The prickling on Singe’s neck turned into a painful burn. Caught up in his anger, Mithas twisted the knife of his words a little more. “Word filtered back to the House a few weeks ago. The survivors of some kind of raid on a little backwoods settlement were full of praise for the heroic death of Toller d’Deneith, but it seemed no one knew what happened to his lieutenant. I think the lords of Deneith would like to have a talk with you, Singe. And I’m going to be the one to give them that chance, thanks to this.” He snapped the gray paper of the message between his fingers. “I know opportunity when it spreads itself out in front of-”
At the other end of the hall, Ashi let out a startled exclamation, and there was a sudden, sharp sound like tearing paper. Mithas glanced past Singe, and a look of surprise and anger flared in his eyes.
Singe didn’t let the moment of distraction go to waste. He leaped up and forward, thrusting himself across the smooth wood of the counter. Mithas tried to twist away with the message, but the message wasn’t Singe’s target. He kicked out with one swinging leg and clipped Mithas’s shoulder, spinning him into the wall. Before the other man had even managed to turn himself around again, Singe was on him. He punched Mithas hard across the jaw, then pinned him against the wall long enough to hammer a second blow into his belly. As Mithas doubled over, Singe plucked the message from his fingers.
“You never know when to shut up,” he told the choking man. “That’s why you always lose at cards too.”
He stuffed the message inside his vest and vaulted back over the counter. Ashi was halfway along the hall, her eyes wide with surprise, her sword half-drawn, and a piece of paper clenched in her fist. The young thugs were standing back out of the way-one of them had a knife out but didn’t look like he sure whether he should use it or not. Singe ignored them and intercepted Ashi.
“What just happened?” she asked.
“Nothing to worry about right now,” he said, turning her around. “We’re leaving.”
“Singe, look at this.” Ashi tried to put her scrap of paper into his hands. He pushed it back at her.
“Later!”
There was a groan and a whistling intake of breath behind them. Singe’s belly tightened and he whirled. Mithas was up again and leaning heavily against the counter. His eyes flashed malevolently. He flung out a hand, and words of magic rippled from his tongue, raw and half-formed to Singe’s ears, the intuitive magic of a sorcerer rather than the practiced spell of a wizard, but just as dangerous. Singe darted his fingers toward Mithas and tried to call out a spell of his own, something to break the other man’s casting, but Mithas was just a heartbeat faster. Before he could even gather his will to resist it, a kind of peaceful calm rolled over him. The fiery syllables of his spell froze, then faded, on his tongue. Ashi grabbed him and shook him, but it seemed as if all he could do was focus on his old friend Mithas.
The sorcerer pushed himself off from the bar. “Why don’t you just come back here, and we’ll keep talking, Etan?” he said through teeth clenched tight with pain. “You’re not in a hurry to leave, are you?”
Something at the back of Singe’s mind screamed that yes, he was, but the words that came out of his mouth had no urgency at all. “No, I’m not in a hurry. What did you want to talk about?” He shrugged off Ashi’s hands and started to amble back toward Mithas, but the hunter seized him and swung him around again.
“Rond betch!” she spat. Singe watched her eyes narrow in concentration, felt a sudden heat in her grip-and the eerie calm that had gripped him shattered like glass as the power of Ashi’s Siberys mark brushed aside Mithas’s magic. Singe stumbled, anger washing over him once more, then spun back to Mithas. The sorcerer’s eyes were bulging in confused amazement at the sudden, effortless breaking of his spell.
“You dabbling bastard!” Singe hissed at him.
Mithas just choked, “How-?”
And that was when the thug with the knife managed to find the nerve to attack. Whooping like a halfling raider, he threw himself at Ashi, his blade raised high. It was a ridiculous, clumsy attack, and Ashi didn’t even bother to draw her sword, but just reached up, grabbed the wrist of the young man’s knife hand, and wrenched it. Her assailant’s knife flew in one direction while he flipped in the other, arms and legs flailing.
His waving hand caught her scarf and ripped it free. He hit the floor hard, and the fabric slithered down on top of him, covering his face-but leaving Ashi’s bare, the vivid patterns of her dragonmark exposed.
CHAPTER 7
Singe saw the shock that passed across Ashi’s face, but the damage had been done. Still leaning against the counter, Mithas’s eyes bulged even further as he stared at the complex lines of color that rose along Ashi’s neck, swirled across her cheeks, and vanished beneath her thick, golden hair. His mouth worked in astonishment. “Sib … Sib … Siberys!” he croaked.
Outrage and alarm churned inside Singe. He grabbed Ashi and dragged her to the door, snatching up the scarf in passing.
The outer door of the hall opened, and the guard who had stood outside came charging through the foyer, maybe alerted by the sound of the thug’s attack and defeat. His gaze darted from Singe and Ashi, running toward him, to the fallen thug, groaning on the ground, and his hand went to his sword with the precise discipline of Blademarks training.
“No!” Mithas shouted. “Alive! Take them alive!”
The guard hesitated. Singe ripped his rapier from his scabbard and swung it high, screaming the first battle cry that came into his head. “Frostbrand!”
Confronted with the screaming warrior and Ashi’s deadly grace, the guard very sensibly leaped aside even as he drew his sword. He tried to strike as they swept past him, but Singe beat down his sword and slashed at him. His rapier sliced into the guard’s blue jacket, and the wizard felt the tip of the blade cut flesh. It wasn’t a pretty defense, but the guard stumbled back and they were past him. Singe heard exclamations, footsteps, and orders from Mithas. He risked a glimpse back and saw more mercenaries pouring out from the door behind the counter with the duty officer at their head.
They must have been the reason Mithas had been trying to delay him, he guessed. If they were though …
He looked ahead as he and Ashi passed into the foyer. The outer door stood open, but Singe could hear running footsteps from that direction too.
“Look away, Ashi!” he said, then focused his will on the door and spat the word of one of the simplest spells he knew.
Just beyond the doorway, flame leaped in brief, intense flare. It lasted only an instant, but for that instant it was dazzling-and its sudden appearance was just as startling as he’d hoped. Running footsteps stumbled, voices rose in surprise, and bodies thumped together in confusion. He and Ashi burst out of the doorway and past the mercenaries that had been closing in on either side.
Singe picked the busiest of the streets coming off the square in which the Deneith enclave stood and sprinted toward it. Mithas’s voice followed them in frantic orders to the mercenaries. “Follow them! Bring them back! Alive, damn you, alive!”
A ripple ran along the edge of the crowd as people turned, then drew back at the sight of a naked blade, though more than a few men and women reached for their own weapons, either in self-defense or greed at the possibility of a reward from House Deneith for capturing the fugitives.
“Fight?” asked Ashi at his side.
The hunter had one gloved hand over her face, trying to hide the telltale lines of her dragonmark. Singe thrust her scarf at her. “No,” he said. “Just follow me.”
He didn’t slow down as he plowed into the crowd and made straight for the biggest, drunkest man he could see: a red-faced brute with muscle-corded arms.