Chapter 25 #2
Sex in a forest at night had its challenges. By the time Meri undid the rest of Sinan’s clothing and he helped her take off her pants, they were both laughing at the clumsiness of it all.
There was nothing clumsy about how Sinan pressed her up against a tree trunk, lifting her off the ground with surprising strength.
The two of them moved together with a steady rocking motion, the friction sending waves of pleasure through her.
She climaxed first, biting him hard in his shoulder to stop herself from crying out.
He came inside of her a moment later, gasping for air as if she had drained his breath away with her passion.
The two of them spent a few frantic moments scrambling to rearrange their clothing and pick up the ghost lanterns they had left on the forest floor, as Meri scanned their surroundings for any hint of danger.
“Sorry about your arm.” She touched his shoulder, but Sinan shook his head and lifted his shirt as he brought his ghost lantern closer to him.
Meri could see her bite marks in Sinan’s pale skin, but as she watched, the flesh smoothed over, gleaming white like polished bone in the green glow.
Meri repressed a shiver. The afterglow from their lovemaking still warmed her body, but the unnatural healing reminded her Sinan was still alien and unknowable.
“I’m glad I won’t need Valentina to cure me again, but I’d be happier if I could even adjust this lamp.” Sinan cupped the lantern in one hand, and the dim light remained unchanged.
She had thought she had hidden her revulsion well, but his gaze slid away from her as he spoke. She leaned forward to kiss him, unsure why she felt guilty. Whatever happened, this attraction she and Gallmau had for Sinan couldn’t continue outside the confines of their current situation.
“Gallmau. Don’t forget.” She pulled on Sinan’s shirt to straighten it. “I’ll come and get you for second watch. Make sure he’s too exhausted to wake up.”
He grinned at that, then bent to pick up the water pouches.
He took a few steps into the darkness and turned back.
The ghost lantern’s patterned light played over his features, and once again he changed from an attractive young man to something eerily beautiful and not quite human.
“Thank you for not killing me when I came out to find you—and when we first met.”
With that bittersweet reminder of their history, he slipped away into the shadows.
Meri passed the rest of her watch uneventfully after her tryst with Sinan and returned to the camp to find the necromancer wrapped in a sleeping Gallmau’s muscular arms. Sinan woke with her light touch on his face and wriggled out of the prince’s embrace without waking him.
Meri pressed her lips to Sinan’s for a brief moment, then crawled into the warm space next to Gallmau.
She regretted her choice of sleeping arrangements when they all awoke in the pre-dawn darkness.
Gallmau was talking to Meri about the Royal nursery and wedding arrangements before she could even untangle herself from the bedroll.
She responded with a string of obscenities in every language she could swear in, which was a long enough list to eventually shut him up.
The food Gallmau had brought had run out, so they broke down and ate a hurried breakfast of Sinan’s corpse meat, which fortunately tasted like ordinary dried beef. She mumbled a prayer of apology over it, hoping that made it less impure before they all headed out.
The sky started to lighten as they passed through a stretch of cleared and abandoned farmland and into the cover of another grove of trees.
The Azhdarchid should be out and about soon.
Gallmau laid out a rough map of their surroundings with a collection of twigs and detritus from the forest, which mercifully distracted him from bringing up Abarsam or harassing her about how she felt.
Sinan hunted around for a suitable tree for climbing, as Valentina recited an impressive litany of facts about the Azhdarchid.
She had written something called a monograph about the monster, and among its other not-so-charming attributes, the giant Archaic creature enjoyed feasting on corpses and flew only during the day.
They had left a tasty trail of dead bodies for the flying beast to find, but they had no way of knowing how many more foot soldiers their enemies had at their disposal.
Sinan scrambled up one of the largest trees Meri had ever laid eyes on with enviable ease.
She could have made it to the top faster, of course, but a firm shake of Valentina’s head and Gallmau’s stricken look when Meri suggested it ruled out that possibility.
Sinan vanished into the vast canopy above them as the hum of morning birdsong burst into a crescendo.
When he came climbing down a short time later, sunshine had begun to stream through the green leaves above.
Dropping the last several feet to the ground, he made his way over to Gallmau’s rocks and twigs outline.
A sheen of sweat made his skin gleam in the dappled light, and he smelled like crushed green leaves.
“There.” Sinan pointed to a spot on the crude map north of their current location, where Gallmau had built a small pile of pebbles. “The Azhdarchid flew from that direction. You said there were caves in the bluffs there.”
“They’re not as comfortable as the lodge, but we camped in them a few times while hunting.
” Gallmau used a branch to draw a line from their current location to the rocks.
“The caves could be used as a shelter, but I’m not sure why Rixende’s abductors would have selected them as a base over the chateau. ”
“North is where I thought they might be holding her.” Sinan pointed to a series of light-colored leaves Gallmau had laid out. “Is that the river that empties into the lake?”
“It passes close to the caves, and there should be some cover along its banks.” Gallmau glanced over at Valentina, then Meri. “Maybe the two of you should stay here. It would be safer.”
Meri was close to pulling out one of her knives at this point, but Sinan broke in before she could show Gallmau exactly what she thought of his suggestion.
“Splitting up now would be unwise. It’s possible our enemies are using a blood trail to track the rescue parties.
Meri and I are the least likely people to have left any residue for that spell, but everyone else on this quest is well-known at Court.
Even if the Order is doing most of the work, I’m sure someone from Lutecia is part of this. ”
“No one sucked any blood from me in Court that I remember.” Gallmau rubbed at his chin, mercifully distracted from his idiotic plan to take on their enemies without her help.
“It could be a different bodily fluid.” Sinan raised an eyebrow at the prince. Gallmau turned pink and gave the necromancer an embarrassed grin back.
“If that’s true then they’d be able to locate Abarsam and his party.
” Valentina eyed the leaf river on the map and left unsaid the possibility the Grand Vizier was among the sorcerers doing the tracking.
They were all thinking it, anyway, even Meri.
“He would have stayed close to water if at all possible. Aquamages are incredibly powerful near their element.”
Sinan suggested Gallmau take the lead as they made their way toward the river, which mollified the prince and prevented Meri from coming to actual blows with Gallmau.
As they marched over the unprotected expanse of a meadow, their feet crunching over dried fall grasses, she and Sinan took the rear position, much as Tharin and Karabil had in their old crew.
They kept Valentina in the more protected spot in the center of their group.
At least this was the most exposed they would be until they approached the caves.
Gallmau had estimated they had about an hour’s walk at a brisk pace until they reached the river, which they could follow up in elevation to the caves.
Hopefully the damn flying monster their enemies were using to hunt for them would be too busy with the carnage they had left behind for at least that long.
A breeze picked up, cool and pleasant against Meri’s face. The scent it brought was anything but. She blew a short note on her whistle to get Gallmau and Valentina to stop. “Fire magic. I can smell it, and something else?—"
Sinan finished the sentence for her. “Death.”
Meri pushed past the others, an aching weight in her chest—grief and despair mixed with hope she was wrong.
She wasn’t.
The first body would have been too burnt to identify, if the giant bodyguard hadn’t been wearing a curved sword with a hilt studded with turquoise—the color of water. Another weapon enchanted with aquamancy, another gift from the most powerful water mage in Kush to someone he had treasured.
Baahir lay dead several feet away, curled on his side as if to protect himself.
The enchanted blue kaftan his father had given him was untouched and untouchable by fire, but his face was scorched and blackened, and there was a musket hole in his forehead.
A beautiful, brilliant boy with his entire life in front of him, cut down far too soon.
Bile rising in her throat, Meri stumbled forward until she sank to her knees beside the last victim.
Abarsam the Magnificent lay on his back, his arms outstretched, as if to embrace the heavens above him.
A fire-blackened hole was all that remained of the center of his chest, and both of his eyes had been cut out.
Rage blocked out her vision, and anger constricted her chest until she thought she wouldn’t be able to take another breath. She would find who had done this and kill him, if it was the last thing she ever did.
A hand, large and warm, rested on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” Gallmau squeezed her arm, his voice choked with sadness. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I do.” Sinan crouched down across from Meri, scanning the body. “This doesn’t make sense.”
Meri exploded. “What about this doesn’t make sense to you? One of your kind murdered Abarsam, then mutilated his corpse. He’s in Paradise now, and I swear by all Three Prophets I’ll send his killer to Hell.”
“Whoever did this isn’t one of the Blessed.” Sinan wasn’t backing down. “That I know.”
“He’s right.” Valentina had been bent over examining Baahir’s body, but she straightened and walked over to them.
“You’re taking the word of a death witch now.” Meri had to lash out at someone, and Valentina was an easy target. “Abarsam was hacked up the same way Sinan used to create those bone eyeballs you pretended to be so horrified by.”
Valentina said nothing in response, only biting her lower lip and hugging her chest with her arms. There were dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there this morning. Too much death for anyone who wasn’t a necromancer.
“That’s the point.” Sinan’s voice was flat, without emotion. If Meri snarling the insult she had used as a seductive nickname last night affected him in any way, he wasn’t showing it. “It’s exactly what I did to Cliona. That’s why it wasn’t one of my people.”
“Arguing about this here isn’t helping,” Gallmau broke in. “Let’s get to the water and out of sight, then we can talk—and try to get the story straight.”
“That’s your problem.” Sinan directed this comment at Gallmau, the other person he had fucked last night, to make everything a little worse.
“You keep thinking this is your story—a heroic poem about wise sorcerers, evil necromancers, and princesses who need saving. That’s not what’s happening here. ”
“What’s happening is that I’m going to kill the Bone Lord who did this, and if you get in my way I’ll take you out as well.” Meri snarled the words at Sinan, and Valentina broke her silence.
“Meri, you need to listen.” Valentina gestured around her at the expanse of death and charred grass.
“This has been staged to make it seem like Abarsam and the others were attacked by a fire mage and then mutilated by a necromancer. It’s the exact inverse of what happened to me and Jacques.
If I hadn’t killed my attacker, I’m willing to bet my body would be in a pool of water, with my eyes cut out.
A good story for an aquamage joining forces with a Bone Lord.
Only I’m a medica, and a necromancer like Sinan wouldn’t want my eyeballs. ”
“I’d want your hands.” Sinan added this without a hint of remorse, and Valentina clasped herself tighter and shuddered.
Meri stared down at Abarsam’s body, some of her blood-red anger dissipating into confusion. “What should your kind have chopped out of him?”
“His kidneys.” Sinan pulled at the burnt remains of the Grand Vizier’s clothing, and he and Valentina spent a few minutes examining the body as Meri sat back and tried not to get sick. “There’s no incision on either side of the flank, and they didn’t go through the abdomen, either.”
“You’re back to blaming the Noviodunam for everything.” Meri had trouble admitting when she was wrong, granted, but the condition of Abarsam’s body didn’t prove anything. “You think there’s no necromancer involved at all.”
“There’s a beast master here, no doubt.” Sinan rubbed his hands clean on a patch of unburnt grass. “But the wise sorcerer in the Royal Court poet’s story wanted to be able to frame both Jacques and Abarsam for their respective murders. I’m just not sure why.”