Lisa Shearin - Raine Benares 02 (20 page)

I had
promised Mychael I wasn’t going anywhere near Tam. I could keep my promise and
talk to Tam at the same time. And I could stay safe while doing it.

“Trust
your instincts, Raine. You are
not
safe here. You’re being watched.”

I
kept my face neutral.
“By who?”

Tam
met my question with silence.

“What
have the Khrynsani got on you?”

No
response.

“You
can’t tell me—or won’t?”

I saw
Mychael on the opposite side of the theatre conferring with some newly arrived
blue-robed mages. He stopped and looked at me. I gave him a little smile and a
wave—and held my breath. He shouldn’t be able to sense me mindspeaking to Tam.
If he could, he’d have been over here in an instant. Mychael held my gaze a
moment longer, then turned back to the mages.

“The
men in blue robes are Conclave shield weavers,”
Tam told me.
“They’re reinforcing the stage’s
shields. Since these are Ronan’s best students, I can’t risk anyone being
hurt.”

“Some
risks are worth taking, Tam. I want to help you.”

“Sometimes
you can risk hurting someone just standing close to them.”

“What
happened in that alley won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”

Tam’s
low laugh brushed against me like the softest fur. I shivered and gripped the
chair’s armrests. Tam had never been able to do
that
before.

“Stop
it.”

His
laughter stopped.
“Just a demonstration, Raine. What happened between us is
still there. We’re not entirely separate anymore. Mychael knows this. Some
things are beyondmortal control—and some things are impossible to resist.Like
you. Please stay away from me.”

Don’t
think about Tam. Don’t think about what we did, or what I’d like to be doing
again right now. Eternal damnation versus amazing sex. Close, but no contest.
Amazing sex didn’t last nearly long enough—damnation lasted an eternity. That
tossed a bucket of ice water on my lust.

“What
have the Khrynsani got on you?”

Silence.
“It’s complicated,”
he finally said.

“With
you it always is,”
I muttered.
“I’m a bright girl, Tam. I can handle complicated. You’d be surprised at the
knots I can untangle. You made a bargain, but you didn’t keep it. Then you
killed the person you made the bargain with. In my family that makes any and
all deals null and void. How does it work in your family?”

“You
saw last night how it works in my family.”
His voice in my head was tight with repressed rage.

“The
Khrynsani aren’t your family.”
I
stopped, thought, and concluded in the span of two seconds.

Oh
hell.

The
Khrynsani worked for Tam’s family. The Mal’-Salins.

I
just sat there. A Khrynsani shaman could have popped out of the floor right
next to me and I don’t think I would have batted an eye.

Things
fell into place for me and it wasn’t pretty.

The
Khrynsani wanted me, which meant the Mal’Salins wanted me. Their lawyers were
taking the legal road. Their shamans were going for dark alleys—and Tam. You
didn’t get to pick either your enemies or your family, and both were just as
likely to stick a dagger in your back.

Tam’s
presence in my mind vanished. My glance flicked back to the dining suite. He
was gone.

Piaras
appeared at my side and I damned near jumped out of my skin.

“You
looked like you were concentrating on something. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“You
didn’t disturb me, kid. You scared the crap out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s
okay. It’s my fault; I wasn’t paying attention.” I was too busy realizing that
Tam’s family had somehow roped him back into service, and had come close to
lassoing me along with him.

I
felt someone watching us. I had a feeling who the voyeur was, but I turned and
looked to the front table anyway. Yep, it was Carnades. I was half tempted to
stick my tongue out at him.

Piaras
grinned sheepishly. “Well, how did I do?”

“Absolutely
beautiful.” I didn’t mention the people in the audience who thought the same
thing but wanted more. “If it hadn’t been for those stage shields, everybody
out here would’ve been—”

I
sucked in my breath and froze. Something was lightly brushing the skin between
my breasts. I looked down. Nothing there except me and mine.

I
stood as calmly as I could considering I was being groped by invisible fingers.
I stepped back and the touching didn’t stop. I blew out my breath in short
puffs and looked at Carnades’s table. He was turned away from me, talking to
someone. It wasn’t him.

And
it wasn’t Tam.

Piaras’s
hand gripped my arm. “Raine, what is it?”

“Someone’s
touching me.”

“I’m
touching you.”

“It’s
. . . not you.” My breath came in gasps. I couldn’t get any air.

Vegard
was beside me. “Ma’am, what’s wrong?”

The
fingers suddenly splayed, the tips pressing into my breasts, the palm pushing
hard against the center of my chest. Power radiated inward from that invisible
hand. Searching. Summoning.

The
Saghred surged against the hand from inside of me. The pressure from both
inside and out held my rib cage like a vise. I couldn’t breathe at all.
Piaras’s face blurred and faded. I was going to pass out.

“Raine!”
It was Vegard. I could see his face, but his voice sounded like he was yelling
down a well. I dimly heard him call for Mychael.

With
the pressure came a presence. Not just old. Ancient. Its weight crushed me,
thickened the air that I couldn’t breathe. Filled my gasping mouth and nose
with the sharp, coppery scent of blood. More blood than one body could hold,
the blood of hundreds, thousands of screaming victims.

It
was magic. Ancient and malignant. And evil. Gleefully evil.

Black
flowers bloomed on the edge of my vision. The hand on my chest suddenly blazed
into a white-hot brand, searing my flesh, burning through bone. My silent
scream became one of the thousands as I fell into darkness.

“It
wasn’t Tam,” I said for the umpteenth time.

I
could almost sit up in bed now. I was perfectly fine. Well, at least better.

Mychael
wasn’t listening to me.

It
didn’t help my case any that when I came around, I didn’t have the strength to
get my head off the pillow. Hard to be defiant and have a decent argument when
you couldn’t lift your own head. I was surprised to find that I didn’t have any
burns. It felt like someone had hauled off and punched me in the center of the
chest with a branding iron.

Apparently
I was out cold all the way back from Sirens to the citadel. And judging from
the cramp in my neck and the dark outside my window, I’d added a couple of
hours of sleep on top of that. I felt better, still crappy, but better.

Once
he determined that I could speak, Mychael had started in with the questioning.
You’d think that air-deprived impressions and images wouldn’t stick around in
your head all that long, but you’d be wrong. Like the phantom hand in the
center of my chest, those images were seared into my mind. There was going to
be no forgetting those anytime soon. By the next time I went to sleep, they’d
probably have taken a place of honor in the parade of night-mares that made me
go scream in the night.

I
wondered how long I could go without sleep.

“All
I know is that the Saghred responded to him,” I told Mychael wearily.
“Big-time.”

His
blue eyes narrowed. “Like Tam?”

“Nothing
like Tam.”

Tam
had been amazing; this had been amazingly painful and nearly deadly.

My
tone must have implied my enjoyment of the former, because Mychael’s scowl
deepened. Great. Jealousy was rearing its ugly head. Normally I’d feel
flattered; now I knew it was only adding unwanted trouble to an
already-too-long list.

“The
Saghred just said hello to Tam,” I explained. “It greeted Mr. Fiery Fingers
like a long-lost friend.”

I
knew who it had to be. He was an ancient, powerful, bullying slaughterer who
enjoyed his work way too much. I’d read all about him and his antics—in his own
words and his own handwriting. All the blood, the thousands of screaming
victims had been Saghred sacrifices.

“You’ve
got a seriously unwanted guest on your island,” I told Mychael.

“I’ve
got a lot of those right now.”

“This
one makes Banan Ryce look like a choirboy.”

Mychael
didn’t move. “Do you have a name?”

“Rudra
Muralin.”

Mychael
sat back in the chair he’d pulled beside my bed. He didn’t say anything for a
while. “Are you certain?”

“I
can’t imagine the Saghred reacting that way to anyone else. He kept it fed and
happy. The rock was trying to rip me apart to get to him.”

Mychael
knew what Rudra Muralin being here meant. I could see it in his eyes. The
Khrynsani and the Nightshades had just been downgraded from dangerous to a mere
nuisance.

Mychael
had himself a big problem. Mine was catastrophic.

A
thousand-year-old psychotic goblin teenage spellsinger wanted his rock back.

“Rudra
Muralin was in Sirens,” I said. “It doesn’t tell us what the Khrynsani have on
Tam, but it might go a long way toward explaining why he had to act like he was
going along. And it would also explain why he didn’t want me there.”

Mychael’s
lips quirked in a sardonic grin. “Tam can be a wise man sometimes.”

I
pressed my lips into a thin line. “So what did the fount of wisdom have to say
for himself?”

“Probably
nothing more than what he told you.”

I
blinked. “You were eavesdropping.”

“I
was doing my job.”

“I
thought your job was to keep us apart.”

“My
job is to keep what happened in that alley from happening again. Tam was less
than forthcoming with me. I thought he might tell you things that he’d kept hidden
from me.”

“So
you struck out?”

“What
he told me, I already knew. When he discovered that the Khrynsani were going to
kidnap one of his employees, he and some of his men went to retrieve the boy.”

I
nodded. “That matches the story the kid told me. Either it’s the truth, or Tam
told the kid what he was supposed to say if anyone asked. That adds another
question. What do the Khrynsani want with a nightclub spellsinger? And then it
just so happened that I was there while Tam was there, and Darshan the shaman
was tickled to see us both. I take it Tam didn’t say why.”

“He
refused to give details. I could have arrested him, but I know Tam and that
wouldn’t have made him talk. Though if the Mal’Salins are threatening or
coercing him, a containment room might be the safest place for him right now.
And if the Khrynsani discover Tam killed one of their own with a death curse,
he may wish that I had arrested him.”

I
almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You threatened to lock him up?”

“I
never threaten; I merely told him what my duty as paladin required of me.”

“Sounds
like a threat to me.”

“I
would have been entirely within my rights as paladin to take Tam into custody.
I can’t trust him, but I can’t deny that he saved your life. I’m having him
closely watched. No doubt, his reaction to the Saghred was as much a surprise
to him as it was to you. I don’t think it was premeditated. The last time he
saw you in Mermeia before we set sail, the Saghred was secure in its casket and
wrapped in containment spells. At that time, those containments actually
worked. There was no reaction then between the two of you and the Saghred.”

No,
but there’d been plenty of reaction between Tam and me. Now there was a
good-bye a girl could remember. I think I can safely say that I’d never been
slammed against a mainmast and kissed quite like that before. Tam wanted to
make sure I wouldn’t forget him. No chance of that.

Mychael
hadn’t seen that farewell, and I wasn’t about to tell him. Especially now.

“The
containments aren’t working so great anymore,” was what I said. Piaras’s song
put the Saghred down for a light nap. It was snoozing just fine until it got a
whiff of Tam’s magic. “I’m not surprised you couldn’t get Tam to admit to
anything. Goblins are notorious for talking in circles. Tam’s elevated it to an
art form. If he doesn’t want you to know something, trying to pry it out of him
will just make you dizzy.” Tam’s answer to a question was very often another
question. Not one of his more endearing qualities.