Thick as Thieves (6 page)

“Stop that!” Madd snapped. After four big pails of hot water, the tub was still far from full.

“I can’t help it. You’re pretty.”

“Well, I didn’t ask to be. I didn’t ask for any of this.” The golden collar encircling Madd’s neck glinted in the low light, its serpent-eye jewel seeming to watch Vorgell balefully.

Vorgell shrugged. “Neither did I.” He indicated his towering body. “I didn’t ask for this, however much my life is tethered to it. But people see me and make assumptions.”

“Assumptions?” A brittle smile tested the edge of Madd’s mouth.

“About what I am, what I’m good for. What I must want or not want.”

“Then we have that in common, don’t we?”

The scrawny lad returned, helped by a sturdy older woman, each hauling two pails. They poured gouts of steaming water into the tub. It was now half-full, releasing billows of promising warmth. Holding Vorgell’s fierce gaze, Madd flicked his thumbs, sending the loin wrap to the floor. Vorgell perked. His little friend was not so little in the cock. Of course, seeing Madd naked was all his own cock needed to stiffen to full mast.

Madd, accustomed to the display, just rolled his eyes. The woman and lad, however, stopped to stare. Flushed and wide-eyed, they gaped either from interest or sheer amazement. It was difficult to tell. The woman tittered as she hustled the lad away.

“Ay! Best tell the mistress! We’ll all want some of this rosy pair!”

Vorgell stared after the departed servants. “What place is this? A brothel?” Though it smelled of women, the establishment did not have an air of commerce.

“No,” said Madd. Cock bobbing prettily, he stepped over the rim and eased himself into the tub. “It’s a sanctuary. For witches.”

Which explained the women. Vorgell knew only the barest bones about Gurgh’s population of magic-wielders. The city was ruled by a boy-king under the sway of a tenuous alliance of powerful princes, mystic priests, and sorcerers who called themselves wizards. He wasn’t quite sure how witches fit in except what he had heard about the coin to be earned collecting bounties. The baron and his soldiers had roundly cursed the lot.

Exhaling a mighty sigh, Madd sank into the water, arms flung over the tub’s sides and head angled back in pleasure. Vorgell’s mouth watered. His companion was the most alluring creature he had ever seen: glossy black hair flung back from his pretty face and rosy lips softly parted, his bodily perfection reclining languidly with soapy water lapping at sweet dusky nipples. No mere mortal seeing Madd this way could resist wanting to fuck him.

Answering his rigid cock, Vorgell took a step forward. Madd narrowed his eyes in warning. A change of tactics was in order.

“Scrub your back?” he offered.

Madd frowned then nodded. “Sure. But your hand stays on the sponge.”

Eagerly, Vorgell knelt beside the tub. The two servants arrived again with more water and giggles, and he waited until they had poured the contents over a grateful, purring Madd and retreated. Madd turned over with a happy sigh. Alone again with his quarry, Vorgell worked the sponge vigorously over the ridges of his companion’s spine. He was tempted to follow that path down to the round globes of Madd’s ass, but resisted.

“So witches hide here?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“From what?”

“Necromancers. Wizards.”

“Tell me, then,” he said, leaning nearer, wanting to lick skin but instead inhaling Madd’s wet, musky scent, “why these women are willing to harbor a wizard?”

“Because, dammit, I’m not a wizard. I’m a fucking
witch
.” Exasperated, Madd shook his head. “I’m witchkin. We can take natural magic and use it to work spells. Wizards are different. They use death and incantations to summon creepy dark spirits, and feed them magic to do their bidding.”

“They’re not like you?”

“Fuck, no.”

“Explain witches to me. I don’t understand them.”

Madd looked around. “This isn’t the place.”

Unable to resist a moment longer, Vorgell placed his lips on Madd’s shoulder, tasting skin so supple and rich he wanted to test it with his teeth. Honey exploded in his loins. A deluge of ice water engulfed all else.

“Idiots!” Ibeena did not look stooped in the least as she stood beside Vorgell, an emptied pail in her hands. “You would abuse our sanctuary for a taste of his skin?”

“I—I,” Vorgell sputtered. Water plastered his hair to his head and his beard to his face. Wet tendrils matted his chest.

“You are acting like a rutting bull! And
you
—”

“What?” Madd glowered at Ibeena just as fiercely, the effect only somewhat diminished by his being naked in a tub of water. “Can’t you see I’m taking a bath?”

Pushing back his sodden hair, Vorgell noticed a dozen women and children lurking near the doorway. He waved to show he’d seen them and half of the group scattered back into the shadows. The remainder fled when Ibeena turned to rebuke them.

“Leave! There’s nothing to learn here.” When they were alone again, she tapped the collar around Madd’s neck and spoke in a low, still furious voice.

“Fool! You let yourself be
bound
?”

“Ibeena—”

“Your mother, your grandmother… that you should become that man’s creature!”

Vorgell rose until he stood over Ibeena like a bear over a weasel. “Leave him be! That thing was forced on him! He wants it off!”

“You speak for him now?” Her dark eyes flashed, undaunted.

“No, he doesn’t,” Madd snapped at her, shooting Vorgell a look saying to just shut up and let him handle this. Vorgell settled for glaring at Ibeena. “But he’s right.”

Now it was she who sighed unhappily. “So the baron grabbed you. You didn’t abandon her.”

“I abandoned no one. Can I finish my bath? The water’s getting cold.”

“I don’t care about cold water,” Vorgell volunteered, earning a scowl from both.

“And you are now keeping company with an escaped slave?” Ibeena asked.

“I’m not a slave,” Vorgell informed her. “My father was chief of the Scur tribe.”

She waved a hand. “Flemgu is saying you’re a slave, and we have no knowledge of the Scur. We don’t care about you. Maddog, however, is one of our own.”

Madd lifted the sponge to his chest and began scrubbing. “I want to finish my damn bath, all right? And then I want to bathe this big ox and rid him of the rat’s nest hiding his face.”

To illustrate the need, Vorgell shook his head, sending water droplets flying far and wide. The old woman ducked but could not escape getting drenched.

She gave Madd a hard smile. “Slave or not, the barbarian follows you. That much I see. Turn him into a human being if you can. Then the both of you will join me in my room and reveal what you mean to do about the abomination the baron worked upon you.”

Chapter 6

“B
E
CAREFUL
!”
Vorgell warned.

Madd held his tongue as the woman shaving the barbarian calmly lopped off another chunk of beard. Thanks to Ibeena’s erection-killing intervention, Vorgell’s bath had been uneventful. After being divested of a bagful of coarse and tangled hair, the big man was on the verge of looking well-groomed.

“There you go.” The woman stepped back and wiped her razor on a cloth. She gave Madd a lifted eyebrow of congratulations. “Under all that was a promising man.”

He didn’t deny it. Vorgell’s hair was drying so it gleamed like a lion’s golden mane, and the shorter beard revealed strong, shapely lips and a rugged jawline. Even shorn, the man looked disturbingly virile. Blue eyes shaded by golden lashes swept the woman with smiling invitation. To Madd’s alarm, she responded by flicking the pink tip of her tongue across her lip.

“Get out. Can’t you see he likes men?” Madd closed the hide curtain as soon as she’d left. “No witches for you,” he told Vorgell pointedly.

“Why not?” The big man shot him a glare. “She looks pleasant enough. Women have always been the best fit for my needs. You are not the first man to refuse my advances. I have often resorted to the soft bodies of women.”

“Well, find some other wench to plow. She’s a witch. Witch women use sex to create magic. And, you, my friend, have magical spunk.”

Vorgell at least appeared to grasp his point. He turned his back on Madd and reached for his clothes. Madd savored a glorious view of immense shoulders, a trim waist, powerful thighs, and a beautiful, sculpted ass. Damn it, but the barbarian was built like a god! And not just any god. Vorgell could only be one of the greater gods, a god of storms or of war, capable of crushing the god of poetry in his fist. The look he cast back at Madd over his shoulder possessed heat enough to ignite an inferno.

If he wasn’t careful, it just might ignite trouble.

Madd wanted to curse but bit his tongue. What the hell. Why shouldn’t he be pleased that a man like Vorgell wanted him? It was so different from every other time men had wanted him that he didn’t know how to take it—but neither did he completely want to put a stop to it. So what if the blond giant was the size of two ordinary men put together and needed to be handled like some exotic beast? He had nothing to fear. Vorgell actually
listened
to him. In the course of a single day, the barbarian had proven himself the most reliable ally Madd had ever had. It wasn’t as though he’d had many. He’d been a neglected child who had fled to Gurgh as soon as he’d turned fifteen and decided he’d rather suck men than join a Circle. There he’d grown up on the streets, where no one had believed in him or had his back. When he’d gotten in trouble, only his grandmother had wanted anything to do with him, and she had found more faults in him than good.

Trouble was… Vorgell was gigantic and wanted to screw everything in sight. Madd had to be insane to even think about encouraging him. With his luck it was just the collar’s magic anyway, making him think of sex and causing trouble.

It was a good thing Ibeena had demanded to see them right after the bath.

“Come on, big guy,” he said.

I
BEENA
’
S
chair of gnarled and twisted branches seemed rooted to the floor and cradled her rag-wrapped bones as if they belonged there. Her tiny bright eyes and knowing smirk told Madd the old woman had not forgotten their previous encounters.

“You owe me a debt.” Ibeena directed the two men to sit where hides lay piled on the floor. “I hid you, fed you, and sent you from the city to safety with your grandmother. I cleansed your name from the streets. And now, look, I am hiding you again.”

The witch was gloating. Women of his kind always did. Witches had little use for men except for creating magic—or life. All male magic was suspect in their eyes, and they controlled it the same way they controlled the fires in their cookstoves.

Madd settled on the hides with Vorgell at his side. The big man’s hair stood out brightly in the dark little room.

“I’m not hiding,” Madd said. “I have a room in Tanners Row. I came here for a bath.”

“Liar. No man comes to me who doesn’t want something. And I don’t mean a bath.”

Overbearing witch. He did want something. Too bad getting it was going to command a price, but there was no way around that. Madd released the ties at his throat, revealing his shame.

“I want to get this thing off my neck.”

“Yes, that.” From her nest of polished branches, Ibeena studied the collar. Her thin lips twitched at what she saw. Then she reached forward to touch the jewel at the center. The spell surged, and Madd gasped at a sudden, powerful desire for the man to whom it bound him.

Flemgu.
The baron’s handsome, red-haired face danced before his eyes, and his stomach turned. Ibeena’s mouth tugged with distaste.

“The basilisk lives, but its power has been entangled,” she said. “The wizard responsible should be stoned.”

“I worked a counter spell. My Gran gave me an adder-stone.”

“Ah, that explains it. Your grandmother owned powerful gifts. You do not… at least none that you should be using.” She sank back into her chair. “I cannot remove the collar. You know this already.”

Vorgell leaned forward. “How can you help him, then?”

Madd swung a glare at Vorgell, willing the barbarian to stay the heck out of his business. The last thing they needed was for the big oaf to reveal his own magical propensities. Ibeena was a powerful witch, and no fool.

“That depends on his plan for freeing himself of the collar, son of the Scur tribe, and how he means to carry it out.”

She never looked at Vorgell. To her, only Madd was of interest. Witchkin ties ran deep. Madd might have been a problem and a nuisance who had never embraced his people’s ways, but his blood was the same as hers. Old laws bound them like iron.

“The basilisk’s egg is in the baron’s castle. If I can get into the castle, and get my hands on it—”

“So simple… so easy,” Ibeena said, though her tongue lent acid to the words. “Fool! The man expects you.”

“I have a plan. He’s looking for the barbarian too, right? We escaped together, and he’ll expect us to be together. I can make sure Vorgell is somewhere else.” He cut a glance at Vorgell, ordering silence, and was relieved by what he saw. “But to enter the castle, I need a cloak of shadows.”