Back in the center of town, she took several twisting streets, and Alexia followed without instruction. Finally, she slowed and watched a house carefully. It was also two-stories tall, stone, and in a wealthy section of the city. All the houses were built flush to the street with the wide sidewalks in front. The houses butted up against each other on their sides. Any unused land would be behind.
Kendra turned at the corner, and as expected, a wide alley took us behind where each house had some sort of barn, stable, carriage house, or all. They were fenced, but we sat high enough that we saw over them. Her eyes were on one house, so my attention went there, too.
“Can you slip up to the house and see how many are inside?”
In answer, I got my feet under me and stood on the saddle and stepped over the fence. I landed on soft ground and rolled, then darted to the outbuilding. Getting found by enemies from behind was not going to happen because of the fence. The outbuilding held five horses, not a good sign. Three of the stalls had boards with names burned into them. Two were for visitors.
Perhaps that was better, but no way to tell, yet. At the rear door, I listened to a pair of men talking, but the words couldn’t be made out. A window revealed them sitting on large stuffed chairs, intently facing each other.
They were mages. Not because they glowed or by any deed of mine, but because I recognized them from the palace. I’d seen them my entire life.
A ladder stood against the outbuilding and a window on the second story was open. It was perfect. I found a few rags in the barn and wrapped them around the top rails of the ladder. It went against the side of the stone house without a sound. At the top of the ladder, I peeked inside to an empty bedroom.
Once inside, my boots came off, and I slipped barefoot from room to room, all empty. The same two voices echoed up to me, never another. There might be someone else, but I’d done all I could to be sure. If a bodyguard or soldier leaped out when I got down, we’d fight.
I moved down several steps and waited. The staircase ended in the room where the mages sat. My sword was in my right hand, my boots in my left. I threw the boots to the far side of the room, causing both men to look that way as I silently raced up behind them.
My sword-tip touched the bare neck of the closest. To the other, I said, “There is nothing preventing me from killing you both, here and now.”
“Damon?” The one able to turn his head asked.
The other started to turn to look at me. I jabbed him hard enough to draw blood.
The first said, “Have you lost your mind, boy?”
Despite my sword, it was two-to-one, and they had looked down on me my entire life. For them, facing a stranger would be more difficult. I sensed both tensing as if they were going to fight.
In a flash, my sword blade rose, and I hammered the butt of the sword handle down on the top of the head of the nearest, stepped aside, and slashed across the chest of the other. His shirt sliced open, as did his skin. The cut looked deeper than I’d intended.
As the first man slumped to the floor, I reached out my hand and tore the rest of the shirt open from the other as he stood in shock examining his wound.
A few slices of my blade cut the shirt into strips. He was still examining his wound when I pulled his wrists behind his back and tied them. The one I’d hit over the head hadn’t moved. I went to the rear door and waved for Kendra to come inside.
“Anybody else here?” I asked.
He shook his head. His eyes were still on his chest as if he couldn’t believe what had happened. Then he raised them to me and growled. “I will kill you for that. I am a mage, stupid boy.”
“If you had a dragon in chains to draw your magic from you might do it, but you don’t.”
“There’s more than one mug to drink from.”
“Not today, there’s not. Maybe not even tomorrow,” I said while using more strips off his shirt to add to the ones already on his wrists. However, the comment stuck with me. Kendra and I would find out what it meant to drink from more than one mug. It didn’t sound good for me. I knelt beside the one on the floor to begin tying him—and saw his eyes were open and already turning foggy. I’d killed him. I’d murdered a royal mage.
Kendra entered in a wary stance, her knife in hand.
The blood ran in rivers down the stomach of the mage I’d cut. The entire lower half of his body was red. He snarled at her, “You.”
I expected Kendra to berate me for killing one and cutting the other, but instead, she glanced at the dead one and back to the other as calmly as if we did this sort of thing daily. She said, “Yes, me. And you are bleeding to death. Damon, I’ll bet you a silver crown that he is dead before dark.”
“You always take the winning side of our bets. No thanks.”
Her face still had shown no emotion, and that probably scared the mage more than anything. She said to him, “I am going to ask you a few questions.”
“I won’t talk. There are others of us who are coming.”
She sat in the chair where he had. “Well, there were three of you here in Andover. Now there is you.”
That statement got his attention. For the first time, I saw fear.
She crossed one knee over the other as she sat at apparent ease. “Without my help, you will die soon. When that happens, I will call down that great beast of a dragon I control, and just like I did at Mercia, I will have it flatten this house, and you along with it. Did you watch my dragon do that to Mercia? I stood beside the river as it did it.”
“Your dragon?”
“The lady in blue light called me the Dragon Queen.”
“No . . .”
“Listen, I don’t have all day. No, let me rephrase that. You do not have all day. Where are the other mages and what are their plans?”
Her casual attitude and cold tone even scared me. Blood still flowed freely from his chest as he slumped to his knees and then to the floor where he lay in a pool of his own blood. His face was sweating and pale. His hand tried to stem the blood as he looked from Kendra to me, then back again, disbelieving what he saw and heard.
She abruptly stood. “Have it your way. Damon, it’s time for us to go.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
We walked outside, leaving the wounded mage lying on the floor bleeding to death. At any instant, I expected her to relent and tell me to question him again. Instead, we mounted and rode to the bazaar where she dismounted long enough to buy a loaf of bread and slab of cheese. Then she led the way out of the city, back to where we had left the first mage.
“Are we going to let him die?”
She turned to look at me. “I’m certain you didn’t mean to cut him as deeply as you did, and the other was an accident. I saw his chirp in my mind disappear when you hit him. The other is so dim I can barely detect it. There was nothing we could do to save him.”
“You called yourself the Dragon Queen.”
“To scare him. To know if he recognized the name. He was terrified of it, and that tells us he knows of the dragon and me.”
A shout drew my attention. The soldier or bodyguard from the inn was threatening a man on the street, demanding information about the mage who had disappeared. “Turn your head away and keep riding, Kendra.”