Lisa Shearin - Raine Benares 02 (16 page)

Knowing
Tam back then, I would have believed any combination of any of the above.

I
thought he’d changed. I thought I’d played a big part in that change.

Maybe
I thought wrong.

I
didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t like it when I was wrong, and I sure as hell
didn’t want the Tam I thought I knew to have reverted to the Tam I’d never want
to meet.

We’d
met when a cash-strapped noble started working his way through his wife’s
jewelry to support his gambling habit. The wife hired me to find her
grandmother’s favorite ring. I tailed the ring—and her husband—right to
Sirens’s high-stakes card table. I’d heard that the owner of Sirens was a
scoundrel and an opportunist, but he was also a savvy businessman. It looked
good for him to return the lady’s ring. Tam told me later he did it to impress
me.

He
needn’t have bothered. Being a Benares, I’ve always been attracted to rogues.
Kind of like a moth to flame. Most times I had the good sense to steer clear,
but with Tam I’d come close to getting my wings singed more than once.

Tonight
I damned near got fried.

“Has
Tam ever told you what his job duties for his queen entailed?” Mychael asked
quietly.

“He
always kind of glossed over that part, but I’ve heard things.”

“He
was Queen Glicara Mal’Salin’s enforcer—her
magical
enforcer—for five
years.”

I
blew out my breath. It was a little shaky. “That’s not the kind of job you get
and keep for that long by helping little old goblin ladies cross the street.”

“No,
it’s not.”

I
knew what else five years meant. I’d heard that chief shamans for the House of
Mal’Salin tended to have short lifespans. The lifespan shortening was usually
done by others who wanted to be chief shaman. I couldn’t understand why anyone
would want to fight to get and keep a job that was just going to get them
killed, but I was an elf and not a goblin. I didn’t give a damn about politics
and intrigue. Goblins thrived on it. For Tam to have survived that long at the
queen’s side meant that he’d left his conscience and any morals he possessed at
the throne room door. No wonder Tam had been so proficient with that death
curse; I imagine he’d gotten a lot of practice.

I
squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay, I’m confused by
something. Actually a lot of somethings, but one at a time. Tam told me that
A’Zahra Nuru was his teacher. I only ran into her a time or two last week, but
she seemed to be a nice, rational sort of lady. Brave, noble, and all that.
Definitely not a dark mage.”

“Primari
Nuru was only one of Tam’s teachers,” Mychael told me, “and probably the only
one he’d acknowledge now. Unfortunately, others were more influential in his
early education. But when he left the queen’s service, Tam went straight to
A’Zahra Nuru.”

My
throat felt tight. “He knew she could help him.”

Mychael
nodded. “He’s not the first that she’s helped. She does good work.”

Black-magic
rehab. Just when I thought I’d heard it all.

I
didn’t want to tell Mychael about Darshan thinking that Tam was in that alley
to capture me for the Khrynsani, but he needed to know. Mychael was protecting
me, and if I had any information that’d help him protect me and not get himself
killed in the process, I owed it to him to be completely up-front. Tam didn’t
hand me over to Darshan, but he’d clearly been blackmailed, coerced,
threatened, or all of the above to do just that. Tam didn’t scare, so that left
the first two. Whatever the Khrynsani were holding over Tam’s head had nearly
been enough to put me in Khrynsani hands. It wouldn’t be the first time
someone’s past had come back to bite them in the ass. I just didn’t appreciate
being there to share the teeth marks.

I
told Mychael about Darshan.

Mychael
listened, his expression grim. “What were the shaman’s exact words?”

“He
said he was glad that Tam had come to his senses, and that he’d arrived just in
time to keep his end of their bargain.” I left out the part where Darshan
offered Tam a drug to use on me. Tam was in deep enough shit as it was, and
Mychael got the picture without it. “I think the Khrynsani have something on
Tam. And I was trying to get him to tell me what that something was when you
came into the alley.” I knew what I was going to say next wasn’t going to go
over well. “I’d like to ask him again.”

Mychael
almost smiled. “Now what do you think my answer to that ill-considered request
is going to be?”

“I
asked you first.”

“No,”
he said.

“No,
what?”

Mychael
leaned forward, until there were only inches between us. “No, you’re not going
to question Tam. I am. It’s safer for you—and for everyone else.”

“To
avoid temptation, avoid being tempted.”

“Exactly.”

I
couldn’t blame Mychael. I wanted to disagree with him, but the truth was I just
didn’t have the energy to argue. He must have sensed it; either that, or he
read my tired little mind. I didn’t know and quite frankly I was too exhausted
to care.

Mychael
reached out and took one of my hands in both of his. It was warm. No liquid
fire, no blazing heat. Just warm, and comforting, and nice. Really nice. Mychael
was right. Tam was an apparently not-quite-recovered dark mage. I was a
dark-mage magnet. We were a kaboom waiting to happen.

Mychael
squeezed my hand. “And I promise I’ll tell you everything I find out.”

That
was a surprise. “Everything?”

“Everything.
For your continued safety, you need to know—and you deserve to know.”

“What’s
Justinius going to have to say about this?”

“Nothing,
because until I speak with Tam, I’m not going to report what happened.
Justinius trusts my judgment. If anything happens on this island that he needs
to officially act on, he knows that I’ll tell him. For now, we’re the only ones
that know, and until I get an explanation from Tam, that’s the way it will
stay.”

I was
shocked, but mostly I was grateful. Regardless of what he’d just said, Mychael
had to be going against a whole handful of regulations not to report Tam and
me— and he was doing it for the same reason he’d done everything else since I’d
met him.

To
protect me.

When
I woke up the next morning I wasn’t on a cot in a contain
ment room or a pallet in a jail cell.

I was
in my soft bed in my luxurious guest room. Sure, the Khrynsani wanted to get
their hands on me, the goblin lawyers wanted to extradite me, and Carnades
Silvanus wanted a warrant for my arrest, but as of this glorious, sun-filled
morning, not a one of them had gotten what they wanted. Bad guys temporarily
thwarted.

I
loved it when my day got off to a good start.

It’d
probably go straight down the crapper the moment my feet hit the floor, but for
now it was all good.

Except
for Tam. What had happened last night and whatever agreement he’d made with the
Khrynsani were definitely not good. Before last night, I would have said
without hesitation that Tam would never betray me and that I would trust him
with my life. I smiled. I’d never trusted him with the rest of me, but then I
didn’t exactly trust me with the rest of him, either.

Tam
was tall, lean, silvery skinned, black eyed, and wicked sexy. Though after last
night, tall, silver, and sexy was consorting with the enemy. Not so sexy.

I
felt a lump under my pillow. Rudra Muralin’s books. I couldn’t believe I’d
actually slept with those things under my pillow, but even here in the supposed
safety of the citadel, I wasn’t about to take any chances of them walking away.
I pulled them out. They were written a thousand years apart, both by the same
sicko shaman, and both were creepy. Definitely not first-thing-in-the-morning
reading material.

The
bag with the kidnapped girls’ hairbrush and locket was on my bedside table
where I’d left it. Last night I’d tried to use the brush to link with Megan
Jacobs. I didn’t know if my tangle of emotions from Tam had interfered, or if
I’d simply been too tired. Either way, contact didn’t happen. I sat up in bed
and pulled the wrapped hairbrush out of the bag. I closed my eyes and took a
couple of deep breaths and tried not to think about Tam. I peeled back the
cloth and took the brush in both hands.

Once
again my contact was immediate and crystal clear.

Megan
was still scared, but now she was almost too exhausted to care. Ailia Aurillac
was wide-awake and looked furious. Good for her. The candle in their cell had
been exchanged for a small lightglobe. It gave off a little more light, but it
didn’t show me anything new about where they were being held.

Someone
walked in front of Megan, then out of her line of vision, then back into view
again. A new prisoner, and not female. He also wasn’t blond or petite. He was
young, dark haired, and muscular. Banan Ryce had kidnapped another student and,
judging from the bruises on the kid’s face, he’d fought back.

Megan
whimpered and then started to cry. Ailia put an arm around her shoulders and
pulled her close. The boy knelt in front of Megan and took one of her hands. It
gave me a better look at him. Hazel eyes, good bone structure under the
bruises, dark hair cropped short, athletic build. Enough to give Sedge Rinker a
good description.

Their
comforting just made Megan cry harder. Dammit. I could be inside someone’s head
and see, hear, feel, and smell what they did, but I couldn’t do a thing to help
a terrified girl. No seeker could do that.

Or
could I? Just how much of a boost had the Saghred given me? Only one way to
find out.

I
felt Megan’s slender body shaking with sobs. I started taking deep, long,
soothing breaths. I kept breathing, and the girl kept right on sobbing. Then
she drew a shuddering breath. The next one was definitely calmer, and she wiped
her eyes. The boy squeezed her hand and smiled encouragingly. That kid was a keeper.

“Come
on, sweetie,” I whispered to Megan, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me, at
least not with her ears. “Work with me.”

Soon
her shaking stopped, and her breathing and my breathing became our breathing. I
continued taking slow, deep breaths and felt Megan doing the same. The boy
traded places with Ailia, and put his arms around Megan. With a contented
little sound, she nestled her head against his shoulder. Soon she slipped into
an exhausted sleep.

I
released the link with her as carefully as you’d tiptoe out of a sleeping
child’s room and close the door silently behind you.

I
snuggled down into my pillows with a satisfied little smile. I did it. Now
that’s
a new talent worth keeping. I could use a couple of more gifts like
that from the Saghred.

I got
up, pulled a robe on over my gown, and started reading Rudra Muralin’s more
recent literary effort. Usually I curled up in a chair with a good book.
Neither Muralin nor his book was good, so I felt safer reading it standing up.
As I read, I started to pace.

Okon
Nusair—as Muralin was calling himself in the last century—had uncanny insight
into the Saghred’s use for someone who’d supposedly lived hundreds of years
after the stone had done its worst. No wonder Nusair’s work had been filed in
the fiction section under myths and legends.

But
to all legends there is a grain of truth.

From
what I had read already, this little book had enough grains to fill a silo. It
also explained how my father was able to keep the Saghred dormant for hundreds
of years.

He starved
it.

The
Saghred fed on life essence, the living souls of those who were sacrificed to
it. Rudra Muralin sacrificed victims to the Saghred before he wanted to use it.
My father didn’t give the rock a damned thing—no wonder it took him the first
chance it got. That was last year. Last week, to save Piaras and myself, I
tricked Sarad Nukpana into lowering his shields and touching the stone with his
bloody hand. Nukpana had taken the bait, and the Saghred had taken Nukpana.

Yesterday
Piaras had sung the Saghred to sleep, but from what I was reading, I had a
sinking feeling it wasn’t dormant or even fully asleep. The peace and quiet we
were enjoying was a catnap. A cat eats, dozes off, and wakes up when it expects
to be fed again. The Saghred had been fed only twice in the past thousand
years.

It
was going to wake up—and when it did, it was going to be really hungry.

“You
must be reading the dirty part,” said a voice from behind me.

I
jumped, dropped the book, and barely caught it before it hit the floor.

Phaelan.

“Don’t
sneak up on me like that!”

He
raised his hands defensively. “I didn’t sneak.
I
knocked.
You
didn’t answer, so I let myself in. It’s not my fault you weren’t paying
attention.”

“I
was distracted.”

“Obviously.
Must be a really hot book. So who’s doing what to whom and how long have they
been going at it?”