Whatever Talia was rummaging for, she didn’t find it. She looked up to Lucia and nodded.
Lucia didn’t have any idea what that meant, but she calmly stepped forward out of the carriage, hands up. Reaching out mentally, she clearly felt the hearts of the robbers—four in all. Oh, she could take them.
“Well, gentlemen,” she said, sensing the tiny daggers of fear piercing each of them. She tended to those daggers gently; it was not a good idea to terrorize them immediately, since that would so easily lead to unexpected, rash action from them. Her touch was gentler, perhaps crueler. “I expect you know who we are?”
“Nah, we don’t care,” said the man she took for their leader. “You’re rich fuckers, that’s good enough for us.” His face was masked, and his accent matched the city workers in Black Harbor. The four were standing in a semicircle, guns lazily trained on her.
“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” said Lucia, raising the level of fear in them slightly more, piercing their hearts more pointedly. She opened her eyes wide, and began reciting a nonsense chant in Paradisi, the ancient language of the old world, almost under her breath. The language sounded ridiculously ominous to an uneducated ear.
“Wha’s she saying?”
“Shut up, Haft,” and the second man cuffed the first.
“Haft, is it?” she said. “Well, now that I have your name,” and she continued the nonsense chant, occasionally adding his name in. She stepped forward, and Talia emerged behind her into the momentary sunlight, slipping to the front of the carriage slowly. All eyes were on Lucia, and she intended to keep it that way.
“No, stop her, please!”
“Shut up!”
“These are cute,” she said, gesturing to the rifles trained on her. “Oh, believe me dearies, I’ve survived worse.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Talia jerk her head in a clear signal. With that, she abandoned all subtlety, twisting the daggers of the robbers’ fear into blades of pure, icy terror. She lunged for the one called Haft. He cried out, dropping his rifle and falling backward, clutching his chest, though Lucia hadn’t laid a finger on him. Another spun around wildly, as if seeing shadows closing in from all directions. He fired off into the trees, deafening Lucia as he fled.
Talia slammed a rock into the third robber’s head, grabbing his rifle as he fell, unconscious. Then, rounding on the leader, she did not hesitate, firing the weapon.
Lucia’s heart skipped a beat as the sound of the rifle slammed into her. Blinking away tears, she knelt down to catch her breath. The world spun around her. She heard distant sounds of the other two fleeing, and Talia speaking in a low voice to the remaining robber, but she didn’t catch anything the Duke said.
Recovering, she straightened and saw the leader was writhing on the ground, blood gushing from his knee. Oddly, Talia had pulled a strip of cloth from … from somewhere, perhaps from the man’s own shirt, and was binding up his wound. She had ripped away the pant, exposing his purpling leg to the air.
She was continuing to talk quietly to him.
“Put pressure on it, here,” she said. “The tourniquet will ensure you won’t lose too much blood, but your leg will likely need to be amputated.”
“What—who,” the man gasped out, then he groaned pathetically at the pain. Lucia felt a needle-prick of empathy for him.
“I will send riders on from the next town. If I leave now, they should be here within half an hour,” Talia said. “Keep pressure on the wound and you might survive until then. It will be painful, but you could make it out of this alive.”
Then, Lucia had a thought. She came around to the man’s side, soothing the man’s pain a little but keeping a healthy dose of fear icing his heart. Noting Talia’s rich black attire, she knelt beside him.
“Tell them you were spared by the mercy of the Sable Prince of Thieves,” she whispered in his ear, and tilted her head to indicate the Duke. “And that she spares any honest thief, so long as they pledge their loyalty to her.”
“Yes,” the man whimpered. “Yes, of course, I will . . .”
And so, they left the robber on the side of the road. Talia hefted an unconscious but healthy Richmond into the carriage and took the reins herself. Once they reached the next village she was good on her word, sending riders down the road after the robber. Perhaps he will survive, she said.
And, she added to Lucia after securing rooms in the local inn, “You have quite a brilliant mind under pressure. Sable Prince?” She snorted to punctuate, before disappearing into her room where Richmond had been laid out to recover. “Perhaps I’ll use that after all.”
Lucia stared after her for a long moment before retiring to her own.
***
The next morning dawned early as the sun sent her golden light through the cheap curtains of the inn’s suite. Lucia missed having someone to share her bed, but there was little for it. Apparently Talia was not planning to fulfill any marital duties beyond appearances.
Lucia slipped from the bed and shrugged. Her loss. She prided herself particularly on her skills in that area. But, to each their own.
There was a polite knock at the door, which Lucia answered directly. Outside, Talia’s manservant waited, his face a perfect picture of servitude. He motioned for her to follow once she stepped into the hall, and led her to a private dining room Talia had commandeered. She was there breaking her fast.
“I trust your sleep was restful?” Talia asked.
“It would have been better in your bed,” Lucia slipped in, as she broke her own fast with a muffin.
Talia didn’t show any particular response to that. “We’ll have to get back on the road early. I’ve a social call this morning that cannot wait.”
“Oh, meeting the neighbors?”
“Yes,” Talia said. “Local gentry, a few hours by carriage from House Fallmire.”
“Oh!” Lucia nearly spit out a mouthful of muffin. “That was my other question!” She swallowed down the rest of the mouthful before continuing. “What was all that hullabaloo about Fallmire, anyway? It sounds like a reasonable name for a noble house.”
Talia snorted. “Well, it wasn’t my name to begin with. I … have reasons for concealing my name, of course. But the cause for which I am being raised to the nobility is my capture and execution of a particularly notorious pirate, Isabel Fallmire.”
“Ah. Huh. Right.” Lucia considered this a moment. “And you took her name because … ?”
Talia looked at Lucia for a moment, then shook her head slightly. A pink tinged her cheeks. “I … have my reasons.”
Well, Lucia was not getting anywhere with that line of questioning. But she was surprised to hear Talia go on.
“I’ve given it some thought. With your actions last night, I am considering your proposal for a contract to assist me in my vengeance.”
“You—”
“You are very perceptive, Lucia,” Talia said. “You could be useful to me. So, I want to extend a little more information to you, as a sign of good faith.” She looked down at her hands, took a deep breath, and continued. “The hatred you sense within me stems from my father’s death. Those who framed him for treason still walk free, and it is my aim entire to see them brought to justice.”
I knew it, thought Lucia smugly, before her eyes widened as she fully realized what precisely was at stake here. Vengeance for the murder of the Duke’s father? It could not get more perfect. She’d have to play her cards very carefully, but as she looked over the Duke, the woman’s lips pressed into a line, she believed. She believed, for a moment, that this woman really could bring revenge upon those bastards—whoever they were—who had killed her father.
“There are three who have earned my ire,” Talia continued. “You’ve met one already; Forteza benefited the most from my father’s demise.”
“I’ve seen another, I think,” Lucia said as she leaned back in her chair, looking at the Duke with fresh eyes. “There was the man who walked in on our hearing; military dude, decked out like the Parliamentary treasury. Your hatred flared at his presence.”
“Commander General Gregor Hawthorne, yes,” said Talia. “My second target.”
“And the third?”
Talia paused at that, looking down at the floor, deep in thought. “Henry Lindell, Bishop Inquisitor of Cavaline. I suppose you’d meet him eventually, should I put you under contract, but he tends to keep to the shadows. He is the most dangerous of the three.”
This was a step forward. Lucia stood as their meal was cleared away, taking Talia’s arm. This Duke would have her vengeance on these three bastards. And Lucia would ride her coattails into a contract brimming with far more power than she could have ever hoped for.
Revenge burned far more brightly than any momentary passion, particularly within this woman. With luck, it would burn for the demon, too.