Blade of Secrets (Bladesmith #1)(58)

“Trust the mercenary,” Petrik says. “Might as well trust a starving lion!” He falls behind Temra and me quickly, despite his best efforts to keep up.

My face turns beet red, but it has nothing to do with the exertion. Kellyn just made a fool of me. Both Petrik and Temra will blame me for this. We can’t lose our money. Not again.

There are so many threats I’d like to hurl at that long, muscled back. First among them is to halt before I unsheathe Secret Eater and detach the mercenary’s knees from the rest of his body. I could do it so easily.

It’s a fanciful thought, but one I would never carry out. I’ll leave the violence to Temra.

Kellyn pushes people over in his haste, angry shouts following in his wake. He leaps over a parked wagon, slides around a shop corner, barrels into a merchant’s cart full of fruit. I hear Petrik slip on a rolling orange from behind me. Temra loses ground as she has to veer around the overturned cart.

And I’m hot on the mercenary’s heels, having jumped the obstacle.

That good-for-nothing wastrel. That lying, scheming, self-obsessed, worthless little worm of a man. When I get my hands on him, I’m going to yell until I lose my voice.

He’s heading farther and farther out of town. Does he mean to traverse back to the road out of the city? He won’t have anywhere to hide then!

Not that he’s been trying to hide. He made a point of slamming the door out of the pawnshop, after all, did he not? And he brandished that bag of coins at me. Taunting me, even. Daring me to chase after him.

Almost as if—

I stop in my tracks. Temra bashes into my arm, not stopping in time. The panting sound behind us must be the scholar.

“What are you doing? He’s getting away!” Temra screams.

“Something’s wrong,” I say.

“You can tell me while we run,” she says, yanking my arm and trying to physically pull me after Kellyn.

“He left his sword,” I say.

“I already mentioned he could buy a new one.”

“But that one was special to him. He loves Lady Killer. And he’s—well, it’s like he’s leading us somewhere.”

Kellyn disappears around a bend in the road, just where the houses of the city end and morph into trees, where the noises of the market fade into animal calls. Secluded. Private.

“If he wanted to run off with the money, he wouldn’t have made so much noise about it,” I say. “He would have been sneaky. Quiet.”

“He’s an arrogant—bastard,” Petrik says between breaths. “This was exactly his style.”

“No, I don’t think—”

The foot traffic had been thinning, but all of a sudden about thirty people step onto the road. People in red with falcons on their chests.

And Kellyn.

Kellyn is among them.

Standing there like he knows them.

Only, he still looks off to me. He’s holding himself differently. And his stature isn’t quite right.

What has happened to him?

“You!” Petrik bellows across the road to where Kellyn stands among all of Kymora’s soldiers.

Temra is speechless. For while she thought him capable of running off with our money, she didn’t think he’d do this.

Neither did I.

“But Secret Eater,” I say quietly to my companions. “I cut him.”

He must have changed his mind. Maybe Kymora got to him in Thersa, convinced him to lead us to a place where she had more forces stationed. I suppose if she offered him enough money—

But Kymora isn’t among her soldiers. If she knew we’d be here, then where is she?

“Ziva Tellion!” a woman who is almost as tall as I am shouts. “Hand over your weapons or prepare to have them removed from you by force.”

“Eat dirt,” Petrik says.

Temra nods at him in approval. “Yeah, shove off, lady. You can have them when you rip them from our cold, dead fingers.”

Petrik snaps his neck in her direction. “Perhaps we need not take it that far.”

“When you’re vastly outnumbered,” Temra says through clenched teeth, “sometimes you have to rely on intimidation.”

“And the mercenary also said he’d be right back with our money! So clearly he’s a great source of wisdom!”

“Shh,” I tell them. “Let me think.”

“While you do that—” Petrik cocks back his arm and flings his staff. It flies end over end toward the closest of Kymora’s guards, a big man with a mud-colored beard nearly down to his navel.

And while the weapon worked splendidly against untrained city folk, this man catches the staff in one hand.

But the staff has to return to its wielder, so the guard is dragged forward as the staff jerks back toward Petrik. His feet make long trails through the mud on the road as he wrestles with the stick, trying to find purchase.

Petrik’s face is horrified as the guard grows closer and closer. Kymora’s soldiers seem mildly perplexed as they do nothing but watch the scene with interest.

The bearded guard has his full focus on the staff, as though now it’s become a personal struggle between himself and the stick. He clearly doesn’t think us an actual threat.

Which is why his face flits to surprise when Temra sticks him with her shortsword.