discern. Who
was in there? I longed to peek over the ledge and through the window, but that
might be a mistake. Did they really believe that I was in the bed asleep?

“Where d’you suppose she is?” one
of them asked as if to answer my silent question.

“Wandering around, likely,”
answered another. “And looks like her beast was let outside. Doesn’t matter.”

I frowned. They thought I might be
wandering around the castle and they didn’t care? Hell, in that case maybe I
should have. Then I’d find the armory and swipe a few more weapons.

After a few more minutes, they
left. I waited a little longer before swinging myself over the windowsill back
into the room. I stalked around, knife at the ready, but the men were gone, the
door shut behind them. The room, for all their searching, looked untouched. I
quickly revived the fire and examined the place more thoroughly. They’d moved
around the items sitting on the table and dresser, but replaced everything as
neatly as possible. The clothing in the drawers wasn’t as tidy as before. I was
surprised to see a pair of black pants sitting in one of the drawers. Apparently
Martock had made good on his word and must have had them delivered during
dinner. The bed was a little mussed, as though they’d looked under it if only
to see if I were there. I stood there, hands on my hips. Obviously they didn’t
want me. Did they guess Marianne was an object? Maybe they thought that if Alex
were a stag, Marianne was something else, something I could hide.

Well, she was. But were they really
stupid enough to think I wouldn’t keep her on my person? One of them hadn’t at
least.

The clack of Alex’s hooves alerted
me to his presence. I looked at him over my shoulder.

“We’re sleeping in shifts tonight.”

Sleeping four hours apiece proved
unnecessary, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I wished fervently that I
could spend just one night in the luxurious bed without being woken by Alex’s
cold deer nose on my shoulder or face.

I faced myself in the mirror the
next morning. Dark circles under my eyes revealed my exhaustion. I scowled. At
least they made me look meaner when I did that.

I donned the black pants and then
pondered what to wear above the waist. The dresser didn’t contain any shirts;
just finely folded dresses. I eyed the knife I’d stolen at dinner.

Fine.

I pulled out a sapphire dress, as
sleek and beautiful as the green one I’d worn the night before. It dipped down
in a V-neck, with short sleeves that held only a whisper of a ruffle at their
edges. I laid it flat on the ground and took the knife to it. Alex made a
grumbling noise.