“Atre!” Surprised, Brader loosened his hold on Seregil just enough for him to elbow the man in the ribs and slip free.
As Atre thrashed in pain, his free foot hit the bottle,
sending it spinning toward the edge of the stage between two footlights.
Seregil lunged after it and caught it one-handed just as it tipped over the edge. At the same instant two large hands clapped around his and Seregil found himself fetched up painfully against one of the footlights, looking down at Micum Cavish’s pale face.
“You take her,” Seregil gasped, releasing the bottle very carefully into his friend’s hands. Micum pressed it to his lips with a gasp of relief. It held Illia’s ring.
Seregil got to his feet clutching his wounded shoulder and looked back at Brader, expecting an attack. But the man was on his back in a pool of blood, one of Alec’s arrows protruding from his heaving chest. Seregil scanned the theater and Alec waved to him from one of the boxes-the one they’d been sitting in with Kylith a few short months ago-and started down for the front of the theater. The front doors stood open now, explaining how Alec and Micum had gotten in while he and the others had been distracted.
Grimacing in pain and feeling a little dizzy from blood loss, Seregil picked up his poniard with his left hand and stood over Atre. The man coughed out a spray of bloody spittle; it reminded Seregil of the black poisoned blood running down Thero’s cheek, and he resisted the urge to kick the remaining life out of Atre.
Instead he knelt beside the dying actor, placing the needle-sharp point of the poniard to his throat. “How do we restore Illia’s soul? Tell me!”
Atre let out a wheezing laugh. “Or what? You’ll kill me?”
“Slowly.”
“Too late for that, I’m afraid. Unless you let me drink.”
“Those are swallowtail arrowheads,” Alec informed him as he climbed onto the stage to join them. “They have to be cut out, and even then you probably won’t live.”
“Let me drink,” Atre rasped again. “If you do, then I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“I’ll get it,” Micum said.
“You’re not serious!” Alec gasped.
Micum regarded him stonily. “It’s my girl’s life. And you know the ones in the bottles with the completed seals are already dead.” With that, he climbed onto the stage and disappeared behind the scrim.
“He’s right,” said Seregil.
Alec picked up the fallen chain and examined Elani’s jewels. “Seregil, there’s a stone missing from the brooch.”
“My pocket,” Atre gasped. “Take it. I haven’t hurt her.”
Seregil searched him none too gently and found the loose stone. It fit the mounting on the brooch. “All right. Is Brader still alive, Alec?”
Alec bent over the other man. “Yes.”
Brader raised a bloody hand, motioning him closer. Alec went to one knee and bent over him. “What is it?”
“The company-” The way Brader’s voice gurgled in his throat spoke of a punctured lung, or worse. “Merina and the others. They know nothing about any of this. They had no part. I’ve no right to ask, I know, but please, I beg you, spare them! I swear to you, they had no part-”
“Do you know how to restore Illia’s soul?”
“The necklace.” Brader waved weakly in Atre’s direction. “Use it! Use-necklace. He always did. Will you swear? Please! My children-”
“Unlike you, we don’t kill the innocent,” Seregil growled. “And if they are innocent, we’ll see that no harm comes to them.”
Brader looked up at Alec, eyes growing dim. “I’m so sorry-for all of them.”
As they watched, Brader let out a racking, bloody cough, shuddered, and went still.
“Saved us the trouble,” Seregil sneered, then broke off as Brader began to change before his eyes. The long, bloodless face crumpled in on itself as the skin went brown and leathery. In moments the corpse was wizened to the bone, shrunken limbs like old sticks wrapped in rags, fingers curled like leathery claws, the skin brown and dull as an old boot. Only his hair remained as it has been, coppery red against the crimson blood pooling under his head.
“Looks like you and Thero were right about what they were doing with those souls,” said Alec. “How old do you think they really were?”
Seregil looked down at Atre and snorted. “Far too old.”
Micum returned with a sealed bottle.
“Quickly!” gasped Atre.
Seregil took the phial, broke the seal, and held it tantalizingly close to Atre’s lips without actually giving it to him.
“Tell me.”
“Drink-first. Or I take it to the grave.”
Micum looked ready to do murder. But instead he softly implored, “Seregil, please.”
Gritting his teeth, Seregil tipped the contents of the phial into Atre’s mouth. The actor swallowed convulsively, half choking, then shuddered violently. Seregil was afraid it had killed him, but instead color flooded into Atre’s cheeks and his eyes went vague and glassy. In spite of the arrows embedded in his body, he looked as strikingly handsome as he ever had onstage.
“Ah, that’s better!” he sighed.
“Now tell me how to save my daughter, damn you!” Micum demanded.
Atre laughed. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I only take the essences. I don’t put them back.”
Micum grabbed him by the throat, his face a mask of rage. “Liar! Tell me!”
But Atre let out a strangled laugh and rasped, “Can’t.”
“Then you’re of no further use to anyone.”
Seregil handed Micum his poniard. The big man gazed down at Atre for a moment, then stabbed him through the heart again and again, until his own face and tunic were covered in blood.
At last Alec grabbed his arm. “Enough, Micum. He’s dead. Look.”
Atre’s body was shriveling and going leathery and brown, as Brader’s had, but more slowly. That handsome face gradually transformed to a horrid mask as the flesh darkened and shrank on the bones, eyes wizening like raisins. When it was
over, his exposed white teeth and auburn hair were the only recognizable remnants of the man who’d been the toast of Rhiminee.
Seregil handed Micum his handkerchief. “You’re covered in blood.”
“So are you. How’s the shoulder?”
“It hurts,” Seregil admitted. And it was worse now that the excitement was over.
Micum helped Seregil out of his bloodstained tunic while Alec tore strips from his own shirt for bandages. When they had made the best job they could of binding the wound, Alec looked back at the corpses. “What do we do with them?”
“Leave them,” said Seregil. “We’ll lock the place up again, until Thero can figure out what to do with all those bottles downstairs.”
Alec gave him a worried look. “If he’s still alive.”
“If he’s not, what do we do?” asked Micum. “Atre was no use, but Thero did get Mika’s soul restored, even if it was only by chance.”
Neither Seregil nor Alec had an answer for that.
After taking the bone necklace, several phials, and labeled bits of jewelry to show as proof to Korathan, they hid the door to Atre’s workroom behind piled crates again, to keep the rest of Atre’s cache safe until Thero-or some other wizard-could decide what to do with it. The bodies they left for Korathan to deal with. Locking the theater securely behind them, they began the long walk back for their horses.
“What in Bilairy’s name took you two so long?” asked Seregil.
“We nearly got arrested,” Alec told him. “The neighbors thought we were attacking Brader and called in the bluecoats. Brader ran, and I got away a moment later.”
“How did you not get arrested?” Seregil asked Micum.
“Told them Brader had gotten my daughter in trouble, and that I and her brother Alec were after him for it. That, and a little gold, worked a charm.”
“I got here first and got the front door open and managed
to get up in the box for a shot while you were all distracted.” Alec shook his head. “You three up onstage like that? It looked like a scene from one of Atre’s plays.”
Seregil sighed. “I hate to admit it, but I am going to miss those.”
CHAPTER 45. Life, Death, and Magic
THE city woke to the sound of gongs and herald’s cries: “The queen is dead. Long live Queen Elani!” and “Princess Klia has led Skala to victory in the north!”