“Hey,” I told him.
He spun around, hiding his face.
“I’m fine,” I told them. “It’s all good. Everything is good.”
Everything wasn’t good. Everything hurt like hell. The little girl hugging me felt like someone was stabbing needles into my body.
I looked at Reynald. “Is he dead?”
He nodded.
“Good.” The relief that flooded through me was indescribable. I had never been so happy in my entire life. “How long was I out?”
“About half an hour,” Reynald said.
Less than last time. Or at least I was guessing it was less, but then last time I had been stabbed several times, my throat was slit, and I’d drowned. There was a lot more damage to heal.
I suddenly realized that I was still in the hallway. They must’ve been afraid to move me.
“Do we need to go? I can try to get up.”
“Why would we need to go?” Reynald asked.
“To escape.”
“Everyone is dead,” he told me.
“But we need to leave. What if the guards come here and discover all the dead people?”
“Why would they come here? In all these years they’ve never bothered with this house.”
“What if Derog’s clients show up?”
“I hope they do.” Reynald smiled.
I shivered and instantly regretted it. Shivering hurt.
He was on my side. At least for now.
I met Reynald’s gaze. “My brain is a little slow right now.”
He nodded. “I can tell. We have five children in our custody. We must provide them with a safe place to stay until we can return them to their families or determine what to do next. We’re in a fortress of a house. We can hold it against a small army. In a little while, I will get a boat and dispose of the bodies in the bay, as is the time-honored Kair Toren tradition. We will clean the blood. We will sleep safely and eat well, and after you recover, we will go through Derog’s ledgers.”
And there would be a lot of ledgers. Years of them. Lasa kept meticulous records.
Reynald was right. Derog was a slaver. If he had paid off any guardsmen, they wouldn’t stick their necks out to get revenge for him. His only living relative was his sister who lived in another province, and we would be able to handle her if she showed up. The Kair Toren underworld would note that we had killed Derog and his crew and leave us alone because they were creatures who ate their weak and avoided their strong. By their logic, Derog was strong, and because we took the house away from him, we were stronger. Nobody knew anything about us, and nobody would want to test us. Why would we go anywhere when we could just stay here?
“Are things a little clearer?” the blademaster asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Come on, little one.” He reached for the little girl holding on to me like a baby lemur. “Let Maggie get a breath.”
PLANTER8
Istretched my legs and leaned back in my new office chair. It used to be Derog’s chair and office, but he didn’t need them anymore. In fact, I now had an entire suite to myself: a luxurious bedroom, a palatial bathroom with running water, and this personal office with a desk and a lovely window.
I had offered the suite to Reynald. He gave me a short laugh and settled into a slightly less luxurious set of rooms previously occupied by Lasa. We put Clover into one of the other suites, the little girls in the room next to her, and Kaiden on the other side.
