Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
I was making my way back to Rook’s shop when I couldn’t help myself. The lamp was just so out of tune, so I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath from my diaphragm and started singing it back into shape. It was a busy time of day, in a thriving part of the undercity, a cake and pastry shop across the street from me with an apothecary to its right and a butcher shop on its left. I was singing, pulling the tangled mess of magical music back into place when the door of the pastry shop opened and out stepped an archangel. Gavriel the Destroyer. I’d had the biggest crush on him when I was little, and it had lasted all the way up until I was fifteen and he told me bluntly that he would never consider me marriage material. That had hurt my delicate little unfurling femininity, sending it hiding behind music for the next… Had it only been a decade?
At any rate, I registered who he was and did the only possible thing, which was to take off in a long stride that was almost as good as running. Better than running because it wouldn’t get as much notice as a flat-out sprint. At the next alley, I turned right into it, hoping there would be an exit at the end. Otherwise, I’d stay hidden until he was gone. Forget pride and respectability. If he saw me and recognized me, he’d have me cuffed and on the next train back home if he didn’t just spread his wings and fly me there. That would be traumatic, because he wouldn’t be flying slow for my comfort like he had last time, and that had made me puke. So, no. I was hiding like my life depended on it, because it did.
The winding alley came out on another street that was far less busy and respectable, and the lamps keened for someone to fix them, but I wasn’t going to be seduced by them again. That’s right. Music was my temptation, not some ogre with a nice pair of tusks. Not that they were nice. Whatever.
I was disoriented, but was probably going in the right direction when a tall elf stepped in front of me with the sneer of a thousand years of disappointment gracing his otherwise perfect lips. His fingers curled around my wrist before I could recognize the threat. Elves weren’t dangerous, not like ogres. I mean, elves could be dangerous, particularly when they went to war, because they put all that unnerving grace and immortality into destruction, but usually they were too interested in beauty and art to be a problem.
“You’re the supposed master of music? You in your…” He sputtered as he gazed in horror at my floral spectacle. Maybe it was the hat.
I tugged away from him and dragged him two steps, but his grip was very good. “No idea what you’re talking about.” This must be Master Cutter or one of his deputies. Did the music guild have deputies? He didn’t look like a fighter, but elves were like that, all skinny and disinterested until they put on their gold armor and wiped out your army.
“I hereby charge you with falsely representing the music guild, usurping position, using your stolen authority to take the music guild’s resources and use them for your own enrichment. The sentence for such behavior is?—”
I jerked my hand back and twisted, dragging him around right before an explosion went off, hitting him first, me second, knocking us both down and filling the air with clouds of smoke that smelled of goblin, not the kind that worked in labs behind elaborate doors, no these were assassin gobs.
Absolutely not my best day. I lay there on the pavement while my body leaked essential fluids and Master Cutter’s sneering face loomed over me, frozen in his glazed-eyed death mask. I should push him off, but the explosions were still going off, and I’d forgotten my body armor. I knew I needed armor today.
The distant skittering laughter of the surrounding goblins was cut off by a roar that shook the cobbles under my back. And now things were going to get really messy. It was an ogre’s roar, and it was met by at least two more. Ogres were even worse than goblins. Goblins didn’t eat you without killing you, not like Rook had done to me. And my neck still tingled, even as I slowly bled to death. Maybe not so slowly. Or maybe it was a concussion that was making things so weird and distorted. Maybe it was having a dead Master Cutter on top of me, crushing my lungs. Elves were so heavy for how scrawny they looked.
I shifted and felt the stab in my ribs. Some of the goblin shrapnel had made it through Cutter’s body and into mine. A lot probably. I was stuck to the elf, probably for good. Bad. He was definitely not the body I wanted to be attached to in my last living moments.
The elf was ripped off me, taking several large metal pieces with it. It was like getting stabbed all over again, only more blood loss. Standing over me, Cutter’s limp body dangling from his fist was Rook the Luthier, my fire-chicken perched on his shoulder and gold light patterns chasing over his cheeks, showing that he was as experienced on the battlefield as he was in the music shop.
Only an idiot goblin would attack an ogre prepped for battle, particularly when he was flanked by two others, their skin also chased by light magic that would help them destroy an army of goblins with their bare hands. High-level magic users, all of them. How terrifying.
Rook picked me up and threw me over his shoulders, dislodging Yaga in a flurry of feathers and squawks, possibly not as violent as he could have been, but there was no gentleness, no caution for the metal barbs still sinking through my body, or the open wounds dripping my blood. It was pretty blood, rich red with strands of gold in it. I should probably do something about my blood getting all over Rook. Angel blood was poisonous to his kind. At the very least, it would give him a rash. When I rubbed his neck, he turned his head, and I got to see the welling rage in his eyes. I’d never seen an ogre so angry, and I’d seen them screaming battle cries as they charged me.
I let my hand fall while he grunted and continued forward, his lope surprisingly even and smooth as he covered a block in ten steps. Fast. Graceful. Strong. Powerful. And he was carrying me back to his shop. Was he going to eat me for real this time?
I sighed heavily and closed my eyes. I needed to stop the bleeding, which meant I needed to focus on my own healing. I must have a concussion, or it wouldn’t have taken me that long to realize it. I started humming, awakening my own defense runes, my own battle magic, but I’d only barely warmed up by the time we burst into his music shop, then through the main room to the small chamber filled with unfinished instruments, and the bed that he threw me down on like I wasn’t seriously injured. He was clearly not in the medical sector.
I glared back at him because he couldn’t just throw me around like that while I was bleeding to death. It just wasn’t done. “I’m injured. Be gentle with me.”
He bared his teeth at me, which I saw up close and neck-tinglingly personal, because he followed me down onto the bed, arms holding himself up as he hovered, barely not touching, but so close I could feel the magic and emotion coming off him in waves. If he was a piece of music, it would be a thunderous battle cry with all the depths and reaches of anguished fury.
“You let yourself get injured while we were in the middle of negotiations. You used your diabolical magic on me after you’d lulled me into a false sense of your docility by allowing me to take your neck. You are not going to deceive me again so easily.” He grabbed my left wrist and secured me to the bed post with a piece of string that lit up gold and green before he did the same to my right wrist.
“Wait! What are you…” Honestly, I was still bleeding to death, so it’s not like I could fight about getting tied to his bed.
His eyes still glowed unnaturally bright, painful to look at, but everything was pain, so I just dealt with it and met his glare with my own. “Mira, you will remain here until I grant you your freedom,” he growled. Then he licked me, my neck where he’d bitten me earlier, and honestly, it felt so good, I barely noticed him yanking out a five-inch piece of shrapnel from my abdomen. Yeah, right.
I screamed, and then I gurgled as he poured something noxious and potent in my mouth, something that would deaden the pain. It would also render me unconscious, but not before I got to watch him pull the biggest chunks of goblin metal out of me. One of my thighs was particularly porcupine-like. Must have not been blocked by Master Cutter. Funny to think that the elf had ended up giving his life in exchange for mine. Strange fate.
The potion did not put me to sleep, so I got to watch the process as he removed shrapnel, and then stopped the bleeding, using his magic to imbue me with his supernatural healing. He shouldn’t have been able to tune into my frequencies and apply his own brute force on me, but maybe after the duet, he was attuned to me, or maybe he was more sensitive because of his artisanal ways, or maybe… No, it wasn’t like we had a real bond between us that would allow him to bestow his health and healing on me. Periodically, he would lick my neck, and it would always feel good, but not good enough to block out whatever horrible pain I had to deal with.
I didn’t scream again, though. I could cope with pain. Instead of screaming, I started humming, closing my eyes and focusing on music, the one thing in my life that hadn’t ever let me down. The problem was that the pure and holy hymn I started singing wasn’t just mine because Rook took up a second part that hadn’t existed before he made it his, turning my song into our song, and bringing his magic burning to life inside of me.
It made it impossible to focus on the music to block out my pain. I opened my eyes to glare at him, but he was busy weaving magical runes over the raw mess that was the left side of my body. Where was my skin? Not to mention my clothes. It hadn’t seemed that bad earlier. Weird. Then again, it was goblin metal, and that tended to keep splitting even after the impact to more thoroughly mutilate whatever it hit.
“I hate goblins,” I mumbled, tugging on my tied wrists to try and do something about the mess going on. No way I could survive that.
“We are in accord. How convenient that we are already of the same mind on such an important subject.”
I scowled at him and then felt his strength enter me while he collapsed on the edge of the bed beside me, one of his legs over mine, trapping them to the bed. “What did you just do?” I tugged on my wrists again, but it was pointless. He’d tied me up very securely. In fact, if he’d just killed himself with whatever he’d done to me, I’d probably be here until I died. I wasn’t sure if even Anna and her sorceries could free me.
“You owe me a life debt,” he mumbled, words slurred until he collapsed even more fully, limp, unconscious, leaving me to finish bleeding out on my own.
I’d never slept with a man before, but I was almost certain being tied to a bed with an unconscious ogre against my side was not the ordinary way of things. My blood was giving him a rash. I watched it form on his neck and shoulders without anything I could do about it. Unless I licked it off him. I couldn’t possibly do that, but when a blister started rising up, I decided that since he was unconscious, he wouldn’t know about it, and if I owed him a life debt, which I wasn’t going to admit, I should definitely do something for him. I didn’t seem to be dying, and that was all thanks to his efforts to keep me alive.
So I licked his shoulder, just enough to get my blood off him, and then his neck, because it had droplets of my blood that were starting to fester the sweet skin beneath. He tasted sweet beneath the salty blood. It was weird, but less weird than when he reared up and grabbed my throat, my licking apparently having woken him. He stared down at me in a moment of bewildering uncertainty as he unconsciously flexed his hand.
“You’re crushing my throat,” I wheezed out, and he immediately released me, then pulled a blanket up over me, which was probably good because my skin had mostly grown back so you could consider my lack of clothing indecent.
“Your tongue was on my neck,” he said, still looking at me with uncertainty, like he’d never been so shocked in his life. I really needed a book on ogres to figure out what their taboos were. I only liked shocking people intentionally.
“My blood was burning you. You’ll probably still have some blisters.”
“Your blood? You were licking off your blood so that it wouldn’t harm me? Ah.”
His ‘ah’ was accompanied by a narrowing of his eyes, like he didn’t trust my explanation, but whatever else could I have been licking him for? He wasn’t wearing my clothing, after all. Ogre traditions were so weird. And my neck was still tingling.
“I wouldn’t say that I owe you a life debt, but?—”
“You do. You owe me a life debt.” His rich, low voice was absolutely immovable.
I continued on like he hadn’t interrupted me. “But I can owe you a rash debt.”
“A rash debt? I didn’t save you from a rash. I saved you from death.”
“But rashes are worse than death,” I said as seriously as I possibly could. “Particularly blood rashes. Trust me on this.”
“I trust you on nothing. You bespelled me to sleep while I was creating your harp. You almost got yourself killed while you were under my protection.”
“I’m not under your protection. You kidnapped me. That’s not protection, that’s…” I sputtered, because I wasn’t sure what that was, but I wouldn’t have been in this position if he hadn’t kidnapped me in the first place. Except, why had goblins attacked? Song wasn’t out in the middle of nowhere where they could do what they liked without facing consequences from seriously dangerous residents. Only a complete idiot would throw a goblin bomb in the middle of the under-city, unless it was a very well-paid assassination attempt, but if that was the case, was I the target?
I felt myself go very still as that possibility sank into me. I’d pulled Cutter around, or the bomb would have struck me full blast instead of him. Yes. I’d definitely been the target. Seriously? Goblins wanted to kill the music master of singsong city? I’d get my revenge. They would be singing for me before the month was out, and they would be paying for my hall. And they would be donating their time to my efforts. But who had hired them? Who wanted me dead? I understood my dad sending someone to bring me back, like Gavriel, but who would pay the exorbitant charge that an assassination attempt in Song would cost just to kill me?
He nodded like my silence was agreement. “I will return. You will remain with Lanise. Spare her your wiles or I’ll hang you naked from a wall somewhere.”
I blinked at him as he got to his feet, stumbled slightly, and headed towards the door. “Where are you going? You spent too much magic on healing me. You’re hardly up for anything other than sleeping. Lay back down and I promise not to lick you again. Although I don’t get why it freaks you out so much when you did it to me. It doesn’t make sense that wearing a shirt justifies…”
He shot me one last look and then was gone, leaving me alone for a good five minutes I spent trying to figure out how to get my hands free, and then I passed out. I woke up a long time later from the buzzing burning all over my skin. I was wearing bandages that I desperately needed to rip off so I could scratch myself. I writhed around, only to have a very large green hand land on my chest, holding me down.
The hand belonged to a muscular arm that disappeared into the sleeve of a black t-shirt. An ogre woman was lurking over me, her expression mostly blank, with a hint of threat. “Break scabs, Arrook take my hide.”
“What will he do with it?” Maybe it would go into an instrument, a nice drum set, for instance.
“Then he hang you from wall. Naked. Hu-mil-i-ate you.” She jabbed my forehead with a large green finger to punctuate her words.
“I see. So your skin is worth doing something with, but mine isn’t?” I covered my sudden fear with humor. It was all very well to wake up with ogres threatening you, but if he’d told her that he’d hang me from a wall just like he’d told me, maybe he was serious. How could I possibly be a respected Singsong City Music Master after being publicly displayed like that? I’d much rather lose some of my skin than my entire reputation.
“You want Arrook take your skin?” Her eyes widened like I’d shocked her, and then my neck tingled, like it was competing with the agonizing itching for what could drive me the most insane. Groan.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Rook the Luthier? We were in the middle of negotiations when…anyway, I need to speak with him.” And get him to untie me before I died from not being able to scratch the itch. All the itching. I was going to die from it for sure.
“You stay ‘til scabs heal. Goblin dust get in wound. Itch turn dead. You stay. I watch.” She nodded and then settled back into a chair she’d clearly made her own.
“You’re telling me that if I itch my scabs, I’ll die? That’s ridiculous.”
“Goblin dust kill if bomb fail. Goblins good at deading.”
Deading? I was actually having a conversation with a real ogre, not a pretty little artisan like the luthier. I wasn’t sure if Rook was torturing me for escaping his, ‘protection’ or whether I really would die if I scratched my itch, but either way, I was stuck with an ogre guard who didn’t take her eyes off me, like I’d vanish if she looked away for a second. That boded ill for any escape plans I was going to make, even if I did get my hands untied.
I smiled brightly. “I guess we’ll be here together for some time. What’s your name?” She wouldn’t tell me if she was a competent guard.
“Lanise. I stay with you at hall.”
Ah. This enormous green muscle-bound rock-crusher was Rook’s delicate little niece who wanted to be a musician? That was good. In that case, I should be able to use her love for music to help me get untied.
“Lanise, it’s so nice to meet you. What are your musical preferences?”
She studied me blankly.
After an uncomfortably long silence, I asked, “Do you play any instruments or are you a singer?”
She studied me blankly.
“Because you want to be at the music hall to study music.”
She blinked her big orange eyes once.
I exhaled and slumped down on the bed while my itching skin drove me to distraction. “You’re not very chatty all of a sudden.”
“You stay. No itch. No dead.”
“Sure. Sounds lovely. Hey, Lanise, how about if you scratch my skin? Just in between the scabs. It would be so nice.” I started wriggling around, trying to twist my body so I could rub my right thigh against the bed. It itched so abominably. I was going to die if I didn’t do something to relieve it.
She sat on me.
I gurgled and kicked my legs until she got off, studying me while I struggled to find my breath. I’d almost died from her massive weight. How many hundreds of pounds did she weigh? Maybe it was in the tons.
“You stay. Still. No itch. No dead. No hu-mil-i-ate.” She poked my forehead with each syllable while I deflated and gave in to the inevitable. She was a good guard. Good ogre guards had a single-minded devotion to their task that not even the most diabolical prisoner could distract them from.
Maybe if I hadn’t put Rook to sleep, he wouldn’t have me under such a conscientious guard, who was also my new music hall occupant. I’d definitely expected someone much younger. Apparently, using magic on him had really offended him, although he’d kidnapped me in the first place. Such hypocrisy. Not that I couldn’t respect him for finally taking my security seriously. I wasn’t some demure female who he could lock up without at least a few escapes.
Then again, the last time I’d escaped hadn’t gone so well, what with the whole goblin assassination attempt. There weren’t very many goblin assassination attempts because they were so good at what they did. They weren’t attempts. They were assassinations. Cutter, the music guild’s representative, was dead, and who knew what happened to his body? If I was truly the target of the attack, and I couldn’t see how anyone else would have been, that meant that someone really wanted me dead, which meant that I was safest right where I was, with the ogres. Only a complete idiot would attack ogres, even the small ones. He hadn’t seemed that small when he’d been throwing me over his shoulder and carrying me away.
No, he wasn’t very small at all. I swallowed hard while my heart beat too fast and my skin itched and my neck tingled. Would Rook be an answer to my growing problems, or would he be the biggest danger of all?