Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (18 page)

“So now you know who I am. Care to return the favor?” Gray asked.

Another long cautious silence before Gray heard a faint rustle of straw and a clink of chains on chains. “My name is Jamie.”

“How long have you been held down here, Jamie?”

“What . . . what month is it, my lord?”

“August.”

The following wait seemed to last forever, a whispered rush of words beneath the boy’s breath. Did he pray? Did he count? “Are you certain?”

“How long, Jamie?”

“Six months, my lord. I’ve not seen the sky in six months.” And then he wept.

*  *  *

Where were the blasted keys? Meeryn gave a rodent huff of exasperation as she scurried back along the top of the cabinet. Surely they’d be locked away in here. This was the only spot fit for storage of anything in this horrid place. She rummaged once more through the bits of leftover chain links, snaps with broken ends, a coil of knotted rope, a bent ankle cuff in iron and two in silver. She made sure to avoid these, though just being this close to the poisonous metal made her head spin and her stomach rise into her throat. No sign of keys.

She squeezed between two loose dove joints and dropped into the bottom of the cabinet onto a pile of smelly laundry; a ripped shirt, another with a frightening rust-colored stain across the back spreading outward from a burnt edged tear, three mismatched socks, one shoe with half a buckle. No breeches and no keys.

She pushed through a nibbled hole obviously made by some earlier mousy visitor and found . . . success—of a sort. Pegs and pegs of keys, but which one belonged to which cell? She’d have to try them all. Laborious but not impossible. Retracing her path, she emerged at the top of the dusty cabinet and peered over the edge. The small guardroom was as horrible and depressing as the rest of the catacombs, the only advantage over the prisoner cells that she could see being the tentative flicker of an oil lamp set on a table beside a chessboard, the pieces ready for a fresh match. Of Ossine, she saw no sign but for a tin cup of cider and a button. The place appeared deserted.

Suspicious, but she’d not look a gift horse in the mouth. Who knew when they might return? Racing down the side of the cabinet, she leapt for a chair back, scurried across the table, and dropped to the floor. Drew once more on the moon’s power and her own inner magic to shed one skin for another—mouse for human.

She sighed and stretched her arms over her head, loosening the coiled knot of nervous twitchy muscles. Mouse was one of her more useful aspects, but she hated the accompanying rodent jitters. Opening the cabinet’s upper doors, she snatched up the stained shirt with a wrinkle of her nose and slid it over her
head to fall almost to her knees. Next, she unlatched the bottom doors, running a hand back and forth over the pegs before grabbing as many as she could drop into her outspread shirt.

Set and still blessing her good luck, Meeryn hurried out of the guardroom. The tunnels stretched away into the dark, a gutter running down the center aisle filled with something green and smelly that oozed between the toes.

“Gray,” she whispered to the dripping silence.

Nothing, though she felt as if dead things watched her from the crooks and crannies and breathing seemed loud in the deafening quiet of this forgotten place.

Gray, I’m here to rescue you
, she pathed, reaching with her mind for some hint of where he might be hidden.

A voice burst against her brain like the slam of a door.
Rescue me? Are you barking mad or simply stupid as a bag of anvils? Get the hell out of here now.

So much for gratitude. She followed his pathing, picking her way over the greasy, slippery stones, splashing through puddles of what she really hoped was water, before coming to rest in front of a narrow wooden door with a barred grate just above eye level, though if she stood on tiptoe . . . “Are you in there? Are you all right?”

“I’m in here. ‘All right’ is a relative term. I’m not dead.”

Grasping the ends of her shirt in one hand, she fished out a key with the other. Fitted it into the lock and turned. “Dromon plans to solve that as soon as possible.” And a second. “He’s accused you of murdering
the duke.” A third. “Mr. Pym, the duke’s valet, a footman, and the two enforcers are prepared to back up his story. The Gather’s been called.” A fourth, or was that the second again? “They should be here in a week to pass sentence and witness your execution.”

“I expect an I-told-you-so is in order,” he answered, his sense of humor apparently undamaged.

“Plenty of time for that later. Now we need to get you out of here.”

“We? This isn’t a game, Meeryn, and the title of N’thuil won’t save you if they find you here.”

By now, she couldn’t tell which keys she’d tried and which she hadn’t. Her feet were going numb on the frozen stones and she knew every second’s delay was a second for the Ossine to return in force. “I can’t sit by and let them punish you for something that wasn’t your fault. Not this time.”

He said nothing for a long moment as she fumbled with three more keys, dropping them one after the other with a clatter onto the floor.

“I looked for you that day, even knowing you were in the Orkneys,” he said quietly. “I kept hoping I’d spot you in the crowd. Then I prayed I wouldn’t.”

“I couldn’t face it . . . or you . . . so I ran. I’m not running this time. At least, not away. That is, not away from you. Rather, this time it’s
with
you. If you’ll have me.” She shut her mouth to keep from babbling and concentrated on her pile of keys.

Finally, a turn, a click, and the door swung open.

Gray sat curled in a corner where the soiled straw had been piled to form a makeshift nest. His face had fared badly, his body worse. The earlier gashes in his shoulder and arm had reopened, blood leaking onto
his chest. He blinked up at her, a hand shielding his eyes from the shuttered lamplight. “I return to my original point, you’re barking mad.”

She knelt beside him, a hand on his arm. “Quick, before they come back. The way is clear.”

“I appreciate the attempt, but you need to go—now.” He narrowed his gaze. “What on earth are you wearing?”

“The latest London fashion in menswear. Now, do you want to just sit here and let Sir Dromon drive a stake through you and bury you like a grub in the dirt, or do you want to escape to fight another day?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Can you walk?” She felt his legs; still attached, no protruding bones.

“Not far.” He held up his left arm. One end of a short chain was attached to the wall. The other held a silver cuff locked around his blackened and bloody wrist. She recoiled, the sour taste of bile in her mouth. Purple streaks crept their way up his arm to his elbow and his fingers curled like talons into his palm. “Don’t suppose you brought
that
key with you, did you?” he asked.

A figure loomed like a specter in the doorway, his tasseled scabbard banging against his leg, a key dangling from his fingers. “She didn’t, my lord. But I did.”

*  *  *

“You can’t stay now that your cover is blown, Kelan, so take Jamie and ride for the village of Sidnam. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

“I’m to stay with you, my lord,” Kelan answered. “Those are my orders.”

“And who gave you those orders?”

The enforcer shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, his gaze darting everywhere but at the huddled pile of bone and rags standing shaky and wide-eyed beside Meeryn.

“That’s what I thought, but Lucan’s not here. I am, and I’m telling you to take the boy and ride.” Gray glanced down the tunnel. A torch sputtered and died. Their own breathing echoed back to them, harsh and quick, but no voices were raised in alarm. There was no clink of drawn steel or crunch of boot heels. “How hard did you hit them?”

Kelan grinned. “Hard enough, my lord. They’ll not wake until dawn at the earliest and even then they’ll be hard pressed to point both eyes in the same direction.”

Gray didn’t like the setup. In fact, the whole thing stank as foully as the rancid gutters, but he’d no choice left to him. Escape now, or be cleaved head to crotch and his innards fed to the grubs next week. “Jamie can barely walk. He needs help if he’s to make it away without being recaptured.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t look much better.”

Gray couldn’t argue that point. He knew he must look a wreck, his wrist throbbed, and every inhalation was accompanied by a woozy pinwheeling of his vision. He leaned against the wall to keep himself from slumping down beside it. “That may be, but I’ve got some unfinished business.”

“I can help, my lord. Let the girl take the lad. I’ll stay behind with you.”

“That
girl
is still Lady N’thuil to you,” Meeryn interjected.

Gray shoved off the wall with only a slight lightening in his head. “No, she’s coming with me.”

“I don’t know, my lord,” Kelan hedged.

“You don’t have to know, you have to follow orders. Lucan will snarl, but he’ll not eat you for breakfast. I’ll be right behind.”

“Lord Halvossa . . . I mean Your Grace . . . that is . . .”

Gray winced, the pain too raw, his grandfather’s death still unreal. Still just words. “Damn it, Kelan. Don’t call me that.”

“Yes, Major.” Chastened, he hoisted Jamie up, supporting him under one arm. “Take care of yourself. Two may be down, but an entire nest of Ossine wait above. Sir Dromon won’t let you go easily.”

“If we don’t arrive by morning or the countryside is too dangerous, you know where to go.”

Kelan gave another curt nod before he led Jamie farther down the black tunnel away from the guardroom, their shuffling footsteps dying away but for the occasional slosh of water on stone.

“Where are we going?” Meeryn whispered into the sudden silence as they headed in the opposite direction.

“I’m retrieving the Gylferion and getting the hell out of Deepings. You’re going back to your chambers and praying none learn of your foolishness.”

She stiffened as if he’d slapped her. “If you think you’re leaving me behind, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for, Gray de Coursy.”

Oh, to be saddled with a biddable woman. He closed his eyes, hoping to stave off the worst of the black spots crowding the edges of his vision, but it only served to focus his attention on the grinding stabbing pain in his wrist. “This isn’t a childish lark,
Meeryn. It’s not a swipe of Cook’s pastries or a toad in your governess’s bed.”

“Do you honestly think I don’t understand the circumstances? I do have a brain in my head. But you can’t do this without me. You need me.”

“That was last night,” he growled cruelly, frustration banding his shoulders, impatience knotting his muscles. “You mistake necessity for expediency.”

If her eyes could shoot sparks, he’d have gone up in flames. “If you’re trying to anger me, you’re succeeding.”

“I’m attempting to save your damned life,” he answered, trying not to remember the silken flesh of her thighs, the taste of her on his tongue, the way she shuddered against his mouth when she came. What he wouldn’t give for a long submersion in an icy pool or a fresh whack to the head to knock in some sense.

“Fine,” she said, “you don’t need me, but you need Jai Idrish. It amounts to the same thing.”

They reached the guardroom. Empty, though they came across two bodies in the passage just beyond, and another in a side chamber. Gray knelt, feeling for a pulse. “They’re still breathing.” He yanked a knife from the sheath of one of the downed Ossine.

Meeryn grabbed his wrist. “No.”

“I have to. Alive, these men remain a danger and a potential threat, a spear pointed at my back.”

“And if you kill them now, how much better will you be than Sir Dromon and his thugs?” She touched the sickly purple streaks inching their way up his arm toward his heart, her fingers passing lightly over the ugly jagged gash on his shoulder, the horrible bruising across his rib cage. Her touch raised gooseflesh
across his skin, and he shivered, though not with cold.

“I’ll be alive,” he answered.

“And as guilty of murder as they are.”

He drew in a shaky breath. Blew it out in a huff of surrender. “So much for McIlroy’s lessons in swordplay.”

“Conal taught me how to fight an armed assailant. Not how to kill a defenseless victim.”

“It’s them or me, Meeryn. I fight to survive.”

“But if survival turns you into something ugly and unfeeling, is it really survival?”

“If I make it out of here in one piece, I’ll let you know.”

She stared on him for a long uncomfortable moment, as if reading the hidden corners of his soul. Just before he humiliated himself by squirming under her disappointed forthright gaze, she bent to the waist of the closest guard, pulling loose his belt.

“What the bloody hell are you doing now?”

“I might draw the line at assassination, but I’ve never balked at simple thievery.” She held out her arms, the overlarge shirt she wore riding high on her sleek thighs.

“Right,” Gray answered.

After wrestling one unconscious guard free of his clothing, Gray bound and gagged them both, and if he knotted the ropes a bit tight or shoved the gags a bit farther down their throats than necessary, Meeryn didn’t quibble. But she did cast him a swift uncertain glance when he took her hand.

“It’s black as pitch down here. I don’t want to lose you,” he explained.

She snatched a candle from the guardroom and lifted it high to illuminate the black passage beyond. “Me . . . or Jai Idrish?”

He chose discretion over valor and kept his mouth firmly shut. Instead he pulled her along, turning down a narrow, low-ceilinged corridor, ducking to keep from scraping his head.

“Shouldn’t we be headed for the surface?” she asked. “This passage is taking us deeper into the cliffs.”

“Bring that candle closer and you’ll see.” Gray scanned the dripping slimy stones, running his fingers along the seams of the roughened granite slabs.

“What are you doing?”

He traced the notched circular outline of a stone with a finger, dug away the surrounding grout until the shape stood out. “This is it.” He pushed and the block sank into the wall. A door grated open with noise to wake the dead. A slithery curl of dead air snuffed their candle, tossing them into darkness. “Quick. Inside.”