“You really a fighter pilot?”
It was more than curiosity that prompted the question; he wanted to know if he should let her go when he escaped, or make sure she stayed put in her cell. Though his loyalty to the Cofah had faded after his expulsion from the army, he still had family on the mainland. He worried from time to time that her people would one day shift their strategy from defensive to offensive. The size of the Iskandian army, and their population as a whole, might be laughable when compared to the empire’s, but with those fliers, they could dance circles around imperial dirigibles and easily engage in guerrilla attacks on the mainland.
This time, the woman was the one who didn’t answer. Tolemek kept his amused snort to himself. There wouldn’t be much of a conversation if neither of them answered questions. It was just as well. The silence suited him. He looked at the starry sky beyond the window, listening for quick feet on the rampart that might not belong to the guards. At least he tried to. The howler monkeys made it difficult. They ought to be sleeping by now, surely? Maybe some predator out there had them roused.
A soft clink sounded outside. A pebble thrown at the wall.
Tolemek sprang to his feet, at the window in an instant. As soon as his face was pressed against the bars, a small irregularly shaped object lofted over the outer wall and sailed in his direction. Right away, he knew the trajectory was off. It wasn’t going to land anywhere near his window.
He knew it would be in vain, but he stuck his arm out anyway. He would only get one chance.
The small bundle struck the roof overhang twenty feet above. Tolemek stretched his arm out as far as he could, hoping luck would bless him, and he could catch it as it fell. The packet shifted, but caught on some crevice or drainpipe on the edge. He stared, disgusted. This was what he got for enlisting the aid of a twelve-year-old boy.
A whistle blew on the rampart, then two guns fired. Monkey howls blasted from the jungle. Tolemek didn’t see the target, but the guards were aiming toward the rocks beneath the wall. He cursed and hoped the boy had been able to scramble away quickly or knew how to swim and had dived for the deep water beyond the rocks. The kid had known the risk of helping him, but he had volunteered anyway, his eyes gleaming at the promise of a silver round before and a gold one after, but Tolemek hadn’t expected the guards to shoot at a kid. That was the reason he had enlisted someone young instead of talking the captain’s men into helping. That and the fact that, should his mission prove fruitful, he didn’t want to share the find with any other pirates.
“Problem?” the woman asked.
Yes. “No,” he said and patted along the window ledge, hoping he might pull out some cracked piece of sandstone to use as a projectile.
“There are some rocks on the floor.”
He eyed her. She hadn’t moved, but had clearly deduced his problem from his wild lunges. Without saying anything, he patted around on the floor. He found a few chunks, then stuck his arm out the window again. Ridiculous angle, but he had to try.
He threw the first rock. It clanged off the roof eave, several inches from the pouch. He grimaced at the noise, but the monkeys were still complaining about the gunshots, so he doubted anyone would hear it. Still, his grimace grew deeper as he tried three more times. The last time, the rock sailed past the pouch, six inches away. Curse the awkward angle—the bars made it impossible to make a decent throw, and he had limited ammunition.
“Need help?” the woman asked.
Tolemek snorted. “What are you going to do?”
“Hit whatever you’re trying to hit, I imagine.”
“Uh huh.” He knelt to grope around for more rocks. “Can you even reach the window?”
“I’m not that short.”
Though he was loath to waste even one rock, he wasn’t having much luck himself. And she sounded oddly confident. Maybe she had a secret rock-throwing skill. Who knew?
Tolemek extended an arm toward her, a rock on his palm. She hesitated a moment before walking over, then visibly steeled herself before coming close enough to pluck it from his grasp. He wasn’t surprised. His attire choices were more about convincing bloodthirsty pirates to leave him alone than scaring off women, but they had a dual effect. He backed away, so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with him breathing on her neck—or the top of her head. She was barely five feet tall. Didn’t the Iskandian army have height requirements?
Rock in hand, she looked out the window and located her target. She had to stand on tiptoes to stick her arm between the bars. He snorted again. If the angle had been awkward for him...
She stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth and threw the rock upward. A second passed, and she jumped and flung her arm out as far as she could.
Tolemek’s mouth dropped open as she caught his pouch and landed back on the floor. He recovered his usual grim expression before she turned in his direction and was ready when she tossed the sack to him.
“You have dragon blood or something?” he asked.
The flash of surprise—and horror—that crossed her face told him that suggesting such was as much of a faux pas in Iskandia as it was in Cofahre, maybe more so. He lifted a hand, his instincts urging an apology, but she spoke first.
“I shoot things all day for the king. Hitting a target that close isn’t much of a challenge.” She strode to her spot against the door, folded her arms across her chest, and resumed watching him.
“Even when you’re bleeding?”
At some point, her nose had started trickling again. She must have felt it, but she only sniffed. “It’s not the first time.”
These words were the admission she hadn’t voiced before, and Tolemek found himself starting to believe the commandant’s claim. Zirkander wasn’t his quest, not now, but he wouldn’t mind paying that man back for all the lives he had ended. And for the military career he had ruined.
Tolemek splayed his fingers and looked down at his hand, a hand that had once held a sword for the Cofah army, a hand his father had once grasped with approval. If he brought one of Zirkander’s people back to the captain, maybe the Roaming Curse could use her to lead them to him. To set a trap for him. To kill him. Goroth loathed Zirkander even more than Tolemek did.
He lifted his head and met the woman’s eyes. He didn’t smile—he didn’t want to be too obvious that he wanted something from her—and forced a casual disinterest into his tone as he hefted the bag in his other hand. “I know the layout of Dragon Spit, above ground and under. And I aim to escape. Want to come with me?”
“Why’d you think I helped you with that pouch? I’m hoping you have something in it to handle the door.”
“I was thinking beyond the door. I have a ship waiting in the harbor. You help me get what I’m looking for here, and I’ll get you off Cofahre.”
“Sure, Deathmaker. Sure, I’ll hop right into your ship with you. With your chivalrous reputation, how could I go wrong?” While he was considering a response—his reputation might not be flattering, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with being unchivalrous toward ladies—she surprised him by shrugging and adding, “I will happily get out of this monkey-kissed dungeon with you.”
He wasn’t surprised she didn’t embrace his offer wholeheartedly—even if she couldn’t guess at his ulterior motives, she had to be thinking that she would be, at best, trading one imprisonment for another—but it was good enough for now. He felt fairly certain she wouldn’t shoot him in the back at the first opportunity, not if she believed he knew a way out. It was after they stepped into the jungle that he would have to keep an eye on her, lest she slip away and he lose his chance to get Zirkander. But that was something to worry about later. He had a stop to make before leaving the ancient fortress.
• • • • •
Cas moved out of the way so the pirate could approach the door. He was untying his pouch and eyeing the hinges.
“You can call me Tolemek,” he said.
Oh, first names? He was schmoozing her now, eh
? She would use it, but only because Deathmaker was on the unwieldy side.
“Ahn,” was all she gave him. Maybe it was too much, but Cloak had already spilled the beer all over the table. He knew who she was, and he had to be thinking the same way Cloak and his people were—that she was a route to the colonel. Let him think whatever he wanted, if he got her out of this prison.
He glanced at her, but she couldn’t read his face. Probably because all that shaggy hair was hanging in front of it. What an animal. Wait, no, she had better not think of him like that. After all, Deathmaker was supposed to be a scientist, even if this man didn’t look the part, a scientist who made horrible, horrible disease-filled devices that could kill legions of innocent people.
She leaned against the wall and watched him unwrap a couple of items from the pouch while wondering what kind of reward she might get for bringing him back to Iskandia in chains. Or maybe she could just bring his head. But decapitating people was gruesome, even by her standards. Growing up as her father’s student had somewhat inured her to death, but there were levels of beastliness that a human being should never descend to.
Tolemek opened a glass vial with a glass stopper and used a slender brush to smear dark goop onto the hinges. He removed the lantern from the wall. “I have matches, but I might as well save them, since our guards were thoughtful enough to supply ambient lighting for our evening.”
The casual tone and chatter didn’t fit in with his look or his reputation, so she assumed he was trying to win her over. Like a hunter laying salt out in the woods for the goodly deer to enjoy, all the while waiting with a rifle in the trees. Even if he wasn’t, she wasn’t going to be anywhere around when he beelined for whatever ship he had in the harbor. She would find a freighter and take her chances stowing away.
Tolemek held the lantern up to the hinges. Cas lifted her brows, thinking he meant to light the substance—though that would be tough with the glass sides protecting the flame, but he was merely observing his work. Soon, the goop burst into a white flare.
The intensity of it made Cas blink and look away. Something clanked to the ground. By the time she looked back—it couldn’t have been more than a second—Tolemek was tearing the door off and thrusting it sideways into the hall. The edge rammed into the startled guard’s chest. Even though the man had been turning, swinging his weapon toward them, he didn’t get a shot off. Tolemek used the door to shove him against the opposite wall. The man’s grip loosened on his weapon.
Seeing an opportunity, Cas jumped through the door and caught the guard’s rifle before it hit the ground. She leaped back, checking in both directions—and checking her pirate as well. He wasn’t so busy bashing the guard into the wall that he didn’t notice her grabbing the firearm. Nobody else was around, so she trained it loosely on the guard, but the man’s eyes were already rolled back into his head, the result of a few palm strikes from Tolemek.
Cas waited to see if he would argue over the rifle—or try to take it from her. He did eye it briefly, but he simply took the guard’s sword belt, tightening it a few holes so he could hang it, complete with sword and cudgel on his own waist. Like he needed weapons to look fiercer. Cas gave him an insincere smile and risked getting close enough to slip the extra bullets out of the ammo pouch. She stayed on her toes, feeling like the deer watching the hunter, ready to dart away at any moment. Tolemek’s eyebrows flickered, but he didn’t say or do anything. After she had fished out the bullets, he headed down the hallway. Not in the direction that would lead to the stairs and the offices Cas had been led past on the way to her cell.
She eyed the lantern, but it had struck the floor hard in the melee, and oil was spilling from its dented cache. The gas lamps on the wall couldn’t be removed, so she hoped he wasn’t taking her anywhere dark. She jogged to catch up with him.
They hadn’t gone more than twenty steps, passing several other closed oak doors, when he stopped before an intersection and raised a hand to halt her. “Don’t fire unless it’s an emergency,” he whispered. “It’ll be too loud. They’ll sound an alarm, and there won’t be time to... escape.”
She resisted the urge to point out that he was stating the obvious. Besides, she was busy noticing that little hesitation. Escape wasn’t the first thing on his mind, not when he seemed to have let himself get captured so he could get in here.
The sound of rustling clothing somewhere around the bend reminded her to focus on the moment. Without warning, he burst into a sprint, disappearing around the corner in a blink.
Startled, Cas hustled to the intersection. There were three guards in the hallway he had charged into. The closest one was on the floor, clutching his stomach; the farthest one was staggering backward, grabbing at his face with both hands—something dark and blotchy covered his eyes and nose. Tolemek was trying to take the middle one down, but this opponent had clearly had time to react. He had his sword out and swung it at the pirate’s head.
Though shooting would have been a quick way to end the fight, Cas was as reluctant to make noise as he was. She grimaced as sword struck sword, the clash echoing in the hall. She raced to the man on the floor, who had recovered enough to get to his hands and knees. She kicked him in the side of the face. His head cracked against the sandstone wall hard enough that the thump rang out as loudly as the swords. The colonel would have found a way to take these men out with more honor—or at least without kicking them while they were down—but her size didn’t get her far in fisticuffs, and her mission was escaping, not sparing the lives of enemy soldiers. Fortunately, the crack against the wall dazed the man enough that she could remove his weapons without hurting him further. In addition to the standard cudgel and short sword, he had a pouch of Cofah throwing stars at his waist. She plucked it off with relish, glad for a projectile weapon that didn’t involve gunpowder explosions.
She palmed one of the stars and stood, seeing if her pirate needed help. But the guard he had been trading sword blows with was down, his eyes rolled back in his head. The last man hadn’t figured out how to remove whatever was sticking to his eyes, and he could only flail ineffectively with his sword. Tolemek dodged the swats, ducked under his arm, grabbed it, and twisted his wrist so the man dropped the blade. After shoving him against the wall, Tolemek grabbed a key ring off the guard’s belt. He kicked open a door and thrust the man inside. Tolemek locked the door before his foe could recover. He grabbed the unconscious sword fighter and thrust him into another cell. It crossed Cas’s mind to help manhandle the last guard inside, but she couldn’t begin to lift one of these big men. Besides, Tolemek was handling the situation fine. He hoisted the last man into a cell and locked that door too.
Interesting that he hadn’t killed anyone, given his reputation. Or maybe not. Even if Cloak had locked him into a cell, she was fairly certain he was Cofah and that these were his people or at least had been at one time. If this were an Iskandian prison, his choices might be different. No, given his record of killing her people, she was certain they would be different. She wondered if he knew there was a memorial on the Tanglewood Peninsula and that kin of the three hundred people who had died in that village made pilgrimages there every spring to pray for the souls of their lost loved ones.
With the last door locked, he faced her. Cas had the rifle in one hand and the throwing star in the other. A good fifteen feet separated them. Enough for her to throw one of the stars if she were of a mind to. If she did, could she get out on her own?
For a moment, they stared at each other, and she suspected he knew exactly what was on her mind. There was a wariness in his stance, like he was prepared to spring away if he needed to, but he didn’t look that worried. He probably didn’t think she was that dangerous with some enemy weapon native to his continent and not hers. She thought about showing him how dangerous she was, but what would that serve? Only to warn him that he had best keep an eye on her.
Cas waved at the hallway behind him. “What’s the plan? There another set of stairs that way?” br />
“Yes.” Tolemek held her eyes for another long moment before turning his back on her to lead the way.
She watched the target area between his shoulder blades for several seconds before following. She hoped a moment wouldn’t come when she regretted not taking the opportunity to plant a bullet or throwing knife there.
Another turn took them down another hallway of cell doors. On the positive side, it was devoid of guards. On the negative side, it was devoid of stairs or other exits too. That didn’t keep the pirate from striding down to the end. There wasn’t an interesting tapestry, decorative plant stand, or slyly placed lever that might suggest a secret door, but he rested his ear to the stone and thumped the blunt tip of the cudgel against it. Whatever he heard satisfied him, for he delved into his pouch, pulling out the vial again. He dabbed the goo on the sandstone, making a circle with it this time.
Cas leaned against a side wall so she could watch him as well as the way they had come.
“What is that stuff?” she asked, wondering where he had gotten it. The burning of the metal hinges had been handy, and if it could also burn holes in a six-inch-thick sandstone wall, that would truly impress her. She could think of a few useful applications for it back home.
“It doesn’t really have a name.” Tolemek kept dabbing at the wall, trying hard to stretch what little paste he had to complete his circle. They better not get locked up again, because he didn’t look to have enough for another set of hinges.
“How can it not have a name?” Cas tried to imagine shopping for it in some exotic market by simply describing its properties.
“The creator didn’t come up with one. Though I hear it’s recorded as Brown Goo Number Three in his journal.”
Oh, so this was something he had invented. Even though it had proven nothing but handy thus far, the admission, however oblique, chilled her. It was as if, in admitting to creating this little concoction, he had admitted to creating every horrible thing she had heard of the Roaming Curse using on its enemies—its victims.