Twilight's Dawn (The Black Jewels #9)

Daemon landed on the drive, using Craft to create a blanket of air so that the Coach silently came to rest just above the gravel.

As soon as the Coach settled, Ladvarian passed through the door and disappeared.

*Sylvia,* Daemon called on a psychic thread. *Sylvia!*

No response of any kind, not even a weak effort of someone sick or injured. *Beron?*

Barely a flicker, but he thought there was some response.

Daemon stepped out of the Coach, then waited for Jaenelle and Surreal. The three of them moved up to the front door together, then passed through it one by one. Daemon took the lead while Surreal guarded their backs. As he headed up the stairs, probing and searching, Ladvarian shouted, *Jaenelle!*

Daemon leaped up the remaining stairs, moving fast to stay ahead of Jaenelle, following the sounds of barking and shouting. He burst into the room, a Black shield fanned out in front of him to protect the women behind him.

A huddle of people—several adults and the boy, Haeze. A Healer cringed near a narrow bed, her eyes on Ladvarian. The Sceltie floated on air above the bed, snapping and snarling to keep the woman away from Beron, who lay in the bed, bloody and too still.

Jaenelle rushed over to the bed. Surreal remained by the door, a knife in her hand. Ladvarian continued snarling at the Healer. And Daemon, riding the killing edge, watched everyone in the room as he assessed the stink of the adults’ psychic scents. Fear, desperation, and a petty satisfaction that it wasn’t their boy lying wounded in the bed. And something more that he couldn’t identify—yet.

“You whoring bitch.”

Planting one knee on air, Jaenelle threw herself across the bed, grabbed the Healer’s Jewel, and channeled a blast of power through cold rage.

Surreal yelped in surprise. Other people screamed, and the Healer shrieked as Jaenelle shattered the woman’s Jewels, both ranking Jewel and Birthright, breaking her back to basic Craft. Windows shattered. The walls of the room cracked in patterns that made Daemon think a violent lightning storm had been etched on the plaster.

He felt as if the Winds had turned into a funnel of speed and power that would sweep away anything in its path, and he was standing at the edge of that fury.

Then the power and fury were gone, reclaimed by the witch who had unleashed it.

Jaenelle opened her hand. The shattered pieces of the Healer’s Jewel fell to the floor, completely empty of power. Pushing against air, Jaenelle returned to the other side of the bed.

“Lady?” Daemon asked sharply.

“She was destroying Beron’s vocal cords under the guise of healing his throat,” Jaenelle snarled.

He didn’t ask how she knew or if she was certain the harm was deliberate. Jaenelle wouldn’t have broken a Healer that way unless she was certain.

Daemon looked at the adults, then at Haeze, who was curled up on the floor.

Everyone in the room had known the bitch was doing it—including the boy who was supposed to be Beron’s friend.

That was the something more he had picked up in their psychic scents—their worry that someone would find out they had stood by and allowed Beron to be harmed.

Well, someone had, and he wasn’t about to overlook or forgive anything.

While Witch’s fury shook the room, Ladvarian had pressed himself against the bed over Beron’s legs. Now he stood up, shook himself vigorously, and looked at Jaenelle. *This room has bad smells, and it is getting cold. You should take Beron to the Coach so you can heal him properly. Surreal will guard you while the Prince and I look for Lady Sylvia.*

*Why aren’t you being that bossy?* Surreal asked Daemon on a Gray thread.

*I wouldn’t have dared. Not yet, anyway,* he replied dryly.

Jaenelle looked at Beron. “Agreed.” She pulled the top sheet loose. Ladvarian jumped off the bed as she floated the boy on air and wrapped the sheet around him.

*Can you handle this?* Daemon asked Surreal.

*Do you have a problem with me burying anyone who upsets her?*

*No problem at all.*

*Then I can handle this.*

Ladvarian went with the women as they hurried to get Beron to the Coach. Daemon remained, his hands in his coat pockets, doing nothing but staring at the people huddled together. Now that Witch was out of the room, he was, once more, the dominant predator.

“Prince?”

The male voice was unfamiliar and cautious. Not surprising, since the man was coming up behind him and wouldn’t want to be mistaken for an enemy.

Looking over his shoulder, Daemon studied the Warlord wearing the badge of a Master of the Guard. “Come in.”

The Master entered the room, flanked by several other Warlords. “Someone has been hurt?”

“The Queen of Halaway’s son,” Daemon replied. “And Lady Sylvia is missing.”

“How may we be of service?” The Master’s voice turned grim.

“Lord Ladvarian and I are going to search the grounds for Lady Sylvia. Have some of your men search the house.” Daemon pointed at the Healer, then at the adults he assumed were Sylvia’s hosts. “Keep them under guard, separately, until I’m ready to have a little chat. Take the boy to his room, under protection.”

“Done,” the Master said.

Daemon walked out of the room as the Warlords swarmed around the people being detained. The Master followed him out.

“Something else?” Daemon asked, pausing at the top of the stairs.

“Does this have anything to do with the missing children?”

Cold rage swept through him, but he kept it chained. “What do you know about missing children?” And why hadn’t you shown some balls and come up to the Hall to tell me about them?

The Master licked his lips, a nervous movement. “Sometimes borders are just lines on a map. The folks living in the towns and villages on the other side of the border in Little Terreille? They’re good people. We have no quarrel with them. When children started going missing, they asked us to keep a lookout for them. Not hard to do. A child from Little Terreille isn’t going to have the looks that would blend in with Dhemlan children, so he’s easy enough to spot. Most of the time, when a youngster runs away, he’s angry or unhappy, but no one has done him real harm, if you understand me.”

“I do. And if you do suspect real harm?”

“The youngster is brought before the Queen and isn’t returned to his family unless she’s satisfied that the reason he left home wasn’t more than growing pains.”

“Do you think the missing children are runaways?”

The Master hesitated, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. We’ve checked the runaway houses within our Queen’s territory.”

Most small villages had at least one runaway house—a safe place an unhappy child could go to receive a hug, nutcakes, and a sympathetic ear, or be given some space to brood over some trouble at home.

“I want to know if there are any children missing from Dhemlan villages.”

“I’ll check with the village guards, but I haven’t heard of any children going missing,” the Master said. Then he finished grimly, “Which doesn’t mean there haven’t been some that have gone missing.”

“I want daily reports until this is settled,” Daemon said as he started down the stairs.

“You’ll have them.”

“And get in touch with the Province Queen’s Master and make him aware—”

*Daemon!*

The urgency in Ladvarian’s voice made him rush down the rest of the stairs and out of the house. Dim balls of witchlight hung over a spot in the garden, so it wasn’t hard to find the dog.

And it wasn’t hard to see what the Sceltie had found.

Ladvarian circled the lower halves of two severed legs. The legs were bare; the feet were still covered by ankle boots.

*These smell like Sylvia,* Ladvarian growled as he daintily walked on air to avoid leaving paw prints in the blood. *And I smell dead flesh.*

Daemon caught himself before pointing out that the severed legs were dead flesh. The dog had grown up at the Hall and had been given the same training in Protocol as any other young male who had resided there. Ladvarian wouldn’t use a disrespectful description simply because a person was demon-dead, so calling someone “dead flesh” was an indication of the dog’s contempt for the person—an indication that the scent belonged to an enemy.

“Track the dead flesh, but don’t go farther than these gardens,” Daemon said. “I’ll search for Sylvia. And stay shielded.”

*I will.* Ladvarian headed down a path that led away from the house.

Daemon put a Black shield around the legs to prevent anyone from taking them. Then he searched the ground for a blood trail. Nothing clean about the severing, so there should be plenty of blood for him to follow.

Unless the attacker had used Craft and vanished Sylvia. Those personal storage cupboards the Blood created with Craft and power couldn’t support anything that was alive. But you could move a body that way—or kill someone who was wounded.

He found blood splashed over the tops of plants, following a line where there was no trail. Stepping up on air to stand level with the tops of the plants, Daemon created a brighter ball of witchlight and followed the spray until he found a spot in the garden that looked crushed by a body—and he found pools of blood. Not as much as he’d expected, not if Sylvia had still been alive when she’d landed there, but enough to tell him where he needed to look for Halaway’s Queen.

Ladvarian trotted up to him, also balanced on air. *The dead flesh is gone, but its smells are strong in some parts of the garden.*

“Hunting here?” Daemon looked around. Sylvia had landed close to one of the garden paths. If she did make the transition ... He sighed. “She’s not here.”

*Tildee and Mikal are not here either,* Ladvarian said. *I have called Tildee. She doesn’t answer.*

“All right. Let’s take care of the living, and then we’ll see what we can do about the dead.”

They retraced their steps back to the house. As they passed the point of attack, Daemon wrapped a tight shield around the legs and vanished them.

Seeing Surreal standing near the front door, talking to the Master, Ladvarian trotted over to the Coach, then had to wait for Jaenelle to create an opening in the shields and let him in. Reassured when he saw the precautions his Lady had taken, Daemon joined Surreal and the Master.

“They didn’t find Mikal or Tildee—or Sylvia,” Surreal said.

“And no one seems to know where the younger son of the house has gone,” the Master said.

“Oh, sugar, I think they know,” Surreal replied.

Which meant there was at least one child whose disappearance had gone unreported. Either Sylvia stumbled onto something evil here or she’d been lured here to be sacrificed. Either way, none of the people he needed to talk to the most were here.

“Surreal, go get the boy,” Daemon said. “Pack up anything you can as fast as you can. We’re taking him with us.” No matter what part Haeze had played in setting this trap, Daemon wasn’t going to leave a child in this place.

“Give me ten minutes.” She opened the front door and went inside.

“Do you want us to stay?” the Master asked.

“No. You need to keep a tight watch on your own village. I’ll contact the Province Queen and have her send in some guards.”

“This village has guards,” the Master said. “Do you want me to talk to them before I go?”

“Do you think it will make any difference?” Daemon’s voice was dry, biting.

The Master stared at him, then swore. “They’re blind to what’s going on in their own village, and it may be deliberate. That’s what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying. This village is under your Queen’s hand. As her Master, these guards are under your command same as the men in her home village. Would you vouch for them?”

“A couple of months ago, I would have. Now?”The Master shook his head. “They knew about the children that had gone missing across the border. If there was any hint of something being wrong here, my Queen should have been told.”

And the Queen of Halaway should have been informed so that she wouldn’t have come to such a place without an escort, Daemon thought. If she came at all.

Unless he was totally wrong about the man standing in front of him, that mistake wouldn’t be repeated. He suspected that, by tomorrow, the Master would contact every other Master of the Guard in Dhemlan, encouraging them to insist that their Queens have an escort for any kind of visit outside the home village.

But if the other Masters weren’t informed, that would tell him something about this man too.

The front door opened. Surreal came out, one hand loosely gripping Haeze’s arm. She said nothing to the men, just escorted the boy to the Coach.

“What do you want done with the Healer and this family?” the Master asked.

He wanted to rip them all apart to find out what they knew about Sylvia’s attacker. But the prudent thing to do—the right thing—was to let the District Queen deal with the people in her territory.

And if he wasn’t satisfied with how the District Queen dealt with these people, he would take care of them. Quietly.

“Take them to your Lady,” Daemon said. “I’m sure she’ll have some questions about what happened here tonight.”

“I’m sure she will,” the Master said.