Thick as Thieves (22 page)

He couldn’t believe he was arguing with Vorgell about this. “Hells, Vorgell, don’t you think I want to rescue Gillja? But I’m at the end of my own rope. You’re not talking of going up against the baron or a few soldiers. These are
wizards
. They are necromancers and command forces witchkin can’t answer.”

“He’s right,” said Reannry, speaking up unexpectedly on his side. “Wizards hunt witchkin for sport. Their fiends give them access to more powerful magic than we can command—and certainly more than
he
can.” She cut a withering look at Madd.

Madd wished he could scald her.

“The one I hit with my mace died easily enough.” Vorgell folded his arms, sending an alarmed Petal skittering up to his shoulder.

“Only because you caught him by surprise while his damned crazed fiends were sucking all the magic out of
me
,” Madd pointed out. “If Usdan had full command of his fiends, none of us would be here. And by the way,” he reminded both other people in the room, “I’m still exhausted after that. I really don’t know if I can be of much use.”

“Maybe I can find you a few spiders to eat,” Reannry snapped. “But if we do nothing, they’ll just create more fiends from Gillja.” She was clearly desperate. For a moment Madd let his resentment slip enough to feel a twinge of sympathy. “She’ll suffer more than any woman should and you know what they do, Maddog. They harvest the wands while the woman still lives. They use living bone to bind newly arrived fiends.”

As if he didn’t know already how monstrous wizards were, the things they did. But Madd could see Vorgell growing angrier and more determined. His sway over the giant barbarian only extended so far, and that mostly sexual. If only he knew for certain he could actually do it….

“I can probably create a keyhole, if there’s magic enough,” he volunteered, surprising himself. The sudden look of hope in Reannry’s face, and seeing Vorgell’s small, ready smile, were reason enough to keep thinking through the possibilities. “I’m not saying it’s a good idea. Rattail Alley might be guarded and Ibeena surrounds her haunt with misdirection spells, even if I dare to try. So does Tagard. But I might be able to find the moon oak in the Hidden Grove that we used to get here.” He’d used his blood to unlock the boundary, and the tree would bear a residual memory of him that would dispel misdirection. Coupled with his own memory of the place and his maternal affinity to moon oaks, it might be enough to create a stable keyhole. “I could try that. It would save us a couple hours.” It would take them at least that long to get to the oak walk.

“You’re telling me you really do create portals?” Reannry blurted in disbelief.

“Keyholes. Temporary, not permanent. Men
can
work translocations, you know.”

“Only through necromancy, or by sucking cock and eating flies—”

Madd lurched to his feet, but Vorgell stood and placed himself between them. His glower served to silence Reannry… or maybe it was the presence of Petal the basilisk hissing at the stunned witch from his shoulder.

“Gods, you’re so damn blind!” Madd shouted, little caring what she thought of him or that there was a basilisk in the room. “You think I suck cock to get scraps of magic, is that it? That I’m a pathetic scavenger performing disgusting acts for a few mouthfuls of life sap just so I can lash out against the matriarchs? I don’t
care
about the matriarchs or whether they say I’m fit for a woman’s bed! I don’t like women, all right? Not for that. I don’t suck cock for magic, I suck cock because I like cock. I like getting my cock sucked and I really—yes, really—like sucking the cocks of other men! And you know what I like best of all? I like sticking my cock up some other man’s ass!”

“Everyone knows that!” she snarled.

“Then why do you care? It’s not like women in any of the Circles even
want
me!”

Her shoulders slumped. “We don’t… it’s just,” she spread her hands as if to show they were empty, “you’re a half-blood and—”

“Are you sure of that? The half-blood part?”

“No.” There was something new in the way she looked at him. Something cunning and witchlike and dangerous.

Madd didn’t want to pursue that look. He turned to Vorgell instead. “Are we going to do this or not? Either I can argue with her about my disgusting sexual habits, or I can create a keyhole.”

Worry creased Vorgell’s forehead. Probably he didn’t know all that had passed during the brief spat, other than that it involved witchkin matters he little understood. But the man knew him well enough to understand he’d just agreed to do what was needed.

“You go outside,” Vorgell said to Reannry, who appeared more than ready to comply, if only to get away from Madd. “I’ll calm him down. Just take what we need, food and supplies, and wait outside until we join you.”

“Will he help?” Reannry’s hushed voice was nearly swallowed by the muffled brush of her cloak against Vorgell’s leg.

“He will,” Vorgell assured her. “Now go.” Hand to her back, he propelled her toward the steps leading up to the forest floor.

“You don’t know that I will,” Madd grumbled when Vorgell came to stand over him. What he most wanted at the moment was to go back to before Reannry had arrived. He wished he could just curl on the bed with his head on Vorgell’s lap, warm and cozy and happy to be safe. Not rush off like this, headed back into disaster.

“I know that you’ll try.” The big man put a hand on his shoulder. Madd looked up to see Petal gazing down at him, her unnerving eyes like those of a quizzical dragon. He’d never seen a dragon, but there were lizards enough roaming Gurgh and she bore an uncanny resemblance. Vorgell knelt beside the bed and gently pulled Madd toward him.

Too tired to fight, Madd didn’t resist. The kiss when it came surprised him by being not sexual at all. Vorgell’s mouth softly skimmed his lips, avoiding the swelling and Usdan’s bite marks, then planted tender kisses to his jaw, cheek, and forehead. When Vorgell pulled back, Madd saw a pleased smile on his friend’s face.

“You liked that,” Vorgell said.

He had. He would be damned if he would admit as much. “That doesn’t count. It was barely a kiss.” It was, however, a claim… one he was terrified he might one day want to honor. With a sigh, he said, “I suppose your enchanted cock is up to the job?”

Vorgell was already on his feet, fingers nimbly opening his britches. “Is your mouth?”

“It’s been better, so don’t expect any finesse. I’ll just swallow your cock whole. It’s what I do.”

“You shouldn’t listen to her, or any of them. A man like you is a rare find, Madd. If I had my band of raiders, I would carry you off, not her.”

“No,
they’d
carry
her
off. They’d leave me to you.” Madd lifted Vorgell’s unflagging cock to his lips and grimaced slightly at the hurt he felt on opening his mouth.

“True. And I would be up your ass before you could yelp.” And then there were no more words, just a happy grunt from the giant as Madd’s mouth enveloped his tip. A few long, soft licks and the man was down Madd’s throat. Vorgell obligingly took Madd’s head in his hands and governed his thrusts, thighs and buttocks unmoving as he let Madd set the pace.

Though the experience was more painful than pleasant, Madd enjoyed the thick push of Vorgell’s cock within his mouth. This man’s readiness might be heightened by unicorn magic, but Vorgell proved with every encounter that his care for Madd went as far beyond ordinary lust as a temple visit was above an assignation with a whore. He made his desires known, and often, but he was being patient in a way Madd had never known before.

When Vorgell spurted into his throat, Madd swallowed and only released Vorgell after doing what he could to lick him to the last quiver of pleasure. The grin that beamed down at him was proprietary and delighted, as if he had just given the best suckjob ever—and he knew he had not.

“I will live a long life and never tire of seeing you on your knees,” Vorgell said.

Why was the barbarian assuming they would always be together?

“Don’t get used to it,” he said. “I’m so sick of magic right now I wish never to use it again.”

“Do you have enough? For a keyhole?” Vorgell asked.

Madd pushed up to his feet. He wobbled and Petal chittered, a gravelly unpleasant sound. He couldn’t tell if the creature was expressing concern for him… or a warning not to impose further on Vorgell. At this point, he didn’t give a crap what the basilisk was feeling. Getting the thing off his neck only to have it rumbling at him from Vorgell’s shoulder while he gave the man a suckjob wasn’t the clean break he’d anticipated.

“A place doesn’t get more magic-rich than a sanctuary under a moon oak,” he said, taking up his cloak and throwing it about his shoulders. He watched Vorgell wad up the cloak of shadows and stuff it into his shirt, where it made a visible lump. Together they walked up the narrow stairs to the cold air of the forest above. Roots laced the earth around them like gold work, intricate and forbidding. “I’ll be able to do it. Just don’t expect me to be good for much else beyond a little moon magic once we get there.”

Just when he was fed up with magic and wanted nothing more than to deny his witchkin birth so he could turn to a nice, easy life of thieving from Gurgh’s surplus of prosperous merchants, magic had become his only useful talent.

Chapter 16

V
ORGELL
doubted he would ever find a keyhole ordinary. There was something dark about the magic that created one, perhaps the darkness Reannry referred to when she called male magic foul. Madd used blood and he twisted life to puncture something not meant to be punctured, which meant a keyhole—or any breach—resembled a sort of wound. The world quickly closed such. Continually wounding the world was probably not healthy. Vorgell worried for Madd more than for the world, but wanted no harm to come to either.

Digging a hole in the earth between the great roots of the moon oak that stood guard over the sanctuary, Madd had buried the thighbone of his mother. Vorgell’s heart ached at the simplicity of the act, that Madd had nothing to say over his mother’s remains but a hurried “I’m sorry” before he heaped earth over the spot and covered it with an offering of brightly colored leaves and some autumn crocuses. Those and tears would be all the woman would ever have by way of grave gifts. Vorgell hoped her spirit would be content.

“She was a sweet and gentle woman,” Reannry said quietly. “She had clear sight. The Moon lineage is old and its blood runs true.”

Vorgell frowned, not certain what she meant by that. The young witch woman had spoken so softly her voice would not have carried as far as Madd. He had not yet forgiven her for having spoken harshly to his friend or condemning men who preferred their own sex. That she was subdued for the moment didn’t mean she’d changed her views.

When Madd rose and strolled back toward them beneath a canopy of leaves edged with the last rays of sunlight, Vorgell and Reannry both straightened, prepared to move. Vorgell cupped his hand over his breast pocket, where Petal now formed a sizable bulge as she nestled against his body heat. The little basilisk had hunted several large, sluggish bugs while Madd performed his rite, and was now sated and content.

It took Madd only a minute to nick his finger and let blood fall in a pattern of drops on the leaf-littered forest floor. Reannry stiffened at the sight but did not interfere when Madd chanted guttural words that caused a void to appear where the trunk of the moon oak was thickest and nearest the ground. Vorgell wondered if she also noticed that creating the keyhole left Madd pale, his skin beaded with sweat. Taking hold of both witches, he ushered them all through before the aperture could close.

They emerged in the midst of different trees, with the sun at their backs and the portal vanishing immediately upon their passing. That Madd looked around and nodded before he slumped to the ground, head cradled on his knees, Vorgell took as a good sign.

“He did it,” he informed Reannry before kneeling to check on Madd.

“Leave me alone,” Madd snapped. Another good sign. Vorgell clapped him on the shoulder, then rose and paced toward a nearby rise that looked familiar.

It was dark enough he couldn’t see much, but he did hear the deep roll of gongs in the distance. Gurgh sounded gongs at nightfall to signal solemn worship at the Sun Temple. They had another few hours until the gates into the high city closed. He heard a quiet crunch of leaves underfoot as Reannry came to his side.

“Are we here before them?” she asked.

“I don’t know. They would have to have ridden very fast to beat us.”

“They might ride fast.”

He nodded. Would the wizards taking Gillja to the city have a change of horses waiting? Or be willing to spend coin on fresh horses? Without knowing that, he could not be certain. The more likely situation favored tired horses because the wizards and their captive would not stop for rest, knowing the guard at the city gates would allow them to enter whatever the hour.

Together, they looked back to where Madd huddled at the foot of the moon oak.