Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (10 page)

The fourth enforcer. Of course, there had been four at the start. In the confusion, she’d not noticed one’s disappearance, but there he was with his arm tight against the neck of the missing groom, a silver blade poised to drive into the boy’s heart.

“Do you want to see us stake the lad and send his soul to the grubs?” Thorsh threatened.

Gray’s mouth was ringed in white, his face hard and closed. “Let him go. He’s committed no crime.”

“Hasn’t he?” Thorsh strode to the boy, who shrank away with a terrified whimper. He took hold of the collar of the groom’s coat and yanked it from his shoulders. The boy cried out. Snot and tears mingled on his chin. Thorsh did the same with the boy’s shirt, leaving him bare-chested, ribs heaving as he wept. “No clan mark upon his back nor signum upon his mind. He’s an unmarked abomination. A rogue that should have been drowned at birth.”

“He’s a child.”

“Not for much longer. Soon he’ll be a corpse.”

Gray seemed to consider his options as he stood. A hand opened and closed in agitation. His nostrils flared as he inhaled, lips pursed as he let his breath out in a slow deciding whoosh of air. His gaze fell on Meeryn. “Forgive me,” he murmured, at the same time pulling a second pistol from his coat and pointing it at her. “And get up.”

Confused, she hesitated.

He cocked his weapon and jerked his hand in an upward motion. “There’s little time left, Meeryn.”

Her blood froze. Her breath seemed trapped in her lungs. But she did as she was bid.

Gray yanked her back against him. Her arms were pinned useless to her sides, the pistol jammed under her breast. His breath was warm upon the side of her face, but even now he didn’t act out of panic or desperation. He remained as calm as if no one’s life hung upon a wrong move or an ill-timed gesture. “Let the boy go, or I blow a hole through your precious N’thuil.”

Face twisted in a mix of pain and defiance, Thorsh pressed a bloody hand to his shoulder. At Gray’s threat, he laughed, his eyes squeezed to slits in an insolent face. “Do it.”

“You think I bluff?” Gray called.

“I think no matter which choice you make, I win,” Thorsh sneered, drawing a knife from a sheath at his waist. The handle was chased in bronze and carved with the double eagle’s head of the Cornish Seriyajj, the blade wrought of pure silver. Light rippled upon its killing edges with a sickening menace. He touched it to the groom’s neck, a drop of blood welling behind the point. The boy screamed, his eyes wild.

“You doubt my nerve?” Gray asked.

The pistol’s mouth was only an inch from Meeryn’s heart. A clean shot would tear her open but she’d be dead before she hit the ground. A fraction off and she’d be gut-shot to linger in agony. She held perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.

Thorsh shrugged. “You doubt mine?”

He pressed harder, dragging it down the boy’s throat toward the notch at the base of his neck, leaving a gruesome line of red. The groom thrashed and cried
out, but the enforcer who held him cut off his breath until he subsided.

“Enough!” Gray called out, shoving Meeryn away with a curse as if she burned him. “I yield, but let the boy go.”

He stepped onto the lane, his palms held out to show he was unarmed.

At a nod from Thorsh, the enforcer released the groom, who sagged at once to his knees with blubbering wails. Grinning his triumph, Thorsh met Gray at the road’s crown, his dagger’s tip wet with blood. “The lad must mean much for you to exchange your life for his. Do you use him for pillow sport? Perhaps he’d welcome death if the alternative is despoilment.”

Gray remained silent, his body taut as a wire, his spine nearly cracking with the strain. Meeryn could feel his rage burning high and bright like a flame—no, an inferno. Thorsh’s silver blade whipped out once and twice more, slicing Gray’s fine tailored coat to ribbons. “Remove the rest. Show us all your disgrace.”

Gray unbuttoned his waistcoat, pulled free his shirt. Both landed upon the road beside his coat. The bandage wound about his arm was stained red while the deep scores from the dog’s claws stood out raw and angry against his paler skin. But it was the sight of his bare back that made Meeryn gasp. Not because she hadn’t seen the damage before. But those glimpses had been swift and furtive. She had avoided gazing directly upon the physical proof of his exile from the clans. Now there was no escaping the thick, ridged wreckage of scarred flesh where the flames had charred away his clan mark on his grandfather’s orders.

“Unmarked rogue.
Emnil
. The sentence for trespass
upon clan lands is death.” Thorsh drew his sword, the same rippling eerie glow bouncing off the longer heavier silver blade. “May your soul be damned to dark corners and never find the Gateway home.”

He lifted the sword high as he prepared to drive it deep. Gray never moved. His golden head remained lifted in challenge, unwilling to bend an inch, even if it might mean his life.

“No! Stop! Please!” she heard herself shout, though pleading gained her nothing.

Thorsh grunted his dismissal of her and lunged, the sword slamming toward Gray’s chest.

Meeryn closed her eyes in horror only to have them fly open at a surprised shout from Thorsh as Gray rolled onto his feet with the stolen sword miraculously in his hand, the length of it resting on the back of Thorsh’s exposed neck.

None would know what might have happened next, for a shouted halloo and a jangle of harness heralded the arrival of a gleaming black carriage, the crest upon the doors familiar to all assembled.

It drew to a halt. A groom leapt down to open the door, and Sir Dromon Pryor descended in a scented wave of hair oil, cologne, and sweat. He surveyed the tableau before him with smiling excitement as if he regarded a pantomime at Vauxhall. “Welcome to Deepings, my lord. It’s good to have you home.”

*  *  *

The short carriage ride was completed in a silence thick enough to chew and swallow. Sir Dromon sat beside de Coursy, so close their elbows touched now and then as they hit a rut or bounced through a puddle. So
close he could drive a knife through the filthy
emnil
’s heart and be rid of him once and for all. He ignored the impulse. Such crude methods had never been his style. De Coursy’s death must be seen as justice, not murder. Barring that, an unfortunate accident might serve as well. He’d erred badly when he’d forced His Grace’s hand and had the young lordling exiled. Far better to have kept de Coursy close where he might be used, then subtly guided toward his own destruction.

Sir Dromon sniffed a quick sigh and dismissed past mistakes. The Munro slut had done her work; de Coursy had come running home. All progressed according to his design.

“The N’thuil claimed I would be safe so long as I traveled in her company. I must admit, your enforcer’s attack made me doubt her veracity. I’m relieved to see she wasn’t as mistaken as I feared.”

“It is just as she stated. The N’thuil may offer sanctuary and safe passage to any lost soul she chooses. Mr. Thorsh shamed the order of Ossine by attacking your coach in such a fashion and ignoring Miss Munro’s authority. He shall answer for his insubordination, you can be sure of that.” He offered de Coursy an obsequious smile. “I’m honored you answered my summons, Lord Halvossa.”

“Please, it’s Major de Coursy. I don’t choose to use that title.”

“As you wish, Major. I wasn’t certain you would return to a place with such . . . sorrowful memories for you. I’m glad to see you put the good of the clans ahead of your own personal feelings. It shows the true nobility that is so prevalent among your house. A true son of Idrin, you are. His Grace, the duke, would be proud.”

“There’s a first for everything.”

Sir Dromon tittered into his sleeve. “Together, we can find a way through our current troubles. I’m sure of it.”

“Fewer of your monsters set loose on the countryside would be a good start.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Thorsh and his ilk are necessary in these unstable times. More so, now that we are unsure of the Fey-blood’s intent. The clans cannot sit idle while the enemy masses.”

De Coursy eyed him like a disease. “Yet they seem more interested in killing shapechangers than in defending the Palings against a Fey-blood attack . . . or am I mistaken?”

“All issues to be discussed, all problems to be solved,” Sir Dromon said with an accommodating smile.

The coach rolled beneath the arched stone gateway of Deepings outer wall and into the enormous inner yard. Towers punctuated each turning in the thick gray stone fortifications, while straight ahead stood the tall central house, a tangled maze of elegant apartments where the family lived, as well as miles of drafty corridors, twisted stairwells, bustling servant quarters, and dank halls.

De Coursy glanced beyond the glass, his face tightening, his hands drumming on his thigh. Then he turned from the view to address Sir Dromon once more, any nervousness vanished beneath a polished veneer. “My coachman will be given all the proper death rites for one of the clans. I should like you to perform the service personally,” he said in a voice that brooked no dissent.

How was it that half-naked and sweat-streaked, he still bore himself with a prideful dignity, as if the world owed him obedience? As if he hadn’t been stripped of
place and position, spared only his life? Sir Dromon gritted his teeth in a grimace of a smile. “Of course. I’ve instructed the Ossine to bring the bodies to Deepings for the necessary ceremonies.”

“You mean body,” Gray corrected. “My groom was released and sent on his way unharmed, was he not?”

Sir Dromon smiled and nodded. “A slip of the tongue. I meant to say ‘body.’ The young boy was taken by one of Thorsh’s men to Haleworthy, where he might catch the mail coach for London. It was done just as you ordered.”

“Not that I don’t trust your men, Sir Dromon, but I should like confirmation of his safe passage. Have the enforcer . . . I believe Thorsh called him Kelan . . . have the young man report to me when he returns.”

His not-so-subtle jab wasn’t lost on Sir Dromon. It would seem the snot-nosed prig had grown clever in the intervening years. “Directly he arrives, my lord.”

“It’s Major, Sir Dromon. Let’s neither of us pretend my title of Lord Halvossa or my presence here at Deepings is welcome by either of us.”

Miss Munro sat through this conversation as though a poker had been rammed up her arse, her lips pressed white in a face like a wheel of cheese. Only her eyes burned with a dangerous light as they rested upon de Coursy in the seat across from her. That was good. Whatever happened between them on the journey from London to produce such hostility could only aid his own plans.

“I’ve made arrangements to have you placed in the guest hall,” he said.

De Coursy’s brows lifted in question. “Won’t it be needed for the Gather elders?”

“The Gather’s summer meeting was put off due to His Grace’s poor health. We hope he regains his strength and the autumn meeting can proceed as planned. Until then, I have tried to fulfill his duties to the best of my abilities, though I could never hope to replace him in the hearts of the clans.”

“Were my old apartments not available?”

Sir Dromon offered a humbling hunch of his shoulders. “I’m afraid I took the liberty of moving my own small household into these rooms. With the duke’s illness, it seemed important for me to be on hand at a moment’s notice rather than have to travel back and forth to Drakelow each day.” He paused. “And of course, we did not expect you back.”

“No, of course you didn’t. I understand completely,” de Coursy replied. “The guest hall will do . . . for now.”

Sir Dromon found himself flushing scarlet. He despised himself for his cowardice, though it would serve him for now to have de Coursy thinking he was a cowed subservient. He would only learn differently when it was too late. When the traitor’s rebellion lay in ashes around him, his friends dead or driven away, his life balanced in Dromon’s careless hands.

De Coursy would beg for mercy. Grovel in the dirt like the lowest grub. Piss his boots and vomit his terror with every slow, methodical pass of the flensing knife.

It would avail him naught as his skin was stripped, his innards pulled from his steaming gut, and his still-beating heart ripped from his broken chest. Buoyed by such cheerful thoughts, Sir Dromon met de Coursy’s steely gaze . . . and smiled.

“His Grace has retired for the night, my lord, and is not to be disturbed for any reason. Sir Dromon’s orders are quite strict on that point.”

“Does he know I’ve arrived? That I’m”—he couldn’t bring himself to say
home
—“that I’m here?”

“He’s been told, my lord.”

He’d already tried five times to convince the new Deepings’ butler to stop “my lording” him after every sentence. And failed five times. He wasn’t sure if this was the man’s way of kowtowing to an obvious superior or thumbing his nose at a disowned exile.

“His response?”

Mr. Pym’s lips thinned, and he cleared his throat. “His Grace’s response was to throw his dinner plate at a footman and curse your black soul to the grubs . . . my lord. He says he has no wish to see you today or any day.”