“Don’t do me any favors,” Kandler said to Deothen. He tried to sound as confident about it as he wanted to be. “I can handle this.”
“Really?” said Sallah. “You could take on a few score of battle-hardened veterans yourself? I’d like to see that.”
“Step back, and you might get a chance,” Mardak said, his voice dripping with desperate menace.
“Are you out of your mind?” called a strong feminine voice. Kandler turned back around to see Mardak’s wife Priscinta smack him in the back of the head. He hadn’t seen her march up with the others. She must have followed Mardak from the square and watched from a distance until she figured out what he and his people were up to.
Enraged, Mardak turned to slap his wife, but she snatched his arm before he could land the blow. “This is Kandler,” she said, “not some wandering beggar worshiping some upstart god!”
Sallah started to object, but Priscinta kept talking. “Kandler founded Mardakine with you, and he’s saved our little settlement more times than I care to count. Who slew that carcass crab when it came crawling out of the Mournland looking for a meal?”
Mardak opened his mouth to say something, but Priscinta kept rolling. “And Burch,” she said as she pointed up to the shifter’s rooftop perch, “he brought down three of that flight of harpies before these archers of yours even unslung their bows. I think they’ve earned their place with us.”
Mardak took advantage of the fact his wife was looking away to slap her to the ground. Everyone gasped. Mardak looked down at his hand as if it had just come to life on its own. His face, red with anger only moments before, blanched pale as a skeleton left out in the desert sun.
Priscinta sat on the ash-coated crater floor, her hand covering the red mark Mardak’s blow had placed on her ivory skin. She stood with painstaking care and brushed the ash from her skirts. Then she turned to her husband and spat blood from her mouth on the ground before him. Where it landed, it turned the ash black.
Without a word, Priscinta launched herself at Mardak. Before she could reach him, Rislinto stepped between them and held her at bay. “Don’t!” he said. “He’s not worth it!”
“He’s not worth my blood, but he’s already had some of that!” Priscinta said. “I was a warrior-maiden!” she said as tears streamed down her flushed cheeks. “I gave that up to bear your children, you spiteful bastard!”
“That’s right,” Rislinto said. “Your children. Like Pradak, who’s standing right there!”
Priscinta turned to see her eldest son gaping at his parents. The fight fled from her. With that, Rislinto wrapped his thick arms around Priscinta, and she collapsed against his barrel chest. She pressed hard against him, muffling her sobs.
Mardak stared at his wife for a moment. Kandler could see the tears welling up in the man, but he knew that Mardak would never allow them to flow, never admit that he was wrong in front of so many other people. Mardak’s eyes went to his son, and his face burned with shame.
“None of that matters right now,” Mardak said, more to himself than anyone else, then louder he said, “We are under siege by forces unknown. If we are to survive, everyone must follow orders. No one is exempt.” He turned to Kandler. The justicar could see that all of his old friend’s shame and fear was now hammered into a red-hot blade of righteous rage, its new-forged tip pointed straight at him. “Not even our finest.”
Kandler let loose a hard laugh. “So,” he said, “what are you saying exactly?”
“You’re not that dumb, justicar.”
“Pretend I am.”
Mardak sighed. “You and Burch shall surrender yourselves into my custody now.”
“And if we don’t?”
“Not even you two can stand against so many of us. You may manage to kill many who have called you friend, but we will bring you down.”
Kandler scanned the faces arrayed against him. Many of them, like Temmah, refused to meet his eyes. They stood tall, though, with their hands on the hilts of their weapons. He had fought alongside many of them, and since the founding of the town he had trained with them all. He had worked to instill in them a sense of duty to their town, to each other. He had never guessed that this would be used against him.
How many of them could he bear to kill? If he tried to run, the archers would bring him down before he reached the crater’s wall. If he stood and fought, he would be forced to murder his friends or die at their hands. Once such a fight began, there would be no turning back.
“Priscinta is right,” Kandler said. “You are a bastard.” He glared at the mayor, measuring the distance between the two. He knew he could draw his blade and slice through Mardak’s throat before the man could even raise his sword. He considered it. The thought felt good.
“Sticks and stones, Brelander,” said Mardak. “What will it be?”
Chapter 8
“You did a good thing,” Sallah said through the barred window in the door of the jail. Her words echoed off the walls of the room dug deep into the stone beneath the town hall, and they sounded hollow in Kandler’s ears.
The justicar sat up from where he’d been lying on the smooth, gray stone floor. The same material made up the walls, which were featureless but for two things-the anchors to which Temmah and Rislinto had attached the prisoners’ manacles and the pair of cold fire torches that burned without smoke or heat, their flickering light lending a bit of illusory warmth that did nothing to push back the room’s gravelike chill. Kandler’s chains clinked as he stood up and stretched as far as the links would let him.
Across the room, Burch remained seated in his iron chains, the pupils of his yellow eyes gleaming in the torchlight. Still as a statue, he glared at the window in the door, the only window in the room, just as he had since he first heard the footsteps coming down the stairs. Kandler could feel the frustration radiating from his friend, as silent and cold as the unnatural torches.
“Temmah,” Kandler said. “Is it our custom to let strangers visit with prisoners?”
“No,” the dwarf called up at the window from the other side of the door, too short to speak directly through the aperture. “Well, actually, I don’t really know. You two are the first prisoners we’ve ever had.”
“Do you think I’d approve?” Kandler arched an eyebrow at the door. He thought he saw Sallah smiling at him through the bars. She turned away, though, before he could be sure.
Kandler could almost hear the dwarf pull at his beard as he puzzled over the question. “Normally, no,” he said, “but these circumstances aren’t particularly normal.”
Kandler nodded, even though he knew Temmah couldn’t see him. “You’re one smart dwarf, Temmah,” he said. “When your world changes, you change with it.”
“I wish we could say as much of our town’s leader.”
Kandler and Burch both laughed at that. The echoes reminded them of where they were, and the sound trailed off fast. Kandler sat thinking for a moment. He wasn’t sure just how he’d gotten himself into this mess, but he knew he needed to get out.
“How long we here for, Temmah?” Burch asked.
The dwarf hemmed and hawed for a moment. “Well, that all depends. We’ve never imprisoned any of our own before-or anyone else for that matter. You’re our inaugural guests.”
“Some honor,” said Burch. Kandler knew the shifter would have preferred to fight, but once the justicar gave himself up, Burch followed his lead. They hadn’t talked much since Mardak had thrown them in chains.
Kandler got up and started to pace the floor as far as his chains would let him. He could only go about three steps before he had to turnaround. “This is a fine jail you built, Temmah,” he said.
The dwarf laughed, a low merry rumble. “With all respect, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Compared to even the humble bolt hole in the Mror Holds where I was whelped, this is little more than an outhouse.”