“We all have different things that arouse us,” Marla observed. “That’s
court’esa
lesson number two, isn’t it?”
Now he was really starting to worry. Marla was delighted. In a heartbeat she had turned the tables on her adversary and suddenly held the upper hand. Galon Miar was no longer anywhere near as sure of himself. Now he doubted her motives, was suspicious of her inexplicable capitulation, certain there was something sinister in her intentions.
“What are you up to?”
“I’m surrendering,” she told him, breathless as a lovelorn girl.
He wasn’t convinced. “Surrendering? Why? So you can call your guards and claim I took you by force?”
“If you weren’t prepared to risk that fate, Galon, you wouldn’t have come through my window.” She deliberately let the robe fall open and moved closer to him. “Isn’t that what you wanted, darling? Marla Wolfblade throwing herself at you, desperate for your touch, your kiss, your caress? So take me, Galon. Take me hard. Show me what I’ve been missing out on. Ravish me. I’m yours.”
He actually took a step backward and Marla knew she’d won. She studied him triumphantly and stepped back, once again full of icy dignity.
“Now who’s afraid of whom?” she said, tying the robe closed. Then she walked to the centre of the room and turned to face him. Her eyes never left his face as she called out, “Guards!”
At her summons, the door flew open and two palace guards burst into the room. When they realised their princess was not alone, the men drew their swords and turned on the intruder. Galon stared at her in shock, but was smart enough to make no threatening moves other than to raise his hands to show the soldiers he wasn’t planning to resist.
“Your highness?” the more senior of the two guards asked in confusion, staring at the assassin. “Are you all right?”
They’d been on duty outside since she’d retired and had let nobody past her door. The unsuspected presence of a strange man in their mistress’s bedroom had her guards looking almost as stunned as Galon.
“Master Miar was just leaving,” she told the guards. “Be so kind as to escort him off the premises, please.”
She turned to look at him. To his credit, he recovered quickly. He lowered his hands, bowed with genuine respect. “It’s been a pleasure, your highness. I expect we’ll resume our …
conversation …
sometime soon?”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Marla advised.
“It’ll be soon enough,” he predicted with an insolent wink, already back to the Galon she knew. “You need me.” And then he grinned at her. “Almost as much as you want me.”
Marla allowed herself a small smile. “I wouldn’t bet the family fortune on it if I were you, Galon.”
For once, he didn’t seem to have a clever comeback. Marla watched as the guards escorted him from her room and down the hall toward the stairs.
Once he was out of sight she closed the door and leaned against it, her breathing ragged, wondering why, of all of the emotions she was battling with right now, the hardest to deal with seemed to be the urge to run down that hall after Galon and call him back to her room.
A
s it turned out, the most difficult part of Starros’s grand plan to honour Dacendaran by robbing Krakandar of its entire population was finding a way to speak to Xanda Taranger without bringing the wrath of Mahkas Damaran down on all of them. Damin’s commission to his cousin had been to keep an eye on Mahkas, which meant even with uninhibited access to the slaveways, there weren’t many opportunities to find Xanda alone in the palace.
Krakandar Palace probably wasn’t the safest place for such a potentially dangerous meeting to take place, in any case. After days of mulling over the problem, Starros decided to take a more direct approach. With Luc North’s assistance, he arranged for Wrayan’s Thieves’ Guild henchmen to kidnap Xanda Taranger off the streets of the city in broad daylight.
Their mission was made easier by Xanda himself. He made a point of inspecting the city two or three times a week to see how things were going, to talk to the people, reassure them, gauge their mood, and generally try to put a good face on things. Because he was here as a guest and actually held no formal position in Krakandar’s court, he was able to do this without fanfare and usually accomplished his inspection with no more than a single guard accompanying him.
Wrayan’s men ambushed Xanda and his guard as he entered the narrow streets of the Beggars’ Quarter, a few blocks from the Pickpocket’s Retreat. They overwhelmed them and bundled the two men away, trussed up like chickens on their way to market, not removing the ropes or the sacks thrown over their heads until they were behind closed doors in the safe house.
“What the hell …” Xanda began, struggling as his kidnappers freed him. His voice faltered as the sack was pulled from his head and he found himself face to face with Starros.
“Hello, Xanda.”
“
Starros
? For pity’s sake, man!” he complained, shaking free of the ropes that had bound him, while he glared at the men who’d taken him prisoner. “Couldn’t you have found a less dramatic way of getting me to your …” he glanced around and then shrugged, “ … your
lair
?”
“Believe me, Xanda, if there’d been an easier way to do this, I would have used it.” He glanced at the men still holding Xanda’s accompanying guard, tied and blindfolded. “Let him go.”
Luc’s men did as Starros ordered. As soon as the man’s hands were free he pulled the sack from his head and stared at Starros in shock.
“I thought you’d be dead by now, lad.”
Starros smiled gratefully. “Thanks to you, Sergeant Clayne, I survived.”
His thanks were heartfelt and genuine. Clayne was the man in charge of the palace cells the night Damin returned to Krakandar. This was the man who’d stood aside to allow Damin to come to his aid.
The big man was clearly disturbed by Starros’s miraculous recovery. He eyed him up and down, his expression grim. “You shouldn’t have survived, lad. You surely shouldn’t have walked away from it without a mark on you.”
“I had help of a sort you couldn’t imagine, Sergeant.”
The man looked around the room with a frown. “And now you’ve fallen in with criminals, I see.”
“I don’t know if he’s fallen, so much as been given an almighty shove,” Xanda remarked, rubbing his chafed wrists. “Is there anything to drink around here, or are you lot planning to torture me, as well as tromp all over my dignity?”
“Get him something to drink,” Starros ordered the man standing closest to the door. “And take Sergeant Clayne into the next room. I’m sure he’d appreciate an ale or two.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Clayne announced belligerently. “My job is to watch over Lord Taranger.”
“And I swear no harm will come to him. I’m asking you to leave for your own protection, Sergeant,” Starros explained. “You did me a favour once, and now I’m returning it. What I have to say to Xanda could be considered treason. You’ve risked a charge of treason once before on my behalf. I’m not going to implicate you, even by association, a second time.”
Clayne thought about it and then held up his hands to indicate he would offer no further resistance. “Very well.”
Starros waited until the others had escorted Clayne from the dingy room and then turned to look at Xanda once they were alone.
“Noble of you to care so much about Clayne’s neck, while you’re endangering mine without a second thought.”
“Oh, we’d thought of that,” Starros assured him. “We’re going to beat you senseless after we finish our meeting and leave you for dead in an alley somewhere. Just to make it look good.”
“There’s the mark of a true friend.”
Starros smiled. “I like to help where I can. How have you been, Xanda? You look tired.”
“I’m all right, I suppose.” He sank down on the bench beside the fireplace. “As right as any man can be, living in an insane asylum, at any rate.” Xanda jerked his head in the direction the others had disappeared. “You seem to be fitting in with your new friends rather nicely.”
“I’ve been touched by Dacendaran,” Starros reminded him, taking the seat opposite. “That makes me something of a celebrity in the Thieves’ Guild. Didn’t you notice? I even have my very own henchmen now, ready to do my criminal bidding.”
“Yes, I noticed that.”
“In truth, they’re not really mine, they’re only on loan from Wrayan while he’s away, but they do the job and they look at me like I know what I’m doing, so I suppose that means something.”
The conversation halted when the man Starros had sent for ale returned with a jug and poured one for Xanda, and then let himself into the other room where they were holding Clayne. Xanda took a long swallow before fixing his gaze on Starros. “So, what is this treasonous plot you wish to implicate me in, old friend?”
“I want to evacuate Krakandar.”
“Wouldn’t we all,” Xanda agreed sourly.
“I’m serious. Mahkas Damaran stole the thing I loved most in this world, Xanda. I want vengeance. Real vengeance, not some token of it. So I plan to take away the thing he loves most.”
“I’m not sure he actually loves the people of Krakandar, Starros. Come to think of it, I’m not sure he actually loves anybody.”
“He loves the power the people of this city represent.”
“True enough.”
“Then you’ll help me?”
Xanda rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’d love to. But what exactly do you expect
me
to do? If you want me to unseal the city, you’re wasting your time. Luciena would have nagged me into it weeks ago, if it was even remotely possible. Every time I suggest it, Mahkas gets more obstinate about it.”
“We don’t need to unseal the city,” Starros assured him. “The Thieves’ Guild has other ways to get past the walls.”
“They
do
?”
“Don’t ask me for details, Xanda, you’re better off not knowing.”
He took another swallow of ale. “I don’t doubt that. Are you going to tell me how you plan to get the people out?”
“That’s something else you’d be better off not knowing.”
Xanda looked at him curiously. “Then why exactly did you bring me here? To brag about it?”
“I need to make certain we’re not interfered with; that the soldiers in the city don’t start looking into anything out of the ordinary. I don’t want them tipping off Mahkas to our plans.”
Xanda raised a brow at him. “You want me to quietly put it about that the Krakandar Raiders should turn a blind eye to your criminal activities?”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
“Only vengeance,” Starros replied.
Xanda barely hesitated before agreeing to grant the favour Starros asked for. “I can probably do what you ask, but I have a condition of my own.”
“Name it.”
“Among the first people you smuggle out of the city will be my wife, my children, and the Lionsclaw boys. Promise you’ll get them to my brother in Walsark and I’ll burn down the damned palace myself as a diversion, if need be.”
“I’m not sure we need anything quite so drastic. I do appreciate the offer though. But you have my word that Luciena and the children will be among the first to leave the city. Do you think Travin will mind twenty thousand-odd refugees in his borough?”
Xanda smiled thinly. “Not if you promise to make them all buy at least one piece of his wretched porcelain.”
The young thief was mightily relieved. “I’ll make it a condition of every citizen’s exit from the city. And thank you. I thought it would take hours to convince you of the cleverness of my diabolical scheme.”
“Nothing’s too much trouble for an old friend,” Xanda said, draining the last of his ale. “You really are taking this whole Thieves’ Guild engagement rather seriously, aren’t you?”
“Not really my choice, Xanda. Damin traded my soul to the God of Thieves when he should have let me die. I’m stuck with this.”
“And you’re too well brought up to do a sloppy job on anything,” Xanda noted wryly. “I wonder what Almodavar will make of the new Starros when he gets back.”
“I dread to think,” he said. “Can’t imagine he’ll be too impressed by my change of circumstances. On the other hand, it’s hard to tell with Almodavar, and there’s no proof he’s actually my father, you know.”
“No proof he isn’t, either.” Xanda put his tankard on the seat beside him and looked across at Starros. “I’ll need to be getting back soon or they’ll come looking for me. There’s really no need for the whole beating-me-senseless charade, you know. I can fake it.”
“If Mahkas suspected for a minute …”
“I can deal with Mahkas,” Xanda assured him. “You take care of your end of things and let me deal with the maniac.”
Starros was surprised at the sudden feeling of melancholy that washed over him. “I remember a time when we all thought Mahkas Damaran was the most wonderful man we knew.”
“That’s the worst thing about childhood illusions,” Xanda agreed. “They really hurt when you discover how wrong they are.”
The pain in Xanda’s voice surprised Starros. He’d thought he was the only one suffering intolerable grief. “Just how bad is it up there?”
“You can’t begin to imagine,” Xanda sighed. “Mahkas can only speak in a hoarse whisper, even when he’s yelling. It drives him crazy. He thinks everyone is secretly plotting to bring Damin back to unseat him. It’s most of the reason he won’t open the city gates. Nothing anybody says will convince him Damin rode off to war against Fardohnya. Mahkas is convinced Damin merely stopped out of sight at the Walsark Crossroads and is waiting for his opportunity to come back and take the city by force.”
“Has it occurred to Mahkas that Damin was in the city not so long ago and could have taken over any time he pleased, if that was his intention?”
“Ah, now that sort of conclusion requires a degree of rational thought. Mahkas isn’t real big on rational, right now.”
“What about Bylinda?”
Xanda shook his head in sorrow. “She’s the hardest one to watch. Leila’s death has destroyed her.”
Starros wasn’t surprised to hear Xanda’s news. “I know what you mean. I saw her a few weeks ago. In the slaveways.”
Xanda looked at him in alarm. “In the
slaveways
? Do I want to know what you were doing in the slaveways, Starros?”
“Probably not. But I do understand what you mean about Bylinda being destroyed by grief. She looked like a wraith when I spoke to her.”
“That’s a pretty fair description, actually,” Xanda agreed unhappily. “Luciena’s desperately worried about her. We all are, for that matter.”
“Well, I’d offer to help, but I don’t think my presence in the palace would do anything to ease matters.”
Xanda forced a weary smile. “There’s an understatement if ever I heard one. But I’m glad you survived this, Starros. There’s been enough death in this family to last a lifetime. And you appear to be adapting remarkably well to your sudden change in circumstances, even if your life is turning in a direction you didn’t anticipate.”
“I still haven’t convinced myself this whole ‘let’s sell Starros’s soul to the God of Thieves’ plan isn’t Damin’s idea of a sick joke.”
Xanda looked around the small main room of the safe house, nodding with approval. “Well, you’re on your way to a fine career as a thief, I’d say. Your own minions. A nice lair. What more could a thief want? You’ll be giving Wrayan a run for his money soon, won’t you? How long before you’re the head of the Krakandar Thieves’ Guild?”
“Never,” Starros said and then, before he could stop himself, he burst out laughing as something else occurred to him, something so ironic it was almost painful.
Given the serious nature of their conversation only a few moments ago, Xanda wasn’t nearly so amused. “I don’t get the joke, I’m afraid.”
“It just occurred to me—I used to complain Orleon would live forever and I’d never get to be Chief Steward of Krakandar Palace.”