Con & Conjure

Chapter 3

I looked at Mychael and felt a little sick.

Telling the man you were in love with that the man you used to be in love with was here on business was one thing. When your present love was the top law enforcement officer, and your past fiancé was the kingdoms’ top assassin . . . well, the thought made you queasy.

“Well?” Mychael asked. A man of few words.

“I found both of them.”

I stood and went over to the dirty window. Prince Chigaru was being carefully lifted onto a litter, loyal snake-in-the-grass Chatar by his side no doubt waiting for another chance.

Or was I wrong?

I knew I wasn’t, at least I didn’t think so, but it just didn’t make sense.

“Raine,” Mychael was saying. “Who is it?”

“Chatar.”

“Who?”

“The healer out there working on Chigaru.”

Mychael was instantly at the door, opened it and called to Tam. I didn’t share Mychael’s urgency. Chatar wouldn’t try anything with Imala and her agents watching his every move, and guessing his next one. Tam stepped through the doorway and I told him what I’d seen.

“Raine, Chatar has been the prince’s personal physician for three years,” Tam said. “Are you certain?”

“It was fired from a small dart gun,” I told him. “Chatar’s hands loaded it. I saw the tattoos on the backs of his hands.”

Tam glowered. “Damn.”

“Ditto.”

“I’ll have to handle this carefully,” Tam murmured. “Chatar is one of the prince’s closest confidants.” He left the office and gestured to Imala. You could have heard a fish scale drop on that dock as Imala crossed to him, and Tam leaned down close to Imala’s ear. Her expression gave absolutely nothing away as she looked to me. When I nodded, Imala’s eyes hardened, but she made it a point not to look at Chatar. Instead she tilted her head up and spoke quickly to Tam. He turned and came back to us.

“Imala will post agents with the prince and Chatar to keep another attempt from being made. She will question those on the yacht to get Chatar’s whereabouts from the time the yacht entered the harbor until I brought the prince out of the water. His cabin will also be searched.” He looked at me, eyebrows lifted.

“Yes, I’m sure. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.”

“What about the crossbowman?” Mychael asked.

“Well . . .” I started.

Phaelan had walked over to the doorway, and saw what had to be a sickly look on my face.

“I found our crossbowman,” I told him. I paused. “I love it when my past comes back to bite me in the ass.”

Phaelan knew precisely who I was talking about. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Wish I was.”

“Dammit.”

“And then some.”

“Is he here for anyone else?”

“Don’t know.” And I didn’t really want to know since that other person on Rache’s to-kill list could very well be me. As angry as he’d been the day I broke off our engagement, he’d off me for free.

Mychael was looking from one of us to the other. “Who?”

“Want me to tell him?” Phaelan asked.

I sighed. “Might as well.”

“Rache Kai,” Phaelan said. “Heard of him?”

Mychael nodded. “Assassin. The best.”

“That’s the one.” Phaelan looked expectantly at me.

I waved my hand. “Go ahead, tell him.”

“He’s also Raine’s ex-fiancé.”

“I broke up with him nearly a decade ago,” I told a stunned Mychael. I did a little cringe of my own. “It really could have gone better.”

Mychael’s expression didn’t give anything away. He quietly asked, “Where was his shooting perch?”

“I broke off contact once I knew it was Rache, but I can track him to the ends of the earth.”

“She knows him very well,” Phaelan added helpfully.

I shot my cousin a withering look.

“I didn’t know who he was back then,” I hurried to add. “I mean, of course I knew who he was. I didn’t know what he was. I broke off our engagement when I found out. ‘Young’ and ‘stupid’ pretty much sum up my early twenties.” I stopped blabbering, taking Mychael’s continued silence as an accusation, when it was probably just an inability to get a word in edgewise. “Or didn’t you ever do anything stupid when you were young?”

My fist had a death grip on the crossbow bolt. I wanted nothing more than to let it go, but I knew I wasn’t finished with it yet—though no doubt the killer elf on the other end would gleefully be done with me. A bit of advice: before you get involved with a man, make sure he’s not a killer for hire; and if he is and you decide to ditch him, make sure he’s a crappy shot.

Mychael looked at me for a moment, a hint of a smile on his lips. “It’s a wonder I lived to see thirty.”

“I’m continually amazed that I lived through my teens,” Tam muttered.

Phaelan grinned. “Hell, it’s a good day for me when I live past breakfast.”

Imala quickly strode over to Mychael. “I need transport through the city for the prince with a Guardian escort.”

“Done.”

“And I need a perimeter set up around the Greyhound Hotel.”

“My men are already there.” Mychael frowned. “Preparing for the prince’s arrival, in two days.”

Imala glanced at the prince and I swear she growled. “I didn’t know.” She said it like she’d already said it a couple dozen times today and knew she’d say it dozens more. Chigaru was going to get a lecture from the head of his secret service, too.

At least something good was going to come from all of this.

Chigaru’s guards managed to get their prince into a coach and on his way to the Greyhound Hotel. The coach was surrounded by goblin guards, and the goblins were surrounded by Guardians. Mychael wasn’t taking any chances that any of Chigaru’s guards might be tempted to make a slight detour to take down any crossbow-toting elves. You could carry pretty much any weapon you wanted to around Mid; you just had to fill out reams of paperwork. Phaelan claimed that if your hand survived all the name signing, it’d be worthless for wielding the weapon you went to all the trouble to be able to carry.

Mago felt safe enough joining the prince at the hotel. Yes, he was an elf, but he wasn’t carrying a crossbow, the prince knew him—but most importantly, the prince didn’t know him as a Benares. A cover of a respectable mild-mannered banker definitely had its advantages, especially now.

Me? I had no cover and no hope of obtaining any anytime soon. If Sathrik had hired Rache, Rache had to know that I was on Mid. For all I knew, Sathrik probably slipped Rache a little something extra to turn me into a crossbow cushion, too. After I’d broken up with Rache, I went to a lot of trouble to get as much information on my professionally homicidal ex as I could. Sometimes survival just meant knowing more about your adversary than they thought you knew. I’d been ignorant about Rache once; I swore never to be that way again. Our paths had crossed several times since then, but never with fatal results. Though I’d always known that Rache was the patient sort.

“Rache prefers upscale accommodations,” I told Mychael. “But he’s willing to sleep in the dirt if his client pays him enough.”

“Sathrik has always been willing to pay for what he wants,” Tam said.

The goblin king was generous and giving—just what I didn’t want to hear.

“At least he can’t glamour,” Mychael said.

“Not a spark of magic to his name, thank . . . what did you say?”

“Rache Kai can’t glamour.”

“And you know this, how?”

“I know Rache.”

“Apparently not as well as you know Rache,” Tam chimed in.

I wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. Though Mychael’s bombshell wasn’t going to go unnoticed. “Personally or professionally?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

Mychael was the Guardian commander, but in his former professional life, he’d also been a Black Cat. Officially, they had no name, though were called Black Cats by certain criminal elements who had the bad luck to come into contact with one. Like a black cat in a dark alley, you might catch a glimpse of one, but if you blinked, it was gone. Black Cat operatives had reported to the elven throne, were trained to do what was needed, where it was needed, and to whom it was needed, going where the law couldn’t go.

Mychael had been one.

And Mychael knew Rache.

“I’ve had to stop him on more than one occasion,” Mychael was saying.

“Has he seen your face?”

“Not my real one.”

Rache couldn’t glamour, but Mychael could; and as one of the best spellsingers there was, he could also alter his voice. A master of disguise was my Mychael.

“Did your ‘not real self’ piss Rache off?”

Mychael grinned. “Just every chance I got. We often found ourselves at odds.”

Phaelan spoke up. “He’d been hired to off someone you’d been asked to keep alive?”

“Something like that.” Mychael turned to me. “Which is why I want you off the streets as soon as you can tell me where he is.”

“We know he’s been hired to assassinate Chigaru,” I said. “I’ve been walking around this island for three months now. Word spread pretty quick that I was here with the Saghred. If Rache had wanted me, he could have come and tried to get me anytime.”

“You said Rache wouldn’t kill a fly unless someone had paid him,” Phaelan said.

I resisted the urge to punch my cousin. “I’m personal. Rache knew I was in Mermeia. He didn’t come after me then, and he won’t come after me now.”

At least I hoped not.

“Unless you try leading every Guardian on the island to his hideout,” Phaelan continued. “I don’t know about Rache, but I’d take that personally.”

And I was thinking about personally yanking my cousin behind the harbormaster’s shack and kicking his ass.

I shot him a look that said just that. “We can stand around here talking, or we can go and get ourselves an assassin.”

“Absolutely not,” was Mychael’s response when I said I needed to be there when they caught him.

“Mychael, just because I tell you where he is, doesn’t mean he’s going to stay put for you. By the time your men get there, he’ll be gone. Rache can smell someone coming after him.”

“And he won’t be smelling you. I’ve caught him by surprise before.”

“And he’s still alive.”

“So am I,” Mychael countered.

“And so am I. You know I have to be at the front of your hunting party for this to work.”

His frown told me he knew it and he didn’t like it.

That made two of us.

I knew that finding Rache wasn’t going to be easy. He knew me and he knew how I worked. Yes, I’d learned a lot as a seeker since I’d last seen Rache, but no doubt he’d been keeping up with me just like I’d been keeping up with him. And even though my seeking skills had been multiplied by a factor of a hundred thanks to the power boost I’d gotten from the Saghred, the rock had merely enhanced the skill set that I already had.

Rache knew that skill set. He’d volunteered to let me practice my tracking spells on him. He’d gotten entirely too good at staying one step ahead of me. I usually found him. Eventually. That was then and for practice. This was now and for keeps.

It didn’t take me long to pick up Rache’s trail. The impressions from the crossbow bolt had reminded me of any details that I had forgotten. I hadn’t forgotten much, and it didn’t take me long to recall every last bit of it. We found that he’d been staying at an inn in the entertainment district. It had the benefit of a lot of people coming and going, and no one really paid attention to anyone else. Everyone was focused on their own pleasure—unless their pleasure involved finding someone else. Rache had the knack for making people either not want to be anywhere near him—or to be very close to him.

Yep, I’d been young and stupid.

And I’d been in love. My first and, I thought, my last time.

Until Mychael.

When I was in training to be a seeker, I’d thought that tracking Rache was just good practice. Though if I’d been paying attention, I’d have noticed that he was way too good at staying one step ahead of me. Rache claimed to be a merchant, which explained why he traveled a lot. That he was a successful merchant explained why he would bring me such expensive presents when he returned. That certainly explained the travel, money, and the uncanny ability to avoid detection and capture. Not a skill set often seen in your average merchant.

But downright critical in your above average assassin.

“Anything?”

Mychael was about twenty paces back, giving me enough room to work, but when you share some kind of mysterious magical bond with someone that lets you talk to each other without speaking, personal space changes into something that’s neither space nor personal. I hadn’t minded until now. Being able to talk without speaking to the man I was sleeping with was fun, and being able to do it in public took it a couple of steps and a leap over from fun and into naughty fun. But having the man I loved inside my head while I was hunting the man I used to love took awkward to a whole new level.

“He’s ahead.” It was all I said because it was all I knew. Rache was still ahead of us. I couldn’t sense that he was moving, but we didn’t seem to be getting any closer to him, either. The Rache I’d known and broken up with wasn’t a magic user; he wasn’t even a magic dabbler. Though maybe he’d lied to me about that, too. I didn’t want to find out now that Rache followed our breakup with an extended period of self-improvement.

Just in case, I quietly muttered my personal shields into place. They’d deflect a crossbow bolt—or a novice magic user’s attempt to fry me.

The farther toward the city center we got, the more uneasy I became. There were plenty of places for an assassin to hide—but only one was protected by wards, guards, and diplomatic immunity.

The elven embassy.

And guess what? That’s where Rache’s trail went cold.

The elven embassy was located half a block from the goblin embassy. And judging from the guards in full battle armor punctuating the walls around both compounds, everyone knew everything that had happened in the harbor. Everyone also looked entirely too eager to find a reason to retaliate. Retaliation of the painful, bloody, and deadly kind.

Neither Mychael, his Guardians, nor I shared the same homicidal need.

All of us were presently standing between the two embassies, but across the street from either one. I wasn’t comfortable with our proximity to either embassy’s range of fire. I think some of Mychael’s boys were beginning to reach the same conclusion.

“This isn’t a good place, sir.” Leave it to Vegard to say what we were all thinking.

Mychael’s stony gaze went from the elven embassy to the goblin embassy. “Which one?”

I knew that question was for me, and I also knew that I had no idea how to answer him. I stood a fifty-percent chance of being right—or wrong. Truth was, I didn’t want to go into either place. I’d been inside the elven embassy once, gotten trapped, damned near died, and didn’t want a repeat of either experience. I hadn’t been inside the goblin embassy, but if the exterior trappings—sharpened black iron stakes for fence railings, and blood-red wards sizzling on the gates—were any preview of what waited inside, I’d rather stand here in the street. Not to mention, I was an elf, a member of the race that all believed just tried to kill a goblin prince.

Embassy Row was normally crowded with coaches and pedestrians this time of day.

There wasn’t a living soul to be seen.

People knew what had happened. They were smart enough to stay away from the elven and goblin embassies. If someone fired a shot or launched a spell, Embassy Row would turn into ground zero for the beginning of a war.

Unless they were crazy, people usually stayed away from war zones.

We were standing right in the middle of the street. I guess that made us several kinds of crazy.

The elven embassy looked like it was expecting a full-scale attack at any moment. The guards appeared ready to shoot anything that moved wrong. And to put the paranoia icing on the cake, the embassy actually had battlements complete with armed and patrolling guards. Some of those guards had partners—nearly waist high, dark, sleek, and red eyed. Werehounds.

Rache had tried to kill Prince Chigaru—a goblin. There were plenty of goblins who wanted him dead, but so did a lot of elves.

Left or right. Elf or goblin.

Take your pick.

I didn’t want either one.

“This is a quandary,” Vegard noted.

My Guardian bodyguard had the gift for ultimate understatement.

I looked back toward the elven embassy. A man I knew only too well stood on its marble stairs, watching me, wearing the same smarmy and smug expression he usually did.

You could see Taltek Balmorlan in a room and look right past him—which was exactly what the elven inquisitor wanted. The word that described him best was average. His hair and eyes were an unremarkable shade of dull brown. He was of average height with average looks. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about his appearance.

It was perfect camouflage for the predator he was.

Balmorlan wanted war with the goblins. Balmorlan would want Prince Chigaru dead.

Taltek Balmorlan wanted me.

He was an inquisitor for elven intelligence. That was his job title. What he actually did was deal in weapons, and in a world of magic, mages were weapons—so Balmorlan dealt in mages. I called it kidnapping; Balmorlan called it doing business. Guess who was at the top of his shopping list?

I stepped out into the street.

“Ma’am,” Vegard cautioned.

Mychael didn’t say a word either out loud or inside my head. He knew what Balmorlan had planned for me.

Unable to get his hands on the Saghred, the elven inquisitor had found a way to bond other mages to me, which would allow them to tap and use the Saghred—by using me. He’d had a warded cell built in the elven embassy with Level Twelve wards, detainment spells layered for strength, and magic-depleting manacles bolted to the walls.

All he was missing was me in those manacles.

I was Balmorlan’s target.

And he was mine.

Rache’s trail ended here. With all the wards and spells protecting both embassy compounds, he could be in either one, though I was leaning toward the elves as Rache’s latest clients. Taltek Balmorlan and his elven government allies had access to more money than was in the elven royal treasury.

He could afford Rache. Easily.

Besides, Imala Kalis was firmly in control of the goblin embassy. She was working every waking hour to plan the coup that would kick Sathrik off the throne and put Chigaru on it, not put the prince in the Mal’Salin family crypt.

I stood there, letting Taltek Balmorlan get an eyeful. It was all he was going to get, and I gave him a smug smile of my own to let him know it.

“Is he in there?” Mychael asked out loud and from right behind me, then he stepped up to stand by my side. I felt a surge of satisfied delight. Mychael and I were in the middle of Embassy Row. Vegard wasn’t with him, so he’d obviously asked him and his men to wait on the other side of the street.

Mychael beside me was an obvious challenge to Taltek Balmorlan—or Rache. Mess with my woman, and you mess with me, his posture said.

“I want you now,” I murmured.

“Right here in the street?” I heard the smile in his voice.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re a bad girl, Raine Benares.”

“You bet I am.”

“Can you sense him?”

“Not with all the distortion.”

“Those aren’t the same wards the elven embassy typically uses,” Mychael told me.

“Heavy-duty mage work?”

He nodded. “They’re blocking anything from getting out.”

I didn’t need three guesses as to what—or who—that something was.

“Can you get in?” I asked.

“Not without a warrant, and by the time I got one, Rache Kai would be long gone.”

That was when the shot came. It didn’t come from the elven embassy or the goblin embassy. It came from the building behind us.

I heard the whistle of an incoming bolt.

Everything went into slow motion. Mychael shoved me away from him and twisted his shoulders and chest sharply to the right. The bolt glanced off of Mychael’s breastplate with a metallic spark.

Armor-piercing bolts.

Rache wasn’t aiming at me.

That shot was intended for Mychael. If his reaction time had been any slower, he’d be dead.

I clearly saw Rache in a third-story window of the building behind us. The bastard wanted us to see him—wanted me to see him kill the man I loved. Then in a blink, Rache was gone and the window empty.

So were the stairs of the elven embassy.

No Rache. No Balmorlan.

No answers.