The whore sits hard against the far wall, knees drawn up to her chest. In this position, I can see up her skirt and feel the tingle again, like an itch that can’t be scratched, but push it aside. As I approach, she tries to make herself smaller. I crouch before her.
“He sent you, didn’t he?”
She steals a look over my shoulder at the men dead behind me, shakes her head hard.
“Not them,” I say doing my best to smile comfortingly. “Him. Khirro.”
“I don’t know no Khirro. I told you that.”
“Of course.” Still smiling, I stroke her cheek with my fingers. She flinches. Her skin is soft. “Is he in the city?”
“I don’t know no one like that.”
My smile disappears. “Is he close?”
This time she shakes her head. I won’t get anything from her. This Khirro’s connections and influence run deep. He must be a very dangerous man for her to be more afraid of him than me. Good.
Could I really have loved such a man?
I touch her cheek again, run my fingers through her hair. She doesn’t flinch this time. It seems to calm her, instead, as is my intent.
“It’s all right,” I tell her, forcing the smile back to my lips. She relaxes a little more. “I’ll find him myself. Now, where were we?”
I slide my other hand beneath her skirt and stroke the soft flesh between her legs. A shiver runs through her; I lean in and put my lips on hers. My tongue goes into her mouth, but I feel no excitement like before, no tingle. Instead I notice the gap in her teeth. I suck her breath into my lungs and she stiffens. I move my hand from her crotch to her chest, my palm flat against her breast. It’s large and soft, and it makes me think of another woman, not the young blond but an older woman, a woman who I once thought of like a mother. I don’t let the thought stop me as I push my palm firmly into her chest. Her ribs let go and her life ends.
I stand and survey the night’s work, looking upon the blood and the bodies. My hands are tacky with drying blood, a feeling to which I’m becoming accustomed. Three dead, only one by weapon. My skill is greater than I knew. But am I ready for the man named Khirro?
As I regard the dead, I realize two things. First, I’m going to have to find somewhere else to stay while I await my prey. The second thing I come to understand is I can trust no one. Anyone can be in league with my enemy.
Perhaps everyone.
Chapter Eighteen
Khirro’s head hurt almost as much as his hands.
He blinked his eyes hard to refocus, but the pain distracted him and the dimness of the cell conspired against his vision. Through the haze and feeble light, he discerned a shape huddled against the wall across from him.
Athryn.
“How long?” Khirro’s words grated out of his dry throat. They’d been given no water since they came underground, and bursting into flames did nothing to help his thirst.
Athryn crossed to his companion. “A couple of hours. How do you feel?”
“Like a horse galloped across my forehead.”
“Not a horse. Magic. You found the fire, Khirro.”
He held up his hands wrapped in pieces of cloth torn from Athryn’s shirt.
“Did the fire do this?”
“No. You grabbed the blade of the Mourning Sword. You are lucky you did not lose your fingers.”
“Yeah. Lucky.”
“But how did you bring the flame to be? Do you remember?”
Khirro’s brow wrinkled as he thought back, struggling for recollection. He remembered the men coming to take Athryn and wanting to stop them, jumping to Athryn’s aid before the fire came without warning or provocation from him. The same feeling of elation and despair he felt when it happened rose in him again-he’d brought the flame forth but had no idea how.
“I don’t know. It was just there.”
“Well, thank the Gods it was. You saved me from that horrible fate.”
The magician pointed at the corpse in the middle of the cell and Callan sprawled out beside it. Khirro had forgotten about Callan.
“Has he woken at all?”
Athryn shook his head.
Khirro pushed himself up to his feet, wincing at the pain in his palms as he did, and went to where Callan lay. A few more of the glowing worms wriggled about near the corpse of the unknown man while others lay still, their light dimming or gone.
“Be careful around those grubs.” Athryn came to his side. “The wounds in your hands will make easy access for them. That is how they got them inside our friends here.”
Khirro stomped harder than necessary on the worms, grinding them into the stone floor with the sole of his boot, lips pulled back in disgust.
Athryn went and kneeled beside Callan and Khirro watched as he pulled the bottom of the man’s shirt open. In the lack of light, Khirro had to move closer to see the small incision on the man’s lower abdomen; the skin around it looked red and irritated. Tiny ripples rolled across his belly like it was a pond into which someone had tossed a pebble, disturbing the surface.
“He doesn’t have much longer, does he?”
“It would seem not.”
Khirro stared at the minute movements, imaging the grubs beneath the skin, crawling over each other in a frenzy to feed on Callan’s insides.
What a horrible way to die.
“Is there anything we can do for him?”
A pause. “Kill him.”
Khirro’s heart jumped at his companion’s words, though he knew they were the truth. They’d seen what happened to the other man-it was too terrible a death for anyone. They remained crouched at Callan's side for a minute, neither speaking. Khirro contemplated Athryn’s words.
We have no option. I’m sorry, Callan.
The sound of a footstep in the tunnel yanked their attention from Callan and the things writhing inside him. They both looked up toward the wooden bars.
“They are coming back,” Athryn whispered. Khirro began to unwind the bandages from his hands, hoping to find a way to reignite the fire, but Athryn stopped him. “No, Khirro. Wait by Callan’s side. When I signal, you must take his life.”
Khirro swallowed hard and nodded.
Killing him isn’t just about saving him from agony, it’s about saving ourselves.
He knew Athryn felt badly for his inability to help when the giant attacked at the shore, leaving the boat in ruins and nearly killing them both, and now Khirro had found his magic and saved Athryn. Here was the magician’s opportunity to redeem himself.
But I don’t want to kill him. Khirro watched Athryn glide across the cell and crouch beside the door. He bit his teeth together hard. It must be done. Athryn must find his magic.
The light of one of the underground-dwellers’ torches bounced into view. Khirro knelt beside Callan, looked up and down the man’s body, deciding how to kill someone who wasn’t threatening him. He could choke him, squeezing the life from him, but that might take too long for Athryn’s purposes and would expose Khirro’s wounds to the glowing worms. And there would be no blood.
Does there need to be blood?
He looked across the cell at Athryn standing beside the door, out of sight from the approaching men; too far away for Khirro to ask for his input without alerting their enemies.
But he didn’t have a knife nor a sword; no weapon of any kind to open one of Callan's veins. How then?
Khirro looked down at the smear of worms on the floor between the two men, crushed by his boot, and the solution came to him. It brought with it a shudder of revulsion, but he could think of no other way.