Page 11 of War Mage (The War Brides of Adrik #4)
Adara
I waken to someone roughly shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, girl,” an unfamiliar gruff voice orders, tone cruel. “I don’t have all night! Wake up!”
I groan, my limbs feeling numb and leadened, my head pounding. Slowly, my thoughts gather, remembering what happened before. The ship. The storm. Stupid Urim. The wave. Going into the void. Underestimating how far we needed to go to arrive on land. Hitting my head. I’m lucky to be alive, honestly.
I open my eyes with difficulty. Everything hurts, down to my bones, just like when I was in the anti-mage chamber. My vision is blurry and there is an incessant pounding behind my eyes. Hovering over my face is a male that I don’t recognize, with pale skin and a grim frown. Gasping, I scramble backwards, only to realize that I’m naked except for a blanket, which I jerk back up over my breasts. My silver manacles jingle at my wrists. Why am I naked and chained?
“Wha . . . ?” I croak out of a dry throat. “Who . . . ?”
“Be quiet,” the male orders. While he talks I see a flash of fang in his mouth. Vampire . We must have made it to Barakrin after all. “You speak to your new owner, human.”
Owner? What in the Nether? My eyes slide past the vampire and see Urim in his Honorless disguise, bandana around his forehead, slumped down a wall, his mouth open and foaming slightly. His eyes are rolled into the back of his head, white and bloodshot, and is totally still. Is he dead? Alarm courses through me. How did he die and why am I alone with this vampire, who is calling himself my owner?
“Come on, girl,” the vampire says, sounding callous. “Get up and let me have a look at my new property. Your old master is dead and you are mine now.”
My old master? What is this person saying? My sluggish brain struggles to understand what he’s saying. Then, suddenly it clicks.
“You . . . killed him . . .” I say slowly, looking the vampire in the eyes. He’s a little fuzzy around the edges, my mental faculties still slow to catch up after the blow to my head.
“Yes, stupid human. He brought you here after your ship sank, but I had no need for him. Orc blood is bitter and I have no taste for it. Nightberries were a good enough fate for him. But you . . . magic blood sweet enough to be intended exclusively for Grazrath? That I must experience for myself.”
What am I going to do? I can’t do this mission by myself. Who will sell me to Grazrath so that I can get in front of the demon to hit him with my soulfire? But that idiot orc went and got himself poisoned and now I’m alone with a madman who views me as property.
But I am no one’s property. I need to kill him and figure out what to do from there.
The vampire reaches toward me, moving faster than a human could, and takes my arm in a brutal grip.
“Are you feeble of mind, woman? I told you to get up! I reported a dead castaway to the magistrate already and the storm is fading, so I must hide you before the city guards come for the body or they’ll take you away from me!”
His hand squeezes painfully as he begins to pull me up, but I summon my fires to the surface of my arm, heating the skin to an agonizing level for a non-fire mage. It’s a little difficult, my fires sluggish to respond to my call after being unconscious, but they answer just the same, my skin glowing with heat where he’s touching me.
The vampire hisses and jerks back, his pale hand already reddening. “What in the Nether?”
“I belong to no one, vampire,” I spit at him, dropping my blanket so that I can have both hands, even though it bares my body to his gaze. I stand while summoning small balls of flame to hover over my palms. “And you will never taste my blood.”
“A mage?” he asks incredulously, some fear in his voice. “Of fire? But you are wearing iron!”
“Time to burn, you bastard,” I declare, before pushing my hands forward, ready to spray him with fire and burn him and this lighthouse to ash. Suddenly he is in front of me, moving too quickly for my eyes to track, his hand around my throat and squeezing tight enough that I immediately lose my breath. Fuck. He must have fed recently on the blood of sentients. But I have had combat training and even the panic of not being able to breathe does not stop me from responding. I grab his arm with my burning hands, searing into his flesh.
This time, though, the vampire merely grunts in pain and squeezes tighter, my vision darkening at the edges as my brain loses even more oxygen. We battle for a second, him squeezing my throat and me burning him, but then my flames sputter out, needing my oxygen to feed them. Then he laughs mockingly, his grip getting even tighter. “I don’t know why your chains aren't working, but no matter. I have even larger iron chains in the back. Once you are unconscious again, I’ll bind your power and you’ll be just as weak as any regular human bloodbag. But I’ll still be able to taste your magic every time I feed and grow to be as strong as Grazrath himself! I’ll—”
“Do nothing but die,” comes a familiar voice .
Urim!
Before the vampire can react to the sudden reappearance of the orc, Urim is behind him, huge, strong hands gripping his head and then, with a mighty pull, the orc snaps the vampire’s neck with a sickening pop . The vampire’s grip goes slack, oxygen rushing back into my lungs. Then Urim drops the dead body to the floor, the vampire collapsing lifelessly to the ground in a lump, his head at an unnatural angle.
“Urim!” I breathe out a sigh of relief, gulping down air. I never thought I’d be happy to see the orc alive, not after everything that has happened between us, but I’m glad he’s not dead. “I thought—”
“He tried to poison me, but I’m immune to most poisons,” Urim says, breaking into my words. “I played along to see why he wanted me gone, but his motivations were boring and selfish. It would seem that he only had ambitions of having his own blood slave.”
“Well, that wasn’t a boring motivation to me ,” I retort. “I was his intended target. If you hadn’t been alive to intervene I would have been bound with iron and enslaved. No more mission or freeing the Mage’s Tower.”
“That would have never happened,” Urim comments dismissively. “He was far too clumsy to succeed at killing me. I have survived worse and am not so easy to kill.”
I roll my eyes at his arrogance, but do not argue. I’m too exhausted to challenge him right now and besides, it seems to be true. He apparently drank nightberries and lived to tell about it, so what do I know?
Urim looks at me, as if trying to ascertain whether I am injured or not, but then turns away abruptly, reminding me that I am standing naked in the middle of the lighthouse cottage and Urim is just wearing a blanket tied around his hips. An involuntary blush heats my face and I hastily reach down to pull up the blanket I dropped earlier to cover my body.
“You should get dressed. If the lighthouse keeper’s words are to be trusted, we’ll have company soon,” Urim remarks, still looking away.
“Why am I naked?” I ask, looking around the room before spying my damp dress hanging in front of the fire.
“Your clothes were lowering your body temperature and you were becoming hypothermic. It was either undress you or let you die.”
I absorb his words uneasily. The fact that my inner fires weren’t keeping me warm means that I must have been pretty close to death. I don’t blame him for taking action to save me, though I feel vulnerable in just my skin. But I run into another problem.
“You’ll need to remove my manacle so that I can dress,” I tell him, still holding my blanket over my breasts. Urim moves to unlock the cuffs at my wrists and then turns away again when I'm freed. With that taken care of, I pull down my shift from the peg in front of the fire. It’s still mildly damp from the storm and the ocean spray, but it’ll have to do. Glancing back warily at Urim, I see that he’s still looking away, giving me a semblance of privacy. Still, I keep the blanket up and somehow squirm into my shift while staying under the covering. When most of my body is covered by my shift, I’m less careful about being seen and hurriedly pull on my blouse, petticoats and kirtle. When I’m dressed again, I clear my throat to signal that he can look again.
“You should get dressed as well,” I point out. “Unless you want to meet the city guards in a blanket.”
Urim’s eyes flick over to me, his expression as unreadable as always. Then he gives a curt nod, before walking past me to his own clothes hung in front of the fire. I move to give him space, but keep my back to him, so that he can dress in peace.
“We should discuss a plan,” he says from behind me. “This is going to be a complication.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“The original plan was to wash up on shore under the cover of the storm and let the lighthouse keeper turn us into the magistrate, where I would show them the contract between Vargan and Grazrath to procure travel papers. His little stunt in trying to steal you has complicated matters.”
“Travel papers?” I question. They didn’t mention this part of the plan and I have never heard of travel papers before.
“Our intelligence shows that Grazrath has put Barakrin under an oppressive totalitarian rule,” Urim explains. “Unless you are favored by the Crown and wear his symbol, gatherings are limited to less than five people and travel between cities is forbidden. Merchants and other officials can be exempt, but must have official travel papers in order to not be stopped and imprisoned. Those that disobey are usually pressed into blood slavery.”
“They press their own people into blood slavery?” I ask, aghast. “Vampires can feed from each other?”
“Yes,” confirms the orc behind me. “Culturally it used to only be done between mates, considered the ultimate intimate act, but it can be forced. With the war with Adrik and Orik not going as easily as they would like, Grazrath and his supporters have been forced to conscript other vampires into the ranks of the blood slaves in order to have enough sentients to satisfy all his followers. Especially since Grazrath’s blood slaves do not last long.”
“How will we adapt the plan then?” I query. “The lighthouse keeper only reported one castaway and apparently reported you dead. When the city guards arrive they’ll find him dead and the two of us very much alive.”
“As I said, things have become more complicated,” Urim says evenly, as calm as ever, even as he’s telling me we’re fucked. “Intelligence states that an outsider killing a vampire citizen of Barakrin is one of the ultimate sins. I’ll try to spin a tale where I was defending Grazrath’s property and use the contract I have to give my words weight, but there’s a high likelihood I’ll be put to death.”
“Death?” I ask, alarmed. In the bond, his feelings remain steady. How can he be so calm about the “high likelihood” of his death? “But who will deliver me to the demon?”
“When they take us before the magistrate, I’ll try to appeal to their loyalty to Grazrath to get them to deliver you to Evernight themselves. I’ll emphasize the reward Grazrath has promised in return for magical blood slaves and put pressure on their greed and ambition. Then, if they kill me, you’ll still be able to carry out the mission.”
“But what will I tell the queen?” I demand. “You are important, right? She said I needed to bring you back. I’ll be blamed if you don’t return!”
“It was always a possibility that I wouldn’t survive this assignment,” Urim replies calmly, sounding as emotionless as one discussing the weather. “The queen knew that when she gave it to me. I knew that when I accepted it. Just as you knew that there was a possibility that you wouldn’t survive it either. There are no certainties in the life of a spy or assassin. You'll just need to explain what happened and they’ll find you blameless.”
“There has to be another way,” I argue. “We could leave now, without seeing the magistrate. Forge travel papers. Something. The chance of success on this mission falls drastically if we don’t have a soultie and I would like at least a fraction of a chance to survive this whole thing!”
“I am no forger,” the orc says, still maddeningly calm. “Are you?”
“Well, why didn’t we forge them before we left?” I ask, exasperated. “I’m sure you have forgers in your network of contacts. If you knew about the travel papers, why not bring them?”
“I do have excellent forgers,” he admits, sounding closer behind me. “But we didn’t have any travel papers to copy and no idea what they looked like. It was why the original plan necessitated being brought before the magistrate as castaways, like I said. And you’ll still have a chance to escape. You have your voidwalking. You can still get away after attacking the demon.”
“If I survive! And what if they don’t even deliver me to Grazrath?” I challenge. “What if they just decide to take me for themselves, like the lighthouse keeper wanted to?”
“Then you can use voidwalking to escape them and travel to Evernight yourself. Make your way to Tevin in the Fabric District. He is one of my assets and is connected to the resistance. He can help you get in front of Grazrath another way.”
I turn, confrontationally, and find that Urim is so close behind me that I almost bump into him as I whirl around. He’s dressed in his Terrian outfit again, that bandana covering his false brand. He looks every inch a Terrian slaver-pirate.
“The plan can’t just be to turn ourselves in and wait for you to be executed!” I exclaim. “It can’t just be up to me and a tailor to bring down an archdemon. I need my partner! There must be another way.”
“If there is, we don’t have time to find it or put it into action,” Urim says firmly, though perhaps a touch resignedly. “Because they’re here.”