Wedding Bells, Magic Spells (12 page)

On the floor next to the tables was a sight that stunned me.

The two bags of goblin gold the pirate/assassins had been paid with.

I looked at my cousin in dumbfounded disbelief.

“That’s tainted gold,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with it, and neither do my men.”

“You’re a pirate.”

“A pirate who doesn’t spend money taken off a ghost ship. That’s just asking for trouble.”

Mychael was pressing his lips together against a smile. “Any idea how they died?” he asked Vidor.

“I have a theory, but I’ve asked an expert to confirm it.”

At that moment, the door opened, and Tam came in.

Vidor stepped forward to shake Tam’s hand. “Primaru Nathrach, I’m so glad you could join us.”

“A room with you and two dead bodies?” Tam quipped. “How could I resist?”

“Your expert, I take it?” I asked Vidor.

“If I am, it’s the nicest thing I’ve been called today,” Tam said. “And this is certainly the most welcome I’ve felt. I think word has gotten around about who was behind Ambassador Eldor’s assassination. Either that, or I’m simply a lot less popular than I thought.”

Mychael scowled.

“None of my men have been on shore,” Phaelan told him.

“I’m not blaming you or your crew,” Mychael said. “The elven embassy knows what happened. I imagine that’s the source of any rumors.”

Vidor pulled back the tarp over the first body.

“Will Saltman,” Phaelan muttered and quickly looked away.

Phaelan had looked away. I wanted to.

Will Saltman had seen his death. That is, if his death had been delivered in the most horrifying, scare-you-out-of-your-skin way imaginable.

Tam reached down with his thumb and forefinger and opened one of the man’s eyes even wider.

Phaelan shifted one step closer to the window.

Tam didn’t say a word; he simply replaced the tarp over the face of Captain Saltman and peeled back the one covering his first mate, George Pennett.

Same terror-stricken expression. Tam repeated the same eye exam.

“Death curse,” he said, covering the man’s face. “Khrynsani.”

“Crap,” I said.

“To say the least.”

“What did you see in their eyes?”

“Broken blood vessels. The curse terrifies, paralyses the major muscles, and constricts the blood vessels. Horrible way to die.”

“It’s not like there’s a good death curse,” Phaelan muttered.

“Are you certain there was no living person on the ship other than the captives?” Vidor asked.

“Positive,” Phaelan replied. “We looked. My men are professionals. If there’s anything worth having on a ship, they’ll find it.”

“You’d said that there were nineteen dead men on deck and three more belowdecks.”

A muscle twitched in my cousin’s jaw. “Correct.”

“Might your men have—”

“They didn’t want to spend one second longer on that ship than they had to. So I told them they
had
to do a thorough job. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go to the trouble to haul two bodies back here and then do a half-assed job in the ship search.”

“Of course, forgive me.”

“No problem. Just establishing that we looked, and if there’d been anything to find, we’d have found it.”

“Your boys typically focus on shiny things,” I said. “This wouldn’t have been anything they’d want to stick into their pockets and bring home with them.”

“Was there any area belowdecks that made you or any of your men want to get out of there?” Tam asked.

“All of them.”

Mychael nodded. He knew where we were going with this. “Any area where that impulse was especially strong could indicate a repelling spell. It would cause a more than rational fear of a cabin or a specific area of the ship. That and a veil could have hidden a mirror mounted to a wall.”

Phaelan blanched. “Mirror?”

I hated mirrors, but my mirror hatred was nothing compared to Phaelan’s feelings. Yes, my cousin was vain about his looks, but the only mirrors he allowed on his ship were for shaving, and it was a near mutiny-level offense if a crewman didn’t secure that mirror in a box or duffel after using it.

“After my men searched the ship,” Phaelan replied, “I went back over it myself. I’ll admit I made quick work of it, but I wasn’t sloppy. Five captives held by a crew of dead men is about as spooky as it gets. I didn’t like where I was, but I didn’t find or feel anything that made me want to run out of there.”

“Were there any rats on the ship?” Tam asked quietly.

That question won him the silent and undivided attention of everyone in the room.

Phaelan’s forehead creased as he thought. “Come to think of it, there weren’t any. And Will Saltman wasn’t known for running a clean ship. There should have been rats, most definitely in the hold, but there weren’t.”

“A Gate,” Tam said.

Technically, I knew that a Gate could be torn anywhere, even on a ship under sail. But I’d never heard of a specific instance.

“Rats may be repellent to us,” Tam said, “but some of the acts we commit are so abhorrent to rats that they would throw themselves off a ship rather than be anywhere near it.”

I suddenly remembered the rats running from the bunker where Sarad Nukpana had hidden while he’d been regenerating his body—and where his soul had temporarily infested Tam’s body.

The rats had run like hell from that, and so had we. I’d hated myself for running, but it’d been necessary if we were going to live long enough to get Nukpana’s rotten soul out of Tam’s body before that infestation became permanent. I’d tried to tell myself that it was a tactical retreat, but that hadn’t lessened my guilt one bit. It’d been the rats that had showed us the way out of that underground maze, saving our lives, and, less than an hour later, Tam’s as well.

I’d been in a room when a Gate had been torn open. Twice.

If you asked me, the suicidal rats had the right idea.

“Any higher-level Khrynsani mage can open a Gate,” Tam said. “Evil is more needed than strength.”

Gate fuel included terror, torture, and death. The more that was produced, the larger and more stable the Gate.

“One mage?” I asked Tam.

“Maybe a temple guard or two with him, but one mage could have done it alone. He wouldn’t have needed much time to do what he did. One mage and one word.”

Killing with a single word sounded impossible, but it wasn’t. I’d seen it done. Once.

Tam had done it.

One mage had ripped a Gate onto the
Fancy Devil,
scared every rat into jumping overboard, struck the crew dead with a single word, and left the way he’d arrived.

“He left the captives alive as witnesses,” I said. “And the gold to frame the goblin government for all of it.”

Mychael nodded. “It was worth more to the Khrynsani that those two bags of gold with the Mal’Salin royal seal be found. We know the Khrynsani and the goblin government are no longer the same.”

Tam’s expression hardened. “We’re the only ones who do.”

*

When we left the morgue, I almost had to run to keep up with
Phaelan.

“Death curse?” he blurted.
“Death curse?”

“Yeah, so? You said yourself Will Saltman and his crew were bottom-feeding scum that deserved anything they got, including a death curse.”

“They did. I don’t.”

I was officially confused. “What?”

“I brought two bodies that’d been struck dead by a Khrynsani death curse on board my ship.”

“They’re dead. They can’t hurt anybody. Death curses aren’t contagious.”

“Try telling that to my crew.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I don’t
have
to. Enough of my men knew it was dark, heebie-jeebie magic that killed them. I’ve got to clean the
Fortune
. Now.”

Somehow I couldn’t visualize my cousin swabbing decks. At least not anymore. While Phaelan and his brothers had been growing up, the decks of Uncle Ryn’s ships had been clean enough to eat off of. Whenever any of his boys got out of line, he’d put a mop in their hands. Those boys had done a lot of deck swabbing.

Phaelan stopped just short of rolling his eyes. “Not scrubbing. Blessing. I need a priest.” He frowned. “More than one. I need a priest from every religion on this island.”

“Aren’t you overreacting?”

“No!”

“Your crew won’t care—”

“My crew will be going over the side like those rats if they get wind of this. And they will find out. They always have.” He stopped, a puzzled look on his face. “I’ve never figured out how. It’s not like they’re very smart.” He took off again. “But they’ve got superstition in spades. They’re a good crew, and I’m not about to lose any of them.”

Phaelan ran out the citadel’s front doors.

“What’s gotten into him?” Mychael asked.

“Temporary religion.”

Markus Sevelien was one of the most determined people I’d
ever met, but even he had to admit, late in the afternoon, that when the peace talks officially started tomorrow morning, he wasn’t going to be sitting at the elven delegation’s table.

The elven delegation had originally consisted of Ambassador
Santis Eldor, Isibel, and Markus. The ambassador’s assassination
and Markus’s thwarted murder left Isibel as the sole representative of the elven queen. Markus had said she was good, but few people were that good.

The injuries to Markus’s body would be keeping him in bed, but his mind had been working furiously on a solution. That solution arrived along with the last of my relatives who would be attending my and Mychael’s wedding.

My cousin Mago Benares, aka Mago Peronne, aka anyone else he needed to be.

The eldest son of my Uncle Ryn, Mago had determined long ago that the best way to make money was to manage it for other people.
He’d kept his first name but changed his last, because needless to say, most people wouldn’t trust their money and investments to the son of the most notorious pirate in the Seven Kingdoms. He could change his name, but nothing could alter his instincts. Mago was a vice president at the First Bank of D’Mai in Brenir. My cousin may have had the instincts of a pirate, but he lacked the stomach of one. For Mago, to set foot on a deck was to feed the fishes. The last time he’d come to Mid had been by ship. It’d taken him the better part of a day to recover from the experience. This afternoon he’d arrived from Brenir, dashingly attired in flying leathers, on a chauffeur-flown sky dragon.

Sailing made him sick; flying only messed up his hair, and that was from the helmet.

Go figure.

Mago was your basic tall, dark, and handsome elf. Phaelan had always claimed that Mago had stolen all of the height so there’d be none left for him. If that’d been possible, Mago would have been the one to have done it. He was well educated, well traveled, and well heeled—the very personification of a gentleman adventurer. He could change identities and professions at a whim.

It was that skill that’d led to Markus attempting to lure my cousin away from his lucrative banking career and into intelligence. His efforts hadn’t borne fruit after his initial effort; however, he seemed to be having better luck this time, at least temporarily.

Mago had agreed to assume yet another identity, this time in service to his queen.

He and Isibel had been meeting with Markus for the better part of the late afternoon and early evening, plotting strategy. Dalis had hovered protectively, ensuring her patient didn’t exhaust himself.

My cousin would be playing the role of a diplomat. It’d been said that he could rob a man blind and have that same man thank him for his good work. It’d be interesting to watch him work his magic at the negotiating table.

Mago was born to sit at a negotiating table—or as he was doing right now, schmoozing at a reception.

Today had been exhausting enough, but tonight had proven that there could always be something worse.

A cocktail party.

To get the delegates talking to each other before the peace talks officially started tomorrow morning, Justinius Valerian was hosting a reception in the citadel.

I’d never liked fancy parties. Fortunately, I’d never been invited to that many, but I knew I wouldn’t like them.

I was right.

I’d never been one for small talk. If you didn’t have anything to say, or there wasn’t anyone you particularly wanted to talk to, then why go to the trouble? It didn’t help matters any that Mychael wasn’t here yet. He was in down in the communications room. Ben had contacted the ship carrying Mychael’s parents to make sure the Guardian escorts were with them. They were expected tomorrow on the evening tide.

I wanted to meet my in-laws. I was also terrified to meet my in-laws.

Mychael had been assuring me that once they met and got to know me, they’d love me.

I wasn’t holding my breath on that one.

That sense of impending doom wasn’t doing a thing to help how I felt right now. I felt like a major diplomatic blunder waiting to happen. Not only was I a fish out of water, I was flopping around on the dock.

Mago, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more in his element. To look at him you’d never know that he hadn’t spent his entire career in the foreign service. He and Isibel looked stunning together. Mychael’s sister didn’t strike me as the type to have her head turned by a handsome face, but Mago also had wit, charm, and intelligence in spades, as did Isibel. The two of them were working the room like the professionals they were.

I almost felt sorry for the other delegates.

Almost.

For the role of elven diplomatic attaché, Mago had assumed yet another alias—Mago Nuallan. It helped that he’d recently grown a dashing, meticulously trimmed beard. It went well with his new identity.

Mago Peronne was the personal banker of the goblin king Chigaru Mal’Salin, not exactly a shining example of elven impartiality. Mago Nuallan was a brilliant up-and-coming, hotshot member of the elven foreign service. Rumors had been carefully and strategically placed so that Mago would be touted as Markus Sevelien’s secret protégé—and secret weapon.