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“Ha,” huffed Clee. “Lord Cowherd is not as light as he looks.”

“These wiry types can fool you, sometimes,” Rusillin observed. “I was beginning to think he was never going to fall over.”

For conspirators, they didn’t sound very passionate, Pen thought. Or even very excited. He felt a bit indignant about that. The fright was all on his part. He let his eyes slit open.

Together, they manhandled him out onto the gallery, now deeply shadowed with the evening though the sky was still pale, only the first stars showing. Down a back stair. Past the level of the courtyard, and down a darker, narrower stair, the walls partly dressed stone, partly seeming carved out of the living rock. While Clee supported Pen’s half-limp form, Rusillin lifted a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked a stout wooden door. They dragged Pen through, and Rusillin turned and locked it again.

Shouldn’t we be trying to escape? Pen asked urgently.

Soon. There are two of them. The chance must be good, or it is likely to be wasted.

There were two of him, too, Pen thought, or perhaps thirteen depending on if you counted the lioness and the mare, but he still felt outnumbered. He felt outnumbered just by Rusillin.

Pen wasn’t sure if they’d brought him to a cellar, a storeroom, an armory, or a dungeon. The long chamber seemed to partake of all those descriptions. The roof was supported with pillared arches of stone, graceful enough for a minor Darthacan temple. High on the lakeside wall, a line of thin, iron-barred windows like half-moons let in the last of the silvery twilight. A bundle of pikes rested off the floor in a pair of wooden cradles. Barrels and crates were stacked all around, but along one wall lay a pile of old straw, with several sets of ugly manacles hanging down. That the irons were unpeopled and rusty was not all that reassuring.

The brothers dragged Pen to the far end of the chamber and let him down, rather gently, to the cold rock floor. He twitched and half rolled, and caught a glimpse of the nearby water gate. From this side, it was a stone ramp down to a broad, low arch above the lake, which lapped gently at its base. A barred portcullis, raised at present, protected the opening in the thick walls, and a further set of heavy doors were pulled back. On the ramp, a skiff was drawn up half out of the water, its oars shipped. Faint reflections rippled on the curving roof of the chamber.

“Let’s have a better light for this,” said Rusillin, and Clee pulled a tinderbox from his belt pouch and went to kneel by a row of part-used tallow candles set up along the edge of the ramp and shielded from drafts by coarse glass vases. Half-a-dozen smoky yellow lights soon sprang up, which, Pen realized, made hardly a difference to him. Another advantage lost to delay?

When Rusillin turned his back for a moment, going to rummage among his stores, Pen seized the chance to turn his head, but the only other item of interest in view was an old wool-stuffed mattress flopped on the floor nearby, a blanket and pillow piled at its foot. So why aren’t I laid on that? If it was where kindly kidnappers kept their victims while waiting to sell them on to some evil merchant rowing in from the lake, shouldn’t it be over by the manacles?

He forced himself to stay limp, if still slit-eyed, as the brothers came back to gaze down at him in a moment of contemplation.

“That was easy,” said Clee. “As you said, let him walk to us. Like a calf to the market.”

“Bit of an innocent, I’d say,” said Rusillin.

“Bit of a fool. Well, Lord Cowherd.” Clee prodded Pen with his toe. “Sorry about this, but needs must drive.”

“He’ll feel no pain. You, or I?” Rusillin held up a long, wicked war-knife, obtained from somewhere among the stored armaments. Its edge gleamed new-honed.

“It’s your trade. Probably your reward, if the demon jumps to you.”

“Those are the odds, correct? The demon always jumps to the strongest man in reach, you said.”

“So Tigney claims.”

“In that case, why it did not jump to one of those temple guards the sorceress trailed?”

“Can’t guess.” Clee shrugged. “He did say it was the most powerful demon he’d ever overseen in all his stable. You have to wonder why it jumped to the divine, back in her day.”

“It shall like its new home, I daresay,” said Rusillin tranquilly.

They’re not trying to kidnap me. They’re trying to kidnap Desdemona!

So Pen wasn’t the merchandise, from the robber lord’s point of view; he was just the wagon. I thought a demon could not kill and hope to survive?

Other way around, said Desdemona. A sorcerer cannot kill with magic and keep his demon. But he can certainly be killed, and lose it. If it jumps in time.

So was he to be summarily unbetrothed a second time, before he lost his life? He felt madly bereft in prospect. Surely a demon must prefer a powerful captain, who would lead it to the feast of all chaos on a battlefield, over, over clumsy Lord Cowherd. The epithet stung.

Not, said Desdemona tensely, if we scramble. Now, Pen.

As Rusillin’s thick fingers made to close on his throat, and the blade descended, candlelight flickering along its quite excessive length, Pen jerked and rolled away.

“Bastard’s teeth!” Rusillin swore. “I thought he was out. Clee, grab him!”

Pen pushed to his knees, then to his feet, as Clee made an oddly slow swung at him. He evaded the dedicat and looked for the door, but Rusillin was already in the way. He slashed at Pen’s belly, which barely twisted out of reach in time. Pen dodged around a pillar. Rusillin dodged the other way. Clee cut him off, seizing him around the shoulders. “Gah, he moves like a snake!”

Rusillin lunged.

As the blade approached Pen’s belly, a spiral of rust ran up its length; by the time the hilt rammed home, as slowly to Pen’s eye as a bead falling through honey, it had shattered into a thousand bright orange flecks that burst into the air like dandelion fluff, and about as lethal.

“What!” Pen and Rusillin both grunted, practically in unison.

Fire, said Desdemona cheerfully, takes many forms.

Clee still clutched him from behind. Pen wrenched away. Rusillin tossed away his hilt, grabbed up a pike, and swung it between Pen and his goal.

“Demon, capitulate!” cried Clee. “We offer you a better master! Tigney means to betray you to the Saint of Idau! I copied out the letter! Aid that fool you ride at your own peril!”

Desdemona, as excited as a hunting dog let loose upon its prey, seemed to hesitate, freezing within Pen.

Pen, backing away from both men, tried frantically to counter. “But which master? Have you thought it through? Whichever one of you she takes will fall helpless in a swoon, and the other can cut his throat again.” Could he divide his enemies?

Rusillin grinned horribly, swinging his pike around. “I think not. If it jumps to me, Clee still cannot take my lands nor my command, so his risks are doubled. If it jumps to him, well, I am just as pleased to skip the risks, and have a loyal sorcerer secretly in my service, whose rewards will be rich.”

“You can’t imagine we were so stupid as not to work that out in advance,” chided Clee, also grabbing a pike and getting between Pen and the door. Together, both men strove to back him up, jabbing and feinting and allowing him no escape. They seemed ruffled, but not enraged. It felt very strange to be murdered so indifferently. Rusillin, Pen thought, would be just this cold and level-headed in battle, perhaps had been.