Dad swore quietly but extensively.
“What?” I asked.
“Those wards are wicked bitches.”
“Can you take them out?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually isn’t now.”
“I know,” Dad all but growled.
I felt the wards, and under that a gag spell. Sarad Nukpana was being careful. He knew what Talon was capable of, especially after the kid’s performance last night. But most important, Talon was his prized catch. He wasn’t taking any chances.
The wards shifted and I saw it—a hinged door a little over a foot high and that much again wide. I’d seen similar in modern jail cells. Guards could pass food to a prisoner without the risk of unlocking the door. The wards shifted again, covering the hinged door. I counted all the way to ten before the wards moved away again. The little door stayed untouched by the ward for another count of ten. Nice and regular.
I grinned. This could work.
“No, Raine.” Dad’s voice said his word was final. He’d looked where I’d been looking. I wasn’t the only one who could count to ten.
“It’s the only chance we have,” I told him. “You said it yourself—those wards are wicked bitches. So I’ll go under them.”
Dad scowled. “In ten seconds.”
“So I’ll go fast.” I kept my eyes on the wards. Ten seconds on, ten seconds off. I loved predictability.
“No, I’ll go fast,” he told me.
“Your shoulders are too broad.”
“I’ll fit,” Piaras said.
I looked at him and his shoulders. “No, you won’t. Plus you’re too tall; you’d never make it through before those wards touched you.”
“What would happen?”
Dad’s eyes had gone back to tracking the wards. “Well, you’d be a lot shorter for one thing.”
I realized something distinctly unpleasant. “Dad, if Talon has any wounds, I can’t touch him.”
Dad handed me his gloves. I didn’t know if they’d work, but I tried them on. They were a little large, but manageable. “I’ll just try not to touch the kid.” I slid out of my sword harness and started stripping off my doublet.
Dad stared at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making myself as narrow as possible.” I would fit, but most of my clothes wouldn’t. After I’d stripped off everything extraneous, I was left wearing high boots, trousers, a small pouch with some necessities, and an awfully thin shirt. I suddenly noticed it was really, really cold down here. Dad noticed the parts of me that didn’t like the cold and quickly looked away. Piaras noticed and then tried not to notice.
I shoved a dagger into my belt at the small of my back and pulled the gloves back on.
Piaras nervously glanced back at the bunker opening. “If there’s nothing I can do in here, I’ll stand watch outside.”
Dad nodded once. “Thank you, Piaras.”
The kid looked at me, his dark eyes solemn and afraid—for me. “Be careful, Raine.”
“Whenever I can.”
I started to kneel, and Dad laid a firm hand on my arm.
“If for some reason you can’t get out the way you went in, I’m taking that door off its hinges. Wards or not.”
I smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
I knelt and waited for the ward to move. I opened the flap and quickly looked inside. It wouldn’t do me any good to risk life and limb wiggling through that flap if Talon wasn’t in there.
Or if a goblin guard was. It’d suck to avoid having my legs cut off by a ward only to have my head lopped off by an ax. I looked. Talon was in there and he was alone. He seemed to be asleep—or unconscious. I was hoping for asleep.
“Dad, the room’s big enough. When I start through, get your hands on the bottom of my boots and shove me through.”
He knelt beside me. “You got it.”
I waited for the next ward cycle to start, dropped to my stomach, started squirming through, and Dad gave me a shove that damned near drove my head into the far wall of the cell. It felt like I left parts of me around the edges of that door.
I scrambled to my feet. Talon was awake and giving me a lascivious look that I’d gotten on numerous occasions from his father. The similarities made me uncomfortable in ways I’d never imagined.
Talon was chained to the wall. There were enough links to allow limited movement, but that was about it. I thought it was a little overdone. No doubt the kid was nimble, and he was a knockout spellsinger, but wards, a gag spell, and chained to the wall? Apparently I could add paranoid to my list of Sarad Nukpana descriptors.
Talon rattled his chains and grinned, slow and wicked. “I’ve had this dream before.”
Yep, like father, like son.
I just looked at him. “Kid, I can go right back out the way I came in—without you.”
“I’ll shut up.”
“Smart choice.”
His grin turned sheepish. “It appears I didn’t make the smartest choice last night.”
“Let’s see . . . you froze a courtyard full of Guardians, ran away, got yourself snatched and brought here when Mychael and your dad told you to go to the citadel and stay there—so I can see where you might think that.”
“Would ‘sorry’ cover it?”
“Doesn’t even come close.”
“How did you find me?” Talon asked, nimbly changing the subject.
“Piaras led us to you.”
“Piaras?”
“He followed you from the citadel, saw Nukpana grab you, and risked his own life to follow you down here—then he had to kill two Khrynsani to try to save you.”
Talon gave a low whistle. “He’s so going to kick my ass for that.”
“Safe assumption.”
I wasn’t just making small talk. I was trying to figure out the best way to get those shackles off Talon. Naturally, they couldn’t be just any shackles. They were the magic-sapping kind. And I’d have to touch them to get them off. Another nasty surprise was that if the magic user shackled with them tried to use magic, the jolt they’d get would make them think twice about ever trying again.
I noticed burns on Talon’s wrists. Looked like he’d tried, more than once. I didn’t see any blood, but burns definitely qualified as a wound. I didn’t know where the Saghred drew the line as far as what wounds qualified as a sacrifice, and I wasn’t about to use Talon to find out.
I nodded down at the manacles. “Tried to sing your way out of those?”
“It didn’t go well.”
“I imagine not. I think I’ll go with the old-fashioned way.”
Among the tools of the trade that I’d brought with me was my favorite set of picklocks. A good seeker never went anywhere without them. I pulled them out of the pouch at my back, knelt, and examined the lock on one of the ankle shackles, careful not to touch it. The construction looked simple enough, but I knew better. I’d start with his ankles. As long as I was within groping distance, I wanted Talon’s hands secured.
I leaned over the left ankle shackle.
“I think I’m in love,” Talon told me.
I looked where Talon was looking—right down the front of my shirt. I sat back on my heels.
“Kid, do you think you can control yourself long enough for me to free you from this hellhole, or would you like to stay here and wait for Sarad Nukpana to come back?”
“I’ll be good.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. By the way, once I start working on these, you might need all the breath you can get. You might want to take a few good ones now.”
“You’re not using magic, so there shouldn’t be any pain. Right?”
“Possibly, but probably not. I’ve got the Saghred partially powered up to find Nukpana, and I’m going to have to touch these shackles to pick the locks. I’ll work fast, but you might get the same jolt you did when you tried to get out of them.”
That tossed a bucket of cold water on his lust.
“And by the way,” I continued, “the Saghred’s hungry and your wrists are raw. Touch me and you could be lunch.”
Talon raised his hands defensively, chains clanking. “Keeping my hands to myself.”
Maybe being the Saghred with feet wasn’t all bad.
“Sarad Nukpana told me some of the things that he was going to do with me.” Talon’s aqua eyes were angry and terrified at the same time, mostly terrified. “Do whatever you have to. I can take it.”
I hoped he could, because there was no other way around this. And nothing disturbed the peace—and would bring more Khrynsani guards running—like a screaming goblin teenager.
“I’ll work fast.”
“I won’t scream.” Talon took a deep breath and then nodded.
I went to work.
And the shackles didn’t like me.
They expressed their displeasure straight to Talon. He was made of tough stuff; Tam would be proud. There was a lot of hissing, and when the last manacle dropped to the stone floor, all the kid had to show for it was a trickle of blood where the he’d bitten his lip.
“Dammit, you’re bleeding. Do not touch me.”
“No touching.” Talon was panting and his voice quavered a little, but that was it.
I was impressed. That had to have hurt like hell, but the kid hadn’t so much as whimpered.
“We’re going out the same way I came in. There are wards out there that cover the door on a ten-second interval. You have to be out in ten seconds.”
“I can do that.”
I certainly hoped so. I knelt next to the door. “Ready?” I asked Dad.
“Ready.” There was a whole world of relief in that one word.
“Let me know when and Talon will stretch his arms out.
His wrists are burned, so grab his forearms if you can. Pull hard. I don’t want to touch him, not even his boots. Talon, get down on your belly and get ready.”