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Daindreth
The town house appeared quiet and peaceful and as deserted as the first time they’d approached it. Daindreth didn’t dare believe it actually was.
Amira moved ahead of him, her every movement controlled, careful, and calculated—a predator on the hunt.
The assassin crouched in the shadow of a garden wall across the street from their chosen hideout. She grimaced, studying the shuttered windows and locked doors.
“What is it?” he asked quietly. “Can you sense anything?”
Amira grimaced. “It’s hard, from this distance with so many other people around.” She waved in the air. “But...there’s at least one person in there. Alive.”
Relief washed over Daindreth, but it quickly faded as he realized only one person could be terrible news.
“This way.” Amira waved him after her.
They crossed the street to the townhouse, keeping close together while Daindreth watched their backs.
They slipped in through the servants’ entrance where Amira had broken the lock two days before. Close on her heels, Daindreth mouthed a few silent prayers for Thadred as well as for himself and Amira.
Sometimes, it was hard to know if the gods favored them or not.
They checked the carriage house first. It was empty with no sign of Thadred save for the bags and bedrolls they’d left behind. Thadred’s cane was missing, but there was no sign of a struggle.
Thadred must have left the loft of his own volition.
Amira led Daindreth on a circuit of the townhouse while she checked the hedges and walls, searching quietly.
They had to walk through rose trellises to keep close to the wall and Daindreth almost knocked over a birdbath decorated with a religious frieze of Eponine. Daindreth caught the birdbath and trotted after Amira.
The assassin studied the walls of the townhouse, her brow furrowed. “Two people,” she corrected herself. “One seated, one standing. Near the landing of the second floor. If I’m remembering the layout right.”
Daindreth studied the sheer stone before them, brows rising. “You can tell all that from here?”
Amira shrugged. “Ka can bleed through stone.” She hesitated as she said that, then gestured for him to follow her.
“Will Sairydwen know we’re here?” Daindreth asked, the strange name catching on his tongue.
“Probably. If it is her.”
“Iasu?”
Amira shook her head. “Not Iasu.”
Daindreth wasn’t sure how she knew but took her word for it.
“She’s in a good spot. We can’t approach without being seen. I can’t think of how...” She trailed off.
“What if I went in and tried to speak with her?”
Amira’s eyes widened. “No.”
“You could come in from behind her, then.”
“You want to use yourself as bait? Absolutely not.” Amira shook her head. “I won’t allow it.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“We wait. She has to come out eventually and then—”
“Then what?” Daindreth cast Amira a hard look. “We just wait until she gets bored? Until the Kadra’han find us?”
Amira gnashed her teeth, glaring at him.
“We can do this, Amira,” Daindreth said. “She doesn’t want to kill me.”
“You’re so sure?” Amira snapped. “She seemed eager enough to attack back in the market.
“She doesn’t.” Daindreth looked up to the second level, where Amira said that the sorceress waited. “She wants to talk to me. Why else would she have waited for us alone? She wants us to approach.”
“Exactly. There could be traps. Spells. Any manner of—”
“Do you sense spells?”
“Around her and Thadred, yes.”
“On the house?”
Amira’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides. “Just because I can’t find them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“Alright then.” Daindreth straightened. “She wants to talk, or so I’m going to assume. I want to speak with her, too, so it works out.”
Amira grabbed his arm. “Daindreth, you can’t just waltz in there with a cornered sorceress! You can’t play by her rules or meet on her terms.”
“She has Thad,” Daindreth shot back. “I’m willing to meet her on whatever terms she wants.”
“Dain—” Amira’s hand tightened on his sleeve. “We don’t know what she wants. We don’t know how she plans to do this. We could—”
“Amira.” Daindreth caught her shoulders. “You know as well as I that if the sorceress found us, the Kadra’han won’t be far behind.”
Amira bit her lip and looked away.
“That’s what I thought.” He kissed her forehead. She was stiff and rigid in his arms, and he half expected her to push him away. “I’ll see what she wants. Maybe we can convince her to help us find our way into the Cursewood and to the mothers.”
“She won’t,” Amira snapped.
Daindreth ignored her skepticism. “I need you to cover me from one of the windows. Can you do that?”
“Can I?” she sniffed.
Daindreth almost chuckled despite himself. “I know you can.”
Amira jerked her chin. “Go. Give me about three minutes and I can be in through one of the windows.”
Daindreth nodded. “Thank you.”
“Keep an eye out for an ambush. If I can hide our ka, it’s possible other sorcerers can do that, too. There might be more of them in there that I can’t see.”
Daindreth looked over Amira. He hadn’t thought of that. “Will she sense you? Your ka, I meant.”
Amira shook her head and stepped away from him. As she walked toward the back of the house, shadows rose up from under the gardenias and under the eaves of the windows. They slithered after her like black ribbons, wrapping around her in a shroud of shadow.
Daindreth blinked a few times, not sure if his eyes were deceiving him, but no. His fiancée had just melted into shadows in broad daylight.
He’d never forgotten she was a sorceress, but sometimes she still surprised him. Sometimes he did forget that she was descended of the women who had mastered nature itself. She was less than a goddess, but certainly more than a mere mortal.
Daindreth turned and made his way to the front of the house. Tension coiled through him as his heart beat a sharp staccato.
He made his way to the back entrance of the townhouse, the one that Amira had wiggled open to let them pillage the pantry.
Despite Amira’s fears, there was no sign of life anywhere on the first level. The paintings of the walls were covered in white dust sheets along with every piece of furniture in sight.
His footsteps sounded eerily loud on the polished wooden floor, almost loud enough to make him cringe. The sorceress wouldn’t need ka to know he was coming.
Daindreth passed from the bright sitting room through a narrow hall and into a larger room with what appeared to be a dulcimer with covered chairs and settees all around. Here there was no sign of life as with the other rooms.
Carefully making his way to the stairs, Daindreth winced as one of the steps gave a loud creak. Voices came from overhead, one female and the other he recognized as belonging to Thad.
Daindreth ascended the stairs, forcing himself to move at a deliberate, measured pace. At the top of the stairs, he stopped, facing down the scene in front of him.
The sorceress from the market stood in her same plain dress, facing him from behind a chair. Thad sat in the chair with the cane at his side, no visible harm or bindings keeping him in place.
Thad’s eyes widened for just a moment at the sight of Daindreth, but he quickly schooled his expression.
The sorceress appeared less surprised. She glanced over Daindreth with what might have been disdain, one willowy hand resting on Thadred’s shoulder.
“Thad,” Daindreth said with a nod. “Are you alright?”
“Overall, yes,” Thad answered. “Though I seem to have been taken captive by a woman. This is a very embarrassing situation.”
The sorceress tightened her grip on Thadred’s shoulder and he winced. “Be careful that you don’t insult me, imperial.” Her tone was cool, calm, and she sounded every bit the dangerous enemy Amira thought her to be.
Daindreth didn’t take his eyes off the sorceress but spoke to Thadred. “Would you like to introduce me to your lady friend?”
“She hasn’t given me her name,” Thadred replied, cocking a suggestive glance over his shoulder.
“It’s alright. I know it.” Daindreth raised his chin, taking a few steps closer. “Sairydwen, correct?”
The sorceress tensed and glanced to the side. “Very good, demon.”
“I’m not a demon,” Daindreth said. “I have one, but we’re quite separate. There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding about that.”
Sairydwen’s lip curled, indicating that she wasn’t in an open-minded humor. “Where is your other slave?” she demanded.
“Who?”
“The girl from the market,” she demanded. “The sorceress.”
“Ah.” Daindreth nodded once. “Amira, you mean. My other Kadra’han. I don’t have slaves.”
The sorceress’s grip shifted on Thadred’s shoulder and he grimaced. What was she doing to him?
Daindreth noticed Thad’s ring was gone, the one that collected his excess life force and made him resistant to spells. The sorceress now wore it on her thumb, though it hung loosely. Daindreth guessed that meant Amira wouldn’t be able to use magic against the other woman.
“I’d appreciate it if you would let my cousin go,” Daindreth said as calmly as he could. There was still no sign of Amira.
Sairydwen glanced over her shoulder again. Could she sense the other sorceress or was it merely logical to expect Amira to attack from behind?
“Why did you come, Sairydwen?”
The sorceress faced him again. It occurred to Daindreth that it was odd she had come against them while outnumbered. She was either foolish, had reinforcements, or an escape plan. Since it seemed unlikely that she had reinforcements and Daindreth didn’t think she was a fool, he concluded that she must have some means of escape they didn’t know about.
“I came to ask you what you want.” Sairydwen cocked her head to the side.
“I want my cousin back.”
The sorceress moved so that Thadred was squarely between her and the archduke. “You know what I meant.”
“I want the cythraul out of my head,” Daindreth answered honestly. “I want to be free.”
Sairydwen scoffed. “And I would like to walk through the streets without being hunted like some backwoods witch.”
“Then let’s help each other.” Daindreth spread his hands in a gesture of peace. “You know who I am?”
“Daindreth Fanduillion, son of the butcher,” Sairydwen spat. “Your father drove us from our homes when we would not grovel before him. Killed those who tried to resist. Tortured—”
“But you had the last laugh, didn’t you?” Daindreth snapped back. The image of his mother—beaten and battered—flashed across his mind.
For all that Drystan had been a cruel and coldly ambitious man, he had loved his empress. Daindreth remembered little of his father, but he remembered that much. Caa Iss had made the emperor attack Vesha, brutalize her. Beat her until she lost the child she’d been carrying, Daindreth’s unborn brother.
Sairydwen cast him a sardonic smile that was all teeth. “My people live as vagabonds in the forest, cowering in shadows. We don’t laugh often.”
Daindreth forced himself to rein in the anger rising in his chest. “I want the cythraul out. You want freedom. Let me speak with your mothers.”
Sairydwen shook her head. “I will never take you to my mothers.”
“Then why did you come?” Daindreth gestured around them. “To talk? You didn’t seem too eager to talk the last time we met.”
Sairydwen cocked her head, surveying him. “How many Kadra’han do you have shackled to you, archduke?”
It felt odd to be addressed by his title after so long with just Thadred and Amira. They had skirted around his identity, but now it seemed that Sairydwen was done playing games. “Just Thadred and the girl from the market you saw.”
Sairydwen raised her eyebrows, nodding. “The daughter of Cyne. She seemed eager to fight for you. Too often a girl will do anything for the first man to bed her.” The sorceress tsked her tongue. “But it’s a sorry man who has his lover defend him.”
Daindreth straightened. “Careful. She’s going to be your empress, soon.”
Sairydwen cast him a knowing smile and for the first time since he had been in boy’s shorts, he wanted to strike a woman.
Did she have no idea how much self-control he had spent on restraining himself? How many times he had fought to keep from taking everything Amira so freely offered?
But no. Everyone only saw what they wanted to see, and they wanted to see the worst.
“What do you want?” Daindreth repeated.
There was still no sign of Amira.
“I wanted to see you.” Sairydwen studied him with a narrow gaze. “And give you a message.”
“And that is?” Daindreth folded his arms across his chest.
There was a snap and a crack from outside the building. Amira’s voice called out and a thud followed.
“Amira!” Daindreth made to run to a window, but Sairydwen stopped him.
“No!” She pulled Thad to his feet and the knight winced.
Thadred jabbed an elbow for her gut as he stood, but the sorceress caught it. Thad let off a hiss of pain and relented.
“Let him go.” Daindreth took a quick step toward the sorceress. “What did you do to Amira?”
“Nothing, really,” the sorceress replied. “Just a minor spell of binding on the outer windowsills. One that I released at an opportune moment. She took a tumble, but she should be fine.”
Daindreth eyed the woman as he would a viper. She wasn’t more powerful than Amira, he didn’t believe that, but she had learned how to weave and thread her spells like a master while Amira was still learning.
“That’s the message,” Sairydwen said, voice flat, challenging. “You cannot outwit us, you cannot out-scheme us, and you cannot out-magic us, not even your Kadra’han.”
“If you’ve hurt her—”
“Silence.” Sairydwen moved Thadred between them again as Daindreth tried to circle around. “That will be quite enough, archduke.”
Thad shook his head at Daindreth quickly, his mouth pressed tight.
“What’s she doing to you?” Daindreth looked to Thadred.
“I don’t know. It just—”
“I’ve run threads of ka through the major veins in his nervous system,” she coolly answered, calm as a physician in a collegium lecture. “A difficult spell, but most effective at reminding larger opponents which of us is in control.”
“I don’t want you for an enemy,” Daindreth said, keeping his hands in plain sight. “I want to negotiate, Sairydwen. I want an audience with your mothers. Help me find them. Please.”
Sairydwen studied him closely, then shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“You strike me as someone who likes the truth, archduke. So here it is—you will never be free of that cythraul. Leave us alone and we will leave you alone. Continue your efforts to find us and there will be consequences. Your curse is irreversible.”
“You didn’t cast the spell that bound him to my bloodline,” Daindreth shot back. “You don’t know for sure.”
Sairydwen looked older than him, but not by more than a few years. She couldn’t have been one of those who cast the original curse.
“I do know,” Sairydwen replied. “The infection of that cythraul was permanently bound to your bloodline. If you were smart, you would kill yourself now before you have children. End it all.”
“Why not kill me if I am so dangerous?” Daindreth demanded. Anger rose in his chest despite the fact he had once—and not so long ago—tried to end his own life for that very reason.
“We are not murderers,” Sairydwen snapped back.
Daindreth’s nostrils flared, and his fists clenched at his sides. Considering the Istovari had slit Amira’s wrists and left her for dead all those years ago, it wasn’t a particularly convincing argument.
“Every curse can be broken,” Daindreth quoted, echoing the words that Amira had repeated to him again and again for months since he’d told her of the fiend.
Sairydwen shook her head. “That is true.” The sorceress inhaled, her face hardening once again. “You might be a good man, but sometimes the best thing a good man can do for the world is to die.”
“You said there was a way to break the curse!” Daindreth pressed. “The price—”
“If you follow me, I will hurt your friend very badly.” The sorceress pulled Thadred closer against her with one hand and with the other, she tossed the magic blocking ring on the floor. She reached out to touch the stone wall. “I know your assassin is a good tracker, so I am taking your friend with me. Let me go, and he will be fine. Chase me, and anything that happens to him will be on your hands.”
Light erupted in a half circle against the wall, burning out from the carpet and searing a lopsided ring around the sorceress and Thadred.
“Let him go!” Daindreth dove for the sorceress, but she was already being engulfed by streams of light.
“Dain!” Thadred struggled, but the sorceress dragged him back.
The two of them disappeared in a flash and nothing was left behind except a circular hole in the floor. Bits of burned wood and carpet rained down on the sitting room below, but there was no sign of Thadred or Sairydwen.
“Thad!” Daindreth shouted in vain.
“Daindreth!” Amira cried from outside. “Daindreth, what happened?” Her voice broke off into a choked cry.
Alarm flared through Daindreth. He remembered to snatch up Thadred’s discarded ring—it was warm to the touch—before he turned and raced back down the steps. He tore through the house, knocking over an end table and leaving a gilded vase in shards on the floor. He rushed out the back of the townhouse as fast as he could.
He found Amira limping toward him with her right arm cradled against her side and favoring one ankle. Her hair was strewn with leaves and her back was smeared in grass stains.
“Daindreth!” She grabbed him with her left hand and pulled him to her, wincing as she did. “Are you alright? I sensed the flare of magic. What happened? Where’s Thadred?”
Daindreth shook his head, looking her over. “Thad’s gone. She took him.”
“Took him?”
“One moment they were there and the next they weren’t.” Daindreth still wasn’t sure just what he had seen.
Amira cursed, then clenched her eyes shut and groaned. “A hostage?”
“I think so.”
“She won’t hurt him, then.” Amira winced again.
The sorceress had seemed to say that she wouldn’t hurt Thadred so long as no one pursued her. Daindreth wasn’t sure they could risk following, but at the same time, leaving Thadred at the mercy of the Istovari was out of the question.
“Are you alright? What happened? You fell?”
Amira nodded. “She used low level spells to secure some of the stones outside the windows. She used so little ka that I thought it was just coming from the ivy or moss on the stones, but...” The assassin groaned.
“Here. Sit down.” Daindreth eased her onto a stone bench and felt gingerly along her right shoulder.
“Ah!” Amira doubled over, panting in pain.
“It’s dislocated.”
“I think so,” Amira grated. “It got yanked out of socket when I fell.”
“Hold on.” Daindreth pulled her against his chest.
Once, a guard had fallen and dislocated his shoulder while they were on the road. Taylan had called Daindreth over and told him that setting minor wounds was an important skill for a general and had made him help.
Daindreth tried to remember what he had learned then, bracing one hand on the inside of Amira’s shoulder, below her collar bone, and gripping her forearm with the other.
Amira pressed her forehead against his chest, shaking. “Just do it,” she whimpered.
“Hold on.” He kissed her hair. “Shush.”
Amira’s whole body tensed, but she didn’t pull away.
Daindreth closed his eyes and pulled—steady, consistently, so that he didn’t tear any of the tendons. Her joint popped and snapped back into place.
Amira let off a choked cry and collapsed off the bench.
Daindreth caught her and eased her down so they were both kneeling on the grass. He stroked her back and crooned in her ear while she clung to him with her good hand. “I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. “Breathe. That’s it. Shh.”
Amira gasped, her breaths coming sharp and fast. “We need to make a sling for it,” she muttered. “I won’t be able to...fight for a while.”
“I know.” Daindreth held onto her.
“We need to get Thadred back.”
Daindreth didn’t disagree, but seeing her on her knees, face white with pain, made him less eager to press her. “Amira...just catch your breath for a moment.”
“You said she vanished with Thadred? Was she touching rock when she did?”
Daindreth took a moment to remember. “Yes.”
“She must have used a portalstone.”
“Never heard of them.”
“They’re old,” Amira grunted. “Most of them haven’t been used in decades. It was too dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“A portalstone can transport you across any amount of distance instantly.” She looked up at the house, her eyes gleaming with tears of pain. He hated to see her suffering, but his tough assassin quickly wiped the tears away. “It comes with risks, though.”
“Risks?”
“The portalstone needs a continuous vein of stone or ore. You can stop anywhere along the ore vein, but once it ends, that’s where you’ll be forced off.” Amira rubbed her face with her good hand. “With the land shifting and eroding, the veins of ore would become disconnected. Sorceresses would get dumped underground or thrown off cliffs, so the practice was abandoned.”
“Not entirely, it would seem.” Daindreth looked up to the upper story of the house where the sorceress had stood. “The foundation of this house must be connected to the stone veins. Do you think that’s how she got in?”
“I don’t know,” Amira admitted. “But she can’t have gone far.”
“Do you think they’re safe?” Daindreth asked.
“Yes.”
“You sound certain.”
“I am. She wouldn’t have used it unless she thought it was safe. This whole meeting was set on her terms.” Amira cursed softly, pressing her right arm against her chest. “It would explain how she moves so quickly within the city, too.”
Though a part of him was still in a panic over losing Thadred, Amira’s confidence was reassuring. She knew what had happened and how to counter it. That was a welcome change.
Her face shone with perspiration. She was strategizing and planning, but she was in pain, no matter how she might try to hide it.
Daindreth rubbed her back. “Let’s see if there’s something we can use to bandage your arm in the house.”
Amira nodded.
As he helped her up, his mind went back to his cousin. Thad was at the mercy of the Istovari sorceresses—all because they had left him alone and vulnerable. It hadn’t made any sense to bring Thad along this morning. At the time, even for Daindreth to go was a great enough risk, but now...
Amira was talking as she limped toward the house, Daindreth supporting her. “Once we find where the portalstone let them out, we can track them.”
“Did you hurt your ankle?”
“Sprained, is all,” Amira clipped. “It will be fine soon.”
Daindreth let her lean on him, not arguing. “The Kadra’han will no doubt be here soon, love. We need to get out of here.” Especially now that she was hurt.
Amira shook her head, her face still pale as the linen that covered the furniture in the house. “Let’s just...get my shoulder dealt with and then...get our horses from the stables.”
Daindreth nodded. He grabbed a linen sheet off a dining table in the next room and returned to sit across from Amira. Drawing his knife, he began cutting it into strips.
