“You played rather aggressively tonight,” Brennan said.
What would Casside say? “I dislike losing money.”
Brennan grimaced. “We have all just lost a great deal of money.”
“How fast can the enterprise be rebuilt?” Richard asked.
“The efforts are under way now. Six months.” Brennan’s face jerked. An ugly scowl distorted his features, as if the fury inside him struggled to tear through the paper-thin mask of his easygoing demeanor. The man had a temper. Richard filed it away for future reference. “It was the Hunter. Three hundred men and a yearlong hunt, yet they can’t kill one man.”
The irony was too rich. It was time to carefully push Brennan in the right direction. “One wonders why.”
Brennan pivoted on one foot toward him. “What are you implying?”
“I find it odd that these three hundred men can find a set of twins of particular age and coloring but can’t find the Hunter.”
The passageway widened, circling the main keep. A few moments and they would pass through the arched gate and reach the main courtyard and their phaetons.
Something moved in the darkness by the arch.
Brennan halted. Richard put his hand on his rapier. Casside was a skilled fencer—like many bluebloods, he had a proper martial education. The slender sword wasn’t Richard’s preferred weapon, and being divorced from his magic hindered him. Casside couldn’t stretch his flash onto his sword. It was a lost art, known by a select few. And now that he was Casside, Richard would have to make do without it.
People moved within the arch, ink black silhouettes in darkness.
Brennan raised his head. “What have we here?”
Arrows whistled through the air. Brennan’s magic sparked, bursting from him in a brilliant white flash shield, disintegrating the missiles.
A bright blue flash shot from behind them, threatening to cut Brennan in half. Richard shoved him out of the way. The flash scorched the cobbles between them.
Richard dashed into the darkness in the direction of the flash, his rapier bare, counting under his breath. One, two, three, four. Another bolt of blue lightning tore at him. The flasher needed four seconds to recharge. The most accomplished magic users could do it instantly, but most needed time to refocus their magic.
Richard dodged, and the magic scoured the cobbles. The flasher gave himself away. He saw them now, three people waiting in the alcove to the left—the magic user and two fighters.
Richard charged. One.
The fighter on the left, a lean, agile woman, struck at him, spinning, her twin wide swords slicing like a razor-sharp tornado. He dodged left, right, left again. Two. The bigger sword grazed his chest, cutting through the doublet. Steel burned his skin.
Three.
The woman pressed her advantage.
Four. He dodged right, avoiding the flash by a mere second, lunged, and smiled as the tip of his rapier burst his opponent’s heart. The woman fell.
One. The large man behind her leaped, taking her place, chopping at him with a vicious short axe. Two. Three. Richard backed away. Four. His instincts screamed, and he dived left, half a second before another flash bolt cut a gash in the stone wall behind him.
The axe fighter smashed into him, knocking him off-balance. Too close for a lunge. Richard veered left, grabbed the axe fighter’s right arm, yanking him forward, and smashed the heavy hilt of the rapier into his left eye. The man howled in pain. Three. Richard spun him around and shoved him forward. The flash tore into the axe fighter. The stench of smoking human meat filled the air.
Richard sprinted, putting all of his speed in the run. Time slowed down, stretching like viscous honey.
He saw the magic user, a short, overweight woman. Slowly, as if underwater, she opened her mouth, raising her arms. The first brilliant blue spark of the flash formed between her fingers, biting at her skin with roots of lightning.
He thrust.
The blade passed under the growing tangle of magic, under the woman’s left breast and into her lung. He’d missed the heart by a hair.
Richard threw himself left. The magic tore from her in a wide beam. She tried to scream, but the words gurgled in her throat. He dropped the rapier, grabbed her from the side, and snapped her neck with a quick jerk.
It cost him half a second to recover his sword. Richard dashed back. When he’d sent Garett, his cousin, to hire the thugs to kill Brennan, he warned him to hire enough to make a serious statement but not so many that Brennan would be overwhelmed. As satisfying as it would feel, Brennan couldn’t die. But Richard had never counted on a flasher or a skilled swordsmen. There was a slight chance that they could actually succeed, and their scheme would fall apart before it had even begun.
He rounded the bend. Brennan bent over a prone man, breathing hard, his face an ugly, feral mask. A thick drip of bright red blood spilled from his scalp onto his face. Three bodies sprawled on the cobbles. None of them moved.
Brennan clutched a man by his shirt and stabbed him.
The man cried out.
“Who?” Brennan demand, his voice a ragged growl. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” the man groaned.
Brennan twisted the dagger in the wound. “Who?”
“Kordon said . . .” The man’s voice was fading. “He said . . . it was . . .”
“What?” Brennan yanked him higher.
“Eagle,” the man whispered. His eyes rolled back in his skull. His body convulsed once, and he sagged in Brennan’s grip. The king’s cousin stared at the limp body, his eyes bulging. He looked deranged. Then the anger vanished, and Brennan pulled his composure back on like a mask.
“Robert!” Richard sank force into his whisper. “We must leave. There will be questions.”
Brennan let go of the corpse, dusted his hands, and strode into the arched tunnel, his pace brisk. “Did you bring a phaeton?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll ride in it, then. Can your servants be trusted?”
Richard hid a smile. He had replaced all of the staff in the house with his family. There wasn’t a single person in that house whose name wasn’t Mar. “Implicitly.”
“Good.”
The arch ended, opening into a well-lit courtyard filled with phaetons and horses. Richard stopped, pulled a handkerchief from his clothes, and thrust it at Brennan. “Blood.”
“Thank you.” Brennan pressed the cloth over the blood. They crossed the space quickly. Richard opened the door of the phaeton, and Brennan ducked inside on the wide bench. Richard climbed in after him and let his fingers fly over the controls. The ornate panel buzzed, the gears began turning, and the phaeton whirred to life. He drove out of the courtyard, maintaining average speed.