Brencis stopped in front of her, smiling slightly. “I’ll bet she has pretty legs. Very long, very slender, very strong.”
“Yes, my lord,” Lyssa agreed.
Amara found herself sleepily returning Brencis’s smile.
“Take the trousers, off, Amara,” he said, his voice holding a quiet, snarling promise in it.
“Yes, my lord,” Amara said drowsily. The soaking-wet leather was stubborn against her pleasure-numbed fingers. “I… it’s too tight, my lord.”
“Then be still,” Brencis said, his voice amused. “Very still.”
A dagger, its tip glittering with fascinating, wicked sharpness, appeared in his hand, and he knelt by her side. “Tell me, Countess,” he murmured. “Were you here on Gaius’s orders?”
“Yes, my lord,” Amara murmured. She watched as the knife’s tip, doubtless enhanced by Brencis’s furycraft, sliced effortlessly through the hem of the leather flying trousers over her ankle. He began cutting slowly upward, his knife opening the garment as readily as a boy might peel a fruit.
“And your husband,” Brencis said. “He isn’t dead, is he?”
“No, my lord,” Amara said sleepily. The knife slid over her calf. She wondered if she would feel it if such a sharp blade opened her flesh. She wondered if, in her current state, it would feel good.
“Where is he?” Brencis continued.
“Nearby, my lord,” Amara replied, as the knife moved past her knee. “I’m not sure where, exactly.”
“Very good,” Brencis said, in approval, and placed a kiss on the naked flesh at the back of her knee.
Amara shuddered in anticipation.
“What are his intentions?” Brencis asked, returning to cutting his way up Amara’s leg.
“He’s waiting for my signal,” Amara said.
Brencis smiled grimly as the knife opened the leather encasing Amara’s thigh, slicing slowly up toward her hip. “To do what?”
“Free the captives, my lord.”
Brencis laughed. “Ambitious of you. And what is to be the signal for him to begin? There doesn’t seem to be much left of you, but when we take him, I can at least make sure that you are the one to whisper in his ears when he is captured and recruit-”
Metal scraped on metal, and Brencis paused, frowning in puzzlement.
Amara looked down, to see that his knife had parted the leather over the top of her thigh-where the discipline collar her husband had bound to her, hours before, nestled tight against pale flesh.
Brencis’s eyes widened in stunned realization.
Amara called upon Cirrus, her hands lashing out. She caught Brencis by the wrist of the hand that held the knife, twisting toward his thumb, the motion taking him by surprise, so swiftly that he had no time to resist with his normal strength, much less with fury-enhanced power. The knife came free of his grasp, and Amara seized it with what seemed like lazy precision to her own accelerated senses before it could even begin to fall.
Brencis had seized upon his own wind furies by then, his hands beginning to rise to defend himself-but he had not been quick enough. Amara slapped his hand aside with one hand and with a flick of her wrist, passed the fury-sharpened dagger through both of the arteries in his throat.
Blood flowed out in a torrent, a cloud. It splashed over Amara’s naked leg and torso, hot and hideous, as she stumbled, thrown off-balance by the speed of her own movements, and fell back out of the tub and out of the reach of Brencis’s hands.
The young Aleran lord arched his back, his hands thrashing out wildly. One of his clenched fists struck the wooden frame of the tub and shattered it, sending soapy water, the bubbles stained with spraying blood, rushing out over the floor. He twisted, flailing toward Amara, and one of his thrashing shoulders struck a dazed Lyssa in the stomach, flinging her back like a doll.
“The signal?” Amara hissed, her body singing, alight with rage and with the silver-white pleasure flowing from the metal collar bound about her thigh. “The signal is your corpse, traitor. You will never touch my husband.”
He tried to say something, perhaps, but no sound emerged-the dagger had parted his windpipe as well.
It was nearly impossible to strike down a furycrafter of Brencis’s power without employing comparable furycraft to accomplish it.
But only nearly.
The last scion of Kalarus crumpled to the floor of the inn, shrinking like a bladder being slowly emptied of water. His blood joined the perfumed water on the floor.
There had barely been a sound to betray the murder.
Amara stumbled back against the wall of the room, fighting the euphoria still being forced upon her by the collars. She wanted, very badly, to just sink to the floor and let the pleasure have its way with her once more-
– but the collar on her leg ceased sending its pulses of ecstasy through her at the very thought. She had, at her own insistence, been instructed otherwise. If she ignored those instructions, it would shortly begin inflicting hideous pain instead of bestowing rapture, and Amara felt little bubbles of entirely involuntary panic rippling through her at the very thought.
She forced herself to stagger to the room’s wardrobe, conscious of Lyssa’s wide eyes upon her as she moved. The collared girl had her mouth open in horror, and tears had flowed down her face, cutting streaks through the flecks of blood spattering her features. Amara opened it, and seized one of Brencis’s tunics, quickly donning it, then tossed one of his capes over her shoulders. They fit her like sacks, but they would do. She took Brencis’s sword from the belt at his hips a few seconds later, moving quickly, half-terrified that his stillness might be a ruse-but the dead man never stirred. Like the clothing, the sword was too large to fit her comfortably-but like the clothing, it would do.
“I’m sorry,” Lyssa sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Amara turned to look at the girl, and caught her own reflection in a mirror hung upon the wall. She wore a dark green tunic and cloak, and the color contrasted sharply with the almost-solid scarlet staining her face, her hair, her hands, and the bare skin of her leg. She bore a bloodied knife in one hand, a bright sword in the other, and her eyes were wild and dangerous. For an instant, Amara frightened herself.
“Stay here,” she told the girl, her voice hard and clear, “until you are instructed otherwise.”
“Ye-yes, my lady,” Lyssa said, pressing herself abjectly to the floor. “Yes, yes, I will.”
She turned to the window, unlocked and opened it. The window overlooked the Slave Market courtyard, which looked much as it had when she had last seen it-full of prisoners, though with rather fewer guards than there had been. Only a few Vord were in sight-but the green glow of the croach was brighter, from other parts of Ceres, than it had been the night before.
She couldn’t be sure of any of the collared Alerans. Some of them could have been collaborators like the two with Rook when they’d bumped into one another. Some of them could have been more deeply conditioned by the modified collars than others. Some might be able to fight against the collars’ control and help them-but Amara had no way to know one from another.
So she had to regard each of them as the enemy.
Amara stood in the window for a moment, fully aware that she could be seen in the candlelight of the room. Dimly outlined, feminine shapes appearing in that window would doubtless be a familiar sight to those below-and she had no way of knowing where Bernard was, to be able to give him a more specific signal. She would simply have to trust that he had been keeping track of where she had been taken and would be in position to watch the building to see her standing there like a practice target. She counted slowly to thirty, then closed the curtains again.