Defending Destiny (The Warrior Chronicles) (35 page)

Magnus remained silent the rest of the way out of the house. Leashed violence came off of him in waves. There were two cars waiting. One for Merry with two immaculately dressed, dark sun-glassed men, and one for Magnus, Daisy, and Gerry, again with two men, identically dressed. Black suits. Black ties. Black shoes. Black glasses. Black guns. Black Lincolns with black-tinted windows. Ominous indeed.

One door was held open for Magnus. He got in without a word. The opposite door was opened for Daisy. She paused but didn’t get in. She jerked her head up in the air. “I’m not going anywhere near Court without Gleipnir and Magnus’ training sword.”

Gerry’s voice was calm as he responded. “Gleipnir is being transported as we speak.” Gerry nodded toward the three men entering the house with duffle bags. “Alexander will remain unarmed. Get in the car, Daisy. I have orders not to hurt you, but I don’t mind drugging you.”

One of the men in black produced a syringe. Daisy bent and slid into the back seat next to Magnus.

Gerry handed one of the men his shotgun. He was given a small black semi-automatic in return. He pulled the slide, chambering a round, and slid into the back after her. No one but Daisy heard his whispered “I’m sorry.
”

“You know Lauren will call a formal meeting of the entire Council to Court when he hears about this,” Daisy said.

“It’s already done, Daisy. We will be the last to arrive,” Gerry answered, knowing that not all of them would be leaving the castle walls once they entered.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The castle didn’t look much like a castle from the outside, more like a manor house of extreme proportions. The ornate and electrified gates were opened for public events twice a year. Twenty percent or so of the residence was open for public viewing during bi-annual festivals; one festival for each equinox. It was not the most hospitable time of the year for outdoor festivals, but the Arm-Righ and the Council weren’t big on hospitality. Be seen, and be seen to be generous, so as not to engender unwanted attention. Just another member of the community, fear not dear citizens, that was their motto. Twice a year. The other three hundred and sixty-three days, the castle was on invisible lockdown. No one got in or out without an appointment and security personnel escorting them. Eighty percent of the house was never seen except by members of the Court and the Council and the thrice-vetted cooking, cleaning, and maintenance staff.

The lord of the manor did not clean the toilets.

No one spoke during the ride, which was fine with Daisy. She didn’t much feel like small talk. Her brain was going a mile a minute, but wondering what was going to happen was futile. She knew the King wanted Taryn’s map and the key to deciphering it. That meant that Taryn was safe since she was the key, but it put the people her sister loved at great risk. Right now, Daisy was at the top of that list.

Love meant leverage, and leverage was an unfaithful bitch.

Leverage slept with whoever had enough power, audacity, and ruthlessness to use her, without regard to who brought her to the party.

The King wanted Daisy’s ability to find artifacts, and she knew it. Daisy had a natural way of tuning into their energy, at least when they gave off energy. If Taryn gave her half a lead on where an artifact might be found, odds were Daisy would find it. The King wanted certain artifacts found. He wanted others kept hidden. That meant Daisy wasn’t quite as valuable as Taryn on the one hand, and downright dangerous if uncontrolled on the other. Hence, her fate was more precarious than her sister’s.

The ones Daisy loved were also at risk. Leverage again. Death, incapacity, and leverage, three words Daisy wanted to hear. Those same three aimed at those who would harm her gave her hope; hope and the determination to be the meanest, most cunning, downright devious, and lethal bitch the Arm-Righ ever had the misfortune of trying to manipulate. It was a tall order and she hoped she had the stones to carry it off.

The scenery out the rear-seat window changed with their elevation. She was squished between Gerry and Magnus. Sitting between two very large men who had leg-stretching issues gave her the feeling of being squeezed from both sides.

She ignored it for the most part and pushed back on their muscled arms with what she’d been told were bony elbows when they encroached too far into what should have been her personal space. Both men ignored her, lost in their own thoughts, and shuffled out slightly when they were elbowed.

Daisy began to pay more attention as they entered Mallaig. She restrained herself from bolting up in her seat when she recognized a lone figure standing in the shadows by the docks, the unmistakable shape of a sword pommel at an angle on his back. When she looked his way she saw him nod before he melted into the background and disappeared from view.

If she interpreted Rowan’s nod correctly, he was also headed for the castle, armed, old school. She could almost feel Gleipnir’s answering hum through the back of her seat.

…

During the time she had while traveling between Mallaig and the castle, Daisy focused on what she could remember of the rules of Court. Rules were funny things for her, like numbers for mathematicians. She liked to memorize them. Find patterns among them. Make complicated puzzles out of them. She played those mental games so she could bend them sufficiently when needed and break them with as little ramification when she couldn’t. It was a gift, like making lists, and she’d done it for as long as she could remember. It served her well, especially through her adolescence.

More than once her father said, with no minor disappointment, that she should have taken after her mother and become a lawyer. Her mother affectionately said she had a mind for detail and precision. Her father equated that with the mind of a white-collar felon who got away with it. Wall Street was full of them. Daisy had no issue with lawyers, but she despised financial fraud. The first time Jordon said that, she didn’t talk to him for a week. She was in kindergarten at the time. The second time, none of the women at Potters Woods spoke to Jordon for three days. He loved the first twenty-four hours. The next had him pulling his hair out, and by day three, that kind of disparagement was out of his system for good. She was in second grade that time.

Daisy learned a very important lesson. She learned the fine art of rule implementation and that sometimes the most esoteric rules were the best ones to remember. She’d learned that from her mother and from the financial criminals who got big bonuses instead of prison time. The lesson stuck.

Learn the rules. Written and unwritten. They are all important. Vitally so, for a Second. More so for you, the youngest Second to hold the position and the first woman. Two strikes against you walking through the door.
Lauren’s voice echoed through her head.

Learn the rules.

And she had. She remembered one in particular because it made no sense and was so antiquated she doubted anyone had used it in more than a generation. It was just the kind of thing to keep in her back pocket, especially with a King who was so consumed by his greed for power that he wouldn’t spare time for something so trivial and unimportant as the last footnote in a rather dry rulebook.

They arrived at the gate. It was lit and opened immediately for their vehicle.

Gerry was right.

They were expected.

The sound of the gate opening wasn’t disturbing. The sound of it closing immediately once their vehicle made it through was.

Her descent into courtly violence had begun.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Daisy was not taken to the Arm-Righ. None of them were. Instead, they were each taken to their own rooms. Her clothing, enough for a week or more, hung in the closet along with a formal court gown; low cut, high slit, and hand-beaded in shades of blue. The gown looked like it would fit her like a second skin; sleeveless, it left little to the imagination. The bodice was a deep navy blue that flowed into increasingly lighter shades until it fell at her feet in cool, icy blue. The slit in front was so high she’d risk exposure with every step. The ten-inch beaded train behind would hamper easy movement. She could fight in that dress, but it would be much easier if the dress ended at her knees and was shaped more like a bell than skintight fish scales dropping a foot longer than she was tall.

For a lot of material, there was nowhere she could hide a weapon.

The Arm-Righ thought of everything.

The gown he’d chosen screamed “elegant slut,” which the Court would enjoy. It would hamper her freedom of movement enough to put her at a distinct disadvantage if she wanted to use her legs to fight. The only nod to Scottish formality was a V-shaped ribbon of tartan that ended in a point at her pubic bone. More than suggestive, the whole effect made her feel more like a sex object than if she’d put on only her favorite over the knee boots, pearl choker, and a smile, and danced around naked with a rose in her teeth.

The Alexander tartan was restricted. Permission had to be given to wear it. No barrier for a King, apparently. If it had been up to her, she would have used Clan MacDonald tartan, since Alexander was a sept of the clan, but that would have been too easy. MacDonald tartan could be found everywhere, and the King was one to make a point in everything he did.

He left little to chance.

He was also a victim of his own arrogance.

If he had a vulnerability, that was it. But how to turn it to her advantage?

The phone on the wooden roll-top desk across the room rang. She crossed and answered it. “Hello,” she said, uncertain as to the proper phone etiquette when visiting a castle occupied by an evil King. “Daisy Bennett…u
h
…Alexander
, speaking.”

“Dinner is at eight, Mrs. Alexander. Your escort will arrive at your door at precisely seven fifty-five to assist you to the dining room.” There was a pause.

Daisy said nothing. The inanimate voice on the other end was as androgynous as it was officious, and seasoned with just a dash of condescension.
So one of the Arm-Righ’s third-stringers then. The lower down on the food chain, the more superior they tended to sound when they expected the recipient of their instructions to not be around very long.

Daisy waited. She wasn’t about to add to the speaker’s already overblown feeling of self-worth.

“Formal attire is required.”

“Of course it is.” Daisy hung up the phone and looked at her watch. Two hours and fifty-five minutes until she had to shimmy into that ridiculous mermaid gown. She checked her door. Locked. No TV. No computer. She walked to the bookshelves; half of the titles were in Latin. One of the titles popped out at her. A small volume, but one she’d seen before:
The Rules of The Damselfly Court.

The copy Lauren gave her was printed from a PDF. This one was hand-illuminated on parchment. The lettering was flamboyant and beautifully drawn in the Celtic style of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The words, and their meaning, were the same, whether produced from a
laser printer or hand-bound and illuminated in gold leaf.

Daisy plopped herself down for a little light reading and a nap before dinner.

…

Magnus put up a stink when they separated him from Daisy. The sixteen armed retainers who walked him to his room dissuaded him from breaking a few jaws. He would have felt better, but finding out if this castle had a dungeon wasn’t on his to-do list. Getting chained up wasn’t going to help him help Daisy.

He was thoroughly searched and made to walk through a state-of-the-art x-ray machine before he was escorted to his room; one of twenty-five or so doors that looked identical, down a long wing exactly three hundred and sixty-seven steps from the side entrance. The door was opened for him and locked behind him, leaving him alone in a large, beautifully equipped suite. Under other circumstances he might have enjoyed spending a night in the four-poster canopy bed with the drapes drawn, Daisy naked, ready to play the Highland lord to her lady.

It took him about three seconds to find the first bug. Ninety seconds later he had the whole suite swept. The Arm-Righ’s minions weren’t very creative in their placement of monitoring devices. He too was told to be dressed and ready for dinner by seven fifty-five. He’d be ready, right after he found Gerry Butler.

Not even all the King’s men were going to be able to keep him from skinning that traitor alive. After that he’d find out why Butler betrayed Daisy.

Magnus looked at his watch. Just shy of three hours before they’d come back for him. Gerry walked with his armed escort every one of the three hundred and sixty-seven steps to his temporary cell. He’d given a Magnus a hard look before he sneered disdainfully and shut his door.
Dinner is a formal affair, Islander. The sporran goes in the front.

The choice of words had been strange. He was, in fact, an Islander. He was been born just outside of Stenness on Orkney’s main island. He had numerous kilts and more hand-tooled sporrans from Macski’s Highland Gear than he could count. He didn’t need a lesson on where to put it.

Magnus scanned the room, careful to avoid the cameras which were focused primarily on the door and windows. No computer. No globes. No maps on the wall. He walked to the fireplace, cold now and empty. Leaning on the mantle place he surveyed the bookshelf, scanning titles until his eyes lit on a volume entitled
The Orkney Islands.
He pulled it and three other books from the shelf and crossed to the bed, plopping himself down. As far as he could determine, the camera viewing area did not include the bathroom or the bed. He closed the bed curtains just to be sure.