Chapter Thirty-Six – Kalon
The Link
“I can’t believe it’s taken you three days to find a cheap mercenary,” I said, staring at the rugged man behind the bars of the dungeon cell.
Rugged was an understatement. He’d been thoroughly beaten if the swelling and bruising on his ugly face was anything to go by. His arms were bound behind his back, but his right shoulder hung at an awkward angle as if it’d been popped out of its socket.
I couldn’t find it within me to care.
Hayes coughed into his hand. “If it weren’t for me, Your Highness, we still wouldn’t have found him.”
“Why do I think I insisted that you be part of the investigation? I don’t trust the Imperial Knights.”
Sir Chester cleared his throat. “You can’t say that out loud here, sir.”
“I can say what I want. My lack of trust in anything related to the Empress is hardly a secret, least of all to you and my father.” I motioned to the lock. “Open it.”
He stepped forwards and unlocked the cell door, pulling it open for me.
I stepped inside the musty box of a room and glared at the man before me. He really was nothing special. There were mercenaries like him riddled through the empire, and he didn’t seem to have any special talent that set him apart from anyone else.
He was, in a word, disposable.
“Roderick Coleman, twenty-six-years-old, born in the town of Lurdnors to a prostitute mother and unknown father,” I said, reading his profile off the report Ezra had provided me.
“Grew up in the red-light district and apprenticed as a blacksmith as a teenager before being kicked out for stealing. You’ve drifted from job to job ever since. ”
Roderick tilted his head to the side and peered at me through a swollen eye that was coloured with shades of blue and purple. “Yeah, and?”
I chuckled. “You’re pretty cocky for someone who has no control over his life right now.”
“What does it matter? I already know you’re going to kill me.”
I was.
And it was going to hurt.
He was going to beg me for every last miserable second of his pathetic life.
I shrugged and leant against the bars behind me. “Maybe, maybe not. That depends how much information you’re going to give me. If you talk, I’ll let you have a fair trial.”
“If you don’t kill me, she will.”
“Who’s ‘she?’”
He said nothing.
Ha. So, that’s how this was going to go. “Let’s talk about the wraithhusk. Where did you get it?”
His shoulder twitched. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“I don’t believe you. I’ll ask you again—where did you get the monster?”
“It was there when I arrived.” He coughed, leaning as far forwards as his restraints would let him.
“You expect me to believe that you, a man with no particular talents, was able to coerce a wraithhusk into doing what you wanted it to?”
He shook his head. “It was knocked out. All I had to do was wake it up at the right time.”
“What about the mudlung blood? Are you the one who marked out the path to the rest area?”
Roderick nodded. “I didn’t know where it was leading to. I was given a hand drawn map with it on and told to put it on the trees on that path.”
“But you knew when to wake it up. That it’d be during the hunt.”
“I didn’t! I swear.”
I drew my sword and pointed it at him, just slicing his neck with the tip of the blade so that the barest dribble of blood beaded on his skin.
“I don’t like liars, Roderick,” I said coldly.
“I’ve been quite kind to you given that my fiancée is unconscious because of the beast you set free.
Don’t you think it’s unfair that you’re sitting here lying to me while I don’t know when she’s going to wake up? ”
Panic flashed in his eyes, and he tried to lean away from my sword, but I stepped forwards, increasing the pressure on his neck as a drop of blood trickled down his neck. “I knew, I knew! But I thought it would be over when I released it. That’s what she said.”
“She?” Anger crept its way through my veins. “Who?”
“I—I don’t know! Please! Please s-sto—”
“Please? You have the audacity to beg me after knowing what you’ve done?
” I pulled back my sword and plunged it into his uninjured shoulder.
His raw scream reverberated off the walls, even making Sir Chester wince behind me, and I pulled it back out, watching as his blood soaked his thin cotton shirt.
His jaw trembled, and tears spilled out of his eyes. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know anyone would get hurt! I didn’t know where the path lead!”
“Bullshit!” I pulled out my dagger and slammed it into the chair between his legs, then gripped his bloody throat so tightly that his wound opened and trickled blood across my fingers.
“Wraithhusks are some of the most dangerous monsters. One scrape of their claw and you’re paralysed, which is what happened to one of my knights.
And you think you can sit there with your pathetic apology? Do you think that’ll cut it?”
“I-I—” He choked against my grip.
I brought my face close to his, clenching my fingers. “Tell me who hired you. Now.”
He opened his mouth, fear shining in his eyes. The very moment his resolve wavered flickered in his gaze, and just when I thought he was going to tell me, his body convulsed. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, showing the whites, and blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
He went limp.
He was dead.
“You bastard,” I said, stepping back from his body. “What happened there?”
Sir Chester opened the door and handed me a towel. “Did he have poison in his mouth, maybe?”
“He was about to speak, and I clearly saw his tongue. He couldn’t have broken a capsule.” I wiped his blood from my hands and looked back at his body, pausing when a shadow appeared on his neck. “What’s that under his ear?”
“What’s what, Your Highness?”
I walked back over to Roderick and pushed his head to the side. “A magic circle, maybe? See that?”
“Hmm.” Hayes joined me inside the cell and peered at where I was pointing. “You’re right, sir. It does look like a magic circle.”
“Get Aerwyna and Duke Trelawney here to check and record it,” I ordered him. “Sir Chester, wait outside and make sure nobody else comes down here until his body has been disposed of in case of residual mana.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“I’ll be in my room washing up.” I tossed the towel I’d used to wipe my hands on the floor outside the cell. “Send the duke to me with a report when they’re done here.”
I stalked out of the underground prison and quickly left the main villa to return to ours. I was used to the scent and feeling of blood, but something about that man’s on my hands felt dirty and made my insides twist.
That magic circle.
It wasn’t right.
I’d seen hundreds, if not thousands, of magic circles in my life, but that one held a pattern I’d never seen before. My skin crawled at the mere thought of it, and if the spell the circle had contained was what I thought it was, this problem was a whole lot bigger than a wraithhusk.
***
“It was a death spell encased within the circle,” Duke Trelawney said, handing me a sheet of paper. “I could practically feel it oozing from him the moment I walked in there.”
“A death spell? They’re illegal.” I read the notes he’d just passed me, rubbing my wet hair with a towel.
“They were outlawed one hundred and fifty years ago when Emperor Viddar outlawed black magic,” he explained. “We don’t even keep this kind of information in publicly accessible areas of the Magic Tower. The books on this sort of spell are locked within the Head Mage’s private study.”
“Can anyone access your study?”
“Nobody except me. The password changes every time the Head Mage does.”
“Can you find out if anyone other than you has accessed it?”
He nodded. “I’ll check as soon as I return. When did the spell trigger?”
“He was about to tell me who hired him, so I’m assuming it was related to the name of his contractor.”
“That’s quite possible,” Duke Trelawney said, concern flashing through his eyes.
“It was a common use for this kind of spell even when they were legal. Assassins would often use it in place of poison—they would be branded with the spell and use it as a method of suicide before they could even be questioned.”
“Could the circle be branded on someone without their knowledge?”
“Theoretically, yes, especially if the receiver was asleep or unconscious at the time of casting. Why do you ask, Your Highness?”
“It took some coaxing, but he was willingly about to tell me the name of his contractor. He was a coward who was trying to save his own life at any cost, so I doubt he’d have tried to tell me if he knew he would die.”
“Hmm. It does complicate things.” He folded his arms across his chest, leaning back in his chair. “If one has it, then everyone involved with the incident does, too. It’ll make getting to the root of it difficult.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible.” I tossed the paper down onto the table. “How frustrating. Tracking down anyone else is going to be tough. If they’re anything like Roderick Coleman, they’re all loners with no place to go to.”
“Why not get ahead of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It might be too soon to profile them like that, but if Illusion looks into the known mercenaries that fit those parameters, then we could find any who had contact with Roderick.”
I leant forwards, pressing my fingers together. “You mean work backwards? Interesting. We might also find out information if we can send someone in. I knew there was a reason I kept you close, Your Grace.”
He smiled, letting out a little chuckle. “I’ll leave the infiltration to Ezra and stick to the magic.”
“Please do. If someone is practicing black magic, this is serious. You should investigate the forest with Sir Chester to look for further traces.”
“Of course, Your Highness.”
A series of knocks sounded at the door.
“I’ve told him not to do that,” I muttered. “Enter.”
The door swung open, and Ezra marched in before stopping and bowing extravagantly. “Your Highness.” He looked up and saw the duke, then dropped his head once more. “Your Grace.”