Bloodtraitor (13 page)

That didn't mean I intended to be taken and executed. I threw Aaron in front of the guards, and dodged my sister's clumsy attempt to grab me. I had almost made it to the door when I felt a strong hand close on my wrist. I pushed magic at those around me, but it wasn't enough.

Grabbed, dragged. Something hit me.

Gone.

“PLEASE.”

Alasdair knew that voice would reverberate in her dreams and nightmares forever.

Shkei, bleeding, broken, begging…and her with a knife near to hand. The trainer had left them alone, because he didn't believe she would ever do this.

He had made her do the work of hurting Shkei this time. He had assured her it would be worse if he did it, and so she had…

The memory, the thoughts, made her dry-heave.

And Shkei just said, “Please.”

He had given her a weapon.

I can't.

But she also couldn't even say the words aloud, because the light was already gone from his eyes. In his mind, he had given himself to the next world already; he did not want to live, not in this place, where he would only be used to hurt others.

He had been so good to her…

She heard Master Gabriel finishing his conversation. He would be back in the room in moments. She only had another second.

“Please.”

She held him close, and balled one hand in his hair to keep him still. She didn't trust herself to hit the heart with one blow, and wanted to make sure the end was quick, so she held the knife in a tight fist and drew it across his throat as firmly as she could.

The blood seemed to fly at first, as the last few beats of the heart drove it up into the air as if it would soar to freedom…but then it just gurgled, and finally slithered, out and down his skin.

She wasn't crying. The tears were gone.

There was nothing left as the trainer knelt beside her, took the knife from her hand, and said, “I'll let you dig the grave.”

Alasdair had killed Shkei, and it had been a mercy, but it had broken her. She had given everything for my brother: her freedom, her pride, her soul, and finally the last bit of
self
she had, because Alasdair Shardae was not a murderer.

Alasdair Shardae could not dig a grave—even a shallow one, which was all she could manage in the frozen ground—and cover her last friend up with earth without even looking up at the sky. It had been the first time she had been allowed outside since she had been sold into that place, but the notion of escape never occurred to her.

Alasdair Shardae was not the one who had returned to the trainer's arms, after, and let him comfort her. That queen was gone. Only Ashley remained.

“Malachi.”

I woke, shivering, in a serpiente cell.

This prison was quite unlike the one in which my brother had died. It was not even as nice as the one in which I had been born and lived for several years. In fact, it had a decidedly damp smell, and moisture settled into my skin from the dank, musty air. Whatever else one might say about them, at least Midnight's cells were dry and clean. I doubted this was out of mercy on anyone's part; Mistress Jeshickah was aware that human diseases spread quickly in poor conditions, and she wanted to maintain her property in good shape.

“Malachi Obsidian, Lady Misha is ready to speak to you.”

The voice at the door was Jabari's. Blinking, I saw that he had two other guards behind him—too many for me to fight past. I would have to face Misha.

My own sister can't really want me dead.

Except she did. It was not healthy to challenge a madwoman's worldview, or to needle at the heart of that madness. If she had just wanted me out of the way for a while, she wouldn't have accused me of a crime with a death sentence.

I rose to my feet, feeling every ache and pain. Someone had hit me after I was down, more than once, but I could walk. Jabari led me, not out, but deeper into the prison.

Serpiente did not believe in imprisonment as punishment, so this place was rarely used. Occasionally, criminals might spend a few days here while awaiting trial, if it was considered too dangerous to let them out, but the cells were never full…like they were now.

Hollow-eyed, shocked-looking serpents, some wearing the regalia of the royal guard, watched us pass on our way to the interrogation room. I wondered what crimes they were here for. Speaking up? It seemed that Misha had partly won the crowd through persuasion, but partly won her throne by removing those who would get in her way.

The interrogation room was normally a little better than the rest of the jail, because it included a vent high in the wall designed to bring fresh air into the room. My heart stopped when I saw Kadee, but then I realized she was alone and unchained. If anyone knew a way out of this place, it was the little half-human serpent who had once lived here.

Relief was quickly replaced by horror as I realized the room was not nearly as clean and sparse as I recalled it from my brief sojourn when I was twelve, with a table and lamp and a sideboard for water. A spike had been driven into the wall and shackles hung from it. One of the blade-tipped Obsidian staves sat nearby, and the sideboard held not a pitcher of water but a collection of weaponry, some bloodied. Misha did not take care of her toys as well as the trainers did.

How did I know they were Misha's?

I knew. She had brought the brutality home with her. What else did she know how to do anymore, when faced with opposition? The sweet voice of reason was no longer whispering in her ear.

Jabari regained my attention by shaking me fiercely, clacking my teeth together before I braced myself and focused on him.

“Where. Is. Hara?” he demanded.

“Is Misha coming?” I asked.

He shook his head, sharply, before saying, “Not today, but the guards outside your cell don't know that. I'll let you go with Kadee, but only if you answer my question. What happened to my mate?”

Kadee would have told him already if she thought it was a good idea, so I paused to imagine what would happen next if I replied with the truth.

I could tell Jabari that Misha and Aaron had conspired to sell Hara. He would get the word out, if he could work quickly enough to keep Misha from stopping him. Hara would become a rallying point, until the people overthrew Misha. She would become a symbol of their revolt. The serpiente would not take up arms against the vampires to prevent starvation, that I believed, but if Misha spread her madness through the people, filled the jails, and practiced a trainer's art on her chosen few and then they learned Hara was alive…they might go for Midnight. With torches and pitchforks and bows and a few blades, serpents better suited to shepherding or selling handmade jewelry in the market would attack Midnight's stronghold.

And they would be slaughtered.

I dropped my gaze, and put every ounce of power into forcing him to believe me.

“Hara is dead,” I said. The backlash of agony, the last rattling breath of dying hope, nearly took my voice away. “I didn't do it. None of us did. It was a stupid accident, in the river.” Was I making any sense? Not really. There were plenty of rivers where plenty of people had met their demise trying to cross, but the heir to the throne would not have been so foolish. It didn't matter, as long as Jabari believed the key facts long enough for me to get out—Hara was dead, and I didn't do it. “Misha saw it as an opportunity.” He could and probably would rethink it later;
believe me for now!

Jabari nodded.

“We need to get out of here,” Kadee said, her gaze shifting nervously between me and Jabari. Hara's lover felt too strongly about the cobra to be swayed for long even by magic, and I didn't have the time or imagination to come up with a better lie that he would believe once I was out of sight.

“How?” I asked Kadee.

“Change shape, follow me.” She hesitated before saying, “I'm hoping you're not much bigger than I am. Can you…” She waved a hand vaguely at Jabari.

I could push at his mind so that he would “see” us go a different direction than we went. Even if his loyalty to Misha was questionable, we did not need a royal guard to know all our secrets.

Kadee and I both changed shape, and slithered down into what must have been some kind of rodent burrow. Kadee was right that it was a snug fit; if I did not have her assurance that there was a light at the end of this tunnel, I never would have entered it, because it would be impossible to turn around if we hit a dead end.

We emerged in one of the small, cramped caves that Kadee and Shkei had once extensively explored. I wondered how they had found this particular passage, but put the thought from my head. I didn't want to think about my brother right then.

I didn't want to think about anything at all.

“I don't think Misha knows where my camp is,” Kadee explained as she led the way, “but if you could work some of your magic to ensure that, it would help me sleep more easily.”

“I can do that,” I said as I surveyed the area. The site, a nearly enclosed hollow set between a fallen tangle of scrub and some large boulders, had been well chosen for concealment. Serpiente guards might have walked by this spot even before I added a few enchantments to make it less noticeable.

We prepared for dinner. Kadee had acquired quality supplies from the palace while those doors had been open to her, and the ground had finally dried enough to allow a fire, so the food was plentiful and delicious, but neither of us was in the mood to appreciate it.

I finally told her the details of Nathaniel's plans, and that Vance had gone to speak to the bloodwitches among the Azteka.

“We lost Aika,” Kadee reported when I was done.

“What do you mean,
lost
?” I asked.

“She told me last night that she trusts Misha more than she trusts Nathaniel. She's backing the new serpiente royal house. She says she won't tell Misha about our plan with Nathaniel.”

What would Misha do if she heard? Would she want to join us? No, she would never be willing to work with Nathaniel, and he had made it clear he didn't intend to work with her.

“We have to trust her,” I said. “I can see why she is more comfortable siding with Misha than with a mercenary. I don't think she would do anything to undermine Nathaniel's plan, even if she doubts it will amount to anything.”

“What about us?” Kadee asked.

“I'll have to go back to Midnight,” I said, making my decision as I spoke, “to try to convince them to wait to deal with the serpiente until after the fall equinox.” That was the task Nathaniel had charged me with. If I couldn't do it from within the serpiente palace, I would have to work from the other side. “If Misha and her crew can avoid repercussions from the vampires until then, the serpiente will survive after Midnight falls.”

“In theory, they aren't breaking any laws,” Kadee said, “so it should be easy enough to persuade the vampires to…not ignore it, precisely, but allow the serpiente to destroy themselves.” She sighed, and stared into the distance. “While you're at Midnight, I'll go to the Shantel. They will know the best way for me to help.” Before I had any chance to agree or disagree, she whispered fiercely, “It feels so wrong to separate this way. You at Midnight, Vance with the Azteka, me with the Shantel. You're all the family I have left.”

I took her hand, and her cool fingers clenched around mine.

“Tomorrow we go our separate ways, but we're still on the same side,” I assured her. “If we live through this, we
will
be a family again. Don't forget that.”

Don't forget me,
I thought, desperately, because we were each going back to the nations that had once welcomed us. The Azteka would let Vance join them, and if they did, he would have a rank near to that of royalty; he was not trained, but even without the skill to use it, a bloodwitch had holiness in his veins. Kadee had been brought by the Shantel from human land to the serpiente, and they had always kept their arms open to her.

After Kadee fell asleep next to the flickering fire, I stayed up for a while, just watching her and trying to imagine a world where a fifteen-year-old girl didn't need to face so much.