The Destroyer Book 3 (52 page)

If they did, the tiny sleek ship could be managed by two people.

I had been thinking of a way for Iolarathe and me to escape quickly, with little trace, in a way that would be hard for my expertly trained soldiers to track. I knew a little about sailing, but nearly all of my life had been spent on land or horseback. As was true of most of my soldiers, the sea was intimidating, chaotic and unpredictable and easily able to foil the magic that kept us immortal. We could hold our breath for much longer than a normal human, but if the ship sunk into deep waters, our magic could not save us from death.

It was the third job I had taken after my stint as a stable boy. To find a suitable escape vessel, I'd wandered the harbor and helped the half dozen ships unload their cargo. I chatted with their crews and made friends with their captains. As fate would have it,
Sea Dog
was one of the first boats I approached, and the first mate asked if I would be available to crew when they left port. After a discussion over a bitter ale, I'd worked out the terms of my brief employment and both the captain and first mate agreed to take my wife as a passenger.

"Fuck it's cold," a voice said from the wall above me on the south side of the barracks.

"Eh. But at least you're off at dawn," another voice whispered.

"I might stick around and watch them chop that Elven bitch into pieces," the first voice said.

I stopped.

"Huh?"

"The one they had in that special cell. They are executing her at dawn." I recognized the voice of Tillian. One of the more experienced wall sentries.

"You don't say? I thought they were going to keep her in there forever. Was it true that she killed three of our wardens when they caught her?" the second voice asked. I didn't recognize his voice, but I hadn't been able to speak with all of the guards that worked in the barracks.

"I wasn't there. Heard that she broke into Malek's estate and attacked his students."

I moved closer to the wall and assessed the surface for climbing. I had heard a few rumors of her capture but this sounded closest to the truth. She must have thought that the Ovule was being kept in Malek's home and she was probably correct. Malek had come to collect several trophies and interesting artwork from the Elvens.

"I know that she bit Commander Grillp's nose off yesterday when he questioned her." From my memory, Grillp was one of Malek's captains. I recalled Malek giving him logistic detail instead of active combat duty. I was just thankful that someone from Shlara or Alexia's army had not been assigned to interrogate Iolarathe. Their methods were effectively brutal on our enemy.

"It couldn't have happened to a bigger asshole." They both chuckled.

"He ordered it. Might even wield the axe."

"Do you think any of the generals will be there?"

"Naw. They don't give a fuck about the Elvens anymore. If Malek was in the city, he might show up, but he's been gone for the last year," Tillian said.

"Too bad. I've never seen one."

"I saw Thayer a few years ago. He was as scary as they say he is. Looked like the kind of man that eats raw iron for breakfast."

Their conversation devolved into a debate about which general would win in a battle, but my mind had already flown into action. I knew they had been questioning Iolarathe, but no one seemed to think of her as more than a particularly aggressive prisoner of war. It was also possible that this was a trap, but I couldn’t imagine a low ranked guard being privy to such a ruse. And it was true that none of the generals were supposed to be in the city at the moment. My old friends were not involved in her capture or sentence of execution. I was just being paranoid.

But paranoia had kept me from being captured by countless O'Baarni hunters for the last twelve years.

The ship would leave in two days, but I had to move now. Iolarathe would be dead in the morning and I needed to take the risk. Fortunately, I had anticipated the possibility that I would have to free her before the
Sea Dog
left and had scouted out a few spots where we could wait. One of which was the inn where I currently stayed. It wasn't the safest strategy, but we would have to make it work. If not for the loud drunkards outside my room, I would have still been asleep and missed this conversation and my love would have been executed.

I walked around the walls of the barracks and toward the front gate of the complex. My heart beat faster than normal so I forced it to calm. There was a mixture of O'Baarni and normal humans here; if an O'Baarni thought I looked suspicious, I didn't want to give them an additional reason to question me. As expected, there were two guards at the gate, bunched together over a small fire pit.

"Good evening, Decar." I didn't know the other guard, but Decar gave me a friendly smile. I walked past the two of them and into the courtyard. They didn't bother to stop me and probably thought I was running a stable boy errand or out chasing girls.

The courtyard was empty and I met no opposition on my short walk to the stables. Once inside, I crept silently past the sleeping horses and up to the hay loft where the stable boys slept. The loft was big enough for each of the young men to get a good-sized corner to himself, and the night concealed my movements. I climbed to the top rafter above my corner and ran my hands through the darkness. My fingers brushed the strap of my leather pack and I carefully pulled the bag from its hiding place. Inside was a weapon belt that sheathed a short sword and dagger, two hooded cloaks, a large jug of very spiced wine, lock picking tools, and a dozen throwing darts loaded in a leather satchel that firmly attached to my belt.

Once armed, I crept out of the stables and sneaked toward the dungeon entrance. I heard the various guards conversing on the walls in their usual manner. In fact, the environment matched every night I had observed during my stint as a stable worker, so my hopes raised that this part of my plan might be completed without complication. It was a few hundred yards to the prison, but I had become well versed in the arts of stealth by now. Shadows made more noise than I did and were probably more visible in the night than my sneaking form.

The outside door to the jail was thick wood, with stout iron rails that wrapped around it like a cross. The hinges once screeched when moved, but I had applied a liberal coat of grease to them late one night and the door swung with little more than a whisper. Of course, that only helped if anyone were to be listening outside of the dungeon. The guard inside would sense the change in air pressure and wonder who approached.

If he was paying attention.

"Who goes there?" a call rang from deep within the torch lit tunnel. The voice was Fenzan, one of the dungeon guards with whom I had the best relationship. He had first given me a tour of the cells and would be the happiest to see me. My luck was indeed good tonight.

"Andset, sir. I can't sleep and thought you might want to play a game of dice."

"Does a bear shit in the woods? I'm fucking bored as hell down here." I walked the stone tunnel and then down the short flight of steps to the guard table.

When I first introduced myself to Fenzan, I had remarked at how odd it was that there was just one guard down here. He agreed that it was boring, but apparently the watch commander had found the two previous guards drunk and asleep one night. He then decided that the shift only needed one sentry moving forward, one that was an O'Baarni. It worked out well for Fenzan, since he took the position and both salaries.

The promotion would not end well for him tonight.

I had thought of a dozen different ways to get past the guard without murder. I could have used poison, some sort of distraction, maybe talked my way through. I even thought about sneaking by, but the stone corridor was too narrow, well lit, and the only guards stationed here were unlikely to be asleep. Even if one of the less violent methods worked, they would know my face, the fake name I used, and once my generals put the pieces together they would increase the resources hunting for me.

"Couldn't sleep huh?" he asked when I stepped toward him; he sat on one of the stout oak chairs with his booted feet upon the table.

"Naw. Too cold and those assholes snore." I reached my right hand out to pass him the dice and then grabbed his wrist. I stepped to the side of the table, to his left, and yanked his arm while I drew my dagger. Even for an O'Baarni, I was fast and strong. Fenzan thought I was only a human and his face didn't have a chance to register surprise before my blade sunk into his temple and ended his life.

I let out a long breath and cradled his body before it hit the stone floor. He wasn't the first of my kin I had been forced to kill. But the others had been in self-defense, or at least, I justified my actions because my capture meant death. But this was murder and I could not fool myself into thinking otherwise. Regret filled my heart like a sick tidal wave. I had agonized over this decision for many days but I knew this outcome was still wrong. Unfortunately, I didn't have the imagination to think of a better way to free her. Was Iolarathe's life worth more than one of my people?

I had already proven to myself that it was, since Shlara was dead.

I cradled Fenzan's limp body in my right arm and grabbed the set of keys with my left. A few paces behind the table was another wood door that led to the cells. I found the key quickly and opened the door. The hinges on this one creaked, but I had expected as much.

The dungeon had a simple layout. Three floors of about a hundred yards on each level. At the end of each hallway, a set of stairs led down to the next floor. Only a quarter of the torches lit the walls, Fenzan explained to me that the prisoners were given food and water in the morning. If this was true, I had about five hours before anyone would notice something was amiss.

I passed a few cells housing sleeping prisoners. Even carrying the weight of Fenzan’s body, I moved silently, and had no fear of waking them. My cloak covered my face, so if one of the captives saw me, they would not be able to make out my features.

The stench of shit, piss, vomit, and death filled my nose as I dug deeper into the dungeon. The bottom floor held their Elven prisoners, who were given little attention and often left to starve as a punishment. There were about ten of them locked in cramped cells. The first time I had been down here I acted like I expected a young stable boy to behave, forcing myself to gasp and gag. The smell was horrible, but I had experienced much worse after a battle. I lay Fenzan's corpse at the end of the hallway and began trying the assortment of keys on the massive steel door of Iolarathe's cell.

The third key I tried worked and the gray steel door moved open with a gentle push. The torches on the wall behind me did little to illuminate the inside of the cell, but my eyes could see in almost complete darkness. Crouched in the corner opposite the door was a figure clothed in a dirty sheet with one arm shackled to the wall.

"Do not speak." I pulled on her shoulder to turn her toward me. Her face was covered with dirt and mud but her eyes shone with animal intensity. Her unchained arm lashed out at my face but I grabbed it with my other hand. The blow should have been strong enough to knock me over, but her strength was little more than that of a normal human.

"Look at me. Look at me. Look at me," I said until her eyes seemed to register my face. She stopped struggling and gasped. Her silver eyes grew in size and her mouth opened in complete shock.

"Do not speak," I whispered again and she nodded.

Then I moved to her shackle and tried the keys, there were twenty on the ring but none of them worked. I guessed that would be the case, so I pulled out my lock picks, inserted the tension tool, and scraped the curved pick across the teeth of the lock. My advanced sense made the task easy since I could feel and hear the pins' tiny movements. In half a minute, the lock was defeated and I had released the shackle on Iolarathe's wrist. I should have picked the lock to start.

I helped her stand and her hand ran over my shoulder, finally squeezing along my bicep. The contact was electrifying and I resisted the urge to take her in my arms and kiss her. I needed to stay focused on the next few parts of my mission or all could be lost. As soon as we exited her cell I picked up Fenzan's body and moved it into her place, even clasping his dead wrist into the shackle. Then I locked the door behind us and led her across the dungeon floor and up the flights of stairs.

I hung up the key ring by the table and pulled out the extra cloak and the jug of spiced wine from my pack. I gave Iolarathe the cloak and she donned it carefully. Then I uncorked the strong smelling wine and poured it over the small bloodstain on the stone tiles, over the chair, and over the table. I left the bottle tipped over on the table, dripping slightly onto the stone. If my luck continued to hold, the guard relieving Fenzan in the morning would think that he got drunk and abandoned his shift.

Iolarathe inhaled deeply once we stepped outside of the dungeon. I pointed toward the back wall, away from the front gate, and she followed me in that direction. To reach the top of the wall, the wardens climbed straight stairs that attached to the stone barrier on the right, but were open to the courtyard on the left. The stairway we took was the least exposed, but we could still be seen from two of the warden’s posts should they choose to look into the courtyard. The steps led right up to another station, and I heard guards chatting at the top about a dice game.