Chapter IV

IV

Whatever Talia was rummaging for, she didn’t find it. She looked up to me and nodded.

I had absolutely no idea what she meant by it.

Well, nothing for it. I calmly stepped forward out of the carriage, hands up as instructed. No sudden moves. Instead, I reached out with my empathy and immediately sensed the hearts of the robbers—four in all.

Honestly? It could have been much worse.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” I said, remembering to accentuate my typical Eldami accent. I keenly felt the tiny daggers of fear piercing each of them. This wouldn’t be hard, exactly, but it wouldn’t do to terrorize them immediately. That would so easily lead to unexpected, rash action from them. Nervous fingers on the trigger.

No, my touch was gentler, perhaps crueler. As Talia emerged behind me, I teased a little. “I expect you know who we are?”

“Nah, we don’t care,” said the man I took for their leader. “You’re rich fuckers, that’s good enough for us.” His face was masked, and his own accent matched the city workers I’d heard call to each other in Black Harbor.

The four highwaymen were standing in a semicircle, guns lazily trained on Talia and me.

“Oh, well, that’s a relief,” I said, and I raised the level of fear in them slightly, making their blood run just a bit colder. Then, I matched the fear within to the drama without. I opened my eyes wide and began reciting a nonsense chant in Paradisi, the ancient language of the old world, almost under my breath. The language never failed to sound terrifying to an uneducated ear.

“Wha’s she saying?”

“Shut up, Haft,” and the second man cuffed the first.

“Haft, is it?” I said. “Well, now that I have your name,” and I continued the nonsense chant, occasionally adding his name in. I stepped forward, and Talia slipped behind me into the momentary sunlight, sneaking to the front of the carriage slowly. All eyes were on me, and I’d keep it that way.

“No, stop her, please!”

“Shut up!”

“Those are cute,” I said, gesturing to the rifles trained on me. “Oh, believe me dearies, I’ve survived worse.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Talia jerk her head in a clear signal. At that, I abandoned all subtlety, twisting those daggers of fear into long blades of pure, icy terror. I lunged for the one called Haft. He cried out, dropped his rifle and fell backward clutching his chest.

I hadn’t laid a finger on him.

Another spun around wildly, as if seeing shadows closing in from all directions. He fired off into the trees, deafening me as he fled. Talia slammed a rock into the third robber’s head. She grabbed his rifle as he slumped unconscious. Then, rounding on the leader, she did not hesitate.

The crack of the weapon deafened me once more.

My heart skipped a beat as my ears started ringing. Blinking away tears, I knelt down to catch my breath. The world spun. I heard distant sounds of the other two fleeing, and Talia speaking in a low voice to the remaining robber. I couldn’t tell what Talia—my wife, I realized anew once more—was saying.

The confusion passed. I straightened and saw the robbers’ leader was writhing on the ground, blood gushing from his knee. Oddly, Talia had pulled a strip of cloth from... from somewhere, perhaps from the man’s own shirt, and was binding up his wound. She had ripped away the pant, which exposed his purpling leg to the air.

Talia was continuing to talk quietly to him. The ringing in my ear had dimmed enough so I could understand.

“Put pressure on it, here,” she said. “The tourniquet will ensure you won’t lose too much blood, but your leg will likely need to be amputated.”

“Wha’—who,” the man gasped out, then he groaned pathetically at the pain. A needle-prick of empathy stung me.

“I will send riders on from the next town. If I leave now, they should be here within half an hour,” Talia said. “Keep pressure on the wound and you might survive until then. It will be painful, but you could make it out of this alive.”

Then, I had a thought. I came around to the man’s side, soothing the man’s pain a little but keeping a healthy dose of fear icing his heart. Noting Talia’s rich black attire, I knelt beside him.

“Tell them you were spared by the mercy of the Sable Prince of Thieves,” I whispered in his ear, and tilted her head to indicate Duke Talia Fallmire. “And that she spares any honest thief, so long as they pledge their loyalty to her.”

“Yes,” the man whimpered. “Yes, of course, I will…”

We left the robber on the side of the road. Talia hefted an unconscious but healthy Richmond into the carriage and took the reins herself. Once we reached the next village she was good on her word, sending riders down the road after the robber. Perhaps he will survive, she said.

And, after securing us rooms in the local inn, she turned to me. “You have quite a curious mind under pressure, demon Lucia. The Sable Prince of Thieves?” She cocked her eye before disappearing into her room where Richmond had been laid out to recover. “Perhaps I’ll use that after all.”

I stared after her for a long moment before retiring to my own.

---

The next morning dawned early as the sun sent her golden light through the cheap curtains of the inn’s suite. I missed having someone to share my bed, but there was little for it. Apparently Talia was not planning to fulfill any marital duties beyond appearances.

I slipped from the bed and shrugged. Her loss. I prided myself particularly on my skills in that arena. Perhaps I could… convince her. Eventually.

There was a polite knock at the door which I answered directly. Outside, Talia’s manservant waited, his face a perfect picture of servitude. With perfect politeness, he led me to a private dining room Talia had commandeered. She was there breaking her fast.

“I trust your sleep was restful?” Talia asked.

“It would have been better in your bed,” I slipped in, as I broke my own fast with a muffin.

Talia didn’t give any particular response to that. Instead, she turned to business. “We’ll have to get back on the road early. I’ve a social call this morning that cannot wait.”

“Oh, meeting the neighbors?”

“Precisely,” Talia said. “Local gentry. They live a few hours by carriage from House Fallmire.”

“Oh!” I nearly spit out a mouthful of muffin, my curiosity getting the better of me once more. “That was my other question!” I raised my finger to stall while I worked to swallow.

After half a breath and a swift napkin-wipe cleaning away sodden crumbs of half-chewed muffin, I asked, “What was all that hullabaloo about Fallmire, anyway? It sounds like a reasonable name for a noble house.”

Talia snorted. “Well, Fallmire wasn’t my name to begin with. I... have reasons for concealing my name of birth. You may well surmise. But the cause for which I am being raised to the nobility is my capture and execution of a particularly notorious pirate, Isabel Fallmire.”

“Ah. Huh. Right.” I considered this a moment. “And you took her name because... ?”

Talia looked at me for a moment, then shook her head slightly. A pink tinged her cheeks. “I... have my reasons, demon Lucia.”

Well, I wasn’t getting anywhere with that line of questioning. This Talia kept things close to her chest. But she had another surprise for me this morning.

“I’ve given it some thought. With your actions last night, I am considering your proposal for a contract to assist me in my vengeance.”

“You—”

“You are very perceptive, Lucia,” Talia said. “You could be useful to me. So, I want to extend a little more information to you, as a sign of good faith.” She looked down at her hands, took a deep breath, and continued. “The hatred you sense within me stems from my father’s death. Those who framed him for treason still walk free, and it is my aim entire to see them brought to justice.”

I knew it, I thought smugly, before my eyes widened as I fully realized what, precisely, was at stake here. Vengeance for the murder of Talia’s father? It could not be more perfect. I’d have to play my cards very carefully, but as I looked over the newly-minted Duke, her lips pressed into a line, I…dammit, I believed. I believed, for a moment, that this woman really could bring revenge upon the bastards who killed her father.

“There are three who have earned my ire,” Talia continued. “You’ve met one already; the Marchesa Forteza benefited the most from my father’s demise.”

“I’ve seen another, I think,” I said as I leaned back in my chair. I fixed the Duke with fresh eyes. “There was the man who walked in on our hearing; some sort of military duff decked out like the Royal treasury. Your hatred popped off when you saw him.”

“Commander General Gregor Hawthorne, yes,” said Talia, her tone dry as ever. “My second target.”

“And your third?”

Talia paused at that, looking down at the floor, deep in thought. “Henry Lindell, Bishop Inquisitor of Cavaline. I suppose you’d meet him eventually, should I put you under contract, but he tends to keep to the shadows. He is the most dangerous of the three, by my reckoning.”

I let the conversation lapse for a moment. This was a major step forward.

We quickly finished the light breakfast before us. I stood as our meal was cleared away. I felt emboldened, and as Talia moved past me, I took her arm. She aquiesced to this as we stepped, arm in arm, to greet the day.

This Duke would have her vengeance on those three bastards. Revenge burned far more brightly than any momentary passion—and it burned like a funeral pyre within this woman. With luck, that fire would serve me well.