6. Clash of Stone and Steel
Clash of Stone and Steel
Talyn
Talyn turned the daggers over in her hands as she stood outside the door to Cyra and Bressen’s bedchamber later that night.
It would take two ports to get where she needed to be.
One to get onto the other side of the door without opening it, several steps, then another port to get to the center of the bed where the lord and lady slept curled around each other.
She’d have to go for Bressen first, so she hoped whatever position he was in gave her good access to his heart or throat.
If he awoke before she was able to kill him, she wasn’t sure how long it would take him to realize what was going on.
She needed him dead before he opened his eyes.
Once the lord was taken care of, then she’d worry about Cyra.
Cyra would be both easier and harder to kill.
Easier because, even with the recent boost to the lady’s powers, Talyn was sure she could kill Cyra before the lady realized what was happening.
Harder because she didn’t actually want to kill the woman.
Talyn had never changed her mind about a job she took before, but she was reconsidering it now.
History had branded syphons as extremely dangerous perimortals that needed to be eliminated before they could amass too much power, but Talyn had a hard time picturing the woman who’d tried desperately to befriend her these last few weeks as a power-hungry despot in the making.
The lady had committed a crime, Talyn reminded herself, perhaps more than one, although the details varied depending on which of the servants she spoke to.
One swore Cyra had melted the minds of the people in Fernweh who’d burned her family’s vineyard.
Another claimed she’d set a building on fire with the men inside it before the merman had doused the flames.
Still another claimed Cyra had turned all the villagers to mice and set cats on them, then laughed as the felines hunted the rodents down.
That last had been said with approval rather than censure.
Talyn wasn’t sure which version to believe, if any, but Cyra had done something to the people of Fernweh in retaliation for the destruction of the vineyard.
She knew that much. Cyra herself had let it slip that she was supposed to be under house arrest, although clearly no one had dared to enforce the restriction.
Talyn smiled wryly and shook her head at her own hypocrisy. It was a cruel irony that she was trying to sit in judgement of Cyra considering her own drive for vengeance had made her what she was.
She’d been only sixteen when she’d gone after the man who’d torn apart her family.
It had been easy to lure him to the abandoned building on the outskirts of town that night ten years ago, letting him think she was a prostitute.
He’d been confused when she suddenly shifted into someone else – that face she always wore when she killed someone now - and his confusion changed to shock when he’d felt her dagger sink into his side.
She hadn’t killed him, though. Not immediately.
She’d spent the next several hours letting his screams be a balm to the pain of her loss.
In the end, the man’s death hadn’t brought Talyn any peace. If anything, it had only ignited the need to shed more blood, the desire to purge the world of people like him. Thus she’d begun her journey toward becoming the most dangerous and notorious assassin on the continent.
Talyn didn’t always have the luxury of killing only those who deserved it, but if the person hiring her was worse than the person she was asked to kill, she had no problem taking her client’s money, then killing them both. She considered it a service to mankind.
Now, here she was standing outside the bedroom of a couple who were – as far as she could tell – relatively decent people.
The lord was an arrogant ass, but that wasn’t an offense worthy of death, much as she wished it was.
Likewise, she had a hard time picturing Cyra hurting anyone unless she was protecting someone she cared about.
Talyn swore under her breath. She’d already taken half of Sandrian’s money for this job, and if she backed out now, her reputation would take a serious hit. She’d have to kill Sandrian to keep him from spreading the word of her failure.
For that matter, it wouldn’t be hard to justify killing him anyway.
He’d kidnapped and threatened Lord Aidan’s consort in order to get a few pieces of jewelry.
For what reason, she still didn’t know, but at this point she could make the case that Sandrian deserved her dagger more than Cyra and Bressen did.
Talyn shook away the thoughts. She needed to stop weighing the morality of it. She was the last person who had any right to judge anyone, and she was being paid to do a job, so she’d do it. She still might kill Sandrian later, just because she wanted to, but she’d finish this job first.
Talyn steeled herself. If the gods were good, this would be over in a few seconds.
She ported.
Talyn blinked in confusion as she rematerialized in the same place she’d been standing in front of the door. She ported again, but once more she found herself standing in front of the same door. She frowned, but the issue hit her a second later.
The room was warded. Fuck.
Talyn’s stomach twisted as she realized she’d likely just set off an alarm that told whoever created the wards that someone had just tried to breach them. She had maybe seconds before Bressen or Cyra came crashing through the door to find her standing there.
Talyn ported again, but this time she materialized in the hall outside the sitting room where she’d been. Then she ported again and again and again, as fast as she could to get back down to her own room before someone came looking for her.
She made it as far as the first floor when a wave of power rocked the house, causing her to stagger. She’d felt such a surge before and knew what it meant.
Lord Bressen was awake, and he was furious.
It was well-known among the servants that when Lord Bressen was especially angry, his power pulsed, strongly enough that anyone within a few hundred feet could feel it.
This had been more than just a pulse, though.
This had been a surge strong enough to shake the floor under her feet, like a small earthquake.
Talyn was about to port again when the front door of the house flew open, and several guards rushed in.
Talyn shifted instead into the form of Yarris.
She’d seen him leave the house to head toward the city and assumed he must have the night off.
Hopefully in the chaos, no one would realize he wasn’t supposed to be there.
“What happened?” one of the guards asked Talyn as he rushed up.
The man was in his late thirties and not quite as tall as some of the other guards, but he was solidly built. He had dark blonde hair and a closely trimmed beard. Sully, the Captain of the Guard at Tide’s End.
“I don’t know, sir,” Talyn answered.
“With me,” Sully ordered as he charged up the stairs, and Talyn had no choice but to follow him and the other guards who’d come in.
Just before they reached the landing to the third floor, two large figures barreled into the stairwell before them to head for the fourth floor.
Samhail and Axenus.
Talyn and the rest of the guards followed on their heels, and within seconds Talyn found herself in the last place she wanted to be, back on the fourth floor facing the Lord and Lady of Hiraeth, who were now standing in the hall outside their sitting room.
Lord Bressen wore only a pair of loose black pants that hung low on his hips and gave a tantalizing view of his toned upper body. Cyra had wrapped herself in her silky bathrobe and stood pressed against him while he wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders.
Right here, right now, Cyra didn’t look like the destructor Sandrian insisted she was, but merely like a scared young woman seeking comfort from her husband.
“What happened?” Samhail asked as their whole group stopped in front of the lord and lady.
Unlike Lord Bressen, the pair of black leather pants Samhail wore were tighter and showed off every muscle of his lower body.
Sweet gods, were those his thighs or just well-shaped tree trunks?
At least he was wearing a shirt. The gods had some mercy on her.
“Someone or something set off the wards on our bedroom,” Bressen said, and Talyn was surprised to hear how shaky his voice sounded beneath its skin of ire. “Gods damn it, Cyra just put them up today. I didn’t expect them to be tested so soon.”
Talyn closed her eyes to curse her luck. If Sandrian had sent her that message only a day earlier, the room would have been unwarded, and her targets would now be dead.
“Could they have gone off accidentally?” Axenus asked. “Maybe it was just an animal. Did you see anything?”
“When my power pulsed, I didn’t sense anyone nearby,” Bressen said. “Just the two of you on the third floor and the guards and servants on the first floor. Whatever it was disappeared quickly.”
Talyn’s stomach turned over. She didn’t realize he could sense people nearby through those pulses.
“How could they get away so quickly?” Cyra asked.
“Someone may have tried to open a portal into the room,” Axenus said. “That would have set off the wards, and we know Magdalene has that power.”
Talyn frowned. She’d met Magdalene when she met Sandrian, but she thought the woman was a seer.
“Someone might’ve tried to fly in as well,” Samhail said. “We should check the grounds and the skies.”
“Agreed,” Bressen said. “Axenus, stay with Cyra. Samhail, with me.”
Bressen turned and went back inside, presumably to head for the balcony off his bedroom. Talyn blinked as a loud whoosh sounded, and a pair of huge leathery bat-like wings topped with sharp talons sprang free from Samhail’s back as he disappeared into the bedroom behind the lord.
Gods damn her, those wings…