The last time I’d seen Benedict he had been impeccable in his lieutenant’s uniform, clean-shaven, clear-eyed and hateful.Now his beard grew wild and his skin was sallow, his powerful frame reduced by hunger.But his eyes were the same.Sharp.Arresting.
“Benedict,” I greeted.
His hand shot out.I flinched back too late and was hauled forward, right into the bars.Cold iron pressed into my chest as he held me close, his fingers gouging through my heavy clothing and into my skin.
“How are you here?”he rasped, his eyes darting around my face, over my shoulder, to the door and back.“Areyou here?Did they catch you?Where is my brother?”
“Let go of me,” I hissed.“I’m here to rescue you.”
“You?”He barked a laugh, so close I smelled the foulness of his breath and felt a splatter of spittle.He seemed scattered, nearly manic.“How?”
“Yes, me,” I bit back, pulling the keys from my pocket and holding them up for him to see.“Which key is it?”
He immediately let me go.“That one.”He pointed to a medium-sized iron key with a long stem.“Where is my brother?”
“Pretending to be you and staging a false breakout at the southern gate,” I replied, rubbing at my collar where he’d grabbed me.The lock tumbled and the door whined open.
“Woman!”another prisoner whined.“Take me with you!”
“My apologies, gentlefolk.”Benedict vanished into the dark and returned with a worn cocked hat, which he popped onto his head as he stepped through the opening.Without permission, he reached for one of my weapons belts and unfastened it with quick fingers.I bit back a protest—he was already done.He relaced it around his own hips and checked the sidesword in its sheath.
Evidently satisfied, he went on, “This is a personal rescue only, I’m afraid.”
Protests exploded and a wave of impulses assaulted me—come, keys, the urge to claw my own face to the bone.Even prepared as I was, the magnitude of the onslaught staggered me.Compassion and pity and rage and terror battered at my defenses, piercing me like shrapnel.
Benedict grabbed my wrist, his skin clammy with cold sweat and rough with dirt.Every other voice silenced, again leaving only his influence—a low thrum, a distant quiver in my guts.One magic restraining another.
I swallowed my bile and took a ragged breath.“Should we release them?”I managed, low enough that I hoped only Benedict would hear.
“No,” he said firmly, releasing my wrist but maintaining his sheltering power.He breathed, low and deep, his focus on those around us.Their voices died one by one, and I heard a muffled, straining sob.
“Most of them are imprisoned for an actual reason, rather than just being foreigners,” he explained.“Feel no pity for them.Where do we go now?What is your plan?”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but chose to regardless.“This way.”
Only one face made me look back as we slipped out into the room of unconscious guards and Benedict pulled the door closed.The Stormsinger at the bars, still tracking me over her mask with scars for eyes.Still tapping, though more slowly now.
The fox is in the bushes.The wolf is in the wood.
I soved the door closed as Benedict began to strip one of the guards of his coat and weapons belt.As he donned them, I crossed to the main door, looking through Tane’s eyes at the hallway beyond.
Somewhere distant, I heard an alarm bell begin to clang.Benedict looked up, his new guard’s coat at odds with his soiled, battered, cocked hat.He set to priming one of my stolen pistols.
“That bell is probably for Sam,” I reassured him.“It’s part of the plan.He’ll lead the chase into the town and west into the hills, then meet up with us.”
“I see.”The Magni joined me in the doorway and adjusted his commandeered weapons belt, now heavy with additional provisions.“I assume we are going the other way, then?”
“Yes.With me.”I started off down the stair, following Tane’s guidance.We slunk and darted, ran and paused our way through the maze of the prison, avoiding the great hall and slipping past the doors to the common cells.
“Illya will be waiting with a boat at the prison docks,” I murmured as we paused in a shadowed alcove, Tane rejoining my frame at the same time.Her light extinguished, and shadows swept over us.
A guard sprinted past, oblivious.Benedict’s eyes were distant, and I suspected the guard’s distraction was not entirely natural.
My companion’s focus sharped on me once the guard was out of sight.“Illya Uknara?”
I nodded and stuck my head back out into the passageway—right into the sight of six guards and an armed, raging gentleman.
“Stop!”a voice roared.
