Sworn to War Page 9

  She realized quickly that she would only have a few precious seconds before they regrouped at the base of the stairs and not only hit back with force but also used battle magic to get their way.

  She didn’t have to worry, though, as Thanar snapped roughly, “Move!”

  He pushed her to the side. She almost fell out of an open window, but that was nothing compared to the descent of the two soldiers who went straight down dozens of stairs head-first and into their comrades who were trying to rush the four companions at the top once more.

  “Into the room,” she heard Sebastian yell behind her. Ciardis saw several of the soldiers trying to help a seemingly unconscious Emperor of Algardis revive.

  “Looks like someone needs a healer!” Ciardis yelled down the stairs in delight.

  She grinned in satisfaction as Thanar grabbed her arm without waiting and dragged her behind him.

  She didn’t have the chance to see Maradian awake, furious and raving, as she was pulled into a room, curtain rod still in hand. Breathing hard with a delighted smile on her face, Ciardis said, “We may have only caused a few bruises, but by the gods I feel great!”

  It wasn’t precisely the same as actually kicking Maradian in the face, but it was the closest she’d come in the turmoil of the past few hours. She would take what she could get.

  Her mother was standing closest to the door, practically mewling in her rage as she clawed at the locked frame.

  Sebastian didn’t even bother attempting to soothe Lillian. He impatiently pushed her out of the way and grabbed Ciardis’s weapon of choice. As he jammed the curtain rod into the door handles and fashioned a temporary lock, Sebastian said with a grunt, “That should hold it for a few minutes!”

  “What have you done?” shrieked Lillian behind them as Thanar and Ciardis came to inspect the prince heir’s work.

  The daemoni prince snorted under his breath and tossed a hefty ball of flame at the handle.

  He raised his hand and held it over the bronze door handles. Ciardis watched in satisfaction as the metal melted and fused together into one.

  “More than a few minutes, I think,” Thanar said with a distinctively satisfied purr.

  “You’re sure that’ll stop them?” Sebastian asked dubiously.

  Thanar shrugged. “Long enough, I think. The magic in this hall is subtle but effective. It’s set to repel even the most complicated magical spells. They can’t break through the door no matter how much power they put behind the push. These healers were very thorough about protecting their wards against magical incursions, it seems.”

  “Great,” said Ciardis said in relief. “What say we find another way out of here then?”

  They all turned around to scour the silent room for another entrance.

  It was empty except for more fluttering fabric and a lot of empty beds.

  The soldiers who had preceded them up the stairs had been unceremoniously tossed down the steep flight of stairs back the way they came before they had forced their way into the room, so it was just Lillian, Ciardis, Thanar, and Sebastian in one gigantic hallway.

  It was double the size of the trauma room below. Ciardis guessed that it was for long-term guests.

  “I guess I was right,” she noted as they paced down the hallway of the second floor. She noticed still lumps in the beds to the left and right of her, about nine beds away from the doors behind them. She frowned. “What are these? Bodies?”

  Lillian, whose arm was gripped tightly in an unrelenting daemoni prince’s hand, snapped, “This isn’t the morgue!”

  “Then who are all these people?” asked Sebastian as he walked up to the nearest occupied bed and snatched a sheet back.

  The bed was empty except for what looked like a giant sack stuffed with something.

  Sebastian grabbed it and ripped open the ties that held it together. The only thing that fell out was cloth and medical supplies.

  He frowned and went to the next bed. The same thing presented itself.

  His eyes went to a bed on the opposite side of the room. As he walked over, Lillian grew angry. This time she acted. But by the time she got there, it was too late. Sebastian ripped away the blanket. Instead of sack cloth, there was a body before their eyes.

  “I told you,” said Lillian with a hiss in her voice as she yanked away from Thanar and raced to the bed. “That we are merely Maradian’s pawns. Now see what you’ve done. He really will kill them for the insult you gave just now.”

  Ciardis lurched back with a pale face.

  “It can’t be,” she said with a hand to her mouth.

  Thanar was less circumspect about his choice of words. “Oh, for the love of bloody darkness…”

  17

  Ciardis felt her heart leap in surprise, in fear, in complete confusion.

  This wasn’t happening.

  She knew that it was both the best thing that could have happened to them and, at the same time, the worst.

  “This cannot be happening,” Ciardis snapped. “Maradian knew where she was all along and I fed right into his trap.”

  “Well, the good news is that it looks like we’re no longer at war with the dragons,” Sebastian said brightly.

  Ciardis groaned aloud.

  “That’s about a millimeter better than being charged with kidnapping by the dragons,” Thanar said. “They don’t take kindly to missing members of their families, especially representatives of the entire race.”

  “Let’s not be too hasty here,” Sebastian hurried to interject. “She could just be…sleeping.”

  Thanar looked at him, and so did Ciardis. They had identical expressions of disbelief on their faces.

  “I believe that optimistic, ridiculously hopeful segue is usually my line,” the princess heir-in-waiting said.

  Sebastian glared at them both as he said, “Look, I’m having a really tough week. If I can get one all-consuming evil thing checked off the blacklist that is my uncle’s standing contribution to society, I think I’ll take it.”

  Ciardis rolled her eyes as she turned to look at her mother, who was rocking back and forth in the middle of the room. “Take a number; we all have familial problems today.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Thanar cheerfully. He swaggered over to the Ambassador of Sahalia’s still form and proceeded to poke her foot with increasing force.

  Ciardis glared at Thanar’s back as she snapped, “That’s right, you just killed all of yours.”

  Thanar halted his pecking of the still-unconscious ambassador to look over his shoulder. “That’s a low blow, even for you, Weathervane.”

  She snarled right back, “Oh, so it’s Weathervane now? I thought we were on more congenial terms. What happened to Golden Eyes?”

  Thanar lifted a mocking eyebrow. “You get teasing epithets when you’ve earned them.”

  Ciardis almost laughed, but she couldn’t. “Could you just be useful?”

  “How would you suggest I go about doing that?” the daemoni prince asked, tugging on the big toe of a currently shoeless and dead-to-the-world ambassador.

  “Well, you could start by not teasing the dragon that will bite off your head the minute she wakes,” Sebastian said as he paced away, looked at the door and paced back the other way.

  “If she awakes,” Thanar said pointedly.

  “She’d better,” grumbled Ciardis.

  “She has to,” a recalcitrant Lillian Weathervane finally said from where she sat on an empty healing hall bed, watching them discuss the ambassador’s fate.

  “Why is that?” Ciardis asked, troubled.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t want Raisa to waken. It was just that they had enough problems on their hands as is, and as much as the dragon liked her ‘sarin’, her first duty would be to her people. Which meant she would do anything to get out of this room and return to Sahalia to warn her queens of the existence of a Kasten ship.

  All of which added up in Ciardis Weathervane’s head as not a good day for the Algardis Empir
e.

  Hmm, but an angry dragon could help us get out of this rather bothersome situation, Ciardis mused. Not to mention this room.

  “Because she has to make regular reports to her people, she can’t just go silent and never return,” her mother said pointedly.

  “Then why is she here, unconscious?” asked Sebastian, ice in his voice.

  Lillian smiled at him, a proud expression on her face. “The Emperor’s orders.”

  “It would seem that the Emperor bit off a bit more than he could chew, then,” Ciardis muttered in disgust. She wasn’t surprised. Annoyed, yes; surprised, no.

  Lillian shook her head firmly. “Maradian always, always has a plan. How do you think he got away with the first Empress’s death so easily?”

  They all turned to look at her.

  Thanar commented, “He did actually do quite a beautiful job of sticking you with that crime. Even I can acknowledge that.”

  “What?” asked Ciardis, fighting the urge to pull out her own hair.

  Thanar shrugged. “Just acknowledging his craftsmanship.”

  “Let’s not,” said Ciardis with a glare.

  Before anyone could say anything else, she whirled on her mother. “And you. What is wrong with you? Your world now revolves around the man who nearly had you killed and most certainly convinced an entire empire that you committed regicide. Why are you siding with this duplicitous snake?”

  Lillian frowned and said, “That is language unbecoming of a lady, and certainly of a Weathervane loyal to the empire.”

  “Right now I’m a lady loyal only to myself,” Ciardis Weathervane practically snarled.

  Sebastian intervened with a loud cough.

  Ciardis whirled on him and glared. “Shut it!”

  She turned back to her mother without giving him a chance to deny his fake cue and continued, “Mother, you of all people should know that loyalty to this empire ends in heartache.”

  Lillian chittered. Ciardis had no other way of describing the sound that came from her mouth.

  When she could actually form words again, Ciardis picked her jaw from the ground and said, “I don’t even know what I can say about your behavior, but let me tell you how my day has gone. It went to hell in a handbasket at dawn and since then has gotten no better. I can point to one central figure who is the cause of this anguish, and I’m sure you can too. Therefore, I am an extremely upset young woman who is tired of being broken, scared, and manipulated by the one man who was put on this godforsaken earth to protect us all.”

  The frown slipped off Lillian’s face; a stillness rested in her eyes. Ciardis wondered if she had finally gotten through to her, but Lillian didn’t say anything.

  Not a word.

  It made Ciardis uneasy, but she didn’t back away and she didn’t back down. She couldn’t.

  This was her mother.

  She had turned away once.

  She wouldn’t do so again.

  “Why?” Ciardis asked, scooping Lillian’s thin fingers into her hands. “Just explain to me why in words that I can understand.”

  Lillian Weathervane opened and closed her mouth, but no words came out. It was as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t. Ciardis watched her gaze change from a melancholy older woman to a fierce clan matriarch and then back again.

  It was as if Lillian Weathervane couldn’t make up her mind who she wanted to be, and that scared her daughter.

  Ciardis watched as emotions warred in her mother’s eyes. A few seconds passed, and then one seemed to win out. Lillian pursed her lips tightly and closed her eyes. She rocked back and forth and squeezed her daughter’s hands with a fierce grip. As if she was still waiting for something. Something Ciardis Weathervane wasn’t even sure was there.

  But whatever it was, Lillian found what she needed.

  “Because,” Lillian said as she opened her eyes again to lean over and whisper in Ciardis’s ear, “he always has a plan.”

  Ciardis leaned back, disturbed, but she still didn’t let go of Lillian’s hands.

  The Lillian she saw when she could look at her mother’s face again was different than the one who had just whispered in her ear. She was perky and smiling again. As if she had whispered the greatest secret and all was right with the world now.

  Ciardis was sorry, but that wasn’t good enough.

  She grasped Lillian’s hands tighter and squeezed, putting strength into her grip.

  “Mother,” Ciardis Weathervane said forcefully. “I need to know, what has he done to you?”

  Lillian looked down at her with a happy smile. “Done, my dear?” She laughed. “Nothing. Nothing but give me my youth back. My carefree youth.”

  Ciardis dropped her hands and stood up from the crouch she had knelt in.

  Then Lillian said, almost as an afterthought, “And he gave me back my boy.”

  By then Ciardis had already turned around and began to walk away.

  She froze. Then she whirled back, eyes wide, and shouted, “Mother, what did you say? Boy? What boy?”

  When Lillian didn’t answer her, merely gave her that happy carefree gaze again, Ciardis leaned over her and screamed, “Boy, you said boy! Do you mean…do you mean Caemon?”

  But the moment…whatever it was, was gone.

  There was blank emptiness in response to her question.

  18

  When she pressed further there was anger until Lillian was looking back up at her with an impatient frown. “Ciardis Weathervane, what in the world is the matter with you? Stop screaming and get your act together.”

  The tone and the laced undercurrent of anger in Lillian’s voice was as different as night and day from the woman who had just whispered secrets of nothing in her daughter’s ears.

  Ciardis stared at her in confusion, wondering if the person she was seeing now was the same person who had sat before her just a minute ago.

  “Mother?” Ciardis asked timidly.

  “Yes,” snapped Lillian. She stood up with an impatient glare and lifted an eyebrow at her. “What is it, Ciardis?”

  Fierce pounding on the door interrupted them, yells making the soldiers’ desires known. They obviously still didn’t have a way to magically break down the door.

  Impatience weighed on the tip of Lillian’s tongue and her words were brusque, clipped, even, as she continued, “And is anyone going to answer that?”

  “They can wait,” Ciardis replied almost as an afterthought.

  This was the Lillian Ciardis knew very well. Not the emotional creature she had just talked to not even a minute before.

  As Ciardis eyed her mother askance, Sebastian walked up to her side. Thanar actually turned away from his ongoing poking and prodding of the dragon to saunter over.

  Thanar said, “Now, this is fascinating.”

  For once, Ciardis Weathervane didn’t know what to say.

  Sebastian put a restraining hand on Ciardis’s shoulder as he gently pulled her back.

  Ciardis nearly jumped out of her skin when he touched her. She hadn’t even realized that she was still looming in Lillian’s face. They were practically touching nose to nose.

  Ciardis took a deep breath and asked in a deliberately steady tone, “Do you see this?”

  “See what?” Lillian asked her crossly as she folded her arms and glared. “All I see is a scared little girl running to her mother.”

  Ciardis ignored her; she hadn’t been asking Lillian anyway.

  For their parts, Thanar and Sebastian answered in the affirmative.

  Ciardis said, “What do we do?”

  “What can we do?” Sebastian asked, looking skeptically at the older woman who was glaring at all three of them now with an exasperated look.

  Lillian snapped, “Why are you three standing there like children? We have work to do. The empire needs us, and you should know by now that the Emperor is the one who can lead us through this turmoil.”

  Ciardis gulped. “There seem to be two of her. Almost as if she had w
arring personalities, except they’re not fighting each other. They both seem to be convinced of one thing.”

  “That Maradian is the savior and benefactor of the human race?” Thanar asked with wit.

  “Pretty much that,” Sebastian said.

  Ciardis replied, “Well, I guess we know whose handiwork this is.”

  “Was there any doubt?” Sebastian said.

  Ciardis snorted. “I was holding out hope for a simple breakdown, instead of a forced…twin personality change or whatever this is.”

  Lillian looked at all of them in disbelief and then swept away across the room. “I have no idea what has gotten into all of you, but you must snap out of this at once. I brought you here for a reason.”

  Sebastian turned to follow her, and this time it was Ciardis who restrained him.

  “Wait, let’s see what she does,” Ciardis whispered.

  It was Thanar who spoke directly to Lillian. “Why did you bring us here then, Lady Weathervane?”

  Lillian sniffed as she swept over to Ambassador Raisa’s bed. “For this, of course.”

  Now it was their turn to look completely confused.

  Lillian muttered something uncomplimentary and then raised her voice. “Have I taught the three of you nothing in my dealings with the court?”

  Ciardis hesitated, then walked over. “Why don’t you refresh our memories, Mother?”

  Ciardis expected Thanar to at least object to being put in the same category as the younger Weathervane and prince heir, but he said not a word.

  Lillian huffed. “Always know your enemy, my dear. A few days ago, the ambassador gave formal notice before the court that she was departing these lands.”

  “Oh, she did, did she?” Sebastian said, miffed.

  She could have told us, Ciardis thought in sulk. We spent hours looking for her in the underground city.

  “It is common courtesy among the diplomatic ranks,” Lillian said in a dry tone that implied Ciardis would know that if she had bothered applying herself just a bit.

  “And then what happened?” Thanar asked.

  “Well,” said the calculating Lillian, “the Emperor knew he had to act. There was only one reason a dragon would break her queen’s protocol and flee across the sea.”