Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (36 page)

In the library, Mac and David were waiting for him. David wearing a smirk that always meant trouble; Mac staring at the ceiling as if the answers to life were written among the cornices. Gray chose to ignore them both. He righted an overturned chair. Stooped to pick up a fragment of Wedgwood, a jagged triangle of celadon green with a woman’s arm in white, all that was left of the expensive vase that had formerly sat in one corner. He tossed it back on the floor to be lost among the piles of rubble and refuse. “Pryor’s desperate.”

“Not that you’re not well aware but I think it begs repeating; Dromon’s going to have a bloody army of Ossine with him,” David replied, dropping onto a slightly battered sofa. “Are you prepared for that? For what that might mean?”

“Torture, dismemberment, death, desecration.” Mac ticked them off on his fingers.

“And not that I don’t love a good disemboweling with some broken bones for good measure,” David added, “but I tend to prefer to be on the winning side. We’re not exactly . . . ah . . . equal in numbers. You, me, Mac, and . . .” He waved a hand as if searching for an answer.

“Lucan,” Gray finished for him.

“Four of us against Dromon’s marauding bloodthirsty Ossine. Love those odds. I can see why you don’t gamble.”

Gray took a seat. His normally organized and immaculate desk had been turned inside out. Folios
dumped, drawers pulled out and upended in a blizzard of files and scattered pages. Ledgers ripped open then ripped apart. “Can you think of anyone you’d rather have fighting at your side than the Kingkiller?”

“Ten thousand of Wellington’s finest? A hundred of Boney’s best?” David wisecracked. “A few dozen street urchins throwing stones? A nasty puppy with a case of the mange?”

Gray began the long task of salvaging what he could from the mess. “Sorry, none were available. You’ll have to take what you can get.”

“Me and my overactive honorable nobility. It’s never done anything but get me into trouble.”

“Where
is
Lucan?” Mac asked. He stood at the window facing the street, his feline gaze on the afternoon traffic, his pose one of cautious vigilance. Gray could almost imagine the very tip of the panther shapechanger’s tail twitching in catlike watchfulness.

“He said he’d be here. I don’t question him too closely.”

“Afraid of what you might find out?” David asked.

“Something like that.” A ledger of receipts. A book on alchemy. Correspondence from his tailor.

David sat up. “Not to rain on your brilliant plan, General, but even if somehow we manage to win over a company of zealous enforcers happy to stake us out like yesterday’s laundry, we’re still not free of the curse. You’re still not free of the curse.” Leave it to David to point out the obvious.

“No, not yet.” A book, pages scattered from the broken binding. Another bore a boot print, the words a pulpy mess. A third had been torn to shreds. “But the Gylferion are here. Jai Idrish is here. The two of
you are here. It’s only a matter of finding the missing piece that brings it all into focus.”

“Adam’s not missing, Gray. He’s dead. And not even Callista’s gifts of necromancy can pull him free of death for our purpose,” David commented with his usual flippant delivery.

Had Gray not been aggravated, exhausted, uneasy, and slightly feverish, he might have ignored him. But the curse gnawed at the edges of his consciousness like a cancer. He worried for those he’d put in harm’s way and grieved for those he’d put in the ground. Too many lives. Too many souls. Too many ghosts to drag him into despair if he weakened for a moment. He slammed a book onto the desktop with force to rattle and sway the chandelier.

“Do you think I don’t know that Adam’s dead, St. Leger? Do you think somehow I’ve forgotten the day we lowered him into the ground like a grub rather than releasing him to the wind and the flames in the proper way?”

“I think you’ve forgotten that it’s taken you two years just to gather these dented disks.” David’s tone carried a sharp whipcrack, reminding Gray that the laughing scoundrel had a dangerous edge. “You can’t expect to find every answer in an old book or organize your way to victory. Sometimes you just have to improvise and hope events come right in the end.”

“The answer is here. The knowledge is in one of these volumes.” Gray rose from his chair and began pulling books off the broken, battered shelves. Those he recognized as valuable, he placed on a table. Others he dismissed, tossing them aside. The pile grew along with his frustration. “I just have to find—”

“What? A sentence that reads, ‘To break a Fey-blood curse add one onion, dance around the table in your small clothes, and touch your nose with your tongue’?” David shot back.

“Don’t be a blasted idiot.” Gray plucked a book up from the topmost stack he’d made. Leafed through the torn pages for something . . . anything . . .

David’s shadow fell across the page as Gray leaned against the table. “Are you certain this duel with Sir Dromon you’ve contrived isn’t your way of going out in a blaze of glory rather than a whimper of shriveled weakness?”

Gray opened the next book, scanning the two chapters on Golethmenes. There wasn’t much. The author had only the vaguest theories to espouse. He plucked up a third, but the pages were ripped clean away, leaving nothing but a few ragged threads where the binding had frayed.

“Or your way of exacting the vengeance you were denied when your grandfather died?” David continued.

His question pierced Gray’s concentration like a swordthrust to the gut. He felt the edges of the leather folio bend under the force of his grip. Gray hadn’t killed his grandfather, but he’d imagined his death more times than he could count. “I never wanted vengeance.”

“Bullshit,” David barked. “You’ve always wanted it. You may have prettied it up in a noble cause, but come down to it, this has always been about standing over your enemy and driving a sword into his chest and seeing the life drain away. Smiling when he begged for mercy. Watching him writhe in agony like he watched you.”

“That’s not true.”

He no longer saw the words upon the page or the monk’s elaborate illuminations. His stare turned inward to a scaffold, a crowd of unsmiling faces, and the rank odors of piss and sweat and vomit as his life was taken from him.

He’d had the opportunity. The old man had invited it. Gray had turned away. Was sparing the duke’s life a weakness or a strength? Did it matter? Vengeance might have been his reason for entering into this conspiracy. What drove him now was more than simple retaliation.

“You’re wrong, David,” he repeated. “And this conversation is over.”

“Is that an order, Major?”

“If you want to take it as such,” he snarled through clenched teeth.

“You can deny until you’re blue in the face, but if you do, you’re lying to yourself. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

He locked his gaze on David’s, fists itching to knock the bastard on his ass. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Why is Meeryn Munro here? She was your ticket to Deepings, you told us. But you’re not at Deepings anymore.”

“She’s N’thuil. I need her to summon the power of Jai Idrish.”

“Is that why? Or did you just need her—period?”

His heart clenched and he tossed off an ugly laugh. “London’s Lothario is giving me advice on women? That’s rich. Mac, are you listening to this?”

“Don’t drag
me
into this. I’m minding my own
business. If you two want to beat the stuffing out of each other, go ahead.”

“Tempting, but I’ll let Dromon’s Ossine have first crack.” Gray slammed the book closed, took up a restless pacing walk wall to wall and back again. “Fine, so I need her. I might even love her. What the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

“Tell her so?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Gray paused at the hearth, staring into the cavernous mouth. No fire to lose himself in, no warmth to ease the chill along his bones. He plowed both hands through his hair, linked them at the back of his neck. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Why—because it galls you to know I’m right?”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

“This clock says it’s time to tell her how you feel . . . before it’s too late.”

He spun around, gut aching, head pounding. “You make it sound so fucking easy, St. Leger. Find the girl, tumble head over ass, live forever in a little dream cottage for two.”

“Do I? Then perhaps you’re not as observant as I thought.” He slammed his mutilated hand on the tabletop, a finger missing, compliments of ganglord Victor Corey. St. Leger had fought for his life . . . and then he’d fought for Callista’s. Death didn’t frighten him. He’d been there and done that already.

Silence descended as each party surrendered to a neutral corner. Gray tried to focus, but his thoughts were scattered and restless. His nerves jumping. David
had skated too close to too many truths that Gray wasn’t ready to confront.

“I can’t tell her anything until this is over. It wouldn’t be fair when I don’t know how this will end. She could be grieving a corpse by the end of the week.”

“Hell, she could
be
a corpse by the end of the week.”

Mac cleared his throat and gave a subtle shake of his head.

David shrugged and answered with a widening of his eyes. Mac subsided to his role as lookout. “All I’m saying, Gray, is that if you care about Meeryn and she cares about you, there’s no time like the present. Tomorrow might be too late.”

His parents and Ollie gone without a good-bye. Grandfather dead before Gray had a chance to make his final peace. Would his time with Meeryn end the same way?

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

David snorted, subsiding back onto the sofa with a disgusted roll of his eyes. “You once told me you wanted more than a quick swiving. Seems to me you’ve found it. Now the question becomes, what are you going to do about it?”

What indeed?

*  *  *

The rain had passed and now evening light faded toward dusk. The windows in the houses across the street glowed orange and red, as if fires licked from room to room. Heat shimmered up from the street and the few pedestrians out looked wilted by the oppressive humidity. She scanned the corners, the alleys, the rooftops, her nerves scraped raw with waiting,
when a startled cough and a shimmer of color at the corner of her eye caught her attention.

She spun, finger on the trigger of her pistol, to find not a merciless Ossine enforcer but the wizened figure of Mr. Ringrose blurring into being. He’d changed from his earlier attire of down-at-heels shopkeeper and now wore the crimson and gold robes of a sorcerer born, a long tasseled cap upon the sparse white hair of his head, and his long beard combed to a brilliant snowy white. Over his shoulder, he bore a leather sack, which he patted as he came into being, as if afraid he might have lost it during his magical travels.

“You nearly had your head taken off,” she snapped, still trying to catch her breath and ease back the cocked trigger without blowing a hole in the ceiling, the floor, or Mr. Ringrose. “What are you doing here?”

He sniffed and smoothed a hand down his beard. “I might ask you the same question, impertinent snippet of a girl. Where is de Coursy?”

“Downstairs in what’s left of the library.” She put the pistol down on a table. Turned it so the barrel pointed away from her. Changed her mind, picked it up, and shoved it in a drawer where she didn’t have to look at it.

“Where am I?” He glanced around with a somewhat owlish expression.

“My bedchamber . . . such as it is.”

He took in the disheveled room, face growing pink, lips pursing with disapproval. “How did I end here? I was certain my directions were spot-on”—he touched a finger to his lips—“and then I made a left at”—he motioned as he thought out loud—“and then down at . . .”

“I hope your knack with medicines is better than your skill at directions.”

He sniffed, his long nose quivering with distaste. “My knack with medicines has never been questioned before, thank you very much.”

“Aren’t you the one who gave Gray and the others the secret to the draught in the first place?”

“I offered them a few hints. Nothing more.”

“And now they sicken when they take it and sicken when they don’t.”

“It’s not my fault the blood of the shapechanger pollutes all magic it touches, turning life to death and death to . . .”

“To a curse they can’t control.”

He clenched the strap of his satchel. “Does de Coursy want the draught or not? I’ve things to do and places to be. I do not like to leave the shop too long. There are so many specimens to catalog, so many new items to identify.”

“Of course. I’ll take you to him.”

Ringrose followed her down the corridor to the main staircase. The banister was lying in pieces on the floor in the main entry hall and three risers had been axed to splintered shreds, but Meeryn circumnavigated the damage, stepping over the broken urns littering the floor and the glass sparkling like diamonds from a fallen shattered chandelier to lift the latch on the library door.

Mac Flannery stood at the mantel, his soldier’s stance and sharp features revealing his military bearing better than any red coat or gold braid ever could. David St. Leger leaned against a table, one leg dangling, casually spinning a bronze disk like a top with
his scarred and disfigured hand until Gray reached over and snatched it away. “Enough larking about, David. We’ve work to do.”

“Seems to me we’ve been kicking our heels for hours awaiting . . . oh, that’s right . . . our execution.”

“You can leave anytime.”

“And miss all the fun? Wouldn’t hear of it.”

“What have you there?” Ringrose said, his voice scraping across the conversation like a bow across an out-of-tune fiddle.

Everyone stopped as one and turned to the newcomers.

“Ringrose. You’ve come,” Gray said, Meeryn noting the relief in his voice even if his expression never changed.

“What have you there? I asked.” The sorcerer scurried across the floor, robes flapping about his bony ankles, a finger toying with the end of his beard. “What are you playing with as if it were child’s toy?
Anata Asantos! Deux breolmi neophirotha
.”