Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (7 page)

Gray fought back the spasm of fear that rippled up his spine. Ran a finger around the rim of his glass with the same nonchalance he might bring to a night at Almack’s or an evening at White’s among friends. None would ever see him cringe or flinch or look less than completely confident. None would see him beg—ever again. A vow he’d made in the early days of his exile, when the flesh on his back blistered and broke and blistered again and breathing was an agony to be endured.

“I appreciate the warning, Doule.” He tossed his coins on the counter and rose from his stool. “If you hear anything more, send word through the usual channels.”

“Aye. As you say.”

He’d taken only a few steps before inspiration turned him around. “What have you heard of the new N’thuil?”

The tavernkeeper frowned, as if he was trying to recall any gossip he might have gleaned from his brother’s visits. He slowly shook his head. “Only that she’s a woman. A lady N’thuil, who’d have thought such a thing would come to pass? Maybe it’s true what some say.”

“What do some say?”

“That Pryor thinks to control Jai Idrish through the girl.” Another long pause as Doule’s frown deepened, the shake of his head slower and more deliberate this time, his words seeming to be pulled from him syllable by syllable. “Others say it doesn’t matter and the crystal’s power is just a faery story. Which do you think it is?”

Gray pulled on his gloves and settled a hat upon his head. “I don’t know—yet.”

Outside, it drizzled, the waning moon of Berenth lost behind a low layer of thick clouds. He pulled up the collar of his coat, scanning the darkness with a knowing eye. A warm breeze brought with it the stink of the stables and set the trees to dancing. Two drunkards assisted each other home to a rousing chorus of “John Barleycorn.” A man took a piss against a tree. A woman’s giggles grew breathless when her companion’s hand slid into her bodice.

Reassured that he’d not been recognized, Gray set off toward the posting inn, though he still kept to the darkest lanes and loneliest paths, every sense alert for trouble, every mile closer to Deepings tightening already taut muscles. So wrapped up in searching out two-legged trouble, he never saw the dog chained in the timber merchant’s lot until he tripped over it.

The brute leapt to its feet, barking and snarling loud enough to raise the dead. Gray eased away, one slow step at a time, never taking his eyes from the dog, sending every calming thought he could muster toward the heavy-jawed, beady-eyed cur. He’d made it as far as a rickety loading porch, stacks of milled boards piled beneath an overhang and out of the weather as
they waited to be shipped, when the dog lunged, teeth clamping on Gray’s arm.

Pain shot down into his fingers as the dog’s jaws tightened. Blood seeped onto his cuffs. He grappled against the muscled weight of the beast, fending off its attempts to tear out his throat. Claws raked bloody gouges across his chest as he fought back. A smash of his fist against the side of the dog’s head, another to its snout, and the dog released him with a yelp. Immediately, Gray reached over his head for the edge of the overhang, lifting and rolling himself up onto the roof. It groaned under his weight and he held still, peering down at the dog which stood on hind legs in a frenzy of frustrated barking.

Gray tossed the animal a salute before inching carefully up and onto the main roof of the building. His chest felt like it was on fire and the fingers of his wounded arm had started to tingle, but he wriggled toward the ridge line. Hopefully, the other side of the roof sloped low enough to the street to allow him an easy descent. He made it to the top, pulling himself up the final few feet with his left arm as his right dangled by his side. Not broken, but damned sore. Pausing to catch his breath, his ears pricked and a shiver raced over his skin.

Imnada.

“. . . cut out your forked tongue . . . body to the grubs . . .”

“. . . carry nothing . . . here to see sister . . . know what you’re talking about . . .”

The conversation didn’t emanate from the street below but from a narrow alleyway to his left between the timber merchant’s offices and storage sheds.

“. . . then what is this,
avaklos
scum?”

Gray’s gaze narrowed, his hand tightening on the
edge of the roof.
Avaklos
, an Imnada term for any clansman who chose to live within the human world rather than hide behind the Paling walls. Though always considered odd, in recent years they’d fallen under suspicion for colluding with Gray and his conspirators. Many had, but many more had simply been caught within a net that did not discriminate between guilt and innocence.

“. . . who sent you . . . who’s the traitor in Deepings . . . answer and I might let you live . . .”

“. . . don’t know . . . gave me a letter to deliver . . . all I know . . .”

“. . . you lie . . .”

Gray crouched at the ridgeline. His arm screamed in protest, muscles taut as wires. The blood roared in his veins, dripping off his fingers. If he sensed their presence, surely they’d sense his, they’d feel the brush of Imnada power in the air. His only hope lay in the fact that both attacker and victim seemed to be shapechangers. They might assume they sensed each other and give it no more thought. He might still hold the element of surprise as an advantage. In a quiver sparse of arrows, that had to count for something.

“. . . please . . . know nothing . . . please . . .”

Gray heard the dull thud of fists on flesh, the scramble of bodies in a struggle as the Ossine enforcer dragged his victim farther down the alleyway, where none might come upon them.

“You say you’re in town to visit your sister. Be a shame if something happened to her, wouldn’t it? And so soon after having that little baby of hers, too.”

“She’s nothing to do with this.”

“Then tell us what we want to know and we’ll leave her be. Simple.”

Gray could hear the smug contempt and brazen cruelty in the enforcer’s voice. Apparently, not all of the Ossine supported Pryor’s attempts at reconciliation. He’d trained them too well, indoctrinated the shamans with the seeds of his hatred for any change in the ancient customs and set them loose upon their own like rabid wolves.

“I . . . I can’t . . . it’s . . .”

The man was weakening, his voice tired, defeated, his breath wheezy and rasping from the beating he’d already taken. Gray had no time left to weigh options. Besides, every choice left was a bad one. The roof was too steep, and there was nowhere to let himself down. He couldn’t go back and challenge the dog again. What did that leave? He knew, even if he didn’t like it.

Shimmying free of his coat and his boots, he dragged his breeches off awkwardly with one arm and shucked out of his coat. Calling on the moon’s power, he wrapped himself in the magic of his race, bones twisting, muscle transforming. Heat beaded on his brow and slicked his injured chest as his nerves sizzled and his blood pounded in every vein. He spread his wings as the freedom and ecstasy of the shift took over. His face sharpened to a long-bladed beak, lethal as a dagger.

And with a cry carried on the wind, the eagle lifted from his perch, talons extended like razors, and dove for the kill.

*  *  *

Meeryn closed the book with a dusty thump, but she couldn’t shake off the tragic tale of Lucan Kingkiller so easily. The Imnada warlord had loved unwisely, allowing the seductress Morgana to convince him to betray
his friend and king. To slay Arthur and place her half-blood son Mordred upon the throne. The plan had failed. Mordred was slain at the Battle of Camlann, Morgana escaped, and Lucan had been captured and brutally executed by the Fey-bloods. But it had been the Imnada clans who’d paid the greatest price as the armies of the Other fell upon the shapechanger holdings with savage ferocity, seeking vengeance for their murdered king—slaughtering any who bore the blood of the shifter, scattering those who managed to flee.

Known as the Fealla Mhòr, this war decimated the Imnada. Only Aneavala, the most famous N’thuil after Idrin himself, was able to save the clans from extinction by erecting the Paling mists. But that had been when Jai Idrish still burned with the light of the goddess and the N’thuil was more than a ceremonial functionary.

She was no Aneavala, and she couldn’t count on Jai Idrish to save the clans from destruction a second time.

She closed her eyes, hoping to catch a few hours’ sleep before sunrise, but the stuffy humid air of her chamber and the unsettling whirl of her somber thoughts kept her from drifting off. She kicked free of the covers, huffing her frustration into the silence. Her nightgown clung to her legs and back and the sheets smelled stale in the heat.

Surrendering, she rose from bed to splash her face and arms with the tepid water from her nightstand ewer. Then crossed to fling open her shutters and open the casement wider to catch any passing breeze that might blow her way. A gentle rain fell, and she leaned into the night, lifting her face to it, sending out the rote verses of a childhood prayer to the Mother whose waning face was hidden from view by the clouds.

That’s when she caught movement at the edge of her vision and the buzz of Imnada power burst hot and tingling across her mind. A shape was barely discernible except as a flicker of black upon the dark clouds. As it approached, it revealed itself to be an enormous eagle possessing the elegant sweep of strong wings and a sleek hunter’s body with the killing force of a loosed arrow.

Gray?
Her pathing slid out across the distance like a mental whisper. A focused thread of thought.

No answer.

She frowned. That couldn’t be right. This bird veered and lurched as it fought the air currents. It struggled to maintain a steady descent, but with each stroke of its wings it seemed to weaken, one wing beating frantically as the stable roof yawned into view. She squeezed her eyes shut, unable to watch the ugly collision. Opened them again in time to see the eagle skim the shingles by inches before fluttering in a rush of wind and feathers to the ground. Its left wing lay outstretched and limp.
Gray!

The bird’s head swiveled toward her window, its gaze like a blade.
Stay where you are.

His voice in her head rooted her to the floor.

What’s wrong? Why?
she pathed
—
when the answer revealed itself as a shadow peeling free of the stable’s interior. The buzz of Fey-blood magic ground against her nerves until even her hair hurt. The flash of a blade in the dark chilled her blood. But how did he know the wounded eagle was a shapechanger? Luck? Treachery?

She stared transfixed as the eagle hopped a few steps, attempting to tuck its injured wing against its body. Another awkward step and then it beat at the air in an attempt to take flight, but the wing pinned it
earthbound. An easy kill for a Fey-blood with a knife.

She might not be able to guide her people through the Gateway like Idrin or wield the power of the crystal with the ease of Aneavala, but she could kill one skulking bastard bent on murder. She retrieved her stiletto from its sheath beneath her pillow. Conal had made her practice with the weapon until it became an extension of her body and he had warned her to keep it close at hand at all times. He never said why, but she followed his instructions even now, years after his death. The slender knife felt warm in her hand, the grip easy as she took aim, waiting for the perfect shot.

The Fey-blood stalked the eagle, herding Gray toward a low stone wall, but now Meeryn saw that what she’d taken for the gleam of a blade was in fact, the glint off a fine-mesh net. The stranger didn’t want to kill Gray. He wanted to capture him.

Her heart plunged into her stomach. She set her jaw, gauging distance and trajectory as she’d been taught. Took a steadying breath and hurled the blade toward the loathsome sorcerer with all her strength.

Years of training paid off. The stiletto found its mark, biting deep into the base of the man’s throat. He dropped to his knees before toppling slowly into the mud with a sick thud. She braced herself for a shout, a scream, a witness to shriek a warning to the rest of the sleeping inn, but there was no sound beyond the rain’s steady drip and her own rapid breathing. Spinning from the window, she grabbed up her cloak, throwing it around her shoulders before she lifted the latch on her bedchamber door. None moved in the corridors, and the even the lamp at the top of the staircase had burned out.

Quickly she sped down the stairs and through the shadowed taproom. The main door would be bolted and barred, but with luck, a side door or even a window might have been forgotten. She found what she was looking for down a narrow passage from the kitchen. Some lazy servant had turned the key and then left it in the lock. Letting herself out into the yard, she paused a moment to gain her bearings. To her left, a path led to a metal gate and the road. To her right ran the stone wall she’d seen from her window and the dark expanse of the stables beyond.

Even as she pulled her cloak up to cover her head and hurried through the drizzle, a hot starshot wind torched her face while a wild boiling energy pulsed under her skin. She reached the stableyard in time to see the eagle vanished and Gray in its place. He lay unmoving for a moment, the shift from aspect to human leaving him wrung like a sponge. Completely vulnerable. He rolled over onto his back in the mud. Deep bleeding scores raked his muddy chest, and his left arm had been savaged brutally.

Ignoring the muck soaking into her skirts and the dead body sprawled facedown a few feet away, she knelt beside him, hands clenched in her lap. “Are you able to walk? We have to get you inside before someone stumbles on us. Dead bodies have a tendency to beget awkward questions.”

Gray rolled up onto an elbow, cradling his injured arm against his chest. His stare moved from Meeryn to the fallen Fey-blood and back again. “More than a few of those questions are mine.”

*  *  *

Up the stairs without mishap. Into his bedchamber, none the wiser. By the time he’d pulled on a pair of breeches, washed the mud from his wounds, and sat while Meeryn bandaged his arm, Gray almost believed they might have succeeded in escaping detection altogether. The body would be found, exclaimed over, and carted away by the authorities. Hopefully, if and when they started asking difficult questions, he and Meeryn would be long gone. As for the other body, if it surfaced from the bottom of the river at all, there would be none to identify a faceless, shredded, water-bloated corpse.