40: INTERLUDE IN AN ABATTOIR
(Talon’s story)
Alshena D’Mon descended the long flight of stairs from the Court of Princes down the hall to the east wing of the palace. She tapped her fan on the wall as she walked, tapped it against the tapestries and the carved wood paneling, tapped it with a fierce staccato beat of excitement.
Servants and slaves scattered when they saw her coming.
Alshena rushed down a different set of stairs: seldom visited, quiet, and dusty. At the end of the stairs she found a blank wall, unpainted, and pressed the mortar in a certain way. Pressing in the wrong way would have been fatal, but that didn’t concern the noblewoman. She knew the sequence so well she could repeat it in her sleep—if she ever slept.
The red-haired matron of House D’Mon hummed a dirty sailor’s tune as she walked down the revealed dark passageway. It led down shadowy twisted stretches of tunnel that Therin D’Mon himself hadn’t used in well over a decade. Finally, the tunnel ended in a dim room.
As Alshena entered the chamber, a man to her left screamed. His shackled body arched up from the low wooden table as he vomited black blood, splashing his body and the floor. A slow stain of sickly smelling bile spread in a pool as the man stopped twitching and lay in obscene rictus.
Alshena lifted the edge of her agolé and stepped over the liquid.
“Ducky, you used too much,” she said.
At that statement, the shadow resting against the wall moved forward, and revealed himself to be Darzin D’Mon. He sighed. “I’m aware, love. I just can’t seem to balance this formula.” He looked disappointed, before his head snapped back up again and he scowled at Alshena. “Gods, do you have to look like her? You know I can’t stand the bitch.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have married her then,” she replied. “Do you realize she looked like this just to annoy you? She’s really quite pretty.”
“She’s really quite dead,” Darzin said.
She bent over and touched the black fluid oozing from the dead man’s body. She sniffed it once, wrinkled her face in disgust, and wiped the liquid off on the dead man’s clothes. “Ugh. Must you poison them? It ruins the flavor.”
Darzin sighed. “I didn’t kill him to satisfy your appetites, Talon. And the whole reason I ordered you to murder my wife was so I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore.” He waved his hand at her form in annoyance.
“Oh, very well. I brought you a new flavor to sample, anyway.” At that sly pronouncement her figure wavered, then shifted and flowed. When she lowered her arms, Alshena D’Mon was gone. In her place was a stunning teenage girl, with dusky skin and waist-length hair fashioned into tiny braids. Both the girl’s hair and fingertips were henna dipped.
Darzin smiled. “Very nice, sweet. A recent snack?” He ignored the dead man lying in the middle of the torture room. He crossed the floor and ran his fingers down the woman’s arms, around to the small of her back. He nuzzled his mouth against her neck with all the tenderness of an illicit lover.
Talon nodded, looking up at him through thick eyelashes. “She was so sweet. I should give your new ‘son’ a thank-you gift for leading me to her.”
Darzin looked her in the eyes and then laughed. “Well, yes, I suppose there must be some advantages to working in a brothel.” He continued chuckling as he removed his arms from around her. “He has good taste, at least.”
Talon leaned over the table and rubbed her reddened fingers down Darzin’s arm. “I bet he’d taste good too. Oh, he’s so pretty. I just want to eat him up. Can I have him, dearest? Please?”
Darzin shook his head and snickered. “Don’t be ridiculous, Talon. He’s my son.”
The room grew quiet.
Talon scraped a sharpened nail against the edge of the blood-soaked table, carving a deep channel in the wood. “If that boy is your son I am the Virgin Duchess of Eamithon,” she growled.
Darzin threw up his arms. “Fine, love. You’re right. He’s not my son, but since his real father will never have the stones to admit the truth, claiming him lets me control the brat. So, no, you can’t kill him.” He paced the room several times.
Talon sat down on the edge of the table and drew up her legs. “He is so sweet, Darzin. Fifteen years old and jaded as a ripe peach. His brain would taste just like ginger jelly.”*
“You can’t have him.”
Talon thought about it for a moment. “You know—”
Darzin frowned at her, half-amused and half-worried by her overwhelming appetites. “This isn’t negotiable, my dear. You want a new slave? I’ll buy you anyone you want, but not him.”
Talon snapped at him, “Don’t interrupt me. That’s not what I was going to say!”
“My apologies, sweet,” he said with mock seriousness.
Talon pretended to busy herself with counting her toes. She said, “This girl he liked so much. The one I ate, Morea. She has a sister. Dear Kihrin was looking for said sister. I think he wanted to play hero and rescue her from her bad, nasty slave master.”
“How sweet,” Darzin said. “A real-life reenactment of the Maevanos.”
“Shhhh . . . don’t interrupt while Nana is explaining the rules of the game,” Talon said. “With Morea dead, little Kihrin might still want to play hero. Since this sister is as beautiful as Morea was, why, she might even make the poor boy fall in love with her—especially if she was tragic, if she needed to be rescued. She’d be able to get the young boy to do almost anything for her . . .”
Darzin smirked. “Yes, I see where you’re going with this.”
“Why, he might even take off the Stone of Shackles for her.” The look of sweet delight she gave him, angelic under any other circumstance, could only be described as the purest evil.
“The Stone—?” Darzin raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Talon snarled, and her voice took on a demonic quality as she hissed, “Don’t play games, human. Despite how I appear, I am thousands of years older than you and it is just possible I am not an idiot.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—”
She traced a design with her littlest finger in the silk of Darzin’s shirt. “Haven’t I served you for all these years now? Done whatever you asked? Seduced whoever you wanted? Slept with whoever you wanted? Torn to little itty-bitty pieces whoever you wanted?”*
“Always,” he agreed, eyeing her.
Talon leaned forward until her face was right next to his. She whispered, “To my kind, that stone he wears around his neck is as obvious as a lightning strike on a clear night would be to you. It hums to my body of its power. It vibrates with magic. It sings.”*
Darzin gazed at the shape-shifter in amazement. “I had no idea you had this ability.”
Talon blushed and looked away, a perfect imitation of a cloistered virgin. When she looked back, her expression was more serious. “I take it this is why you took so long to find him? Because the stone shields him?”
Darzin scoffed. “It was pure luck I stumbled upon him at all. I can only assume that when Lyrilyn ran with him, she gave the baby to that whorehouse bitch my father used to own.”
“Poor Therin. He frees Ola and she repays him by stealing the son he won’t admit is his anyway.” She paused. “Are we sure Therin didn’t put her up to it? It would be a canny move for him, if Therin wanted to keep an eye on his son without admitting who daddy is.”
He frowned and studied the far walls of the dungeon before shaking his head. “No. If he knew where Kihrin was the whole time, he’d have damn well shown up when the High General said he’d found one of our Ogenra in the Lower Circle. But you ate the brat’s keeper, that Reveler musician. Didn’t he know anything?”
She feigned disappointment. “Ola was the mastermind behind this. There were rumors she was a Zheriaso witch—there might be truth to that.”*
“This whole thing has been a disaster. Somehow, she paid for her bond price, and Therin let her buy back her freedom. Who does that? He should have taken the metal and whipped her until she learned her place. Instead she took the brat and raised him right under our noses, and none of us noticed. Downright embarrassing. We’ve had no luck finding her either, not with all our people out looking. Maybe, as you say, she is a witch. I’ll see if the Academy can send a witchhunter out to help.”
“When you do, tell them to check all the bakeries and sweet shops.”
Darzin smirked. “If I had my way, we’d just kill the brat and give him to you. However, from what little we’ve researched on the Stone of Shackles, the necklace lends its wearer a kind of immortality, so we don’t dare. And like most of those damned rocks, it can only be removed by the owner willingly.”*
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard. Who do we have to torture?”
Darzin scowled. “A dead musician or a whorehouse madam. Unfortunately, Thaena wouldn’t Return the musician, and I can’t find Ola anywhere.”
She looked disappointed, giving no hint of her own culpability in Surdyeh’s death or Ola’s disappearance. “Someone could cast an enchantment on his mind, perhaps?”
“Not likely to work, even assuming you could locate an enchanter. Ironic and unfortunate if Ola turns out to be one—but that would explain a few things.” Darzin snaked an arm around the girl’s waist and drew her closer. “I’m surprised you’re even able to read Kihrin’s mind.”
She shrugged. “I don’t use magic for that. I can read anyone’s mind. It’s like reading a book over someone’s shoulder. Although it’s faster if I gobble down the whole book all at once.”
He pulled away from her. “Anyone’s mind?”
“Oh, anyone weak-willed. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’ve learned to shut me out.”* She pretended to chide him.
He settled back beside her. “Nothing personal.”
“Of course. I still have plans for the boy. Mentally, he’s quite a mess, you know. I’ll have fun with that.” She paused. “‘If I had my way’ and then ‘we,’ you said. Are you working with someone I don’t know about?”
“Just a group of like-minded men who share the same goals. Nothing to worry about.”
“The others want him alive, then?”
Darzin ran his hands along her shoulders while nodding. “At least until we’ve convinced him to give up the Stone of Shackles.” His eyes never left Talon’s body, heedless of the fact they were just inches from a fresh cadaver. “Afterward, I don’t think they’ll care what happens to him.” He stopped moving his hands. “This slave girl’s sister . . . what’s her name? I’ll send my men to buy her. She might be useful leverage.”
At that, Talon threw her arms up and sank back down on the table next to the dead man, pulling Darzin on top of her almost-naked body. She laughed at the delightful joke. With leisure, she unbuckled, unbuttoned, and unfastened the Lord Heir’s clothes, oblivious to the blood and gore around them.
“That’s the best part, darling,” she whispered. “You already own her.”