The Paladin Caper (35 page)

Naria’s mouth twisted into angry words that she swallowed instead of saying. She reached into a hidden pocket of her fine orange gown and drew out a glossy black crystal no larger than Loch’s palm. “The field past the water garden,” she said. “The key will bring it down from the sky and make it visible.”

She tossed Loch the key.

“Never come back here.”

“Deal.”

Loch stepped out of the sitting room. She brushed Naria’s shoulder as she walked by.

Naria didn’t turn as Loch walked away.

There were worse places to wait for Loch to fight things out with her sister, Kail decided, than on a comfortable bench in the Lochenville estate’s water garden with a beautiful woman beside him.

The beautiful woman was a death priestess, and that still threw him off from time to time, but the good thing about working for Loch was that he’d learned that there were lots of things worse than death priestesses.

That was also the bad thing about working for Loch, Kail decided, and sighed, looking at the white-and-purple flowers floating on the lily pads.

“What are you thinking?” Desidora asked, leaning into him a little. She didn’t curl her arm around his. Something about it, someone doing anything close to grappling with him, made his mind go to that dark little corner where Archvoyant Silestin’s magic had wrapped around his soul and turned him into a helpless puppet.

Some women would have gotten angry when he tensed up and pulled away, taken it as an insult or a sign that he didn’t care. Desidora was a love priestess, though, at least when she didn’t have her death powers turned on to make zombies, and she had a pretty good idea of how people worked.

So she leaned into him instead of curling her arm around his.

He put
his
arm around
her
waist. “The usual,” he said, and she nodded, her auburn hair brushing against his cheek. Her hair smelled warm and mysterious, at least when it was red instead of pitch black. “Silestin was bad, and he came after us hard, but it didn’t hit us where we lived.”

“I’m glad your mother is safe.”

“I think I saved the ancients from her more than the other way around,” Kail said, and grinned. “My mom will take anybody who gets up in her face.”

Desidora shuddered, and at first Kail thought she was sad, and then cold.

After a minute, he realized that she was trying to hold in a laugh.

“Diz. Diz?”

“You,” she gasped, still trying not to laugh, “you say all these things about people’s mothers! And then you say
that
about yours, and I’m not supposed to think anything?”

Kail sat back and fixed Desidora with a stare. “Diz, you’re not thinking rude things about my mom.”

Her eyes wide and innocent and maybe watering a bit from laughter, she nodded. “I would never do that.”

“My mother is a nice respectable lady,” Kail said firmly, “and—no, damn it, don’t start laughing again!”

The damn water clock emptied a great wave of water behind them, and Kail jumped and swore, and Desidora leaned over, giggling hysterically.

And then Tahla staggered out of the manor, one hand pressed to her side and leg dragging behind her, and shouted, “Run!”

A crimson blast of energy slammed into her from behind, and she sailed down the stairs, hit the marble stones of the yard below hard, and didn’t move.

“Byn-kodar’s hell,” Kail muttered.

“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is!”
came a cry from the manor, and beside Kail, Desidora went cold, literally.

“You can say that again,” she said as her hair went black and her skin went pale.

Ghylspwr came out of the manor in the grip of former Archvoyant Bertram, with a pair of paladins flanking him. Technically the ancients had also enslaved the nobles who had put on the paladin bands, but the nobles had on some level been trying to seize power, and Kail could see his way to letting that lie.

Bertram . . . well, he was Learned, and he was old money, and he was probably not
less
corrupt than most of the voyants, but he hadn’t been aiming for war when Kail had seen him up on Heaven’s Spire, locked in place with tendrils of crystal jabbed into his fingers. He’d been a man trying to do the right thing, his body and mind shackled by magic.

“Can you break Ghyl’s hold on Bertram?” Kail asked as he got to his feet.

Desidora flung out a hand as Ghylspwr and the paladins leaped down the stairs and came at them. Bertram flinched, reeling in place, and then recovered and kept coming.

“Shielded,” Desidora hissed. “But are they all shielded?” She raised
both
hands this time, and something in her stance told Kail that she wasn’t trying to free the nobles from their paladin bands.

Both of the paladins paused as Desidora’s magic hit.

Then they smiled, raised their arms, and unleashed blasts of crimson light.

Kail saw it coming and dove from the little platform, rolling as he landed on a wooden bridge. He heard the other blast hit Desidora, who splashed into the water behind him.

“The death priestess,” one of the paladins called out. “See how she twists the very essence of magic with her unholy power?”

“If only we had wards that could prevent her from draining the life from us as she would some pathetic sack of meat,” said the other. “Ah, wait. We do. Mister Lively sends his regards.” He turned to Kail, who hadn’t stopped running, and raised his band again. “Which one is this?”

Kail reached another platform and ducked behind the vine-wrapped marble column that rose from it as blasts of energy cracked and hissed around him.

“Oh, of course!” cried the first one. “Binjamet duQuaille, the petty thief whose mother we arrested.”

More blasts of energy flashed past, and Kail hunkered down. The blasts sizzled as they hit the water, and fish bobbed to the surface, floating belly up.

“Does this Binjamet have any powers I should be worried about?” said the second one. He was moving, his steps light but audible on one of the wooden bridges. Kail looked over, saw him come into view on one side, flanking him, and dove into the water.

He realized quickly that the water was only waist high, and pulled himself along the bottom more than swam. He heard a froth of bubbles behind him as the blast hit where he had been, and the water near his feet burned for a moment.

He wanted to come up for air but pulled himself along slowly instead. Splashing would tell them where he was, but the pool was filled with lily pads and fish and flowers and crap, and if he moved slowly, he thought it possible that he might not die immediately.

Blasts struck the water a ways away, and then off in the other direction, hissing and bubbling. Kail pinched his nose, looked up, and aimed for a patch of darkness as he came up as quietly as he could, lungs burning.

He was under one of the wooden bridges, which arched just enough to give him room to get his head out of the water.

“Where are you, little man?” called the first paladin from right over his head. “Your file doesn’t say anything about breathing underwater, so you must be here somewhere.”

“His file doesn’t say much of anything,” the other paladin called back from behind one of the marble pillars, and Kail heard the sound of a blast hitting the water again. “No magic. The Silkworth girl is better with locks and has alchemical training. I suppose Lochenville keeps him around out of sentiment.”

“Kun-kabynalti osu fuir’is!”
Ghylspwr shouted again, and above his head, Kail heard the first ancient sigh.

“We’re not going to kill you,” the paladin called out begrudgingly, and sent another blast of crimson into the water, frying some lily pads and sending more fish to the surface. “But if I have to get wet searching, you’re not going to be happy when I find you.”

Kail reached up, grabbed his ankle, and pulled hard. The paladin fell, and Kail lunged onto the bridge on top of him.

He got in two good punches before the paladin got in a kick that flung Kail away, and the scout got back to his feet to see the paladin coming at him, grinning broadly, black coat flaring dramatically. “Oh, look at you, fighting.”

“Yeah, look at me,” Kail said, and came in swinging.

The paladin blocked one punch, stepped away from a second, and spun into a kick that caught Kail in the chest and flung him across the bridge and onto the platform at the other side. He hit the marble, rolled into the column hard enough to bounce off, and sent a lovely reading chair toppling into the pool as he slammed into it.

“Shall I?” the other paladin called, and Kail looked over to see that the man had his arm raised, pointed dead on target.

“Don’t strain yourself.” The first paladin walked lightly across the bridge, still grinning. “He’s weak enough that you might accidentally kill him, and Commander Ghylspwr wants him alive.” He cracked his knuckles. “You see, little man, this is for your own good.”

“Uh-huh.” Kail looked past him at Bertram, who had crossed a bridge onto one of the platforms. He held Ghylspwr up high, as though lifting the weapon for a better view.

Kail could see the memory of his own eyes in Bertram’s.

“Ghylspwr wants me alive, huh? Why’s that? Is his mother lonely?” He jerked his chin at Ghylspwr. “Listen, Ghyl, she can’t be that lonely, because when I went to her place last night, there was a line out around the corner.”

“Kutesosh gajair’is!”
Ghylspwr yelled, and Bertram flung the mighty warhammer.

Kail was in the water before it even left Bertram’s hand.

He dove, came up, heard the warhammer hit the marble column and shatter it, and saw the asshole paladin’s smug expression wiped off his face as a bunch of shattered rock came down on top of him.

But Kail only gave it a glance, because he was pulling himself out of the water, rolling back onto a bridge just as a crimson flash of light ripped into the pool where he’d been, killing even
more
poor fish. Then Kail was up, running, over the bridge, to the platform, to the next bridge, and then to the platform where Bertram still stood.

The former archvoyant had not moved from his throw. He stood like a statue or a broken puppet, arm extended, hand open.

“Bertram!” Kail yelled. “Bertram!”

He reached the man, the poor broken man with the tortured eyes, and slapped his hand shut. “Bertram! He’s not in your hand! He’s not in your hand!” Kail pushed the man’s hand into a fist, his dark hands holding Bertram’s shut. “He’s not here!”

Bertram blinked. He looked at his hand. “I . . . I . . .”

Kail met his eyes, and Bertram sagged and fell into him, arms going taut around him.

Kail wanted to flinch and pull away, but some things were more important.

He was interrupted by mocking laughter, and he turned to see the other ancient. “Was this your plan?” the paladin said as he crossed a bridge, arm trained on Kail.

“Maybe there’s a reason they keep me around after all, huh?” Kail called back.

“A clever tongue?” The paladin shook his head. “A witty slave is more trouble than he’s worth.”

“You’re right,” Kail said, and gently pushed Bertram behind him. He looked down. Bertram’s hands were squeezed shut of their own volition now, and with a smile, Kail turned back to the paladin. “And I sure as Byn-kodar’s hell can’t fight you. But you know, you’ve overlooked two things that really should’ve been in that file of yours.”

The paladin stepped onto a bridge, still smiling. “And those are?”

“First off,” Kail said, “you don’t wanna go after a lady who manipulates magical energy
with magical energy
, because that’s probably just gonna piss her off.”

The paladin paused on the bridge, and the water around him began to froth.

“And second, Diz doesn’t just mess with energy. She can make zombies too. If only we had a giant pile of dead fish nearby for her to play with.” The paladin looked down at the frothing water, and Kail smiled, “Ah, wait. We do.”

A writhing mass of golden scales and white bellies roared out of the water, mouths gaping, and hit the paladin like a solid wave of flesh. He hit the water, screaming, and as he went under, the water around him churned white, and then red.

“Nicely done,” Desidora said as she rose from the water, standing upon fish that floated belly up to support her weight. She was drenched, her sopping hair and dress pitch black.

There was a time when that would’ve bothered Kail.

Today, he grabbed Bertram. “You too, Diz. Come on.”

She turned, her skin chalk white, gazing at the pile of rubble under which Ghylspwr sat. “He’s down there!”

“Diz. Not now. You’ve got nothing that can hurt him, and if he gets into a paladin’s hand, we’re dead.”

“He used me,” she said, and even through the coldness of her death aura, Kail heard the hurt. “He lied to me.”

“And you’ll make him pay for that someday, Diz, I promise.” Kail took her arm, not hard. “Not today.”

She turned, her eyes dark, and then she blinked, and her hair slid back to red, and her dress to pale green. She nodded shortly and pushed past him to where Tahla lay at the foot of the steps. She checked the woman’s pulse, then grimaced and shook her head.