“Let’s get you on the ground,” Vegard shouted back at me.
I gasped for breath, and the rushing wind tried to take it away. “Thief . . . has the rock . . . not in citadel.”
Vegard’s eyes narrowed in fury. “Where?”
“Moving.”
“Can you track him?”
I only felt like I was riding in his pocket. I nodded.
Vegard signaled to Phaelan’s pilot to go to the citadel and get reinforcements.
I stopped fighting the contact with the rock. I couldn’t see where the thief was, but I could feel him, like an invisible string bound me to him. As we circled back from the citadel, the string tightened. I had no clue how I could sense the rock, yet couldn’t tap one iota of magic. I’d just add it to the absurdly long list of crap I didn’t understand.
“Down!” I shouted. “Need to be closer . . . to the street.”
“Hold on.”
I’d heard that sky dragons were nimble enough to fly and land pretty much anywhere. I’d never seen it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be in the saddle of one while it happened.
Vegard sent Kalinpar into a full dive.
Kalinpar shrieked in pure joy.
I just shrieked.
The sky dragon leveled out just below the rooftops in an entirely too small street. I got an up-close look at the goblin thief wearing what I guessed was his own skin, and he got the same view of the three of us. His eyes widened, right before he darted down a too-narrow-for-Kalinpar side street and out of our reach.
Vegard pulled back hard on the dragon’s reins and banked back up into the sky. My stomach tried to do the same. He leveled off just above the rooftops.
“Still sense him?”
The only sense I had was the need to be sick. I shoved it down, literally, and focused on the rock with everything I had. I might not have magic right now, but I had something even more powerful.
Stubbornness.
That thief wasn’t getting away. He couldn’t get away. If he did I’d wish I was dead or sharing the Saghred’s link with a bunch of pervert elf mages. They’d get to share the sensation of having people slaughtered and feel like they were being slaughtered on them, feel their souls being torn out of their dying bodies, those bodies disintegrated under the Saghred’s destructive magic.
Over and over again.
Dozens or hundreds or even thousands of times. Until the Saghred was full. Until it was at full power. And Sarad Nukpana and his king could turn that power against anyone they chose. Unrelenting. Unstoppable.
“Left!” I shouted.
I followed the thief and guided Vegard to an intersection that might be big enough to land in. Not that we had a choice. The thief was there, so we were going to land.
It wasn’t the worst part of town, but it was far from the best. We were less than a dozen or so blocks from the citadel, but we weren’t close enough that they’d come running if I screamed loud enough.
The sun wasn’t up, and the dregs of Mid’s society were still out. They scattered when Kalinpar swooped in for a landing, claws extended.
Vegard swung a long leg over the dragon’s neck and smoothly dismounted.
I smoothly fell off.
“You look green, ma’am.”
“Feel green.”
“You gonna make it?”
“Not if we don’t get that rock back.”
He gave me a hand up and I took it. Behind us, Kalinpar snorted.
“Stay,” Vegard told him. “Signal.”
In response, the sky dragon tossed back his head and sent a plume of blue flame straight up above the rooftops. Any Guardian pilots in the air couldn’t miss that.
The plume also lit the outlines of some less-than-scrupulous individuals closing in on Kalinpar or at least thinking about it. The dragon turned his massive head in their direction, and I swear he smiled.
Vegard saw it, too. “Signal first. Play later.”
Kalinpar stopped smiling and sent a short, miffed plume in the air, angled slightly toward the nearest thug. The thugs jumped back. The dragon smiled.
We left Kalinpar to his amusements.
We had to catch a thief.
Chapter 22
Dawn was less than an hour away. We didn’t have an hour.
“Which way?” Vegard asked.
I hesitated. I hadn’t told Vegard that my magic was gone. I especially hadn’t told him that I’d damn near taken Phaelan’s soul. That wasn’t the kind of comment you casually tossed out there before going into a place where we’d be trusting each other with our lives. I didn’t think the Saghred would try anything with Vegard. When my magic had gone, so had my soul-sucking urges. At least I thought they were gone. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t be the first time that the Saghred tried to pull a fast one.
I’d hoped my magic would be back by now. It wasn’t, and we were going after a master glamourer who had a rock of cataclysmic power in his pocket. The goblin couldn’t use it, neither could I; but the rock, however, might take offense at me wanting to take it back to the citadel.
Big, messy, soul-sucking offense.
Right now, I could barely sense it, and without my magic, I couldn’t tap the thing even if our lives depended on it, and they probably would.
I gave Vegard the short and not-so-sweet version of my magicless state.
To his credit, he didn’t put his fist through the wall we were standing against, even when I told him it was all the fault of Taltek Balmorlan and his magic-sapping manacles.
Or the Saghred.
Or all three.
I had no clue and I desperately wanted one—along with my magic back.
I’d never lost my magic before, and had never heard of anyone who had lost theirs, so any reason I came up with would be nothing but a guess. But any guess I made wouldn’t alter the fact that magically speaking, I was as naked as the day I was born.
“Can you get a general direction from the Saghred?” Vegard asked.
“Think so.”
I reached out. Not with the magic I didn’t have, just with a link to a cursed rock.
The Saghred was here, close by. I knew that much. What I had no clue about was which way the goblin had gone with it. Now that we were on the ground, my sense of the rock was spread thin, as if the trail had been smeared over the whole block. Naturally, it wasn’t a block with only one or two buildings; it was a rat’s warren of narrow, twisting streets and alleys, recessed doorways and darkened windows. Perfect for seeing without being seen. Perfect for a goblin who could see better in the dark than a hundred cats combined.
My life, soul, and sanity depended on going into that dark and finding that goblin and the rock he’d stolen. A diluted trail from the Saghred meant only one thing—magic of the interfering kind. That meant our thief wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see a master glamourer and thief conjuring a ward complex enough to mask an object as powerful as the Saghred.
A Khrynsani could. I already knew from the two suicide bombers in the harbor that there were Khrynsani on Mid. Well, those two particular Khrynsani weren’t anywhere anymore, but they didn’t travel only in pairs. Like rats, if you saw two, simply check the dark corners. There were more; you could count on it.
I quietly told Vegard what I’d sensed—and what I couldn’t.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he assured me. “I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve.”
“You might need more than that,” I whispered. I quickly told him about the thief’s arsenal—darts and strawberries—one eatable, both poisonous. I didn’t mention the box the poison came in or the itty-bitty portrait of me in it. If Vegard knew he’d take me back to Kalinpar and order the dragon to make
me
stay. At least he’d try. By not telling him, I was saving valuable time. Vegard wouldn’t have seen it that way, but then Vegard wasn’t going to know.
Ten minutes ago, the goblin thief had been wearing his own skin. For a man who could alter his appearance in the blink of an eye, ten minutes was an eternity. The goblin had the Saghred, was on his home turf, lurking in the dark, and could look like anyone by now.
I didn’t have diddly-squat.
No sleep, no strength, no magic. I’d been kidnapped, chained, choked, force-fed a mage, and fallen off of a sky dragon.
The thief had changed into a beautiful girl, had a kinkyfun evening, and an hour ago had taken an early-morning stroll into the citadel to pick up and carry out a rock.
I was on my last leg. He was just getting warmed up.
And to top it all off, he knew we were here.
“Ma’am, I don’t suppose you’d stay here and let me take care of this?”
I just looked at him.
“Didn’t think so.” Vegard took what to him was a short sword from the harness across his back, and offered it to me. To me, it was massive.
“As much as I’d love to take that,” I told him, “right now I couldn’t hold it up, let alone run anyone through with it. Got something smaller?”
Vegard flashed a quick grin. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear you ask.”
“Me, either.”
He handed me a pair of long, slender daggers.
“Aren’t those a little . . . dainty for you?” I asked.
“I’m not always a brute. I can do subtle.”
“Vegard?”
“Ma’am?”
“Bring the brute.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. He’s right here.” The big Guardian bared his teeth in what might have been a grin. If so, it was one the goblin thief or any of his Khrynsani friends didn’t want to see.
A sky dragon roar overhead nearly made me jump out of my skin.
We looked up. Two dragons glided past just above the rooftops, wings slightly pulled back for landing. One of the pilots raised an armored hand at Vegard.
“Reinforcements,” Vegard snapped. “About damned time. Let’s move; they’ll catch up.”
I held my daggers out in front of me. If someone or something came at me out of the dark, it’d be met with steel.
We moved as fast as I could detect the Saghred’s trail, and as cautiously as our sense of survival demanded. The rock’s presence grew stronger, though not any more definite. It wasn’t moving and we were; you’d think that would be called progress.
I estimated it was about half an hour until dawn. There should be lights in some of the windows; people should be up, even people who stayed up all night waiting to jump on people like us.
No one. Nothing.
I didn’t need my seeker instincts to tell me that was a bad thing.
Every step I took was like sticking my head into Kalinpar’s mouth while he was feeling playful.
It was suicidal and I knew it. We should be running in the opposite direction, not sneaking forward. The goblin and whatever friends he had were somewhere ahead, waiting until we got close enough to do something we really weren’t going to like. The Saghred was with them and wanted to be with them. I didn’t need magic to know any of it; my instincts were working just fine, and they were screaming at me to run and not stop until I hit the harbor, and once I got there to start swimming.
Instincts had a way of thinking you had a choice. I didn’t.
The look on my face must have said all of that loud and clear. The big Guardian’s only response was a grim nod. I guess surviving something that was suicidal but necessary made you a hero. Failure just made you dead and posthumously stupid.
I stopped—and stayed stopped.
The Saghred’s presence rang like a bell. An evil bell, but still a bell. Loud and clear.
And close. Too close.
I inclined my head ever so slightly in the direction the rock’s come-hither was coming from. Vegard saw and calmly drew his battle-ax from where it rode across his back, the blade glowing blue with restrained magic. He started to step in front of me. I put a hand on his arm and shook my head once. It didn’t look like an evil hideout; the only thing it looked like was abandoned. The worn, wooden door looked like any other door. Though if the Saghred and that body-morphing thief were in there, absolutely nothing would be what it seemed.
I took a breath and made it a good one, in case it was my last, and carefully wrapped my hand around the metal latch. I made no move to turn it, but stood perfectly still, willing the essence of the last person who opened it to come to me.
Nothing.
I resisted the urge to growl and kick the door. It wasn’t the door’s fault that when the Saghred had fed it’d sucked out my magic along with that elf mage’s soul.
There, I’d said it.
I’d been in magic-sapping manacles before; my magic came back almost immediately. I’d been telling myself that since I was in Balmorlan’s longer that it was taking longer for the effect to wear off. I didn’t believe it, but I didn’t want to let the possibility of the alternative so much as cross my thoughts.
The Saghred had taken my magic, whether by accident or spite. I didn’t want to think about it, but I couldn’t ignore what it might mean. An old door with a rusty latch would be just that and no more. No sense of who last touched it, how much power they were packing, no warning of what waited on the other side. I’d be going in blind.
I inhaled sharply through my nose and clenched my teeth, willing myself not to scream in impotent fury—or cry. I didn’t have time for either one. Though if I survived this, I’d treat myself to one, the other, or probably both. Vegard’s strong hand tightly squeezed my shoulder, that one touch telling me he knew what I was thinking, and he was there for me. I knew it was a mistake, but I glanced up into his eyes. I couldn’t see them all that well because my vision had suddenly gone blurry. I sniffed, clenched my jaw, and swallowed hard. Vegard laid his big hand next to mine against the door, and his lip curled back with distaste.
“Khrynsani?” I asked.
Vegard nodded tightly. “And a hint of a repel ward. Just enough to make people pass by or not notice it at all.” He took his hand off the door. “We’re waiting for backup.”
“We don’t have time to—”