She’d enlightened Bron the day after the blizzard, when they stood on the bridge together and she’d accepted his request to court her. “Who told you I kissed Ceybold at Spirius?”
He pressed his cold face to hers. Their breath steamed in from of them as they watched a pair of cranes creep across the partially frozen creek, hunting for food. “Most of Panrin,” he said. “They couldn’t tell me fast enough, along with the fact you’d brawled with the schoolmaster.”
“I would have refused Ceybold’s challenge,” she said. “Except he made me a wager I couldn’t refuse.”
When she explained that her willingness to kiss Ceybold in exchange for his help in getting Bron to return to Panrin, he thought his blood would boil out of his body. No longer shaking from the cold, he spun a startled Disaris about and glared at her. “Never do that again, Disa,” he said softly, not sure who he was more displeased with—her or Ceybold. “Never bargain with anyone over me, especially when you’re using yourself as the stakes.”
“But it was the only way I knew how to bring you back to Panrin, even for a few days!” She sighed. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” he said. Especially after his first battle with the Kefians, when he was sure he would die on an icy field next to the first man he’d killed. The shame of that killing weighed heavily upon him. He’d told no one of it, recoiling at the thought of what his mother and Disaris might think of him if they knew. He shoved aside that particular darkness and returned to the matter at hand. “But there are other ways to bring me to Panrin. Trust me to find them. Trust yourself.”
After they parted at the bridge, he’d intended to confront Ceybold at his home. Not because he’d kissed Disaris—which did fuel Bron’s anger with jealousy—but because he’d used a mostly innocent game, and Disaris’s affections for Bron, to turn the kiss into a transaction. Disaris may have been too innocent to understand the underhandedness of Ceybold’s actions, but Ceybold wasn’t, and neither was Bron. That petty cruelty, disguised as a favor bought with false affection had finally madeBron accept there was no redeeming any friendship between himself and Ceybold, nor did he care to any longer.
He pushed his unfinished ale to the side. “You get one warning. Stay away from Disa. Don’t bother her, don’t pretend with her. Don’t use her to strike out at me. If you want to draw a little blood, then you grow a spine and a pair of balls, and you come for me directly.” He leaned across the table, gratified when Ceybold leaned back, eyes widening. “If I find out you’re bothering her—and I will—I’m coming for you.” He stood and walked out of the Feathered Wren, leaving Ceybold to seethe alone with the gifted ale.
He thought the matter settled between them. When he wrote to Disaris after returning to Burnpool, and asked if Ceybold was vexing her, she’d replied that she hadn’t spoken with him, and the only times she’d seen him was in the company of that “pip tarse schoolmaster jin Morevan.”
He should have known better. Seven years later, when Disaris unexpectedly and coldly cut him out of her life, he learned the hard way that malice like Ceybold’s had staying power. It didn’t fade with time; it grew roots, blossomed and bore the most poisoned of fruit. When he’d asked Disaris if she’d once again bargained with Ceybold, he’d watched her eyelashes for the betraying flutter. She never blinked once when she told him no.
Chapter Nine
Disaris stumbled through the entry doors of a once-lavish home and fell to her knees before a man dressed in long red robes and a tall hat decorated with onyx beads and the skeletons of birds. While his clothing was morbidly majestic, the man himself was forgettably average-looking. Until one looked into his eyes and saw the fires of fanaticism burning there.
Ceybold knelt beside her and bowed until his forehead touched the floor. “Master,” he said. “I have brought you a gift. My wife, Disaris. The code breaker who was translating the Holy Book of the Dark Mother, Kocyte.”’
Disaris swallowed a gasp. This was the Hierarch? The notorious leader of the Daggermen? The man who embraced violence as a standard to live by and worshipped a goddess so vile that other gods had exiled her from this realm? Her mouth went dry. She had lived among evil before, feared if she did so for too long, she’d be corrupted by it. Succumb to it. Now she knelt in the heart of its source.
The Hierarch regarded her and Ceybold with a gaze colder than that of any serpent’s. “Ceybold, I thought everyone in Baelok was dead.” He softly clapped his hands together as ifapplauding Fate. “So it is true,” he said, his toothy smile at Disaris making her flinch away. “The goddess has blessed us with your safe return, mistress. Welcome back to the fold.”
Equally disgusted and furious, Disaris didn’t have the time or patience to indulge in social etiquette with the leader of assassins. “Where is Luda?”
Ceybold’s sharp cuff to her head made her ears ring, and she canted sideways from the blow. “Shut up, bitch.” His command was hardly more coherent than a snarl. “You haven’t been given permission to speak.”
He got a taste of his own discipline when the Hierarch backhanded him hard enough to knock him over. He lay on the ground, clutching his face, eyes wide as he stared at his master. “Neither have you, Ceybold,” the Hierarch said in a mild voice. He turned his attention back to Disaris as if Ceybold’s presence was no more important than that of a fly, and just as annoying. “Your sister is well,” he assured her in a tone usually reserved for grandfathers who passed out sweets to their grandchildren instead of murdering them. “She doesn’t quite have the talent you do for translation, but she’s improving. Things will be different now that you’re returned to us.”
Bron had once told her to stop bargaining with people, especially those like Ceybold. Too bad Fate kept throwing obstacles in her way that forced her to gamble with such repulsive people. “I want to see her,” she insisted. “I won’t translate a single rune or letter for you until you show me proof that she’s alive and unharmed.”
Her defiance was a risk, taken not because she was fearless but because she was desperate. The note Ceybold had left for Bron guaranteed he’d come back to the Daggermen’s lair with the intention of wreaking havoc. Ceybold was counting on it. Disaris had to know if Luda was here and find a way to help her escape.
The Hierarch shrugged. “Fair enough.” He signaled to one of the many disciples surrounding him who bowed and disappeared into a hallway at the back of the room. He then pointed to Ceybold who’d resumed his subservient position and stared at the floor. His head jerked up, mouth wide with shock when the Hierarch pointed to him and said “Kill him.”
Ceybold inhaled and scurried back from the pair of Daggermen approaching him, knives drawn, ready to to dole out the same ending they gave to all their victims. He held up his hands to ward them off. “Wait! Wait!” he pleaded. “I know how the portal stones work. Not just the one we used at Slaekum’s temple.”
Another gesture from the Hierarch, and his minions returned to their positions. Their master tilted his head, watching the cowering Ceybold for a long moment before telling him, “Go on. I’m listening.”
Disaris listened, disgusted as Ceybold did his best to talk his way out of his own execution. He had no idea how to decipher the stones and make them work. He’d admitted as much to her himself after he killed Zaras and took Disaris hostage as the so-called “gift” for the Hierarch to curry lost favor and reclaim his status. “You and Bron never even saw me hiding near the Hayman Stone,” he said, wiping his bloodied hands on one of Zaras’s dish towels. “You were too busy keeping an eye on the Daesin soldiers chasing you.” He wagged a finger at her. “Everyone knows if you don’t properly shut a door, something will come in or go out. I waited until the leader of the Daesin guard followed you through the portal, then I went in as well, and just in time.”
Heartbroken over Zaras’s death and furious over her own recapture by the man she’d fervently hoped had died at Baelok, Disaris paused in her ruminations for how to escape and killCeybold to repeat his words in her head. The leader had followed them.
Cimejen.
Disaris prayed that Golius’s hunting dog would find them and become their ally instead of their adversary. Either way, she’d rather take her chances with him instead of the Daggermen.
Ceybold spoke even faster as the Hierarch visibly began to lose patience. “I can show you how the stone near here works and how to use it in conjunction with the Hayman Stone. But first, you should know she…” He paused to point at Disaris. “Came through the portal with a battle mage known as the Moon Raven. They were followed by a Daesin officer. I came through after them.”
The Hierarch glanced at Disaris. “Is that true, mistress?”
She nodded. “The gate part, yes. The rest, no,” She gleefully lied, “I came alone.”
