Wild Card Read online

  I was proud of my cousin. Here we were chasing a pack of evil mages into a dark swamp, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he was enjoying himself. Though that might have everything to do with escape being the Khrynsani’s top and only priority.

  A roar split the night, and I swear it shook the water under our boat.

  I knew that sound.

  Sky dragon. If that Khrynsani mage got airborne, there’d be no way to stop him. Sky dragons were fast, nimble, and enthusiastic fire-breathers.

  I bit back a scream of frustration. “So much for how he’s getting out of here. Can we go faster?”

  Nathrach’s response was a force of will that sent the boat leaping forward. I damned near lost my grip on the sides, and I didn’t think the goblin would have minded one bit.

  There was no law in the Daith Swamp. Technically, it was under Brenir’s jurisdiction, but the swamp wasn’t patrolled. The swamp didn’t need protecting, and if someone was dumb enough to go wandering around in there, they deserved whatever got them.

  I wasn’t dumb, just determined, though I was probably the only one who thought so.

  As soon as the bow of our little boat bumped a patch of bog grass, Nathrach was over the side and moving fast. I didn’t expect him to wait for me, which was why when he suddenly stopped, I plowed into him, nearly putting us both facedown in swamp water.

  When he swore another blue streak, I saw why.

  We didn’t see Pavane Taregani.

  We saw five Pavane Tareganis the instant before every last one of them turned and ran into the swamp in five different directions. An illusion to throw us off.

  The sky dragon roared again—from three different directions. Probably another illusion. Hopefully.

  There was no sign of any of the other Khrynsani.

  Janek and his people were still busy with those ten dark mages and two demons.

  None of those things were good.

  I added choice words of my own to Nathrach’s litany, as Phaelan slogged through the muck to catch up with us.

  “Any chance this Pavane Taregani handed the jewels off to an underling, and these five illusions are to send us on a wild-goose chase?” I asked.

  Nathrach shook his head. “If Sarad doesn’t get those souls, he’ll take Pavane’s, so the weasel won’t let them out of his sight.”

  “So, which one of those mages was the real one?” Phaelan asked.

  I ramped up my seeker senses and stepped around Nathrach. “The one carrying the souls.”

  *

  Goblins could see in the dark as well as elves could see in the daytime. Tamnais Nathrach took the lead from me. I was enough steps behind the goblin mage that I could stop before running into him again. Phaelan was bringing up the rear. I was wearing high boots that until now I’d thought were waterproof. My mistake.

  Surrounding us were moss-shrouded cypress, reeds, and black water. Entirely too much black water. Depths unknown, inhabitants undetermined, and as far as I was concerned, both could stay that way. Something was draped across the path directly ahead that I really hoped was a tree root.

  The path forked in three directions. Pavane Taragani was trying to get crafty with the wrong girl. Like a bloodhound on a strong scent, I had a lock on those souls and nothing was going to shake me.

  “Left,” I told Nathrach.

  Surprisingly, he took the left path without question.

  The area directly ahead was slightly lighter. When we got there, we saw why.

  A sky dragon loomed in the Daith Swamp’s idea of a clearing. The light we had seen was the banked flames that were visible through the nearly translucent skin of its throat.

  Right now I was grateful for light to fight by any way I could get it, even if it might be trying to roast me a minute from now. I’d always wanted to see what killed me.

  Pavane Taragani stood next to the dragon. He’d waited for us. He saw Nathrach and smiled.

  Correction, he’d waited for Tamnais Nathrach.

  And so had his Khrynsani friends, who stepped out of the swamp all around us, hands glowing with what looked like ball lightning.

  I had a sneaking suspicion this was a setup.

  I also suspected Phaelan and I had just been relegated to collateral damage.

  “They’re not coming any closer,” Phaelan murmured.

  Nathrach’s hands were suddenly glowing blood red.

  “They don’t need to,” I said.

  Mages didn’t have to get up close and personal to fight—or kill. However, Phaelan and I couldn’t fight what we couldn’t reach. I couldn’t even throw a knife that far in the daytime with any accuracy.

  We were sitting ducks, and soon to be roast ducks. And if those goblins stayed where they were, there wasn’t a damned thing we could do to fight back. If the blue lightning didn’t kill us, the dragon fire would. Phaelan and I were the most flammable things in fire-spitting or lightning-throwing range.

  Unless the Khrynsani didn’t think we were worthy of their killing consideration.

  Phaelan and I were elves; they were goblins who thought of elves as slaves, when they thought of us at all.

  I stiffened. Maybe they wanted to take us alive.

  I couldn’t let Pavane Taragani leave with those souls. Anything I could do would get me dead by any of many painful means, and he’d still escape with the pouch of jewels.

  Nathrach grabbed my arm and jerked me to his side.

  “Shoulder to shoulder, Captain,” he ordered. “Do not break contact regardless of what happens.”

  Phaelan and his instinct for self-preservation did as told.

  A shock jolted my shoulder where it touched Nathrach’s arm, and every hair on my body stood on end.

  Shields.

  Not only was Nathrach shielding himself, he was extending them to protect the two of us.

  And boy, were we going to need them.

  I absently wondered how long the shields of a mage as powerful as Tamnais Nathrach would hold out against the combined black magic of the Khrynsani surrounding us. By myself, I could have held out for maybe ten seconds against just one of them.

  “You tried to talk me out of this,” I said to Nathrach, never taking my eyes off our impending doom.

  “I seem to recall mentioning something to that effect.”

  “I’m stubborn.”

  “Really? I never would have known.”

  “Is there anything we can do about this?”

  “We?”

  “Okay, you.”

  “I wait.”

  “What?”

  “I thought I would wait.”

  “For what? The first sizzle of black magic melting our skin?”

  “Actually, from the spell they’re using, they’re going more for immediate immolation.”

  “Because immediate is so much better,” Phaelan shot back. “Less pain that way.”

  “Sarad and I were at a loss how to lure you out.” Pavane Taragani stepped away from the sky dragon, walking leisurely toward us. “Your talent is your greatest strength; your compassion your fatal weakness. We sought a way to use both against you.”

  “So you had your agents ask around, found out about Sethis Mortsani’s debt, and offered him a seat at the table.”

  “Very good. I’m impressed, Tamnais. Then again, you always have been too intelligent for your own good.”

  “Or for yours. And don’t be impressed. You’ve never offered a last-minute invitation. You’ve always wanted every player thoroughly investigated beforehand. For you to make an exception is most unlike you. You promised Lord Mortsani a seat for the game—but only if he brought children’s souls.”

  “You have to admit, it was the perfect bait for a compassionate man such as yourself,” Taragani said. “But there was the not insignificant problem of how to ensure that you became aware of it.” The Khrynsani mage smiled at me. “And then the elf came along. It was perfect. We could not have plotted it better ourselves.”

  I grima
ced. “Sorry about that.”

  Nathrach shrugged. “It’s not your fault. An unfortunate coincidence.”

  Unfortunate was right. The Khrynsani were closing in, but not close enough for me or Phaelan to help in the fight.

  Nathrach smirked with the confidence of a man who is holding all the right cards. “Predictability is your weakness, Pavane. You had to know the city watch would have whatever house you chose under surveillance, so you chose one with an escape route you knew they couldn’t cover.”

  “And it is working splendidly; my demons are seeing to that. I knew you would come alone. You would not want to endanger any new friends you may have made in your new home.”

  Nathrach smiled a slow, dangerously knowing smile. A smile that grew into a chuckle.

  Huh?

  The Khrynsani closest to us burst into flames, his incoherent screams rising with the fire.

  When a second one turned into an upright torch, their brothers spun to face the new arrivals. Picking on us suddenly seemed to be bad for their health.

  I could barely make out the figures who had aligned themselves behind the Khrynsani, but the dark power I felt rolling from them told me they were black magic badasses of the worst kind—or in our situation, the best and exactly-what-we-needed kind.

  “I didn’t need to recruit and endanger my friends,” Nathrach said smoothly, “when you have countless enemies.”

  What followed involved fire, explosions, cussing, and a gratifying volume of screams coming from the Khrynsani ranks. And best of all, they’d been so focused on shielding themselves from the front against Nathrach that they’d neglected to literally cover their asses.

  Pavane Taragani was running toward the dragon, using his mages’ fiery deaths to cover his escape.

  Oh, hell, no.

  Nathrach’s shield was to keep Khrynsani magic out, not a stubborn elf in.

  “Raine!”

  I ignored Nathrach’s shout, determined to reach Pavane Taragani before he climbed into that saddle. He could go wherever the hell he wanted, after I had those souls.

  I had a dagger in my hand and my plan was to slice the leather holding the pouch to Taragani’s belt, then run like hell. As far as plans went, what it lacked in tactical brilliance, it made up for in sheer suicidal audacity. Taragani would probably fry me the instant I grabbed that purse, but there was the slimmest chance I might actually pull it off.

  And then, just when I had the bad guy figured out, he hauled off and did the unexpected.

  Pavane Taragani yanked the purse off his belt and threw it out into the swamp.

  My world went into slow motion.

  The Daith Swamp had two kinds of ground—was solid and only looked solid.

  The purse was flying out over ground that looked solid but mostly wasn’t. I’d seen small birds land out there and get sucked down. The purse would be gone in seconds, the souls inside imprisoned forever.

  I ran as fast as the marsh would let me toward ground I sincerely hoped was solid.

  The purse came down.

  I dove into the stinking muck.

  The bog closed around me as I caught the purse.

  And Tamnais Nathrach caught me.

  *

  Pavane Taragani decided to take his chances with Sarad Nukpana later by returning to Regor without the souls. If he’d hung onto the souls, he would’ve had to face Tamnais Nathrach right then and there.

  Smart choice.

  Nathrach could have gone after Pavane Taragani or me and the souls, but he couldn’t do both.

  I was grateful for his choice.

  As the bog had closed over my body, I’d felt an iron grip on my ankle.

  The bog lost. Those children and their families won.

  And me.

  Those dark mages finished off the Khrynsani only minutes before Janek’s watchers arrived, and they vanished as suddenly as they’d come.

  Bound by the law and all, watchers believed in letting criminals go through the justice system. So did Nathrach’s allies. They simply sped things up a bit. I think we all believed that justice had been served. Six of the players had survived; four had not. Lord Sethis Mortsani became one of the latter after making the fatal mistake of launching a death curse at one of the demons. As to what the demon did, let’s just say it was highly unlikely the nachtmagus would be coming back from the Lower Hells; but if he did find his way out, he’d need to find a new body.

  Without any of his lackeys surviving to dispute his story, Pavane Taragani was free to give Sarad Nukpana whatever excuse he’d managed to come up with during his flight back to Regor.

  Despite what Nathrach had said about Nukpana taking Taragani’s soul if he failed to return with the jewels, I had little doubt that the Khrynsani second-in-command would survive to perpetuate evil another day. That’d be like Phaelan taking his rapier and skewering his first mate. Unless he’d tried to organize a mutiny, that’d simply be a waste of good help, or in Pavane Taragani’s case, evil help.

  I imagine good evil help was equally hard to find.

  Nathrach knew several dark mages who could unlock the jewels to release the imprisoned souls. The children’s souls were released next to their stasis-bespelled bodies as Malina Adler or one of her colleagues guided each one back where it belonged and the healers released the bodies from stasis.

  The eight children who had been taken in Mermeia were saved. However, the dark mages determined that the remaining souls had been abducted too long ago and from too far away for there to be a possibility of a viable body to be returned to. Malina and the other nachtmagi guided the newly freed souls across to the other side.

  Phaelan saw to it that the loan sharks who’d been stalking Lady Kaharit to pay back her now late husband’s debt understood that continuing to do so would be a very bad idea. I had a feeling that Tamnais Nathrach’s visit with me this evening would convince any remaining doubters.

  The two of us had Lady Kaharit’s ring and seven of her jewels and were on our way to return them.

  It was twilight in the Goblin District. Light enough for an elf; dark enough for a goblin.

  “Tam?”

  His lips twitched at the corners. “So now you call me by my name.”

  “Hey, after you played tug-of-war with a bog over me, let’s just say I know how a wishbone feels. Then you saw—and smelled—me coated in bog slime. . . Well, the mystery’s pretty much gone at this point.”

  “I assure you you’re still a complete mystery to me.”

  I wasn’t sure how to take that, so I asked the question that’d been nagging at me all day. “You knew the Khrynsani were setting you up?”

  “I suspected it.”

  “And you helped us anyway.”

  “I helped you. And I brought backup.”

  “Who you couldn’t know would arrive in time.”

  “I had them already waiting in the swamp. It was the obvious escape route.”

  “What if Taragani hadn’t sent those demons after the players?”

  Tam shrugged. “Then it would have been a tougher fight. Some things you simply cannot know before they happen. You roll the dice, you take your chances.”

  “Big chances.” I hesitated. “And by now, Taragani’s told this Sarad Nukpana person that losing those souls was because of you. What’s he going to do now?”

  “The same thing he was already planning to do. Though after this, I might get bumped up a few places on Sarad’s ‘To Kill’ list.”

  “What about the Khrynsani getting revenge on Mermeia? You said—”

  “An overexaggeration to get you to back off.”

  I shot him an accusing look. “Because you were going to get involved anyway.”

  Tam nodded. “Though preferably without you.”

  “Without me, you wouldn’t have been able to track those souls.”

  “True. But without me, you wouldn’t have reached the swamp in time; and if you had, you would have been reduced to a burnt smudge—or a permane
nt resident of that bog.”

  I winced. “All true.” I gave him a sly smile. “Which only means that we make a good team.”

  Tam’s opinion on that was a noncommittal grunt. “Good teams work together, on a plan, agreed upon in advance—and they typically have a leader.”

  “We’re not typical,” I said. “Besides, I don’t follow well.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And unlike Taragani, I’m not predictable.”

  “In a deck, you’d definitely be the wild card.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “When our lives are at stake, yes.”

  “What if our lives weren’t at stake?”

  He gave me a slow, wicked sexy smile. “I own a nightclub and casino. I’m all about having fun.”

  Naturally my mind went immediately to Sirens’ doors. I wondered which one was his favorite panel. I had no doubt he’d tell me if I asked. I felt my face get warm and I didn’t ask.

  “You don’t sound worried about Nukpana paying you a visit,” I noted, taking a sharp right turn back to my topic.

  “I’ve come here, and this is where I’m staying. When Sarad wants to find me, he’ll know where to look. Pavane was right about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He called Mermeia my home. For someone like me, wherever you are when you decide to stop running, that’s home.”

  We walked in silence for a few minutes.

  When we arrived at Lady Kaharit’s home, she answered the door herself, dressed in sleek and sumptuous black.

  I’d been right. She made a stunning widow, and from the expression on her face when she saw Tam, she’d just spotted husband number two.

  I glanced at Tam for his reaction.

  He wasn’t looking at her. All of his attention was on me.

  The End

  About This Series

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