He coughed and tried to claw his neck with his left hand, but moving it made him grunt in pain. And that made him cough all over again.
Cheyenne sat back on the couch and lowered her magic toward the cushion so he could see her face. “Have a nice nap?”
“You’re fucking crazy.” Spit flew from his mouth as he hacked and wheezed and drew in raw, gasping breaths. “Why are you still here?”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
The orc’s eyes widened, and he tried to scramble away from her across the floor. The halfling sent a burst of purple sparks into the floor beside his hand as a warning and Durg froze.
“On purpose, okay? Relax.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Durg. The thought ran through my head and hung out for a while. I don’t like you.” Cheyenne snuffed out the black energy sizzling in her palm, and the air went still around them. “But I think you might be a lot more useful to me if you’re not zipped up in a body bag. Trust me. I know people who do that for a living. They’re very good.”
“Yeah? I have friends too, drow.”
She sucked a breath through her teeth. “Not like mine. My friends have a record of putting your friends in cages, which is where you belong right now.” I just called the FRoE my friends. Ignore the semantics.
“Then where’s my damn cage?” Durg growled.
“We’re not there yet. If you tell me what I wanna know, you might be able to stay home a little longer. Nice place, by the way.” The halfling took a quick glance around the room. “Minus the spell-burns.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you whatever you want as long as you keep those damn whips away from my neck.”
“We’ll see. Tell me about the bull’s head.”
“What the hell do you—”
Cheyenne’s hand darted toward the other side of the living room. Purple sparks burst from her fingertips and struck all three of the daggers buried in the tapestry and the wall behind it. Her magic crackled along the steel handles and the blades before fizzling out. “That bull’s head. And don’t tell me it’s nothing. Nobody uses an O’gúl symbol for a dartboard unless there’s a lot of bottled-up hostility behind it.”
The wounded orc stared up at her from the floor, his eyes wide as he caught his breath and sized up the dark-skinned drow with the wild bone-white hair making herself comfortable on his couch. “For someone who doesn’t know what it is, you sure use a lot of phrases from back home.”
“I’m a quick learner. Talk.”
The orc sneered at her and pushed himself up enough to sit on the floor and snarl at the pain in his dislocated shoulder. “You know how much shit I could bring down on my head just by talking about this?”
“You’re already swimming in shit, Durg.”
“You couldn’t stand up to those assholes even if you knew who they were. I swore I was done with it when I—”
Cheyenne blasted him with another few purple sparks, this time in his good shoulder just to even it out. Then she pulled up another sphere of black magic and shoved it toward his face. “Quit stalling! I’ll use this if you don’t spit it out already.”
“Okay, okay. You’re crazy!” The orc leaned away from her crackling magic, his yellow eyes wide again as he let out a nervous hiss. “That fell-damned bull is the insignia for the O’gúl head.”
“The what?”
“Guardians of the Crown. Shit, will you take that thing out of my face?”
The halfling withdrew her hand, but she kept the black energy churning in her palm, just in case. “You’re gonna have to break it down even further.”
He glanced up at her and let out a snorting laugh of surprise. “You been living under a damn rock, drow? The royal guards. That insignia was branded into every shield and weapon and sewn into every patch on their fell-damn—” Durg tried to lift his arm and grunted, freshly reminded of his dislocated shoulder. He lifted his other hand to the same shoulder and tapped it again. “They wore it here. Took their orders directly from the Crown.”
Cheyenne frowned. “What are a bunch of royal guards doing Earthside?”
“That’s not—” The orc rolled his eyes. “That was me dumbing it down for you, drow. They’re not guards, not these days. But their loyalty to the Crown’s made them even crazier than they were when the Rís needed real guards. Now they’re just screwed-up henchmen. Again, dumbing it down.”
When the halfling moved her sphere of black energy slowly closer to his face, Durg hissed. “So, what are they doing Earthside?”
“Spreading the Crown’s fucking crusade. They’ve been trying to bring the same shit to this world that’s been rotting the heart of Ambar’ogúl for centuries.”
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.” Durg licked his spit-covered lips and glanced quickly from her to her threatening black spell and back. “I came over here to get away from all that, just like everyone else. Don’t bring me into it.”
I’m not gonna get anything else outta this scumbag. Snuffing out her black orb one more time, Cheyenne leaned away from him and pressed her hands into her thighs. “No. I won’t bring you into it. But I’ll be watching you from here on out, Durg Br’athol. I know you made your crossing in March. That you came off Rez 7. That you apparently didn’t start making trouble until you thought all eyes were finally off you and focused somewhere else.”
The orc just stared at her, breathing heavily.
She pushed to her feet and loomed over him. “If I want any more information out of you, you’d be even more of an idiot not to give it to me when I ask. ‘Cause I know where you live now, too.”
Durg just growled at her as she turned away from him, fully intending to step right back through his front door and leave him there to deal with the mess. Then
