“You
have
been here before. Okay, we get in the basement, then what?”
“We’ll evaluate the situation and act accordingly.”
Which meant Mychael’s plan was changing with our situation. He was flexible; I liked that. What I didn’t like was that we didn’t know what was waiting for us inside that basement.
I was right. Nothing good ever happened after two bells.
Chapter 13
Mychael began humming at a level so low it barely registered in
my ears, but I was close enough to him to feel the rumbling deep in his chest. There were four horses harnessed to that coach. A split second later, every last one had its ears flat to its head. Then they started neighing nervously and pawing the cobblestones. When two Khrynsani guards came up on either side to calm them, the horses screamed and reared as if those goblins had stepped straight out of their worst nightmare.
Then they bolted. The coach went up on two wheels as the terrified horses tore around the corner, the friction of their horseshoes raising sparks against the cobbles. They rounded the next corner and were gone. Two of the guards took off in pursuit. Two remained.
We went from outnumbered to piece of cake in under ten seconds.
“Can you hold the veil on your own?”
Mychael asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Get to the gate. I’ll take care of the guards.”
Mychael glided swiftly and in complete silence to the pair of goblin guards and snatched them up by the scruffs of their necks like a pair of kittens. They didn’t even have time to reach for their weapons. I felt Mychael’s surge of magic as the goblins’ eyes rolled back in their heads and they went down. It helped that they were standing close together, no doubt trying to come up with an excuse for their bosses as to why they had no way to get back home to the family lair. Mychael altered his grip from their necks to the backs of their uniform collars and quickly dragged them down the street and tossed them behind a pile of garbage.
The garden gate had probably been warded, but the goblins had deactivated it for a quick getaway. I appreciated their consideration almost as much as I appreciated that someone had kept the gate’s hinges oiled. There was a bit of a breeze, so a slowly opening garden gate could be blamed on a loose latch and the wind. I slipped through and left it open for Mychael. I didn’t see any goblins in the garden. If they were there, and I was sure they were, they were probably sticking close to the house, making sure Nukpana and Ghalfari weren’t disturbed.
The door to the garden shed was conveniently located on the side of the small building and the only thing it faced was an ancient oak in the garden’s corner. True to Mychael’s word, it was unlocked. A few seconds later, Mychael joined me inside.
“How long will those two be out?”
I asked.
“At least an hour.”
Within minutes, we were through the trapdoor, down the ladder, and, with the help of a lightglobe that Mychael conjured, quickly covered the distance to the house under cover and underground. I’d never liked tunnels, and events during the past few weeks hadn’t given me any reason to change my opinion, but I was grateful for this one. When we reached the basement door, Mychael disabled the ward with a single word. But before turning the knob, he carefully reached out with a searching spell.
Mychael didn’t have to say anything, out loud or otherwise. I felt it myself. No one was on the other side of that door, or even anywhere near. I didn’t have to say I didn’t like it; from Mychael’s expression, he liked it even less than I did.
I knew what it meant. There was no one down here because everyone was upstairs. And if we were going to save Markus, that was where we had to go.
Mychael turned the knob and slowly opened the door.
Nothing. No Khrynsani welcoming committee, but I could feel them and hear sibilant goblin voices coming from the floor above us.
I hadn’t seen any horses other than the ones harnessed to the coach. That told me there couldn’t be that many goblins upstairs. Probably. Hopefully. Though considering that there were only two of us, anything more than that was too many.
An acrid smell tickled my nose, familiar and potentially helpful. I took another whiff to be sure. I felt myself smile. Oh yeah. It was dark in the far corner, but my Benares nose had never lied to me when it came to these little beauties. I tapped Mychael twice on the shoulder and jerked my head toward something that just might even the odds—or eliminate the odds entirely.
Markus Sevelien was a connoisseur of the finer things in life, most notably wines and exotic liqueurs. Even though Markus was only living here temporarily, he probably had a nicely stocked wine cellar down here somewhere, but this wasn’t it.
This was an ammunition cache that would have made Phaelan green with envy.
There were eight plain wooden crates stacked in the corner. The lids on the top two were open. Mychael increased the glow from his lightglobe and I took a peek inside. Carefully nestled in three rows were a dozen of what looked like metal kegs so small I could have easily wrapped my hands around one. Nebian grenades. Someone who didn’t know what was inside might have called them cute. Just one of those little kegs contained enough Nebian black powder to turn the ceiling above our heads into the floor beneath our feet. Regular black powder didn’t have anywhere near the punch that the Nebian variety did. It was literally powder fine, highly unstable, and obscenely expensive. The Nebians were a wealthy people, and the contents of these little kegs was one of the reasons.
The simple beauty of a Nebian grenade was that no fuses were necessary—just throw and run; the metal was thin and the impact would take care of the rest. Once the powder inside was exposed to the air, you had ten seconds to run like hell or become a permanent part of whatever was left of what you were blowing up.
Very nice.
Markus favored less obvious and more elegant means of dealing with his enemies. And until two days ago, he’d been staying at the elven embassy, which made me wonder if he even knew these were down here. Maybe, maybe not. It depended on if the Markus upstairs was the Markus I knew or the son of a bitch I suspected. If all of those crates were full of Nebian grenades, there was enough “kaboom” to turn this end of Ambassador Row into Ambassador Crater. It wasn’t that I wanted to use a grenade, but if the situation went to hell in a handbasket, I wasn’t going to turn up my nose at any viable solution.
I found myself grinning.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Mychael took a look in the crate and shook his head.
“You’re thinking extreme property damage; I’m thinking quick and messy death—for us.”
I emptied the leather pouch clipped to my belt of anything that a girl in a house full of evil goblins didn’t need and reached for the closest grenade.
Instantly Mychael’s hand locked around my wrist.
“Raine.”
The look I gave him was calm and cool—and if he thought he saw an explosives-crazed Benares glint in my eyes, he was mistaken.
“For use only if necessary.”
“Define ‘necessary.’”
“If Nukpana and his uncle give us Markus and let us leave, then it won’t be necessary.”
Mychael just looked at me.
“When and where have you used these before?”
“If I told you, you might have to arrest me. Besides, since my arms and legs are still attached to the rest of me, it means I know what I’m doing.”
He sighed and released my wrist.
“If you jostle that thing around, I’ll be picking what’s left of you out of the rafters.”
“You mean there’ll be rafters left?”
I asked innocently.
“How disappointing.”
I tucked a grenade inside my pouch, followed by a second one. If our situation went down the crapper to the point where I needed to cause one explosion, chances were I’d need two.
“Now, what’s your plan?”
He told me. I think my jaw dropped.
And he thought
I
was nuts.
The first part of Mychael’s plan involved getting upstairs, getting
the lay of the land, and not getting caught. I thought that was an excellent start. From there, it sailed into uncharted territory, at least as far as I was concerned. Mychael’s plan was twofold: he would take care of every goblin between us and Markus, and I would stay out of sight. While I was all for Mychael eliminating goblins and I liked how he was going to do it, I wasn’t a big fan of being a wallflower.
According to Mychael, the first floor was the public reception area: sitting rooms, a small ballroom, and offices. The second floor was mainly personal quarters, and the third was servants’ quarters. The goblins were on the first floor. At least that was where Sarad Nukpana was. I was getting the same black, oily sensation crawling along my skin that I did outside with the coach. Nukpana was here and he was close. That oily trail went to where Mychael said were the front reception rooms, probably the sitting room, which was one flight up, down one corridor and take a right, cross the entry hall and we’d be there. It was right next to the front door and freedom.
Except we weren’t going there, at least not until Mychael had done his work.
He had the reputation of being the best spellsinger in the seven kingdoms. If everything went according to plan, no one would hear a single note until it was too late. Mychael would be singing a concert for one set of goblin ears at a time, taking out every guard between us and that sitting room. Once we got there, the plan was to hit Nukpana, Ghalfari, and anyone in that room with the same song. It’d have to be a lightning- quick strike. If they sensed or heard one note beforehand, the plan was shot to hell and probably us along with it. Sarad Nukpana and his uncle were that powerful; they were also within killing distance of the man we needed to rescue. It was a classic hostage situation with a sick twist: Nukpana wanted Markus’s knowledge, memories, and life force for himself, but if push came to shove, he’d slit Markus’s throat out of sheer spite. If he couldn’t have him, he’d kill him.
Mychael would be using a sound shield for his voice that extended about twenty feet in every direction. Anyone outside the shield wouldn’t hear a thing, but any goblin within twenty feet of Mychael’s pipes would be taking an hour-long nap that a cannon blast wouldn’t disturb.
Mychael and I were at the top of the stairs, still veiled, and about to go into the main house.
“I wish you’d reconsider staying here,”
Mychael said.
“We don’t know what’s waiting for us up there, and you’re not walking into that alone. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re near the top of Nukpana’s lunch list. I don’t want to use the big gun, but I will if I have to.”
We both knew I meant the Saghred, and Mychael knew: where he was going I was going. This was the time to act, not argue. I didn’t think Sarad Nukpana was going to kill Markus here. According to Vidor Kalta, it took more than an hour to do a cha’nescu ritual. Nukpana would want somewhere safe where he wouldn’t be interrupted. That meant as soon as they had Markus tied up and ready to go, they’d leave. We were running out of time, if we hadn’t already.
“You need to shield your thoughts,”
Mychael told me.
“And once we’re through this door, no talking, not even mindspeak.”
“Won’t your sound shield cover us?”
“It will cover my sound—my voice, our footsteps—but not strong emotions. Strong emotions or thoughts will cause my shield to ripple, buckle, and possibly fail. We have to keep our minds as clear as possible.”
“You mean the Saghred, too.”
“I mean the Saghred
and
your temper. There can’t be a flicker of either one. If you feel the Saghred stirring, push it down and do it fast, with no emotion, no fear, no panic.”
I about said he had to be kidding, but I knew he wasn’t.
“I’m in the same house with a goblin who wants to kill me and an elf who may have sold me and mine down the river, and I’m supposed to keep me and the rock on an even keel?”
“Raine, you don’t have a choice. Anger or fear will give us away and so will the Saghred. We’ll be invisible in every sense—”
“Unless I lose control.”
“You lose control; I lose the shield.”
“We lose our lives.”
“Good reason to keep your temper under control, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“I’m motivated.”
“I hoped you would be. Let’s go.”
There weren’t any goblins in the kitchen. However, there were lots
of knives. I silently helped myself to a pair of long carving knives, tucked one in my belt, and kept the other in my right hand in case it needed to make itself useful in the next few minutes. I walked two paces behind Mychael on his right side and out of his way.
We encountered the first Khrynsani temple guard leaning against a doorway. His bosses were on the other side of the house, and he was left to stand watch over a lot of empty space that, with the arrival of me and Mychael, suddenly wasn’t so empty anymore. He was confident and complacent right up until the instant Mychael’s whispered voice sent him sliding down that doorway onto the floor. He never knew what hit him.
Mychael’s spellsinging voice was softer and more soothing than a whisper, gently nestling into the place between sleep and wake. It was low, it was velvety, and if he’d been aiming at me, I’d be in a happy little puddle on the floor. Damn, he was good. I’d known that for some time; the Khrynsani guards got to find out the hard way.
Mychael flowed smoothly through the house. We had no time to lose, and Mychael wasn’t wasting a second. Nukpana and Ghalfari hadn’t brought as many Khrynsani guards with them as I would have expected. Normally this would be good news, but normally there would be someone for them to guard or kill.