Gryl ignored the jibe. “You can point me to this Mallister’s house?”
“I can indeed, especially if it will hurry you on your way.” Surathanan glanced about the room, looking from body to body. “Your handiwork is beginning to smell and I’d like to find less… ripe accommodations before the empress’s men bring word of your death and usher me into her presence.”
“Tell me then.” The slaver offered the directions without hesitation, going silent as soon as he finished, his last act of smug defiance. The prodigy nodded and took a step toward the door, only to stop and turn back, raising a finger and waggling it at Surathanan. “Oh, one more thing…”
“What is it now? I’ve told you all I damn well—”
Gryl twisted at the hips and drove his fist into Surathanan’s jaw. Bone collided with bone and the slaver went stiff, collapsing on the cot, eyes buried deep in their sockets.
“I haven’t forgotten your role in Valtus’s disappearance, in case you were wondering,” he told the unconscious man. “And while I said I wouldn’t kill you, I suspect you’ll be sorry I didn’t once I turn you over to his father, Delvin. That old priest harbors secrets; dark ones. Ones I suspect are best left hidden, though I imagine he’s quite eager to make an exception and cart them out.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to be you.”
Gryl hoisted the slaver over his shoulder and left the dead knights behind, seeking someplace to secure Surathanan until he could return for him. Dawn was fast approaching and Gryl had yet to accomplish his task. If it didn’t happen soon, it never would.
Mallister’s manse was just as Surathanan described it. A wall twice Gryl’s height encircled the property, and crooked and jagged barbs protruded at all angles from the top, leaving no room for a would-be intruder to avoid losing blood on the way in. The only entrance was barred by a great iron gate and the mechanism to open it was hidden, well out of reach behind the wall’s double-hand-span thickness. Three men paced beyond its bars and Gryl was surprised to see their eyes so clear, so aware, at this hour. A fourth and fifth prowled the area outside the wall and made it clear that Mallister had spared no expense when it came to his security. These were no peasant militia men. Still, the empress had Jacquial imprisoned in the house and it would take her entire army to keep him from her.
His first thought was to storm the property, knife the men at the gate, and race for the house, but if Mallister could spare a handful of men for the gate in the middle of the night, Gryl could be certain there would be a dozen more between it and the front door of the manse. Even if he were to win through, it would give the empress’s men inside time to mobilize or flee and neither suited his needs. Stealth was the order of the day. He only hoped he had time for such cautiousness.
Gryl circled the property, slithering through the shadows, dodging the guard who patrolled the grounds nearest him, and leapt to the wall as soon as the man was out of sight. Rusted steel points bit into the prodigy’s hand as he grasped the lip of the wall, cutting through his glove and slicing flesh. The barbs punctured deep but his Avan masters had long since bled him of pain, leaving him to feel nothing more than a vague pressure at the point of each puncture. Blood oozed from his wounds as he pulled himself up the wall by the one hand, leveraging himself at the top and taking a moment to bend a few of the other barbs flat. Old and weathered, they gave in, one snapping with a brittle pop and two more creaking aside so their tips bit into the stone of the wall, their sting muted. Gryl scrambled the rest of the way up, balancing in the narrow space free of metal spikes, and surveyed the property.
A well-manicured garden covered the majority of the yard alongside the house, leaving only a couple horse-lengths of open space on either side of the makeshift wilderness. Walkways of white marble, gleaming in the moonlight, spread serpentine throughout the greenery, seeming to run everywhere and nowhere at the same time, a labyrinth of white amidst the green. Trees and shrubbery cast deep shadows over the remainder of the lawn and, while the garden offered Gryl plenty of cover on his way to the house, it also offered Mallister’s men a dozen opportunities for an ambush. Still, outside of skirting half the property to avoid it, risking being seen by roaming sentries, there was no other way to reach the pair of sunken doors he’d spied near the rear of the house. With all the windows barred by iron rods, that seemed the most likely entrance to the cellars.
Gryl cast one last glance in search of hounds and, seeing no sign of any, dropped over the wall. He landed in a crouch and raced for the garden, only drawing breath after he was safe inside its verdant sanctuary. The wind rustled the leaves and set the branches to swaying but he could hear nothing beyond the willowy serenade of the trees; no shuffle of hidden feet, no anxious hands creaking against leathern grips. Still he waited to be certain, counting the moments in his head and cursing each and every one of them before determining he was alone in the garden. The warble of insects returned. Only then did he inch his way forward, following the winding marble pathways in the direction of the manse. To his surprise, he reached the other side without event. He hunkered down to observe the house.
Two more of Mallister’s men stood guard within the recessed archway, if their efforts could be seen as such. Unlike those at the gate, these men could just as well have opened the door for Gryl and ushered him inside for all the dedication they showed. They hunched between the twin stone pillars, backs to him, hiding from the chill wind, neither watching anything save for the shuffling of their feet.
“Might well as be waiting for the grass to grow,” Gryl heard one say, his voice drifting across the field.
“Better this than what those poor bastards down there are stuck doing,” the other man said, gesturing toward the doors as a great puff of gray smoke billowed from his mouth. “Least out here we can sneak a smoke and a nap and don’t need to be nowhere near her.”
“Aye,” the first agreed. “You’re right about that, Arlen. That twat is right evil. Wonder what she’s hiding under all that—”
Gryl darted low across the open field and launched a dagger, their words driving his hand as if it had a will of its own. He wondered of his feelings for Jacquial while the blade sunk into the sentry’s neck, steel grating against bone. The man toppled, surprise etched across his features as Gryl took the broad stairs three at a time. He dodged the falling sentry and thrust his sword through the eye of the remaining guard when he turned to watch his companion tumble away. The man grunted and went still and Gryl shook his corpse from his blade, letting it crumple onto the landing. He stared at the bodies and sighed. Myr Eltara had stolen his desires just as she had his agony, his childhood castration assuring that, and yet here he was, carving his way through Amberton for a woman he could never love.
The heat that stung his cheeks spoke otherwise.
Believing it better to act than contemplate such uncertainties, Gryl rifled the bodies and opened one of the doors, peering inside. A short landing met his gaze, another set of steps plunging downward just beyond. Nothing moved in the guttering light of the lanterns hung on the wall on either side of the entryway. Gryl dragged the dead men inside and sealed them in, before plunging down the dark stairwell, blades at the ready.
The air was cool inside the cellar and he could taste moisture with every breath, the harsh winter having settled into the bones of the house. He eased down the last of the steps and pressed his back to the wall. Three passageways jutted three different directions but there was no mistaking the way he was to go, only one path illuminated with more of the lanterns dangling from bronze hooks. He stared down the other two corridors and listened for any signs of activity but heard nothing. For all of Surathanan’s bluster regarding the empress’s relative, Mallister had made it easy on Gryl.