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Immediately, Jace and another of Magnus’s men rushed toward Dmitri. Lefric’s friend was still right beside him, and Dmitri was too weak to do more than stumble back. Jace and Magnus’s aide used that momentum to haul Dmitri toward the edge of the dock.
“You can’t kill me!” Dmitri shouted. “You don’t know what I am owed.”
“You are owed a much slower and more painful death than drowning after what you did to my Peter,” Magnus said clutching Peter close.
“I have information,” Dmitri insisted as Jace and the aide pulled him all the way to the dock’s edge. “Just ask him,” he went on, managing to free an arm so he could point at me. “Ask my pup.”
Everything froze. Jace’s eyes went wide, and he glanced from Dmitri to me. Magnus radiated fury, and everyone else on the dock bristled with confusion. But everyone stared straight at me.
My heart felt like a rock falling slowly through the sour mush of my stomach to settle hard in my groin. I was exhausted, in pain, my hands on fire. I ached with fear for Ludvig’s life and pulsed with ongoing terror after everything that had happened in the last month. But somehow, I managed to croak out, “You can’t kill Dmitri. He saved our lives.” I looked straight at Magnus. “He saved Ludvig’s life.”
The air crackled with tension as we all waited for Magnus’s decision on the matter. I’d never seen Magnus so rattled with emotion.
Dmitri, vicious fool that he was, grinned and said, “Yes, King Magnus. I saved your lover’s brother’s life. Surely, that makes up for a long-ago misunderstanding between me and my former lover.” He narrowed his eyes at Peter.
What Dmitri lacked in good sense, he made up for with balls. I was just grateful that Peter looked like he’d passed out in Magnus’s arms, and like Magnus and Neil were the only thing holding him upright.
I wasn’t sure if that was enough to stop Magnus from ordering Jace and the other man to toss Dmitri into the river, perhaps after running him through first.
“You can’t kill him,” I managed to say, breaking the silence with my small, wrecked voice. “I promised him immunity if he helped us escape from Seymchan.”
“You promised me more than that, pup,” Dmitri said, breathless as he balanced on the knife’s edge of life and death. “I intend to live long enough to make you fulfill your promise.”
Again, the entire dock fell into brittle silence.
At least, it would have if a group of men who looked like soldiers of Hedeon hadn’t rushed toward the scene we’d created.
“What is the meaning of this?” one of those soldiers demanded. “You were told to leave in peace. We want no further quarrels here.”
“Yes,” Lefric’s friend said. “We should board out boat and set off for home. Whatever this is, it can be solved on the boat.”
Lefric’s friend stared hard at Magnus as he spoke. They were headed to Good Port, but Lefric’s friend had called it home. He addressed Magnus like an equal as well. Whoever he was, he was from Good Port and he was important.
“Get Ludvig onto the boat immediately,” Magnus said, gently handing a still-limp Peter to Neil. Neil scooped Peter up like a baby and carried him straight to the gangway. Magnus then surprised me, and probably everyone else within the sound of his voice, by calling out, “We need a healer! If any healer would like to travel to Good Port and be paid richly, come forward now!”
It was surreal, and I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that his shout would produce a result. But to my surprise, one of the soldiers who had approached the dock asked, “Would a military healer do?”
Magnus twisted to face the man, as surprised as everyone else by the question. “Do you have battlefield experience in the treatment of sword wounds?” he asked.
“Actually, I do,” the man said.
“Then board the boat immediately,” Magnus said, without sentiment or thanks. I couldn’t blame him for a touch of rudeness, given the circumstances.
The soldier turned to his fellows and said, “Tell Alexandra where I’ve gone and that I’ll bring back a king’s ransom with me.”
The rest of us started moving as the healer marched toward the boat. Lefric’s Good Port friend and Magnus’s other aide lifted Ludvig and carried him to the gangplank as well. That left only me, Magnus, Dmitri—with Jace and the other aide still holding him firmly—and Lefric on the dock.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t slit your throat right now,” Magnus growled, stalking closer to Dmitri and, to my horror, pulling a thin dagger from his tunic. As if answering the excuse he knew Dmitri would give, he said, “Your deal for immunity was not made with me. Anton cannot save your miserable, worthless life.”
Dmitri stiffened at the ferocious hatred in Magnus’s eyes. “It was a misunderstanding,” he insisted, his earlier cockiness gone. He must have underestimated Magnus’s love for Peter, but he wasn’t underestimating anything now. “I regret that I did not clarify things with Peter that day, but you have to believe me, I thought he was up for it.”
Magnus bared his teeth in a snarl and raised his dagger, but almost out of the blue, Lefric asked, “Are you really Dmitri’s pup now?”
It was exactly the sort of bizarre, incongruous statement Lefric was prone to make, and that was needed to douse the fire of Magnus’s hatred…at least enough for him to think about his actions.
Magnus lowered his dagger and took a step back, his expression hardening to calculation instead of flaring with loathing. Even though I knew he liked me, when he turned to stare at me, demanding with his eyes that I answer the question, I cowered on the inside.
It was easier to look at Lefric when I answered with a nod. “It was the deal we made,” I said. “He only agreed to help us escape if I agreed to become his pup.”
