People in the crowd were pleased. It seemed quite a few of them had already seen Kai fight.
“No one will bet against him,” Sebastian said in my ear. “This one is just for show.”
Still, I couldn’t help being nervous, and then I looked at Kai’s opponent. He was tall with long arms. His head was shaved and beads of sweat ran down his temples. It wasn’t warm down here. There was a sheen across his face, and his eyes were glazed. He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly.
“Something’s wrong,” I whispered to Jarrod. “You need to stop this.”
He glanced down at me. “Quiet.”
My anxiety began to grow as the two men on the floor began circling each other. This mercenary was different from the others.
“Please,” I begged Sebastian. “We need to stop this.”
“Don’t fuss,” he whispered back. “Kai will be fine.”
He was wrong. So was Jarrod.
Kai was in danger. I knew it with every breath I took, but there was only one avenue open to me, and I had hoped never to use it again. After my one reading of Lavonia, I’d wanted so much to leave that part of my life behind.
As if to entertain the crowd, Kai flipped his sword once and caught it. People applauded and cheered.
Sweat ran down the mercenary’s face, and I had no choice, not if I was to protect my husband. Focusing all my strength, I reached out for Kai’s opponent’s thoughts, and a wall of desperation hit me.
His thoughts and emotions rushed and swirled in my mind.
He was an ex-soldier who’d married, had children, and tried his hand at farming. A bad crop had forced him to borrow money at high interest. Another poor year had left him in dire straights. He and his family were about to be turned from their home to starve. Allemond Monvílle had offered to pay the entire debt and interest if he would kill Kai in the ring. This man had killed before, many times, and he’d agreed.
He believed he’d probably signed his own death warrant as well, but at least he would save his family.
I jerked away from his mind with only one thought. He was going to kill Kai.
In a flash, Kai moved fluidly inside this opponent’s guard and nicked the man’s shoulder.
The crowd cheered.
Without an instant’s hesitation, I leaped from my seat and jumped down into the area with my skirts flying. People behind me gasped.
Neither of the men fighting saw me. They were too focused on each other.
As Kai continued moving past the man and was turning back, the mercenary abandoned all rules of the match and swung for Kai’s face, slicing his cheek open. Unprepared for this, Kai stumbled, and the man swung downward, cutting through the back of his right knee.
“No!” Sebastian cried, jumping to his feet.
Kai fell backwards onto the floor of the pit. The man gripped the hilt of his sword with both hands just as I reached them. Throwing my body over Kai’s, I held up one hand in instinctive defense and looked up to the mercenary.
At the sight of me, he froze.
Then his expression hardened and he raised the blade higher, ready to bring it down through us both. But it was too late. Guards had poured from the lower door, and one of the Cornetts’ men reached us first. He rammed a knife into the side of the man’s throat.
For a just a second, I thought I saw a flash of guilt pass across this guard’s features, but then Sebastian reached me and dropped to his knees, and all of my attention turned to Kai.
His face was bleeding, and so was his leg. He writhed in pain.
“Help!” Sebastian shouted at Lord Henri. “We need help.”
The Cornetts were patrons to a physician who lived nearby, and Henri sent for him before we’d even moved Kai out of the arena. Watching my husband, as he was carried to our guest room, was one of the most difficult things I’d ever lived through. I believed Kai to have a high pain threshold, and he was in agony.
Upon, arriving, the physician took one look at him and pulled out a bottle of poppy syrup. He made Kai drink enough of it to put him to sleep. Then Kai’s wounds had been dressed. The slash on his face would probably leave a scar, but no one was concerned with that.
Our fears were for his leg, and the physician could tell us little. He struck me as competent but not gentle or comforting.
“The main thing you need to guard against is infection,” he said. “If it becomes infected, it will have to come off.”
Jarrod looked as if he were about to be ill. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Only time will tell how much use it will be,” the physician said bluntly. “There are no bones broken, but the cut is deep and across the back of his knee. It might heal enough for him to put weight on it, but even if, he’ll most likely always have a limp, and his days of sparring with swords are over.”
Jarrod closed his eyes.
Not long after that, Lord Henri cleared the room to give us some peace. As he himself left, he said, “I will get to the bottom of this. You can be assured.”
Then Jarrod, Sebastian, and I stood around Kai where he lay.
“What made you jump down into the ring?” Sebastian asked me. He must have been waiting to ask me this.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. If Jarrod learned my secret, he’d be determined to exploit it.
“Something was wrong,” I answered. “I could see it in that man’s face. He was sweating, and I nearly needed a shawl.”
“And that was enough to send you running in front of all those people? If you’d been wrong, you would have embarrassed Kai almost beyond forgiveness. You know how proud he is.”
I looked away.
Sebastian sighed. “I’m sorry. You saved his life.”
“But she didn’t save his leg,” Jarrod said bitterly.
For him, that was all that mattered right now. Kai was his last hope, and now Kai had been maimed.
“We still don’t know what happened,” Sebastian said, “Why would some mercenary try to kill Kai? I assume he was hired? But that blasted guard had to go and kill the only person who might have been able to give us answers.”
By now, I’d had some time to think, to try and piece things together. I knew Allemond had hired the man—or perhaps coerced was a better term. It seemed the Monvílles had arranged for our invitation and then originally planned to attend the gathering. Perhaps Allemond had second-guessed this in the end and decided that after Rolf’s recent death, another attack on the Volodanes might put him in the path of blame? If he weren’t here, no one would think to blame him.
I thought on the fleeting guilt in the expression of the Cornett guard who’d killed Kai’s attacker. Had Allemond arranged to pay him a sum he couldn’t refuse? For Sebastian was right. If the mercenary had lived, he would have been tortured until he talked. Now, he was silenced forever.
“Who’d hire someone to kill Kai?” Jarrod asked. “Cornett?”