Con & Conjure

Chapter 21

Duke Markus Sevelien was the chief of elven intelligence. For the past few weeks, Markus had been officially—though not actually—dead. Taltek Balmorlan had arranged for his boss to have the kind of housewarming present that really warmed the house—by blowing it up then burning down what was left. As a result, Markus had found it advantageous to let Balmorlan and his allies inside the agency continue to believe that he’d died in that explosion. He thought he could better clean his agency of rats if they thought he was dead and came crawling out of the woodwork to take over the house.

As always, Markus’s timing was impeccable.

Markus wore his usual black, looking unusually elegant for a man who had been considered by most to be dearly departed until mere minutes ago. Though to ex-ambassador Giles Keril, the elven duke probably looked like Death himself with a newfound sense of style.

As the chief of elven intelligence, even one newly back from the dead, Markus had the right to take over the embassy and everyone in it. And with a grim-faced Vegard and at least four dozen Guardians armed to the teeth and beyond at his back, he was not only exercising his rights, but daring anyone to say or try to do anything about it. No one looked inclined to do either.

Vegard looked like he really wanted someone to try.

Giles Keril’s mouth hung open in shock. “Your Grace,” he managed. “I protest these charges.”

Markus gave him a chilly smile. “You deny that Raine and Phaelan Benares are at this moment imprisoned in the dungeons of this embassy with the intent of torture and death?”

The little man drew himself up to what little height he had. “I not only deny the charges, I demand to know the identity of my accusers. It is my right.”

If that wasn’t an entry line, I didn’t know what was. I looked at Phaelan. “Are my eyes still glowing?”

“Not as much as they were, but you still look scary as hell.”

“Bet you say that to all the girls.”

I walked and the guards parted. I even heard a sword drop. I gave them what I hoped was an evil glare. I hoped it wasn’t what I felt like, the grimace of a woman who was about to throw up on her own boots. Throwing up on myself wouldn’t exactly be intimidating. Phaelan stayed right by my side, his swagger telling every guard or embassy official we passed that “We’re wanted fugitives and you can’t do a damned thing about it.” I glanced at Phaelan, half expecting to see him sticking his tongue out.

Once the last of the gawking embassy bystanders parted and there was nothing between me and Giles Keril but a gratifyingly small section of empty floor, I got the satisfaction of seeing a man literally shake in his boots. I didn’t know if it was the shock of just seeing me upright and breathing, or the terror of seeing me upright, breathing, and with glowing eyes. It didn’t matter; I enjoyed it anyway.

“Good to see you, Raine.” Markus’s smooth greeting would have been right at home at an embassy cocktail party. He graciously inclined his head to Phaelan. “Captain Benares.”

“Good to be alive to be seen.” I stopped when I got close enough to Giles Keril to make him start to hyperventilate. I didn’t think Markus wanted him to faint quite yet. “Where’s Mychael?”

“The citadel, ma’am,” Vegard said. “We have a situation there.”

I felt a little sicker than I already was. “The Saghred?”

“The rock’s still where it’s supposed to be, but we have a thief in the house. The boss is trying to find him before he makes a try for it.”

“That thief’s a master glamourer.”

“He knows.”

I blinked. “How did—”

Vegard cleared his throat awkwardly. “He got a message from . . . uh, a mutual acquaintance of yours.”

Rache Kai.

First he killed Balmorlan’s mages, and then he warned Mychael about the goblin thief. If he thought that meant we owed him, he had another thing . . .

I stopped and smiled. Yeah, we did owe him. I was sure Rache had a reason for doing what he did, and there was even a remote possibility that reason didn’t have anything to do with Rache. He could have merely been thinking about someone else besides himself for a change. Yeah, and he probably had some mountain property to sell me in the Daith Swamp. I chuckled, and instantly three pairs of eyes were on me. Worried eyes.

I held up my hands. “I just thought of something funny; I haven’t gone over the edge.”

Markus stepped in close and kept his face neutral. Vegard was right behind him. “You don’t look well,” Markus murmured without moving his lips.

“Flirt,” I told him.

“Raine.”

Nothing like a joke you didn’t feel like making falling flat. “I . . . ate a mage.”

Markus didn’t so much as bat an eye. “I see.”

A master of understatement, my erstwhile employer. Truth was, if I let myself so much as think about what did happen and what nearly had happened, I’d want a cozy padded room all my own that I could curl up in the corner of.

“You might say I have a bit of indigestion right now that I’m trying really hard not to dwell on.”

“Understood.”

I was also trying really hard not to look at Vegard. I knew I’d see every flavor of pain and guilt in my big Guardian’s big blues. If I saw that, I just might lose what little grip I had. I think he knew.

“Ma’am,” he said, his voice tight. “This wouldn’t have happened if I—”

I raised my hand to stop him from finishing. If he finished, my grip on sanity might be the same. “Nothing you could have done. Shit happens.”

“Not to you and not on my watch,” Vegard growled. He paused uncomfortably. “Are you . . .”

Vegard wanted to know, but didn’t want to ask. Was I still in my right mind? Considering everything that’d happened since the Saghred had latched on to me like a soul-sucking leach, sanity was relative.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m still sane, whatever that means. And if I don’t think about the alternative, I won’t go skipping down that path.”

“In that case, you didn’t hear me ask.”

I gave him a curt nod. Denial has always worked great for me. It’d never made a problem go away, but I was in denial about that, too.

“You saved me the exertion of looking for you,” Markus said. “Though I confess I was rather looking forward to releasing these gentlemen to find you by any means possible.”

The men behind him didn’t look gentle in the least. They looked a bit disappointed, too.

“They can go collect Taltek Balmorlan, if they’d like,” I said. “That way their trip won’t be a complete waste.”

Markus’s dark eyes gleamed. “And where is my wayward and also soon-to-be-ex employee?”

Phaelan spoke up. “Special-built cell, Level Twelve wards, chained to the wall in magic-sapping manacles.” He glanced at me. “Did I get it right, cousin?”

“Perfectly.” I handed the satchel full of documents to Markus.

“What is—”

“Documents I found in Balmorlan’s office,” I told him. “Protect-with-your-life kind of documents. Promissory notes, deeds to property—I think I even saw a will—all signed by Taltek Balmorlan. He’s collecting money and anything else of value to fund his own war against the goblins and anyone else who gets in his way. I couldn’t take the time to go through the lot of them, but a couple of the documents I saw were witnessed by Carnades.”

For the first time in my life, I heard Markus Sevelien whistle.

Giles Keril picked that moment to faint.

Phaelan stepped aside to avoid Keril’s head hitting his boots. “Looks like he’s impressed, too.”

Markus raised his voice so that the entire embassy staff could hear. “Sir Vegard, I would like to formally request that your knights remain here to ensure a smooth and uneventful transition of power.”

The big Guardian grinned. “We’re here to serve, Your Grace.”

“And if you would be so kind as to select a few of your men to escort—or carry, as the case may be—ex-Ambassador Keril to a maximum security cell and see to it that he and ex-Inquisitor Balmorlan are not allowed to communicate in any way.”

Vegard inclined his head. “On behalf of the paladin and archmagus, the Conclave Guardians are honored to render any assistance we can to ensure the security of this island and the protection of its law-abiding citizens.” At the last part, he shot a dark look down at the sprawled Giles Keril.

“Nice,” I murmured.

Vegard flashed a grin. “Sounded good to me, too.”

Markus’s sharp black eyes scanned the room like he was memorizing every guilty face, at least half of which were trying to be casual while noting the nearest exits. “Raine, my apologies, but I need to remain here. I’ve found through unfortunate experience that after a person of power is removed from their post, the underlings have an annoying habit of vanishing along with evidence that may connect them to crimes their superiors may have committed.”

“There looked to be plenty of vacancies in the dungeon,” Phaelan suggested brightly.

Markus smiled. “That was to be my next request to Sir Vegard.”

The big Guardian’s eyes fell like a slab of granite on the nearest pack of bureaucrats who suddenly found the floor beneath their boots simply fascinating. “I’d recommend starting with the senior embassy staff and working our way down until we run out of cells.”

Markus nodded in approval. “Eminently practical.”

Vegard smiled in a quick flash of teeth. “I think you’ll be pleased with how many lackeys my men can fit in a cell.”

“Just leave me enough people to operate the embassy.”

“How many is that exactly?”

“More than myself.”

“Done.”

Vegard issued orders and the Guardians started herding bureaucrats in silly pseudo-military uniforms down the same stairs that Phaelan and I had sneaked up.

“There’s still a price on my head?” I asked Markus.

“Oh, yes. But I don’t believe any man who saw you right now would be foolish enough to attempt to collect.”

I snorted. “The citadel’s packed with fools.”

“You’re referring to Carnades?”

“The very one at the top of the Seat-of-Twelve heap.”

“Then you’ll want to know that when I left the citadel to come here, Carnades was being escorted to the archmagus’s office for questioning.”

“Questioning?”

Markus’s dark eyes glittered and he lowered his voice. “A result of your other cousin’s activities, I believe. Tell Mago that should he ever wish to change careers, I would gladly offer him a position in intelligence.”

As a testament to Phaelan’s determination to stick to me like glue, he did something even more terrifying than fight a werecrab.

He rode a sky dragon.

Speed was critical. Going by ground, even on the fastest horses, was out of the question. Less than five minutes versus half an hour or more equals no contest. I was on the second saddle behind Vegard, and Phaelan had a white-knuckled grip on the horn of his saddle behind a Guardian dragon pilot. My cousin sat rigidly upright, staring straight ahead, unblinking, unmoving, either from terror he was having now, or the fear of the terror he would have if he looked down. Phaelan had sailed into the teeth of the Straits of Mourning with half a crew and storm-ripped sails, but apparently taking him off the ground took away every bit of daredevil he had.

I didn’t like being on a sky dragon, either, but I liked the thought of Sarad Nukpana getting his hands on the Saghred—and thereby his hands on me—even less. Unlike Phaelan, I felt better if I kept my eyes on the ground. That’s where I wanted to be, and if I kept looking at it, maybe my stomach would believe we were actually going to make it there. The sun had not yet come up as we banked over the harbor on our approach to the citadel, and our dragons announced their landing intentions with deafening shrieks.

One of them sounded suspiciously like Phaelan.

I grinned, then started to laugh. I couldn’t help it, and I—

Choked. Did a bug fly in my—

My throat constricted as if a giant hand were tightening around it, clutching, suffocating me. I panicked and tried to pull air in. Nothing. With the pressure came a presence I instantly recognized.

The Saghred.

I felt close enough to the rock to smell it. Corruption, vile and sickening, like sour bile at the back of my throat. Ancient, rotten, and malignant.

The Saghred was me. I was the rock.

And the thief had both of us.

I didn’t see him; I didn’t have to. The bastard’s hand was wrapped around the rock, around me. He’d gotten past the guards and the wards, and had stolen the Saghred.

The rock wasn’t doing a damned thing to stop him.

It wanted to be taken.

The edges of my vision were going dark. Holy hell, I was going to pass out flying over the city. I clutched the saddle horn in front of me with one hand and pounded desperately on Vegard’s back with the other, grabbing at his shoulder.

Vegard turned, saw my face, and his eyes went wide. He shouted something I couldn’t hear. The roar I heard wasn’t the wind; it was my breath rasping, absurdly loud like I was trapped inside a box with no air, no light. I knew I wasn’t locked inside a box, and not only did I have plenty of air, I was flying through it. My body didn’t believe it, panicking, fighting to escape. My legs jerked with a mind of their own and did something very bad.

I kicked off the leg restraints, also known as the only things strapping me to a giant airborne lizard.

I fell off.

I clawed at the saddle as I slid from Kalinpar’s back. My hands, still weak from the manacles, slipped off of the smooth leather edge, my other grasping for something, anything.

Vegard’s big hand closed like a vise around my wrist.

“Shit!”

Vegard didn’t mince words. I couldn’t make them.

Vegard fought to keep Kalinpar steady, struggled to haul me back into the saddle or at the very least not drop me, while trying to keep from falling off himself. The morbid pessimist in the back of my head wondered if I fell, would I die instantly on impact, or would I get to feel myself break and/or splat into a million pieces; and if so, what would it feel like?

That made me scream, or at least try to.

“Give me your other hand!” Vegard bellowed.

My hand, arm, and the rest of me was dangling at talon level with Kalinpar. The dragon’s talons were the length of my hand. Had Kalinpar been trained to pluck a falling person out of the air without a fatal puncture?

“Raine!” Vegard screamed.

His grip was slipping.

Vegard didn’t have the leverage to pull me up, and I didn’t have the strength. The thief was on the move, carrying the boxed Saghred in a pocket or pouch. His pace was smooth and unhurried. No, he wouldn’t want to attract attention. I had a link with a rock that did nothing but destroy, and I couldn’t so much as burn a hole in the bastard’s pocket.

I wasn’t the Saghred. I was me, and I was dangling above the city, and the only thing between me and a messy death was getting back on a flying lizard. Thick leather straps crisscrossed underneath Kalinpar’s gray-scaled belly, strong enough to hold two saddles and two men.

Strong enough to hold a desperate-not-to-die elf.

A gust of wind caught my legs; Vegard’s gloved fingers slipped again. I screamed, this time in rage, and sound actually made it out. I was not going to fall. I was not going to die. I was going to get on the ground, run down a thief, take that rock away from him, and club him over the head with it. Hard. Repeatedly. I hooked the edge of my fingers under Kalinpar’s belly strap, then up to the second knuckle, then wrapped my fist around it with a white-knuckled death grip. Which was exactly what it was going to take to get me to let that leather strap go. Death himself would have to come and pry my fingers off one at a time.

“Hang on!” Vegard shouted.

I shot him a look and got a grin in return.

The grin widened. “You’re about to get a lift.”

What?

I looked down. There weren’t any buildings or streets, just a big, broad, scaled back. Phaelan’s pilot expertly guided his dragon up beneath where my legs dangled, staying just out of the way of Kalinpar’s powerful wings. The sky dragon’s back was as good as solid ground. Phaelan’s hands steadied my legs just below the knees. Vegard got a firm grip on my arm, and between the two of them—and a pathetic amount of assistance from me—got me back in the saddle. I wasted no time strapping my legs back onto Kalinpar’s sides where they belonged.

“Let’s get you on the ground,” Vegard shouted back at me.

I gasped for breath, and the rushing wind tried to take it away. “Thief . . . has the rock . . . not in citadel.”

Vegard’s eyes narrowed in fury. “Where?”

“Moving.”

“Can you track him?”

I only felt like I was riding in his pocket. I nodded.

Vegard signaled to Phaelan’s pilot to go to the citadel and get reinforcements.

I stopped fighting the contact with the rock. I couldn’t see where the thief was, but I could feel him, like an invisible string bound me to him. As we circled back from the citadel, the string tightened. I had no clue how I could sense the rock, yet couldn’t tap one iota of magic. I’d just add it to the absurdly long list of crap I didn’t understand.

“Down!” I shouted. “Need to be closer . . . to the street.”

“Hold on.”

I’d heard that sky dragons were nimble enough to fly and land pretty much anywhere. I’d never seen it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be in the saddle of one while it happened.

Vegard sent Kalinpar into a full dive.

Kalinpar shrieked in pure joy.

I just shrieked.

The sky dragon leveled out just below the rooftops in an entirely too small street. I got an up-close look at the goblin thief wearing what I guessed was his own skin, and he got the same view of the three of us. His eyes widened, right before he darted down a too-narrow-for-Kalinpar side street and out of our reach.

Vegard pulled back hard on the dragon’s reins and banked back up into the sky. My stomach tried to do the same. He leveled off just above the rooftops.

“Still sense him?”

The only sense I had was the need to be sick. I shoved it down, literally, and focused on the rock with everything I had. I might not have magic right now, but I had something even more powerful.

Stubbornness.

That thief wasn’t getting away. He couldn’t get away. If he did I’d wish I was dead or sharing the Saghred’s link with a bunch of pervert elf mages. They’d get to share the sensation of having people slaughtered and feel like they were being slaughtered on them, feel their souls being torn out of their dying bodies, those bodies disintegrated under the Saghred’s destructive magic.

Over and over again.

Dozens or hundreds or even thousands of times. Until the Saghred was full. Until it was at full power. And Sarad Nukpana and his king could turn that power against anyone they chose. Unrelenting. Unstoppable.

“Left!” I shouted.

I followed the thief and guided Vegard to an intersection that might be big enough to land in. Not that we had a choice. The thief was there, so we were going to land.

It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was far from the best. We were less than a dozen or so blocks from the citadel, but we weren’t close enough that they’d come running if I screamed loud enough.

The sun wasn’t up, and the dregs of Mid’s society were still out. They scattered when Kalinpar swooped in for a landing, claws extended.

Vegard swung a long leg over the dragon’s neck and smoothly dismounted.

I smoothly fell off.

“You look green, ma’am.”

“Feel green.”

“You gonna make it?”

“Not if we don’t get that rock back.”

He gave me a hand up and I took it. Behind us, Kalinpar snorted.

“Stay,” Vegard told him. “Signal.”

In response, the sky dragon tossed back his head and sent a plume of blue flame straight up above the rooftops. Any Guardian pilots in the air couldn’t miss that.

The plume also lit the outlines of some less-than-scrupulous individuals closing in on Kalinpar or at least thinking about it. The dragon turned his massive head in their direction, and I swear he smiled.

Vegard saw it, too. “Signal first. Play later.”

Kalinpar stopped smiling and sent a short, miffed plume in the air, angled slightly toward the nearest thug. The thugs jumped back. The dragon smiled.

We left Kalinpar to his amusements.

We had to catch a thief.