House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(51)

“You talk strange,” says Mal. “Can’t you just be plain and say, yes, he’s happy but he had a fight with his lord and now he’s in a snit?”

“Can’t you just be plain and bloody tell us where he’s gone?” Jannik says.

Mal looks over at Jannik and snorts. “She sold him again. I think he came back because he didn’t think she’d really do it to him twice. Not the brightest candle, that one. Pretty as a painting and about as much brains.”

He came back to her driven by whatever familial bonds he thought he still had. And she sold him. I don’t think it’s because he was stupid, I think it’s because he wanted to be wrong. He needed to be wrong.

Sold. The thought is enormous and disturbing. “Sold him to who?”

“The blond one from Eline.”

“Shit,” says Jannik. “Shit and f*ck and Gris damn.”

Personally, I agree.





A SMALL TRUTH


We head back to Harun with the news. I wonder how much he knows through the bond. He was confused enough when we left him, and there’s also a chance he’s done himself permanent mental damage. And now here we come to inform him his prize belongs to someone else. Sold. “You tell him,” I say.

Jannik has been deep in thought, frowning. He jerks up. “What – he already hates me.”

“Exactly.”

He tips his head back. “Ah,” he says with a sigh. “You do realize when this is all done we will never be welcome there again. We know too many of their dirty little secrets.”

And where then does that leave us – utterly friendless. There’s Carien, but she’s an Eline by marriage and I truly do not know the extent of our trust. Does she know of Garret’s recent purchase? Worse, was it perhaps her idea that he buy another? The next bat someone stumbles over in the warren of the Hob district could be one I know.

And I don’t hate him that much.

“We’re here.” I announce it needlessly. Neither of us wants to get out.



*

Harun clutches the door frame as he lets us in. He smells sour and sick, worse than when we left him. It seems he’s been self-medicating with a bottle. He stumbles down the passage and leads us to the room where he tried for his Visions. The stench of vomit lingers. He collapses into a chair and sits there hunched over himself.

“You should be getting better,” I say to him. The worst of the scriv will have faded and begun to work itself out of his system. At the very least, he shouldn’t look so clammy, like something dug out from under a rock. I wonder if this has anything to do with Isidro – if the vampire is drugged, beaten. Worse. Between the two of them they are looping pain and guilt and anger and love and only Saints know what else. What does that do to a mind? To a body?

He glares at me. “Where’s he?”

Jannik coughs. “He’s been . . . .”

“Been what? Stop prevaricating, you Gris-damned bat.” Harun winces and half-doubles, his hands grabbing at his stomach

Anything could be happening to Isidro right now. Is this the after-effects – or simply Harun’s own body giving out? I don’t know if the bond weakens with distance, or is instead stretched out like a silk thread until it snaps and the two people it joined are left to die alone.

“You should lie down.” I hate feeling sorry for him. He’s an idiot for taking that much scriv. He’s an idiot for treating Isidro like a bauble to own.

“Stop telling me what I should be doing and give me a f*cking answer.”

My breath heats in my lungs, the bellow of my heart fanning the flames of my anger. Instead of giving in to the satisfaction of screaming at him, I hold myself calm and say simply, “Eline has him.”

Harun pauses, then straightens a little. His already pasty, sweaty skin has taken on a sallow tone I do not like. He’s poisoned his blood, or worse. “Pour me a drink,” he says.

“And which servant are you speaking to?” I say even as Jannik sighs and gets up to unstopper a pear-shaped bottle of distilled wine. “You shouldn’t be drinking.”

“You are not my nursemaid, Pelim.” He accepts the snifter Jannik pours him with a mumbled thanks, and drinks deep. When he sets the glass down his hand is curiously still, the earlier shivers gone. “You’ve proof?”

“We have,” I glance at Jannik, who is shaking his head very slightly, “word from a trusted source.”

“Let me guess,” says Harun. “The cat herself.”

“You mean Splinterfist?”

“I mean your dear little friend, Carien,” he says, then shudders. He folds his hands together and presses them against his mouth. When he talks, the words come out obstructed, as if he wants to push them back in and swallow them down. “He’s scared,” he says. “It’s dark, and he can smell the others, the smell of their blood.”

“Dammit,” Jannik says and pours himself a glass of Harun’s liquor. “Felicita?” He raises the bottle.

“Oh Gris, yes, why not.” A headache is sparking in my left temple, throbbing small and tight. I rub my thumb hard into the spot and wait for my vision to clear. “We need to find a way to get to him in the Eline house – if he’s even there.”