As soon as he emerged onto the landing, Evander knew he should have stayed in his room.
As he’d expected, the Dread Five crew was brawling with the Sennalaithic soldiers, but they had targeted Haldir. He lay on the floor in the center of a writhing mob, screaming profanities as Elspeth and Ignatius held him down. Samara was trying to reach him, a knife clutched in her hand, as two soldiers held her arms. The sleeve was torn from Samara’s uniform coat. Blood streamed from a cut above her eyebrow. Giles sat against the counter, panting, his nose pouring blood down his shirt. Rosemary had her arm around a corporal’s neck, and she was grinning, her front tooth gone.
Evander didn’t hurry down the stairs. He marched, backed by the heft of his frustrating day. Clenching his fists, he plunged into the crowd, shoving people aside as he made for the thrashing knot at the center. All he could think about was how every second his tea and soup were getting colder.
Samara lunged free of the men holding her, knife aloft. Evander yelled “NO!” as he threw himself between Samara and Haldir. Samara shrieked in horror, but she had too much downward momentum to stop herself.
The knife struck Evander’s chest.
Chapter forty-five
Evander
Evander gasped, expecting the blade to pierce his lung, and for half a heartbeat, he thought,this is a stupid, humiliating way to die. But the knife glanced off his shirt. The material didn’t even snag.
His last thread of patience gone, Evander grabbed Samara’s wrist and twisted. She screamed in pain, dropping the knife. Haldir caught it up and slashed at Samara, but Evander caught Haldir’s arm while he was off-balance and executed a quick wrench. The knife clattered to the floor, and Evander stomped his boot on the blade.
Unreasonable in his anger and fear, Haldir gripped Evander’s shoulder and wrenched. There was a sickening pop, and Evander’s stomach pitched. With his mind racing and his blood high, he didn’t register the pain.Whirling on Haldir, he struck the bigger man in the throat with his elbow. Haldir stumbled into a table, choking.
“Everyone, clear out!” Evander shouted, straightening just in time to be clobbered by a clay pot. It shattered on his shoulder and knocked him sideways onto the floor.
Haldir recovered, and he and Samara both dashed for the knife, but Evander lunged out and grabbed it from under their fingers. With a growl, he pushed to his knees and slashed at their legs.They jumped away, Haldir scarlet with fury, Samara pallid with shock.
Hungry, tired, missing Valenna, and absolutely sick of every human being in the three kingdoms, Evander stood, trembling with constrained wrath, his mouth set into a hard line. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this angry. He had never been this angry.
For one blinding second, Evander considered walking away and letting the stubborn, belligerent Cobblepinions suffer the consequences of their own stupidity. They’d rid the world of Haldir, and he wouldn’t have to train them. A victory on two fronts.
But he couldn’t ignore the gnawing truth that they were here because of him.
With another growl—his third that evening—Evander lunged out, snatched the shotfire from Haldir’s belt, and fired it into the ceiling. The crowd ducked, covering their ears as plaster dust rained down on Evander’s hair.
“Everyone, sit!” he ordered.
No one moved.
“SIT! ON! THE! FLOOR!”
It was just one or two soldiers at first, then everyone lowered themselves to the tavern floor and sat, watching Evander tensely.
“Listen to me!” Unaccustomed to shouting, he found it hurt his throat. “I don’t know who started this …”
A murmur rippled over the crowd, growing to a rumble, but Evander yelled, “I DO NOT CARE!”
The voices died down, and all eyes fastened on him—the soldiers’ hopeful, the trainees’ furious.
“Colonel Bournemuth is going to overlook this,” Evander said, closing his hand over the back of Haldir’s neck. “He recognizes his misconduct and knows the king willbe so displeased about his new conscripts having to be executed that he will most likely be executed along with them.”
Haldir let out a small chuff.
“Return to the barracks. If I see any one of you, Cobblepinion or Sennalaithic, within fifty strides of town tonight, I will shoot you myself.”
The tavern emptied, the crowd bending around Evander like river water flowing around a boulder. The Dread Five crew shot him reproachful looks as they passed.
Except Samara. She sat on the floor with her knees drawn up, her eyes shining.
In a matter of seconds, only Samara, Haldir, and Evander remained.
Evander shoved Haldir away.
