She felt new hope beginning to kindle in her breast. Now, they had a new goal. Now, they weren’t running. Now, they were going to take the fight to Jane and end this once and for all. That evil woman was going down.
‘Not yet,’ Thelonious said, stamping out the fires of victory that had begun to burn. ‘It’ll be a long journey on horseback; we should get some rest for now. Let’s make camp. With those scrolls, we’ll make the journey in a day, so even if she doesn’t use the antidote, we’ll have days to spare.’
Syline grumbled, but she couldn’t really think of much of a counter argument. In the end, the trio made camp away from the site of the battle and all tried to get some rest. Syline though, found herself far, far too antsy to sleep peacefully. Tomorrow would be when they settled this.
Chapter 16
‘Well,’ Lauralee said, looking up from the dazed and drained maid in her lap, wiping blood from the young woman’s neck, ‘sounds like it’s settled then.’ She gently helped the girl sit upright, leaving her to lean against her shoulder as she spoke to her mistress. ‘Would you like me to go and administer the antidotes, now that she’s out of the picture?’
Jane Petrov stood, radiant. Her pale skin practically seemed to glow in the dark room, and embers seemed to dance within her amber eyes. The changes brought about by the gods’ blood were becoming all the more obvious, as were the instabilities. Quite a few maids had died recently. Lauralee had reserved this one for herself partially just to protect her from Jane.
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. No, I don’t think we will administer the antidote. This idiot girl has caused me enough problems, and I never got the chance to take any kind of’ – she let out a slow, hungry breath, her tongue flicked across scarlet lips – ‘personal revenge.’
‘But Kassandra Petranski is one of the most famous noblewomen in the city. Her death’s going to bring a lot of attention, going to have people looking for the source, and that was a Nachthelm poison. Eyes will come our–’
Jane had stood impassive through most of it, but suddenly her face contorted in rage, as if a switch had been flicked. A slap sent Lauralee tumbling off the bench she sat on, to crack her head against the tiles. The sound was echoed by the maid, no longer with anyone to support her, flopping down onto her side and bouncing her head off the wooden bench. Lauralee’s head spun, that had been like a kick from a horse. Her eyes drifted up to Jane.
‘I am in charge. Do you understand, you idiot girl? You do what I say, when I say it, then, you go back to your boring bitch mother and tell her of my wonderful work here. You do not speak, you do not give opinions, and you do not tell me what to do. They both die. I’ll have it no other way.’
Jane stormed from the room, as Lauralee struggled to her feet, and immediately found her balance had been thrown off, as she fell straight back over. Blood dripped through her white hair down her forehead. She had to pull herself up on the bench to sit upright as she stared off after Jane’s back. This madness was going to kill them all. She had to get back to her mother and warn the hand of how irrational Jane was becoming. The old court mage only had a day or two left. Perhaps if she gave him a little of the antidote it would let him hold out long enough for her to escape the city, before questions began. Damn those mercenaries, a part of her had wanted this story to end well for Syline. Now she was on her own again, with no-one else aware of Jane’s madness. It was up to her, and her alone, to figure out a solution before Jane endangered the whole organisation, or at the very least, get out of here before Jane’s temper killed her.
The party took their rest in the early afternoon and woke well before sunrise. This suited them just fine: even with their horses magically enhanced, this would be a journey and a half. Thelonious whipped them up a porridge from their supplies as Syline worked on preparing her spells. There was no real hope of turning back from today. It would be do or die and she knew that well. So, her spells were chosen with that in mind: a spell of shielding, her now almost-signature flame dagger spell, the burning chain she had used against the court mage’s guard, a spell of vanishing and a spell of arcane missiles.
She pushed herself and prepared one more, one extra that she thought may help decide the day. The lightning teleportation spell.
‘So,’ Amberly said as Syline sat with them around their fire. Thelonious handed her a bowl of porridge, and a little pouch of sugar he’d taken from Teagan, which made it a much more appetising meal. ‘When we get there, what’s our plan exactly?’
Syline looked down into her porridge. It was hard to say just what she was going to do. She just knew she wanted to finish this.
‘We can’t go to the king. At this point, we know Jane has a path to my family and to Anatoly; we need to finish this without giving her a chance to touch them. We have to hope she came through on her side of the bargain of curing them, but we’ll check on that when we get there.’
She bit her lip and paused her planning to shovel some porridge into her mouth. It was hot and chewy. She was used to it being mushy, but they didn’t have much milk out here. It was nice, though. It reminded her of a simpler time.
‘If she hasn’t, our only real choice is to, is to kill Jane Petrov, and quickly too if we’re going to save Anatoly. Her husband too, if we must. Chances are they’re together on this. Take the antidotes, cure my family, then prove to the king just what Jane and her husband have been up to. Jane’s done something to herself. Something is wrong with her.’
Thelonious sat up and turned to look at Syline from the fire. ‘Something’s wrong with her? What do you mean?’
‘She’s… she’s too strong. She’s not human.’
‘Syline, you’re the only human here,’ said the half-elf Amberly, getting a little laugh from the hellblooded Thelonious.
‘You know what I mean. When she confronted me in the library, her nails cut straight through me, and then she threw me into a wall like I was so much sackcloth. She’s far stronger than she has any right to be. I don’t know if it’s just spells cast on herself or something, but she’s definitely dangerous. This will be a real fight.’ Syline took a swig from her water flask. ‘If either of you.’ She sighed. ‘I won’t blame either of you, if you don’t want to do this, since there’s not really any coming back from it if we fail, but it’s my family. There’s no other choice here for me. We’ve only got so much time before she realises Teagan played her.’
There was no hesitation on Thelonious’ part: he slapped his knee and gave Syline a grin as he leaned towards her. ‘Now, what else would I be doing with myself? Try and find some other noble girl who wouldn’t be half as interesting as you to protect? Nah, nah, my place is right here, Syline.’
A flush grew on Syline’s cheeks right away at that, but Amberly’s answer had it grow all the more.
‘I owe you my life, Syline. I owe you, and I haven’t really done anything to make it up to you yet. There’s no way in all the hells that I’m leaving before we’ve seen this through to the very end.’
Syline ducked her head down into her scarf now, shyness overcoming her, though her attempt at hiding was ruined as Corax squawked at her intruding on his nest and pecked lightly at her cheek to ward her off, getting a few giggles from the wizard. Her smile softened and she looked between her companions.
‘Thank you. I could never have gotten here without the both of you.’
With those final sentiments, the trio fell quiet, sinking into their own meals and their own thoughts. Syline, for her part, couldn’t deny the excitement that came with going home. She missed her family, she missed Magdova and her mother, Kat and Kassandra Jr. She missed Alexis and Anatoly and was eager to see them all again. To save them. Fear fluttered in her breast like butterflies, but her conviction and the thought that only they could do this was enough to squash them down.
When their breakfast was finished, the three brushed down their horses. Syline and Amberly took a moment to introduce themselves to their new mounts and stroke the horses’ muzzles, reassuring them that they’d be okay with these new riders. Then, Syline cast the scrolls on one horse after the next, and blue mist lapped at the muscles and hooves of each of them. The horses nickered and reared up, eager to run. As one, the trio mounted up, weapons on their hips, armour strapped – Thelonious had looted Amberly a chain shirt, plate gloves and pauldrons – and supplies secure. They exchanged one last glance and a grin. It was a long way from Russenholde yet, but there’d be no stops, no chance to talk until they arrived.
‘Let’s get to it,’ Thelonious said, giving the girls a last smile before setting off without another word. Syline and Amberly squealed as one and hurried to harry their horses after Alma’s furious gallop into the dark of the pre-dawn morning. Mist curled from the hoofprints left by their mounts and as one, they left the island behind, cutting a course straight for the kingdom’s capital.
Whatever enchantments were laid upon their horses, the journey was not an easy one for the riders. They rode as fast as the horses would carry them, but even at such speeds, it took them until just after the sun had set for them to arrive at their destination, having ridden for the whole of its journey across the sky.
Twice on the journey, they had to stop to save their muscles from the endless jostling. For Syline, however long the journey may have been, it passed like a blur. Beautiful vistas of frozen water fell away behind them as they took the monumental bridges that carved a course through the centre of the nation, linking its most grand islands. They had no time to take a less direct course now and had little fear of hunters pursuing them, especially at such speeds. With the last rays of the sun tinting the sky orange, the trio approached the walls of Russenholde. For Syline, it felt like a lifetime since she had fled this city, teary-eyed and terrified, even though in truth it had been less than a week.
‘I can’t let the guards see me,’ Syline told Thelonious as they approached, still on the thickly forested road before the open plain around the city.
‘Alright, why not?’
‘Well, I don’t know if they work for Jane or not. The last one who approached me tried to kill me on sight and I can only imagine the stories spread about me now.’
‘Fair. How are we going to hide you? Not like I have a carriage for you to hide under.’
