The Only Option (7 page)

The smile on Tilo's face died as he saw Rochus. “Don't tell me you're back to being angry and guilty.”

“Says the man who wanted to fuck me because he didn't come flying to my rescue.”

For a moment, Rochus half-thought Tilo was going to pitch the wood at his head. “I wanted to fuck you because I wanted to help and because it's not exactly a burden. Believe it or not, I've never had to fake anything regarding you.”

“That's not what you—”

“What I say doesn't seem to matter to you!” Tilo bellowed. “You hear whatever lets you stay mad and keep hating me.” He dropped the firewood on the ground and turned sharply away. “I'm not saying I don't deserve to be hated, but stop claiming I'm fucking you because I don't have a choice. That isn't remotely true.”

Rochus opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again. What was the point? It was done and over with, and he most certainly would not cave to weakness a third time. And the moment the problems with Rothenberg were resolved, he could go home and never think about Tilo again.

He pulled his cloak tightly around his shoulders and went to feed Fury, then spent a few minutes playing with Song and Silence. By the time he was done, his temper was mostly calmed, though he still felt awkward and disconnected whenever he looked at Tilo—who refused to so much as glance in his direction.

Rochus returned to the makeshift shelter and pulled pen and paper from his saddlebags. When he'd finished writing a letter to his uncle, he secured it in a message tube. “Song.” The raven flew over to him and held out her right foot. When the message was secured, Rochus stroked her feathers. “Fly swiftly, but be careful. See that no one but my uncle reads it.” Song cawed, nibbled at his fingers, then flew off.

“Your uncle?” Tilo asked.

“The Magus Supreme.”

Tilo blanched. “Um. I hadn't—I didn't know.” He looked like he wasn't quite certain if he was going to throw up, cry, or do both.

Rochus frowned. “What's wrong?”

Laughing bitterly, Tilo replied, “What's wrong? I've forced the hand of the nephew of the Magus Supreme, and if I recall correctly, your parents are nothing to scoff at either. I can't believe I was so stupid, I never registered—”

Standing, Rochus closed the space between them and grabbed Tilo's shoulders, shook him gently. “Calm down before you pass out. If you're afraid there will be some sort of repercussions, set your mind at ease. I'm a grown man. They have no business interfering in my life even if they wanted to, which they don't. My uncle finds all this hilarious and my parents don't even know. When they do find out, they'll join my uncle in laughing at me. Everyone from the queen down is quite assured I'm getting what I deserve.”

Instead of laughing as he'd expected, Tilo just looked more wretched. “So I'm both a pathetic, desperate fool incapable of making my own decisions
and
a fitting punishment.” He turned sharply away, jerking free of Rochus's hands, but not before Rochus saw the tears.

Before he could catch Tilo again, however, Tilo shifted into his dragon form and flew up into the sky.

“Silence, stay with him,” Rochus snapped. “Return to me only after he's made it home safe.”

This was
exactly
why he never left his damned tower if he could help it. The only things he excelled at were necromancy and making a mess of everything.

He kicked the abandoned firewood, feeling not remotely better as it tumbled around and into the fire. Putting the fire out, he then turned to breaking down camp. By the time he was done, Tilo was long gone from sight and Rochus suspected he wouldn't be seeing Tilo again anytime soon.

But they had the same destination, and hopefully he wouldn't be further attacked before he reached Rothenberg.

Heaving yet another sigh, he swung into Fury's saddle and rode off after his vanished husband.

Whatever Rochus had expected upon reaching Rothenberg Kill, it had entailed
something.
Not a whole lot of
nothing.

The first few abandoned farmhouses had been unusual but not particularly strange, but when he'd reached a village and found it empty—that was strange. When he reached the town that was supposed to be just a couple of hour's south of Rothenberg Castle and found it empty as well…

That wasn't strange, but straight up ominous.

Worse, it looked like everyone had left on purpose. He supposed that was better than a surprise attack that sent everyone fleeing in a panic, or the whole town being dragged off. But it still struck him as worse that an entire territory had packed up and left.

And yet somehow, word never reached the royal castle that something was wrong in Rothenberg Kill. Then again, if the Queen's Hands were involved, even just a few of them, nothing would reach Irmhild if they didn't want it to.

Irmhild was going to burst into flame. Rochus almost wished he'd be there to witness it. Nothing was more hilarious than Irmhild on the warpath—when he wasn't the target, anyway.

He paused at a town board to see if there were any notices posted about what had happened, but the most recent looking posting was about some pigs available for sale, followed by a yearly feast hosted by Tilo's family that would be taking place two months ago. Forget Irmhild, Rochus was going to start murdering people himself, and if they thought an angry queen was bad, it was only because they'd never seen an angry necro—

A deafening roar made him startle so badly he nearly knocked himself out of the saddle. Fury trembled beneath him, and Song cawed irritably from where she and Silence had perched on top of the board. “That had better not be what I think it is,” Rochus said. Because if it was, he was going to well and truly lose his temper and he wouldn't be very sorry about it later.

“Let's go,” he said, wheeling Fury around, soothing his trembling with a gentle touch. “Drop me off and you can find somewhere better to be, beautiful.”

Fury relaxed under his touch and pressed on, Song and Silence coming to rest on Rochus's shoulders. Memory dropped down to prowl ahead, growling softly as she crept through the high grass.

“There's no way you can kill it yourself—bone wyverns aren't toys!” Rochus shouted after her.

Memory replied with a derisive meow and kept going.

Rochus lifted his eyes to the sky, but he sobered as they crested the hill and looked down in the valley below, where he immediately saw two things:

The sound had indeed been a bone wyvern, which was currently fighting Tilo.

And Tilo was losing. His beautiful sunset orange scales were smeared with blood; his left wing drooped and his right wing dragged.

A bone wyvern: the animated corpse of a giant wyvern. It would take not one but tens, even hundreds, of spirits to bring back a dead giant wyvern if its own spirit was not immediately captured at death. And it wasn't the kind of spirit kept to be useful later, like Rochus had with the Hand's spirit. Anyone willing to endure the difficulty and exhaustion of capturing a wyvern spirit generally needed it immediately—and if the situation was bad enough to require stripping a spirit from a giant wyvern, creating a bone wyvern probably wasn't the solution to the problem.

No, bone wyverns were generally used by posturing twits for purposes of intimidation, destruction, and proving superiority. Usually they were all of the one. The last time he'd seen a bone wyvern he'd been… thirty-two? Something around there. Drunk as a ship full of sailors on leave because he was meant to have been relaxing. Last time he made the mistake of thinking that ever happened.

The damned thing had destroyed three houses before he'd finally sobered up enough to use his magic properly, and he'd been mightily fucking pissed off by the end because getting drunk at all was no easy thing for a necromancer and he'd worked especially damned hard to get shore leave levels of drunk.

And it had all turned out to be the work of some egotistical monster angry with the local justice for daring to arrest him for a list of charges Rochus no longer recalled.

He dismounted, removed his saddlebags, and let Fury run off back toward the village. “Shall we?” he asked his remaining three companions, getting a caw, a flap of wings, and a happy growl in reply. “Let's try a trap, then.” Kneeling, he rifled through his saddlebags until he came out with the little wooden box he hadn't touched since putting the Hand's spirit in one of his crystals.

Ignoring the crystals, he pulled out a small velvet bag and tipped out the contents—bone carved into small spheres, etched with necromantic runes for binding, and between them stretched a single spirit so the anchors called to each other and made the trap all the stronger.

He pricked one of his fingers and covered four of the spheres in blood. Sucking on his finger, he gave one sphere each to the Song, Silence, and Memory. “Go.” He kept the fourth for himself and tucked the rest away before walking quickly down the hill to where Tilo was barely moving anymore and the bone wyvern was prowling like a predator who knew it had won and was dragging out the thrill of victory. That meant it had been animated long enough the spirits within were merging, become the worst sort of twisted, contorted semblance of life.

Which in turn meant it had been made by a strong necromancer who had intended for the bone wyvern to last, and
that
was a problem of the highest order.

It was also a problem to be dealt with later.

For the present, he went to the spot that would form the northern corner of the trap—a spirit trap, also frequently called a graveyard because people liked thinking they were clever. He felt it when the other three fell into position. He softly whispered the spell, casting out the binding lines between the anchors. When it was nearly done, he looked up and bellowed, “Tilo! Run!”

Tilo, to his credit, went still only for the barest moment from surprise before he moved in a sudden burst of energy, running full tilt toward Rochus. The bone wyvern chased after him, roaring so loudly it resonated through Rochus and made his chest vibrate.

Tilo only just barely managed to stay ahead of it, but that was all the time Rochus needed to close the trap. The bone wyvern crashed against the walls of the trap just as it slammed into place, snarling and screeching—but bound by the will of a necromancer and the power of a captured spirit.

Rochus let out a heavy sigh and fell back in the grass, landing hard on his ass. He took off his spectacles and wiped sweat from his face. “Suck on that, you piece of shit.”

A soft, pained whimper drew his attention, and he was abruptly reminded that Tilo was severely injured. “Hold on!” He surged to his feet and back up the hill to his saddlebags, annoyed with himself for not carrying them with him. He tossed stuff as he touched it until he finally reached the small bundle all the way at the bottom: a roll of heavy fabric, at the center of which rested a bottle worth more money than he could count without wincing.

Carrying it down the hill, he cradled Tilo’s enormous head as best he could and dumped the contents of the small bottle down his throat. “You'd better keep that down. I don't have another; they're too fucking expensive.”

Tilo gave a low, sad rumble, his blazing eye slipping closed. But he was breathing evenly, and after several minutes, his smaller wounds began to close up and the larger ones began very slowly to lessen in severity. Tilo was too big for the potion to work one hundred percent, but it worked enough.

Rochus turned to the ravens and Memory. “Keep an eye on the wyvern. Come get me if something starts to go wrong. Memory, do not go into the trap and fuck with it.”

Memory lifted one paw and began to lick it clean.

“I mean it,” Rochus said and shoved her head playfully before going back up the hill to gather his things. He slung the saddlebags over one shoulder as he returned to Tilo. “On your feet, you useless dragon. For the record, this is not how you treat a new spouse. You should wait until at least the one year mark to start dragging your spouse into battles and forcing them to use expensive healing potions on your sorry ass.” That got him a half-hearted growl, but some of the fire had returned to Tilo's eyes, so Rochus decided to count it a victory. “Can you walk?”

Tilo grumbled again but heaved to his feet. Rochus whistled for Fury, who joined them a few minutes later as they walked along a wide road to the end of the valley and up another hill… to a beautiful, enormous lake. It was so clear he could damn near see to the bottom of it, and so large he couldn't see the other side, just the foothills that framed the far end. The path they walked spilled into a long bridge that led to the castle built in the lake.

“Nothing of interest in Rothenberg, my ass,” Rochus muttered. Beyond those foothills were the Creiamore Mountains, which meant the river of the same name. It had enormous value as a travel point through most of the continent, with several tributaries—one of them probably feeding the lake. If it was underground, not much could be done, but if that branch of the river was above ground…

Rothenberg might be a whole lot of nothing, a forgotten territory at the edge of the mountains that divided the continent almost completely in half… but it connected to more important territories, territories that would love to have access to the lake and its connection to the river. It would shave weeks, if not months, off travel time for this corner of the continent. One of those neighboring territories was Morretain, which belonged to Hoffman. How convenient for Hoffman. No wonder the bastard had played so hard at disinterest.

And Tilo had apparently been sitting right in the middle of it without realizing just how valuable his land was. Or maybe he did know and was acting otherwise.

Mood souring further at the bitter reminder Tilo was a talented liar, Rochus stifled his questions as they continued on across the bridge and through the gates into the castle.

The silence struck him first. A lord returning to his castle should have merited
something.
Tilo didn't strike him as the pomp and circumstance type, but still, someone should have come to greet him. But then, there hadn't been guards at the far end of the bridge either. No one else on the roads.