Impatience entered Xevar’s tone. “Are you quite finished, Delmar?”
A knock came from behind them, at the main door. Startled for real this time, Nightfall nearly brained himself on the door latch. “Yes, Master,” he managed.
“Then come out of there so I can attend the door.”
Nightfall rushed to obey, pausing only long enough to glance into the smaller room and ascertain it contained nothing other than the chamber pot, toiletries, and washing bowl. “Yes, Master. Sorry. I’m just jumpy. After what I saw . . .” He hurried out of the room.
The moment he came back into the main quarters, filled with its plush furniture, Xevar closed the sleeping room’s door behind him. “Now sit,” he said firmly as another round of knocking rattled through the room.
“I’m coming!” Xevar hollered at the door. He wrenched it open to reveal a woman nearly as tall as himself; the top of Nightfall’s head might reach her eyeballs. She had the same medium-brown hair as Xevar, but she wore it long and thick, without the receding hairline. Though minimally coarsened by approaching middle age, her features remained attractive in a slightly masculine, heavy-handed way. Her lips were full, her nose just shy of bulbous, and her jaw square and well defined. Large, green eyes with sweeping lashes might have gentled the image had she not held them in an angry squint often enough to have etched crow’s-feet at their corners. Her generous breasts did not sag, and she had well defined curves softened by a healthy layer of fat. “Ah, Jacquellette.”
Nightfall bowed.
Jacquellette marched into the room. “Don’t ‘ah’ me, Brother. You called me here.” She caught sight of Nightfall and stopped, her wide lips pulling into a cruel smile. “Delmar.”
Nightfall bowed again, not allowing himself to feel the intimidation he tried to show. He already knew Xevar was the sorcerer, yet his sister had the sleek overconfidence and regal bearing down even better than he did.
Jacquellette sank into a chair. “So, what happened?” She pinned Nightfall with her emerald stare.
Glad his character allowed for coyness, Nightfall looked away. He did not want to enter a staring contest with her. For once, his demon glare might not win. He licked his lips, looking desperately at Xevar for assistance.
The master obliged. “Delmar’s nervous. Says he saw something horrible, but I waited for you to get the details.”
“Horrible, was it?” Unlike Xevar, Jacquellette did not even try to hide her smile.
Nightfall understood why Xevar, rather than his sister, met with the clients. The potboy and the real Delmar had said the slaves feared her worse than him, but Nightfall had found their claim difficult to believe. Now, he understood why. She clearly espoused the sorcerer cruelty Xevar hid so well. Nightfall wondered if some sort of magic allowed Xevar to shove that part of his personality onto her. If so, she did not seem to notice or mind. Nightfall supposed it might be worth the cost to have a sorcerer brother at one’s beck and call.
“Horrible,” Nightfall repeated, hugging himself as if to disappear. “Truly horrible.”
Xevar explained, “Delmar’s become so haunted by what he saw, he thinks he’s hearing noises from my bedroom.” Nightfall detected a hint of warning in Xevar’s tone.
“Is he now?” Jacquellette twisted her features into a grim parody of thought. “Well, then. Perhaps we should hold this conversation elsewhere. Somewhere absolutely safe.”
Nightfall did not like the sound of that. Not only did it seem certain to drive him farther from the place where he believed they might be hiding Edward, but he did not want to wind up in some dungeon cell or, worse, in Jacquellette’s quarters. He pictured human heads dangling like trophies from every wall and images of blood and death in tapestries and paintings. Thoughts of her living space brought another worry home. Perhaps the door he had seen in Xevar’s quarters led, not to Edward, but to Jacquellette, a secret way for the two of them to come together. Once again, he suspected them of having a closer relationship than just brother and sister. So long as it produced no offspring, no one would know. Perhaps Xevar had some magical way of preventing pregnancy, or they sold off the results of any union as slaves.
That thought sickened him more than the scenario he had created about the meeting between Nightfall and Cherokint, so he abandoned it. If the door in Xevar’s bedroom did not lead to Edward, Nightfall would have to find another one. To do so, he suspected, he would have to rid the slaving house of Xevar and his sister. Neither seemed likely to prove an easy battle.
“You mean the garden?” Xevar guessed.
“Where better?”
Realizing their destination, Nightfall went utterly still. “Please, Master.” He appealed to Xevar, certain Delmar would. No one would expect mercy from Jacquellette. “I can’t go there. No one ever comes out of there . . . alive.”
Xevar tousled Nightfall’s hair like a child’s. “Don’t worry, Delmar. You’ll be the first. Right, Jacq?” Though he pronounced her full name as JACK-let, with only a hint of a third syllable in the middle, the shortened form sounded more like Jayk.
This time, her smile seemed more tolerant, almost kindly. “Boy, if you tell us what happened last night, you’ll be the first survivor. We decide who comes and goes from the garden, understand?”
Nightfall bowed again. “Yes, Mistress.”
Jacquellette made a gesture toward the door. “Xevar, lead the way.”
Xevar obeyed, opening the garden door and heading out into the same dank drizzle that had assailed Nightfall on his walk to the House. None of them wore a cloak, and the droplets left darker circles on Xevar’s silks. Not seeming to notice, he walked across the shattered garden to the same bench where Nightfall had caught him eating. As he approached it, he turned suddenly to Jacquellette, and Nightfall had to leap aside to keep from treading on Xevar’s heels. “Perhaps this isn’t such a good idea. You-know-who might be watching.”
Jacquellette reached for Nightfall, and it took all his will to allow her to touch him. Like Xevar, she chose the shoulder, gripping so tightly her fingers gouged his flesh. She turned him toward her. “You saw Nightfall kill Cherokint,” she guessed.
Nightfall wanted to slice every feature from her face, beginning with her insolent, pouty-lipped smile. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Where did Nightfall go when he finished?”
Right here, you hideous, sniping bitch.
Nightfall held his tongue; she made his role nearly impossible to play. “He . . . he just melted into the darkness. Became a part of it. Disappeared.” It could not hurt to follow the conventions of his reputation. He had already ascertained from Delmar that Xevar seemed to have no magical way of detecting lies. “He said he had business on the other side of the world. In Alyndar.”
“There. You see!” Jacquellette shoved Nightfall away like so many rags. “He’s gone.”
Xevar rubbed his throat, revealing a bandage beneath his collar.
“I told you that mind-power of yours would work on him, too.”
Xevar finally lost his calmer facade. “Only after I already told you it did.”
“But you thought it might wear off quicker. That he might see through it.”
Xevar shrugged. “He’s a magical creature. A demon—”
Jacquellette made a huffing noise. “A man masquerading as a demon, you mean. He fell for it as easily as any other dupe.”
The urge to damage her became stronger, and Nightfall kneaded his fists at his sides. He wondered how Xevar could stand a lifetime of her and began to doubt his earlier thoughts of an illicit union.
“Jacq, please.” Xevar rolled his gaze to Nightfall. “Let the boy speak. I want to hear what he has to say.”
Brother and sister sat on the bench and turned their attention on Nightfall. Raindrops clung like diamonds to their hair, wiry from the dampness.
Nightfall cleared his throat. “The demon came, like you said, and he was angry. He smashed right through Cherokint’s stained-glass window.”
Xevar grinned. Jacquellette fairly howled. “So much for the slaver’s treasure.”
“Raged through the servants’ dinner, and all of the guards, without a scratch.”
Xevar raised a brow. “Still think he’s just a man?”
“Quiet,” Jacquellette said, attention wholly on Nightfall. “Go on.”
Nightfall obliged. “He caught Cherokint in his library. Pinned him in about an eye blink. Said he was returning the favor for someone named Edward.”
They both listened raptly now.
Nightfall swallowed hard and winced, as if to dodge a memory. “He killed him, then.”
“You mean Nightfall killed Cherokint,” Xevar supplied, though Jacquellette had already gotten Nightfall to acknowledge that detail.
Nightfall nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Jacquellette was leaning so far forward, she seemed likely to fall from the bench. “Don’t skip the good parts, Delmar. How did he kill the old bastard?”
Nightfall whimpered. “He—he—it took hours. He used knives, sometimes. Also his—his hands, and—his—his teeth.” He covered his face. “I couldn’t watch most of it. It was horrible. It was like—like—” He forced tears, sobbing.
“Like what?” Jacquellette demanded.
Nightfall peeked at her through his fingers. She was leaning toward him, practically drooling with anticipation. Even Xevar seemed excited by the description.
Monsters.
Nightfall summoned the most gruesome image he could, though only a sorcerer could act in such an evil fashion. “It was like he was eating the man alive. Cutting off an ear here, a finger there, gouging out eyes, bathing in the blood and laughing like a fiend.”
“And Cherokint?” asked Xevar, now as eager as his sister. “How do you know he was still alive?”
“He was screaming.” The tears trickled down Nightfall’s cheeks. “Begging and pleading, but the demon showed him no mercy. All that blood—I couldn’t believe he was still alive, still conscious. But he just kept on screaming.”
Jacquellette clapped her hands in glee.
If possible, Nightfall hated her more. He tried not to contemplate what these two animals might have inflicted on Edward. Doing so might drive him to a fury he could not control, one that would surely leave him dead. For, despite his demonic description of Nightfall, he was in fact, as Jacquellette had stated, only a man. Worse, a man with a natal gift. If Xevar only killed him, he would have to consider himself lucky.
As always, Xevar remained the more professional of the two. “Delmar, did you find out who will take over the operation of the House?”
Nightfall wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve. “I did as you bade, Master.” Though he usually liked to confront his greatest danger, Nightfall avoided looking at Jacquellette, playing his part. “One of his guards, sir, a man named Davvi, is restoring order there. But the wife plans to take over once he does.”
“The wife?” Xevar looked and sounded taken aback. “Cherokint’s widow?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jacquellette laughed.
“But she knows nothing—”
Jacquellette threw an arm around Xevar’s shoulders. “Which is why, my dear brother, you must marry her.”
“Marry her?” Xevar leaped to his feet, and Nightfall shuffled a few steps backward. “Marry Cherokint’s wife?”
Jacquellette did not bother to stand as well. “You have the means to convince her.”
“Yes, but—”
“And as owner of both main slave houses, you’d be the richest man in Hartrin. Richer than the king, perhaps.”
Still playing Delmar, Nightfall retreated farther, edging toward the door. He would have preferred to place himself in a position of escape near the wall, but that would risk his role-playing. He also knew that, if Edward still lived, he was inside the House of Xevar.
“But our plans!” In his outrage, Xevar seemed to have completely forgotten Nightfall. “If I’m here managing two businesses and a family in Hartrin, how can I go to Alyndar?”
That got Nightfall’s attention. He tried to disappear among the holes and shattered trees of the garden.
Unlike Xevar, Jacquellette clearly had not forgotten their audience. She glanced at Nightfall, then switched to the tongue of the Yortenese Peninsula, one he knew every bit as well, though Delmar would not. Nightfall would have to remain on his guard and not react to anything they said. “I’ve been thinking, Brother.”
“Yes,” Xevar said with clear impatience. His tone contained warning.
Jacquellette raised a forestalling hand. “Hear me out. It’s a good idea.”
Xevar remained silent, but he did not take his seat.
Jacquellette’s gaze went from Xevar to Nightfall at intervals, but her brother seemed to have forgotten their guest. He had his back fully turned toward the house and Nightfall.
Jacquellette curled her fingers together. “If I take the soul of the new boy in the dungeon, I’ll have control over the king of Alyndar.”
Nightfall almost stopped breathing. If Jacquellette could steal souls, she was the sorcerer. Yet, he had personally experienced Xevar’s ability to make people like and trust him, a power he knew had come from the soul of one of Cherokint’s slaves.
Unless . . .
Nightfall’s mind took off in another direction.
Is it possible Xevar’s power is a practiced ability or even a natal gift, coincidentally the same as the slave’s?
He frowned, doubting the possibility; but the only other explanation seemed equally impossible.
Two sorcerers? Working together?
He believed Brandon when the Magebane had said sorcerers could never organize, since greed eventually drove one to slay the other for his powers.
Could the sibling bond overcome that appetite? Was it possible these two actually managed to work together?
Apparently as struck by Jacquellette’s words as Nightfall, Xevar shouted, “If
you
take it? That soul is mine!”
Xevar’s reply diffused any doubt. Nightfall’s heart pounded so hard, none of his tricks could control it. To remain outside in the rain left him vulnerable to the lightning spell he knew one of the sorcerers controlled, and he now understood the purpose of the frightened child penned in the deepest part of the House of Xevar. Apparently, the boy harbored a powerful natal gift that allowed him to fully control a grown man’s mind. The sorcerers must have known of the boy’s existence but only just captured him; otherwise, they would already have killed him, extracting his soul to dominate the king of Alyndar. Nightfall forced himself to breathe without panting. He was not supposed to understand their conversation. He needed to get inside and quickly. No one could fight two sorcerers at the same time and hope to live past the first spell.