Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (50 page)
BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)
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“Sergeant told me. Captain’s messin’ with the duty roster.”
“Thought Rowel and Steedman were going to be here.”
“Reckon they were. I was supposed to have today off, but they put your regular relief out on the wall an’ forgot to assign anyone to this duty until just now. I ran the whole way here.” The new guard had the hoarsest voice she’d ever heard. She wondered if he was sick, or if something was wrong with his voice box.
“We’re supposed to have two men to this duty.”
“Supposed to have a lot of things—ain’t seen gold nor promotion nor fine new uniforms, either. I transferred in from Lightning Company just today, and no more than got my kit under my bunk than they stuck me here by my lonesome, and damn me if it don’t go well. Told me I’m guarding skinshifters. I’d rather have the gods’ damned plague, but captain didn’t ask for my drathers. They give you any trouble?”
“Them? Nah. Ate before we got here, slept our whole shift. Don’t get too close to ’em, you’ll be fine. Only reason you’d need a partner is to keep you awake.”
“Hope you’re right. Maybe I’ll be as lucky as you were. Anyway, got a note from the captain to the two of you.”
Kait heard the rustle of paper, then a disgusted snarl.
“Brethwan’s balls, Eagan! Bastards have us eating now and straight back to barracks to sleep, and on duty again at Huld.”
“Huld! We get only two stations to eat and sleep?”
The voice of the new guard, commiserating. “I told you captain was messin’ with the duty roster.”
“Futter the bleeding pig! He’s been a donkey’s ass since we got him.”
The guards who’d watched Kait and Ry for most of the afternoon and evening left, complaining loudly about the captain and his policies as they went. When they were gone, silence returned, but only for a moment. Then the stealthy whisper of approaching footsteps set her skin crawling.
Ry whispered, “He’s coming over. Got his head down and his face hidden. There’s something wrong about him, but I don’t know what. . . .” Then he growled and moved into the crouch that was the only position other than lying down that the cage would allow. “Any closer and I’ll kill you,” he said.
Kait rolled and braced for whatever was coming.
And saw Ian, his skin burnished the color of fine mahogany, his dark hair cropped close to his skull, and dressed in a guard’s uniform, approaching quickly with something hidden in his hand.
Fear flooded her veins and sent her heart racing. Ian could kill Ry or her easily; they were helpless in the cramped cages. The question was, which of them did he hate the most, and would either of them have a chance to talk him out of whatever he had planned?
Ian glared at Ry. “The day I came here, I left a note for you morons telling you I had something planned that would help you. When I got back to the inn, you were gone and I’ve seen nor heard not a word from you until I hear from the guards that they brought in a couple of skinshifters. So I’ve been stuck here, working in this hell, pretending to be loyal to the Dragons and doing things I don’t want to think about to prove my loyalty, and all the time hoping that you would find your way back here to get your gods’ damned Mirror. We don’t have time to talk now,” he said, his voice still harsh and strange. “I set it up so that I’d be alone with you, but one of the Dragons could decide to come after the two of you at any time. I’m going to take you to the Mirror of Souls. Then I’m going to get the three of us out of here if I can.”
“The . . . three of us?” Kait whispered.
She glanced at Ry, who looked as dumbfounded as she felt.
Ian looked at her. Pain flashed across his face, though he hid it quickly. “The three of us. You made your choice—you love him, don’t you?”
“I do.”
He nodded, and bent to insert the key into the lock that held her door closed. “So that’s it. I’m saving you because I love you.” The chain that held her door closed rattled softly as he worked the lock. “And I’ll save him . . . because I love you.” He shrugged and avoided her eyes.
“You sacrificed yourself to help us? Me?”
“We don’t have time to talk,” he rasped.
Something inside her hurt at that moment. She wished she had been able to love him. She wished she could be two people so that she could be with Ian and with Ry without betraying either of them, or that she had never met Ian, or that she could take his pain away. The magnitude of what he’d done for her unrolled before her in the few moments that he struggled with the lock that kept her caged. “Why did you come here?” she asked him.
Her lock clattered open and the chain rattled to the floor. Ian immediately hurried to Ry’s cage and began working on that lock. Kait crawled out of her cage and stretched.
“You mean right here? Or to the Dragons?”
“Both.”
“I figured out a way I could get to the Mirror of Souls. And I knew you needed it. So since you had . . .” Another shrug. “Since you had someone else, I decided I was free to go. I offered my services to the Sabirs, but especially to Crispin—I told him lies about how much I wanted to get even with you, and he put me in charge of the combined Sabir and Galweigh forces. I . . . I did some things I don’t want to think about in order to convince him that I was what I said I was. People died at my word and by my hand. They weren’t innocents, but they were innocent of the things I said they did.” Ry’s lock opened, and Ian backed up so that his half-brother could free himself. “Come with me. We have a ways to go to get to the Mirror, and not much time.”
He led them out of the beautiful arched room into a corridor. In the darkness, only the pale glimmer of moonlight shining through skylights illuminated it.
“This way.”
They followed him, silent for the moment. Kait could hear movement within some of the rooms they passed, and once she and Ry hid in a room while Ian stood in front of the door, his guard’s uniform rendering him effectively invisible. No one spoke again until he led them down a long, twisting staircase into a vault beneath the white city. He took a key and opened one door, then pressed a complex combination of switches to open the next door.
“In here.”
Kait and Ry followed him into a narrow room lit by hundreds of tiny pebbles embedded in the ceiling; the Mirror of Souls sat on a dais in the center of the room, dark and seemingly dead.
“How do we get it out of here?” Kait asked.
“I have a friend in a closed carriage waiting at the south gate of the Citadel. I sent him the message just before I came to get you. He’ll wait for us for a full day.”
“Then all we have to do is figure out how to carry it past the Dragons without them seeing us.”
“I’d hoped you could shield it the way you did when we escaped the
Wind Treasure,
” Ian said.
Wind Treasure,
” Ian said.
Kait looked at Ry. “I can do that. Ry and I are both weak—it might take some time to get it right.”
Ian looked from one of them to the other. “Hurry. Someone will be along to check on this thing within the station. I can kill him, but the moment he doesn’t report in, more will be on the way.”
54
H
asmal told Dafril nothing that he wanted to know, but he was no longer able to feign indifference. Through the early part of the torture, he’d placed himself in the meditative trance he would have used to summon magic, had he not been shielded from it. He’d withstood terrible things by standing apart from his body and watching what was done to him as if he were only a distant and uninterested observer.
asmal told Dafril nothing that he wanted to know, but he was no longer able to feign indifference. Through the early part of the torture, he’d placed himself in the meditative trance he would have used to summon magic, had he not been shielded from it. He’d withstood terrible things by standing apart from his body and watching what was done to him as if he were only a distant and uninterested observer.
Now, though, the pain had become too much, and he’d lost the trance. He was once again entirely in his body, and bleeding from a multitude of cuts, and scarred from burns with a branding iron. The pain was riveting; he couldn’t pull himself away from Dafril’s soft, amused voice any longer.
“Suddenly I feel that you’re with me again,” Dafril said. “That’s good. That should speed up this process enormously. I’ll have you know that I’ve broken hundreds of your sort, young Falcon—hundreds. Stronger men than you, and men who had full control of Matrin’s magic. You’ll tell me what I want to know.”
Dafril had kept his distance, and kept to the left of Hasmal. The talisman on his right finger still waited, but Dafril had never moved within the slight range of his bound hand. He had to get him close—
Searing pain ripped into his ribs, and he heard his skin sizzle. He screamed and fought against the restraints that bound him.
Dafril sighed. “You see? This hurts a lot, and you aren’t as brave or as strong as you think you are. So help me out, and I’ll help you. Tell me how you and your friends are stealing the souls of my colleagues.”
Hasmal’s mind raced. He thought of half a dozen lies, but all of them were improbable and sounded weak even to him—and if he told Dafril anything, he knew the Dragon would just keep torturing him, making sure that what he said at the beginning matched what he would say when he was more desperate.
He turned his face away.
“Look at me.”
He stared off to his right, trying to think of something that might save him, that might get Dafril within his range.
“Look at me, damn you.”
The searing pain again, this time high on the inside of his thigh.
He screamed and writhed, but kept his face turned from Dafril. It seemed to help.
Dafril said, “I can come around to that side, you idiot. You won’t win anything this way.”
Hasmal’s heart leaped. Yes, he thought. Do come around.
Dafril did, carrying a knife. “Look, you—I can carve out your eyes and your ears, cut off your nose, rip off your balls, or skin the flesh from your body if I have to. The only part of you that I need to have in working order is your tongue.”
Hasmal met his gaze defiantly, and managed a grin. So this was courage—being trapped and terrified and holding fast because he loved Alarista, and because cowardice would betray her.
He wondered if that was the difference between courage and cowardice—if brave men loved someone outside of themselves while cowards loved only their own lives. If that were true, then all men might be cowards sometimes and heroes at others. Then he wondered if all courage trembled inside—if all of it felt so thin and fragile, so ready to tatter and blow away in the next faint breeze—or if there was a better sort of courage that filled the belly with reckless fire and protected the mind from terror. If any of that sort of courage existed, he wished he could have some, because he was so scared he feared his heart would burst through his chest.
“Stubborn bastard. I’d cooperate if I were you.”
“You aren’t me,” Hasmal whispered.
“What was that?” Dafril leaned closer so that he could hear what Hasmal had said.
Yes, he thought. “I’ll tell you,” he whispered, his voice even softer than before.
Dafril stepped in close and leaned all the way over Hasmal. “Louder,” he said. “Say it louder.”
And that was close enough. Hasmal rested his index finger against Dafril’s leg. He felt the slight vibration as the talisman popped away from his skin and burrowed through the cloth of Dafril’s breeches.
In a moment, Alarista and Dùghall would see him through Dafril’s eyes. Dùghall would enter Dafril and pull his soul out and trap it in one of the tiny soul-mirrors that waited on the floor of the tent. And Hasmal would be saved—if he could just hold on until they could reach him.
“We found a way to make our own Mirror of Souls,” he whispered.
Dafril’s eyes narrowed, and he ran his thumb along the bloody edge of the knife. “Really? Tell me more.”
55
T
hey lugged the Mirror of Souls through the dark underpassages of the Citadel of the Gods, breathless, frightened, yet exhilarated, too. Kait had to fight the urge to shout, to scream defiance at the Dragons who went unaware about their business in the white streets above her head. We have it, she thought. We have it, and we’re going to get away with it, and we’re going to destroy you.
hey lugged the Mirror of Souls through the dark underpassages of the Citadel of the Gods, breathless, frightened, yet exhilarated, too. Kait had to fight the urge to shout, to scream defiance at the Dragons who went unaware about their business in the white streets above her head. We have it, she thought. We have it, and we’re going to get away with it, and we’re going to destroy you.
“How much farther?” Ry, the strongest of the three of them, carried most of the Mirror’s weight; he’d positioned the artifact with two of its petals resting on the small of his back and he gripped one petal in each hand. She and Ian followed him, balancing a tripod leg each. They seemed to Kait to be moving quickly, but they’d been in those dark passages for a long time anyway.
“Can you see a fork in the passageway ahead of us yet?” Ian asked.
“It goes off in three directions.”
“We’ll take the left corridor. The passage will start rising immediately and branch again. The right branch comes out in a guardhouse at the Citadel’s service gate. We’ll have to kill the guard, but my friend and his carriage will be parked behind the stables across the street.”
“I can already smell outside air,” Kait said.
She saw Ry nod. “I do, too.”
The picked up their pace until they were running. It was an unconscious action born of fear and anticipation, but it was dangerous, too. Hurrying, their breathing became louder and their attention too focused on the simple mechanics of not falling down while carrying their burden. “We have to slow down,” Kait said, pulling backward on her leg of the tripod.
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