Rik shuddered. “Sardec?”
“Yes, even the good Lieutenant saw a resemblance.”
Rik felt a little sick. Asea continued as if she had not noticed.
“Lord Elakar was killed shortly after she arrived. By a Shadowblood. I am certain.”
“It might be Lord Jaderac. Or one of their entourage.”
“It might be. But none of them fit my theory. She does.”
“You said you were going to test your theory.” Rik could see where this was leading and he did not like it in the slightest.
“I am going to take her into my custody.”
“Do you have the power? She is an Ambassador.”
“There have been many kidnappings and assassinations recently, Rik. This will be one more.”
“Kidnapping or assassination?”
“Most likely both. She cannot be freed once she knows who we are.”
“We?”
“I doubt Her Majesty would approve of what we are about to do. I doubt our army commanders would either. So it will have to be us, and a couple of your old friends from the regiment. You know the two I mean.”
“Weasel and the Barbarian?”
“Yes. They will keep their mouths shut. There is still the matter of the forbidden books you stole from the Prophet Zarahel. The Inquisition would not make life easy for them if they found out.”
“That is a business I have had cause to regret,” said Rik softly.
“Meddling with forbidden knowledge always gives you that, Rik. Trust me, I know.” Her voice was soft and dangerous. Nonetheless, Rik felt compelled to oppose her will.
“This is madness. What if we are caught? Three humans trying to kidnap a Terrarch noblewoman? It would be the stake for us, after torture.”
“Then you had better not be caught.” She held his gaze easily, and he found he could not meet her burning stare nor match her implacable will. She was utterly serious about this and she did not care who got hurt if they got in her way.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this? Why are you so driven?”
“Because Amarielle was my friend, as well as my Queen, and I failed her, and I am still Terrarch enough to want revenge. Because I am sick of being beaten by the minions of Shadow. Because if I am right and the Shadowblood are here, more than the lives of a few people are at stake.”
Her words chilled him. He looked at her silently. She seemed to feel the need to convince him because she went on. “Look at what’s happening, Rik. Look at what you have seen with your own eyes. Ancient cults summoning demon gods. Obscene sorcery of the sort that created the Nerghul. The Imperium shattered by civil war. It’s starting to look like the last days of Al’Terra all over again.”
“Why not tell the authorities this? Why not let people know?”
She paused for a moment, as if considering saying something. When she spoke, he was convinced that she had been about to say something different and then stopped. “I have told people my suspicions, Rik. Azaar shares them. So does Queen Arielle. But at the moment, all they are is suspicions, and now is not the time to make them public.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, people would think it was merely black propaganda against the Sardeans. For another, the humans…” Her voice faltered in uncharacteristic uncertainty.
“If humans started to suspect that Terrarchs were in league with the Princes of Shadow, there would be revolution,” Rik said.
“At the very least it would undermine the fabric of our society at the very time when we needed to be united. You can see why I need to be certain, and why I need to deal with this quietly if I can. I want to know exactly how far the rot has spread.”
“What will you do to her when we capture Tamara?”
“I will make her talk.”
“She will be able to resist your sorcery if she is a Shadowblood.”
“There are other ways than sorcery to make people talk.”
Rik knew exactly what those methods were.
“Bloody cold tonight,” said Weasel. They sat huddled in the front of a cart in a roadway on the street of the Palace in which Jaderac and Tamara dwelled. It was a large place, brilliantly lit, disturbingly close to the Grand Cemetery. The wind was cold. A mixture of rain and snow filled the air and reflected the sorcerous street-lights on the cobbles. Rik pulled his cloak tight around him but still he felt chilled right through to the bone.
“You call this cold,” said the Barbarian. “You’ve obviously never been in the Northlands.”
“And I hope never to go there,” said Weasel.
Worry gnawed at Rik. He worried about the effect of the damp on the pistols in his belt. He worried about whether Tamara had spotted them as they had spied on her for the past week and would somehow be prepared for them. He worried about what he was going to do when he faced her, what would happen when she talked to Asea. There were things that they had done, and deeds they had discussed that he would not care for his patron to know about.
He considered whether Tamara should have an accident before she could talk to the sorceress. His pistols could easily go off accidentally. The truesilver bullet in one of them would kill her whether she was a Shadowblood or not. That might be for the best, certainly from his point of view. He was not sure he could do it.
Asea might be wrong about Tamara. She was planning to have her abducted and killed just to test a theory. Rik was surprised that he could still be shocked by something like that. He considered himself cold-blooded but Asea was being cold-blooded on a scale that he would never aspire to. He supposed she had her reasons. Tamara might be able to inform them about a conspiracy that threatened their entire world.
But, if Asea was right, Tamara was his half-sister. It ought to mean something but he did not really care about that. He had not known her before Morven. They had not grown up together. She was a stranger who had come of age with every privilege the Dark Empire could provide while he had scrambled to survive on the streets of Sorrow.
Tamara had already admitted that she had conspired to have him killed. Surely he would be within his rights to kill her. He pushed the idea aside. He wanted to know what Tamara had to say and whether Asea was right about her father. His father too, perhaps, although he was not quite prepared to take that on faith.
A lot of strange threads of his strange life were being blown on this night’s cold winds. A family he had never known he possessed had appeared, and turned out to be on the other side in the war he was fighting. Perhaps his father had killed the mother he had never known. It all seemed sick and mad and dangerous. Would it not be better if he simply ran off into the night to find a place to hide and bury himself?
He knew he could not. He wanted the matter resolved, to find out the secrets of his past, no matter how dark they might prove. And he wanted, if he could, to avenge himself on the people who had made his life so miserable. More than that, he wanted, in his own strange way, to see justice done.
Terrarchs like Malkior and Tamara were above the laws that applied to mortals like him. Or at least they thought they were. They planned murder and they killed and they got away with it. There was no way someone like him could bring them to justice. Normally. Just this once, he might be able to do it. If Asea was right, if this was not all just some mad fantasy of her sorceress’s brain, or part of some intricate inhuman scheme that he would never be able to understand.
“Think they’ll be here soon?” asked the Barbarian.
“I don’t know. The ball must be over by now,” said Rik.
“What are you going to do with the gold?” the Barbarian asked. Asea had promised them gold if this went well.
“Spend it on beer, cards and girls,” said Weasel. He was squinting into the gloom. Some figures still moved
