Exile (25 page)

With far more effort than she was willing to let show, she stood up straight. “Thank you, but I must be moving on now. If anyone asks…”

His sly, conspiratorial grin and wink were even more reassuring than his words. “I never saw you.”

She gave him a heartfelt smile. “Thank you, Captain.”

It was a struggle to walk down the gangplank with the constant movement of the water below threatening to toss her off. She still maintained her masking and other barriers, though without the supplemental power of the ring, those would have failed by now as well. Too much energy expended in ascard use, stress, and long hours of wakefulness were taking their toll.

With a deep breath, she started down the street, determined to make it far enough to at least barter a carriage into taking her to the palace. She wanted to reach out and see if Yiloch was there, but she could no longer spare that kind of energy. She made it to buildings that faced the docks before having to stop and lean against one to rest. After all she’d been through, it wouldn’t do to pass out in the street to be robbed or worse, but that was starting to become a strong possibility.

“Lady Indigo?”

The deep voice was uplifting in its familiarity. There was hope after all.

“Cadmar.” She breathed his name in disbelief and turned in the direction the call had come from. When her body stopped turning, her head continued to spin and she spotted the dark skinned warrior approaching only seconds before falling into blackness.

•

“Lady Indigo?”

The deep voice made her head throb. An involuntary moan escaped her lips and someone close by chuckled, causing an agonizing spike in her headache.

“I told you she would wake soon. She’s a strong lady.”

“Cadmar?”

She kept her voice low so as not to aggravate her own head. There was little doubt as to why she suffered such pain. She’d overused her ascard ability by a fair sum. The distressing part was that she didn’t yet have the energy to heal the headache herself. Opening her eyes a fraction, she found herself in a dimly lit room and dared to open them the rest of the way. The elegant furnishings were enough to tell her she was in the palace, so she had gotten that far at least.

Cadmar sat on the edge of the bed, pale green eyes lit with gentle affection and a spark of merriment. Beyond him, Adran stood scowling at her, arms crossed and eyes narrowed with stabbing resentment.

She took a light breath and lifted herself to a sitting position.

“Where is he?” Adran demanded.

She winced, both from his volume and from the underlying pain that rolled out of him. He was the one person in the world who loved Yiloch as much as she did, perhaps more given their long history. She closed off her ability, unable to bear that pain on top of her own.

“Easy, Adran, it’s clear she’s been through a lot.” This new voice was also familiar.

“Ian.” His name came out as a pleased sigh.

The pleasure was fleeting, crushed by guilt and misery. Even after seeing her take Yiloch away from them, the young creator had still spoken in defense of her condition. Did she deserve such consideration from him?

She let her face fall into her hands, trying to fight back the threatening tears. Despite her efforts, exhaustion left her too weak to resist and tears spilled forth. Her shoulders began to shake with sobs she couldn’t control.

“Look what you’ve done now,” Cadmar chastised. He moved closer and put an arm around her, pulling her against him.

“She deserves it,” Adran snapped.

She agreed with him, but she couldn’t control herself well enough to say as much. The night had nearly cost her life and she’d taken a life in the process. A despicable life, yes, but she had loved Jayce once, before she found out what he was like behind that charming facade. Now Yiloch and Ferin were missing and Myac was still out there seeking revenge against Yiloch for something and against her for trying to kill him twice, which was a sensible reason to want her dead now that she thought about it. And here she was, a sniffling, useless mess.

She sank against the iron wall of Cadmar’s musclebound chest and gave in to anguish and exhaustion. The crying made her head hurt more, but at least that made it feel like a little less of an undeserved indulgence to let the dark warrior hold and comfort her.

“Honestly, Adran,” Ian murmured, his voice now coming from over near the other man. “We should hear her side of this before we judge. Why would she come here if she were trying to harm Yiloch?”

“Has harmed,” Adran amended.

She got control of herself and pushed away from Cadmar. With a sour look, Adran tossed her a linen to wipe away her tears. She thanked him and murmured thanks to Cadmar as well, but before she could say anything else, the door swung open. Hax stormed in and her gaze locked on Indigo, her face twisted in a feral mask of fury that made Indigo’s blood go cold.

“You,” she hissed.

Her hand dropped to her sword hilt and she started forward. Cadmar snapped to his feet and stepped into her path. If Indigo was surprised by his intervention, Hax was even more so. She stepped back from him, hurt and confusion rising in her eyes. Indigo felt a pang of sympathy for the other woman. She didn’t know the full extent of the relationship between Hax and Cadmar, but she had noticed a strong bond of some kind there the first time she saw them together.

Indigo stood, keeping one leg against the bed for stability. All eyes turned to her, as she had intended, not quite diffusing the situation, but at least distracting Hax. “Yiloch hasn’t returned here?”

The deepening scowl from Adran was sufficient answer.

“King Jerrin, his son, and wife were assassinated…” she trailed off at Adran’s look of impatience.

“That news spread up from the docks this morning,” Ian offered. “Besides, we already knew that much from the missive you left behind.”

Missive?
Another part of the plan they hadn’t bothered to let her in on.

“But Emperor Yiloch had no part in their deaths,” Adran stated, his voice as tense as his posture.

She nodded, though the movement made her headache flare again. If Yiloch had been planning to assassinate the Caithin king, Adran would have known about it. His conviction was comforting. “I know that now. When I agreed to come here with Serivar, it was with the understanding that we would only be presenting Yiloch with a demand to stand trial in defense of his adepts. If I had known that Serivar was carrying a key to a Serroc prison with the intent of imprisoning him, I would never have gone along with it.”

Adran and Hax looked skeptical, but Ian nodded as though he had expected as much. Cadmar watched, now standing next to Hax and giving her a wary eye as though still expecting some backlash for his defense of Indigo.

“What about Ferin and the three adepts he took with him?” Ian asked.

“Ferin should be wherever Yiloch is…”

“And where is that?” Hax interrupted.

“I’ll explain in a moment. Somehow, they got the other three adepts to confess to the crime and implicate Yiloch. They already put them to death.”

Indigo winced and pressed a hand to her head at Hax’s cry of outrage. The others held their anger in silence, but the drawn faces and stiff postures were enough to tell her they were no less upset and she was suddenly quite glad that she had closed off her ability to sense emotion.

“What of Ferin and Yiloch?” Ian asked.

The lanky youth would no longer meet her eyes and she swallowed against a tightening in her throat that made it hard to continue.

“I stole the key stones for their prisons and destroyed one inside the other to bring them together. I intended to take them both out with me, but Myac followed me.” She held up one hand to forestall interruptions promised by the widening of eyes and opening of mouths. “Yes, Myac is in Demin. He was well hidden or I would have known something was amiss long before this happened. I would have brought Ferin and Yiloch out of the prison with me, but I knew Myac would try to hurt them, so I grabbed Myac and destroyed the other key stone to set them free. Unfortunately—”

Ian jumped in, his eyes lighting with understanding. “You had no way to control where they ended up.”

“So you’re saying that they are no longer imprisoned, but we have no idea where they are,” Adran summarized, a knife-edge to his tone.

“Exactly,” Ian answered for her. “The Serroc prisons exist outside of the laws of normal space. They aren’t bound to any one location.”

Sudden dizziness unbalanced Indigo and she sat heavily back down. Hax pulled up a chair and also sat, her enraged expression fading to a mask of weariness. The idea seemed to catch on as Ian and Adran both pulled up chairs. Cadmar returned to his place on the edge of the bed. Looking around at them, she noted the hopelessness in their faces and her own heart sank. She had hoped the prison would have sent Yiloch back where he was taken from as the last one had, but the new prisons lacked the gateway that created an anchor between it and the prisoner’s point of origin. Failing that unlikely chance, she had hoped one of them would at least have an idea of how to find him.

Cadmar shifted, clearing his throat. “I have news from the southern Lyran border.” When all eyes were on him, he continued. “The raids I was sent to investigate were by the Murak, but they ceased without my intervention. They say that they are now preparing for the invading army moving in from across the Rhuakine toward the eastern border of Kudan.”

Ian’s eyes lit up. “That’s it!”

“What?” Adran asked, a flicker of tentative hope in his pale eyes that sparked the same in Indigo.

“Suac Chozai foresaw all of this. Perhaps he could tell us where Yiloch and Ferin ended up.”

She stared at him, puzzled. The term suac sounded distantly familiar, like the name of a remote relative. Hax snorted derisively, but Adran looked thoughtful. He stood and started to pace the room, keeping to the far side away from Indigo. She rubbed her temples and tried not to watch his pacing. Exhaustion still pulled at her, but she couldn’t afford to give into it yet.

“It’s possible. He foresaw the army from across the Rhuakine and Indigo’s betrayal,” Adran added the last with an accusing glare in her direction and she shifted back as if it might help her escape the daggers in his look. “But would he even help us after Yiloch turned him away?”

“There is also the possibility that Yiloch isn’t that far away. He might return before you even reached the suac,” Cadmar suggested.

“Who’s the suac?”

Ian turned to her. He looked more cheerful, enthusiastic despite the possible obstacles Adran and Cadmar suggested. Responding to his optimism, she felt the glimmer of hope take hold and start to grow, warming her.

“Suac Chozai is a Kudaness high priest. He came to Yiloch seeking his aid and warning him that he would be betrayed three times; by ally, by family, and by love. Yiloch turned him away, which I can’t blame him for,” Ian added in hasty defense of his leader. “The man was rude and arrogant and he had no proof of his claims. No matter what else he was though, it appears that he was also right. If he foresaw all of these things, it seems to follow that he might know where Yiloch ended up.”

“Ian.” Indigo waited until he met her eyes. “You’re a creator. How much do you know about the Serroc prisons? Is there any limit to where Yiloch and Ferin might have ended up?”

With a pained expression, he shook his head. “I know some of the theory behind them, but they’re still very new constructs, so most of that knowledge is hypothesis based on what little is understood about them. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has destroyed a key stone while someone was in the prison before.”

“So they could be dead for all we know,” Hax snapped.

A sharp look from Adran silenced her. He was clearly no more ready to humor that possibility than Indigo was. If the situation were different, she might have given him a grateful look. As it was, such a gesture would just turn his attention and anger back to her, so she avoided his eyes.

“When I destroyed the key to Ferin’s prison it brought him into Yiloch’s prison with me and, since destroying the other stone while Myac and I were still inside didn’t kill us, I don’t think it would have hurt them either.” The burn in her palm throbbed with the memory of that terrifying moment. “I think this Suac Chozai may be our best option. Our only option,” she amended, trying to keep the hopelessness that came with that statement from her voice.

Ian nodded, resolute. “You need some rest before we head out.”

Adran threw up a hand. “Hold on. We haven’t discussed who is to go on this insane venture.”

“Well, obviously you can’t go,” Hax stated. “Someone needs to supervise Lord Terral in Yiloch’s absence. We can’t just hand him the reins and let him run free. I don’t believe you trust him any more than I do and there is still that betrayal of family the suac warned of. You are the most qualified for keeping him out of trouble.”

Adran shifted from one foot to the other, clenching his jaw as he struggled with several responses he must have felt were inappropriate. It was obvious that he wanted to argue the point. Indigo could understand his conflict given how much he loved Yiloch, but Hax was right, especially if Lord Terral was the acting authority in Yiloch’s absence. The man had always made her uneasy.

“I can’t go,” Hax added when all the arguments finally died unspoken on Adran’s lips. “I’m commander of his army. I have a responsibility to keep that army in working order. It’s hard to let Ian go, but we do have many other creators and adepts here. None as powerful, but that power might be more useful to Yiloch right now, wherever he is.” Her frosty gaze fell on Indigo then. “Indigo should also go. She owes Emperor Yiloch at least that much.”

“I’m not letting the two of them do this alone. We can’t send a Lyran creator and a Caithin woman into Kudan. They need someone who knows the Kudaness. Someone like Cadmar,” Adran nodded to the dark warrior and Hax’s agreeable expression turned sour.

Cadmar stood and walked over to Hax, taking her hand with a tenderness that was deeply intimate. “Come walk with me,” he entreated.