05 Dragon Blood: The Blade's Memory (26 page)

Therrik grunted, then jerked a thumb toward the exit. “Take your beer and get out of here before I report you.”

Gormen flashed a quick salute at Ridge—an action that made Therrik scowl—then darted around the big man. He looked relieved that reporting was all that Therrik had mentioned. Given his reputation for pummeling young privates and academy cadets, that wasn’t surprising. Ridge wondered if
he
was about to be pummeled. He almost joked that Therrik should be nicer to young people, so that he wouldn’t be the subject of vandalism so often, but clamped his mouth shut before the words could escape. As far as Ridge knew, Therrik had no reason to suspect he and Tolemek had been anywhere near his house. It would be better for his health if Therrik continued to believe that.

“I heard you were drawing on the wall in here like a three-year-old.” Therrik held a lantern up to the bars and stared at the map at the back of the cell.

“Now, Colonel, I take exception to that comment. I believe I have at least the artistic skills of a five-year-old.”

“You’re known for being delusional.”

Ridge looked at the map. “A four-year-old?”

Therrik’s face remained stony, his dark, dull eyes offering no hint that he appreciated the humor.

“You heard about the lighthouse too,” Therrik said, his hard gaze shifting toward Ridge.

Too? Ah, right. Therrik wouldn’t have sensed the information being plucked from his mind. But if he thought Ridge had some intel that he needed, did that mean he had come for an interrogation? An unsanctioned one? Or maybe Porthlok had secretly sanctioned it.

“I’ve been all along the coasts,” Ridge said carefully. “I don’t think I have any more information than you do, but I can only think of a few lighthouses that would make viable prisons, especially if someone wanted to hide someone extremely recognizable for the long term.”

“And you want to search them.”

“Seems like a logical approach. A lot of the problems we have would go away if King Angulus returned.” And his flier squadrons, but Ridge didn’t want to risk bringing that up again. He did wonder if Therrik had been back up to the hangar and had seen if any messages had been returned.

“I don’t suppose
you
would go away,” Therrik grumbled.

A few sarcastic comments floated to mind, but Ridge kept his mouth shut. Grumpy Therrik was an improvement over cruel Therrik, and he was waiting for the man to tell him why he had come. No need to distract him with clever repartee.

Therrik fished in his pocket. Ridge anticipated everything from brass knuckles to a garrote wire to some compact torture device. What he didn’t anticipate was a key, though maybe he should have. After all, torture implements would be easier to use without bars in the way.

“I’m out of beer,” Ridge said. “No need for you to come in.”

“I bet you swilled it without even thinking that it might be poisoned.”

“I would have thought that in a Cofah prison, but Private Gormen seemed genuinely interested in my tales.”

“I’ll bet.” Therrik shoved the door open.

Ridge tensed, all too aware that he didn’t have Sardelle to help him this time.

But instead of stepping in, Therrik stepped back. “Get out. Go find the king.”

Ridge looked from him to the key, noting a piece of tape around the fat end. This wasn’t the same key as the guards wore on the rings on their belts.

“Is this authorized?” Ridge asked.

“What do you think?”

“I’m not sure what to think. I figured you came to beat me into a pulp.”

Therrik’s eyes brightened, and his fingers curled into a fist. “I would be happy to do that. Maybe it would make your escape look more real.”

“Uh, that’s not necessary.” Ridge would have preferred to wait until Therrik left before venturing out—in the tight corridor out there, he would have to get uncomfortably close to the man to squeeze out of his cell. But he might not get another chance, or Therrik might change his mind.

Ridge took a breath and stepped through the gate. He noticed two things: that the guard at the head of the corridor was not there… and that Therrik grabbed him.

Ridge jerked his arm up in an attempt to block, but Therrik threw his weight behind the attack, his hands a blur. He knocked aside Ridge’s arm, even as he smashed Ridge into the bars beside the gate. Hard metal bit into his back, and his head clunked against iron. Ridge got his arms up to protect his throat, but all Therrik did was pin him there, his hands curled into Ridge’s uniform jacket.

“I don’t believe you bested me, you untrained chair jockey,” Therrik growled. “I can’t see it, but you better be the man those starry-eyed privates think you are.” Therrik shoved Ridge and let him go.

Ridge gripped the bars to keep from falling. He would love to slam a fist into that sneering face, but he was too busy trying to figure out what was going on to truly be angry.

Therrik thrust a finger toward his nose. “If you don’t find the king,
don’t
bother coming back.”

Without waiting for acknowledgment, Therrik stalked up the corridor. He slammed the door on his way out and did not look back.

Ridge couldn’t begin to figure out that man—and a big part of him wondered if Therrik was setting him up to be shot, letting him go so the MPs would see him as an escaped prisoner and unleash the hounds on him. But he willed his legs into motion, anyway. This might be his only chance to find the king. If he didn’t… Therrik wasn’t the only one who could make Ridge’s life miserable—or make it
over
—when he came back.

Chapter 11

Someone had noticed the guards were not at their post.

Sardelle grimaced, but was not surprised. At least twenty minutes had passed since she and Cas had stuffed them into that room. If Kaika wanted to barge into the queen’s meeting, they should have gone straight there from the dungeon, but Kaika had insisted on stopping in the kitchen to make explosives. Technically, it was a storage pantry in the back of the kitchen. Enough of the staff had been working in the main room, its ovens fired up and a giant mechanical mixing machine clanking and churning, that hiding had been necessary.

“We should go,” Cas grumbled, pacing. In the pantry, she could only go three steps before turning around. Every time she spun, Sardelle worried the hilt of her sword would catch on one of the flour bags stacked against one wall, tear it open, and make a mess. “There have been too many delays already. Trying to get into that meeting is going to get us killed.”

“I agree,” Sardelle said.

Cas stopped and stared at her. “You do?”

They were alone in the pantry, waiting for Kaika to return. Kaika had made up her explosives with impressive speed, but then she had insisted on leaving Sardelle and Cas behind while she sneaked back to the dungeon and planted a bomb. “It’ll be a distraction when we need it,” she’d said, “and it should finish the job the other one didn’t quite manage: collapsing the rubble in my cell so people think I’m dead under the pile, and they don’t come looking for me.”

Sardelle questioned how viable of a distraction it would make. Would the noise even be heard? It seemed nobody had heard the first explosion. Either the dungeon was not directly under a part of the castle where anyone was working, or when the architects had designed it a thousand years earlier, they had ensured it was insulated enough that the residents did not have to listen to the cries of torture victims.

Sardelle nodded to Cas’s question. “We were able to get her. I think we’re spitting in Fate’s face by lingering.”

“Yes. Exactly.” Cas went back to pacing. “It would be one thing if we could fight these people, but we can’t. I understand the captain’s drive to find the king, but…”

Sardelle held up a hand. “Someone’s coming.” She stood next to the door, listening with her ears and her mind.

“That woman really wants her flour.” Cas pressed herself into a corner between two shelving units, the sword scabbard clunking against the wall. Kasandral might be invisible to most people, but the blade was definitely there.

The last time the cook had headed for the pantry, Sardelle had distracted her with the subtle suggestion that a taste of the boar turning on the spit would be far preferable to retrieving flour for cookies that were destined to go upstairs to the meeting instead of being consumed by the kitchen staff. Sardelle reached out, intending to make another suggestion, but a second figure jogged into the range of her senses. Kaika.

Afraid she wouldn’t see the cook and would crash right into her, Sardelle almost spoke to her telepathically, but she worried she would startle Kaika when the captain needed her concentration. In the half second she was debating this, Kaika came across the cook. Even though Sardelle had her ear pressed to the door, she did not hear anything. Only her senses informed her when the cook had been subdued and dragged off.

“Kaika’s back,” Sardelle whispered, and eased the door open.

Few lamps burned in this back half of the kitchen, but she could tell the cook was nowhere to be seen. Kaika strode out from behind some cooling racks with a ball of twine and a grin. “We’re all set.”

Sardelle checked on the cook, found her tied and gagged in the corner, and shook her head. With or without explosives, their plan, such as it was, had to be close to tumbling down around them.

“Where’s the meeting?” Kaika whispered. Other staff were still working at the front of the kitchen.

“This way.” Sardelle headed for the door they had come in earlier.

Kaika gripped her shoulder before she could push it open. “Thanks for helping me,” she whispered. “Again. When we find the king, I’ll make sure he knows what you did and that you were loyal to him too.”

Sardelle nodded, though she wasn’t sure she
wanted
the king knowing what she had done here, which had included snooping through his wife’s possessions and breaking into his castle twice. She also wasn’t sure Kaika had any sway with him. Would he even know who some captain in the army was? Sardelle kept the thoughts to herself.

With Jaxi helping to guide her again, she led the others through hallways that eventually took them back to the stairs. Every time soldiers were in their way, Sardelle’s group had to divert—or find a way to distract those soldiers. She teased one into leaving his post with the scent of cookies baking in the kitchen, and Jaxi convinced a couple of others to run to the lavatory.

“We would be smacking right into them if it wasn’t for you, wouldn’t we?” Kaika whispered after they hid in an alcove while a group of four marched past. Sardelle had cut out a gas lamp and deepened the shadows so they hadn’t been noticed. “I had balls of a time getting back to the dungeon without being seen.”

Two men’s voices drifted down from the top of the stairs, and Sardelle did not answer.

Jaxi, did they find those guards yet?

Not yet. I’ve been muffling their sounds. One has been banging on the door with his knee. The man who escorted you up almost has his hands free. Two officers are arguing in the hallway. They’re about to knock and go in to ask the queen if she dismissed the guards.

“We have to go,” Sardelle whispered. She wanted to explain herself, but there was no time.

Trusting the others would follow, she charged up the stairs. Before she reached the top, she battered the officers with wind and knocked them away from the door. As with before, she made a prison of compressed air to hold them, but only one was held utterly immobile. The other growled and batted at the air with his hands. Even though it should not have been effective, he created eddies, pushing against the current.

Dragon blood
, Jaxi warned.

Is it the same man from the tower?
Sardelle would have preferred to
teach
him rather than beat him down, but she doubted a recruiting speech would be well received.

I think so. He—

Kaika surged past Sardelle and hefted a rifle over her shoulder. Sardelle hadn’t seen her grab it, but she clubbed the man in the head while he was still struggling to defeat the magic. Afraid she would get in Kaika’s way, Sardelle focused on the second one. She forced him to his knees and waved to Cas to tie him.

Kaika had stomped her officer into the ground and was kneeling on his back, employing her twine. It was silly to think about now, but Sardelle lamented that the man would likely always consider her an enemy, and she would never get a chance to talk to him about magic. She would probably never get a chance to talk to anyone here about anything except execution orders for herself.

Sardelle helped Kaika and Cas drag the men into the room next door to where they had already stored other guards.

“You two go first.” Kaika waved at their cloaks. “Since I’m not dressed as a whatever, I’ll lurk and come in behind you if I can. Holler if you need help.” She waved a lumpy package, one of her handmade explosives.

“When does the one in the dungeon go off?” Sardelle asked.

“Soon. Might not want to loiter.”

Right. Sardelle adjusted her hood, pulling it low over her eyes, and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Of course not—people had been guarding it, and cookies were on the way.

Sardelle walked into a room full of tables and rolls of… was that wrapping paper? Maybe it was craft paper. Voices drifted out from an open door that led to a second room in the back, with a crackling hearth and several occupied chairs visible through it.

“Looks like we’re late to the meeting,” Cas murmured. She was right behind Sardelle.

Sardelle eased closer, hoping to catch a few words before revealing herself. She would have preferred not to reveal herself at all, so she walked around one of the tables and hugged the shadows near the wall instead of approaching straight-on.

“He’s disappeared from the city,” someone was saying. “We don’t know where he went.”

“What does our spy say?”

Spy? Both of the speakers had been women. Sardelle was about to examine the room with her senses to get a further feel for the occupants, but a woman in a chair close to the door peered out. The queen. Shadows or not, she looked directly at Sardelle and Cas.