Night Shift (Kate Daniels #6.5)(102)

Chest heaving, her heart like ice, Mala tossed back her hood and stood waiting in the torchlight, sword and axe in hand. A brute of a woman with greasy lips and a ragged scar over her pale left eye led the guards.

Mala punted the rutting pig’s head to her. “Are you captain of these men?”

The gore-stained helm landed at the woman’s boots. Shock and anger painted her cheeks red. She reached for her weapon.

“Stay your hand!” Mala snapped. “Are you captain of these men? Heed the cloak I wear and answer well, or I’ll spill your lump-weeded brain into the mud with them.”

Lips pinched, the woman gripped her sword. Mala grinned. So this guard wouldn’t heed the warning. Good. Near the pillories, a bowl of grease and a rod strapped to a belt had told Mala that not only the male guards had been raping the prisoners. By Vela’s moon-glazed blade, she would enjoy gutting every one of these bum-birthed scuts.

A guard behind the woman caught her forearm. “She is Vela’s,” he hissed.

Unease slipped over the woman’s anger and she hesitated. Curse it all. Mala would have preferred that these pigs were among those who didn’t fear the goddess and attempted to challenge her power, instead.

But if they defied her laws and forced themselves on these prisoners, they obviously didn’t fear her enough. Before Mala left this land, they would.

The guard’s hand fell away from her weapon. “The captain is at his supper.”

“His name?”

“Heddiq.”

“Then this will be Captain Heddiq’s last easy meal. You will announce me to Lord Barin, then you will visit the garrison and tell your captain to begin running as far from Blackmoor as he can, because if ever I see him, I will not stay my weapon. Perhaps your next captain will know better than to risk Vela’s wrath by allowing his guards to violate the prisoners under his charge.” She pointed her axe at the other guards. “You three will help these men and women to the citadel gates and release them. One more bruise on any of them and I come for your heads.”

Shim would keep watch outside and let her know if she needed to.

The guards exchanged uncertain glances. “But our Lord Barin—”

Mala interrupted them. “Will allow it.”

And if possible, would suffer the same fate as the guards. The captain wasn’t the only one who should have prevented the guards from raping these prisoners, but Mala wouldn’t make threats that she couldn’t be sure of carrying out. Earlier that day, when she had returned to the caravan to give Telani the salve, she’d learned from the other woman that Barin had ruled over Blackmoor since the days of the Destroyer—and that the warlord couldn’t be killed, though many had tried.

That couldn’t be true; even gods could die. But Mala wouldn’t test her blade against his neck today.

The guards hastily backed out of her way when she started toward the keep. Solidly built, the towers rose like spears against the night sky. The greasy-lipped guard rushed ahead—most likely to warn Lord Barin and to report what Mala had done at the pillories.

Mala gave the woman time and followed at a slower pace. As she passed through the inner gate, a chill raced down her spine. The rain? By Temra’s fist, she hoped it was. But the cold weight in her belly and the sudden urge to draw her sword warned her that this trepidation was nothing so simple.

She’d sensed magic before. Never had such an icy dread accompanied it, but she’d heard this reaction described by her mother, upon first seeing Anumith the Destroyer.

He wasn’t here. But either his sorcery was still at work, or someone here abused the same foul magics.

Perhaps it was someone who couldn’t be killed.

The lilting notes of a hornflute and the distinctive mossy fragrance of roasted constrictor greeted Mala at the entrance to the great stone hall. So the warlord was at his supper, too.

She paused between the stone columns at the head of the chamber. The hornflute player danced in the center, the silver threads in his embroidered tunic catching the firelight from the torches. On either side of the room, two darkwood tables ran the length of the walls, each heavily laden with platters of sugar-dusted fruit, steaming soups, and a portion of the roasted snake. The benches were filled—by courtiers, she judged. Intricately woven garments in bright colors adorned many of the men and women, and even those who were dressed more simply wore finer cloth than any Mala had seen outside the citadel.

At the far end of the chamber, thirteen men ate at a shorter table atop a stone dais. Lord Barin sat in the center upon a tall, carved chair—but even if he hadn’t chosen to raise himself above the others or wrap himself in yellow robes edged in gold, his position would have been impossible to mistake. The fanged head of the giant constrictor gaped open near his left hand, and the first portion of its roasted body stretched to the end of the table. The longest portions fed the courtiers at the other two tables, but the tail ended at the warlord’s right hand, as if the snake’s body had circled the room. The message was clear: even the very food these people consumed began and ended with Lord Barin.

Though he had ruled this land for almost thirty years, the warlord didn’t appear much older than Mala. No gray threaded his brown braids or his short beard, and his tanned skin appeared smooth and unlined, marked only by the sun tattooed around his right eye.

The cold dread in her stomach sharpened. That tattoo marked the sun god’s disciples. The Destroyer had been one, too—before claiming that he was Enam, freed from his fiery prison in the heavens and reborn. Not all who wore that mark believed it. But many did.