“Well, you did hit him,” Maldynado guessed. “And you’re an intimidating figure. He probably lost the urge to fight after he wet himself.”
Yara snorted.
Maldynado headed for her, but paused, his gaze drawn by a light across the park.
“Thanks for helping,” Yara half-mumbled. “Not that I couldn’t have handled those two on my own, but, if I hadn’t been able to, it’s good you were there to-Maldynado, are you listening?”
“Uhm.” Maldynado pointed at the mill building where soft green light glowed behind the windows and seeped out through cracks between the timbers. “This night is getting stranger and stranger.”
• • •
Maldynado and Yara crouched beside a rusty donkey engine ten meters from the mill. The stout machine, with its broad base and vertical boiler, offered the last bit of cover before one had to cross the gravel paths and short-cropped grass surrounding the old building. A pair of tall, split-log doors marked the front of the structure. One stood ajar, allowing a slash of sickly green light to flow out.
“What’s the plan?” Yara whispered.
“I was hoping the rest of the team would show up and tell us,” Maldynado said. They’d passed two more bodies on their way to the mill, but encountered no sign of their comrades.
“Do you always wait for others to take charge?”
“Surely, as an enforcer, you’re familiar with the chain-of-command concept. And with being one of the lower links.”
“Surely you’re familiar with the concept of the lower links being capable enough to step up and take charge when the upper links aren’t around.”
A snippy comment came to Maldynado’s lips, about how she wasn’t taking charge or offering ideas either, but he merely said, “Not really. If Amaranthe is missing, Sicarius bosses people around. If they’re both gone, Books lectures us until we submit to him. If those three are all gone… it’s usually time to go find a drink and a woman.” He rubbed his head. Maybe it was the arguing, but a headache had taken up residence behind his eyes.
“Your devotion to your duty is impressive,” Yara said.
“You should be impressed that, in the absence of my teammates, I haven’t dragged you off into the bushes to engage in carnal relations yet.”
Yara bared her teeth. “You could try.”
Maldynado wouldn’t admit it, but he found the idea of facing rogue soldiers and creepy magic less intimidating. “I’ll look in the mill. Watch my back, will you?” He flicked a finger at the crossbow Yara had claimed for herself.
“Acceptable.”
At least she was willing to take orders if he gave them. Yara must believe that, as a newer member of the team, she held a lower rank than he did. Or maybe she just wanted him to be the one to wander in and get fried by some strange, light-emitting doodad.
After eyeing each window and door for signs of people-snipers, more specifically-Maldynado crept toward the closest wall. Full darkness had fallen, but the green light leaking between the timbers cast its glow onto the grass. His skin appeared sallow under the influence. His headache grew in intensity, and he thought of the device Shaman Tarok had deposited in the lake the spring before, and how its power had contaminated water over a hundred miles away, not to mention filling the forest with deranged glowing-eyed animals. Maldynado hoped this light lacked similar properties.
He paused a few steps from a window with a shattered pane. A crossbow quarrel protruded from the frame, and a second one had probably been responsible for the breakage.
Careful not to make a sound, Maldynado eased closer. Scratched and dulled by time, the window offered a poor view. He wiped away a circle of grime and spattered grass clippings from the last mowing. A single, large room with worn wooden floorboards stretched before him. Old mill machinery, the cutting blades removed, had been pushed into corners, leaving a large open area in the center. A squat cylindrical device sat on the floor, emitting the light from four holes in a dome-shaped top.
Two men lay crumpled on the floor on either side of it.
“Emperor’s balls,” Maldynado whispered. It was Books and Akstyr, neither of them moving. Maldynado wasn’t even sure if they were breathing.
For a second, he thought about running inside and dragging them out, but the dull ache behind his eyes had turned to stabbing pain. He had to escape that light for a minute. He and Yara could figure out what to do from across the field.
Before Maldynado could step away from the window, cold, sharp steel touched his neck. Curse Yara, she was supposed to be watching his back.
His first notion was to hurl an elbow backward and try to catch his attacker off balance, but the dagger pressed deeper. Another hair, and it’d slice into his flesh.
Maldynado eased his hands out to the sides, palms open. “Mind if we step away from the light?” he murmured, careful not to let his emperor’s apple dance about-and get cut. “I think it’s melting my brain.”
“Tell me what you know about it.”
Maldynado’s jaw dropped, a movement he promptly regretted, because it made the knife cut into his skin. But the speaker-the person with the blade to his throat-was the emperor.
“Sire?” Maldynado squeaked.
“Did you arrange for this trap when you were in town?”
“No! We were shopping. Look, I’ll show you our bags. We left them on the path-”
“Sire,” came Yara’s voice. “He didn’t arrange this. There was a conversation I should tell you about, but I heard enough to know it wasn’t about sending men to your hiding place.”
Maldynado bit his lip to keep from snapping at Yara for not warning him about Sespian’s approach. Best to stand still and not dig himself into a hole-a deeper hole.
A long moment passed before the blade disappeared from Maldynado’s neck. He touched his skin and grimaced when blood came away on his fingers.
Arms wide, Maldynado turned, intending to impress upon Sespian just how innocent he was, but the emperor was already stalking away. Basilard had joined Yara by the steam donkey. His approach must have kept her from noticing Sespian as he sneaked up on Maldynado. That Sespian could sneak so well was surprising. Maldynado might have to reassess his image of the young emperor as a harmless, bookish sort.
Basilard waved for attention as soon as everyone stood in the shadow of the donkey engine. Maldynado realized he was the only one there who could understand his hand signs.
We routed the men in black, but we must figure out a way to retrieve Books and Akstyr. Basilard pointed to the building. That device didn’t start glowing and affecting us — he paused to touch his temple- until they were inside. The men with the crossbows tried to ambush us while we ate. I noticed them coming, and we took to the field, but there were a lot of them firing rapidly. We decided to take cover in the mill. As soon as we approached, Akstyr said he sensed magic inside. We were being shot at, so he and Books volunteered to go in and investigate. I don’t know if they turned the device on or if it fired up of its own accord, but they fell unconscious before they could run back out. It’s been at least twenty minutes, and they haven’t moved.
“What’s he saying?” Yara asked.
Maldynado translated.
When he finished, Sespian added, “It was a trap. I think we were all meant to be in there when the device turned on. I don’t know how these men knew we were here-” the look Sespian gave Maldynado dripped with significance, “-but they did.”
“Sire,” Yara said, “it’s possible the soldiers identified you when the group stopped on the road to discuss crossing the bridge. Just because we didn’t have spyglasses doesn’t mean they lacked them.”
It felt strange to have Yara come to his defense, but Maldynado was relieved she was doing so. “How many of these blokes in black did you cut down?” he asked. “Any idea whose stray cubs they are?”
Basilard considered the park while he tallied numbers on his fingers. Fourteen.