There was rapping on the floor that brought me back out of my thoughts.
The chamberlain rapped his staff on the floor, and I could see someone approaching the front of the stronghold.
They paused about fifty strides down the path and heaved a deep breath, then stepped under the arch of stone and gems there.
The shimmer flowed down over them like heat shimmering over stone on a hot day. Their appearance shimmered as well, their human form rippling and revealing a man who carried his own head.
Savion sighed. “Again with this. Make sure he dies when he walks through the doors.”
And for the next two hours, that’s all that approached the stronghold. Common vampires holding their own heads and losing their real ones as they walked in.
The stones were thirsty for the blood again, and each person was hoisted above the fountain, drained for just a few minutes, and then tossed back out into the blazing sun.
Not a single one of those who approached seemed to take notice of the piles of bodies that lay outside the door.
“Monotonous,” Savion said to me. “They keep approaching to try to kill me, and they are fools. It’s boring.” He turned back to the chamber, and shouted, “Boring! Do you hear me! Boring!”
No one had a chance to answer him. A horse and rider barreled through the arch, not stopping to consider what he was showing anyone.
He shifted from vampire to skeleton and rode straight into the hall. Pulling the horse to a stop, the clomp of hooves loud in the massive room, the skeleton-vampire delivering his message. “Your majesty! General Odom has deserted your army!”
A deadly silence descended over the crowd.
Thick with anticipation and a healthy dose of ‘oh shit’ in it, the silence hung for heartbeats.
Savion stood, slowly. In a burst of speed, he was at the horse and rider. He yanked the vampire off his saddle and threw him to the ground.
I heard his skull crack.
Savion put his boot on the man’s throat as his bleached-death features faded away.
“What do you meandeserted?”
“Just that, sire.”
“Odom would never desert me! Never! He has been here since the Spine rose!”
Billan’s hand found my wrist and started to pull me back from the edge of the balcony. I didn’t resist him.
“Sire,” the messenger choked, holding something up. “I swear. I am not lying!”
It was a letter. Savion snatched it out of his hand and pulled it open as he released the man’s neck from his boot. He read quickly across the paper, and at the bottom, he looked up at me.
Oh, no.
“Fuck,” Billan whispered. “He caught one of the messengers.”
I risked a glance at the lord next to me. His face was twisted in fear and anger.
It hit me.
The guy who had galloped in was a skeleton because he was trying to curry favor with the king. A skeleton meant he had been buried.
What was more favorable than uncovering a plot by a now-former ally to kidnap the Breaker of the Spine? And finding out the Breaker was all for being kidnapped?
Not much.
Except maybe the personal satisfaction of seeing that same king want to kill the Breaker.
