Thick as Thieves (20 page)

“It’s a witch hole,” he said to Vorgell, who was looking appreciative. “That’s what wizards call them. We call them sanctuaries.” Too exhausted to explain further, he simply plopped onto the bed. He felt every inch the revived corpse he’d come close to being. The air of the sanctuary was healing, and simply by breathing it he already felt stronger, but what he really needed was sleep. “Care to tell me how you knew about this one?”

The giant man flushed. “While making my escape from the soldiers, I met a girl who was running from them also. Reannry. She’s a witch like you. Sister to the baron’s wife. I helped her hide and she, well, she helped me find you. She grew up in the castle and knew all the ways. We crawled around inside the walls to avoid getting caught. After we saved you, she showed me the passage and told me I would find safety at the end.”

Gillja had a sister? Madd was finding it hard to both listen to Vorgell and keep track of the thoughts racing through his head. There’d been another witch in the castle?

He must have looked suspicious, because a muscle tensed along Vorgell’s square jaw. “But for her help, I could not have found you in time. She cast a sleep spell and put the whole castle to sleep, which meant the only soldiers I had to fight were those in the room with you. It was she who knew to defeat the fiends by breaking the wizard’s wand.”

The room felt too small, and Vorgell’s words strained toward meaning. “She broke the wand?” If the wand was gone… really gone…. Tears pricked at the edges of Madd’s eyes.

Vorgell unslung the weapon belt from his back and hung it over a chair. Half the chair disappeared from view. The cloak of shadows, then. At least they still had that. Madd watched Vorgell place a sword on the table and heft a sturdy pole with a spiked head of iron.

“She shattered it. Used this mace.” The mace was a nasty piece of work, hair still glued to its spikes by blood. Vorgell laid it beside the sword. “The creatures vanished after that.” Then he asked softly, “Was that the wrong thing to do?”

“No.” Madd shook his head. “No, it was the right thing to do.”

If only his head would stop pounding. If only the memories would stop. But Madd was glad Usdan was dead and his damned wand broken. Broken once and for all. The wizard had never taken pity on any living thing. And he was gladder still that Usdan’s fiends had been unbound from the world. The abominations bred on his mother… he drove back that thought, focused on something else Vorgell had said.

“No witch can put a whole castle to sleep.” The words carried an intact thought. The image it presented alarmed him as much as it satisfied. Why hadn’t he thought of a sleeping spell? Probably because he’d never learned a proper sleep spell… it took the sympathetic magic of women to work one with any degree of finesse. Sleep spells were sneaky, yes. But a whole castle?

Another thought occurred to him. “Hells, Vorgell. Did you fuck her?”

The big man looked affronted. “No. I was tempted, of course, but I was thinking too much about how to rescue
you
. She put my hand on her breast and pressed her lips to my chest, that’s all. Are you saying my magic—”

“Probably. Witchkin women generate magic just by thinking about sex, which happens a lot when they’re around men. And you’re attractive, you know.” Despite feeling like he was about to fall over, he was happier knowing Vorgell hadn’t screwed this Reannry, or whatever her name was. Gods, he was tired. He raked through his mind, but couldn’t recall his Gran or Ibeena ever talking about a Reannry. “This witch, Gillja’s sister… did she give you her kin name?”

Vorgell pondered a full moment before saying, “No. But she told me yours.”

“That’s lovely. Did she also tell you what ‘dark’ means? That my mother was raped and so I have some unknown criminal for a father? Did she also tell you how worthless I am? How unwelcome I am in witchkin Circles?”

“Do you think I’d listen if she did?” Vorgell shot him a frown. “I know your worth, Madd. Men who boast of their fathers do so when they cannot boast of themselves. I have fought beside heroes and the greatest warriors of the Scur nation… and I would choose to have you at my side above any of them. You’re clever and loyal, and you would fight until the last drop of blood has spilled from your body. These witches don’t know you as I do.”

So she
had
told him—if not everything, then something. The events of the day and his failures crushed in on Madd. He’d been ensorcelled, trapped by the baron, taunted by Usdan, and beset by fiends and… damn it, he just wanted it all to go away. All of it but Vorgell and his big honest face with blue eyes so deep with feeling Madd might drown if ever he lost himself in them.

“Thank you,” Madd whispered, because he had no strength for more than that. The sanctuary’s air was so rich with magic even a male witch could draw life from it through his lungs, but he could no longer deny that his body needed sleep also.

“I would have gone back for you too. You’re the only person I would go back for. The rest of the world could go to wizards and fiends for all I care.”

Judging by the tilt of Vorgell’s big head and the twitch of a smile on his lips, he would have argued differently. But Madd was past caring. He sagged onto the mattress. Within moments he heard Vorgell moving about and the sounds of a pump being worked. Sanctuaries had access to ground water. A minute later the mattress sank as Vorgell sat upon it.

“I found water. I had blood to scrub from my chin. Now let me clean you up a little.” The big man pulled him to sitting again and began to dab his face with a moistened cloth. Madd flinched as the fabric pressed his lip.

“For the love of the moon—”

“Stop moving. You’ll feel better for this. You can’t see yourself. If your lips weren’t all bitten and nasty, I’d have kissed you by now.”

Madd laughed, even though it hurt, and let Vorgell wipe away flecks of blood and fiend slime from his face. A kiss actually sounded worth the effort. Except that it would be even more painful than the mild scrubbing he was getting. The water at least soothed some of the pain, and there was something touching about the way Vorgell tended him. As though he mattered. He had never felt so safe in someone’s care. And he
had
promised the man a kiss.

“You don’t waste any time collecting on debts, do you?”

“Only from pretty men who make excuses.”

“Screw you.” But he smiled as much as his swollen lips allowed.

Vorgell put aside the cloth and scooted onto the bed to sit with him. Madd sighed and let himself be arranged so his head could rest on Vorgell’s thighs. Not the softest of pillows, but…. He welcomed the comfort and closed his eyes.

“This place is safe and I think it has supplies,” Vorgell said. His voice rumbled as his hand found Madd’s head and gently combed through his hair. “For now, you should rest. I won’t let you up, so you might as well sleep. We’ll decide what to do later.”

Madd nodded. He could no longer fight the weariness. Vorgell’s words flowed around him like leaves on water, swept along before he could grasp them. All that remained was the knowledge he’d nearly killed them both. Crazed by the collar and its half-broken spell, he’d heeded only his need to rid himself of it. He’d nearly lost everything… his life and the only man he’d ever thought of as a friend. And somehow, by a miracle, he’d come out of the mess better than he’d gone in.

“I’m good for nothing right now,” he said, opting for sleep. He nudged his head into Vorgell’s soothing hand, giving himself over. “I leave it to you.”

A
THICK
blanket of furs lay on the foot of the bed, and Vorgell pulled it over Madd’s recumbent form. Just seeing Madd’s head on his thigh—lowered lashes shadowing bruised cheeks, jaw relaxed and showing a faint trace of stubble—awakened a longing Vorgell wanted to quash. It shamed him that his cock should leap with lust and push against the front of his breeches when in his heart, he felt only a deep longing to comfort his friend.

Unicorn magic was more curse than advantage. Vorgell’s cock would lust after his own mother given proximity, or even his father, given his inclinations. Knowing he was ensorcelled to want sex at every opportunity gave him no cause for celebration. Men in his part of the world were expected to express their manly urges, and in his case, the gods had simply heaped him with more temptation.

“At least I have you.” Vorgell kept his voice to a murmur. It eased his heart that Madd was sleeping. Reannry had said this place would be good for him. “You saved me and not just from the baron. I had no home, no future. And now look… I would fight every wizard and every fiend, hand to hand and tooth to tooth, to keep you from harm.”

Because he had Madd in his life, he owned few regrets at having eaten magic berries and fucked himself with a unicorn’s horn. As embarrassing as his lapse now seemed, it had brought him to the baron and this man. And his first ass-fucking, which he had enjoyed so well he was eager to get another, but only if Madd would be the one doing it. He had rather liked being on the receiving end, but didn’t think he would like it with just anyone. For a while he pondered that, whether he would. The baron, for instance, would not have pleased him at all, particularly as Vorgell had seen him last, pocked with disease. Come to think of it, the man had been sniffling when Vorgell had seen him the first time. Only a few days had passed, and the baron had deteriorated badly. Alarmed, Vorgell drew a shaman’s cross on his forehead against the threat of disease then did the same on Madd’s. It would not do for the both of them to get a fever.

Something hard poked his hip and he adjusted his seat. He had shifted position earlier to give more room to the contents of his pockets, but this was different. A click of one object hitting another was shortly followed by more sound. Something in his pocket was moving….

The basilisk egg! If it broke, they would have no payment for the sour old witch Ibeena. If there was one person left in the land in whose debt he did not wish to find himself….

Vorgell eased his hand into his pocket, only to be greeted with a vigorous nip. He bit his tongue to hold back a cry and snapped his hand back. Blood welled red on his pointing finger.

“Why, you—” Apparently basilisks had teeth.

He shoved his hand back into his pocket, this time quickly, and scooped out the contents. The rock with the crystals, the leather bag containing his fire kit, and two copper coins spilled onto the fur coverlet. The basilisk egg was still encased in guardian crystals, but there was now a large chip on the exposed end of the egg. A tiny, pointed beak peeked through the hole. Now that he could see what he was doing, he picked up the egg again and watched the little basilisk chip away at its shell.

Would the old crone Ibeena want an egg that was hatched? He could hardly force the creature to stop what it was doing. With a shrug, seeing as Madd was sleeping, he decided to help. Vorgell grasped one of the guarding crystals between his fingers and then pried and wiggled until it was loose. He carefully slipped it from the rock to give the hatching beastie more shell to break away. He did this twice more until most of the egg’s surface was cleared.

All at once the egg split and a hideous little head popped out. The basilisk’s beady, slit eyes fixed on Vorgell. He recognized that gaze. The eye had looked quite a bit larger as it stared at him from the green jewel of Madd’s collar, but it was the same. He grinned a greeting and watched the slimy thing struggle to free a pink, clawed foot. He could not say for sure just what a basilisk was, save that it had very long toes and what looked like a beak on its snout. Some sort of wet, rosy feathers plastered its skull, but the rest as it emerged appeared to be soft, scaly, and green, not unlike a lizard. When it freed the last of four little legs, it tumbled, tiny tail and all, into Vorgell’s waiting hand, where it quivered in the cup of his palm.

“Well, look at you,” he said, putting aside the now vacant egg and its prison of rock. He thought better of touching the poor newly hatched creature, not knowing if that would be wise, and simply cradled it against his body where it would find warmth. Now that it was free of the egg, he could see the rosy feathers continued from its head down its back and it had a cute little tuft at the end of its tail. It didn’t look quite so ugly now.

“Aren’t you pretty?” he said softly. “You’re pretty as a petal.” The basilisk strove to move forward, but he prevented it from leaving his hand, and it huddled, trapped against his body, looking up at him with unblinking, jewel-like eyes. The little thing had magic in it. That much he could tell, but if it had any powers, he couldn’t say. “You don’t have a mother to name you,” he murmured, because all things that entered the world must be named to assume their proper place, “so I’ll have to do. Because you’re pretty, I’ll call you Petal and hope you’re a girl.”

Staring, slit eyes never left his. However, the creature’s tufted tail curled around one of his fingers, and he thought maybe it approved. But what was he to do with Petal? Give her to Ibeena this way?

The basilisk was restless until he put her on the coverlet next to Madd. In fact, little Petal burrowed in at the hollow of Madd’s neck until she was just a pretty pink-and-green ball on the edge of the furs. She continued to watch Vorgell while her feathers dried and her scales turned a lovely shade of aquamarine. He even touched her, stroking one finger along the silky crest of her spine. Petal didn’t seem to mind.

Content and with heavy eyelids, he was just nodding off when he heard the chirp. He had heard this sound often in the woods and less often in Gurgh, where rats kept down the population. It made a sort of sense that a place like this one, tucked among roots and stocked with supplies, would have crickets. He cocked open an eye just in time to see Petal bound off the bed, feathered crest bristling.

“Petal!” he cried, sitting up. Petal had disappeared under the stove.

“What?” Madd protested. He turned groggily, burying his nose against Vorgell’s lap.

“Are basilisks dangerous?”

“Hell yes,” the young witch answered. “Don’t look one in the eye.”