Blood Ties

  For a wild second, Jev envisioned leaping down and running in through the door, but he would feel a fool if they had locked it as they ran out. Besides, if Lornysh was here, he ought to be in his room. An ally would be very helpful right now.

  As soon as the two elves ran around a bend in the path, Jev continued over to the window. He gripped the sill and with forearms trembling pulled himself high enough to try to tug one side of the window frame open. It was locked. He growled and let go with one hand, dangling four stories above a thorn bush, and pulled his knife out of its sheath. He slid it into the gap between the frames, hoping for a simple latch inside.

  There. It gave way, and one side of the window opened.

  Jev sheathed the knife and pulled himself onto the sill, slithering over it like a snake. Or a drunken mongoose. It was a tight fit, and he almost got stuck. Finally, hoping this was the right room, he tumbled inside, bumped against a desk, and landed on a carpet.

  The tip of an arrow filled his vision as someone aimed a bow at him.

  “Jev?” The arrow shifted away from him.

  Jev slumped against the desk in relief. “Hello, Lornysh. Hope you don’t mind the intrusion.”

  Lornysh was barefoot and bare-chested, having apparently turned in early for the night. He glanced through the window, his sensitive ears perhaps picking up the sound of Tames climbing up, or maybe he was listening to the ruckus coming from the gate.

  “If I’d known you were with that riffraff…”

  “You would have come down to help us?”

  “I would have arranged to be out for the evening,” Lornysh finished.

  “Glad to know you’re always eager to help.” Jev pushed himself to his feet, making room for Tames.

  Lornysh grunted, turned up a lamp, and reached for his shirt and boots. “I’m more eager to help against enemies than my own people.”

  “I think you would consider this scientist an enemy. He was responsible for the deaths of the princes, and I think he poisoned Targyon with his magical bacteria. Also,” Jev added, realizing Lornysh didn’t have a reason to care much about the royal family, “I believe you said, he’s a member of those rebels.”

  “The Xilarshyar.”

  “You don’t like those elves, right?”

  “They’re brash, irrational, and xenophobic.”

  “I’ll take that for a yes.”

  “I would help simply because Targyon is at risk.”

  A scream echoed from the garden, and Jev jumped.

  Tames had made it through the window, but he leaned back out to look. “Looks like your new friends are running around on the paths down there and encountered your monster. Or maybe those are the elves you talked about.”

  “Damn,” Jev said, “I told them to stay outside and just throw rocks.” He hadn’t believed the creature would leave the elven compound. “I didn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  “Look at all those torches,” Tames said. “Must be a hundred people down there. A group made it to the door, and they’re banging at it, demanding the elves send out the king’s murderer.” Tames frowned at Jev. “Murderer? Is Targyon…?”

  “Not yet. It’s possible my message got distorted as it was relayed.” Relayed to whom, Jev didn’t know, but he was positive there hadn’t been a hundred people in the tavern. “Lornysh, can you tell where this Yilnesh is?”

  It occurred to Jev that he didn’t know the elf was here. Maybe it had been the ambassador who had hurried inside so quickly that he forgot to latch the gate. If the scientist hadn’t come back here…

  “I sense him upstairs in his room,” Lornysh said, his eyes focused on the ceiling. “Seventh floor. I think he’s packing.”

  “Tames?” Jev ran toward the doorway, having no intention of letting that elf leave the tower unless he was in handcuffs.

  “The ambassador has also returned,” Lornysh said. “He’s coming up the stairs to—ah. I believe he’s coming to find me. Or you.”

  “Distract him, will you? He was protecting that lake-water-licking mongoose molester.”

  As Jev opened the door to peer outside, Tames came up behind him, a short sword and pistol in hand. “Zyndar really know how to curse, don’t they?”

  “My mother told me not to be obscene in the company of others.”

  Jev stepped out onto the landing. Only one other room shared it with Lornysh’s room, and wooden stairs spiraled up and down toward other levels. Not hesitating, Jev headed upward. Tames followed on his heels.

  Jev would have preferred to have Lornysh at his back in a fight, but if he could keep the ambassador from charging up to assist Yilnesh, that would be a tremendous help.

  As the stairs curved and Jev had his last glimpse of the landing, he saw Lornysh standing there, fully dressed and facing the downward set of stairs. He hadn’t drawn any weapons, but he stood with his arms over his chest, blocking the path.

  “Thank you, Lornysh,” Jev said quietly, trusting his elven hearing would catch the words. He hoped his friend wouldn’t get in too much trouble over this.

  Jev charged past closed doors on the fifth and sixth landings without pausing to see what lay behind them. He envisioned springing into Yilnesh’s room and taking him by surprise, cracking his pistol against the back of his head, knocking him out, and dragging him back to the castle by his ankles.

  A click came from the landing above him followed by the shattering of glass.

  “What was that?” Tames whispered.

  “Nothing good, I’m sure,” Jev muttered.

  He kept going, but he sniffed the air gingerly, imagining some virus or infection having been unleashed.

  A faint greenish smoke drifted down from above as a pungent odor assaulted Jev’s nose.

  “Cover your mouth,” he ordered over his shoulder and yanked his shirt up over his own mouth.

  Fearing that wouldn’t be enough protection, Jev held his breath as he charged up the last of the stairs. The air grew thicker with green smoke. His skin itched, his eyes burned, and his nose ran.

  Jev envisioned the stuff flaying his flesh right off his body, but he refused to turn back. He reached the seventh-floor landing, and his boot crunched on something. The glass of the broken vial. He waved at the smoky air, squinting though his tears to see that one door was closed and the other open. He raced to the open one, leading the way with his pistol.

  But the room, a library with laboratory equipment set up on tables, was empty, the window closed and shuttered. Tames reached the other door first but found it locked.

  He turned teared, bloodshot eyes toward Jev. “Key?”

  Jev, his skin shifting from itching to burning as if he were smothered in acid, shook his head. He had no intention of running back down to ask the ambassador for a key.

  “Move,” he rasped, waving Tames back.

  He channeled his pain and frustration about how the day had gone into a single powerful kick. His heel slammed into the door, and something snapped. With another kick, he knocked it open.

  Jev ran inside, pointing his pistol with one hand and keeping his shirt over his mouth and nose with the other hand. For all the good it was doing. His nostrils burned as if a volcano were spewing lava into them.

  He looked around, expecting to find his foe crouching behind the bed and ready to shoot at him. But the room was empty of everything except furnishings. Yilnesh was gone.

  20

  Zenia didn’t have the patience to wait for a guard to bring her a horse. She raced around the castle to the stable in the back. Horse whickers and arguing voices escaped through its open door.

  She ran inside, intending to grab the first saddled horse she saw, and she almost crashed into a big man’s back. She lurched to a stop, and he turned, frowning at her. Zyndar Garlok.

  A stable boy hurried toward him with a horse in tow.

  “That’s for Captain Cham,” the guard she’d sent on this errand said, pointing at the animal.

  The stable boy, who couldn??
?t have been more than thirteen, shook his head and led the horse around the guard. “Zyndar get priority over captains and anyone else except the royal family. That’s the rules.”

  Garlok, who was looking at Zenia in narrow-eyed contemplation—or was that simply distaste?—smirked slightly at the boy’s words.

  “I have to catch up to Jev—Zyndar Dharrow,” Zenia said, running toward a second stable boy who was preparing another horse. “He went after the elf that may have infected the king with deadly bacteria. I need to get to him before he’s killed. Nobody else will know how to cure the king.” She was tempted to grab the horse Garlok had claimed but feared he would make a tug-of-war match out of it, and she didn’t have time for that. The second horse was almost ready.

  “You know where they went?” Garlok asked.

  She hesitated. Of all the people whose help she would have liked, he wasn’t anywhere on the list. Worse, she remembered his comment about her and Jev quitting or disappearing. She wouldn’t trust him behind her in a fight. Or at all.

  “Tell me,” Garlok growled.

  “I am your employer, not the other way around.” Zenia accepted the reins for the second horse and hurried for the exit, hoping Garlok wouldn’t impede her.

  “I am zyndar, and you are a commoner.”

  “I am a commoner, but what you are is an ass.” She glared. The bastard was deliberately blocking the exit.

  One of the stable boys let out a short laugh before catching himself and clapping a hand over his mouth.

  “Get out of my way.” Aware that there could be ramifications for insulting a zyndar, Zenia forced herself to add, “Please.”

  “Where did Dharrow and that elf go? I know you know.”

  “Then follow me if you want to find out, but don’t delay me. The king’s life is at stake.”

  His eyes narrowed further, as if he suspected her of lying. Why, by all four founders, would she lie about that?

  She was debating kicking him in his big, hairy shin when he stepped to the side.

  “I will follow you.”

  “Wonderful.” Zenia hiked up the hem of her dress to her waist, not caring that she gave everyone a view of her legs, and swung up on her horse.

  “Do you need more men, ma’am?” the guard called, hustling to ready a horse for himself. The second one likely had been for him.

  “Grab anyone you can find and meet us at the elven embassy,” she called as she rode away.

  “You tell him and not me?” Garlok growled, matching her pace.

  “I trust he wants to help the king.” And to help me, she added silently.

  “What in the hells does that mean? I am loyal to the king, no matter who he is and how young he is. That’s the oath I swore long ago.” Garlok curled his lip at her, reminding her of how affronted Jev got when his honor was questioned, until he added, “Common filth.”

  She urged her horse to greater speed, hoping it might outdistance his since she weighed much less than he did. But as she charged through the open gate—new guards were posted there now, and she didn’t see Lunis or the doctor in the courtyard—she spotted someone jogging up the road on foot. Zenia glimpsed blue monk’s robes as the runner passed under one of the street lamps.

  “Rhi?” she wondered, not sure who else from the temple would be running up here on foot.

  “Zenia!” Rhi yelled, waving a hand as they drew close enough for communication.

  Zenia slowed her mount, though she winced when Garlok took advantage and rode past her without waiting. Now, she wished she hadn’t revealed the elf’s destination. What if Garlok arrived first and hindered Jev instead of helping him? Did he resent them enough that he would risk the king’s life?

  “What is it?” Zenia asked.

  “Here.” Rhi pulled an envelope from inside her gi. “Someone sent you mail at the temple, and Mage Darishia told me to bring it to you. I don’t think she knows the archmage forbade me from talking to you.”

  Zenia, aware of Garlok speeding down the road and into the city, accepted the envelope but merely stuffed it into the top of her boot—the stupid dress didn’t have pockets or any extra room to hold anything. There wasn’t enough light to read it, nor did she have time.

  “Jev needs help.” Zenia offered her hand. “Do you want to come?”

  “Of course.”

  Rhi swung up behind her, and Zenia rode after Garlok at top speed. Unfortunately, she no longer could claim less weight for her horse, and they weren’t able to gain ground.

  “Do we get to heroically save his life?” Rhi yelled to be heard over the thundering hooves.

  “Let’s hope he’s not in that much trouble.”

  “Too bad. I think the journalists would write me up in the newspaper if I carried him out of a burning building over my shoulder.”

  “He’s a bit heavy for that.”

  “You don’t think I can manage it? I’ll bet you twenty krons, I can heft him over my shoulder.”

  Zenia shook her head, not wanting to banter now. She wanted to catch up with Garlok and get that elf.

  They tore through the streets, people scattering as first Garlok and then Zenia raced through. A woman yelled curses at Garlok for almost running her over. He yelled back that he was zyndar, presumably implying it was inappropriate for her to curse him. She waved her fist and called him a donkey’s teat.

  Being zyndar didn’t mean quite what it had in earlier generations.

  The smell of smoke reached Zenia’s nose before the elven tower came into sight. She told herself it was woodsmoke from people’s cookstoves, nothing more, but the memory of the burning farmhouse flashed into her mind.

  “Uh oh.” Rhi pointed over Zenia’s shoulder.

  They turned onto a street a couple of blocks down from the tower, but they could already see flickering orange light within the garden walls.

  Zenia urged her horse onward, dread filling her gut.

  Multiple fires burned in the elven courtyard, flames leaping from the branches of trees and threatening to spread over the walls and into the city.

  The bedroom window was open, a faint breeze stirring the hazy green air.

  “That fool jump from the seventh floor?” Jev muttered, his throat raw. He ran for the window, wanting fresh air as much as to see where Yilnesh had gone.

  He stuck his head out, inhaling deeply and looking down. The smoky air outside wasn’t much fresher than the green miasma in the room, and he winced, spotting multiple fires burning in the garden. But he also spotted a spiky-haired elven face peering up at him from the side of the tower below.

  Yilnesh was climbing down without a rope, a pack and weapons strapped to his back. Unfortunately, he was efficient at it, and after that quick glance at Jev, he kept descending.

  Jev pointed his pistol at the top of the elf’s head but growled in frustration. He couldn’t shoot to kill, not when Yilnesh was the only one who knew how to cure Targyon. He shifted his aim toward the elf’s shoulder, though even then he hesitated, envisioning his foe falling four stories and breaking his neck when he landed.

  No, Jev decided. He was an elf. He was agile. He would land on his feet.

  As he squeezed the trigger, a wave of power slammed into him, knocking his arm against the window frame and almost hurling him to the floor. The firearm went off, but the bullet flew wild.

  “Zyndar?” Tames gripped him, offering support. “What happened?”

  “Magic happened.” Jev growled and peered out the window again.

  Yilnesh was gone.

  He must have jumped and disappeared into foliage. Damn it.

  “From the elf we’re chasing?” Tames asked. “Wasn’t he hanging on the side of the wall?”

  Jev thought of the mental showdown between the ambassador and Zenia in the ballroom, the way the elf’s dragon tear had glowed with green energy. “I’m guessing the landlord was responsible. Or another elf in here.”

  Jev did not want to risk dealing with the ambassador by taking t
he stairs back down. Besides, even with all the chaos down there, it wouldn’t take Yilnesh long to escape. He might even find it easier to escape with so much going on in the garden. Jev grimaced, not feeling quite so wise now for orchestrating that.

  “We’re following him.” Jev slung his leg over the window sill.

  “Down seven floors? Founders, sir, you’ll get yourself killed. I can’t allow that.”

  “You’re the king’s guard, not mine, but thanks for the sentiment. I—oomph.” Jev’s hand slipped on an oily sheen covering the sill, and he almost pitched out the window.

  Tames lunged forward and caught his arm.

  Jev cursed as he also found something slick on the tower wall. He didn’t know how far down it extended, but he wagered it was far enough to deter them from following.

  “The stairs,” he barked at Tames, lunging back inside. “Go.”

  “What made you change your mind, sir?” Tames asked they he ran for the door.

  “I didn’t want you to have to explain my death.”

  They sprinted down three flights of stairs without encountering anyone. Jev prayed to the Air Dragon that Lornysh had somehow pulled the ambassador out of their route. But when they reached the fourth-floor landing, they almost ran into Lornysh’s back.

  He faced the ambassador, who stood several steps down with two dour-faced elves behind him. The ambassador’s dragon tear was out, the tree carving on the front glowing an intense green. Lornysh had no visible gem, but his face was tight with concentration. Working some magic of his own?

  Jev thought about slipping past him and attempting the brute force method of bowling into the elves, but he would likely earn a knife between the ribs that way. He was the intruder here, and they would feel justified in attacking him. Unfortunately, he knew he would get in trouble if he attacked them.

  Hoping he wouldn’t kill himself, Jev jumped past Lornysh and onto the railing, then off it, hoping he could land on the spiral stairs behind all the trouble. He made it to the railing behind the two assistant elves, but they whirled toward him as he jumped down onto the steps.