“Shut the fuck up.”
The outer door opened and a third voice, a smoother voice with a southern accent, curled into the room.
“What’s taking?”
The man in the doorway found a new sense of urgency despite his nonchalant reply. “I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying. Sheesh. It ain’t like we’re going to meet her holiness at Hullmallow.” He walked into the room and headed for the desk.
Sena edged quickly backward, making very little sound. Rather than crawling underneath and cornering herself under a piece of furniture she kept the desk between herself and the man.
The outer door clunked again.
“Is he gone?”
Sena heard the other man’s smile. “No.”
The man in the study took the chair from behind the desk and rolled it across the floor to the bookshelves. He then used it as a stepladder to one of the shelves and from there stretched out and opened a square in the paneled ceiling.
Sena saw him fumble with some items before he took what he wanted from his pocket and stashed it in the ceiling. He closed the panel, jumped to the floor and brushed off the seat of the chair before rolling it back behind the desk.
But the man did not hurry. When he reached the doorway he stopped. There was a click from the outer chamber. A strange thunk and he slumped face-first into the doorway between the rooms.
The same click and subtle hiss preceded the sound of a second body falling to the floor—one that Sena could hear but not see. Then she heard the smooth voice with the southern accent speak in sardonic soliloquy, “Good night boys.”
Sena crept from the desk, realizing she had to get a glimpse of the unseen speaker in order to make sense of what had happened. She peeked out despite her instinct to remain hidden and locked eyes with a brown-skinned blond-haired Pandragon that she had seen once before in Mr. Vhortghast’s company.
Bad luck alone had allowed them to see each other across a landscape of murder. Sena hardly noticed the bodies.
Ngyumuh held a gas-powered crossbow in his hands. He aimed and fired in an instant. The quarrel burst through the corner of the desk creating a blossom of splintered wood, the tip of the bolt looking like a deadly metal pistil. Sena wheeled across the floor.
Ngyumuh’s bow auto-loaded from a clip into the gentle magnet of the groove; its tank of pressurized gas drew the string automatically on an internal gear beneath the lock plate. He leapt over one of the men he had killed and burst into the study, keen on Sena’s trail.
The light from the wall fixture flickered over the wooden floor. His eyes took in the body of an infant bird, fresh blood spattered across the boards. Something hazy blurred the bookshelf for an instant. Something out of focus slipped along the wall. Ngyumuh pivoted and fired.
The bolt lodged itself in the spine of a book, riving a dozen chapters of some classical tome. Then the trademark grip of the Shr
dnae Sisters encircled his neck from behind.
The sickle knife, sticky with birds’ blood, lightly scored his throat. Sena’s whisper sounded almost inside his ear.
“I’ll kill you with a twist.”
It had a strange sexual connotation that must have scared Ngyumuh. He set the bow on Mr. Vhortghast’s desk at her request and tried to keep from swallowing—an action that would certainly deepen his already oozing cut.
“Why did you kill those men?” she whispered.
Trained as the spymaster’s personal bodyguard, Ngyumuh must have also known what she was capable of. He tried to buy some time with words.
“What’s it to you?”
Sena pushed the handle of her sickle knife counterclockwise so the razor tip of the crescent made a sudden puncture wound beneath his left ear.
“I don’t ask questions twice and you don’t ask questions at all. Clear?”
Ngyumuh, despite his best efforts, swallowed and worsened the gradual filleting of his skin.
“Yes. Eh’ajyo ogwog.22”
“I speak Gnah Lug Lam, ngod ilom.23” She cut him again.
Ngyumuh winced but finally gave himself completely to her fatal embrace. Even an elbow or sudden kick to her groin wouldn’t guarantee the encircling blade didn’t open his jugular as it left his throat. He had no choice but to capitulate.
“Yehw ikeslud ninglas-dey?24” she hissed into his ear. “If I have to ask again—”
“I’m cleaning Mr. Vhortghast’s house,” Ngyumuh said in the Pandragonian Tongue.
“Of course.”
Sena nodded toward the bodies. “Who are the curs?”
“Operatives with memories.”
“You’re talking a lot without saying anything.”
Ngyumuh smiled despite his pain. “We both know I’m not going to talk.”
“We all make choices,” Sena said.
That was it. She ended it with a ratcheting of the crescent. He gasped once and clutched at his throat before dropping to the floor. Sena suppressed her morbid fascination. She stuffed her feelings and rummaged through Ngyumuh’s clothes.
In his vest there was a pouch of coins and a cruestone for a pigeon’s head. Hurriedly she cast another charm with Ngyumuh’s gushing blood, cloaking herself in a powerful hex of bent shadows and distorted light.
The sight of battle in the gas-lit windows had drawn soldiers from the lawn. She could hear the heavy double tramp of armored boots coming up the stairs.
In one smooth motion, the distortion that was Sena floated up the bookcase, opened the panel in the ceiling, drew out the contents and curled like a draft of chilly air, slipping out between the sentries that were filling up the room.
22 G.L.L.: “You lost little girl.”
23 G.L.L.: Shit head.
24 G.L.L.: “Why did you murder those curs?”
CHAPTER 27
Across town, Mr. Vhortghast was making preparations. He had guessed that his plot had been discovered.
He had not gone to Growl Mort but to a tidy apartment he kept in Winter Fen. A two-room flat with a tiny closet in between, the apartment maintained a northern view of the symmetrical slums of Gorbur Dyn.
Zane was too practical to be upset. It hadn’t been his plan to lose his position or to cause the High King direct harm. Now he realized Caliph’s reign was coming apart. He was flailing at his enemies, hoping by luck to connect with one.
He sorted through a stack of papers on a side table near the hearth. With the installation of the boiler in the
