“Now lie down and go to sleep,” she told them. “You need a long night’s rest.”
They obeyed her instantly, curling up on the road or the steps and closing their eyes, falling asleep at her command.
I snatched the keys on the belt of one of them who’d been guarding the entrance, and we hurried up the steps.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, busily unlocking the steel door.
“I didn’t either.”
“How did you know you could?” The lock clicked and I pulled the heavy door open.
“I just felt it. The magic feels different now. More than it was somehow.”
We didn’t have time to analyze it now. I took her hand and marched ahead through the corridor. The cell blocks all had occupants as we passed them, torches burning bright in sconces along the stone walls. But I didn’t recognize any of them. Caesar had been busy rounding up suspected traitors since my last visit here, it seemed.
As we approached the stairwell that led down into the depths of the prison, I heard two guards chatting before I saw them. They stopped talking suddenly, hearing us coming.
“Who the hell let you in here?”
The speaker took two steps toward me before I raised my sword. The guards came at us fast, swinging their blades. The second I sliced through one guard’s sleeve to his skin, Lela spoke one word loudly over the clanging of swords.
“Come!”
Without my heightened eyesight, I wouldn’t have seen it, but a stream of blood swam through the air, hitting Lela’s upright palm. Just like before. I kicked the guard in the chest, sending him sprawling to the stone floor, while Lela touched a drop of his blood to her tongue.
The second came at me too fast to raise my sword. I ducked his swing and punched him in the mouth, sending him falling back to the wall.
“Be calm,” Lela said softly. “Stop fighting.”
The guard on the floor, his face contorted in rage, suddenly went slack. He sat with his back to the stone wall, panting and staring in wonder at her.
“Now close your eyes and rest. Forget we were here.”
Before the guard had obeyed her command, she raised her other palm to the second guard, who’d pushed off the wall and was coming at me again.
This time, she didn’t say anything at all, but I saw with morbid fascination as three drops of blood sifted through the air from his mouth, landing directly on her palm.
She tasted one drop then ordered the second guard to drop his sword and go to sleep like his comrade.
“By the time we’re through,” I said, panting, “all of the guards in the city will be asleep.”
“We could only wish,” she said, smiling.
I hurried down the staircase to the bottom dungeon cell, where only the worst of Caesar’s criminals were kept. A rumbling growl met us as we approached then abruptly stopped.
“I can’t believe you came back,” said Alaric with his thick accent, once again in the shadows.
I stepped close to the bars. “I keep my promises.”
He emerged from the dark toward the torchlight. He remained in the same half-clothed state, his long black hair matted with filth. The German king smiled.
“I did not think you would,” he replied. “You do recall I was once your enemy in battle, yes? This is a peculiar way of fighting your enemy.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,”I said. “Or haven’t you heard that before?”
“I am not a philosopher. I’m a warrior.”
“Good. Because we need warriors,” I said sternly, gripping one of the bars of the cell. “If we free you, you will ally your army with ours. That was your promise.”
