“That time, when the messenger came, and I was gone two seasons.”
“Yes.” Her throat was dry as sand. “I remember.”
“He brought word of Darla. She was the littlest, a girl no more than eight, the one I couldn’t find. When I found their spoor, I thought, perhaps, they’d taken one away, a child they could sell. I followed them, but the trail went cold. But I left word with folk I knew-folk who owed me their lives-that I wanted any word of her.
“The messenger brought me word that it was four years since a halfling gang took a few children to be sold at market not a hundred leagues from the slaughter. It sounded too alike to be a coincidence. It took a long time, and many false trails, but I found a man who had bought a little girl, just like Darla, as a maid for his wife. The child died a year later from the bloody flux. I also found the name of the slaver who bought Darla from the thieves and sold her to the merchant.”
He spat out the word: “Jadaren.”
“No,” Kestrel whispered behind her. “None of us has ever dealt in slavery.”
Lusk ignored her. His faraway eyes focused on Lakini, and his voice became steely.
“So you tell me, Lakini. Where is your good in any of this?”
They looked deep into each other’s eyes for a long moment before he nocked the arrow back to the bow, lifted it, and loosed it straight at her heart.
She was expecting it and had already begun to fling herself to one side, pulling Kestrel with her. The arrow missed, whispering into the leaves at the mouth of the tunnel.
She had to decide, lightning-quick, whether to throw the dagger or charge with the sword before he got another arrow to the bow. Clasping dagger and sword together, two-handedly, she ran up the hillock. He dropped the bow and drew his own sword, parrying her aside as she struck.
She was still healing. But so was he. She ignored the pain in her shoulder as she bore down, two-handedly, again and again against his one-handed defense. Once he managed to push her off balance and struck with the dagger in his left hand. She dodged aside and, ducking, hit him with the hilt of her sword in the back of the leg.
Lusk staggered and went down on one knee. She forbore to press her attack, and he took advantage of that, striking at her sword from beneath and knocking it out of her hand.
She drew her dagger and crouched. There was no time to retrieve the sword. Lusk launched himself at her, chopping at her left side. She met the blow with the dagger, letting it slide down the length of his sword. With a familiar twirl of her weapon, she circled the hilt and slashed the tip into his wrist, opening the artery.
He dropped the sword and gasped, gripping his damaged wrist. His mad eyes glittered at her. “I can’t believe I fell for that trick,” he said.
He drew his own knife with his left hand and leaped on her, letting his useless right hand dangle. She sliced her weapon up and felt it meet resistance, and then as she thrust with all her strength, it penetrated. At the same time he bore down on her, and the pain in her injured shoulder returned with a vengeance. She could do nothing but push the weapon deeper and deeper into him. Her left side felt numb.
For a moment they were locked together, breast to breast, hip to hip, as they had been when they fell in the cold flame from the Hold. As the last of their strength faded, they relaxed and staggered apart. He stared at her, and the glitter went out of his eyes. She saw the hilt of her blade protruding from beneath his sternum. The tip had pierced his heart.
He blinked, as if puzzled, as if he didn’t understand what had just happened. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a great black bubble welled between his lips and burst, sending a red trickle down his chin.
Unbending, like a tree, he fell. He did not move again.
Lakini crouched by his side. His eyes stared, unseeing at the forest canopy above.
“That’s one of you gone, anyway,” spoke a beautiful voice from behind her. Startled, Lakini turned.
A woman with the waxy face of a vampire and a scar twisting her mouth out of true stood at the mouth of the tunnel. Her hand tangled in the girl’s hair, she held Brioni tightly against her, pulling her head to one side so her neck was exposed.
Kestrel stood before them, her arms extended in mute appeal.
The vampire ignored her and spoke over her head to Lakini.
“Ironic that one of you killed the other, isn’t it? Very piratical. Ping would have approved. Oh, that’s jogged your memory, has it? Probably wasn’t much to you, just a ship at sea with a dead crew.”
Lakini did remember, and she heard again the sound of Lusk’s arrows finding their targets.
“Don’t hurt her,” said Kestrel. “You can have anything you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
The vampire ran a pale finger over Brioni’s neck, just over the jugular, speaking to the Kestrel now. “But this, my dear, is what I do want. You don’t know this, but your ancestor did me a very bad turn some two hundred years ago. And I don’t forget easily.”
She grinned, showing her fangs. “The delicious irony is this-his friend, his very dear friend, his bosom friend- he also did me a very bad turn at just about the same time. And while your great-grandsire was a Beguine, this one’s great-great-so many greats-grandsire was his good friend. A Jadaren.
“Yes,” she said, grinning at Kestrel’s wide eyes. “They were friends, until I gave them a reason to hate each other. And they were both, you will be delighted to know, pirates. And”-she sighed-“not very good pirates.”
“So this is what I am going to do. I’m going to kill this little chit in front of you, and then I’m going to drain you. But first, I think I’ll take your shatter-faced friend’s sword.”
Still keeping her grip on Brioni, the vampire maneuvered over to where Lakini’s sword lay. As she passed Kestrel, two long, thin cords leaped from the back of the woman’s wrists. They looped themselves around the vampire’s legs and pulled hard. With a shriek, she stumbled and fell, releasing Brioni as she did.
In a single movement, Lakini scooped up her sword and cut off the vampire’s head.
Kestrel clasped Brioni tightly to her, and the girl’s arms were locked around her mother’s waist. As Lakini watched, Kestrel stroked her daughter’s hair and took her by the shoulders.
“You followed us,” she said gently.
Brioni nodded and hiccupped. “I knew about the tunnel. When I came back and found your empty cell, I didn’t want to call the guards. I thought they’d kill you.”
“They’ll always want to, said Kestrel, her voice dark and bitter. “And I don’t blame them.”
NONTHAL, TURMISH
1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES
At the entrance to House Beguine, Lakini asked for an audience with Vorsha Beguine. The doorkeeper was very polite, very ingratiating, and said the mistress was busy with the kitchen, or with her husband, or in her private chambers. Could the fairlady come back another time?
Lakini bent close to the doorkeeper’s ear and informed him that if he didn’t tell Sanwar Beguine, immediately, that a deva late of Shadrun was here to tell him of the Key, she would not be responsible for the state of his guts. The man paled and hurried away.
Sanwar received Lakini in the library of House Beguine, with the sun shining through the domed glass overhead. Since she’d seen him at Shadrun a few months ago, he’d gained a little weight and had more white in his hair, but he was still a good-looking man.
He frowned, obviously not expecting her.
She knew she had to act quickly, before his caution overcame his greed.
“You’re not whom I expected,” said Sanwar.
“The other sent me,” she said smoothly, still walking toward him. She was almost to him before his eyes widened and he raised his hand and a smell like lightning on a hot day filled the room. Before he could manifest the spell, she smashed him to the floor.
He groaned and tried to roll away, still gesturing with his fingers. She already had a thin rope in hand. Kicking his hands apart, she seized him by the wrists and bound them together. She reached for his feet and he kicked at her.
“Do that again and I break them,” she growled, and he subsided.
There was a gasp, and Lakini looked up to see a servant in the doorway, mouth open as she looked as her master trussed like poultry on the floor.
“Bring Vorsha Beguine here, now,” Lakini told her.
