Lord of Secrets (The Empty Gods) by Teintze Breanna

Author:Teintze, Breanna [Teintze, Breanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Watch
ISBN: 9781787476233
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2019-07-31T21:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

My knees ached where the stone floor bit into them. I couldn’t see anything except green light and the blurred outline of whoever stood in the doorway.

‘Corcoran Gray, you’re under arrest. Don’t be foolish, and we won’t paralyse you.’

I didn’t recognise the voice. It wasn’t Lorican, and it wasn’t Jaern. At least this probably meant that Jaern wasn’t the one who threw the spell at me, although the choice of spell seemed awfully coincidental. This was some horrible variation on a tetany spell. The muscles in my back wrenched tighter.

Concentrating, I got my eyes to focus. A man and a woman stood just inside the doorway, wearing the elaborately embroidered robes of senior wizards. I couldn’t see Lorican, but there were a limited number of possibilities. He was dead in the taproom, disabled in the taproom or in league with these Guild thugs.

My jaw would hardly open. ‘Just how in the hells do you think I can be foolish in this condition?’

The wizard who had spoken, a man with a curling blond beard, smiled thinly. ‘You have a spell scribed on your wrist. Who knows what you might have written under your clothes. I’m going to pull the spell back a bit in order that you and your companions may strip to the skin. Once we’ve seen that none of you have anything threatening scribed, you may dress, and then we will take you to the Guildhouse for trial. If you do anything that even smells like the beginning of an incantation, I will release the spell again. The tetany spell can break men’s bones, you understand. I’d do it now, but it would be inconvenient to have to carry you.’

‘Bastards,’ Brix whispered. ‘You’re not supposed to hurt people like this.’

My bones had been broken before, as far as that went, but the thought of them breaking hers made my skin crawl. I couldn’t master my neck muscles enough to turn towards her. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘There’s more than one of them; they can throw another copy of the same spell if they want.’

‘Indeed,’ said the wizard. ‘I suggest you get started.’

The spell around me relaxed, just a little. I got up to my feet, unlacing my shirt as I went. The spell still pulsed, putrid green, throbbing under my skin, ready to snap back into action at any moment. It was like moving underwater. ‘There’s no point in you keeping the others; the tribunal won’t find anything to charge them with. The woman’s useless – doesn’t know a damn thing. I paid her for Temples information, and even that wasn’t very helpful. And the Erranter just rents rooms.’

Brix’s breath hissed behind me, but it was all I could think of. There was no other scenario in which the Guildies would let her go. I certainly couldn’t let them find out she was Tirnaal. Ri Dana had a small but thriving slave market; Brix would bring a handsome price on the block – and that was assuming they didn’t just drag her back and lock her up in the Guildhouse here.

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