The inside of the house hadn’t been in the best shape before; now it was completely demolished. It was apparent that magic had been used, the dark and nasty kind. Entire sections of walls were scorched black.
A flash of something pale appeared on the edge of my vision. I damned near jumped out of my boots and had a dagger quivering in each hand.
It was an outline of a man against a burnt section of wall. No blood, just a perfect outline of where the man was—and now wasn’t. The outline was too tall to be either Piaras or Talon.
“What the hell did that?” I breathed.
“He was Khrynsani,” Tam said. “Wearing full battle armor.” He indicated the broad reverse shadow showing the head. “Complete with helmet, probably equipped to filter out the navinem.”
Imala kicked at a mostly melted sword. It had been a broad, curved blade, about four feet long—until someone or something had turned it to melted steel in his hand. The outline of the man and sword was burned into the wall.
The sword was basically slag. The Khrynsani holding it had been vaporized.
“Any of your agents powerful enough to do something like that?” I asked Imala quietly.
“None that were here.”
Mychael’s hands glowed with restrained blue fire as he stepped forward to peer down the dark main hallway. “Carnades is.”
My second-worst enemy could be lurking in the shadows, watching us, tanked on elf ego boost. That was one ego—and power—that didn’t need boosting. If Carnades did that to a Khrynsani, what would he have done to Piaras?
What had been a massive iron chandelier in the ballroom ceiling was now a twisted pile of metal and shattered crystal on the ballroom floor. The ceiling where it had been now sported a hole almost as broad as the chandelier itself. There were people-sized holes in the walls, with some going all the way through into the next room. Others were body-shaped imprints in the plaster.
However, there were no bodies or people in sight.
A chunk of the chandelier shifted—and groaned.
Weapons came out, wards went up, and that moaning lump was immediately surrounded.
An arm fumbled its way clear of the rubble as a familiar head full of tousled brown curls emerged.
Piaras.
I reached him first. No one stood a chance of getting there before I did. He was pinned under four chandelier arms. He should have been crushed, but by some miracle he wasn’t.
“Ow.” Piaras blinked his eyes open and winced.
I tried to lift one of the iron arms; it didn’t budge. “Don’t try to move.”
Piaras snorted.
Snorted?
“Like I could,” he said.
Mychael and Tam lifted up one corner of the chandelier while Imala and I carefully dragged Piaras out.
“What happened, Cadet?” Mychael demanded.
“Ow.”
“Yes, I understand that part. Now what happened?”
“The son of a bitch dropped a chandelier on me.” Piaras shook his head to clear the broken crystal in his hair. “Oooh, bad idea.”
“Who?”
“Carnades.” Piaras gazed blearily around as Mychael and I helped him to his feet. His eyes found Tam and gave an apologetic grin. He indicated the nearby holes in the walls. “Sorry about the mess, sir.”
Tam blinked. “You did those?”
In response, Piaras gave him a lopsided grin. “Me and the son of a bitch.”
Mychael got a small chair that I swear was the only unbroken piece of furniture in the room and guided Piaras onto it.
“Thank you, sir,” Piaras said gratefully. “Carnades sold us out. Somebody had to pay him back.” He grinned again. “I’m somebody.” He nodded proudly toward the biggest hole in the wall. “And I did something.”
Mychael ignored everything that implied. “Where’s Carnades?”
“I don’t know, sir. The chandelier must have knocked me out.”
When it should have squashed and killed him.
Navinem.
“Piaras, look at me,” I said.
He did and I looked at his eyes. Piaras’s eyes were normally large and dark brown, but now his irises had opened to the maximum, but even direct light from Mychael’s lightglobe didn’t bother him.
Hell, it didn’t look like anything bothered him.
“Are you hurt?” Mychael asked.
Piaras quickly stood to show how completely non-injured he was. He smiled like a mischievous little boy. “Ready for more duty, sir. That was fun.”
Fun?“I can see that.” Mychael gazed around. “Now, how did you end up throwing Carnades through a wall?”
Piaras told him, and I got angrier with every word.
Deidre had at least two traitors in her nest. With goblins’ love of intrigue and complex alliances, it’d have been a wonder if all of her people had been loyal to someone and something besides themselves and their purses. Unfortunately for us, one of Deidre’s traitors was one of Carnades’s guards. Ever the braggart, while Carnades had been hurling slabs of wall at Piaras, Carnades had told him that in exchange for his freedom, he’d told his guard that the all-powerful Raine Benares had been reduced to a magical null.
My stomach roiled at the news.
The Khrynsani had hacked their way through a few strategically placed boarded-up windows and thrown what were basically navinem grenades into the house. More Khrynsani followed with more grenades. The drug-laden smoke spread, leaving panic and then immobilizing despair in its wake. The masked Khrynsani barely broke a sweat rounding up the goblins of the Resistance.
“Talon and Nath? Where are my son and brother?” Tam’s face was stone, but his eyes promised murder.
“I didn’t see Nath,” Piaras said, “but Talon set fire to a pair of Khrynsani dragging Prince Chigaru out.”
Mychael and I exchanged a stunned glance. “Would that have been in the front hall?” I asked carefully.
“That’s the place. When Talon told them to drop the prince, they laughed at him.” Piaras gave a low whistle and shook his head. “That was a really big mistake. Then there was shouting, screaming, and a flash of bright light. Then I couldn’t watch anymore; Carnades was throwing chunks of wall at me.”
“It seems Talon is a little more elf than he appears,” Mychael noted.
“And a lot more talented,” I murmured.
“Since he’s only half-goblin,” Imala said, “the drug would also remove his inhibitions.”
Tam almost smiled. “Talon didn’t have any of those to begin with. Right now, I’m grateful for it.”
“Piaras, do you know where Talon and the prince went?” Imala asked. “Did they escape?”
“Sorry, ma’am. I was… occupied.”
Kesyn Badru sat in the chair Piaras had vacated and took a hit off of his flask. “So we’ve got your boy running around looking for trouble—”
“Nothing new there,” Imala said.
“And he may or may not have Prince Chigaru with him.” Badru turned to Mychael. “You think we need to search the house for this Carnades person?”
“To be on the safe side, yes,” Mychael said.
Piaras kicked at the chandelier. “If he was still here, wouldn’t he have made sure this thing had finished me off? And if it hadn’t, wouldn’t he have taken care of business himself?” He gave a half shrug. “I mean, it stands to reason.”
“Yes, Cadet, it stands to reason.” Mychael put a finger to his lips. I knew that gesture; he was keeping himself from smiling.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who found Piaras’s casual attitude about his own near death most un-Piaras-like. But unlike me, Mychael and even Tam found Piaras’s newfound badassness amusing.
Men.
Mychael saw my disapproving glance, but it only made him have to fight harder against that grin. “We’ll check the house just to be sure,” he told Piaras.
Piaras nodded in approval. “That would be prudent, sir. Should I check the basement or upstairs?”
“What you should do is sit down.”
Piaras opened his mouth to protest.
“That would be an order, Cadet Rivalin. If I know Carnades Silvanus, and I do, you’ll have other opportunities to settle your score.”
With a happy smile, Piaras plopped down on the floor, sitting cross-legged. “I’ll look forward to it, sir.”
“I’m sure you will,” Mychael muttered.
I followed Mychael out into the hall.
“How long will that navinem stuff last?” I asked.
“Depends on how much he inhaled. If he was exposed from the time the attack started until they left, it could be another whole day.”
I gave a low whistle. “That would be good.”
“That would be very good.”
“Though we can’t have him blasting his way into the temple.”
“No need to worry. Once we’re on the move, he’ll be all business.”
“The things Piaras did to Carnades,” I began uneasily. “He’s never done anything like that before. You said navinem makes elves feel impervious; you didn’t say anything about sprouting new talents.” That twist was way too close to what the Saghred had done to me for my comfort.
“Piaras is still young, just coming into this power,” Mychael explained. “One of the things navinem does for you is makes you willing to try things you’ve never done before. That or simply react on instinct—which is probably what happened with Piaras.”
“So Piaras and Carnades entertained themselves throwing each other through walls.”
“Looked that way.”
“If this stuff made Piaras feel all kick-ass, it did the same to Carnades.”
Mychael nodded, his blue eyes sparkling. “That’s precisely why I’m so impressed.”
“But Carnades is one of the most powerful mages—”
“In the top five percent.”