Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
Jacaranda
T antalus returned after a while and leered into my cell. “Have you thought about your bad behavior?”
“I’ve thought about the dozens of ways I’d like to kill you, so it hasn’t given me much time to consider anything else.” I stood and walked to the barred door for a place to casually lean.
He chuckled deviously. “You are impudent, aren’t you? Rex is going to have fun breaking you, Jac. And I’m going to have fun helping him.”
“Come in here and say that,” I dared him.
“I’d rather not stand in the filth of the dead, thank you. How’s the floor? Comfortable?”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve had worse.”
“Damn. I had hoped we would exceed your past. I suppose we will have to try harder. Maybe give you a cell near the moat. I hear you had a hell of a time in there.”
I fought a wave of nausea, thinking of that damned moat and the beasts in it that tried to drown me and eat me. Instead of letting my fear show, I focused on the man in front of me. “The funny thing about being unclassed and a bit of a miscreant is that I’ve learned a thing or two about how people like you work.”
“You’ve never met anyone like me,” he said arrogantly.
I smirked, just to irritate him further. “No matter where I’ve gone in the universe, there are always sad little men like you.”
“Then tell me, oh wise prisoner ,” he mocked, “what have you learned?”
“Whenever a pitiful person with a fraction of power doesn’t like me, before they even speak to me, they already know what they are going to do with me, so conversation with them is pointless, because whatever limited authority they have prescribes what they are allowed to do.” I watched as he narrowed his gaze at me. “You do not have full authority here—you’re Rex’s simpering minion. He will allow you only so much power over me, and whatever that is, it’s not as much as you want. People like you can never get enough power, because it’s too easy for Rex to keep you under control with the pathetic hope of more power.”
A snarl curled his upper lip. “Is that right?”
“Mm, hmm,” I went on, crossing my arms over my chest. “So, you’ll threaten me and posture, as though you are some kind of threat, but really, whatever you do to me is limited by Rex. You are impotent. You have no real authority, and you never will. You, Tantalus, are no one of importance. And since you’re not the man in charge, I’m bored of you. We’re done here.”
He scoffed a laugh. “You piece of shit, you have no idea who you’re talking to!”
“I know exactly who I’m talking to, and I am done pretending care.”
He lunged forward to scream in my face, and I grabbed his collar, pulling him hard enough to slam his head against the metal bars. He blinked, trying to figure out what just happened. I did it again, and blood dripped over his eye.
Before I had a chance for a third pull, a guard stabbed my hand, forcing me to release him, while another braced Tantalus from falling. I hissed, “Ah, fuck!”
The two guards eased Tantalus to the floor, safely behind the green line I had baited him into crossing. The stabbing guard snarled, “You’ll die for this!”
“What else is new?” I rolled my eyes, then ripped a corner of the robe Sarah had given me to wrap my bloody hand.
Tantalus shook off the guards and snapped, “I’ll fucking kill you myself!”
“You’re repeating yourself. Maybe you should get your head examined.”
“Oh, fuck you!” he raged.
He lunged toward me from the floor, over the green line again. So, I thrust my leg out between the bars and stomped on his hand with my bare foot, feeling the bones crunch beneath my heel. I jerked my leg back in, before the guards could stab me there, too. Tantalus let out a considerable shriek.
A new guard shouted down the stairwell at the far end of the dungeon, “He’s dead. He’s fucking dead!”
One looked to the other and barked back, “That’s what we’ve been saying—"
The guard at the stairs shouted louder, “ Rex Terian is dead! Someone stabbed him with a bone knife and killed him!”
A surge of panic shot through me, and I yelled from my cell, “Was he with the contra when it happened?”
The stair guard yelled, “Yes, what does it matter? Rex is dead!”
I shook my head over and over, dread filling me. “No, this can’t… no .”
“Your beloved consort is dead,” Tantalus gloated as he stood and cradled his broken hand. “A pity I didn’t get to do her myself.”
“No, no, no,” I mumbled in disbelief as I backed up in the cell. My spine hit the wall, and I slid down it until my tail hit the floor and my knees were close to my chest. “No, no, no—"
“And now that Rex, who according to you held all the power, is dead, then I guess I don’t have to worry about what he would allow me to do to you,” Tantalus said as he stalked to my cell door. “I can do whatever I want. I have all the power, Jac. I’m in control of what happens to you now.” He turned to the guards and barked, “Open his door.”
“We don’t work for you, Tantalus—"
“You don’t work for anyone at the moment, but I know where Rex keeps his money and if you would like to still get paid, you’ll listen to me and open his fucking door!”
The guards huffed, then one unlocked my door.
But all I did was fight the images in my mind of Sarah’s limp, dead body. With a bone knife sticking in it. “No, no, no…”
Tantalus bragged as he swaggered inside. “I’m going to keep you for my pet until I get bored of you. You go ahead and keep saying no—I like it when they struggle.”
Finally, he loomed over me. “What, no comeback this time?” He nudged my foot with his. “Come on. It’s no fun if you don’t fight it.” He kicked my leg, so I pulled it closer to me and away from him.
“The champion, indeed,” he laughed and turned to the guards, while I slowly, quietly inched upward, planning my escape. “Look at him now, boys. Whimpering about his dead consort. A shame the people can’t see him like this—then they would see what their champ—"
I stood behind Tantalus and twisted his head until his neck bones ground and crunched against his spinal cord, killing him. The guards leapt to lock the door, but I was faster. The nearest guard thrust his bone knife at me, but I side-stepped it, turned his wrist the other direction and stabbed the second guard in the gut. He fell. Then, I kicked the first guard, took his knife, and stabbed him in his neck, turning the blade before I pulled it back out.
The second guard—the one I stabbed in the stomach—tried to crawl for the exit, but I flung the knife into his back. He tried to scream and couldn’t, so he kept trying to drag himself to the exit, streaking a trail of blood and viscera on the floor.
I swiped the first guard’s shoes—not a perfect fit, but they would do—and walked to the second guard as he tried to get away. I pulled the knife from his back, and his lungs hissed through the new hole in his back as he suffocated on his own blood. I pilfered his pants and knife, tucking it into the folds of my robe.
I refused to believe Sarah was dead. Not until I saw her body myself.
Baiting Tantalus had been easy but dealing with a house full of guards who had no boss and no rules would pose a challenge. I crept to the top of the stairs and there were no guards. I peeked over the edge of the floor. Evidently, the guards thought their boss’ demise was the perfect excuse to loot his manor. Some of them fought over valuables, but all of them were too busy to notice me at first.
Carefully, I emerged from the stairwell and snuck toward Rex’s bedroom, dodging the guards from room to room. The bedroom was the last place I had seen Sarah, so it was the first place I would look for her or clues. With every step, I prayed she had separated from Rex before he was killed. But before I got to the bedroom, a looting guard spotted me from an office.
I put my finger to my lips and said, “Shh.”
“You can put the knife down.” He laughed and went back to stashing goods in his rucksack, “No one cares, boy.”
“How’s that?”
“Rex is dead. Taking his shit is our severance package. The whole city has melted down over his death. There’s riots in the streets, boy. Faithless is not safe for the living. Take what you can and get out of here. That’s what I’m doing.”
“And what of the dead?”
He shrugged. “Fuck ‘em.” He slung his rucksack over his shoulder and left the office.
I didn’t buy it. There were too many guards for all of them to be in agreement about looting Rex’s manor. I watched the other guards from the doorway, before I made my way to the bedroom. None of them were guarding anything. They were taking it. There were several guards up and down the hallway, too many to avoid for long. Another fight broke out, this time over a pornographic tapestry in the room next to Rex’s bedroom.
The fight was brutal, made worse when one of the guards set fire to the tapestry. “Fine, you want it so bad, there .”
The guard holding it dropped it to punch the arsonist, but he had dropped it onto a runner rug that caught fire immediately. The runner ran the length of the hallway, and soon, the fire did, too.
I ducked into Rex’s bedroom to escape the blaze. Inside Rex’s bedroom, a guard shouted, “Hey, that’s the prisoner! Get him!”
Fuck .
The first guard came at me when I was near the doorway. I crouched as he punched at me, thrust my head and shoulders forward and brought him over my back, then dumped him into the hallway and into the fire. He bolted back toward the bedroom, but I slammed the door in his face and locked it.
I turned around in time to get kicked in the stomach and knocked my head back against the door, falling to the floor. The guard reared back to kick me again, but I punched him in the cock, rendering him doubled over. I stabbed him in the back twice, once in each lung, then pushed him to the floor.
I flung my knife into the eye of the next guard who came at me. He collapsed.
The final fourth guard, who had stayed back the whole time, put his hands up. “I’m just here to swipe some of Rex’s shit. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Then you shouldn’t have gone to work for Rex Terian.” As I walked to the second floor balcony, I kept a knife aimed at the guard, like I was going to throw at him. I shut the doors behind myself and took a breath of the fresh air on Rex’s private balcony.
The only other place Sarah could be is the throne room.
I looked in the direction of the arena but couldn’t see it from his balcony. There was smoke over the city. Between me and that throne room were thousands of people, both living and dead, most of whom had chosen violence the moment they could. Before I would reach the city though, there was a small forest.
And before that, the moat.
I couldn’t go back through the manor to get to the main exits—the fire had closed off that option. Going around the manor would take too long, and I didn’t know who else I might run into if I tried it. Or what else I might run into. The creatures in the moat were bad enough and took a truly mad person to think it was a good idea to have them on their own property, so I could only imagine the other beasts that might lurk on Rex’s estate.
I would have to first cross the moat. There was no way around it.
I closed my eyes and let loose a breath to try and quell my anxiety. Then, I looked at the question before me. How do I cross a deadly, monster-filled moat, when I can’t even swim due to my fear of water? There was nothing in Rex’s bedroom that would be useful for the task. I recalled an office on the first floor. It had a padded bench that could possibly work as a raft.
I climbed over the railing and scaled the side of the manor. The mortar between the stone bit at my fingers, but I managed until I could safely drop onto the grass. I clung to the manor as I walked toward the office, watching and waiting for a tentacle to pop out of the moat like it did last time I was there. Quickly, I peeked in the window, but the room was filled by guards.
Fight the guards, steal the bench, try to float across a deadly moat or, figure out another way. I cursed my luck and stared at the moat.
“If only you had a bridge.”
I looked around and saw no one. But then Omen dropped from the private balcony above me. I laughed and moved to hug her, but my arms went through her instead. She was back to her ghostly form.
I sighed and smiled. “Sorry you’re no longer corporeal, but gods, I’m glad to see you. Have you seen Sarah?”
“No. I was at my associate’s house when I realized things were taking too long, so I started to make my way here on foot. It’s impossible to be sneaky in a carriage. I was almost here by the time the riots started. I heard Rex was stabbed in the throne room.”
“I’ve heard the same thing. Do you think—"
She shook her head. “I won’t believe Sarah is dead until I see her body for myself. She’s already survived things…she’s strong, Jac. There’s no sense in giving up on her now.”
“I’m not. I’m going to get to that throne room or die trying. If he was stabbed there, then there’s a good chance she’s the one who did it, since they went there together so often.”
“Makes sense. Now, to cross the moat. Ready?”
“You have a bridge tucked away somewhere?” I half-joked.
She smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. “You can’t swim, right?”
“No, and even if I could, I wouldn’t swim in that moat.” I suppressed a shudder. “There are—"
“Beasts, yeah, I know. I’m going to need you to trust me.”
I frowned. “What do you mean by that, Omen?”
She held up a Ladrian’s femur. “Because I’m going to swim us across the moat, while you hang onto this bone.”
I shook my head, my stomach pitching with stupid fear. “I’m not—"
“Remember when I let you into my home and you didn’t know it was a ship, because I kept it under an illusion?”
“Yes, so?”
“I will project an illusion to keep the beasts from bothering us,” she said with a grin. “We will be invisible to them in the water.”
My body recoiled internally. “I don’t think—"
“We don’t have the time for you to think.” She marched to the water’s edge and waited. “It’s now or never, Jac.”
I took a quick breath for courage and joined her. “You’re sure this will work?”
“Yes.”
My skepticism got the best of me. “Have you ever done anything like this before?”
“We will need to be absolutely silent in the water. Otherwise, my focus on the illusion could break.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I pointed out.
“Shh.” She closed her eyes to concentrate. Slowly, she slipped into the water and held out the femur for me to hold. She nodded and waited.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I sat with my legs over the edge of the deadly water, waiting for something to grab me and pull me down. When nothing did, I dipped my body into the water, with panic surrounding me as much as the water did. I reached up for the bone and pulled myself back to the surface with it. Then, I nodded to Omen, and she began to swim with one hand in front of her and one hand on the femur.
Her kicks were beneath the water, not splashing at the top. No noise. I prayed to all the gods I could think of, while I clutched the femur and floated next to Omen. Something touched my foot, and I gasped to scream, but she shot me a harsh glance, before she kept swimming. I tucked my legs tight to my body, but that made me move too much in the water, and I almost bobbed onto my side. I had to let my legs dangle slightly, or I would sink us both. Thankfully, whatever had touched my leg did not return for me.
Once we reached the other side, I carefully pulled myself out of the water and ran into the trees for some comforting distance between me and the moat. Omen jogged to keep up and we wrung our clothes out as best we could. She laughed and tucked her femur back into her robes.
“That was interesting.”
“ Interesting ? Your interests and mine differ wildly.” I took a deep breath and stared at the moat. “Never thought I’d go into that thing willingly.”
“I didn’t think you would either.”
“I’m just glad your illusion held up.”
“Yeah.” She smirked and said, “So, you wanna hit the stables, see if we can find an available carriage? Going on foot—"
“Omen, your illusion…”
“It’s going to take a long time to get to the arena, especially with all the rioting.”
I braced my hands on my hips and narrowed my eyes on her. “The illusion was what got us through the moat, right?” Surely it could conceal us through the city.
She smiled with pity in her eyes. “Do you really want to know?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Remember how I said you can always count on me for brutal honesty?”
“Yes.”
She almost grimaced before saying, “I didn’t technically use an illusion to get us through the moat.”
I thought I might throw up. “But something touched my foot and then it left me alone, so why—"
“I told you to keep quiet for a reason. Most water beasts hunt by sound. We kept quiet. So, in effect, we were invisible to them. It’s… kind of like an illusion,” she shrugged innocently. “An illusion you were participating in.”
I ran my fingers through my wet hair. “After all of this is over, we’re gonna have a talk about your idea of brutal honesty, Omen.”
“What?” She flashed me a saucy grin. “It worked.”
“A long talk.” I stomped toward the stables.
“You can say thank you any time, Jac, for me saving your ass.”
I stopped and turned back to her. “Why do you even have a spare femur?”
She arched a brow. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
I huffed and headed for the stables.