Darkness, if that wasn’t what he’d been fantasizing about, squirreling away details of the keep, blind spots of the guards, the arcana he could sabotage and sneak past, since the moment they’d come here. However difficult it might be, the greater difficulty was enacting it at all without knowing what she wanted, and damn if that wasn’t completely counterintuitive to abduction and villainy. Kaz’s suggestions, though, were typically a good measure of the bounds of evil, and the imp was suddenly holding back. Where exactly had he been in the last twenty-four hours anyway?
The blood mage brought the disguised imp closer to his face. “I find it odd you’re not advocating for Amma’s death. Especially after all of this.”
Kaz’s underbite wiggled about as he thought, then he went on hesitantly. “Shehasbeen deceiving you…and youwillhave to kill her eventually…but maybe the harlot doesn’t deserve to die here…exactly.”
Damien glared at the rat and his unreadable, black orbs for eyes, but footsteps at his back made him dump Kaz into the breast pocket of his coat. There was a presence behind him soon after, light-footed, quick, and familiar. “Slithered away, hmm?”
When the blood mage turned, Tia was standing there, arms crossed, eyes leveled right to his. Easier to read, he could tell she hadn’t grown much fonder of him, but there was a newfound tolerance there. “Not far,” he said.
“Ammalie is not telling me the truth about you.”
“Or she is, and you just don’t trust her.”
“I trust her to lie to me when she must. She always has, and unfortunately she has gotten better at it with age.” Tia took a step forward to stand beside him and glance down at the party as well. The guests were small below, but still easy to identify. “She thinks she can protect people that way.”
“Noble.”
Tia grunted in agreement. “I thought you might be a hired mercenary for Brineberth March,” she said after a pause, “but it has become clear to me that you are not.”
The music was slowing, and Cedric pulled Amma closer to him.
“Definitely not.”
“You wear no colors or sigils, and Lady Ammalie insists you are only a traveler. Your loyalty,” she said a bit more carefully, “appears to be questionable.”
“I have been questioning it myself as of late.” Damien took in the number of guards with the red lion-fish emblazoned on them all around. “How would you fix this?”
Tia straightened, glaring at him again, then snorted. “Oh, you know, wave a hand and magically set it all right again.”
“So, itiswrong now? I can’t seem to get anyone to actually bloody say so.” Damien ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the railing, dropping all decorum.
“I didn’t say that either.” Tia’s eyes darted downward again as if anyone could hear them so far up. On the floor below, the song was ending, and Amma and Cedric actually took a step back from one another as Cedric engaged a small crowd who flocked around him.
Damien watched Amma backing away from the marquis. “None of you really have to say, but it does make things clearer.”
“I would cut them down and drive the rest out,” said Tia, her voice so low it was barely a whisper. She was watching Amma too. “Anything to return this place to what it once was, and to see her actually smile again.”
Another set of footsteps came at them then, this one even quicker and lighter than Tia’s. When they turned away from the balcony, Amma’s friend Laurel was there, hair pulled back slick to her head, pointed ears sticking out as she wore a wide grin. “Tia!” she cried in a cheerful but sloshed way. “Oh, goodness, you looksopretty tonight.”
The guard’s face shifted from her typical slight annoyance to one of horror as the half elf bowled right up to them, stumbling over the hem of her dress and falling into the guard’s arms. “Are you drunk?” she hissed. “Gods, this is terribly unbecoming of a lady-in-waiting.”
Giggles erupted out of her as she climbed up the woman’s arms. “Nah, it’s fine! I only drank just the same amount as Sir Robert and Sir Terrance.”
“They’re three times your size,” Tia insisted, doing her best to hold her up, casting Damien a short but withering look. “And Dil’wator’wovl knows elves don’t hold their liquor well.”
“Hmm, now that you mention it…” She rubbed her stomach, and with a dramatic sigh, flopped over the woman’s arm. “Oh, Tia, I don’t feel so good.”
“Sestoth grant me the strength to help this woman and not drown her,” she mumbled, hauling Laurel’s long form up over her shoulder with ease. “Do excuse me,” she said and turned from Damien.
Laurel’s head popped up from where she had fallen lax, or at least pretended to, over the woman’s back. The half elf winked at Damien and then started groaning, quite loudly, about how she needed Tia to bring her to bed, and it became a little clearer where Amma might have learned some of her own tricks.
Damien glanced down into the ballroom again, finding Cedric still surrounded and engaged, but no sign of Amma until the blue puffball of her dress caught his eye, climbing the winding stairs on the opposite side of the balcony, darting through an archway, and into the shadows outdoors.
Damien shoved a hand into his pocket to scoop out Kaz. “Keep an eye on the marquis, and alert me if he looks like he’s headed upstairs.”
“But, Master—”
“Just do it.” Damien dumped the mouse off at the head of the stairs closest to him and hurried around the balcony ringing the room to where he had seen Amma go.
