Alex and Charlie crept up the stairs of the keep. The duke and his guests had all gone to the Great Hall for the noon meal, so each level was empty or nearly so. The duke’s quarters were silent as they passed and continued higher.
Alex headed for the very top of the tower and the watch standers. As always, it pained him to use Charlie, but he couldn’t waste a fighter, and hopefully the boy would be safer doing this job. Since Sage hadn’t made it to the pickets, he’d decided to call them in, and the signal would also be used to begin their attack. Luck was with them, and just as they approached the trapdoor, it opened and one of the guards came down the steep wooden steps, grumbling to his companion that he couldn’t wait any longer to use the privy. When he reached the bottom, his attention was caught by Charlie juggling two small casks. They danced around each other in the dark space as the boy stammered apologies. When the soldier’s back was to the shadows, Alex stepped out and clamped a hand over the man’s mouth as he buried a long dagger in his back, angling up to pierce the kidney. The intense pain caused the man to jerk once and drop straight down. Alex caught him and dragged him backward down the stone steps and finished the job out of Charlie’s sight.
Alex wiped his bloody knife on the man’s shirt and ascended again, signaling Charlie to go ahead. The boy nodded and ambled up the steps to the platform. He had the last two packets of red blaze with him, and they expected the guards had a steady fire in the bowl to keep warm. Alex pulled the hinge pins of the stairs and listened as his brother conversed with the remaining guard; then Charlie came bounding down the wet wooden steps as the guard yelled, “What the hell?”
The instant the guard’s foot hit the top step in pursuit, Alex released his support and the stairs collapsed, dumping the man in a crash under the trapdoor and smacking his head on the way down. Alex drew his sword and rammed it through the guard’s heart before he could untangle himself. He pulled the blade out and looked over at Charlie, who stared at the shuddering body with wide eyes.
Alex stepped over the corpse. “Hey,” he said, grabbing the boy’s chin and turning his frightened brown eyes up to his own face. “You have a job to do, soldier. Focus.” Charlie swallowed and nodded. “Let’s go.” Alex boosted his brother up through the opening and leaned down to drag the dead guard off the steps. He tossed the staircase up onto the wooden platform. “Use that to help hold the door down.”
“His crossbow is still up here,” Charlie called as he lugged the trapdoor shut.
“Be ready to use it if you have to.”
“Yes, sir.” Charlie peeked down at him one last time, red smoke billowing behind him. “Alex,” he called, and their eyes met. “Good luck.”
“Be safe, kid.” The door slammed down, and he heard the bar slide across it. Sword in hand, Alex bounded down the stone staircase.
He had a man to kill.
76
D’AMIRAN PACED IN front of the fireplace of the Great Hall as his guests straggled in for the midday meal. The escort’s muster would be assembling now, and Geddes would drop his hint that the girl had been in the duke’s private chambers all along. Quinn could fill in the blanks. The boy would charge into the trap without thinking, and D’Amiran would have his execution, right in time for everyone to see it.
The ladies would be kept inside the hall, of course, but everyone else could step out to the ward. They’d hang him. Let him dangle and twitch and shit himself while his men watched, surrounded and helpless. The duke could hardly wait.
D’Amiran stopped pacing and looked up. The ladies hadn’t arrived yet. Perhaps they were coming to the back of the hall, through the keep, to avoid the rain. Still, they should’ve been here by now. None were ill as of that morning, which was more than he could say for his own people.
Shouts from the far end of the hall pulled the duke from his thoughts. People rushed in the doors, yelling about a fire in the courtyard. The stained-glass windows scattered drops of color across the room with the flames behind them—flames that raged high and bright despite the hours of rain. Soldiers ushered more people inside, calling for them to run for their lives.
Soldiers in black. Quinn’s riders.
Within the space of a few breaths, nearly all D’Amiran’s allies were in the Great Hall. The crowd parted as Captain Quinn pushed his way through, his sword drawn and bloody.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
D’Amiran took several stumbling steps backward as Quinn grabbed a servant and shoved him against the wall with a sword at his stomach. After a brief exchange, the Demoran captain dropped the man and swept dark, wrathful eyes across every face in the room, searching for the ones he wanted. When those eyes focused on him, D’Amiran saw his own death waiting.
He turned and fled.
77
ALEX SHOVED THROUGH the crowd in the Great Hall. The panicked face of D’Amiran’s manservant caught his eye, and he grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall. With the point of his bloody sword against the man’s belly, Alex demanded what he needed to know. “Where’s the girl?”
“What girl?” the man gasped.
Alex pushed the blade through the first layer of the servant’s jacket. “The guards brought a girl in last night. Where did they put her?”
White showed all around the man’s irises. “I never saw a girl!”
“Would they have put her in the dungeon?” He pressed harder
The man screamed as the sword pierced flesh. “I don’t know! I don’t know!”
Alex dropped him in disgust, and the man fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. People scattered out of his way as he continued his search until he found himself facing D’Amiran from across the room. The duke’s eyes widened when he saw him, and he turned and ran for the back door, which hadn’t been sealed off yet.
Alex sprinted after him, instincts screaming that the duke was going to wherever Sage was being held, and he would kill her. Several yards out of the hall, Alex had to make a choice: up toward the duke’s rooms, straight into the keep, or down toward the dungeons and storerooms. He paused and listened for indications of which way he should go. Then he chose down.
78
AS SOON AS the red smoke appeared, the guards on the outer walls began falling, crossbow bolts buried deep in their chests and backs. Once satisfied, Lieutenant Casseck leaned out of the inner gatehouse and gave a shrill whistle. The Stiller brothers and two companions ducked out of the already smoking armory, carrying casks of alcohol and bellows stolen from the smithy. They reached the barracks and split up, one pair leaving a leaking barrel by the door as they passed.
Casseck watched them pry open their casks and pour alcohol into the bellows, praying no one in the barracks had lit a candle or the whole thing would go up before the teams could get away. Both pairs began pumping the flammable mist through open windows on either end, and he held up a hand to signal to Archer down the wall several yards, who lit the pitch on his arrow.