or four days. Maybe a week on the outside.'
Everything clicked into place in Kallist's mind, and he cursed himself for an idiot. The timing on this could be no coincidence. It could only be Semner's work.
But that meant, just maybe, that the guards could point them toward the ugly bastard himself.
'Go along for now!' he hissed under his breath to Liliana, even as he saw her lips begin to twitch.
She peered at him as though he'd gone mad, but allowed herself to relax.
Two of the guards stepped forward to take the broadsword and crossbow. Grumbling, one of them patted down Kallist, searching for other weapons. The other, with a licentious grin, did the same to Liliana. Kallist recognized the brutal gleam in her eyes, and knew that the guard had better make every effort not to run into her again. Then, hands manacled together, surrounded by the entire squad, they found themselves marched down the streets of Favarial.
'As far as prisons go,' Kallist told Liliana some hours later, 'I've certainly been in worse.'
She glared at him. 'If this is supposed to comfort me, may I suggest that you try some other approach? Perhaps try punching me in the jaw. That would probably work better.'
'I've also escaped from far worse,' he protested.
'That's almost impressive.'
'Well, almost thank you.'
Their current abode was a drab cell, stone-walled on three sides, with a barred gate on the fourth. One of several identical chambers in the watch-house of Favarial, all of which smelled of lingering sweat, fear, and humanoid wastes, it was probably intended to hold no fewer than a dozen prisoners.
That they were alone in the cell only con firmed that the official reason for their arrest was a sham.
Kallist and Liliana sat on stone cots that were bolted thoroughly to the floor, and the cell's 'chamber pot' was nothing more than a tiny hole, far too small for even the thinnest and most desperate prisoner to squeeze through. At the hall's far end, well beyond reach of anyone within the cells, the only exit was guarded by the biggest viashino Kallist had ever seen. Her scales were a dull tan with a snake-like pattern of red and green rings. She wore a custom-formed breastplate of steel, and leaned on… Kallist wasn't even sure what to call the ugly weapon: perhaps a morningstar with anger management issues. It was a heavy steel bar as long as a man's leg, one end wrapped in leather, the rest of its span covered in a chaotic forest of spikes and spines and blades. She watched every one of the cells, constant, unblinking.
The prison was, by all normal measures, perfectly designed to provide neither any means of escape nor even the most crude of improvised weaponry.
'Normal measures,' of course, had no meaning to its present occupants. Oh, it had wards and sigils to prevent wizards from escaping-but the prison's builders had never thought to contend with mages, with walkers, of Liliana's power.
Obviously, Semner's people hadn't told the squad commander much about whom he was dealing with. If they had, he might have taken more precautions.
If they had, the fact that the mages hadn't escaped already would have warned him that something was very, very wrong.
Kallist and Liliana sat, continuing on occasion to bicker and silently wondering how long they would have to wait. Finally, as night slowly crept up behind the loitering daylight, cudgel in hand, they heard the heavy oaken door to the prison hallway screech open. They moved as one toward the bars so they could see. The officer who had arrested them stepped past the reptilian guard, grinned broadly at both of them, and strode toward the door of their cell.
'I'm Lieutenant Albin,' he introduced himself. 'And you are…?'
'Not,' Kallist answered gruffly.
'Enjoying the accommodations?' the lieutenant asked, refusing to be put off.
'Enjoying the bribe Semner paid you?' Liliana retorted.
Albin's grin didn't falter, but his voice turned hard. 'I have no idea what you're talking about,' he told them, presumably more for the viashino's benefit than their own. Still, he moved nearer to the cell, so that anything else they might say wouldn't be so easy to overhear.
'Our 'mutual friend,'' the lieutenant began, 'seems to think that you might know something that would help him locate his target. Cooperate and I can make your stay here a lot more comfortable; might even get you out of here faster. If not…'
'What are you offering?' Kallist asked. Albin smiled once more and stepped closer still so he could whisper, stopping just outside the bars.
It was precisely what they'd been waiting for. Concealed in his fist, Kallist clutched one of the iron bolts that had held the cot to the floor, a bolt that was supposed to be impossible to remove. Kallist had never mastered more than the most rudimentary spells of telekinesis-even Jace hadn't been an expert there-but chipping away at a bit of mortar? That, even he could manage. With a wolfish grin, he dropped into a crouch, stuck his hand through the bars, and shoved the rusty length of metal into Albin's inner thigh.
He and the guard fell back from one another even as Albin's scream echoed through the cells. The bolt vanished up Kallist's sleeve, hidden not merely by cloth but a thin layer of illusion. The lieutenant fell writhing to the floor, hands clasped around the jagged, bleeding wound.
The viashino leaped toward them, weapon raised high, but Kallist and Liliana had already retreated to the back of the cell, beyond her reach. Several long seconds passed as the reptile glared, her tongue flickering in and out, before she knelt and lifted the wounded man as easily as she would a newborn babe.
For a moment more she hesitated, discomfited at the notion of leaving her post. But she would be only a few moments, and the growing pool of blood suggested rather firmly that time was of the essence. She cast one more furious gaze at the prisoners and then vanished through the hall's only door, slamming and barring it behind her.
'Is this enough?' Kallist asked, producing the blood-soaked bolt.
Liliana barely glanced at it. 'More than.'
'Good. Then let's get out of here before some guard shows up to take her place and we have to kill someone who doesn't deserve it.'
By the time anyone else entered the hall, the mages were simply gone, with no evidence they'd ever been present save a few scattered iron bars, and tiny bits of dust that had once mortared those bars in place.
CHAPTER SIX
Lieutenant Albin staggered and limped across the office to slump into his chair. For long moments he simply sat, cursing with every breath as he searched for a position that didn't pull at the bandages on his thigh, didn't send embers flashing through the constant, abominable ache. He cursed the prisoners who'd stabbed him, cursed Semner for getting him involved, cursed the city for not paying him his due and forcing him to accept outside bribes to live the lifestyle he deserved.
He cursed the paperwork on his desk, the forms and requisitions. Hell with 'em; let them wait.
And he cursed the cold draft that wafted beneath the closed door of the office, a draft he felt even through his uniform.
Where in the name of all gods and demons was the draft coming from? His office stood in the heart of the watch-house, far from any exterior exit. Even if every door in the building stood open, no such draft could have wended its way down the passages. And unless some mad deity had reached out and flipped the seasons with the flick of a divine switch, any breeze from outside should've been warm, not this icy breath of winter.
He rose on shaky legs, chair creaking, in time to see the air between him and the door turn black. A swirl of inky fog rose from the stones of the floor, obscuring all vision, all light. The air in the chamber grew colder still, until Albin's terrified gasps steamed in the frigid air, and his teeth chattered like the sound of falling marbles.
Two pinpricks of light, and then two more, formed in the whirling shadows. They glowed sickly yellow, emanating the heat of swift decomposition, as they formed themselves into pairs of eyes that gazed unblinking from
