Page 7 of Of Kings and Thieves

I was trapped.

CHAPTER TWO

Images of a cackling Deviant in a mask ringed by soldiers with leering faces filled my vision—a flashback to the day Flint died. A Deviant was here. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Had they tracked me somehow?

My vision blurred, and I leaned against the wall and tried to control my breathing. Voices drifted in from the hallway.

“Harry,” came the gruff voice, and a man groaned.

“We are wasting time,” said the Deviant in a raspy voice—I knew who was speaking because he sounded muffled from the mask. The male half-goblin shrieked, and despite myself, I was drawn to look through the crack in the wall. My breath caught in my throat, my lungs feeling as if they were filled with ash.

The Deviant stood over the slave, his boot on the young male’s chest. “What have we here? A half-breed. So this is the company you keep, sergeant?”

“No!” said the first man, the one who bore the magistrate’s crest. “This is Harry’s slave. Has been for years.”

“Is that right?” The Deviant ground his heel into the slave’s chest, and the male moved his arms like he was trying to swim. He still wasn’t fully awake. Another pang of guilt shot through my heart like an arrow. If I hadn’t enchanted him, maybe he could have gotten away. “What did you do to your master, half-breed?”

The male cried out and struggled. He seemed to be more awake now and realizing his predicament. The other two men maneuvered Harry into a sitting position against the wall, just below the crack. I held my breath and shifted back so they didn’t see me.

“Harry’s not dead,” the magistrate’s guard said. “Just asleep.”

“Drunk?” asked the soldier.

“He doesn’t smell like it, but you know Harry.”

“No.” The Deviant had turned his head toward the other two and tilted it. “He’s been enchanted. A spell to put him to sleep.” He returned his attention to the young male under his boot. “This half-breed did it, I’ll wager. And if he used magic on his master, he’ll pay with his life… Are you going to blubber all day?”

“P-please,” cried the slave. His face had drained of color, and his entire body shook as the stink of fear rolled off him.

“Tell me, dog.” Another grind of the mage’s heel, and the half-goblin coughed and tried to twist the Deviant’s ankle to get some relief.

A sharp crack shattered the air, sending a piercing pain through my eardrums and leaving the taste of dark magic on the air. It smelled like a bloody piece of rare meat that was turning. The goblin-kind screamed. I covered my mouth with my hands but couldn’t look away from where the end of the Deviant’s staff was pressing into the slave’s breastbone. It had opened a gash the length of his chest. He continued to scream as blood flowed over the floor, and his ragged gasps of air made wet, sloppy sounds.

“You’re going to kill him,” the magistrate’s guard warned. He didn’t seem to want to approach the Deviant, standing back with a look of revulsion on his face.

“Oh, I won’t kill him,” the mage said, his voice devoid of any emotion. The half-goblin must have heard because he started sobbing, even as blood bubbled out of his mouth. “Shut up and tell me what you did to the merchant.”

“I didn’t… do anything,” the slave gasped. His voice was weak. Despite what the Deviant had said, this unfortunate soul was going to die. I knew it was coming just as certain as I knew my own name. “It was her.”

My mouth went dry, and I stepped back from the crack in the wall. I didn’t need to see any more. It was only a matter of time before the half-goblin told them about me, and they would begin searching.

I thought about preparing for death, but only briefly. With the slave’s screams filling the warehouse, I cast around for anything that would help me, considered barring the door, laying some sort of trap, or merely slitting my own throat before the Deviant got a hold of me.

If you die, they win.

The voice in my head was my own, but it carried a ring of Col’s determination. I didn’t know how I was getting out of here, but I wasn’t going to die today. Death was not an option.

My searching drew my gaze upward, and I spotted my way out. The roof had fallen in at some point, and the debris cleared away. A large tarp had been lashed across it to shield the room from the elements, but the fabric was no match for my dagger.

I climbed onto some boxes and began slicing through the covering, to freedom. Every sound the fabric made as it opened made me cringe. But I kept working, cutting a hole to slide through. It was only when the slave screamed a word that I stopped.

“Andris!”

The silence that followed was more deafening than his cries for mercy. My body felt like I had jumped into an icy river. My hand shook, and I blinked back the tears of fear that ran down my face.

“What did you say?” the Deviant hissed. “Speak, half-breed, or you will draw your last breath.”

I breathed a silent prayer to the gods I didn’t believe in to let the slave die before he could say anything more. Unsurprisingly, the gods didn’t answer.