Hunted by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #3)(29)

“I’ve got skills.”

“Indeed,” Fenris said dryly. “Have you used any of those skills to get information out of him, about the Resistance camp and Iannis’s whereabouts?”

“Not yet. Figured I’d wait until you guys got here first. Do you want to do the honors?”

“Certainly.” Fenris turned toward Daresh. “What business does a Resistance camp have in Coazi territory?”

“I’m not telling anything to the likes of you.”

I stood up and approached the tiger shifter, lifting my right hand in the air as I did so. Blue-green fire snapped and crackled from my palm, the flames licking at my fingers. “I’m not sure if the rumors mentioned this or not, but fire is kind of my specialty. Now that you’re not moving around anymore, there’s no reason I can’t slow-roast you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” The tiger sounded indignant and fearful all at once.

“Wanna bet?” Reaching out, I trailed my hand above his spine, letting the flames come within a breath of his fur.

“Alright, alright!” Panic screeched through the tiger’s mental voice. “I’ll tell you. Just get that away from me!”

“Talk first, and I might.” I raised my hand slightly so that I wouldn’t accidentally set him on fire, but remained close enough so that he could feel the heat of my flame.

“The Resistance has always had a camp out here,” the tiger shifter said hurriedly. “We negotiated with the Coazi a while back to let us hide out on their lands, as we do with a lot of the tribes across the country. They’re not allies, but because they hate mages too, they let us stay here as long as we respect the land and follow their restrictions.”

“So you’re not out here for any specific reason?” I pressed as Fenris relayed the information to Annia verbally. “Like, say, to take down an airship of mages passing through?”

“We didn’t take down the airship, but we were told to expect the delegates’ arrival.” Daresh’s voice turned smug. “We prepared some very special accommodations for them.”

Fenris growled at that, but hope filled me – Daresh had just admitted the Resistance had the delegates. “So you’ve taken all the delegates prisoner, then?” I demanded.

“All but the Chief Mage.” Some of the smugness faded from Daresh’s voice. “The idiot we planted aboard the airship killed him.”

No! I nearly screamed aloud as shock and grief rippled through me. But then I remembered the serapha charms around my chest, and forced myself to remain calm. The tiger shifter might have believed he was telling the truth, but his intel was wrong – Iannis was alive. The charm didn’t lie.

“How did he die?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know better.

“We weren’t given specifics. But trust me, if he’d been alive we would have brought him in. He was our main target.”

I gritted my teeth – the tiger shifter had confirmed our suspicions, but we were still collecting more questions than answers.

“Where is your camp?” Fenris demanded.

The shifter hesitated, so I lowered my hand, allowing the flame to singe his orange fur. “Oww, oww, oww! Okay! We’ve taken over an abandoned mining village at the base of the Sarania Mountain Range.”

I frowned, calling up a mental image of the map we’d studied earlier. “That’s to the west, right?” There were two mountain ranges flanking the plains here.

“Yeah, if you head west through the forest, you’ll come right to it.”

I lifted my head to look at Fenris and Annia. “Guess we’d better head over there, huh?”

“It’s the only lead we’ve got, so yeah.” Annia sighed, running a hand through her hair as she looked off into the distance. “Not that we’re going to find the Chief Mage there, since this * insists he’s dead.” She shot the shifter a glare, who returned it in full force.

“Even if he isn’t there, the delegates are and we need to try and free them anyway,” Fenris said. “They are mages, after all, and could be useful to us.”

I groaned, not at all thrilled about the idea of working with a bunch of stuffy mages to rescue Iannis. But I couldn’t deny the extra magepower would be useful. “Alright then, let’s go.”

“Wait!” The tiger shifter yelled. “You’re not just going to leave me like this, are you?”

I turned back toward him and arched a brow. “If you were in our position, what would you do?”

“I’d probably kill you,” the tiger shifter admitted reluctantly.

“Then you should thank Magorah that we’re not you,” I told him.

Hefting our packs higher onto our shoulders, we left the clearing and headed west, the tiger shifter cursing us all the way until we’d traveled out of mindspeak range.

“How long do you suppose it will take for the spell to wear off?” Annia asked after a while. “We’d better be gone from the camp by the time he storms in there, howling for revenge.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Perhaps we should have killed him after all. He would not show us any mercy when he recovered the use of his limbs.

“Two to three days,” Fenris said, and we both turned to him, surprised by the certainty in his voice. “That should be time enough.”