It took me a moment to realize that neither Tens, nor Mack were reacting to her embarrassment, or her threat.
“They can’t hear me, sweetie,” she said, “and that’s a secret, too.”
Goddamnitall to the stars and beyond!
And Delight laughed.
Mack looked from one to the other of us, and back, and then he handed me a small pouch of the sticks, and picked up his pack.
“I don’t wanta know,” he said.
Smart man, that—and Delight agreed.
I prepped the Blazer for firing, reassured by the fact that Mack was doing the same thing, beside me. At least we were agreed on not taking anything for granted. Tens might be sure the landing site was safe, but scans could be fooled, as we’d proven several times over—and neither I nor Mack were taking the chance.
We stepped up onto the platform, and Mack moved so we were angled slightly away from each other, our arms touching. When he was happy with our positioning, he had Tens run one more scan of the area, and then gave the teleport team the signal to send us down.
I’m not fond of teleportation. It always feels like I’ve left an important part of myself behind, or that I’ve ceased to exist for just a second—and it’s hard holding back the images of what could happen if the system went wrong. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I had a mission to focus on.
We landed in the courtyard, just as we planned. The team even managed to tick two boxes on our wish-list: they didn’t land us dead center, where we’d be easily seen, and they managed to put us down on the one side not yet lit by the morning sun.
Did I mention we were going in just after sunrise?
Mack figured that was when folk would be at their sleepiest.
I had pointed out that Blaedergil had left his servants behind, and that servants were most likely early risers. After all, none of them would want to get caught sleeping in when they’d been meant to start a shift. If the man got his jollies out of killing his wives every night, then I shuddered to think what he might do to a servant who overslept.
Mack had argued that, with Blaedergil gone, the servants might take the opportunity to catch up on the sleep they’d been missing with all the screams echoing through the house. Had to admit, the man made a good point.
I shoved those thoughts right out of my head, as the world swirled back into focus. Man, I hoped they’d put all the bits back in the right places. There was no time to check; I just had to focus on the mission, and hope.
It also didn’t help that we weren’t the only ones arriving in the courtyard. There was a strange shuttle coming in almost on top of us. It made me really glad the teleport team had put us to one side of the courtyard. There was no way we’d have been missed, if we’d been out in the middle.
“Well, fuck me si—”
“Later!” Mack snapped, grabbing me with one hand as he piss-bolted for the nearest door.
I didn’t need the extra encouragement, although the quick start was a help. There was no way in all the heavens, I wanted to be in that courtyard when Household Security arrived to see who’d come without knocking.
I figured it could only be the Lord of Skymander, arriving early, and wondered how the fuck Tens had missed it coming in.
“You’d be surprised,” and I thought Tens sounded rather calm for having missed something so major.
“Let’s just say, I want to meet their techs.”
I just bet he did.
I followed Mack through a side-door, glad that the blueprints Tens had hacked out of the house computers were accurate.
“Yeah, you can thank me later... or, better yet, just shut the hell up and quit your bitching.”
Well, that told me!
I stopped and started to deal with the door, but Tens kicked me along.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “Now. Run!”
We ran.
The last place I’d seen Treivani had been outside the door to my room, her arm threaded possessively through Blaedergil’s crooked elbow, her eyes unbelievably grateful that I was there. I still hadn’t worked out what that meant, just couldn’t understand what she possibly had to be happy about—unless it was because she was finally getting free of Blaedergil himself, because that would have made me happy, too.
I’d last heard Treivani three floors up. She’d been screaming, but that was from giving birth, and not because of anything Blaedergil was doing to her. I hoped the birth had gone to plan, and that she and the baby were doing well.
It crossed my mind that I still didn’t know what happened to the children. I mean, I understood it wasn’t good if they were boys, but I’d never asked what happened if they were girls. I shrugged the thought away. Maybe it really was better if I didn’t know.
We ran through the narrow corridors that Tens said were the servants’ exclusive domain, bypassing the elevators, and not looking back. Tens hadn’t told us if he’d hacked the shuttle’s feeds. Nor had he confirmed, whose shuttle it was. For all we knew, the Blaedergil we’d killed had been a clone, and the real one had come out of hiding.
“Don’t even go there.” Mack sounded like he wanted to deny the thought outright, but didn’t quite dare.
I wondered what the chances were that the shuttle that had almost come in on top us was an incarnation of the old master of the house, rather than the Skymander lord.
“Skymander would be preferable.”
“Well, then, it’s your lucky day.”
“Delight?”
“I’ll meet you on the upper floor. Porters put us down just inside the wall, at the back of the kitchens.”
That was both good and bad. I figured that by ‘us’ Delight was referring to herself and Pritchard, and not anyone else from Odyssey. As far as I knew there hadn’t been any other Odyssey personnel
