"Look to the wall," he whispered. "See if you find your own there as well."
Leesil didn't let down his guard. He turned his head enough to see the cubbies and still keep the elf well within his vision. He was close now, close enough to see what rested in the rows of cubbies lining the back wall.
Skulls.
These weren't the rotting heads of criminals or innocents stuck on spikes upon the city wall. These bones were boiled clean and polished, collected like trophies, and one double-wide edifice held a paired set.
The nearest was no different from the others, human in all ways, but the second nestled close to it was distinct. A touch oblong. Even with its flesh gone, his face was more triangular than its human comparion and ended in a narrow jaw and chin bone. Its eye sockets were disproportionate-larger, tear-shaped. It was slightly smaller than the first.
A human-male-and an elf-female. Paired together in death.
Leesil heard banging upon the crypt's door behind him. The room around him dimmed again, and all he saw clearly was the mated pair of skulls.
Two together… his parents… always together.
"I'll add your head, mongrel," Darmouth growled with effort. "Soon enough. Now step aside!"
"Was it worth the price?" the Anmaglahk asked Leesil, a vicious and spiteful edge in his voice. "Is one human, or a thousand, worth what you have lost?"
Leesil had protected Darmouth-but for what? He looked at the man.
The warlord glared back at him. There must have been something in Leesil's face. Darmouth's expression turned coldly pleased, as if watching another of his supposed betrayers suffering before death.
"Leesil… no," Magiere whispered.
He looked at her. Her eyes were locked on him, no longer black but filled with apprehension. He remembered a time when she was all that mattered. Just her. He would have his life be so simple again.
In his mind he saw his mother, Cuirin'nen'a… Nein'a… sitting in the bedroom window seat of his parents' room as she combed her brilliant hair. Beneath her stoic expression there had always been a sadness Leesil couldn't take from her.
If he could now just cut out the pain from his head and his heart.
Leesil lunged at Darmouth.
The warlord thrust the wide war blade dead center at Leesil's chest.
Leesil saw it, seeming so slow and weak with age. He turned his torso sideways without stopping, and the dagger slid along the steel rings woven into his hauberk.
Leesil slammed the hooked knife into Darmouth's throat. From somewhere behind, Magiere screamed at him to stop.
Magiere watched Darmouth fall.
Leesil stood silent over his victim like another cold stone column in the crypt.
Darmouth clutched at the blade as he hit the floor. It was in so deep that half the hilt was buried in his throat. It took so long for him to stop choking and become still. Leesil didn't move.
Magiere went numb. All feeling drained from her. Everything they'd done this night-the deaths of Faris and Ventina, injured or dying soldiers, abandoning the search for Wynn-had been to save this tyrant. All of it was lost.
Leesil had murdered Darmouth.
She wanted help. She wanted Chap. Her shoulder and side began to ache again.
And someone kept thudding against the crypt door.
Magiere made a stumbling run across the room. She jerked up the wooden bar and dropped it. The door swung sharply open.
Chap and Emel stood there, the baron's hand still holding the door latch. No soldiers were in sight beyond them. Perhaps without their lord or Omasta they were still in confusion.
"Oh, merciless saints," Emel whispered as he looked beyond Magiere to the room's far end; then he closed his eyes tightly. "We have failed."
Magiere turned back, leaning into one stone coffin as she passed between them and the dead body of the younger elf. She couldn't bring herself to go all the way to Leesil. He still faced the paired skulls in the one wide cubby in the wall.
There was strange satisfaction in the elder Anmaglahk?, eyes and then he looked toward her.
"Touch her," Leesil said, "and I'll kill you and everything you love."
Magiere kept silent. She already believed this Anmaglahk wouldn't try to kill any witnesses here. He hadn't tried to kill her, even when she refused to get out of his way. Why, was another matter.
"Do not think this changes what you have done," the elf spit back at Leesil. "You spilled the blood and life of one of your own. True… traitor!"
Chap lunged around Magiere toward Leesil, his attention fully upon the Anmaglahk. His growl rolled into a hiss that Magiere had never heard from the dog before. Leesil shuffled to the back wall and the wide cubby.
"Liars and butchers," he whispered, "all of your kind… and that's all I share with the likes of you."
The elf's brows knitted at the sight of Chap, and his voice turned quiet. "Majay-hi… And we are not such liars as you assume."
He edged around Leesil, and Chap circled to stay between them. The elf went to his fallen companion, rolling the body off the coffin and onto his shoulder. He gave no notice of the blood that soaked into the back of his cloak. Magiere wondered how he was still on his feet, much less bearing the weight.
Before he turned toward the door, Chap lunged to the top of the coffin, snarling at him. The elf backed away.
Chap's crystalline eyes locked onto the elf's amber ones. The dog went silent as his ears pricked up. The two remained in that stare for so long Magiere started to wonder what was happening. Chap's ears flattened, and a low rumble between his teeth started to rise in volume.
"Chap?" Magiere said.
The dog leaned toward the Anmaglahk, jaws shuddering, as if he were about to tear the elf's face with his teeth. The sound pounded in Magiere's ears as it echoed through the chamber, a snarl half of rage and half like a yowl of mourning.
"Chap!" Magiere shouted over his din. "Leave him be!"
The dog flinched into silence. The elf shook his head and moved on, inching sideways toward the door to keep his eyes on all in the room.
Chap watched the Anmaglahk until Emel stepped aside to let the man out.
Emel came in, behind Magiere, looking at Darmouth's body with a deep sigh. "I know you two did your best to stop this, but we are ruined. Within days the bloodshed will begin, and when word of this spreads to other provinces-"
"We have to go," Magiere whispered, then raised her voice with difficulty. "Now. We can't stay here."
"What of Hedi and Wynn?" Emel asked.
"We hope they made it out," she answered, watching Leesil. "It won't be long before the soldiers spread their search into the lower levels. We can't fight anymore and there's no hope now of searching the upper levels."
Emel was no longer listening. He watched Leesil as well.
Leesil pulled off his cloak. He picked up his mother's skull and placed it carefully in the wool cloth. He did did same with his father's.
Magiere silently willed Emel not to ask what had happened or she wouldn't be able to answer. She didn't realize Chap was beside her until he licked her hand.
He whined, took several hurried steps toward Leesil and barked twice. When Leesil merely clutched the bundled cloak to his chest, ignoring the dog, Chap kept barking, two at a time in rapid succession.
Emel flinched at the sound. "Tell him to stop that. He does not listen to me."
"It means 'no'," she said, but she didn't know what Chap was trying to tell them.
Without Wynn and the talking hide, there was no way to understand what upset Chap so much. Magiere could only guess. He refused to accept that Nein'a had died years ago.