Shadow Keepers: Midnight (5 page)

“He only wanted in your skirts, girl.”

Carissa closed her eyes. Perhaps Agnes spoke the truth. Perhaps she did not. But the truth was that she had no way of knowing if Tiberius had been truly sincere. She’d lain with him for her own pleasure, and yet Antonio could very well still be in danger.

Agnes went to her, drawing Carissa into her arms the way she had when she was a child. “Do you truly think a stranger to our house would risk his own life against your father’s wishes, and with no men to battle at his side?” Agnes spoke kindly, but her words were firm and full of certainty. “No, dear girl. The man you lay with was many things, but he was not sincere.”

She wanted to believe Tiberius—every instinct within her told her that Agnes was mistaken. Carissa had felt the truth of his words and seen the integrity of his heart. But there was no denying that she could be wrong, and if she waited to find out the truth of it, her brother could well be dead.

“I am a fool,” Carissa said.

“You’re not the first woman to have succumbed to a man’s treachery.”

Carissa frowned, shoving Agnes’s words to the side. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was finding Antonio. “If Tiberius won’t go after Antonio, I must find someone else. Someone I am certain will accomplish the task.”

“Have you not heard what I’ve said? Your father’s men are engaged, your brothers several weeks’ ride from this place. Even if you could find the coin to hire a mercenary—”

“They’d only run at the first sign of trouble.” Carissa sighed. “I know.” She pressed her fingers to the bridge
of her nose. There had to be a way—some way in which she could bring her brother home. It wasn’t as if Baloch could be reasoned with. For that matter, even approaching him would be a challenge. Any man who presented himself at his gate would surely be turned away and—

She stopped pacing.

“What?” Agnes said. “You’ve thought of something?”

“Some
one
,” Carissa said. “Someone who can infiltrate Baloch’s palazzo.” She met Agnes’s confused eyes. “The mission is more than simply breaking Antonio out, you see. If we do that, Baloch will certainly seek retribution.”

“Of course.”

“So Baloch must be killed.”

Agnes said nothing. She just looked at Carissa in the same intent way that Carissa remembered from when she was a child.

“
I
will kill him,” Carissa said, before she could talk herself out of it. “I will kill Baloch, and I will bring my brother home.”

She left immediately, dressed in Antonio’s old clothes, her long hair hidden under a cap. She smeared ash from the grate on her face, hoping to disguise the fact that she had no beard, and planned to ride hard, fast, and meet as few people as possible.

Her plan was simple. She would ride as fast as she could the twenty miles to Baloch’s palazzo outside Lariano. It would be hard—on her body and on the horse—but she was cognizant of time ticking away. She’d heard her father and Tiberius speak of the full moon, and she knew the stories about Baloch and the
occult. She could only assume that he intended to do something horrible to Antonio when the moon hung full in the sky. She planned to have her brother free and long gone before that happened.

She’d never ridden to Baloch’s palazzo, of course, but from the stories her brothers had told her, she expected to arrive close to dawn, and she planned to take a room at a nearby inn. She’d bathe and rest and when she woke, she’d dress in the silken garments she’d rolled up and shoved into her saddlebag. She’d adorn herself with the jewels she’d sewn into the lining of Antonio’s cloak. And she would scent herself with the oils that Agnes had packed for her, however reluctantly.

Even now, as she stopped at a stream so that Valiant could get his fill of water, she could picture with perfect clarity the expression on Agnes’s face as Carissa rode away from the gates of Velletri. “I understand why you must go,” she’d said before they parted. “But still my fear overwhelms me.”

“Pray for me, Agnes,” Carissa had implored. “You pray for me and I shall pray for Antonio, and together we will bring him home.”

She hoped Agnes was praying hard, because her nerves were raw. While on horseback, her attention had been occupied with the rough terrain, staying off the main road, and her increasingly sore rear end. Now that she’d dismounted and was walking to loosen her battered muscles, her mind had time to wander—and to wonder.

Could she succeed? Was she only condemning herself along with her brother?

Since she couldn’t bear to think of it any longer, she remounted Valiant the moment the beast finished drinking.
“Sorry, old friend. But we still have a long way to go.”

This time, unfortunately, her body had become used to the motion of the horse, and her mind wandered despite her best efforts to control her thoughts—and it was that very motion that guided the direction of her thoughts. She could remember the way his hands had stroked her. The way he’d traced her lips. The way he’d murmured in her ear, so soft his voice was nothing more than a whisper upon the wind.

She wanted to believe that she would find him on the road to Lariano, but she’d seen no evidence of another traveler, and she feared that Agnes was right—he’d taken what she had to offer and gone his own way. A burst of anger at his treachery ripped through her, followed in short order by the familiar frustration with her own foolishness.

But still, she could not deny that given the chance she would do it again. She’d wanted to be in his arms, and it was not even his treachery that frustrated her so much as the fact that she would never see him again.

By the Virgin, her thoughts were in a dither, and her overwhelming exhaustion was not helping matters. By the time she reached the small inn on the hill overlooking Baloch’s palazzo, she was in a ripe fury. She was also exhausted. The sun would rise in only a few hours. She needed sleep and a bath and food, and she left Valiant in the inn’s stable and then hurried to the door, expecting that she would have to wake the owner in order to gain admittance. She didn’t.

The place was not the quiet little inn she’d imagined, with darkened tables in the tavern and guests snug in their blankets upstairs. No, this place was loud and raucous
and hot from the blazing fire. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and ale and unbathed bodies, and as she stepped over the threshold, all faces turned toward her. Harsh, battle-scarred faces, puffy and pale from too much ale.

Without thinking about it, she took a step backward, then immediately recognized her mistake. She wasn’t a woman in this room, she was a young man. A young man who’d just shown fear. And to these men, that made her a target.

She strode forward, forcing her back to stay straight and her head to stay high. She didn’t want to, but she looked at each of the men at the tables as she swung her gaze across the room searching for the innkeeper. There seemed to be no one, however, who fit that role.

“He looks too young to have a sword,” one of the men said, staring directly at her crotch. “Not a hard one, anyway.”

He cackled, almost falling out of his chair with mirth as his fellows joined in the laughter, albeit more subdued.

“What you doing here, boy?”

“I’m a traveler,” she said, trying to force her voice lower but not doing a good job of it. “I came for food and shelter.”

“He’s a traveler,” a particularly foul man said to his companion. “Does he look like a traveler to you?”

His companion looked her up and down, squinting in a way that made the scar across one eye bulge. “Doesn’t look like a traveler. Looks like a thief to me.” Scar stood, his hand on his dagger. “Turn out your purse, boy. Let’s see what you’ve stole from your betters.”

“I have no money.” It was true—taking coin from her father would have taken too much time and been far too risky. She had only the jewels she had hastily stitched into her clothing.

“He lies,” the first man said.

“We don’t like liars,” Scar said. He moved around the table from the left as the first man moved from the right. Behind them, another stood. Carissa swallowed, her fingers closing around the hilt of Antonio’s sword. She had his dagger as well, still sheathed at her waist, and the weight of it comforted her.

“Little boy wants to fight,” Scar said.

“I—no.” She backed up a step, praying she could reach the door, but Scar wasn’t having any of that. He rushed forward and got right in her face, his breath so foul she almost passed out.

“I said, show us your money.” He pulled his dagger, but she was faster, and her own sword was out and flying in an instant, the tip of it slicing a new scar on the brute’s already marred face.

He howled with pain and took a step back while his friends stepped forward, all eyes on her. “You’re going to regret that,” the man who’d first spoken to her said. In truth, she didn’t doubt it. She had real skill with a blade, even her brothers said as much. But she was one woman, and these were four armed men.

Scar lashed out with his own rapier, and she parried skillfully, her attention no longer on the men but on the battle. She held her own, her feminine grace a help more than a hindrance as she leapt upon the table, positioning herself best for attack. And attack she did—this was not a defensive game, and she knew damn well she was fighting for her life. When one of the men approached
from her left, she shifted her sword hand and pulled her dagger with her right. Doubly armed, she fought like a wildcat, with all the passion and skill her brothers had taught her.

They would be proud, yes, but even the hours of practice they had endured at her behest were not sufficient against the strength of these grown men. One managed to hook the tip of his sword in the quillon of hers and send her sword flying across the room. She lifted her dagger in defense, but the odds were against her. As another man came at her from the front, Scar grabbed her from behind, tossing her to the ground in one swift, hard motion. The dagger flew from her hand, skittering across the floor to rest beneath a table.

“Down and disarmed,” Scar said. He pressed his hand to her chest to hold her down, his eyes going wide as he did so. “What ho! Look what we have here!” Scar ripped off her brother’s cloak, then tugged at her doublet and shirt, until they ripped open and she was struggling in his arms wearing only Antonio’s riding breeches and the bit of linen she’d wrapped around her chest to bind her breasts. Scar slid a finger between the linen and her flesh. “Soft little thing. Let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we.”

Around him, the men snickered and chortled and begged Scar to hurry so they could have their turn.

He spit on his hand, then rubbed her face. “Soft skin under all that ash. She’ll do for a poke, I think. And she’s got enough fire to last the night for all of us.”

“Keep your filthy hands off me.”

He slapped her without warning, and she cringed at the raw, animal lust she saw in his eyes. Fear flooded her, and with uncommon clarity she saw the future laid
out before her. She was going to be raped tonight—ripped apart by all these men. Battered and broken, and quite possibly killed.

No
.

Perhaps she couldn’t win against all of them, but she could damn well take a few of them out. At the very least, she was going to die trying.

“Give us a kiss, girl,” Scar said.

“Let me go if I do?” She tried to sound terrified. It wasn’t hard.

“Aye, of course. I’m a gentleman. Aren’t I, boys?”

A murmur of laughter mingled with vague agreement.

“All right, then,” she said, trying not to gag as his lips came closer and closer to hers. And then, at the moment his lips brushed hers, she reached down and snatched his dagger from his hip. She thrust upward, aiming for the fleshy part under his neck, but suddenly he was no longer on top of her. Instead he was flying across the room, landing atop a table that collapsed beneath the weight of him.

She stayed on her back, breathing hard, clutching the blade—and looking up at the tall, dark man in front of her, his face painted with a fury more intense than any she’d ever seen.
Tiberius
.

Relief mingled with hope coursed through her. One of the other men rushed him, but Tiberius swatted him away as easily as if he were a fly. The man tumbled through the air, smashed into the side of the tavern, and collapsed like a rag doll.

Around him, the other men shifted nervously.

“Leave this place,” Tiberius said. “Now.”

They hesitated only a moment, then scurried out into the fading night.

Tiberius held out his hand to her. She stayed where she was.

“Come,” he said. “You need a drink and a bath.”

“Why are you here?”

His brow lifted ever so slightly. “Where else would I be, with Baloch’s palazzo so close and your brother hidden deep in its bowels?”

She smiled, all her worries evaporating.

“Come,” he said again, and this time when he held out his hand, she took it, then let him pull her up and into his arms. She clung to him, letting him draw out her fear—for herself, for Antonio. Letting him hold and comfort her.

And when he kissed her, her heart soared.

Tiberius was with her now, and everything would be okay.