Nigel snorted softly and rolled his head to one side, peering up at Mortimer from behind the lock of hair fallen across his forehead. “Were you always such an idiot?” he mused. “Or had I simply forgotten how deep the wellsprings of your stupidity run?”
For a moment, Mortimer didn’t react. His face was so still, the human eye could not track the painfully slow shifting of his features into a snarl. It was like a magic all its own. “It doesn’t matter now,” he declared. “Because I’m going to kill you. Here. Tonight. Yes, Jastira says she wants you kept alive, but . . . I’ll tell her you fought me. I’ll tell her I had no choice, that it was life or death. She’ll understand. She’ll be gracious, she’ll be forgiving.”
“Oh, sure.” Nigel snorted. “That sounds like Jastira all over.”
“And she’ll take me back!” Mortimer continued, his manic voice filling that vaulting space. “When she realizes that I alone have truly loved her all this time, that I rescued her from the prison to which you sent her, that I faced and fought you for her sake—ah! Her love for me will flower anew.”
Nigel raised a brow. “You have fun with that.”
The skull-head hit him in the cheek, fast as a viper’s strike. There was no preliminary, no warning of any kind. Just a sudden crash of stone against bone and a shocked ringing in Nigel’s head. He collapsed on his elbow, too stunned to do anything but brace himself. Spittle and blood fell from his lips, and he wondered briefly if a tooth had been knocked loose.
Then Mortimer’s fingers tangled in his hair, dragging him back up onto his knees. He wrenched Nigel’s face up and spat in his eye. “I’m going to make it hurt,” he said, lifting his other hand and drawing sigils in the air. Nigel felt the life force sucked out of his own body, like the pain of a knife gliding across cringing flesh. He gasped and tried to recoil, even as he watchedthe Dire answer Mortimer’s summons and begin to form in his fingers. “I’m going to hurt you again and again. I’m going to make it last, all night perhaps. By the time the sun is rising, you will be begging me for death.”
Not if Ward the Wardsman is any good at his job,Nigel thought. Which, was in itself more torturous than anything Mortimer had planned. Gods, was he actuallyhopingfor Ward’s arrival?
“Please,” he grunted, spitting a blood gob onto Mortimer’s vest, “get on with it, why don’t you?”
Mortimer grasped his face, planting the palm of his hand over Nigel’s mouth and nose. A bolt of pure Dire force surged through his fingers, straight into Nigel’s brain, and everything else faded in an explosion of agony. All fears for Luna. All loathing of Ward. All hopes or desires or terrors or plans, nothing mattered now. Only pain. Pain that went on for years, for centuries, for eons.
Then suddenly, he blinked hard. The vaulted ceiling of the warehouse swam back into focus, and he realized he was flat on his back. Pops and sizzles of agony burst in different parts of his body at random, no longer the constant flood. But this was almost worse. The moments of relief in between made those sharp stabs all the more intense. Nigel groaned, limbs shaking as he curled into himself.
“That was oddly gratifying.” Mortimer’s voice floated down to him from some dark space of awareness. “Funny. I’d forgotten what a good torture does for a man’s soul. I’ve not felt so alive in years!”
He traced another sigil in the air, gathering a burning cluster of Dire into his fingers. Staggering a little on his bad leg, he knelt awkwardly beside Nigel and reached for his forehead. “Let’s have another go, shall we?”
Nigel felt the searing burn drawing closer and closer to his flesh, and then—
The sound of shattered glass followed by metallic clatters, bursting on all sides like a sudden downpour of large, metal hailstones.
Through the throb of pain in his skull, Nigel couldn’t comprehend what he heard, couldn’t place it. But with a series of loudbangs!the air abruptly filled with a dense haze of purple gas. Nigel’s nostrils filled with the stinking sweetness of severmist—an anti-sorcery agent that disintegrated Dire Matter on contact.
Shocked, Mortimer struggled to his feet, losing his balance on his bad leg and nearly falling headlong. The thick gas filled the massive chamber swiftly, blinding to sorcerous eyes and nearly as confusing to un-sorcerous senses as well. The atmosphere erupted with shouts, and Nigel heard one gruff voice bark, “It’s the bloody wardsmen!”
Snarling, Mortimer whipped his head to one side, focusing on Nigel. “You pulled up my wards?” he shrieked.
Nigel grinned.
Then he rolled, escaping into the thick smoke. He was forced to close his eyes, for the severmistwas scalding. Tears streamed through his squeezed lids, and he feared his eyeballs were even now melting in his skull. But he ignored this and kept on rolling until he hit something. A foot. A dainty little foot clad in a relatively-new boot.
Nigel latched hold of Luna’s ankle, an anchor in this chaos-storm. All around him, wardsmen’s voices shouted things like, “Block ‘em in, boys!” and “Keep those anti-sorcery shields up!” He was almost certain he heard John-blighted Ward’s manly tones among them, sounding particularly heroic. Damn him.
Shaking fingers gripping the fabric of Luna’s skirt, Nigel pulled himself upright. A shot fired, then another, and he could not help wincing. The Brute Boys, disoriented by the gas but otherwise unaffected, were more than willing to fight back, andwho knew what would happen once the bullets really started flying? He had to get Luna out of here.
Blind, tears pouring down his face, his body throbbing with adrenaline and the aftershocks of torture, Nigel fumbled behind the chair, trying to find Luna’s bindings. His hand touched human flesh, and a familiar voice exclaimed, “Oi! Mr. Grimm! Careful, or I’ll cut you!”
Nigel peered through his lashes. The disreputable face of Tobias Goddard appeared through the stinging haze. The boy had a pocket knife out and was trying to cut through the ropes securing Luna’s arms. He caught Nigel’s eye and looked ashamed, even in his terror. “I didn’t mean for nuffin’ bad to happen to her—”
“Never mind that,” Nigel snapped. “Cut her free.”
While Tobias was thus occupied, Nigel pulled out his handkerchief and tied it around his face to filter out the severmist. Better to breathe in as little of the stuff as possible. He tried to ignore the fact that his handkerchief sported a motif of whimsically dancing mushrooms, wildly incongruous to the moment at hand.
“There!” Tobias declared.
Luna’s hands slumped to her sides, and she began to tilt out of the chair. Nigel caught her, drawing her into his lap. “Miss Talbot?” he said, touching her face. She was very still and pale but, as Mortimer had implied, alive. For the moment, at least.
Nigel got to his feet, cradling Luna against his chest. His body protested, letting him know that it really would much rather keel over now and perhaps twitch a little. He ignored it and sought out Tobias through the mist. Another gun shot, and both men flinched. The wardsmen shouted something incoherent to Nigel’s ears just before a bolt of Dire energy erupted at the far end of the warehouse, blasting a hole in the wall.
“Get out that way!” Nigel said, jerking his head in the direction of the hole. “Take the long way home, by Sandpiper and Truelolly. The wardsmen shouldn’t be there.”
