Cat felt a pinprick at her throat.
“This pin’s coated with poison. If it breaks your skin, you’ll be dead,” the woman’s voice warned. “Now, release Steele,” she demanded.
Despite the agonizing pain in her head, the mage managed to recall the magic word. “Willow,” she whispered.
Steele sprang back to life, half falling forward, jabbing at the empty air with his knife. He caught himself and straightened up. “Good work, Julia,” he said. “You managed to tear yourself from your peasant lover, I see,” he added with a sneer. “You’ve hobbled up here just in time.”
Julia, Steele’s sister, Cat remembered. She must be as crazy as he is, the mage thought. Julia drew her poison pin away from Cat’s throat, but Cat remained kneeling on the floor. The fire in her skull made any movement too excruciating, and the light in the room was too bright to open her eyes.
“Aunt Dorath’s been looking for you everywhere,” Julia said anxiously. “She’ll check up here any minute now. You are going to catch Nine Hells if she finds you here. You know she’s put the room off-limits.”
“Nothing will be off-limits to me in a moment,” Steele said. He pointed at Cat. “Check her pockets. She’s Giogi’s little ass. She has the spur.”
“What are you talking about?” Julia asked.
“Just do as I say,” Steele ordered.
Using the large staff she’d used to club the mage, Julia lowered herself clumsily to one knee. Keeping her poison pin pointed at Cat, Julia ran her hands through the folds of the mage’s gown until she came on an item. Julia drew out a silk scarf wrapped around a lumpy bundle—the amulet of protection against scrying and detection.
Through clenched teeth Cat growled, “My amulet.”
Slipping her pin into the bodice of her gown, Julia stood and unwrapped the material. “Eeeew,” she said, sniffing at the contents of the scarf with disgust. From the five pieces of dried, cured meat she selected the largest chunk. It was the size and shape of a baby zucchini, and uglier than a three-month-old sausage. “Steele! It is!” she cried excitedly. “It’s the spur!”
Steele strode forward, but Julia stepped back, pulling out her poison pin and holding it out warningly.
“You can’t fool me, Sister, dear. I know you don’t have poison on that pin. You’re too tender-hearted.”
“I do have the sleeping sap you gave me, though, which works just as well for my purposes. I helped you, Steele. Remember what you promised,” she demanded.
“Yes, yes. All right. Now give me the spur.”
“On your honor as a Wyvernspur, swear it.”
Steele huffed. “On my honor as a Wyvernspur, you have my permission to marry any jackass you please. It could be a Calimshan merchant for all I care. Now hand the spur over.”
Cat opened her eyes against the stinging light just in time to watch the spur tossed across the room. It looked like a piece of brown, dried meat someone had kept in a knapsack for a few years too long. Steele snatched it from the air. His laughter sounded like Flattery’s.
Frefford burst into the room. “What is going on here?” he hissed. “Aunt Dorath said she heard glass breaking.”
Gaylyn came in behind her husband. “Julia, you shouldn’t have climbed all the way up here with your ankle. It could get worse …” Gaylyn’s chiding died on her lips and she blanched when she spotted Cat kneeling on the floor.
Frefford looked down at what had upset his wife. “Mistress Cat, are you all right?” he asked, dropping to his knees beside the mage. “What happened?”
“Hit on the head,” Cat muttered. Her head throbbed too much to say more, but she rose shakily to her feet with the Wyvernspur lord’s assistance.
Gaylyn, aghast, stared at the pin in Julia’s hand. “Julia, what have you done?” she gasped.
“Steele’s found the spur,” Julia said, pointing at her brother as if his discovery would explain everything.
“And now its power will be all mine,” Steele declared.
“Steele, it doesn’t work that way,” Gaylyn insisted, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. “Uncle Drone explained it to me the night before he died. Only one of the guardian’s favorites can use the spur safely. Put it down, please.”
Cat focused on the spur. It was ugly for an artifact, but its power was already obvious. Blue sparks were shooting from its surface between the fingers of Steele’s fist.
“Oh, no,” Steele said. “I’m not buying that silly story, Gaylyn, dear. The guardian is a family myth only someone as foolish as Giogi could possibly believe in. I am not letting that idiot get his hands on the spur. I don’t care if Drone wanted to give it to him. I found it. It’s mine.”
Steele held the spur with both hands and raised it above his head. “I can feel its power already,” he said. The blue sparks were now bolts of blue light, which flickered down Steele’s arm.
Aunt Dorath huffed into the room and pushed past Frefford and his wife. Like a mother who’d found her little child playing with a dagger, Aunt Dorath fixed Steele with a hard glare. “Steele Wyvernspur, you put that thing down this instant,” she commanded angrily.
Steele just laughed. His arms began to glow blue, and the light bolts spread down his torso.
“It’s happening. The power is mine. I can do anything.” Steele jumped up to the shattered window’s sill.
“Steele, no!” Julia screamed.
“Watch this, Sister, dear,” he said gleefully. He pushed open the broken window’s casement and spread his arms wide.
“Fluff-fluff,” Cat whispered just as the Wyvernspur leaped from the tower.
Aunt Dorath and Frefford dashed to the window. “He’s just floating down!” Frefford gasped.
“What?” Julia cried. “Then it works? The spur works?”
Cat bolted for the door and dashed down the outer staircase. Behind her she could hear Aunt Dorath shout, “Frefford, get down after Steele! Get that cursed thing away from him!”
Cat felt dizzy and sick, but she was not going to let an insane kobold-torturer get away with her prize. Because of her spell, Steele was falling with the resistance of a feather, so it would take him at least a minute to reach the ground.
The mage raced from the manor house and rushed to the corner tower. She stood at the base of the tower as Steele drifted toward her. He was still cackling about the power of the spur and flapping his arms, oblivious to the fact that he was really falling.
When his feet touched the earth and he was finally released from her feather fall spell, he wheeled to face her, his eyes wide with crazed rage. “Die!” he shrieked, swiping in her direction with his hand cramped like an animal claw, although he was not close enough to actually reach her.
Cat sprinkled sand over an imaginary baby in her arms and whispered, “Lullaby, Steele.”
The Wyvernspur slid fast asleep, into the slush and mud. Cat pounced on him and tore the spur from his hands.
All this time, she thought, I was expecting some shiny piece of metal, something that can be attached to a boot and used as a prod. What does the spur turn out to be? A disgusting piece of shriveled, mummified—ugh—someone actually slashed it off a wyvern’s foot.
A shadow fell across her and the snoozing Steele.
Frefford stood over her, offering a hand to help her up.
“I’m taking this to Giogi,” Cat muttered, backing away from Frefford on her knees.
“Well, now, it would be foolish for me to argue with such a battle-hardened and powerful spell-caster, wouldn’t it?” Frefford said, grinning as he looked her up and down.
Cat was suddenly aware of how comical she must appear, with her gown scorched by fire and covered with mud and a lump the size of an egg on the side of her head. Despite herself, she laughed. She held her hand out and let Frefford pull her to her feet.