Raven's Hand (17 page)

“See to it that our queen’s prize is secured
and brought to her immediately,” Kane said. He regarded Killian.
“This fool you will take to the palace clapped in irons.”

I surrendered to the soldiers, glad only that
Kane did not immediately kill my love. He would live for now, and
that was better than the alternative. As I was taken from Killian’s
sight, manacles were applied to his wrists and his weapon was taken
into custody. I left him, happy to have finally found him; a
lingering tingle upon my lips from our first and last kiss.

Radden thrust his long sword into a reptilian
Cinderman, twisting his blade viciously so that the beast’s innards
spill out upon the ground. The Cinderman hissed out its final
breath, eyes bugging as it fell away to the street. Many of this
Cinderman’s comrades lay around it, dead or dying.

Fortunately for this battalion,
reinforcements had arrived just in time to turn the tide during the
attack by these abominable beasts. There had been no discovery yet
of the means by which the Cindermen had been able to enter Rainier
with such large numbers undetected. However, their leader, the
lion-like Judah, was nowhere to be seen—an unusual circumstance for
a Cinderman attack.

Radden gestured to several of the soldiers,
asking if any of them had seen his son and the young lady who was
riding inside the carriage. None of them had. None of them seemed
to be in good enough condition to care at the moment either. These
men were battered and bruised, some of them having bleeding wounds
that required immediate care by a physician.

Pedestrians had come to help—some of them
fighting with the soldiers against the Cindermen, others helping
the wounded. The street was bloody also, as though the very ground
had been wounded in order to bring forth this carnage. Radden
surveyed the scene, unsure of which direction Killian ran with the
girl. Surely, the boy had been able to get her safely away from the
attack.

Then Radden saw someone standing in the midst
of the haze which hung heavy in the street. This was no Cinderman
and no soldier. The slender figure was feminine. Her skin was dark
and her robes reminded him of only one person.

“Shalindra?” he whispered to himself. “Can it
be?”

Radden found himself approaching the woman.
She did not turn to regard him. Instead, she continued to stare at
the body of a fallen Cinderman. When Radden came up behind her, he
half expected to find Judah dead at her feet. However, this was
only one of the wolf-like beasts and not their leader at all.

Radden planted his bloody long sword point
down upon the road and dropped to one knee. His hands and hair and
clothing were heavily matted with gore. His joints and muscles were
sore from fighting, yet he would not risk dishonoring himself
before the priestess again.

“Mistress,” he said simply, dropping his gaze
to the ground deferentially.

She did not turn, but spoke in a low voice
where only he could hear. “Radden,” she said, “much has
happened.”

“Yes, my lady,” he said. “I am surprised to
see you in the city. I was not aware that you ever left the Brine
Wood.”

“I find myself wherever Eliam desires,” she
said.

“Of course,” Radden replied. “What is Eliam’s
purpose in having you come here today?”

She turned now, looking down at him. “I have
come to warn you, Son of Rainier.”

Radden lifted his gaze to meet hers.
Addressing him as
Son of Rainier
was troubling to him.
However, he did not wish to argue the matter with her again. She
had refused already to hear his side of things, and Shalindra was a
hard person to argue with besides.

“To warn me?” he asked.

“Do you not realize who it was the Cindermen
came here to destroy today?”

“A girl,” he answered. “The one riding in the
armored carriage. Who is she?”

“She is a Daughter of Eliam,” Shalindra
replied.

“The bond meant for Prince Nathan?”

“The same,” Shalindra said. “You no doubt
understand her value to House Rainier?”

“Precious beyond compare. Her power will
belong to the new king,” he said. “Without a bond, Nathan cannot
assume the throne when his father dies.”

Radden considered a moment longer and then
started to speak.

“She is safe,” Shalindra said, anticipating
his query.

“Killian?”

“Your son has saved her life.”

Radden exhaled deeply, as though a weight had
just been removed from his chest. “Thank, Eliam,” he whispered,
running bloody fingers through his matted hair.

“However, he will soon lose his own life,
unless someone intervenes.”

Radden stood. “Why?”

“He has been taken into custody by the King’s
Guard,” she reported.

Radden considered this new development for a
moment. “But Killian saved the girl from the Cindermen,” he said.
“Why would the king execute my son for heroism?”

“It might have something to do with the
girl’s feelings for the boy,” Shalindra said, arching her brow.

Radden stammered for a moment. Feelings for
his son? How could such a thing possibly be? Killian had only met
the girl minutes ago during the battle. He began to say exactly
this, when Shalindra cut him off.

“Something has happened that no one else is
aware of, not even the girl or your son,” she said. “When it is
discovered, Killian will be put to death in order to break its
power.”

Eyes wide with horror, Radden demanded,
“What? What has happened, Shalindra?”

“Unwittingly, a bond has been made.”

“Impossible,” Radden said, closing his eyes
as a sudden dizziness tried to overcome him. He very nearly fainted
there in the street. When he opened his eyes again, Shalindra was
no longer present upon the King’s Road. Eliam’s priestess had
disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared.

He stumbled for a moment, throwing out his
hand to steady himself. His hand landed upon the warm, muscular
side of a horse. Radden looked up as the horse nickered in his ear.
A black mare stood upon the road with him.

“Esmeralda,” he said, smiling. Then he found
his strength and put his foot inside the stirrup, hoisting himself
into her saddle. “We’ve got to hurry to the palace, girl. Killian
is in trouble.”

This news was all Esmeralda needed to spur
her on. She whinnied and turned on the spot, charging down the road
toward the palace standing at the heart of Rainier, at the end of
the King’s Road. Wounded soldiers, shrouded in mist and the smoke
of flaming debris, watched them go.

Judah shook his head, a wild mane of coarse
hair flailing about him in the near dark of the catacombs that lay
beneath the royal city of Rainier. “Where is my report?” he
shouted.

Two dozen of his Cindermen soldiers waited
with him upon news from the surface. Down below, they had only
heard the initial explosion that began their attack upon the King’s
Road. If all had gone as planned, then the latest attempt by the
royal family to bring one of the Daughters of Eliam to the palace
as a bond for the prince had failed.

Judah had had the opportunity to kill the
previous girl with his own hands. Unfortunately, his presence
during this attack had been forbidden by their benefactor; a man of
few words but great in power. Judah did not enjoy being put into
this position, but circumstances being what they were, he found
himself with little choice.

His people had long been considered
abominations by the humans. At one time, hundreds of years ago,
they were enslaved; used by the royals to fight their wars with one
another. A time of rebellion had ended all of that.

Now, the Cindermen were outcasts, living
nomadic lives, raising their families the best they could, while
the humans dwelled in walled cities having the finer things in
life. Judah meant to see an end to this hierarchy, to bring down
the royals and have the Cindermen rise to positions of status. For
the time being, he would work with those humans who were willing to
grant him the opportunities he needed. But a day was coming when he
meant to crush them beneath his feet and take all for his
people.

The waiting made his men anxious, but Judah
remained calm. His ancestors had waited as long as necessary amid
the high grasses for their prey to finally come to them. He tensed
only when—after an hour had passed since the initial explosion—he
saw several of his soldiers coming down the long corridor with his
benefactor in tow.

This man, dressed in black and wearing a
wide-brimmed hat of the same color, walked toward him almost
soundlessly. In comparison, the plodding of the four Cindermen who
surrounded him every step of the way seemed thunderous. Judah knew
Kane’s reputation among the humans. He was considered a master of
stealth and assassination.

Kane had employers, perhaps even genuine
allies, but he had no real friends. He had no use for such
relationships, no desire to share his life with another. Judah
admired and pitied the man. He was a true warrior, but there was no
joy in him.

When the group came to stand before him in
the half-light, Judah wasted no time. “You killed my warriors in
the forest.”

Instantly, the soldiers surrounding Kane
turned on him, their muscles coiling like springs ready to attack.
The assassin did not move except to smile a little. Retractable
claws came out also as they bore their teeth in anticipation of
Judah’s command to strike the human down.

“Do you also wish to have these die?” Kane
asked in a mirthful tone.

Judah’s eyes narrowed on the man. “They had
the girl,” he said. “We could have ended this then and spared
ourselves the effort today.”

Kane raised his head, so that the brim of his
hat revealed bright almost luminescent eyes. He was still smiling.
“I wanted the attack to take place here in the city,” he said.
“House Rainier must understand their vulnerability.”

“So they can guard themselves?” Judah
growled.

Kane’s grin softened a little. “When you
spook the herd, they panic.”

Judah nodded slowly, showing teeth in his
version of a smile. “And make mistakes.”

Silence hung between them for a moment.
Judah’s soldiers relaxed only a little. They still wanted to kill
the human in their midst. Long held prejudices were difficult to
forget.

Judah’s smile disappeared a moment later.
“Still, my fellow Cindermen are dead by your hand, human. You’ll
have to pay for that.”

For a fraction of a second, there was
complete silence in the subterranean chamber. Even the ghosts
haunting the shadows were unsure what to make of Judah’s
statement.

Judah smiled again—the smile of a wolf on the
hunt.

“Kill him.”

The Cindermen pounced like cats upon a
helpless mouse. Only this was no mouse, and he was as far from
helpless as could be. The Cindermen nearly collided with one
another in their eagerness, but Kane had already moved. Nearly too
fast to see, the assassin ducked beneath the first two attacks,
grabbing one of his assailants by the arm in the process. A moment
later this wolf-like Cinderman was lying on the stone floor with
the joints of his wrist, elbow, and shoulder torn out of place.

The other three soldiers turned on him,
finding their prey. Except, in the eyes of the assassin, he was the
hunter and they were the prey. The first soldier died less than a
second later as Kane’s silver blade stabbed him through the
breastbone. Fearlessly, the other two pursued him in a whirling
confusion Judah found hard to follow.

The third flew through the air toward the
lion-like leader of the Cindermen, landing hard on the stone floor
of the catacomb tunnel with his neck broken. Kane stood still as
the last came to him, claws and teeth ready to rend human flesh.
Something akin to thunder resounded in the tunnel with them.
Otherworldly light flashed in the assassin’s eyes.

The lizard-like Cinderman stopped short of
his prey, fear on his face. He attempted a swift retreat, but Kane
had him by the throat, hoisting him from the ground bodily. His
fingers tightened. The lizard man’s vertebrae popped and snapped.
The life in his eyes died and the assassin cast his rag doll body
to the ground at Judah’s feet.

“Impressive,” Judah said.

Kane fixed his gaze upon the Cinderman
leader, his eyes still burning brightly like two hot coals in their
sockets. “Shall I kill you next?” he said menacingly.

Judah smiled. “Do what you will,” he said,
“but you’ll find that I don’t back down from a fight, whether human
or Malkind spirit.”

The supernatural light diminished to almost
nothing. Kane took one step closer. “Which is why I chose you,” he
said.

“Just as your power with the Malkind is why I
follow you…for now.”

“Then we understand one another,” Kane said.
“Regroup with your Cindermen and prepare for what is coming.”

“You believe they will come for us?” Judah
asked. “Attempt an attack on the Cindermen?”

“Not necessarily,” Kane said. “Even the royal
house does not have the time or the means to expend upon you right
now. To send their army after a band of murderous rogues would
leave them vulnerable to the other houses.”

“They’ll know that someone on the inside had
to help the Cindermen into the city,” Judah said. “They’ll be
searching for a traitor in their midst.”

Kane smiled like a ravenous animal about to
kill. “And they will certainly find one,” he said. “One of my
choosing.”

“Confound this broth!” Stephen bellowed. His
female attendant jumped at the outburst, unsure if she should
remove the steaming bowl, or simply bow her way backwards out of
the king’s presence. She lowered her gaze and simply waited for
direction. Possibly, the king would decide to hurl the concoction
at the far wall. It wouldn’t have been the first time.