Chapter 84
Allie
Ryker pushed Lioran into the lone seat awaiting him in the dungeons the second he’d recovered consciousness. His chainmail armor, devoid of blood but muddied, rattled as he readjusted his position.
Only the two of them, Dax, and I would witness this discussion.
“It smells like goat.” Lioran grimaced.
“If I were you, I’d be thankful my nose hasn’t been broken yet,” Dax said. “Though that can be arranged.”
Lioran twitched his cheeks, trying to dislodge the blindfold. The leather creaked, but didn’t budge, and he gave up with a huff. “There really is no need for such melodrama. My powers do not concern the mind. They still lie with the sea’s song, like our great ancestors’ before–”
“Why did you beg to be captured, Lioran?” Ryker’s voice cut through the dungeon.
“I did not beg.” Even blindfolded, with his hands and feet tied, he stuck his nose up in the air. “I simply propositioned a negotiation–”
“You are in no position to negotiate,” I said. “But your stay here will depend on what answers you give us.”
“No need to be melodramatic, I am a willing prisoner. And I have come prepared with information.” Lioran shook his head. “What do you want to know?”
“Where’s Beren?” Ryker asked.
“I don’t even know where I am,” Lioran said haughtily. “Probably ran away. I’m sure he had an exit plan he didn’t deign to tell us about.”
“What do you know?” I asked.
Lioran sighed. “That your uncle knows who emptied your vaults. A secret he promised to take to the grave.”
I sucked in a breath. “How do you know about Silas?”
Of all the people I expected Lioran to talk about today, my uncle was at the bottom of the list.
“As I said, I came prepared.” He grinned snidely. “As soon as Silas took the throne, he tried to make a pact with the Northern Clans, which we led him to believe we accepted. He wanted support for taking the throne.”
My jaw ticked. The Protectorate had never debased itself by making pacts with the Northern Clans, of all people.
“What did he offer you for this support?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
“Information about you. And your cousins.”
Dax and I exchanged a hurried glance that Ryker did not miss. But he didn’t probe, despite the curiosity wafting off him.
“Surely, he didn’t tell you anything about Clara,” Dax said. “The least he could do is protect his own daughter.”
A bubble of sharp laughter escaped me. “Silas has proven he only cares about himself. What exactly did he reveal?”
“Nothing we didn’t already know,” Lioran said. “And a lot of useless information. As if we cared about abandoned libraries and that your thumb ring is named Fanglore.”
“He also gave you wrong information, it seems,” Ryker said.
Because he had paid enough attention to know my precious ring was called Fangloop, which I might have mentioned only once or twice. Despite fighting the very real urge to scream at Lioran and maybe cave Silas’ head in, warmth spread through me as I gave Ryker a small smile.
Dax also relaxed. If Silas had revealed the truth about him, it would’ve been the most important secret the Northern Clans could have gotten their greedy hands on.
Which begged the question–why hadn’t Silas said anything about him?
He’d proven he didn’t have the heart, so there was no reason to protect Dax’s identity.
Or maybe Lioran just hadn’t been privy to that conversation.
“Did he contact any other Clans?” I asked.
“Didn’t care all that much to ask,” Lioran said. “Beren dealt with it. He dealt with everything.”
“And you just followed,” Ryker said. All the emotion he’d kept from his words swirled inside of him, gnawing on his mind. “Did you teach Nadya how to infiltrate the crater?”
“I only became aware of the girl’s existence when she came to us before the attack. I doubt Edrin knew either. He doesn’t care about anything if it’s not at the bottom of a bottle or tucked inside his mistress’ bosom–”
Dax rolled his eyes. “And he calls us melodramatic.”
“It’s the truth,” Lioran protested, shimmying his bound hands. In fact, he was twitching everywhere.
I narrowed my eyes. “What else?”
His nostrils flared.
“You want sanctuary,” I said, unflinching. “Earn it.”
“You were right, Huntress,” he said. “These times have changed you. I warned Beren not to go against Dria Vegheara’s descendants. But he never listened to anything other than his own voice and greed.”
Neither of us spoke, letting the silence enact the pressure for us.
“Whatever messages Beren had to send, he used the shards' reflection to do it. I’m honestly curious how she replied,” Lioran said at last. “But you’re asking the wrong questions. Nadya was only a pawn. Raised to be one. Will die one.”
“Careful, Lioran,” was all Ryker needed to say to get the man to fidget in his seat more. “She wrecked enough to be important.”
“And knows enough to be dangerous,” I said.
Lioran sighed the kind of sigh that deflates a person, even one as prideful as him. “I wanted to allow you passage to our shores when the children were sick. I thought the plague was a normal consequence of all the ice you have here. I had no clue it was provoked.”
My gaze instantly flew to Ryker. His face hadn’t changed from that unforgiving sharpness, even as I felt the energy tremble in him.
“Beren persuaded me not to,” Lioran went on.
“He said your fall would be our triumph and you’d already turned your back on us, in attitude, if not name.
I agreed. I–” He clenched his jaw and tightened his lips, but the truth finally wormed itself out of him.
“–I wanted you to know your place. Even at the risk of those younglings’ lives. ”
Dax was right.
There were many, many, many more bad men than good ones.
“I didn’t know your mother would die,” he whispered. “Please believe me.”
“It makes no difference,” Ryker said through the whirlwind roaring inside of him. “The gods will judge you all the same.”
“Did Nadya reveal how she set off the plague?” I asked.
It couldn’t have been difficult if one girl had managed to ravage an entire city. Which meant the same heinous strategy could be used in other locations.
Like Aquila.
“Are your ears clogged?” Lioran said, sounding more nasally. “I told you I hadn’t known about her involvement–”
Lioran yelped as Ryker grabbed his hair and pulled his head back until the pulsing veins on his throat stood out. His neck was bent at such an unnatural angle, a mere flick would have finished him.
Ryker didn’t even look down at him.
“Careful how you speak to the Huntress, Lioran,” he said coldly.
Lioran winced and gargled intelligible words.
“You will apologize and tell us everything you know. Or you will regret becoming our prisoner,” Ryker said in that same detached tone. A Commander’s voice. “Got it?”
“Y–ye–”
Ryker let him go.
Lioran hunched forward, pitifully gasping breath after breath.
I didn’t care.
“I’m so–sorry, Huntress,” he wheezed.
Only then did Ryker step away. Lioran recoiled as he brushed past him.
Good.
“That heir of hers planned everything. And before you ask, only Beren knows who sent her,” he said, voice now raspy and subdued. “Only Beren knows exactly where she comes from. Somewhere cold, he said. Had toughened her up.”
A quarter of Malhaven was cold. Few places were colder than the Northern Clans’ territories, however.
“What about those masked attackers?” I asked. “Where do they come from? What are they?”
“Abominations.” Lioran shivered. “They don’t drink.
They don’t sleep. They’re drawn by fire, as if they want to let the flames destroy them, but they can’t.
They just showed up with a missive from that blasted heir.
Even Beren avoided them. But we needed all the help we could get to invade the crater… ”
“So you accepted them among your troops,” Ryker drawled. “Like true, righteous leaders.”
“Someone had to walk through that deadly mist,” Lioran protested.
“Where did you get the poison?” Dax asked, voice darkening.
The fog had horrified us all, but it had shattered something inside of him. He was right. Without an antidote for the poison, any city could be decimated in less than an hour.
“The shipment came from the Fair Isles,” Lioran said.
“Every important shipment comes through there.” Dax tilted his head to the side. “Or used to. They closed their ports when the war started.”
“Every port is open if you know who to pay, but the ships take their sweet time arriving now.” Lioran leaned back in his seat.
“That’s why we waited so long to attack.
We had to take every precaution. We knew you’d be tired after the war, but the poison gave us leverage.
Should have, at least. You managed to muck up that plan, too. ”
I wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, but it indeed stung that it had taken a delayed shipment for them to postpone the attack and not my threats of burying them in snow and ice.
“I’m sure the threats helped,” Ryker said gently, still glowering at Lioran.
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “I just have to be fiercer next time.”
“The fiercest.”
I hid my laughter with a cough.
Dax narrowed his eyes at me before turning back to Lioran. “I’m assuming the poison came in a wooden crate.”
“You are correct,” Lioran said.
“Any stamp on it? Any residue? What kind of wood?” Dax pressed.
Lioran clicked his tongue in annoyance. “I don’t know what bloody type of wood. We only cared about what was inside.”
Ryker hummed, crossing his wrists behind his back. He began to circle Lioran. Each one of his calm steps made the man flinch. “So you don’t know who this heir is or what he truly wants–”
“C–correct,” Lioran said.
“–and Beren has all the useful information we actually need. So, Lioran, I have one question for you.” Ryker stopped behind him and yanked his chair back, tilting it until Lioran’s feet dangled in the air. “What good are you to us?”
“Wait!” Lioran licked his lips, swaying his body so he’d rebalance the chair. Ryker didn’t let him and kept tipping him back. “I can tell you why the crater is bleeding!”
Ryker pushed the chair until its front two legs thunked against the floor. Lioran almost fell on his face, but Ryker steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“Your father–” Lioran licked his lips. “–he stole a piece of Solkar’s Heart.”
Ryker yanked his hand away from Lioran as if scalded.
His breathing turned shallow as pure shock and disappointment coursed through him.
“Your mother showed him the star’s secret location, but he always refused to say where.
At least to us. But one time, he got plastered, as he usually did, and confessed he’d crept down some stairs and broke a piece of it.
” Lioran worked his jaw. “A piece which he also lost. Or had it stolen. The fool didn’t even know.
The crater quickened his death as a result, I’m sure of it. ”
“Where’s this fragment of Solkar’s Heart now?” Ryker asked, fury blistering underneath the surface.
“He didn’t even know, you think I do?” Lioran huffed a mean laugh; he wasn’t the fastest learner, was he?
“Beren doesn’t have it, much to his dismay.
But whoever found it or stole it used it to redirect some of its power.
A lot of it. That’s why your precious crater’s bleeding and we weren’t getting our share. ”
“Why didn’t Beren try to steal that piece?” I asked. “Seems much easier than invading another land.”
“Why settle for a pebble when we can have the entire star, Lioran? We deserve it,” he mocked.
“Fat load of good that did us. Listen to me Ryker.” He shifted in his seat, looking decidedly two feet away from where Ryker actually stood, but at least he got the direction right.
“Beren will not stop. I don’t know how this heir convinced him, but he’s been talking about being a general in a new world order.
Fancy lies, but they twisted his mind. He will do anything and kill anyone to make that happen. ”
“Is that why you came to us?” Ryker asked.
It took a few tense moments, but Lioran finally nodded.
“A darkness has taken hold of him,” he said and, for the first time, true terror coated his words. “It was only a matter of time before he turned on Edrin and me to weed out any competition.”
“Edrin’s dead, so at least that’s sorted,” Dax said without any emotion.
Lioran’s lips parted in shock for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Better than the liver and that rotten leg of his getting him first. At least he didn’t suffer much.”
“Excuse me if I don’t have pity for a man who walked over his own dead soldiers,” I said and meant every single word. “What happens to your Clan now? His?”
Lioran sighed, deflating. Then he shrugged. “I guess the Blood Brotherhood can deal with them.”
I gaped at him. “Just like that? Flinging the responsibility of thousands onto someone else?”
“They’ll fare better in your hands than Beren’s.”
“You will as well,” I said.“You hadn’t even thought about your people, did you?”
“What do you want me to say, Huntress?” he spit out. “No, I didn’t think about them. Yes, I know I’m safer as your prisoner than Beren’s ally. At least I know you won’t draw out my death.”
“We’re still debating,” Dax drawled.
“No, Lioran. We won’t kill you, you’re much more valuable to us alive.” Ryker leaned over until his mouth was right next to Lioran’s ear. The man trembled. “Because Beren doesn’t know you’ve changed allegiances and he will not find out if you do what you’re told.”