The cocky ones never shielded. I smiled in a baring of teeth.
The ancient goblin absorbed the punch, and then he smiled right back at me.
Oh crap.
I never saw his fist coming. My shoulder and head slammed into the catwalk’s metal grille. This is really bad, I thought while I could still feel my head. My dagger clattered down the catwalk behind me, well out of reach. Then Muralin’s full weight was on top of me, his lean body warm, his lips next to my ear, whispering, discordant, feeding my disorientation, softly seducing me into submission, coaxing me into unconsciousness.
Son of a bitch! I raised my head and sank my teeth into his ear.
His whispers turned to screams, then hissing. The spellsong lost its hold on me, my vision cleared, and I used my knees and fists anywhere on Muralin that I could reach. My growls joined the goblin’s hisses. I let go of Muralin’s ear and, using every bit of body weight and leverage I had, shoved him off of me. I tried to get to my feet, but my legs tangled in my gown. No gowns again. Ever. The goblin grabbed for me. I rolled away and out into empty air.
I desperately grabbed the railing at the base of the catwalk. I didn’t fall, but I was dangling at least thirty feet above the stage. A fall would either break my legs or kill me. The backstage area suddenly erupted in shouts and panicked screams. Terrified female shrieks.
The dressing rooms. The spellsingers.
Muralin’s hands grabbed my arms just above the wrist. Hands that felt like living stone: cold, hard, and unyielding. I gripped the railing harder.
The goblin actually laughed. “I’m trying to save you. I can’t let you die yet.” His lips curved into a slow grin. “But I can’t help you unless you let go.”
The sound of steel-on-steel combat joined the screaming from backstage.
My hands were starting to sweat—and slip. My breath came in shallow bursts. I’d never realized how hard it was to breathe with your arms stretched over your head.
“Back… off,” I managed.
“Very well.”
Muralin abruptly let me go; I gasped and slipped some more.
The goblin stood up; the tips of his boots were entirely too close to my fingers. He looked down to the stage. “A drop of that distance is nothing for us, Raine. The Saghred would save you. Just ask and I’ll tell you how to do it. It’s simple—even an elf could understand it.”
“Back. Off!”
Muralin shrugged and walked a few steps down the catwalk, turned, and leaned against the railing. He glanced down into the backstage area and smiled. “Nightshades,” he noted. “Once again elves are doing my bidding without me even asking. You and your people have been most accommodating.”
I pulled myself up inch by inch. I thought my fingers were going to snap off gripping the flat bars that made up the catwalk floor. It hurt like hell and I ignored it. The only thing that motivated a Benares more than greed was vengeance. I pulled myself up onto the catwalk, lay on my belly, and panted. When I thought I had enough air to do it, I got to my feet.
And stared.
Tam was standing about ten feet behind Rudra Muralin. His face gave nothing away, but his eyes promised murder.
To Rudra Muralin.
Muralin spoke without turning. “Your services are no longer required, Tamnais. I have what I came for.”
Tam didn’t budge. “I’m still protecting my investment.”
A pair of armed goblins stepped onto the other end of the catwalk. They weren’t in uniform, but they were big and wearing identical arrogant smirks. Had to be Khrynsani temple guards. A trio of Tam’s bouncers came up the ladder to stand behind their boss. I was trapped smack dab in the middle of everybody, with straight down being my only way out.
Rudra Muralin slowly half turned so he could see Tam. Unfortunately, he didn’t turn his back on me. I swore. I had one dagger left and it had Muralin’s name all over it—all dressed up and nowhere to go.
“Your investment is safe.” Muralin sneered the word like it was something he’d scrape off the bottom of his boot.
“Is it?” The tiniest smile creased Tam’s lips, but the gleam in his eyes was chilling. “Are you quite certain?”
“You dare doubt my word?”
Tam laughed, low and dark. “Doubting your word would imply that its validity once existed.”
Point for Tam. Painful death for me.
Tam hadn’t looked at me, not once.
Muralin stood utterly still, like sculpted marble. “You forget your place.”
“My place is here. Yours is not.”
“I have destroyed men for less than—”
A crossbow bolt whizzed past my left ear, and I dove for the catwalk. Others wisely followed suit.
A volley of bolts followed, pinging and ricocheting off of the metal railing. One punched through a rail and kept right on going, taking one of the temple guards in the thigh. He screamed and fell over the edge, landing with a sickening thud on the stage below.
Crap in a bucket. Wooden bolts didn’t puncture metal. But steel did.
They were shooting freaking armor-piercing steel bolts at us—and “us” included me. The shooters were a pair of Guardians and four fancy-looking elves in someone’s private guard livery. Finding out who didn’t take long. Carnades Silvanus pushed his way through the panicked crowd toward the stage, roaring orders at those fancy guards. I heard the word “kill” at least twice.
I didn’t know if he meant me or the goblins, and I wasn’t sticking around to find out. The second Khrynsani guard behind me was gone. Over the railing or down the ladder, I didn’t care which exit he’d taken. My way out was wide-open.
Until Rudra Muralin grabbed my ankle.
I snarled, twisting from my stomach onto my back, and looked up into a blazing nightmare.
The goblin’s entire body was alight with power, red and glowing like a bloody sun. I felt the power that was building in him and recognized it.
It wasn’t a death curse.
It was really going to hurt.
Muralin tightened his grip on my ankle, his hand like a white-hot brand. I screamed in pain, then in rage. I drew back my free leg and kicked him solidly in the knee.
He laughed.
Not the reaction I was going for.
“Soon,” he promised me. Then he released me and vaulted effortlessly over the railing, landing lightly on the stage.
Impressive. Scary as hell, but impressive.
Two of the elves turned their crossbows on him, and Muralin hissed a single dismissive word, turning the bows to molten metal slag in their hands. The elves’ agonized screams just added to the chaos. With another word, the goblin extinguished the footlights, plunging the stage into near darkness. When they came back up, Rudra Muralin was gone.
Tam hauled me to my feet.
I hauled off and punched him.
His head snapped back. Not as much as I would have liked, but it was gratifying.
Tam wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I think my mouth fell open. “Everything!”
A bolt fired from below barely missed us. Tam grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the same ladder I’d come up. I dug in my heels.
“Raine, please come with me.”
Tam rarely said “please.” I wasn’t the only one who saved certain words for special occasions. My word had four letters. Tam’s word was “please.” He’d said it to me at the rehearsal to warn me to stay away from him. Now that same word was asking me to trust him.
Regaining my trust was going to take a lot more than one word, but it was a start. We had to get off this catwalk.
By now the Guardians must be halfway to the citadel with Piaras. And where the hell was Phaelan?
When I reached the bottom of the ladder, Tam took my arm and pulled me past the dressing-room area and into the back of the theatre.
“Where the hell are we going?” I muttered between clenched teeth.
I caught a glimpse of Sedge Rinker and two of his watchers talking with unfamiliar Guardians, and a dead Nightshade sprawled on the floor nearby, blood pooling beneath his head.
“Do not call out to them,” Tam warned and walked faster.
I let out a bitter laugh. “I’m safer with you than them?”
“For now, yes. Sanura Mal’Salin unwarded her mirror to admire herself, and the Nightshades were waiting.” Tam’s voice was tight with barely contained rage. “They took Talon, Valerian’s granddaughter, and Ronan Cayle.”
Dammit. I pulled back against Tam’s grip.
“Nathrach!” It was Sedge Rinker. The chief watcher had seen me and was after Tam.
Tam hissed a curse in Goblin, tossed me over his shoulder, and ran.
The back of the theatre was dark; Tam knew it like the back of his hand, and he was a goblin. Rinker and his men were human. No night vision. There were plenty of things to trip them up, and from the thumps and swearing, the watchers had found them. But Rinker wasn’t chief watcher for nothing. He cleared his path and kept coming.
All I could see was Tam’s ass and the floor.
Tam opened a door and closed it behind us, and went down a flight of stairs entirely too fast for my comfort.
“Put me—”
“Shhh!”
I shushed, but I wasn’t going to stay shushed for long.
Tam stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Above us, Sedge Rinker and his men ran by and didn’t come back.
“Put. Me. Down,” I said from behind clenched teeth.
Tam didn’t put me down. He slid his hand under my gown and up my bare leg to my thigh sheath. Finding that one empty, he went in search of the other one.
No way in hell.
Tam and I had wrestled before—once with intent soon after we’d met, and a couple of other times since then for fun. He knew my moves. This probably wasn’t going to end well, but I wasn’t giving up my last dagger without a fight.
I clasped both of my hands together into one big fist and hit Tam in the back as hard as I could. When he grunted in pain and surprise, I twisted. We both went down, and I got to be on top this time.