Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(48)

“Your business?” one of the guards grunted, once I finally reached the top.

I panted behind my veil and smoothed my skirts around me—the act of a disgruntled concubine who was frustrated and trying not to show it.

“Is it not obvious?” I crooned, motioning to myself.

“Where is your handler?”

“He was ill. Had terrible runs.” I twisted my lip in disgust and let them hear it in my voice. “Nothing fit for the presence of his excellency, of course, but he summoned me today and it was important to me to be here as he commanded.”

The guards stared at me for too long. One of them chewed on some Pythora leaves he seemed like he had been working on for quite some time. They were high out of their minds, of course, though they held it far better than the townspeople crumpled at the base of the stairs did.

Tarkan’s men were unskilled and replaceable. The ones I really had to worry about would be further into the castle, guarding Tarkan himself. These would be easy to fool. I doubted either of them had held this post for longer than a few months.

They exchanged a glance.

“Fine,” the chewing one grunted. “I’ll take you in.”

He extended his arm to me, and I took it as if I was very grateful to finally have someone who could actually see to lead me around.

The guard escorted me into the palace. It was warm and stuffy inside, the air damp. Someone desperately needed to open some windows. Still, it was far cleaner than Aaves’s pit of depravity—Tarkan, at least, had a more sophisticated idea of power than Aaves’s indiscriminate obsession with furs, silks, and drugs. Tarkan, like the Pythora King himself, controlled his followers with their addictions, but never partook himself. Smart men knew better.

There were a lot of people on the first floor of the palace, mostly the chosen few of Tarkan’s followers who were allowed to enter. Primarily men. A few women. Many were teenagers or younger, hands at crude weapons hung by their hips that they seemed overly eager to use. They’d probably be dead the day they did.

I didn’t make small talk with the guard as he led me up the grand staircase, and he didn’t try. Instead, I stretched out my awareness, feeling the threads around me.

Only clusters of presences down here—blurry, out of focus, their own awareness dulled by the drugs. I reached up, to the floor above. A few more of those types, faceless guards with unsharp minds, but not many.

I stretched further as we reached the top of the stairs. It was far to sense, most auras distant and difficult to read. But Tarkan’s… he was easy. A shard of glass in a pile of feathers.

The guard led me down the hall, the presences of the others growing more distant. Tarkan kept his inner circle small—he’d allow his followers to the ground floor, but few of them any higher. Even the grand staircase wouldn’t lead up directly to his suite. Hence why I was being taken down a deserted hallway, to a smaller stairwell. A set of windows ahead, at the end of the hall, overlooked Vasai’s sparse eastern slums and the rocky plains beyond them, all bathed in the silver light of the moon.

The guard started to turn the corner to lead me up the stairwell.

I made my move.

He was easy to kill. Yes, he was bigger than me, but he wasn’t expecting to fight right now—least of all against a concubine, and least of all in the halls of his own master’s palace. The downside of this ridiculous outfit was that it made it hard to move. The upside was that it provided lots of places to hide a blade.

My dagger was out and across his throat in seconds. My other hand clamped over his mouth before he could let out his gurgling grunt of shock. I positioned myself to break his fall before his body hit the ground.

There was a lot of blood. I’d intentionally chosen red for my dress. By the time anyone noticed, it wouldn’t matter.

I dragged the body—still twitching—into a nearby room and shut the door behind him. Then I went to the window and unlatched it.

A welcome gust of cool air hit my face, drying the sweat on my cheeks and flecks of blood on my veil. I lifted my chin to enjoy it for a moment, while a large figure hoisted himself up to the windowsill.

I grabbed Atrius’s hand and helped him in. He hit the ground with impressive silence. Erekkus was right. He was like a cat.

He’d climbed up hundreds of feet. Clung there for Weaver knew how long, and without being spotted.

I was glad my face couldn’t show it, but I was impressed he’d pulled it off.

He rolled his shoulders and smoothed his hair, which was messy and windswept.

“Do you know how hard it was to follow you?” he muttered.

“You didn’t have to come.”

He let out a grunt that somehow managed to say, I did have to come, and you’re insulting both of our intelligence by saying otherwise.

It was almost impressive how much he could communicate with those things.

I would never admit this aloud—I didn’t even want to admit it to myself—but a small part of me admired the fact that Atrius had insisted on doing this personally. If I was considered too important to risk, I’d told him, what did that make him?

But Atrius was firm. He would go. That was that.

No one could say he didn’t get his hands dirty. I couldn’t imagine Tarkan, even during the height of the wars, clinging to the side of a building by himself for hours on end.

“We don’t have much time,” I whispered, then pointed to the stairwell. Atrius glanced at the pool of blood slowly spreading from behind the door I’d stuffed the guard into and nodded.