Five Odd Honors (59 page)

Brenda looked back toward the man she had flamed, knowing that Dragon’s Breath did not last unduly long. She had been surprised at her spell’s intensity. Now, seeing the color of the flames, she realized that she’d fueled the fire with some of the surplus energy she’d brought with her from the sidhe.

Parnell was bending over the burning man, wiping his sword on the torturer’s loose trousers.

Better than he deserved,
Brenda thought viciously.
He should have choked to death on his own lungs.

Her feelings did not change as she reached up to cut at the blood-soaked leather bonds that held Loyal Wind’s wrists to the whipping post. Parnell came and held the Horse’s unconscious body against his own, slowly lowering him to the stone floor.

Shen, meanwhile, had moved to check first the man he had felled, then to listen at the door.

“No sign anyone noticed,” Shen said, his voice harsh and bitter. “The lack of screams, rather than any commotion, is more likely to bring someone to check.”

“We should have some time,” Parnell said. “They must be used to having their victims pass out, if they treat them all as they have Loyal Wind.”

“Is he alive?” Shen asked.

“He is,” Parnell said, “and if he doesn’t bleed out is likely to remain so. Brenda, how do you feel?”

For the first time, Brenda had a chance to inspect her own injuries. S lidingback the amulet bracelets, she found stigmata matching the wounds she had seen on Loyal Wind’s wrists. She didn’t doubt that her back bore a few stripes as well.

She shrugged of her daypack, wincing at the sharp bite of fresh wounds. The pack’s fabric was marked with blood.

“Angry,” she said, ignoring the pain as she transferred a few spare amulets from the pack to her wrists. She’d have to leave the rest behind. “Impatient. Parnell, can Loyal Wind be taken back through the gate? Can some of your friends tend him?”

“Yes. You go with him,” Parnell urged. “You’re hurt, too, and with the gate made, there’s no need for you to be risking yourself further.”

“I’m going on,” Brenda said. “No one beat me. This bleeding, it’s just echoes of what they did to Loyal Wind. The wounds will probably stop hurting as soon as the link between us fades.”

Privately, Brenda doubted this. The cuts on her wrists were quite vivid, but there was no way she was going to be put to pasture.

“Will your people care for him?” Brenda repeated.

A voice so gentle Brenda hardly recognized it as Wasp’s spoke near her ear. “We will. Honey is a good antiseptic. I have cousins who will clean him, and others who will wash him, and yet others who will guard him until our return.”

Parnell looked as if he would protest, then visibly bit back what ever he had been about to say.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll carry Loyal Wind through. Don’t leave without me.”

“We won’t,” Shen said. He was crouching near the second torturer. “I felled this one with a sending of sleep. He hit his head when he fell hard enough to knock himself out. He’s coming around. I can compel him to tell us something of this place, where we can find the others.”

“Not too many questions,” Brenda said, straining her ears for any other sound. “As you said, it’s silence, not screams, that will bring the guards. We got to Loyal Wind just in time. I don’t want to be too late to help the others.”

When the
three of them stepped cautiously out into the corridor, Brenda had both an All Green and a Dragon’s Tail up. The All Green didn’t help much in the dim light—the infinitely distractable part of her brain made a mental note to ask Des if there was a spell that allowed the user something like night vision.

Des. The thought of him chattering away about some esoteric aspect of Chinese culture or sitting down to his breakfast of congee and pickled vegetables made Brenda’s heart feel funny.

They had ample evidence, first from their slight contact with Gentle Smoke, now from Loyal Wind, that the prisoners had not been treated at all well.

Loyal Wind was a soldier, and might be expected to hold up under torture, but Des? Des Lee was a part-time movie consultant, a model who sold expensive men’s clothing. He might be fairly solid on theory, even pretty fast with those Rooster’s Talons, but under a whip?

The burning of the welts on Brenda’s back and wrists, secondhand though those injuries were, made her doubt she’d manage to do anything more heroic under torture than faint.

The guard Shen had questioned hadn’t known precisely who was being held where. However, he knew the layout of this cellblock perfectly, and had been pathetically eager to share his knowledge with Shen, especially with Parnell standing just within the torturer’s line of sight, looking way too familiar with the sword he kept shifting restlessly from hand to hand.

Doubtless it didn’t hurt that Parnell’s fair-haired, green-eyed appearance must look demonic to the Chinese.

The cellblock was arranged so that each cell could be isolated from the others, double doors deadening the sound of the screams. These doors led into a long corridor that, Brenda noted as she stepped out into it, would make a great amplifier if hearing what was happening to the guy—or gal—next door would make the prisoner more eager to talk.

Right now that corridor was very silent, but that was because—so the torturer had explained—Li Szu had felt that letting the prisoners each wonder if he or she was the last holdout was more effective than hearing the others’ suffering. Comfort, even a sense of solidarity, could be found in knowing one wasn’t alone in misery.

That Li Szu is a nasty creature,
Brenda thought.
He’d be nasty enough if he just depersonalized his victims, but it’s like he gets into their hearts and souls, knows exactly what they’re feeling, and doesn’t care.

Parnell was on point, or rather Wasp was, buzzing ahead, then fluttering back to mutter her report in Parnell’s ear. Brenda appreciated the sidhe woman’s attentiveness, even though it wasn’t exactly necessary at this point. They knew where they were going.

Stopping in front of the third door to the right and across the corridor, Parnell motioned for Brenda to come forward. She did so, the ring of keys they’d taken from the torturers tight in her hand.

Parnell had offered to go first, but Shen had pointed out that none of the scouts knew who he was and explanations would waste time. So Brenda was to open the locks while Parnell stood ready to deal with any trouble and Shen kept watch on the corridor behind.

With her magically enhanced vision, Brenda watched the lock carefully asshe worked the key, remembering stories where a warded lock had given everything away, but the dull metal showed no indication of being anything but a normal lock. The key turned the tumblers with a solid, perfectly natural, metallic click.

No need for fancy wards here,
Brenda thought, carefully checking the short length of stone-lined corridor before stepping in.
We’re in the cellar of a heavily guarded building in the heart of a walled city, in the heart of a walled country. Even if a prisoner got out, where would he go?

Her heart lifted a little at the thought of Loyal Wind, safely gone, and of the contingent of fierce-faced sidhe folks who now guarded the gate. They had orders to close it rather than let it be used against them, and Brenda felt certain that anyone trying to challenge those weird little people would be thoroughly surprised.

She pushed the door open quickly, for if any enemy was inside, they might have heard the lock tumble, and stealth would only give them opportunity to prepare. She had a Dragon’s Breath bracelet ready on her fingers, but there was no need to use it.

The room was empty except for two men, naked but for cloth wrapped around their hips, slumped against the chains that bound them to rings on the walls.

“Des! Riprap!” Brenda kept her voice soft, but against the bareness of that contained area the sound echoed.

The better to hear you scream, my dear,
she thought, anger flaring in her breast and making her breath come short.

Des had moved slightly at the sound of Brenda’s voice, so she hurried to attend to him first.

The key ring contained the means for opening the shackles, but Brenda could see a problem right away. Des was not standing, but was suspended against the stone, his feet of the ground. At best, his feet would be numb, and he would be certain to fall.

“Parnell! I need you.”

He understood immediately, and hastened forward, sheathing his sword as he did so. For the first time Brenda was struck how, despite the fact that Parnell still wore the jeans and casual tee shirt that had been his college uniform, there was more about him of the green-eyed squire of her long-ago dream.

“I’m unlocking the leg shackles first,” Brenda said, kneeling. The floor smelled strongly of pee, and she guessed the prisoners had been there a while. “Be ready to catch him.”

Parnell didn’t say anything, but shifted his stance so he was closer.

As with the door, the locks turned easily. In four snaps of the key, Des was free. He fell forward into Parnell’s hold, and Brenda heard rather than saw Parnell move to lay Des on a cleaner spot of the floor.

She was moving to inspect Riprap. For a horrible moment, she thought the big man wasn’t breathing, then she heard him. The breaths were shallow and erratic, but they were there.

Parnell was back, and they repeated the procedure, Brenda assisting with moving Riprap over by Des.

“I wish Nissa were here,” she said, feeling useless.

Parnell had rocked back on his heels and was inspecting the two men. “I don’t think they’re anywhere as badly hurt as was Loyal Wind. The marks from beatings are older, and something like a cane, rather than a whip, was used. Let’s try giving them some water.”

They did. Des drank almost at once. Riprap let it dribble over his face, but then seemed to suddenly become aware. He drank greedily then, and Brenda, very conscious of how strong he was, leaned down and spoke.

“It’s me, Brenda, Riprap. Des. We’re here to get you out. We’ve got Loyal Wind already, and we think we know where to find the others.”

Des’s eyes flickered open, bloodshot but holding intelligence. Only one of Riprap’s eyes could open. The other was sealed shut with as nasty a black eye as Brenda had ever seen.

“He fought,” Des wheezed, “when he saw Flying Claw. . . . You came . ”

There was wonder in his voice, despite the fact that he could barely shape intelligible words.

“And you’re going,” Brenda said. “We have a way out.”

“We’d better carry them,” Parnell said. “I’ve sent Wasp for some help.”

Des’s eyes widened at the sight of the unfamiliar young man with the honey-blond hair, but Brenda had prepared an explanation she hoped would work.

“Indigenous tradition. Absolutely trustworthy.”

Des seemed willing to accept this, but Riprap’s one open eye narrowed as if he wished he had the strength to ask questions.

He licked his lips as if trying to form words, but at that moment Wasp and her reinforcements arrived.

Brenda had already learned that the sidhe folk were often much stronger than their size would indicate. What Wasp had brought with her were some variety Brenda hadn’t seen until she’d started taking lessons in the sidhe. These six creatures resembled a cross between short squat men and tree stumps witharms and legs. Head, neck, and chest seemed all of a part, while legs and arms looked as if they could merge back into the whole more easily than they managed in de pen dent movement.

Despite their rather frightening appearance, Parnell had assured Brenda that these were some of the creatures who had helped give rise to legends of brownies or bogarts or house goblins—essentially mild, more helpful than not, creatures. Only their relatively large size—they were almost three feet tall—had kept Parnell from assigning a couple to Brenda’s rotating entourage. That, and the fact that they were almost congenitally shy.

The Stumplings looked anything but shy now. They looked equal parts angry and apprehensive, with a dash of fierceness for garnish. Under Parnell’s direction, they lifted up the injured men, three to a victim, and started trotting toward the gate into the sidhe like mobile stretchers.

Shen was keeping watch, but spared Des and Riprap a horrified glance before returning to his vigil with added alertness.

Once they were in the room with the gate, Brenda hurried to explain the situation to Des and Riprap, finishing, “So you’ll be safe and cared for while we get the others out. Please trust us.”

Riprap had been trying to get some words out, and now he managed.

“Come with us,” he said, his voice thick. “These bad to men, but real bad to women.”

Brenda shivered, knowing what Riprap was hinting at.

“All the more reason I need to stay and help get them out,” she said.

Riprap seemed to understand. “Careful.”

“I’ll be careful,” Brenda said. Impulsively, she kissed each of them quickly on the forehead, then stood back as they were passed through the gate.

Parnell was waiting in the corridor, and pointed toward another door, farther down.

“That one next,” he said.