He blinked, as if puzzled, as if he didn’t understand what had just happened. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and a great black bubble welled between his lips and burst, sending a red trickle down his chin.
Unbending, like a tree, he fell. He did not move again.
Lakini crouched by his side. His eyes stared, unseeing at the forest canopy above.
“Ashonithi, Cserhelm,” she whispered as she closed them.
“That’s one of you gone, anyway,” spoke a beautiful voice from behind her. Startled, Lakini turned.
A woman with the waxy face of a vampire and a scar twisting her mouth out of true stood at the mouth of the tunnel. Her hand tangled in the girl’s hair, she held Brioni tightly against her, pulling her head to one side so her neck was exposed.
Kestrel stood before them, her arms extended in mute appeal.
The vampire ignored her and spoke over her head to Lakini.
“Ironic that one of you killed the other, isn’t it? Very piratical. Ping would have approved. Oh, that’s jogged your memory, has it? Probably wasn’t much to you, just a ship at sea with a dead crew.”
Lakini did remember, and she heard again the sound of Lusk’s arrows finding their targets.
“Don’t hurt her,” said Kestrel. “You can have anything you want. Just don’t hurt her.”
The vampire ran a pale finger over Brioni’s neck, just over the jugular, speaking to the Kestrel now. “But this, my dear, is what I do want. You don’t know this, but your ancestor did me a very bad turn some two hundred years ago. And I don’t forget easily.”
She grinned, showing her fangs. “The delicious irony is this-his friend, his very dear friend, his bosom friend-he also did me a very bad turn at just about the same time. And while your great-grandsire was a Beguine, this one’s great-great-so many greats-grandsire was his good friend. A Jadaren.
“Yes,” she said, grinning at Kestrel’s wide eyes. “They were friends, until I gave them a reason to hate each other. And they were both, you will be delighted to know, pirates. And”-she sighed-“not very good pirates.”
“So this is what I am going to do. I’m going to kill this little chit in front of you, and then I’m going to drain you. But first, I think I’ll take your shatter-faced friend’s sword.”
Still keeping her grip on Brioni, the vampire maneuvered over to where Lakini’s sword lay. As she passed Kestrel, two long, thin cords leaped from the back of the woman’s wrists. They looped themselves around the vampire’s legs and pulled hard. With a shriek, she stumbled and fell, releasing Brioni as she did.
In a single movement, Lakini scooped up her sword and cut off the vampire’s head.
Kestrel clasped Brioni tightly to her, and the girl’s arms were locked around her mother’s waist. As Lakini watched, Kestrel stroked her daughter’s hair and took her by the shoulders.
“You followed us,” she said gently.
Brioni nodded and hiccupped. “I knew about the tunnel. When I came back and found your empty cell, I didn’t want to call the guards. I thought they’d kill you.”
“They’ll always want to, said Kestrel, her voice dark and bitter. “And I don’t blame them.”
NONTHAL, TURMISH
1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES
At the entrance to House Beguine, Lakini asked for an audience with Vorsha Beguine. The doorkeeper was very polite, very ingratiating, and said the mistress was busy with the kitchen, or with her husband, or in her private chambers. Could the fairlady come back another time?
Lakini bent close to the doorkeeper’s ear and informed him that if he didn’t tell Sanwar Beguine, immediately, that a deva late of Shadrun was here to tell him of the Key, she would not be responsible for the state of his guts. The man paled and hurried away.
Sanwar received Lakini in the library of House Beguine, with the sun shining through the domed glass overhead. Since she’d seen him at Shadrun a few months ago, he’d gained a little weight and had more white in his hair, but he was still a good-looking man.
He frowned, obviously not expecting her.
She knew she had to act quickly, before his caution overcame his greed.
“You’re not whom I expected,” said Sanwar.
“The other sent me,” she said smoothly, still walking toward him. She was almost to him before his eyes widened and he raised his hand and a smell like lightning on a hot day filled the room. Before he could manifest the spell, she smashed him to the floor.
He groaned and tried to roll away, still gesturing with his fingers. She already had a thin rope in hand. Kicking his hands apart, she seized him by the wrists and bound them together. She reached for his feet and he kicked at her.
“Do that again and I break them,” she growled, and he subsided.
There was a gasp, and Lakini looked up to see a servant in the doorway, mouth open as she looked as her master trussed like poultry on the floor.
“Bring Vorsha Beguine here, now,” Lakini told her.
The woman hesitated, obviously unsure whether to obey or raise the alarm.
“Now!” Lakini growled.
The woman scuttled away.
Something plucked at her throat. She turned to see Sanwar muttering a spell. She kneeled next to him and clamped her hand across his mouth.
“Unless you want to be gagged,” she said, “you won’t try that again.”
“Sanwar-? What are you doing?” said a voice. Vorsha Beguine stood there, looking bewildered. Lakini could see some of Kestrel’s features in her mother’s pretty, now-worried face.
“I’ve come to see you. Your husband can wait there for now,” Lakini said, nudging him with her toe.
Open-mouthed, the woman looked from Sanwar to the deva. “But … you can’t just-”
“But I can, and I did.”
“I’ll fetch the guards.” Vorsha turned to the door.
It opened and Kestrel stood there.
“Kestrel! I thought-! I had heard-”
Vorsha flung herself at her daughter. Hesitantly Kestrel’s arms went around her mother. Lakini saw thin wires vibrating beneath her skin.
“So it’s not true?” said Vorsha.
“I’m sorry, Mother. It is.”
Vorsha drew back and cradled her daughter’s ravaged face with the palm of her hand. “Then Arna?”
“Is dead. And Geb. And Shev. And little Bron.”
With each name Vorsha flinched as if she’d been struck.
“And the worst thing, Mother, is that I killed them.”
Vorsha looked at Kestrel as if she were mad. At her feet, Lakini felt Sanwar stir, and she put a cautionary foot to his throat.
“How is that possible?”
“Like this.”
Kestrel held out her hand. On her palm was a lump of melted glass. With trembling fingers Vorsha took it.
“Look inside,” said Lakini.
The woman blinked at five strands of brown hair that twisted inside the ruined charm. Lakini saw she didn’t have to explain. Three of the hairs fused inside, Vorsha had plucked herself from her daughter’s hairbrush. The other belonged to Sanwar.
Vorsha’s lips pressed together, tight and white, and her eyes were enormous. She turned her unblinking gaze on Sanwar.
“What did you do?” she said, her voice cold.
“He made Kestrel a weapon, against her will and inclination, to strike against the Jadarens from inside,” said Lakini.
Vorsha clutched the ruined charm so tightly that part of the glass cracked apart and sliced her palm. She ignored it.
She kneeled by Sanwar. “It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.”
“It isn’t true,” said her husband.
But Vorsha saw the truth in his face.
She seized his hair, yanking it back fiercely. A terrible expression distorted her placid face.
“I’m a wicked woman, Sanwar, but I love my children. I never loved Nicol, and I was unfaithful, but I thought if I married you, if I was a better wife to you and a faithful mistress of the House, I might do honor to a good man’s legacy. And now I find that I desired a monster, and opened my legs to the worst kind of traitor.”