Exile (22 page)

He wasn’t going to get to Yiloch. She grabbed his hand, trapping the secondary stone between their palms and focused a flood of power on the key stone she held for Yiloch’s prison. In seconds, the stone scalded her already burned palm and disintegrated. The resulting surge of light as the prison imploded blinded her for an instant.

When her vision returned, she was back in her room, Jayce’s body still lying on the floor, and Myac was with her. The secondary key took them both back to where he had been when he entered. Because Yiloch and Ferin had no key and the prison existed outside of normal space, she had no way of knowing where they would end up, but she had made certain that Myac didn’t go with them. For now, she could only hope they were safe.

Myac was gasping, climbing to his feet with the halting movements of a man many times his age. A quick inspection told her he’d healed the wound too fast in his rush to come after her. She stood and moved away from him. She was starting to feel the strain of all the power she had been casting about. Her thoughts were getting sluggish, her muscles beginning to shake with fatigue. How much more could she do before it became too much?

It doesn’t really matter now
. Yiloch and Ferin were free and no one, herself included, knew where they were.

Finally standing, Myac smirked, though she could see a world of pain and exhaustion in his eyes.

“We are more alike then I realized, you and I,” he commented, taking a few staggered steps toward her. “You don’t think this is going to stop me or save them in the end, do you?”

“It certainly evens the odds a bit, don’t you think?” She took another careful step back.

“Why are you willing to risk so much for Yiloch?” he asked, sneering as he spoke the name.

She measured the space between her current position and the door with a glance. They were both about the same distance from it now, but he was injured. Could she count on that to be enough of an advantage with fatigue setting in?

“Why are you so determined to destroy him?” she asked, refusing to indulge him with an honest answer to his question. “I can’t imagine it’s out of some sense of vengeance for the death of his father.”

“No. Let’s just say that I owe them. I wanted to see them both destroyed. It was easier to let one of them kill the other, less explaining to do then. However, in retrospect, I now realize that it would have been easer had Rylan come out the victor. I didn’t expect Yiloch to be so bloodthirsty that he would rather kill me than employ my skills.” He tilted his head to one side, in an almost dog-like, or rather, wolf-like fashion. “Perhaps I should ask what it is you have against me?”

“You tried to kill me,” she hissed, forcing herself to stand her ground. If she backed any further, he would be closer to the door than she was.

“Only after you tried to help the Blood Prince kill me,” he countered, measuring her distance to the door with a glance as she had done.

“I…” she started to argue, faltering when she realized that what he said was true.

“Now you see, my lady. Our conflict started with you. It didn’t have to be this way.” His superior smile grated on her, but it boded well that he was letting his arrogance show. He might grow careless if he believed he was gaining the upper hand. Then he glanced down at the blood over the front of his shirt and scowled. “In fact, it looks like you’re ahead. I have some catching up to do.”

She could feel him drawing on ascard energy around them, sucking it from the air like oxygen. His attack ran harmlessly up against her barriers, reinforced by the power in the ring. Injury and ascard exertion had left him much too drained to overpower her so easily.

She smiled and unleashed her rage into ascard around them. The room burst into flames with a roar. Myac’s eyes narrowed, flames reflecting in them as he turned his own failing strength to blocking out the fire that now surrounded him.

For the second time that night, she fled from her residence, feeling a brief pang of regret for all of the things she would lose in the fire. They were only things.

She ran as far as she could, but long hours of stress and wielding ascard were wearing her down. Leaning against a building, she focused on catching her breath and trying to stop her trembling. Already she could feel Myac searching for her. Now that she knew who he was, he no longer bothered with concealing his efforts from her. Brushing his search away took far more effort than it should have. She couldn’t deflect him for long. There was no way to know for certain who would break first.

Knowing that Myac was here in Caithin, she doubted more than ever that Yiloch or the others had anything to do with the death of the king and his family. She might go to Serivar, but Edan had been living with him. She couldn’t trust him now, not that she ever really had anyway. Caplin was too blinded by grief, anger, and his jealousy of Yiloch for her to seek his help. Those things aside, now that she had set free the remaining suspects in the assassination, she had technically become a criminal herself. It would only be a matter of time before they rescinded her immunity to the Ascard Watchmen and came hunting for her.

She heard the sound of hooves on the cobblestones. Ducking back further into the shadows, she waited until the horse was almost past. A young nobleman sat astride the big chestnut, the exaggerated sway in his seat hinting that he may have had a bit too much to drink. He was probably heading home now to sleep off the excess.

Drawing on ascard around her, she put him gently to sleep and stepped out to take hold of the chestnut’s reins. She used more power to lower him to the ground before he could fall off, then led the horse into the alley. Leaving the animal for a moment, she dragged the young man into the shadows and searched his pockets.

You are not a thief
, a voice in her mind protested when she drew out his coin purse and tucked it into her cloak.

I am now
, she countered.

Leaving the young man lying in the alley, she mounted his horse and urged the chestnut into a long, fast trot. After she had exited the city proper, she reached back with ascard to wake the young man so he wouldn’t fall victim to any other unsavory persons who might be wandering the streets. That done, she urged the horse to a canter and pointed him in the direction of the port town of Kilty a few miles east of Demin.

Tears trailed down her cheeks and she trembled with more than just the chill of the night as they raced down the dark road. In Lyra, she had killed a number of people, but it had been necessary to save Yiloch’s life. Tonight she had killed her former fiancé when she could have subdued him without bringing him harm and called the authorities to deal with him. Then again, they would have done nothing more than give him a warning and set him free again. He would never stop trying to get back at her.

That knowledge was no consolation.

“No,” she scolded herself aloud, “you will not justify this death.”

If she found a way to justify this death, then it would become easier to justify killing again. There were many less violent ways to deal with such a threat. Ways that would only work so long as he never caught her unaware.

She ground her teeth and focused on the night ahead, trying not to think anymore.

Sometime after midnight, she rode into the Kilty docks. Trade was a business of expediency. As such, several crews were busy unloading or loading cargo despite the hour. She tied the horse outside an inn. Someone would take care of him when it became clear he’d been abandoned. His owner might even get him back in time. Leaving the horse to whatever fate awaited, she started toward the ships, using ascard to hide her ring so it wouldn’t become a factor in bargaining.

For a few minutes, she stood in the shadows and watched. Selecting a ship whose crew was loading cargo with the most haste, their urgency suggesting that they were running behind schedule, she approached one of the crewmen when he reached the bottom of the plank on his way to get another crate. He made as if to ignore her and continue past, so she stepped into his path, forcing him to stop.

“Excuse me, Sir, but I would like to speak with your captain.”

His dark eyes overflowed with weary resignation. “We carry cargo, not passengers. You’ll have to try another boat.” He gave a curt nod and sidestepped to move around her.

“I’m sure your captain can tell me that just as well as you can.” She placed a hand on his shoulder with enough force to turn him back toward her.

The man scowled at her hand and turned to the ship, gesturing with his head to an older man standing to the side of the gangplank on the deck. The man looked like any other man working the ship, but since he had at least enough rank to be supervising rather than carrying, she decided it was worth a try.

“Thank you.”

The man shook his head and moved on toward the stack of crates they were loading while Indigo wove her way up the gangplank amidst the curses of the laboring crewmen. The man at the top watched her with a deepening scowl.

“We carry cargo, not passengers,” he reiterated gruffly when she reached him.

She forced a sweet smile. “So I’ve been told. I’ll pay well and be no trouble.”

“Never met a woman who wasn’t trouble.”

She continued to smile, swallowing a string of insults that wanted voicing. “Really, Captain…” she trailed off, pressing for a name. His hesitation in response to the title confirmed her suspicions. “You aren’t the captain, are you?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Look Lady, we’re running two days behind now, the captain doesn’t have time for this.”

“What if I told you I could get you to Yiroth in a day?” she asked, reasonably confident she could emulate what the two adepts had done for the ship she and Serivar had taken to Yiroth. Had that really been such a short time ago? It felt like weeks, several long, exhausting weeks.

The man, probably the quartermaster, guffawed. “I’d say you were running light of cargo up top.”

“Is it because I’m a woman?” she inquired, feeling the press of time against her and trying not to let her impatience show. Eventually, someone would look for her here. It was too obvious an escape route. Then she noticed the smugness coming from him and realized she had guessed wrong. A quick ascard search of the captain’s quarters gave her all the information she needed. “No. It isn’t my gender, is it? It’s my race. Your captain’s pureblooded Lyran, isn’t he?”

The quartermaster’s eyes darkened and he took a menacing step toward her. “You best go find another ship before I toss you overboard.”

She held up her hands in a show of surrender. “Very well. I’ll go.”

He gave a gruff nod, glancing back to the men loading cargo now that he considered the problem solved. She turned as if to walk away, but rather than head down the gangplank, she stopped the turn early and strode swiftly toward the captains quarters. It was only a few seconds before she heard the quartermaster stomping after her, but she was well ahead and moving at a brisk walk. The annoyance rolling off him told her that he did not consider her much of a real threat, which explained why he wasn’t rushing to catch up.

“It’s locked anyway, you fool woman,” he called after her.

Of course, it would be locked. She found the inner latch with a tendril of ascard and searched out the bolt. She was almost to the door when she slipped the bolt free. Pulling open the door, she stepped inside and was greeted by the sound of steel sliding free of a leather sheath. She walked in anyway, stopping a few inches shy of the point of the blade. The pale Lyran captain glared a warning down the length of sharpened steel.

“Who are you?” he snarled.

She sensed the quartermaster as he stopped in the doorway behind her. Reaching up, she laid a finger against the flat of the blade and pushed it aside. As irritation and amusement warred across the captain’s features, she walked past him into the cabin. She sensed the amusement winning out and heard the sword sliding back into its sheath while she pretended interest in the layout of his cabin.

“Go see to the cargo, Renth, I think I can handle this one.” His Lyran accent added an exotic charm to his voice, but the underlying hint of a more intimate attraction warned her to be wary.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the quartermaster nod once and shut the door, leaving her and the captain alone. The captain turned and made a show of appraising her that bordered on outright rudeness, but she herself hadn’t been overly polite thus far. Not willing to let him upset her composure, she returned the scrutiny, taking in the light blond hair, braided back out of the way, and pale blue eyes in a face that remained light of skin and barely lined despite many long hours at sea.

He cocked his head slightly, curiosity growing as they regarded one another. “By all indications I’d say you were a noblewoman, but if so, you look as though you’ve had a rough night. What do you want with me?”

“Captain…?”

“Murchadh,” he replied, drawing a chair up and gesturing for her to sit.

She accepted the seat gratefully, only now realizing exactly how weary she was. The desire to give into her misery and exhaustion was powerful, but she forced it aside and met his eyes. This night wasn’t over yet.

“Captain Murchadh, I need to get to Yiroth.”

“And why would I take you?” he asked, claiming another chair and placing his feet up on the one table in the room.

The approval in his eyes suggested what form of payment he might accept. She ignored it.

“I can get you across the Gilded Straight in a day,” she stated, though she was beginning to wonder if her strength would hold out for such an effort.

“Using ascard?”

She nodded, relieved that his Lyran heritage made him more willing to accept such a possibility and his need for haste sparked interest in his pale eyes.

“Can I ask you one question?”

“Certainly,” she replied, puzzled by the sudden tension she felt in him.

“Do you keep slaves, my lady?”

The tension immediately made sense. “I am of noble blood, Captain Murchadh, but my family does not now, nor have they ever, kept Lyran slaves.”