The Queen of Lies (31 page)

“Careful, mate.” Sword grabbed Heath’s shoulder and indicated a spot on the floor. “That’s a pile of shit right there.”

Heath glanced down and saw Sword meant that literally. Could have been dog crap or human. “Looks like it’s been here a couple days. This place has been tossed pretty good. Think it was vandals?”

Sword started working through the wreckage, turning over books with the tip of his blade. He tapped a bottle. “Maybe. Whoever did it was getting drunk on the job. That’s Archean brandy—probably worth more than Lord Landry’s coin collection.”

“It’s personal,” Heath said, examining the slashed portrait. Lord Willifer Landry, had been shredded, his eye sockets colored black. “Someone didn’t like the reigning lord of the house.”

“Disowned, most likely,” Sword said. “I know that hurt from personal experience. Remember when I used to be Lord Dalrymple?”

Heath chuckled. “That was…an interesting period. It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways you can find to be an annoying pain in the ass. It’s been the one thread of consistency through all your personas.”

“Pshhh,” Sword scoffed. “I know your secret, mate. You could’ve given us up at that dolmen, but you didn’t because you looooove us.”

“I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to.” Heath made his way over a pile of torn-up books. “You’re a deadly fighter in a body that’s twice as strong and fast as mine, and you know all my moves.”

“Aw,” Sword said. “That’s sweet of you to say, but I know you have a contingency up your sleeve. You’ve probably thought long and hard about what it would take if it came down to it.”

Heath didn’t respond. He had several contingencies in fact. One needed to plan for any eventuality, and he had learned long ago not to place his trust in others.

He stepped toward a pair of sliding doors at the end of the library. The lock had been broken open, presumably with a chipped marble bust that lay facedown on the floor. He pushed the door open and stepped into the dark study.

Ransacked, like the library. The mahogany desk was broken into splinters, and everything in sight was demolished. Bookshelves had been emptied and smashed, their tomes scattered on the floor. A stern portrait of one of the Landry founders dominated the wall behind the bookcase, the regal gray-haired figure surrounded by crude drawings of penises ejaculating onto his face.

“More shit in here. Looks like dog crap,” Heath called out. There were papers everywhere. It would take days to look through all of them. “Fuck.”

Sword came through and went directly to the painting. He felt under the heavy gilded frame until he found something, and the portrait swung free from the wall, revealing an unopened safe. “Obviously whoever ransacked this place didn’t grow up in a wealthy family. I mean, the hidden safe is practically a cliché. You want to crack this? These fingers are a little fat for delicate work.”

“Wards?” Heath asked.

“Oh, right.” Sword tapped the end of his blade to the safe. The air rippled slightly as the binding magic dissipated.

Heath examined the locking mechanism and whistled. “The dial is decorative…the actual lock is an automaton. Fully capable of identifying authorized family members, probably rigged with some kind of deterrent. We need tools, possibly acid.”

“Do I have to do everything?” Sword held up his blade, aiming the heartstone jewel in his pommel at the dial. The red gem pulsed with inner light a few times, and the safe clicked open.

Heath glanced at Sword. “Mind explaining how you did that?”

“Heartstone resonates at short range,” Sword said casually. “The piece in the automaton is just a sliver looking for a password. I emptied every word in my lexicon of three thousand languages and dialects until I found the right one. Might have just overloaded it.”

Heath opened the vault, and soft bluish-purple light poured through the cracks. He smiled as he pulled the door open and gazed upon three radiant Archean shards. “Jackpot,” he said, reaching in the vault and removing a leather folio of parchments. “Grab the other stuff while I go through this.”

“Shit.” Sword hefted one of the glowing shards of Archean prismite. “We’re fucking rich, mate. Could buy us a castle with this.”

“Here,” Heath said, flipping through a folio. “Last will and testament of Willifer. It names successors, beneficiaries…Wait. Here it is—a trust for an E. R. Landry to cover the expenses of education at the Lyceum. And a stipulation that he never would inherit the title or land.”

“A bastard then.”

“Looks like.” Heath tossed the folio to the floor. “Who do we know at the Lyceum?”

Sword looked at him. “Maddox?”

Heath sighed. “Who
else
?”

“No, mate…” Sword pointed toward the library at a lean figure shuffling listlessly through the debris. The shoulders were slumped, and his arms swayed at his sides. “Fucking drunk as usual to boot.”

Heath marched out to the library. He spread his arms wide and offered his dazzling smile. “Maddox! Buddy, what are you doing—”

The thing that looked at him had Maddox’s face, but the croaking noise that came from its mouth wasn’t human. The skin was pale, and the eyes were milky with the pall of death. His neck looked slashed and tied back together with thick black stitches. The revenant lunged for him.

Heath’s blades were already drawn and readied, but revenants were fast when they needed to be. The thing slammed into him and knocked him backward as hands scratched and pulled at his clothes. Maddox shook and snapped at him like a ferocious animal.

They crashed to the floor, Heath’s head exploding with pain as it came down on something hard and sharp. The edges of books and shattered glass poked into his back as the monster on top of him went for his neck like a lover in the throes of passion.

The wet feeling of blood crept over on Heath’s neck as the revenant gnawed his flesh. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he’d bleed out in a matter of minutes, but the pain was washed away by the rush of battle. He jammed his blades into Maddox’s rib cage. The abraveum sliced through skin into organs, but the revenant didn’t even flinch.

Sword charged out of the study, his blade in midswing as he leapt toward Maddox and kicked him in the ribs. Revenants were made stronger by necromancy but not heavier. Sword’s blow sent the creature a good couple of feet into the air, with Heath’s bloody flesh still in its mouth.

Heath scrambled back, desperately pressing his hands against the wound. Light poured from his fingers, its radiance easing his pain even as it drew more of his strength.

The revenant lunged at Sword again, but he calmly kicked it, square in the head, back to the ground. Sword let out a roar and speared Maddox through his mouth, pinning him to the floor. The revenant bit at the steel, his limbs flopping and eyes darting frantically.

“Now that’s just sad, mate.” Sword knelt next to Maddox. “Good news is that it looks like he’s already been decapitated and stitched together.”

“He caught me by surprise.” Heath pulled himself off the floor as he massaged his neck. His fingers traced the edges where his skin had regrown softer and smoother.

Sword brushed off his hands. “You want to do any last rites or whatnot? He was sort of a friend…I suppose.”

Heath laughed incredulously. “That fucking sick, manipulative, evil…bitch!”

Sword shrugged. “He was a bit of a twat, but that’s kind of harsh for a send-off, mate.”

“I’m talking about Daphne,” Heath growled. “She wanted me to kill him because he’s some kind of immortal warlock. But look at that shit. Does that look immortal to you? She’s fucking with me, Sword. She wanted to see if she could make me follow orders again.”

“You could…you know, take care of her. It is a rule that the leaders of the Inquisition are all horrible bastards, but they span the multitudinous diversity of ways that people can be horrible bastards.”

Heath had thought of killing her after what had happened in Reda. Sending him to kill children was a test of loyalty. Sending him to kill someone he knew—that was personal.

And unnecessary. “Let’s see where the current takes us,” Heath said. “There’s no use dropping him in the river if there’s a price on his head someone’s willing to pay. But now we have another problem: someone killed him before we did.”

“What luck, right? Three shards, and we’ve bought our way back into the abbess’s good graces practically guilt free. And you go in there bawling like a baby about how hard it was and how you feel nothing but emptiness, et cetera, and she thinks she’s got one over on us. Classic.”

Sword grabbed Maddox’s hair, which had grown tangled and greasy, pressed his boot on his shoulder, and yanked. The blade pinning the head popped out of the floor, accompanied by a sickening ripping noise as the leather stitches tore from the neck. Sword stumbled backward and let the head slide off the blade onto the floor. The revenant’s body lay still.

“Someone killed my friend,” Heath said, surprising himself by his use of the word. “This will need to be answered for.”

Sword cocked his bushy eyebrow. “Will it really, though? I mean, he can’t have mattered that much to you.”

Heath nodded. “No. Our courtship was a mistake. He was rude, arrogant, clingy, and half the time so drunk he could barely get it up. The world isn’t greatly diminished by the absence of his Light, but…mutilation? Reanimation? I knew him. He was a person, a better one than either of us, if you consider it objectively, and he never in his life did anything to deserve this.”

“It’s your vendetta. I just like killing things,” Sword acknowledged. “You think Evan Landry’s responsible?”

“There’s a connection for sure,” Heath said. “It just doesn’t add up yet. But why would he kill Maddox? And why leave his revenant in Landry Manor? Why loot the place for trinkets and not hit the safe?”

They both spun around at the sound of crunching glass.

A short, lithe figure in a black cloak crept along the wall, holding a bundle of fabric. The gentle pulsing glow of Archean prismite showed through the cloth. The thief bolted for the door.

Sword lunged at full speed, aiming to tackle, and probably crush, their unexpected visitor. Sword was Patrean and strong as fuck—when one of those guys ran at you, there wasn’t much to do but get out of the way or brace for injury.

The thief changed direction and sprinted toward the wall, gaining footholds in the emptied bookshelves. The cloak fell back, revealing a woman with a mane of long multicolored hair. By the time Sword got to her, however, she was gone, and he went crashing into the wall.

She somersaulted off the wall and landed into a crouching roll across the floor a good ten feet away from Sword. Heath was moving to intercept. Their eyes locked for an instant. She was maybe seventeen. She flashed a grin then darted toward the door to the foyer.

Heath ducked and unleashed a springblade into the wall, creating a tripwire of abraveum filament at calf level. She cleared it with a flashy midair tuck and roll.

He extended his other hand and let out a flare of brilliant light. Illumination flooded the room, glaring and bright. He let his other springblade loose, lodging it in the wall in front of her. She didn’t see it, and it nearly took off her head. She caught the wire at chest level and fell back, shrieking in pain. The shards tumbled to the floor, still glowing softly.

Sword was on top of her, a meaty hand pressed against her neck. “Stay the fuck down, bitch!”

“Please don’t kill me…I work for Daphne,” she sobbed softly.

Sword lifted her off the ground and slammed her against the wall. “The fuck you do!”

“Sword…” Heath retracted his blades until they clucked back into his arm braces. “She’s just a kid. Lay off a little.”

Sword didn’t lay off. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t gut this cunt right now.”

It was somewhat of a cliché in interrogations for one party to be aggressive while the other seemed reasonable. And Sword usually followed Heath’s lead. But it already had started. Best to go with it. Heath smiled. “Nice moves. I’m Heath, and this is my associate. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing? Madame Landry perhaps?” He turned to Sword and added, “At least give her enough air to answer questions.”

Sword let her down but kept his left hand digging into her shoulder. The wince on her face suggested he wasn’t being gentle with her. Her shirt and chest were slashed from her having hit his abraveum filament earlier, but it was a surface wound. It would sting for a few days, but it would heal.

She pleaded, “I was just looking for food…”

“Let me provide an alternate explanation, if I may.” Sword slammed her against the wall again. “You’re mixed up in this. You overheard my mate and me having a collegial discussion about internal matters. Then you set your little revenant pet to distract us while you made off with the shards.”

“Fuck it,” she sneered, dropping the pathetic façade. “Just kill me. I already would have done it myself if I had the guts.”

Heath rubbed his temples. “How about you just answer our questions? I don’t like torture. In general I don’t like to get my hands dirty. But I just lost a piece of my neck to a revenant, and I just want to go home and take a nice, long, relaxing bath. So let’s start with your name.”

“Esme.”