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Pug squinted. “Tomorrow...maybe tomorrow night.”
Valek needed to hurry. He didn’t have much time to prepare.
18
LEIF
As he traveled to the Citadel, Leif’s thoughts kept returning to Irys’s comment about the twelve missing and four dead magicians. And Irys’s lack of intel about the attacks gnawed holes of worry in his guts, ruining his appetite. Irys could only speculate why—to regulate all the magicians. As for who, she suspected a group of influential and wealthy people was behind it, but she had no evidence.
The timing of the incidents matched with Yelena’s loss of magic. Almost right after she’d been shot with that damn poisoned arrow, the Cartel—Irys’s name for them—started their aggressive campaign against magicians. The only suspected member of the Cartel was Bruns Jewelrose, who’d hired The Mosquito to assassinate Yelena and supposedly the other four magicians. And perhaps he’d also targeted Ben Moon and Loris and Cilly Cloud Mist.
Unable to solve the puzzle while traveling, Leif forced his brooding thoughts to a different topic. Too bad yet another worry popped to the surface. Yelena. Through the super glass messenger, Irys told him the good news—that she’d returned to the Citadel with Ari and Janco—and the bad—she’d been arrested and interrogated by the Council.
Irys urged Leif to hurry so he could verify her story. Leif also carried detailed drawings that his father, Esau, provided to show the Sitian Council what Owen had been growing. Esau had refused to leave the glass hothouse until he had finished his investigation and found someone to properly care for the plants while they were gone.
Meanwhile, Yelena waited for Leif’s arrival instead of escaping. She wished to regain her positive status with the Council. But every day she remained in the jail, the greater the danger.
Sensing his mood, Rusalka picked up her pace. They rode on the main east-west route in the Featherstone lands. In two more days, he’d be home, but if he pushed it, he might shave off half a day. Of course that meant arriving late at night, when all the Councilors would be asleep, so he’d have to wait until morning to talk to them.
He grinned. Leif knew exactly how he wanted to spend those hours. In bed with his wife, Mara, who made the plainest housedress appear to be the height of fashion. Just wrapping his arms around her would ease the ache pulsing deep in his chest. And he’d breathe in her scent—the light aroma of ylang-ylang flower, combined with the sweet fragrance of the living green—and be home.
Instead of overnighting in an inn, Leif decided to stop to rest for just a couple hours. He’d find a merchant camp to join. The caravans tended to avoid the expense of a real bed and bivouacked along the road. With the warm season a few weeks away, many had started their first deliveries of the year.
A couple hours after sunset, Leif caught a whiff of molasses followed by the bitter tang of fear. Rusalka broke into a gallop as the shrill sounds of a horse in distress pierced the air.
When they turned a corner, a cloud of emotions struck him. Panic and fear the strongest. In the faint moonlight, he identified the black shapes. Horse. Wagon. Person.
As they drew closer, the shapes sharpened. Overturned wagon. Man about to be trampled by a panicked horse.
High-pitched squeals and cries emanated from underneath the wagon. The man shouted at the kids to be quiet. “You’re scaring the horse.”
Too late. Leif stopped Rusalka fifty feet before the scene. Her presence might make it worse. At least the children quieted to whimpers.
The man lurched forward in an attempt to grab the reins, causing the horse to rear again. Idiot didn’t know anything about horses. Leif dismounted, then approached slowly.
“Back away or you’re going to get hurt,” Leif ordered the man in an even, nonthreatening tone—more for the horse than the idiot.
The man whipped around. “Oh, thank fate! Can you help us?”
“Yes. Stand over there.” Leif pointed to a safe spot.
“But my children—”
“Will be fine, if you do everything I say.”
The man backed away to the place Leif had indicated. Leif drew in a breath and studied the horse’s body language. A wildness shone in its eyes as its sides heaved. Foamy sweat dripped from its body and it blew air from its nostrils. One of the wooden supports of the wagon had snapped in half, but the horse remained tethered. Crates littered the ground behind the overturned wagon.
Leif inched closer, keeping in the horse’s line of sight. He projected calming emotions, not sure if it’d work on a horse, but figured it couldn’t hurt. Talking to the horse in a steady voice, he approached. The horse shook, but didn’t rear. Leif kept his soothing tone and reached for the reins. He grasped them in his left hand. Then he stroked the horse’s nose and kept talking.
When the horse’s sides slowed and it no longer arched its neck, Leif said to the man, “Move slowly and come take the reins.”
The man followed his directions. Keeping his hands on the horse, Leif slid them back to the hitch.
“Daddy, what’s going on?” asked a little girl.
“Just wait, sweet pea. We need to free Doggie.”
Doggie? Leif glanced at the man.
“We let the kids name him,” he explained.
Better than Beach Bunny. Leif unhitched the wagon while keeping contact with the horse so it wouldn’t spook again. Then he removed the harness. It was slow and tedious work, but eventually, he freed Doggie. Leif led the horse to a nearby tree, then covered Doggie with his cloak to keep him warm until they could walk him to cool off. He returned to help the man free his children.
They lifted the broken wooden bed and four figures scrambled out as they righted the wagon.
Leif turned. “Is everyone all right? I’ve bandages and...” The kids were much taller than he’d expected, and the father pointed a loaded crossbow at Leif’s chest. Unease swirled into alarm.
Stupid.
“And?” the armed man prompted.
“And I just aided in my own ambush. Didn’t I?” Idiotic.
“You’re quick. It took that Hale fellow ages to understand.”
They have Hale? Why didn’t Irys tell me? He swallowed his fear and concentrated on the five assembled before him. No emotions emanated except from the “father.” The others must be wearing null shields. “Why go to all this trouble? You outnumber me.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, if you caught a whiff of an ambush, you’d have been long gone.”
If it’s fun you want...let’s see how fun it is when your clothes are on fire. Leif concentrated.
“Oh, no, you don’t. Frent.”
A puff sounded right before a prick of pain burned on Leif’s neck. He yanked the dart from his skin, but knew it was too late. “Rusalka, go home!”
She galloped by as the woods spun around him. Sinking to his knees, his last thought
before the darkness rushed in was of Mara. Their reunion would have to wait. He hoped.
19
YELENA
Five steps. Turn. Five more steps. Turn. I paced along the twenty-seven iron bars of my cell. Even though I had used all my skills as the Liaison and convinced the Sitian Council I hadn’t been involved in espionage, treason or conspiring with the enemy, they still required my brother’s testimony in order to release us.
Five days. We’d been locked in here for one, two, three, four, five and turn, days. Leif had better hurry.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the soles of your boots,” Ari said.
I glared at him. He’d taken a philosophical view of the entire endeavor, using the time to rest. He’d claimed we’d need our energy for our eventual escape, which we’d already planned in detail so we could bolt at a moment’s notice. Of course it helped his calm attitude that Irys had smuggled in a couple of swords for him and Janco, just in case The Mosquito tried to take advantage of my incarceration.
“Yeah, better to do something constructive with your time,” Janco said.
Janco exercised by grasping the highest crossbar with both hands and pulling his body up off the floor. He’d taken his shirt off, exposing long, lean muscles rippling with the effort. Scars crisscrossing his back, arms and chest resembled a street map of a dense city. And he’d named each scar in remembrance of where and when he’d sustained the injury. The healed gash on his stomach and the matching mark on his back, he’d named “Yelena,” for the time he’d been run through with a sword and almost died. Janco swore I’d healed him.
“Pacing is also a form of burning off excess energy,” I said to Janco.
“I’m not burning. I’m keeping in shape. While Ari’s muscles turn to fat, mine will remain strong and ready for action.”
Ari shot to his feet. “I’ll show you ready for action.” He reached through the bars and clamped his huge hands around Janco’s narrow waist. With one yank, Ari pulled Janco off the bars and held him suspended over the floor.
