Blood in the Water (49 page)

What did that matter? Dead or dying, she was blocking the stairs. Branca could probably lift her but how would that help? Where could she take her? She couldn’t answer the simplest question as to who she was or why she was in the castle. How could she explain away an old woman’s body in her arms? Branca backed away up the steps. All she could do was hide. She turned and ran back for the garret.

As she reached the narrow stair to the roof, slipping on the damp stone, a scream shrilled through the castle, followed by another and another. Crouching on the topmost step, Branca belatedly realised she was weeping.

Tears couldn’t save her. What could she do now? Wasn’t it possible the old woman had fallen? Could she persuade Litasse to mourn such a tragic accident?

Now she heard shouts, urgent and angry. She couldn’t make out the questions but their intent was unmistakable. Doors slammed, booted footfalls echoing through the halls.

It was no good. She couldn’t master her Artifice. Summoning the calm to find Litasse’s thoughts amid the storm of emotion rioting through the castle was simply impossible.

Despair redoubled the throbbing in Branca’s head. Even if she could touch the duchess’s thoughts, how could she hope to persuade her that this death didn’t matter? That her only ally’s murder was no real concern?

Branca hid her face in her hands, hunching to muffle her sobs in her skirts. She couldn’t hide the truth from herself. She hadn’t meant to but she’d murdered that woman. Now she could only wait to be caught.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Tathrin

Adel Castle,

28th of Aft-Autumn

“Don’t fall over the parapet.” Gren held his arm cruelly tight. “And don’t puke on my boots, or I’ll make you lick them clean.”

Tathrin was grateful for the pain. It made the nausea recede. Drenching rain slapping his face helped some more.

“I’m all right.” He knew that was a lie when he opened his eyes. He was still horribly dizzy. But he could walk and that would suffice. He took a step and his foot slipped, hobnails scraping uselessly on the mossy tiles. He threw himself heavily onto the pitched roof rather than risk a lethal fall.

“Let’s hope no one heard that.” Sorgrad knelt by a trapdoor, sliding a knife blade into the crack between the hinges.

Tathrin expected him to lever it open. Instead the Mountain Man brushed a hand over the dagger and the hinges twisted into broken, hissing metal.

“Come on.”

Sorgrad hauled the trapdoor up and Gren jumped through. Both had their swords ready. Tathrin drew his own blade and followed. Blue light flared in the darkness.

“No!” Sorgrad’s shout cut through Gren’s obscene curse. “Don’t kill her!”

Gren’s sword scored a pale line on the wall. “
Sheltya
,” he spat at the cowering woman he’d nearly decapitated.

The Mountain adepts, whose Artifice he feared so? That made no sense. Then Tathrin recognised her.

“Branca?” Relief overwhelmed him.

“I thought—” she sobbed.

“Look after her.” Sorgrad thrust her into Tathrin’s arms.

“Where are they?” Gren jumped to the bottom of the narrow stair.

“That way?” Sorgrad looked back up at Branca. “What’s all the noise?”

Tathrin could hear rising commotion below.

“I… I…” She couldn’t speak for weeping.

“Who cares?” Gren disappeared. Sorgrad followed.

“Branca, please.” One arm around her waist, Tathrin half-carried her down the steps, his sword in his other hand.

A splintering crash drowned out the shouting. Gren hadn’t waited for Sorgrad’s magic: he’d kicked in the garret door. Tathrin dragged Branca after them. However dangerous it might be at Sorgrad’s side, it was safer than any alternative.

Before they reached the threshold, Gren was flung out of the room. Landing hard, he skidded along the floor on his back. Spitting curses, he fought a crackling tangle of white light.

Barely slowing as he ran, Sorgrad stooped to rip the magic away. Swirling the sparkling skein around his hand, he threw it through the doorway and followed. Already back on his feet, Gren was half a pace behind.

Tathrin held Branca at his back as he peered around the door jamb. He saw the light-haired man from Sorgrad’s scrying. Minelas.

“Whoever you are, you’ll regret this!” hissed the renegade mage.

“Eat shit and die,” Gren retorted.

Minelas flung shards of lightning towards both men. Sorgrad threw a ball of fire the size of his fist. It scattered the murderous magic in all directions. Tathrin ducked as sparks struck smoking fragments from the plastered walls.

“Is that the best you can do?”

Minelas’s derisive laugh was cut short as Sorgrad’s magefire rebounded from the far wall. The renegade barely turned it aside with a flare of blue light that left purple smears all across Tathrin’s vision.

Blinking, he saw Charoleia, helplessly lashed to that chair, and Trissa, collapsed in the corner. Minelas stood between them all and the women.

“You think I’d break sweat for scum like you?” Sorgrad wrapped the taller wizard in crimson flame.

Minelas ripped it to shreds with sapphire talons. “I see you’re not man enough to face me alone.”

Gren had been about to thrust his sword through the fire. Cobalt magelight leaped from Minelas’s fingers to the tip of the blade. The tempered steel exploded in a razor shower.

“You think that’ll save you?” Ignoring the cuts to his face, Gren had daggers in both hands before Tathrin had stopped blinking.

“How many knives do you have, little man?” taunted Minelas. “I have more magic.”

“So have I.” Sorgrad’s gesture sent the lethal metal splinters buzzing towards Minelas’s head.

The taller mage threw up his hands and they flashed into white sparks. The room reeked like a blacksmith’s forge.

Tathrin saw flying metal had cut fresh scores across Charoleia’s cheek. He looked back down the corridor. Whatever caused the uproar below, no one had come up here. Not yet.

“Stay here,” he ordered Branca.

His chance came when Minelas blinked into invisibility. Sorgrad tore a gout of ruby fire from the blaze in the hearth and threw it at seemingly empty air. The renegade’s concealment went up in smoke. He wasn’t laughing now, as he vanished again. An instant later he reappeared, menaced once more by Sorgrad’s magefire. Tathrin ran crouching along the wall.

“You dare—?”

Whatever outraged magic Minelas launched, Sorgrad blocked its path with a veil of searing flame. Tathrin felt it scorch his hair. Never mind. He had reached Charoleia, and Minelas couldn’t turn his back on either Mountain Man and live.

Gren was circling around, lobbing insults, ready to throw a dagger through any opening. Minelas did his best to ignore him, trading furious handfuls of magefire with Sorgrad, cobalt and crimson consuming each other. The room was stifling.

Tathrin sheathed his sword and pulled a knife from his boot top. “It’s all right.” Though he didn’t know if Charoleia could hear him.

“I’ll see to Trissa.” Branca was slapping at her skirts to snuff out sparks.

He hadn’t meant her to follow. Then again, she’d hardly be safer in the doorway. Tathrin sawed at the ropes securing Charoleia’s wrists, the knife slipping perilously on her clotted blood. Tathrin wanted to look up, to see what was happening inside the room and beyond. He didn’t dare. If he killed Charoleia by accident, Sorgrad would surely kill him, and he’d deserve it.

“She’s alive.” Crouched over Trissa, Branca’s voice broke between relief and a sob.

Tathrin risked a glance and winced as Gren dodged a lightning bolt at his feet. Sorgrad threw out a hand and the hearth spat scarlet fire at Minelas. The taller mage snared it with his own magelight. Purple light flowed back down the flames and killed the fire dead.

Charoleia’s wrists were free. Tathrin felt for the beat of her blood amid the lacerations. There it was, stronger than he expected. Heartened, he eased the knife under the rope around her neck. A dowdy brown curl fell to the floor. No matter. She’d be wearing a wig till summer to hide Minelas’s ruin of her hair.

Branca screamed. “Look out!”

She was staring through the broken door. Karn was running up the corridor, a naked sword in his hand. Duchess Litasse stood frozen in shock at the top of the stair. Her tear-streaked face was as pale as Charoleia’s.

“You kill that bastard. I’ll gut the other.” Gren abandoned Minelas in favour of this new prey. Karn charged to meet him.

“The duchess!” Tathrin shouted.

She was turning to flee, to summon all the castle’s swords.

A gale rose up from nowhere. Dust swirled down the corridor to envelop Litasse and she was dragged bodily into the room. Karn snatched at her hands, but the whirlwind was dragging him inside too.

Sorgrad blocked the broken doorway with a curtain of flame. Tathrin could feel its heat clear across the room.

“You think I need a spark?” the Mountain mage taunted Minelas. “That you’re the only one who can wield elemental air?”

“Jack of all trades.” The renegade mage launched a spear of blinding light at his head. “Master of none.”

Sorgrad dodged the murderous lightning. It left a black scar down the wall.

“Loose Charoleia.” Tathrin handed Branca his dagger. She began cutting the final rope, muttering under her breath as she glared at Minelas.

Drawing his sword once again, Tathrin stood between the three women and the rival combatants: between Gren and Karn, between Sorgrad and the renegade mage.

Taller and armed with both sword and dagger, Karn could use neither advantage. Gren had come inside the reach of the longer blade to menace him with stabbing strokes. He’d already drawn blood, a rusty smear on the yellow sleeve of Karn’s livery. Karn’s drawn face was murderous.

Where was Minelas? Tathrin couldn’t see the wizard at all. Had he fled?

“No you don’t!” Sorgrad gestured at the dead hearth and black ashes billowed into the room.

Abruptly, Litasse screamed, falling towards the deadly fire that filled the doorway. Sorgrad swore and a gust of wind shoved her into the wall instead.

Minelas reappeared, outlined by swirling cinders. Tathrin saw his hands still outstretched, where he’d pushed Litasse at the flames. He fell to his knees, yelping with pain as the ash enveloping him glowed white hot.

“How does it feel?”

Tathrin barely recognised Branca’s voice, so harsh with hatred. The dagger hung loose at her side, her unblinking eyes fixed on the renegade mage.

Minelas tore at his hair, at his clothing, with frantic hands. “No! I beg—” He collapsed to the floor, keening incoherently.

Gren’s blades were locked with Karn’s, neither able to steal an advantage. “What’s that he’s feeling?” the shorter man asked with interest.

“A taste of what’s he’s inflicted.” Branca broke off to chant something insidiously lyrical and Minelas screamed.

Sorgrad looked through the veiling flames into the corridor. “I’m all in favour of vengeance but we must leave.”

Tathrin braced himself for the blinding nausea of Sorgrad’s spell. Instead the floorboards shook like a rickety bridge. He fell to his knees, barely avoiding Trissa’s feet. Charoleia toppled insensible from her chair and he lunged to save her from a brutal fall.

As Litasse lost her footing, Sorgrad turned his own fall into a tumbler’s roll and saved her from the fire in the entrance a second time.

Gren seized his chance to grapple with Karn. Before either could recover his balance, they fell together, close as lovers. Gren was on top of the taller man, seizing his wrists and slamming his hands into the floor to make him drop sword and dagger. Then he clamped deadly fingers tight round Karn’s throat. Karn punched Gren hard in the ribs, twisting his hips to throw him off.

“Enough!”

The slender figure in the middle of the room threw back her black cloak’s hood. It was Jilseth.

“Behind the fair, Madam Mage, but good day to you regardless.” Sorgrad tried to bow but lacked all his usual grace.

Tathrin saw Litasse try to stab the Mountain mage with a slender dagger she’d got from somewhere. She could only manage a feeble gesture. Gren had fallen sideways, away from Karn. They clawed at each other with murderous intent only to slump to the floor, exhausted.

Jilseth scowled. “I said, enough.”

Across Tathrin’s lap, Charoleia’s weight dragged at his arms. He wanted to lay her down, for her ease and his own, but he could barely move. It wasn’t as if he were bound, more like being caught in some invisible net. He could barely shift his hand a finger’s length along his thigh.

Amber magic hauled Minelas upright and pressed him against the wall.

“There’s your turncoat.” If Sorgrad couldn’t bow, his smile was as charming as ever.

Jilseth was unimpressed. “You’ll be answering to Hadrumal too.”

Tathrin found it hard to swallow. Was that the magewoman’s wizardry or his own dread constricting his chest? What punishment could he expect? Even if he hadn’t used magic himself, he was hardly an innocent here.