One. The large man behind her leaped, taking her place, chopping at him with a vicious short axe. Two. Three. Richard backed away. Four. His instincts screamed, and he dived left, half a second before another flash bolt cut a gash in the stone wall behind him.
The axe fighter smashed into him, knocking him off-balance. Too close for a lunge. Richard veered left, grabbed the axe fighter’s right arm, yanking him forward, and smashed the heavy hilt of the rapier into his left eye. The man howled in pain. Three. Richard spun him around and shoved him forward. The flash tore into the axe fighter. The stench of smoking human meat filled the air.
Richard sprinted, putting all of his speed in the run. Time slowed down, stretching like viscous honey.
He saw the magic user, a short, overweight woman. Slowly, as if underwater, she opened her mouth, raising her arms. The first brilliant blue spark of the flash formed between her fingers, biting at her skin with roots of lightning.
He thrust.
The blade passed under the growing tangle of magic, under the woman’s left breast and into her lung. He’d missed the heart by a hair.
Richard threw himself left. The magic tore from her in a wide beam. She tried to scream, but the words gurgled in her throat. He dropped the rapier, grabbed her from the side, and snapped her neck with a quick jerk.
It cost him half a second to recover his sword. Richard dashed back. When he’d sent Garett, his cousin, to hire the thugs to kill Brennan, he warned him to hire enough to make a serious statement but not so many that Brennan would be overwhelmed. As satisfying as it would feel, Brennan couldn’t die. But Richard had never counted on a flasher or a skilled swordsmen. There was a slight chance that they could actually succeed, and their scheme would fall apart before it had even begun.
He rounded the bend. Brennan bent over a prone man, breathing hard, his face an ugly, feral mask. A thick drip of bright red blood spilled from his scalp onto his face. Three bodies sprawled on the cobbles. None of them moved.
Brennan clutched a man by his shirt and stabbed him.
The man cried out.
“Who?” Brennan demand, his voice a ragged growl. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” the man groaned.
Brennan twisted the dagger in the wound. “Who?”
“Kordon said . . .” The man’s voice was fading. “He said . . . it was . . .”
“What?” Brennan yanked him higher.
“Eagle,” the man whispered. His eyes rolled back in his skull. His body convulsed once, and he sagged in Brennan’s grip. The king’s cousin stared at the limp body, his eyes bulging. He looked deranged. Then the anger vanished, and Brennan pulled his composure back on like a mask.
“Robert!” Richard sank force into his whisper. “We must leave. There will be questions.”
Brennan let go of the corpse, dusted his hands, and strode into the arched tunnel, his pace brisk. “Did you bring a phaeton?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll ride in it, then. Can your servants be trusted?”
Richard hid a smile. He had replaced all of the staff in the house with his family. There wasn’t a single person in that house whose name wasn’t Mar. “Implicitly.”
“Good.”
The arch ended, opening into a well-lit courtyard filled with phaetons and horses. Richard stopped, pulled a handkerchief from his clothes, and thrust it at Brennan. “Blood.”
“Thank you.” Brennan pressed the cloth over the blood. They crossed the space quickly. Richard opened the door of the phaeton, and Brennan ducked inside on the wide bench. Richard climbed in after him and let his fingers fly over the controls. The ornate panel buzzed, the gears began turning, and the phaeton whirred to life. He drove out of the courtyard, maintaining average speed.
Seven lives were lost. They belonged to professional killers. He felt no guilt but a vague dissatisfaction. Some part of him must’ve secretly hoped Brennan would die.
Brennan wiped the blood off his scalp. “Well! That was more fun than I’ve had in a while. How about you?”
Richard sorted through Casside’s possible responses. “You have a strange idea of fun.”
“You always were a cautious man, Casside.” Brennan gave his shoulder a friendly punch. “Come on. You must’ve felt alive there for a few minutes.”
“I was keenly aware that I was alive. I wanted to stay that way, too.”
“And you did. All that fencing paid off. Don’t fret, Casside. You weren’t the target. They went straight for me.” Brennan grinned that infectious smile that made him famous. “A shame they didn’t provide more of a challenge.”
If Richard didn’t have irrefutable evidence that Brennan was responsible for hundreds of broken lives, he could’ve imagined that he might have liked this man.
In ten minutes, Richard parked in front of Casside’s mansion and ushered Brennan inside. Orena, his second cousin, met them in a foyer, saw Brennan bleeding, and made big eyes. “Alcohol, salve, rags,” Richard told her. “Quickly.”
Brennan winked at the woman. “Is he always so demanding?”
Orena bowed her head and escaped.
“Your people are very serious, Casside.”
“They’ve known my family for a long time. They don’t take their duties lightly.” Richard led Brennan into the study. Orena reappeared with medical supplies, followed by Aunt Pete.
“They are both trained surgeons,” Richard assured Brennan.
Brennan leaned back, offering the gash on his forehead to Orena. “Do you think you can make me pretty again?”
“Yes, my lord.”
In ten minutes, the gash on Brennan’s head was washed, disinfected, and sewn up. His own wound required only dressing and some butterfly bandages. The women departed, taking bloody rags with them.
Richard slumped in a chair. “I abhor violence.”
Brennan looked at him. “Don’t we all, my friend? Don’t we all.”
Richard nodded. Casside had never sought military service, a fact Brennan likely knew. He reached for a pitcher filled with red tea and made his hand tremble as he poured it into the glass. The glass spout of the pitcher knocked against the rim of the glass.
Brennan rose. “Let me do that.” He took the pitcher from him and filled two glasses.
“Thank you.” Richard gulped his drink.
“It really took the wind out of your sails?” Brennan watched him carefully.
“Not at all,” Richard said, making an obvious effort to keep the glass steady. “I just want to know who and why. What in the world is the ‘eagle’?”
Brennan drank from his glass and studied it. “Good tea. The eagle is on Maedoc’s family crest. His father was known as the White Eagle. Maedoc, in his own time, was called the Dark Eagle. His son, provided he chooses a military career like the four generations before him, will be some sort of eagle as well. Beautiful tradition, isn’t it? There is a subtle elegance in the old blueblood lines.”
“Maedoc?” Richard raised his eyebrows. “I suppose he knew exactly where you would be. I’m sure losing the money hit him hard, but murder? Why?”
“A bid for power, perhaps.” Brennan turned the glass right, then left, studying the play of light in the raspberry red tea. “He might have grown tired of my leadership. The attack on the island destabilized our little enterprise. It would be an excellent time to make a bid for the new head wolf, and he means to take my place.”
Beautiful. Richard leaned forward. Brennan had taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. “Maedoc can’t run this operation. He knows it. Not only that, but the three of us wouldn’t stand for it.”
Brennan furrowed his eyebrows. “Please. Rene hates Adrianglia for holding him back. He doesn’t care who’s in charge as long as he’s permitted to profit from thrusting a stick into our realm’s gear. Angelia is a twisted creature; she will follow whoever hands her the biggest diamond and whispers sweet nothings in her ears while pouring coin into her purse. And you, well, you seek the money. You’re for sale, my friend. That’s how I got you in the first place. I’m too old for illusions—friendship and loyalty are fine qualities, but the voice of ethics grows weak in the face of riches.”
The plan hinged on throwing suspicion on the retired general. Both Rene and Angelia were too weak for Brennan to ever see them as a true threat. Of all of them, only Maedoc could pose a serious challenge to Brennan’s rule of the slaver trade, and Brennan had to view the threat as significant or it wouldn’t topple him off-balance.
“Maedoc was in charge of the security of the island,” Richard thought out loud.
Brennan gave him a sharp glance. Icy and calculating, that stare gripped Richard and for a second he felt the same calm that descended on him when he faced a fighter with a naked blade glaring at him from across three feet of open ground.
Inside Richard’s head, an alarm wailed. Careful. Careful, now. Don’t be too obvious.
“Do you know how the island was sacked?”
Yes or no? What was the right answer? “Not the particulars.”
“The bandits pretended to be slaves and commandeered our ship. Drayton, that moron, must’ve let them right on board. They sent all the right signals and were permitted to enter the harbor and dock in plain view of the fort. Witnesses say that a crew of slaves began to disembark. They slaughtered the slavers meeting them and spread through the island, hitting precise targets. One group attacked the fort, the next hit the barracks, the third opened the slave pens. Beautiful, isn’t it? Daring. Imaginative. Risky.”
Brennan paused, offering him an opportunity to make a contribution. It was a trap. It had to be a trap. He was watching him too closely. He needed a neutral answer. “It’s difficult to admire them knowing how much money we stand to lose.”
“Divorce yourself from finances for a moment. Think of the brazen elegance of it. This raid is everything Maedoc is not. Oh, he’s hailed as a brilliant tactician, but I’ve studied his military record. Maedoc is a bull, my friend. He sees the target and plows toward it. Deception and sleight of hand are quite beyond him. If he wanted to replace me, he would’ve attacked me directly. Not only that, but why would he identify himself as the Eagle? Why not simply make up a name? In fact, why give a name at all? Those were contract killers; their bargains are simple: money for a life, their quarry or their own.”