The Outcast (Summoner #4)(75)

On the other side of the door, the guard jumped awake, his face twisting into a scowl. He was a mean-looking young man, with a potato-shaped nose and beady eyes.

“If you don’t shut that creature up, we won’t feed you for a week,” the guard growled. “No water either, and you and that bucket will become very familiar.”

“Help me,” Arcturus wailed. “My demon’s gone crazy.”

Arcturus sent an order to Sacharissa with a thought, and the howl turned into a snarl, low and threatening. She took the end of a mop and began to savage it, and Arcturus accompanied the noise with a choking, gurgling sound.

“Hey,” the guard said. “Stop that. I know what you’re up to.”

Arcturus drummed his feet against the ground, his choking more frantic now. For good measure he scraped his fingernails along the door. Then, with a swift mental order, both he and Sacharissa fell silent, and Arcturus pressed his cheek against the keyhole.

The guard stared at the door, his face a picture of confusion.

“Come on,” Arcturus whispered under his breath. “Come see.”

His finger swirled in the air, etching the spiral that powered the telekinesis spell. It fixed to his finger, and he held his hand ready beside the keyhole, waiting to strike.

Now the rebel looked up and down the corridor, as if looking for someone to help him. Seeing nobody, he crouched down and shuffled closer to the door. Arcturus held his breath, then grinned as the man lowered his face toward the keyhole. Curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Arcturus waited. Waited until the lumpy face had filled the small circle of light on the other side. Then he pushed his finger into the lock and unleashed a blast of kinetic energy.

There was a dull whump as the spell was funneled through the mechanism and out the other side, shattering the lock with a crackle of snapping metal. Arcturus threw the door open and burst through … only to find the guard crumpled against the wall, his neck snapped back at an odd angle, eyes glazed over in death. There was no blood—the very force of the blast had killed him.

Arcturus felt the gorge rise in his throat. He ran back into the room and emptied the contents of his stomach into a bucket.

He had not meant for the man to die. In truth, he had thought he would knock the man unconscious, or at worst blind him in one eye.

But there was no time to process his guilt. He pushed the body into a sitting position, pulled the man’s hood up so it appeared he was sleeping, and laid the spear across his lap.

Then Arcturus strapped on his weapons, infused Sacharissa and pulled his own hood over his head to obscure his face. For all any passerby would know, he was a rebel now. At most, he had until morning to save his friends. Or die trying.





CHAPTER

43

ARCTURUS STARED DOWN THE corridor, paralyzed by indecision. He needed to find where the nobles were being held hostage, but how would he navigate the maze of rooms and sleeping rebels?

For a moment he concentrated, trying to smell them using his newfound heightened senses. But the myriad of scents that filled his nostrils were confusing—with hundreds of rebels in the building, there were just too many people. Sacharissa might have been able to make sense of it, but she was infused, and would need to stay that way.

He considered cornering a rebel and interrogating him for information, threatening him with death by fireball. But what if the rebel called his bluff and shouted for help? And even if a rebel did give up information, was Arcturus supposed to somehow knock him unconscious, relying on him staying out cold until Arcturus had escaped? Or tie the rebel up and gag him with his rudimentary knowledge of knots and hope it worked? He didn’t want to think about killing one. It just … wasn’t an option. The image of the man he had murdered floated unbidden to his mind, and his stomach twisted with guilt and revulsion. No. He would not do it again.

The one thing he did know was that he could not stand there forever. If he walked purposefully, he could get away with a simple nod and greeting to any passing rebels, as if he had places to be. But if they found him standing like a plum in the middle of the corridor, they might stop and talk to him.

He needed a friend. For a moment he thought about Rotter, stuck with the Twenty-Fourth in the summoning room. As far as the rebels knew, he was just another soldier in their squad.

If anyone could help him, it was them. The Twenty-Fourth might be massively outnumbered, but with the element of surprise they might just be able to rescue the nobles and escape. The difficulty would be convincing them.

So he walked toward the atrium, his eyes fixed ahead, his face shrouded by the hood. On either side, he could hear conversations, or the clink of metal, but dared not glance into the open doorways. Twice, groups of rebels walked past, but both times they were too deep in conversation to give him a second look.

To his surprise, he reached the balconied floor that overlooked the atrium unnoticed. But that was where his luck ended, and he realized just how harebrained his plan truly was.

Crawley had taken him to the top floor of the eastern stairwell, and had locked him there too; he knew it best, for it was where the servants’ and teachers’ quarters were housed. To reach the summoning room, Arcturus would need to go down the stairs and cross the atrium. Only, there were a hundred or so men lined up against the walls of each floor, ready to step out of the shadows and ambush anyone who walked through the double doors.