Page 14 of War Mage (The War Brides of Adrik #4)
Urim
M y eyes open as the sun reaches its apex, unable to sleep anymore. The canvas of the wagon is doing little to stop the light of noon from permeating the space. It still isn’t sunset, so we are still in the courtyard, the wagon not moving. Adara groans next to me on the bench and burrows her face into my shoulder, hiding her eyes from brightness. For all her dislike of me, she couldn’t stay awake forever, not after the night we had, and is now leaning on me, wrapped in the thin blankets they gave us to try and stay warm. I suspect that her burrowing into me has as much to do with escaping the bright sun as it does with wanting to subconsciously share my orcish warmth. I'm glad to share heat with her, disliking how she shivered without her fires to warm her. For all her passion and intensity, she is a delicate thing, even more than most humans. Though she has more meat on her bones than that first time I carried her, she is still petite and her long imprisonment in the dungeons of Garden Manor and High Citadel did not give her the ability to thrive. Something uncomfortably like guilt courses through me as I look at her, remembering how I kept trying to break her spirit. Her spirit remains, but her body is frail. If she is unable to weather the hardships of the rest of our mission, I’m afraid that it will be my fault.
For all my confidence the night before, as I tried to calm her and banish her rancid fear scent, I am actually worried about our ability to complete what we set out to accomplish. And, I can admit in the privacy of my own mind, we are truly prisoners now, blood slaves in truth. Adara at least is protected, for now, from the appetites of the sadistic vampires. I am not. Though I have been trained to withstand torture of all kinds in my position as Shield to the King, that was merely to avoid revealing sensitive information under duress. I cannot control what they do to my body. If they break my hands, for instance, I will not be able to pick the lock on her leg before she gets to Grazrath. Without access to her powers, she won’t even be able to try to kill him and will likely be tortured to death by the demon lord.
Lord Grazrath takes special pleasure in ruining the pretty ones. The magistrate's words to Adara last night roll around my head like troubled thunder in a cloud. My Mating Instinct howls and rages at the thought that Adara could be hurt. Tortured. Killed. All because of me. Because I didn’t foresee the mission going sideways like this.
But I’m not dead yet, I tell myself. As long as I’m alive I can plot. Strategize. I must survive. There is no other option. Anything else is unacceptable. I don’t actually care about dying. Living on the streets and staring death in the face every day of my childhood cured me of that. I’ve been living on borrowed time from the gods ever since I survived on the streets after the death of my mother. But the idea of failing my rulers, my sacred Oaths, my ma . . . Adara? That will not happen.
Even if I must defy the will of the gods themselves.
???
Night comes both too quickly and at an agonizingly slow pace. I force myself to doze again through the day, knowing I will need my strength for what is coming at night. Adara doesn’t have that same struggle; she is obviously still exhausted from her injury and everything that happened afterward. As the sun sets, there’s some commotion in the courtyard, footsteps and horses gathering, which rouses me from my doze. Adara starts at the sounds as well, before realizing that she’s been leaning against my shoulder. It’s obvious the moment she notices the fact because she shoots upright and scoots on the bench until there’s a hand's worth of distance between us. I try not to let her apparent disgust bother me as I exchange a look with her. Her shoulders tense, but she says nothing. Then I hear the quiet command in the menacing voice of the magistrate, “High Guard, you may move out.”
“Yes, Magistrate Zadicus,” comes the reply, in the familiar voice of Gair. “Caravan, move out!”
The wagons lurch forward, rolling heavily over the cobblestone streets of Stormfury Landing. The wagon bed rumbles and jolts. It’s jarring, but I know that the turbulence will just get worse once we’ve exited the city and are on the country roads. I look toward the front of the wagon, but the canvas is closed tight, so I can’t see the driver of the wagon. I scent the air but smell nothing but Adara’s cinnamon and smoke scent. Which tells me, if nothing else, that the driver must be a vampire if I can’t smell him. Damn these vampires and their subtle, barely-there scents.
Turning back to Adara, I ask, “Did you get enough rest?”
The mage nods her head. “I was like one of the dead. Last night was . . . eventful.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I remark. “It is good that you slept. You need to keep up your strength. Everything you do from here on out should be to conserve your energy. Things will only get more eventful from here.”
Adara rolls her eyes. “I know . I know my limits.”
Ah, her impudent attitude again. It’s like she can’t help but lob impertinence my way. I find I don’t mind it as much as I used to though. It’s an improvement from her fear and distress last night. The scent of her overwhelming emotions almost choked me with their intensity and rotten smell. The smell of another’s fear has never affected me in the way that hers does. It’s like claws scratching against the inside of my skull, the feeling that something is intrinsically wrong. Only years of controlling my emotions kept me from losing restraint when I smelled her fear. It makes me want to kill whatever is bothering her, even if it would compromise the mission. I’ve never felt like that before and it perturbs me.
We roll along in tense silence for a while, when suddenly she says quietly, her voice covered by the rolling sound of the wagon wheels, “Sorry I slept on you.”
“What?” I ask, not sure I heard her right.
She glares at me. “Don’t make me say it again. I already apologized.”
I shake my head, responding lowly, not wanting our wagon driver to overhear our conversation, “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“But you don’t like me,” she remarks. “I’m sure that you don’t want to be my pillow.”
Is that what she thinks? That I do not like her? I suppose that is what I’ve been projecting, trying to keep my Mating Instinct from ruining the mission. It bothers me though, more than I would have thought, that Adara thinks I don’t like her. We may be adversarial and it would be unwise for us to get any closer, but, somehow, I want her to know that I respect her. “It is not that I dislike you,” I tell her.
“Yes you do,” argues the mage. “What happened to ‘you’re cowardly and unpredictable and I’ll never trust you?’”
I shift uncomfortably, having my words thrown back in my face. “You have shown that you are a different person than I thought you were at that time.”
“What? Just because we had sex?” Adara asks carelessly. “Don’t tell me you are that simple?”
Her insults do not bother me. I know that they are coming from a place of hurt and fear. I can feel it in our bond, though she is trying to cover it with sarcasm. “No, it is because you saved us in the Bitter Ocean and have been a good partner to me on this mission thus far. Though I know that your motivations do not match mine, I have still learned to . . . respect you in a way.”
I can feel Adara’s surprise at my words in the mate bond. I continue, “I was wrong before, to mistrust you. My whole purpose here is to ensure your success. I would do anything to make that happen.”
“Anything?” Adara asks, her lips quirking ever so slightly. “Would you give me your Oath on that?”
Her tone is teasing as she says the words, but I take them as serious. “My Oath, Adara. I will do anything to help you succeed on this mission.”
Her brows raise. “That’s a strong promise to make. Don’t you orcs take Oaths very seriously?”
“You underestimate the importance of what we’re doing here,” I say, my voice still hushed. “You agreed to do this for the good of your Mage’s Tower, but you saw those blood slaves last night at the slave market. If Grazrath has his way, the whole world will be in chains. I would do anything to stop that.”
Adara frowns at the seriousness of my words, but nods after a moment. “Alright, I accept that. But you have to admit that promising to do ‘anything,’ to make that happen is still a promise you might not be able to keep.”
“I always keep my promises,” I tell her.
“You’ve never broken a promise?” she challenges. “Not even as a child?”
Her question sobers me. “The only promise I’ve ever broken is when I promised my mother that I would make her well again when her wasting fever worsened. That taught me the importance of only making promises that I have the power to keep. I’ve kept every promise I’ve made since then.”
Adara stares at me, stunned at my personal disclosure. I’m surprised myself. I never speak of my mother. But, oddly, I don’t mind Adara hearing about my mother’s death. If anyone can understand losing a parent to illness it would be her.
The mage absorbs what I told her, but then bites her lip, unable to stop herself from arguing with me. “You have to admit, though, things could go wrong again. You may not be able to help me.”
“Missions have a way of going wrong at the worst possible time,” I agree. “The successful are those who adapt to circumstances as they are and do not waste time wishing for how they would want them to be. But as long as I have life in me, I will help you, Adara.”
The mage considers my words silently, looking thoughtful. After a moment, I continue, keeping my voice down. “That all being said, we should talk about what to do in case things do go wrong again and you are alone when you get to Grazrath.”
Adara nods grimly. “That would be wise. Even if you survive whatever Zadicus has planned for you, we may not even be together by the time we reach the palace at Evernight.”
“True,” I concur. “We need to be practical and think of another way to remove your ankle cuff if it comes to that. I’m going to teach you how to pick the lock.”
The mage frowns, then pulls up the hem of her skirt, revealing the cuff at her ankle. The light of the moon through the canvas glints dimly off the dark metal. It’s thick and roughly forged, with hidden hinges in the back and a lock at the front. It looks like it’ll be a simple lock to pick, thank the gods.
“I’ve never picked a lock before,” Adara whispers, a warning in her voice. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it.”
“It won’t be easy,” I reply, reaching toward the bottom cuff of my trousers and using my claws to pick the seam on my left leg so that I can get the hidden pieces of wire. “I only have a couple pieces of wire, not a full set of lockpicks. But you’re clever. You can get the hang of it.”
The mage’s lips quirk. “Careful, I think you just complimented me.”
“Yes,” I reply evenly. “I did. Now pay attention, we don’t have any time to waste.”
???
We travel for many more hours, the night stretching long. I show Adara again and again how to unlock the ankle cuff, twisting the first piece of wire into a torsion wrench and using the second so that it can move the tumblers on the inner workings of the lock, but she can’t quite get the hang of it. I think her stress and desperation to get it right are causing her to make mistakes, her hands trembling slightly with nervousness. I’m patient and encouraging, even as she fails to open the cuff again and again. My being critical will not help us in this situation.
After failing for probably the twentieth time, Adara growls in frustration. “Why isn’t this working? You can do it so easily!”
“I have had much practice with such things,” I say soothingly. “This is your first time attempting. Let’s take a break and you can try again tomorrow after you’ve had some time to rest. It may be easier to try during the day as well, so you can see what you are doing more easily.”
Adara sighs and tries to hand me back the pieces of wire, but I press it into her hands. “Keep them. It’ll be easier for you to hide it now that I’ve already unpicked its hiding spot. Braid it into your hair so no one can see it. That way you’ll still have it in case something happens to me.”
My words hang heavy between us, a reminder that I may not survive being the magistrate’s blood slave. Adara’s scent takes on a burnt edge of worry, but then she changes the subject, obviously trying to think of something other than my fate. “Why did you have pieces of wire sewn into your clothes, anyway?”
I accept the change of subject without protest. After all, talking about it won’t change matters. “It’s a habit of mine, since I was a child, to always have two pieces of wire on me. You never know when you might need to pick a lock.”
“Since you were a child?” Adara questions, while braiding her hair with the wire hidden inside her thick strands. “It’s not something that you learned as a spymaster?”
Her question is a fair one and though I am not one to speak of my past, I explain, “I became a spy because of the skills I learned as a child. After my mother died, I was a city orphan. I had no clan to care for me or adopt me, so I was alone. I survived at first by begging, but I accidentally begged in the wrong territory. A gang of adolescent orcs, older than me by a few years, but not old enough to join the Horde, caught me and told me that I needed to pay a tribute in order to beg on their street corners.”
“Bastards,” Adara hisses. “There’s always someone willing to prey on the weak.”
“Yes, it is the way of the streets,” I agree. “I had nothing to pay them with so they beat me that day. I tried a different corner the next day, but that was apparently their territory too. So they beat me again. And again and again. I could never escape them.”
“What did you do, then?” the mage asks. “How did you survive them?”
“After many beatings, one where they gave me this scar,” I say gesturing to my cheek, “I finally asked if I could join them. I figured that if I were a member of their gang then they wouldn’t beat me any longer. They were taken aback by my request, but agreed, as long as I did anything they asked. That started my life of crime. I learned to steal, cheat, and lie to survive. I became so good at it that I got cocky.”
“You? Cocky?” Adara asks in disbelief. “I suppose you can be an arrogant asshole, but I have a hard time seeing you as cocky.”
“Well, I was,” I tell her. “I stole from bigger and bigger targets, the richer and more noble the better. That was when I stole from the prince of Orik.”
“The prince?” questions the mage. “Rognar?”
I nod, even though she can’t really see me in the dark. “Yes. He caught me, of course, and I thought that was the end. But I didn’t beg or cower as I faced my fate and that impressed him, as well as the fact that I had almost succeeded in stealing from him. So he offered me a deal; to train with the agents of the Crown and learn spycraft while pledging my allegiance to him and only him. I accepted and that put me on the path to becoming Shield of the King.”
“So you went from being nothing to being the trusted left hand of the king?” she asks. “That is impressive.”
“It was luck,” I return evenly. “I could have just as easily been executed for stealing from the prince. My actions were not those of someone wise.”
“You were young,” Adara retorts. “And it was your skills that impressed the prince so that he saw you as useful instead of sending you to your death. It was your hard work that got you to where you are today.”
“Yes,” I say wryly. “As a blood slave in the back of a wagon.”
Adara gives a bark of surprised laughter, before going back into a whisper. “Did you just make a joke?”
“Don’t count on it happening again,” I say, going back to being even and unflappable.
Adara opens her mouth to make a sassy comeback, I’m sure, when we suddenly stop, the wagons stilling as a “Halt!” is called from outside. I can see nothing from beyond the canvas covers of the wagon, but I hear a great deal of movement and orders being shouted, the sounds of a camp being erected. Adara and I exchange uneasy glances, not saying anything more. After we’ve been stopped for the space of an hour, the back flaps of the canvas are thrown back, revealing an unfamiliar vampire guard in armor, the symbol of Grazrath on his chest.
“Magistrate is calling for you, bloodbag,” the guard sneers at me, climbing into the back of the wagon and undoing the lock and chain at my feet. “It’s dinner time.”
I say nothing as he unthreads the chains from my ankle cuff. In another circumstance, one where I was trying to escape, this would be the perfect opportunity. I’d be able to quickly break his neck, even with my hands chained in front of me and steal his keys. But that would not serve me now, so I am quiet while he frees me from the chains that connect me to Adara. He seems almost careless, getting so close to me, but maybe he doesn’t consider me a threat, since he is, presumably, filled with the blood of sentients.
Adara's face is shuttered, but her scent is nervous and worried again.
“You should sleep, Adara,” I say. “I’ll be back soon.” She nods while looking warily at the guard, who laughs at my words.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he says, before grabbing the chain between my wrists to drag me forward. “Let’s get a move on, bloodbag. I can’t feed myself until I’ve delivered you, so you best not give me any trouble.”
Again, I think of how easy it would be to kill this vampire. He’s arrogant and stupid, a combination that is easy to take advantage of. But I’m not trying to escape; I want them to deliver us where we are going, so I’m obedient as he tugs on my chains and forces me to climb out of the back of the wagon.
The sky is a dark gray as he leads me through the encampment, the stars faded and the moon low. It’ll be sunrise soon. The guard guides me to an opulent tent, reminiscent of a king or ruler’s, the self-importance of the occupant apparent. The guard stops respectfully at the entrance and calls, “I have the slave for you, magistrate.”
“Enter,” comes the quiet reply.
The guard pushes me through the tent flaps with force and I stumble a bit as I enter the tent interior. The vampire magistrate lounges on a long sofa, a goblet of wine carelessly in his fingers. The decadence of transporting such a piece of furniture isn’t lost on me, a show of wealth and power. Off to the side though is where my attention is arrested. A brazier is lit, with a variety of iron poles sticking out of it, something heating in the coals. So it is to be torture.
Magistrate Zadicus looks at me with hooded, unreadable eyes, before taking a sip of his wine.
“Put him on his knees,” Zadicus orders.
The guard immediately obeys, driving me to the ground with a strong grip. When I am situated to the magistrate’s apparent liking, he takes another sip of his drink, regarding me with calculated interest. Then he places the goblet on a golden side table and rises from the sofa, walking over to the brazier and delicately running his fingers over the handles of the iron poles sticking out of the fire, as if considering which one to choose.
“Remove his shirt,” comes the next order. The guard moves to obey, ripping the fabric of my Terrian shirt so that it’s in rags, leaving my chest bare. The magistrate glances over at me and nods approvingly.
“Tell me, Vargan,” Zadicus says, “you’ve sold Barakrin many blood slaves in the past. Have you ever experienced a vampire’s bite yourself?”
“No,” I answer honestly, playing his game. He’s trying to make me afraid, torment my mind before harming my body, but it will not work on me. His attempts are blatant and crude, his technique transparent. He’s trying to play with his food. Still, silence will gain me nothing, so I tell him the truth.
“Vampire bites have a side effect, to counter the initial pain,” Zadicus says, pulling a red hot brand out of the brazier and inspecting it before returning it to the coals. “We call it the afterglow. A hazy pleasure that dulls the mind and lessens the pain of the feeding. I am told some slaves even become addicted to the euphoria. Can’t live without it.”
I have heard of this before, been briefed on it in my intelligence hearings on Barakrin. I don’t know why he’s bringing it up now, but perhaps it is to build some sort of anticipation.
He continues, “The problem with that is that a vampire can taste the emotions of the one on whom they feed. It seasons the blood. And I hate the taste of pleasure. Pain is a much more delicious spice.”
He pulls out another brand, this one in the shape of a rune that I don’t recognize. Then he turns toward me and advances, brand in hand. “This brand is special,” he explains quietly. “It will suppress your ability to feel the afterglow as long as the wound is fresh and even intensify the pain you feel. But where to put your first application? That is the question.”
The magistrate stops right in front of me, his eyes considering as they run over my body. Then his eyes snag on the Honorless brand on my forehead. “Such a shame,” he says, eerily soft, “that you have experienced the pain of a brand before. I would prefer it to be a fresh experience. Oh well. I would imagine you never truly get used to the pain of blistering flesh.”
I don’t say anything to his musings. What is there to say? There would be no dissuading him, begging would probably only feed his sadism, and truth be told, I’m relieved. No twisting or breaking bones, at least not yet, and I can handle pain. Pain and fear are in the mind. The master of my mind is me. I will disconnect my mind from my body by entering into my inner mental sanctuary, where no pain can touch me. The vampire can do what he wants to my body, but he’ll never touch my mind.
The magistrate looks at me intently, trying to read whether his words have landed, but I give away nothing on my face. Finally, he smiles. “I love taking a strong, stoic male and breaking him down to his rawest, truest self,” he says. “You think that this will not be too bad, that you’ll be able to withstand it, but you’re wrong. So very wrong. It will be a pleasure to teach you.”
The brand gets closer and I can feel the heat of the metal as it hovers directly over my heart. I suppose he’s chosen his target. I ready myself to enter my sanctuary and wait.
“Well,” the magistrate says, still smiling. “Shall we begin?”
Then the brand plunges down and all that’s left is pain.