She finished her step casually, shifting her urgrosh to her off hand. Then she reached up and grabbed a fistful of blond hair. Though the changeling had several inches on her, she yanked his head back until his ear was beside her mouth, eliciting a painful sounding pop from somewhere in his lower back as he contorted awkwardly to keep from falling.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” she asked, her tone cloyingly sweet as she twisted her fist and felt his hair begin to pull out at the root. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite hear you.”
The changeling wasn’t cowed, though his words were forced through clenched teeth.
“Another member of the Guild, wasn’t he? Congratulations. I’m sure that earned you a nice sum. But then, you didn’t do it for the money, did you?”
Sabira was acutely aware that Prynn and the mayor’s men were watching this exchange—the men with interest and the Marshal with something less pleasant. She let go of Caldamus’s hair and spun him around to face her.
That was a mistake. The changeling had delved deeper into her thoughts than she would have thought possible and now wore the visage of a dark-haired man with laughing brown eyes and a scar over his left eyebrow.
Leoned.
With a growl, Sabira cocked her arm back and drove her elbow up into that too-familiar face with such force that the changeling’s jaw shattered, spraying them both with warm blood. Caldamus stumbled, tripping over his fetters, and fell backward, slamming his head hard against the packed earth. He groaned once, then lay still, his face reverting to its natural, almost featureless state as he slipped into unconsciousness.
In the silence that followed, Sabira bent down to check his pulse, which was regrettably both strong and regular. She gingerly wiped her elbow clean on the front of his shirt and then stood and looked at Prynn.
“A little help here?”
The taciturn Marshal grabbed Caldamus’s limp body and slung the changeling over his shoulder. Though Prynn said nothing, his disapproval was obvious in every frown and glower he directed her way. Sabira ignored him. She’d done it all the way from Stormreach and she intended to do so all the way back, until she could finally be rid of him and his glaring condemnation, deserved or not.
As Sabira returned her shard axe to the quick-release harness she wore on her back, she looked over the crowd of villagers who had gathered. Most had probably never seen a Marshal in action before, but whatever tales the locals might have heard about the legendary keepers of law and order, Sabira was sure she didn’t live up to them.
“I do so love these nice, relaxing trips to the islands,” she quipped to no one in particular, giving the crowd a wave. Then she turned away and headed down the hill to the docks, not bothering to look to see if Prynn followed or if anyone waved back.
CHAPTER TWO
Caldamus woke a few hours later, coughing up clotted blood and moaning loudly. Sabira looked up from the broadsheet she’d been reading as he writhed on his bunk, testing both his manacles and the wooden support they were secured to. Then he twisted his head around and glared at her.
“Ith thith how the vaunted Thentinel Marthalth treat prithonerth?” The demand was made comical by the changeling’s effort to force so many sibilants through a jaw swollen partially shut, and Sabira couldn’t help but laugh. She stopped short of mocking him in kind, catching the dark look Prynn cast down at her from his place atop the second bunk.
“Well, considering we had the option of bringing you in dead, I’m not sure I’d be complaining.”
“How noble,” Caldamus sneered, twisting his ruined lip into a smirk. He could speak almost normally if he avoided certain words.
Sabira ignored the gibe, turning her attention back to the broadsheet. But she continued to watch him from beneath long lashes. Though she knew his bonds would hold, she’d been tracking him for the better part of a month; it wouldn’t do to let her guard down now.
“Like you did with me?”
It was Leoned’s voice, albeit husky and halting. She knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t help herself.
The changeling wore Leoned’s face again, and the sight of purpling flesh beneath those brown eyes that knew her so well was almost more than she could bear.
It’s not him. I didn’t break his jaw. I’d never do anything to hurt him.
Leoned’s bruised mouth barked an incredulous laugh.
“Oh, but you did, didn’t you, Thaba?”
It was the lisp that saved her, that allowed her to tear her gaze away from his, to remember that this wasn’t Leoned, just some damnable changeling who had no other weapons to fight with, so he was using her own against her.
“Very clever.”
Aggar’s voice this time, and the familiar, much-hated dwarven intonations surprised her so much she had to look again.
Green eyes glared out at her from a ruddy face, while hair far redder than her own sprouted from his chin in a long, multibraided beard that obscured all evidence of her handiwork.
“Enough!” Sabira growled angrily, rising from her seat and crossing the small cabin in two strides. She drew her fist back to strike the changeling again, and his features morphed once more, this time into those of another dark-haired man with the least Mark of Sentinel still visible beneath the bruising and the blood. The sight stayed her hand.
Elix?
What possible reason would Caldamus have for taking on his face? She hadn’t even been thinking of him.
Had she?
No, it was just another trick to buy the changeling a few more precious moments of consciousness. Which were going to end now.
“Don’t do it, Marshal.”
She looked up to see Prynn, his crossbow loaded and not quite aimed at her. She lowered her arm slowly, calculating the range, knowing there was no way she could dodge the bolt if he let it fly.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I know your reputation, and I’ve seen the truth of it with my own eyes. You’re not harming another unarmed prisoner on my watch.”
Sabira snorted at that. The longest two sentences the man had uttered since he’d come down from Fairhaven and they’d been assigned to work together, and they were in defense of a murderer. As Caldamus would say, how noble.
“Unarmed? A changeling who reads minds? Is that what passes for a joke in Aundair?”
The crossbow leveled out, and now there was no question as to where it was aimed.
“Fine.” Sabira gritted the word out between teeth clenched so tightly her head began to ache. “You deal with him. I’m heading topsides.”
She tossed the broadsheet aside and stormed out of the cabin. The changeling’s smug laughter followed her out the door and up the nearest ladder until she was out of earshot.
Sabira found a crate amidships and settled back against it so that she could watch the sun setting red over the Thunder Sea. If she’d stayed in that cabin any longer, with Caldamus dredging up faces from her past and Prynn basking in self-righteousness, she would have stuck the spear tip of her urgrosh through somebody’s eye. She knew she shouldn’t have left them alone—if Caldamus could stroll through her thoughts, there was no telling what he might do with Prynn’s, since she knew the other Marshal didn’t have the benefit of the same mental training that she did. She half hoped Caldamus was even now tormenting the stalwart lawman with lost opportunities and past loves.
Then again, as straitlaced as Prynn was, maybe he’d never done anything he regretted, and it was Caldamus who was burning with frustration as only the most virtuous and honorable of thoughts confronted him. Either way, one of them would be suffering, so she’d count it as a win.