Authors: Kelly McCullough
Broken Blade (11 page)
Weasel this time, a jab to my floating ribs with the point of the rod.
“I’m not sure you understand the situation here.” Lok leaned in close again. “I ask questions. You give answers. Anything else leads to pain. Got it?”
I nodded. I wouldn’t do Triss any good if I were a broken bloody mess when the time came to move.
If you control yourself, you control the situation, and your chance to act will come.
As the words slid through my mind, I found myself incredibly sad to realize that I could never thank Master Kelos for his lessons. Without them, I might well have already died here.
“Good,” said Lok, “then we can continue. Oh”—and he smiled—“and I think it might help us to get to the point if I explain what I want from you. Yes?”
I painted a smile across my swollen lips and nodded again. At the same time, I made my three-thousandth attempt at breaking loose. It was just as effective as all the ones that had come before.
Lok grinned at my struggles. “My boss wants to know everything you know about the baroness’s little assassin, right down to the color of his underwear. Understand?”
“That’s crazy.”
Who was Lok working for? A rival to the baroness other than Maylien? Why would anyone care about that level of detail? Everything I learned just made me more confused. These people were the weirdest damn mix of professional and amateur I’d ever met.
“Was that the answer to my question?” asked Lok. “It didn’t sound like an answer. It sounded like a comment, and I was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do anything but answer questions.”
Before he could do or say anything more, I heard a low thrumming twang and saw a flare of magic at the window. It burned a line across the room from there to the magelight, where it ripped the stone free of its string, then continued to a spot an inch or so to the right of my bleeding ear. At that point, there came a sharp crack, and I felt a spray of pinpricks across my neck and that side of my face.
I didn’t know what had just happened, but neither did I care. My chance had arrived, and I wasn’t going to fuck up this time.
The tumbling magelight hit me on the chest as it fell, bouncing and rolling away across the room, sending the shadows wild. Against my back, I felt Triss come to life. I snapped the fingers of my right hand to draw his attention to the bindings there. I needed a free hand soonest. An instant later, I felt the first of the straps part: wrist, followed by elbow.
As my arm dropped free of the restraints, the pain of full circulation returning hit. It felt like someone had set fire to the blood in my veins. I blocked out my awareness of the pain while I glanced around, checking to see if I had time to finish cutting myself loose.
I didn’t.
Lok was already moving, one hand going for a knife while the other rose to point at my face. I brought my free arm up and across in a blocking motion, signaling my needs to Triss with the positioning of my half-clenched fist.
A stream of magefire burst from Lok’s fingers only to vanish into the oval of shadow that suddenly enveloped my arm from elbow to first knuckle, like a buckler carved from the stuff of night. One for me. But only barely, and at the cost of remaining a trussed goose all hung up and ready for the slaughter.
If I couldn’t get loose of the rack fast, I was a dead man. Triss had a very limited ability to cope with fire magics—a stronger mage or a true spell would have done him real harm—and even a petty mage like Lok could get through given time.
Scar’s stick came in hard then, catching me just above the eye so that bursts of sparkling purple flashed across my vision. At the same time, the spit-adder on Lok’s shoulder reared back, ready to send a stream of venom at my eyes. I tilted my shadowy shield to try to catch both that and the inevitable next round of magefire, but I didn’t have much hope.
Lok opened his mouth like a man about to laugh. But just then there came a low “thwock” sort of noise. A thin trickle of blood dribbled out of his mouth, and Lok crashed to his knees on the hard flags. I heard bone break with the impact but he just slumped quietly forward, beyond caring. Lok was dead, killed by the crossbow quarrel sticking out of the back of his skull. As his face hit the floor, the snake went into convulsions, dying with its master.
That left Weasel, Scar, and the fourth man.
Scar struck again, but I anticipated the blow this time, blocking it with my Triss-covered forearm. The stick shattered in a burst of white fire as my familiar used the contact to turn the wood into a conduit for a flare of magelightning. Scar screamed and fell to the floor, clutching at his ruined hand. I turned to kill Weasel. But he had already dropped his stick and bolted, heading toward the place where the fourth man was wrenching at the door.
That moved both men from threat to target.
Magefire poured in through the window as the fourth man opened the door, turning him into a human bonfire. The room filled with the scent of charring flesh, and Weasel dropped to his belly, begging for mercy.
He wasn’t going to get any from me.
Triss cut me the rest of the way free, and I dropped to the floor. It was all I could do not to go face down like Weasel after the beating and the hours pinned to the glyph. I managed to stay upright, just, but I couldn’t walk for shit. I staggered into a big butcher-block table covered with all sorts of sharp and pointy nastiness, much of which cascaded off the back in a little torture-implement avalanche. Iron and steel smacked into stone with a sharp series of clangs and bangs and a couple of deep booongs when bits bounced against a giant copper cauldron.
“Are you all right?” a half-familiar woman’s voice called from the window. Even with the spell that had covered it broken, I could see only darkness beyond the bars.
“I will be, thanks to you. What do I owe you for the rescue?”
Triss was going to live because of this woman, whoever she was. She could name her price.
There was a merry laugh and then a smiling face leaned in close to the bars. “Why, a shot at my baronial seat, just as I asked for in my letter . . . Kingslayer.”
It was Maylien, my lady of the red dress. The one I’d hoped I’d seen the last of. And now I owed her a barony. At least my life is interesting.
“Damn,” Maylien said, suddenly thrusting herself away from the window. “There’s someone else out here with me. I—”
There came a faint thud, like a sap catching someone behind the ear, followed by the sound of a body falling, then silence.
6
I
dashed to the window, where Maylien had just disappeared from view. Or, I tried to anyway, but my much-abused muscles didn’t want to cooperate and I tripped on Weasel instead of stepping over him. As I began to fall, I felt Weasel twist sharply beneath me and heard the scrape of his knife against the floor as he drew it.
dashed to the window, where Maylien had just disappeared from view. Or, I tried to anyway, but my much-abused muscles didn’t want to cooperate and I tripped on Weasel instead of stepping over him. As I began to fall, I felt Weasel twist sharply beneath me and heard the scrape of his knife against the floor as he drew it.
Dammit, I don’t have time for this.
I did what I could to avoid his thrust, bending awkwardly to my right as the blade came in. Instead of going deep, the knife cut a shallow furrow along the back of my ribs. I rolled farther to my right, trying to get some distance between us as Weasel slithered to his knees and pivoted toward me. Before I’d gotten very far, I slammed into the legs of the bleeding-table, hitting the fresh cut on my ribs and sending little spikes of light across my vision.
Weasel lurched toward me, raising his dagger to sink it into my chest. Under normal circumstances I could have dealt with him easily, even naked and unarmed. But I was still so stiff and sore, I could barely shape a fist, much less hit someone with it. That left magic, but my nima was at least as drained as the rest of me. Not that I had any choice. I signaled Triss for magelightning, but he had his own plans.
The shadow of a dragon rose between Weasel and me, hanging in the air for a moment like a falcon ready to stoop on its prey. Weasel screamed and threw himself back and away, dropping the knife. Triss fell on him anyway, enfolding him with wings of darkness and hiding him from view. Then Triss squeezed, closing into a tight ball of shadow with Weasel hidden at its center. Slowly, the ball contracted, shrinking to the size of a pinhead while I dragged myself upright. I didn’t understand what Triss was doing, not initially, but I could feel the tremendous strain of it echoing along the connection between us.
When Triss sprang back to his normal size and shape, Weasel had simply vanished. While I tried to make sense of that, Triss beat his wings sharply and climbed toward the roof. The connection between us attenuated to little more than a slender thread of shadow. His head whipped angrily this way and that as he ranted and raved in the language of the Shades, a sharp, sibilant sound like the swearing of angry snakes. I could make out only a few words, “kill” and “make suffer” and “all”—it’s not a tongue they use much with humans.
His attention fell on the injured Scar then, and he stretched across the room, looming above the fallen man like a figure in some mummer’s shadow play. Scar screamed when the shadow fell on him, just as Weasel had screamed. Triss squeezed and strained, pushing himself almost to the edge of endurance . . . and then Scar, too, had vanished. That’s when I realized what Triss must have done. He had made a gate of himself and sent them to the everdark. I wondered how long they would survive there in the cold and infinite blackness—always falling but never hitting bottom—and I shivered.
I actually shivered.
I’d been trained to kill almost from the day I’d learned to walk, and I
had
killed. Many times. I’d intended to finish both Weasel and Scar myself. I would have done it with a smile on my face and no hesitation. But it would have been quick and clean, an opened vein, a dagger to the heart, a crushed throat. Nothing like what Triss had just done.
had
killed. Many times. I’d intended to finish both Weasel and Scar myself. I would have done it with a smile on my face and no hesitation. But it would have been quick and clean, an opened vein, a dagger to the heart, a crushed throat. Nothing like what Triss had just done.
The plunge into the everdark was a terrible death, and a rare one. I’d heard whispers of berserk Shades opening the gates of shadow, but I’d never seen it happen nor expected to. It was not something we asked of them. Not ever. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why. Now I knew the answer. Fear. What Triss had just done to my enemies, he could also do to me if he chose.
Every time I hid myself within his darkness, every time I exercised my magic through him, every time I drew my familiar around me for any reason, I placed myself on the threshold of the everdark with nothing more than a shadow between me and doom. If I didn’t trust Triss more than I trusted myself . . .
I shivered again, this time from the subterranean cold of the damp dungeon. Between that and the abuse I’d taken, I was courting shock just by standing there. I needed to get moving. More importantly, I needed to find out what had happened to Maylien. I owed her that and more for helping me to save Triss.
“Triss!” I called as I staggered to the window. “Triss, come here!”
I had to hold on to the bars to stay upright while I looked out into the night. But all I could see was a narrow stretch of empty cobblestones with a blank brick wall beyond and no sign of Maylien.
Shit.
I turned away from the empty night. Triss was still flitting this way and that through the room, looking for something more to kill and still muttering in his own tongue. He’d taken Lok into the shadows, too, though the mage was already dead, and he kept stooping to examine the charred corpse of the fourth man.
I almost wished he’d go ahead and take the bastard. The stink of burned meat had me on the edge of gagging. For a couple of seconds after I called him, I thought Triss wasn’t going to come to me. But, after a few more dives at the dead man, he slid back to the place at my feet where the dungeon’s lights would have put him.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “They hurt you, and I couldn’t stop them.” His voice was high and fast, laced with anguish. “I couldn’t do anything at all. It felt like one of the nightmares that sometimes take you humans while you sleep, like it had me in its teeth shaking me and shaking me and shaking me, like it would never stop.”
“It was pretty nightmarish for me, too,” I said.
“I know.” My dragon shadow suddenly lifted off the floor and wrapped his wings around me. “I know. I wanted to kill them all, to make them pay for hurting you, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t! I’m so sorry.”
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