Scholar of Decay (47 page)

The single word cut through the other sounds in the ballroom as though they were flesh and it a sword.

Three of the four segments of the spell completed, Aurek jerked around at his brother’s cry. He was alive! He was safe!

“Dimitriiiii!” The name turned into a howl of pain as the first of the rats reached him and sank chisel teeth through the negligible protection of his trousers into his calf.

“Aurek!” Dmitri clung to his brother’s name, used it to pull himself further out of the trap he’d found himself in.

How much of what Louise had told him was a lie and how much the truth became unimportant. Aurek needed him. His brother needed him.

If Louise was a wererat, then Jacqueline was a wererat, and one of them had to be controlling the rats. Jacqueline was closer. Drawing the dagger Louise had given him, Dmitri threw himself at her sister.

“Dmitri! No!” Thinking only to protect his brother, Aurek yanked a rat off his thigh, stomped on another, and brought his thumbs together. Ignoring the pain, ignoring the spell he’d nearly finished, he grabbed for focus and concentrated. Spreading his fingers, he spun around until Dmitri was no longer within the parameter of the spell and screamed, “Burn!”

Rats shrieked and ignited as jets of searing flame shot from his fingertips.

The ballroom quickly filled with clouds of greasy black smoke.

Coughing and choking, eyes squinted almost shut, Louise didn’t know how it had happened, but it was all going wrong. Her carefully constructed, cunningly complicated plan was tumbling down around her like a house of cards!

No! This is my chance! Kicking a burning rat aside, she pulled the statue from her pocket and raced toward Jacqueline. If she couldn’t use Aurek’s wife as a hostage, the statue would still make a dandy weapon smashed down on the back of her sister’s skull.

Large hands closed, with a crushing grip, around her upper arms. She snarled and kicked but couldn’t break free.

When the smoke cleared a moment later, Jacqueline and Aurek faced each other across twelve feet of open floor. The burned, smoldering bodies of dead rats fanned out behind the wizard. The silent, watching bodies of live ones fanned out behind the Lord of Richemulot.

Jacqueline held Dmitri in one hand, her claws dimpling the flesh of his throat. A trickle of blood ran from her thumb down under his collar. Dmitri no longer held the knife. It lay gleaming on the floor at Jacqueline’s feet.

Aurek held Louise, a hand enclosing each arm. Louise held a small porcelain statue in both hands. He couldn’t change his grip or she’d drop the statue, and as much as she wanted to smash it, she knew it was the only thing keeping her alive.

Glancing quickly around the room, noting a pile of bleeding bodies in the doorway that were all that remained of the guests who hadn’t escaped, Aurek inclined his head to Jacqueline. “We seem to be alone.” His voice, a little hoarsened by the smoke, was remarkably steady.

“The others have fled lest they be implicated in the attempted coup.” Jacqueline smiled. “Rats, as it were, leaving a sinking ship.
Tomorrow they’ll deny they were ever here.” Then she sighed, and the smile disappeared. A glittering green gaze fell first on her sister, snarling in Aurek’s grasp, and then down at her own trembling captive. “So the little Nuikin races to his brother’s rescue; it seems that you mean more to your family than I do to mine.”

“That’s not true!” Louise cried. “I was running to defend you when he grabbed me.”

“Don’t be a bigger fool than you have to be, Louise.” Exasperation and anger mixed equally in her tone. “You’re making the family look bad.” Her fingers tightened slightly. Dmitri whimpered.

Cornered and desperate, Louise twisted around until she could stare up into Aurek’s face. “Kill her,” she growled. “Kill her, or I’ll drop it!”

It was an empty threat, and Aurek knew it. If she dropped Natalia while he held her, she knew she was dead the second the statue hit the floor. The moment he released her, and she could scurry to safety, Natalia’s life was forfeit. It no longer came down to whether or not he could trust Louise. Natalia’s life wasn’t the only life he had to worry about. “If I attack your sister now, she’ll kill my brother.”

“Who cares about your stupid brother?”

Aurek stared across the space at Dmitri, who was staring in horror at Louise as though he were seeing her for the first time. “I care,” he said quietly.

Dmitri swallowed in spite of Jacqueline’s grip. His eyes filled. Tears spilled down his cheeks and trickled over the back of Jacqueline’s hand. “I’ve been such an idiot, Aurek. I’m so sorry.”

“It was as much my fault as yours. I should never have pushed you away.”

“Touching,” Jacqueline murmured dryly, “but I don’t think you’ve picked the best time for an apology.” Her eyes narrowed as
she studied Aurek’s face. “A simple scholar?”

Aurek’s chin rose, and a muscle jerked in his jaw. “It’s all I wanted to be. But because of my foolishness—my pride—in believing that research for the sake of research exempted me from the responsibilities of power, my wife is trapped alive inside that statue and my brother’s life is in your hands.” He inclined his head. “I have nothing more to hide. We are at your mercy.”

“You always were,” Jacqueline told him, her voice cold. “This is my domain, and nothing happens I do not know about. Something you, Aurek Nuikin, at least should have remembered, since I warned you in the beginning. I expected better from you, and I gave you every chance to confide in me.” Her expression held no mercy. “If you hadn’t tried to pass yourself off as something you weren’t, I might not have torched the workshop.”

“You …” He saw again the ash, the total destruction of hope, and his vision darkened.

“Perhaps you should have told me what you were looking for when you asked for my permission to search. Did you think I have no feelings? Did you think I would take advantage of your love’s helplessness? Did you think I have never loved?” She almost shrieked the last question, but a heartbeat later the slip of control might never have happened. “Had you confided in me, I would have known the workshop was important to you and not merely a part of my sister’s plotting.”

“It was her!” Louise squealed. “She burned the workshop! Avenge your wife! Kill her!” She felt his fingers begin to loosen and started to struggle.

He couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk his Natalia. Not even to destroy the one who’d condemned her to remain in her living hell. “No.” He tightened his grip.

Jacqueline’s lips curved up off her teeth, though the expression
could in no way be referred to as a smile. It was impossible to tell if she approved of his choice or thought him a fool for making it. “As it happens, I have no real interest in either of you. Shall we trade hostages?” Opening her hand, she moved it from Dmitri’s throat to his back and pushed him toward his brother.

Louise read her fate off her sister’s face, saw the suffering she would endure at her sibling’s hands, saw the pain to come. This human who held her would hand her into her sister’s grasp, pry the statue of his wife from her fingers, collect his brother, and all three of them would go off to a happy ending.

Leaving her to suffer the torments of failure all on her own.

Oh, no. She shook her head, her own lips curling back. That’s not going to happen.

Shrieking with fury, she flung the statue into the air as hard as she could.

“NO!” Aurek watched it rise—up, up—and stretched out his hands to catch it as it fell.

Crimson silk pouring off her as she changed, Louise leaped for Dmitri, claws curved to rend and tear. He had betrayed her! He, at least, would die!

An enraged wererat moves almost too fast for human sight, but for Aurek the attack on Dmitri and the fall of the figurine toward the polished floor occurred with agonizing slowness. He watched muscle and ebony hair sheathe Louise Renier’s body. He watched her muzzle lengthen, a tail appear from under the fall of full skirts. He watched Dmitri freeze, eyes stretched wide with horror as he, in turn, watched his death approach. He watched his beloved Lia
turn end over end by the smoke-stained ceiling—end over end over end until she began to fall to earth once more.

And he watched Jacqueline Renier watching him, and realized that this choice was his alone. She would not help.

The wererat’s claws were a breath away from Dmitri’s face.

This choice … How could he choose?

And then he saw a way.

The first three segments of the spell had already been completed. Thrusting his hand into his pocket, he pulled out the iron bar and threw it at Louise Renier’s feet. It tumbled through the air, mimicking the end-over-end movements of his Natalia’s fall. When it finally hit the floor, invisible bands of power closed around the shrieking wererat. It wouldn’t hold for very long. He could feel it weakening even as the last band snapped into place.

It didn’t have to hold for very long.

With Dmitri safe, he lunged desperately forward, his hands outstretched to catch the falling figure of his wife.

It seemed …

 … to go on …

 … forever.

Then his fingertips caressed the porcelain one last time as it dropped just beyond his grip and smashed into a thousand little pieces at his feet.

Time started moving at its regular rate once again.

Aurek dropped to his knees. The howl of disbelief that tore up through his chest slammed into the grief that closed his throat and emerged as a tortured whimper. Ignoring the damage to his hands as the shards sliced through palms and fingers, he gathered up his Natalia and held her close. Reflected in every drop of his blood, he could see the face of the laughing wizard.

After a time, how long a time he had no idea, Aurek realized he was alone with Jacqueline in the deserted ballroom. Truly alone. Even the laughter in his head had been replaced by an empty silence—but then, the joke was over.

They stared at each other for a long moment, the wererat and the wizard.

Aurek wouldn’t, couldn’t speak first.

Jacqueline slowly shook her head. “I had your brother bandaged and sent back to your townhouse to pack,” she said abruptly. “You’re a smart man, Aurek Nuikin. You know that I should kill you both for your participation in my sister’s little coup attempt.”

Aurek stared up her, suddenly aware that should she wish to do just that, he could not stop her. Could never have stopped her. From the beginning, he had been as much in her power as any other fool who chose to live in her domain. He bowed his head.

“Instead,” she continued, “I offer you safe passage to the border.”

“Why?” His voice seemed to belong to someone else. Someone he didn’t know.

Her gaze dropped to the broken statue still cradled in his bloody hands. “I too have loved—and lost.” For a heartbeat, the emerald glitter left her eyes, and her expression softened into something that might have been pity. “Go home, scholar. There is nothing left for you to learn in Richemulot.”