her instruments 02 - rose point (40 page)

Sneaking through an Eldritch palace while dodging guards and random passersby was an experience Reese never wanted to repeat, especially not while caged in a corset and struggling to handle very noisy skirts. But somehow they made it across the length of Ontine and into a far more modest wing of the palace, where the ceilings didn’t loom high enough to give her agoraphobia and the furniture wasn’t too expensive to sit on. They’d barely gained that hallway when they were stopped by several very aggressive men dressed in white.

“No, no, they’re ours!” said a familiar voice, and Irine pushed past them to throw herself into Reese’s arms. “You’re safe!”

“What, no hugs for me?” Sascha said.

Irine snagged him with her other arm and squeezed them into a single embrace. “Hugs for everyone,” she said. “Come on, in here.” She pulled them into the room. “The angels decided to smile on us today. Reese, this is Elder Urise and his acolyte, Belinor.”

The thin old man swaddled in the cot met her eyes and then smiled, and the brilliant warmth of it almost made her miss the bruising on his face and what she could see of his neck. “At last. Here is the source of the good lord’s distractions.”

Before Reese could decide how to respond to that, Irine shook her gently. “They know where he’s being held. And they can get us there.”

“But we have to go with you,” the youth standing at the cot said, his Universal an accented staccato.

“Plus, we have men with swords!” Irine added.

Reese glanced over her shoulder at the two Eldritch at the door. “You are Liolesa’s bodyguards?”

“You have the right of it, if not the nuance,” one of them replied, and his accent was far cleaner.

“What’s the nuance?” she asked.

“We are bodyguards who have trained to work together as soldiers, and we are fifty in number.”

“Oh!” Reese said. “Well. That’s a lot of nuance.”

Sascha snorted.

“Anyway, yes, you can come with us, and if you turn out to be our enemies and you’re lying to us about all this, I’ll kill you myself before I die,” Reese said, and was surprised to discover she meant it. “But time’s wasting. Can we get moving? Before they kill Hirianthial?” She glanced at Irine. “I assume Sascha told you about the Pad, and you told them?”

“I didn’t have to.”

“We are the Queen’s Swords,” one of the armed Eldritch said. “We know her contingency plans. And we have had some training with foreign weapons, if you have them.”

“Hand out the candy,” Reese said, and let Sascha handle it as Irine grasped her arm. “What? What’s left?”

“One thing before we go,” Irine said. She grabbed a bag from the floor and thrust it into Reese’s arms. “There’s an empty room next to this. Let’s get you changed.”

“Do we really have time for this?” Reese asked, though she desperately wanted the answer to be ‘yes.’

“You’ll slow us down and make too much noise like this,” Irine said, turning her to face the door and giving her a push. “Come on, let’s get it done.”

Reese had wondered how they were going to ‘get it done’ quickly. Irine answered that by taking a knife to the laces and cutting her out of her costume. She stared at the puddle of satin at her feet and struggled with a sense of dismay and foreboding.

“It’s just clothes,” Irine said. “If you’re going to get upset about anything, get upset about your empty boot.”

“My empty—” She stopped, remembering the dagger Baniel had used to lend credibility to his story. The weapon she’d promised Hirianthial she’d treat better than her first, and now she’d left both of them behind! She scowled. “That bastard. Next time I won’t miss with it.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Reese pulled on her pants, her shirt and belt, transferred her data tablet to the inside pocket of her vest before shrugging it on. Her hand glided over the medallion with its rampant unicorn; she paused, turned it over to trace the tiny figure on the back, sword and flowers entwined. There was no doubt in her about any of this. Ordinarily she would have found that strange, but maybe she’d grown inured to shocking twists of fate during the initial pirate-slaver adventure. Rescuing the Eldritch from disaster seemed like an appropriate encore. They wouldn’t know what hit them, if she had any say in the matter, and there was no question that she would.

Reese tucked the medallion under her shirt. “Let’s find Hirianthial and get out of here.”

“There’s at least one good thing about all this,” Irine said as she led Reese out.

“What’s that?”

“This time we don’t have to worry about a cargo rotting out on us.”

It took Reese a moment to make sense of that and then she surprised herself with a laugh. “It’s too bad. We could have used the bombs.”

Of course the Eldritch had dungeons. The youth guiding them through it had objected to the word—he insisted on calling them catacombs—but it was a dank maze lit by torches where evil Eldritch kept prisoners; as far as Reese was concerned, that made the place a dungeon. It was large enough not to be crawling with guards, which she’d been expecting, and for that she gave thanks. The men they brought were equal to the ones they ran into. Olthemiel was the name the first had given her, and the other was Beronaeth, and they were as grim a pair as she’d seen; their faces reminded her of Hirianthial’s when he’d been talking about chasing down pirates and slavers.

They were so adept at handling the guards that it worried her when they stopped at a junction. Olthemiel withdrew, joining them a few feet back.

“What’s wrong?” Reese whispered.

His eyes were somber. “We face priests now.”

“What does that mean?”

“They may be able to sense us coming,” Belinor said. The young priest held his robes closer against the chill. “Or they may be able to warn others by sounding an alarm with their minds.”

To him, Olthemiel said, “You know what we must do.”

“They would have killed my master, who is a good man, and one of their own. Why should we have more mercy than them?”

“Does this mean you’re planning to kill them?” Sascha asked. “In an ambush?”

“Does that trouble you?”

“Hell no,” Reese said. “Go for it.” Olthemiel looked at her sharply, and that was enough evidence of surprise for her to say, “I think it’s pretty obvious who the bad guys are. I’m not going to shed any tears about people who want to arm the Queen’s enemies with guns they got from pirates.”

He studied her a moment longer, brows up. Then inclined his head and went to join his man at the edge of the corridor.

Sascha whispered, “Sure you’re all right, Boss?”

“Yes,” Reese said, but reached for his hand anyway. She closed her eyes, listening to her heart race, fighting nausea. Would they ever attack? Would they be found? Would they end up in cells of their own? They’d found a way out of the first one they’d gotten thrown into, but she didn’t want to push her luck. Besides, somehow she doubted the little trick she’d tried on Inu-Case would fool any Eldritch.

The barest scrape of boot heel against ground and her guards were gone. A moment later, she heard the scuffle and the bodies as they hit the floor. Sascha pulled her to her feet and they darted around the corner, Bryer and Irine at her heels and Belinor taking the rear.

“Here,” Olthemiel said, hauling on a heavy door at the end of the corridor.

Reese dropped Sascha’s hand and ran. She was too frightened to walk: if he was dead she had to face it now, before she lost her nerve. And the first sight of him, spilled on the ground, almost choked her breath out of her. She fell to her knees beside him and put her hand on his shoulder and hell with the Eldritch touch thing, she had to know—

—his skin was warm. That was good, right?

“Hirianthial,” she whispered. “Please, please don’t be dead.” She bent down, trying to see his face. “Oh please, don’t be dead.”

He didn’t answer and she let her head slowly fall until her brow rested on his hair. Under the blood stench, he still smelled like expensive cologne. It made her chest shudder, which is how she knew she was trying not to cry. To distract herself, she petted the silken hair... and discovered that most of it was missing.

Was it her indignation that woke him? He must have felt it surge in her, an outrage out of proportion to the triviality of the offense. But he opened his eyes, just enough to see her.

And then he spoke, rusted baritone gravel. “It will. Grow back. Lady.”

“It was so beautiful,” she said, tears leaking, drop by heated drop. “And they cut it!”

His chuckle was so rough it hurt her throat to hear it. But he had laughed—how was that possible?

“Can you be carried?” Reese asked. “We have to get you out of here, but will you bleed to death if we lift you?”

“They... have stabilized me. Or I would have died much earlier. That is... my guess.”

“Your guess!”

He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Better a death... in the arms of friends. Than to stay here.”

Her heart contracted so hard she thought she’d pulled a muscle in her chest. Her fingers fell off the shorn hair, touching the edge of the dangle... was it her imagination, or did he tense and then relax? She hoped all he felt through her fingertips was her concern, her grief at the sight of him this way, and her absolute resolution to save him. That and... everything else, all the things she could no longer hide. Her head slowly fell until it rested against her wrist and she whispered, “Oh, Hirianthial. We have got to stop with you ending up places like this.” She managed a watery smile. “Prison cells aren’t really your speed.”

“Noted... for the future.”

“I hope so,” she answered, hushed, trying to hide her tears. She pulled her hands back to keep from discomfiting him and waved Bryer inside.

“Reese,” Hirianthial said, as the Phoenix bent toward him. Bryer paused so she could lean toward him... but whatever he’d been planning to say was lost with the consciousness that drained from him, taking the animation from his face, the glow, the warmth. Bryer shook his feathers and gathered the Eldritch from the ground.

“Oh, blood, be careful—”

“Know what I do,” Bryer said. And then, with more of an effort, “Trust me.”

She’d never heard the Phoenix say anything like it, and was so shocked she could only watch as they left the cell. Then she shook herself and hurried after, wiping her face. The guards were conferring with Bryer, which gave her time to rub her nose and put herself back together again, and once she had she found the twins watching her with expressions she couldn’t quite place. Not sad, and not proud, and not gentle, but all of those things?

“So,” Sascha said, quiet. “You finally know.”

She looked toward the body in Bryer’s arms, saw the slack face with its too-short hair and over the neck the dangle now absurdly long without the mane to give it context. Swallowing, she met their eyes and said, “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“Are you going to say something?” Irine said.

Reese shook her head. She lifted her hands to stop them from saying the inevitable. “He knows. He knows, and he hasn’t said or done anything. I mean, how could he not know? He can read my mind. Has read it.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I’m centuries too young for him, can’t marry him, can’t have his children and I’ll be dead in the blink of one of his eyes. I won’t force the issue. How could I?”

“But if he wanted it...?” Irine asked, cautious.

Reese looked down. In the face of Hirianthial’s injuries, she could no more deny her feelings than she could stop breathing, stop leaking tears. “I’d say yes.” Up now, at their eyes. “Oh, I’d say yes.”

Sascha stepped forward, clasped her arm. “Then let’s get this business taken care of.”

She covered his hand with hers and followed the guards.

Returning to the library, even with two casualties, was a lot easier with Belinor and the Swords to show them the back ways through the servants’ halls. Even with Urise tottering on his acolyte’s arm, they made good time. At Olthemiel’s signal they emerged into the palace proper, pouring into the hall outside the library. There was no one in the hall: nothing between them and freedom. Beronaeth reached for the library door

...which opened for him...

...on the woman who’d run screaming from Reese upstairs, the one who’d told everyone about them.

Thaniet stopped abruptly, startled, and then her eyes flew to Bryer and the burden in his arms. She squeaked at the sight of Hirianthial, hand flying to her mouth. Reese almost forgave her the whole spying business when she saw the woman’s dismay. Almost.

Olthemiel drew his sword.

“Are you going to kill her?” Sascha asked sharply.

“In front of two priests!” Irine added, though Urise was barely conscious.

“She is Asaniefa’s woman,” the Sword captain said. “She must be dealt with either way.”

“Oh, oh, I won’t tell Surela!” Thaniet exclaimed, going gray at the sight of the naked blade. She looked to Reese and said, rushing the words so fast they almost tripped on her accent, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it would come to this.”

“You have got to be kidding us,” Sascha said, ears flicking back and teeth showing.

Reese remembered all the times she’d steadfastly refused to think something through because she hadn’t wanted to face the repercussions. “No... I believe her.” To Thaniet, she said, “But you’re a risk we can’t take. I’m sorry.”

Thaniet gasped in.

“We could take her with us?” Irine said. “Maybe?”

“So she can sabotage the ship?” Sascha’s ears were still flat.

“She doesn’t know enough to sabotage anything,” Reese said.

Bryer sighed and shifted Hirianthial in his arms. In a motion faster than Reese could track, his arm flashed out, smashed against the woman’s head, and resettled Hirianthial in its crook. Thaniet dropped like a stone.

“You didn’t—”

Beronaeth was already tying her hands behind her back and dragging her into a nearby room.

“She’ll live,” Olthemiel said. “Go, now. We’ll guard.”

“You won’t come with us?” Reese asked.

“Someone must stay, take the Pad so it can’t be used by the Queen’s enemies,” Olthemiel said. More quietly, “We have our orders, Lady. We go into the countryside to await her direction, protect her assets. Go now, and delay no longer.”