White feather, freaky ocean, cold water sponges that only grew in the depths, cliffs…
Oh, you dumb fuck.
I walked out into the open.
A thin female prisoner saw me first and elbowed the man next to her. The lot of them stared at me. On the left, a boy about Conlan’s age walked through a small doorway, carrying a platter with a pill bottle and a glass of water on it. He noticed me and froze.
The teenage girl saw me. A shiver ran through her. She hopped off the stage and bounced in place, whining in a high-pitched voice, like a toddler on the edge of a tantrum. “Mine, mine, mine, mine…”
The man on the throne waved his hand at her without bothering to look up.
She grinned. Her smile stretched from ear to ear, literally. Her head split, and the top half of it went up, her mouth wet and red, lined with conical teeth. Her thick, pink tongue wiggled in the sea of teeth like some weird worm. She was like a Muppet from an ancient kids’ show, except this wasn’t cute, it was horrifying.
She slammed her jaw shut, her teeth making a loud, bone-scraping click, and charged me.
I unsheathed my sword.
She was hellishly fast.
I dodged, and she swiped at me with her hands, each finger tipped with a sharp, blue claw. I backed away, blocking her swipes with Sarrat. Her claws rang on the metal, like pebbles flicked at the blade. She caught my left forearm and gripped it, throwing her weight into it. Her mouth gaped open, and she tried to pull me forward, toward her snapping teeth.
I rammed the pommel of Sarrat into her temple.
The blow knocked her back. She stumbled to the side, her eyes wild, and I took a step and kicked her in that bulging stomach. The front kick took her off her feet. She flew a couple of yards backward, fell, and vomited up an undigested human forearm, the hand still attached. A very small hand.
“Kill her!” the female prisoner with the angry eyes screeched. “She eats children!”
The thing on the floor grabbed the arm and stuffed it back into her mouth. Her neck expanded, she gulped it down, and then I was on her. She’d managed to come up from the crouch in time to meet me straight-on. Sarrat’s blade slid into her chest with a soft whisper and cut into her heart.
Her pale blue eyes stared at me, shocked.
I twisted the sword in her heart, ripping it, and withdrew.
She whimpered, “Mine…” and collapsed on the floor.
I stabbed her through the left eye, driving Sarrat into her brain in case she decided to regenerate, freed the sword with a sharp tug, and looked at the man on the throne. “Cute opening act. Can’t wait to see the headliner.”
THE OLD MAN peered at me with watery eyes, anxiously rubbing his hands. The man on the throne looked up, his face slack with annoyance. He looked to be somewhere around 30, maybe 35. He had the worn-out complexion of a naturally pale person who’d gone through too many sunburns, with tired skin creased by premature lines. Stubble hugged his jaw, the result of neglect and apathy. His light brown eyes, however, were sharp.
I glanced at the child with the platter. “What’s your name?”
“Boy,” he said.
Great. “Is that what he calls you?”
The child ducked his head.
“What was your name before you were here?”
“Antonio.”
“Good to meet you, Antonio. I want you to cross the room and sit down with those people over there.” I nodded at the chained-up group. I needed to get all of the people I had to protect into a single clump.
The boy scurried behind me to the group and sat down next to Darin. Thomas’ son was watching me. They were all watching me. I needed to chat Aaron up to confirm exactly what god I was dealing with. The white feather was pretty clear, but verifying never hurt.
“Love what you’ve done with the place, Aaron,” I said. I kept my tone conversational. Having him lash out randomly wasn’t the plan. “And this must be Garvey?”
The old man gave me a startled look.
“You broke my ward,” Aaron said.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Hitched your cows to an iced wagon.”
He thought about it and grimaced. The mother of all headaches raging in his skull was making it hard to think.
His voice was tired. “Did Claudia send you?”
“No, but I’ll let her know I dropped by the next time I see her.”
“Are you a knight?”
“No. Who was the girl?”
“A pet. What do you want?”
I pointed to the chained-up people. “You’re a slaver and a human trafficker. When you sink that low, you have to expect a reckoning.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I was hoping for a hint of shame or regret,” I said. “This is very disappointing.”
“A mercenary,” he finally said, as if the word was slimy. “How much did they pay you?”
“I’m doing this pro-bono.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve become a problem I decided to resolve.”
“Did I now?”
“Looks that way.”
“Do you even know who I am?”
“I can make an educated guess. You were a knight-enchanter. Most knights do two years in the Academy. You did four, because wards require advanced training in environmental magic and magic theory. The Order invested in you, and they like to get their money’s worth, so they would have offered you a 20-year contract, which you must’ve agreed to since your runes have osmium in them.”
He gave me a slow golf clap, wincing. His head still hurt. “Congratulations. You put 2 and 2 together.”
“The Order trained you and promised to house and support you for the duration of that 20-year contract, which started when you graduated. The minimum age to enroll in the Order Academy is 18, you finished at 22, and you look to be in your thirties, so you didn’t do your deuce.”
A hint of life sparked in his sallow eyes, then died down. “That’s right.”
“They really don’t like to kick knight-enchanters out. What was it? Incompetence? Couldn’t be, not with the quality of that ward out there. It had to be greed.”
“Some people call it greed. I call it proper compensation.”
“You would’ve been paid as a Class V. That’s over a hundred grand per year.”
He stared at me as if he pitied me. “Is it funny or sad that you think 100K is a decent amount of money? I would figure it out, except I really don’t care.” He made a wrap it up motion with his hand.
“How much did you want?”
“I wanted my due. I gave them all of my twenties. Oh, what a great honor it is to be a knight of the Order of Merciful Aid. So much honor. Such a noble goal. Trudging through shit and blood every day to be wrung dry for the sake of people who won’t even thank you, only to finally end up back home, exhausted, and then have to check if you can afford a bottle of Glenfiddich to drown your sorrows.”
I held my left thumb and index finger apart a little and made a sawing motion with my right hand.
“Are you playing a tiny violin?” he asked.
“Yep. The name of the song is ‘My Heart Bleeds for You.’”
He grimaced. “You’re an annoying little fly, aren’t you?”