Phaelan unlocked the chains around my waist and eased me down to the floor, a floor that had never felt so good. I breathed slowly, in and out, trying to convince my stomach not to mutiny again. Taltek Balmorlan lay in a motionless heap. Phaelan wasn’t bleeding, but Balmorlan was, across the back of the head. My cousin was making quick work of my ankle manacles, but he glanced up and saw where I was looking.
“The rock doing its thing with that mage made for one hell of a distraction,” he said. “Let me pick my way out of those manacles and make good use of the chain—right across the back of the bastard’s head.”
“He’s dead?”
Phaelan went back to work. “Don’t know, care less.”
A split second later, he had me out of my ankle chains.
“Got a blade on you?” Phaelan asked.
“Check my boots.”
He did and I didn’t. He looked at Balmorlan and growled in frustration.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m not leaving him alive.”
As much as I wanted Taltek Balmorlan no longer breathing my air, killing him would just get rid of him; it wouldn’t get rid of his allies, his spies, and his lackeys. If Balmorlan was found dead, they’d just regroup and continue as planned. It would delay them, but it wouldn’t stop them. Leaving Balmorlan alive—and able to talk—would give us the best chance to end his war-monger operation once and for all.
I told Phaelan what I was thinking.
Phaelan’s expression said loud and clear that he didn’t like what I was thinking. However, his vicious and frustrated kick to Balmorlan’s ribs said he agreed with me. Under extreme protest.
“Get his keys,” I said. “I want in his office.”
Phaelan’s eyes lit with soon-to-be-fulfilled avarice. “That’s my girl. The mage payroll—enough to pay six.” He nodded in approval. “We’ll make a card-carrying Benares out of you yet.” He flipped the inquisitor over like a sack of grain. “Rest for a minute,” he told me then proceeded to do a very professional job of plundering the body.
I wasn’t interested in gold. If that was Balmorlan’s only office in the embassy, he probably kept things there that were even more valuable than gold—documents, financial records, anything that would make being in this hellhole and force-fed an elf mage worth my while.
When Phaelan finished his ransacking, he had a full purse, a gag, which meant Balmorlan might have made good on his threat, and a ring of keys.
But no weapons.
“Can you scoot over?” Phaelan asked with a vicious grin. “He made those magic-sapping bracelets, now he’s gonna wear ’em.”
I got myself against the far wall as Phaelan dragged Balmorlan’s body across the stone floor to where I’d been chained to the wall. Limp arms or not, I wasn’t about to take a chance on the rock eating Balmorlan.
“Those manacles were custom made for me,” I told Phaelan. “They won’t fit him.”
Phaelan’s eyes had an evil gleam. “One way to find out.” He cuffed a manacle around one of Balmorlan’s wrists, and barely got the thing to lock. “Look at that, it fits.”
I smiled. “Someone’s going to be uncomfortable when he wakes up.”
Phaelan grinned. “Ain’t it a shame?” He got the other manacle on, then had to put his own ankle manacles on Balmorlan; mine wouldn’t go around his boots.
While Phaelan was making sure Balmorlan wasn’t going anywhere, I was making sure that I could. I braced my feet on the floor, leaned my back against the wall, and pushed myself up with my legs. It went slowly, but it went.
“Can you walk?” Phaelan asked.
I did some careful breathing, forcing the nausea down and keeping myself up. “Try and stop me.”
“I won’t, but you can bet someone—”
“Else will,” I finished. “I know. I’ll bite the bastards on the kneecaps if I have to.”
“Hasn’t been a jail built yet that can hold a Benares once we’ve decided to leave.” Phaelan went to the open and wardless cell door and checked both ways. “We’re still clear, let’s—” He looked back at me and his eyes widened. “Um . . . your eyes are glowing.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I suddenly felt sick with fear. Just because the rock was digesting didn’t mean it wasn’t paying attention.
“Trust me,” Phaelan said. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes.”
“Then let’s put me to good use.” I looked back at Balmorlan. When Phaelan wanted someone unconscious, he didn’t fool around. Chained in his own custom-made iron with the practical addition of a gag. “I must say you’re a beautiful sight,” I muttered.
Once in the corridor, Phaelan walked like a man with a purpose—and a man who knew where he was going.
“Uh . . . been here before?” I asked.
“Just on paper. When Balmorlan started threatening you, I figured blueprints for this place might come in handy. Tanik sold me a set. Included the layout, and everything we need to avoid to get out of here. Guaranteed.”
Tanik Ozal was a smuggler. Though the goods he dealt in didn’t end up in a dusty warehouse or back alley trading room. Tanik’s source of his considerable income was the choicest merchandise for the wealthiest clients. I didn’t trust him as far as I could toss him, but he’d helped me and Phaelan in the past.
“He gave me the family rate,” Phaelan was saying. “Only charged me half a fortune.”
“What a sweetheart.”
Fortunately, it didn’t take a genius to find Taltek Balmorlan’s office. It was the only locked door that wasn’t a cell.
I let Phaelan work the keys in the lock while I kept watch. Problem was there was nothing to watch. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the possibility of having five full minutes without the need to fight for my life; I just didn’t believe it. Lady Luck wasn’t speaking to me, and Fate had apparently decided to write me off. But neither of those changed the fact that no one was down here, at least not right now. The guards had seen what the Saghred had done to that mage. To them it’d looked like I’d done it, and every last one of them had run like hell and hadn’t come back. Maybe they’d gone for reinforcements, and a freaking platoon was going to come running around the corner any second now.
Now that would be more the way my luck was running.
“Can you work faster?” I whispered.
Phaelan never took his eyes from the lock and keys. “Would if I could,” he said in a singsong voice. He tried one key after the other. “You know, this’ll be a nice haul for getting knocked over the head and chained up. The mages are all dead, so their money is all ours.”
My plan for that pile of dirty money was to give it to Imala and Tam for Chigaru, that is if we got out of here with our lives—and after I got my strength back and wrestled Phaelan for it.
There was a click.
“Yes!” Phaelan hissed in celebration.
It wasn’t a large office, just enough room for a desk, two chairs, and a cabinet. Taltek Balmorlan was a tidy megalomaniac. Retentive, actually. Writing quills arranged in a wooden rack in order of size. Inkwells were capped with no dribbles down the sides of the bottles, and there were no papers out anywhere. That was just wrong. Though if everything was in its proper place, then the proper place for what both Phaelan and I were looking for would be a safe. Now we just had to find the damned thing.
There was nothing hanging on the walls and no rug on the floor for a safe to hide behind or under.
“Walls are stone,” Phaelan noted.
“So’s the floor. See any seams?”
“Nothing. You?”
“Nada.”
We looked at each other. “Ransack,” we said together.
We went to work. Phaelan was a pirate and I was a seeker, so both of us had extensive experience making short work searching a room without getting caught. I opened a shallow cabinet, put my hands against the wood panel on the back and pushed it back and forth, testing for some give in the wood. And give it did. It slid to the right, exposing a not-so-solid part of the wall. A safe that wasn’t very safe. Bad for Balmorlan and best for us, it opened with yet another key on the ring. It only took Phaelan two tries to get it open.