Chapter 12

“I have no need to employ such crude methods.” Zenia sounded offended.

“You will answer my questions and tell me what you know.”

He grimaced, remembering the magical compulsion she’d laid on him

earlier. Even now, she might be using a tendril of power on him to keep him

toddling along like an obedient retriever.

“Well, that won’t take long. I don’t know much.”

“Clearly, the rumors that zyndar children receive an excellent education

from private tutors are false.”

“Clearly.” Jev decided it wasn’t worth getting upset over insults. After all

he’d endured, they were a petty annoyance at most. Maybe if he didn’t

respond in kind, she would thaw a few degrees. He had never been questioned

by an inquisitor and didn’t know how much of their interrogation magic was

rumor and how much was truth, but he hated having any of the dark arts plied

on him. “We mostly just got lessons on how to be appropriately haughty in

the presence of commoners.”

She gave him another frosty look. So much for a thaw.

They turned down a narrow street framed by millennia-old whitewashed

stone buildings.

“Look out,” the monk barked.

She lunged forward, grabbed Zenia’s arm, and pulled her to one side of

the street. But not quickly enough. Few humans could match the speed of a

full-blooded elf.

“No,” Jev barked, trying to step forward and stop Lornysh before he hurt

either of the women—where had he come from? A rooftop?—but the end of a

bo slammed into his chest before he reached the fight.

The monk.

Jev stumbled back. His chainmail blunted the attack, but he would still

have a bruise tomorrow. The monk reared back to thrust the weapon again—

trying to drive him away from Zenia so she could jump in to help against

Lornysh.

Jev whipped his forearm across in time to block the second blow. His

instincts cried out for him to follow the block with an attack, to leap in before

she could bring the bo to bear again, but he made himself lift his arms, a

gesture of surrender. He didn’t want to fight an inquisitor of one of the

Orders, damn it. Even his title wouldn’t protect him from retribution if he hurt

one of them.

A sickening crunch sounded as the monk whirled from Jev and sprang

toward her comrade’s side. Once again, she was a hair too late. Lornysh

slammed the inquisitor against the wall with strength one expected from

dwarves—and steam hammers—instead of slender-armed elves. The woman’s

head struck stone, and she crumpled to the cobblestones.

“Stop, Lorn,” Jev ordered, waving to get his attention. He also issued the order in the elven language, in case it would more likely get through to him.

Neither worked. The monk roared and sprang at Lornysh, and he defended

himself with that deadly agility his kind were known for. He hadn’t drawn a

weapon. He didn’t need to. With arms and legs that blurred with the speed of

his movements, he knocked the bo out of the hands of the monk, then gripped

her arm and slammed her into the wall, the same as he had Zenia. Bone

crunched audibly, and she cried out.

When Lornysh drew back a fist to rain more blows down upon them, Jev

jumped in and grabbed his arm. Lornysh’s gaze jerked toward him, his pale

eyes wild instead of their usual icy calm, as if he were living in some other

moment, in some past battle.

Lornysh tried to jerk away, and Jev felt his strength, but Jev had strength

of his own. He gripped that arm, using his wide stance for leverage, and

didn’t let go, afraid Lornysh might continue if he did. For a moment, Jev

thought Lornysh might turn on him—might not see him as a friend in

whatever past hell he was reliving—but those eyes slowly calmed, awareness

returning to them.

Jev, who rarely dared touch Lornysh outside of sparring practice, released

him and stepped back. He looked down at the women, both of them crumpled

on the street against the wall, neither moving.

“Founders,” he whispered with distress and rubbed the back of his neck.

What now?

“This might be why your people lost the war,” Cutter drawled, walking in

from whatever doorway he’d been hiding in farther up the street, waiting to

spring the second half of the ambush. Unnecessarily. He waved dismissively

at the two women, at how easily they had fallen to Lornysh.

Jev knelt beside the women to make sure they were still breathing. They

were, but both were unconscious, and an alarming amount of blood streamed

from Zenia’s temple.

“By the founders, Lorn,” Jev said, “these are officers from the Water

Order. Law enforcers, if religious law instead of city law. There’s not much of

a difference around here. You can’t just knock them out. There’ll be

repercussions.”

“Your laws mean nothing to me.”

Jev rose to his feet, glowering at the blood on his hand. “While you’re

walking in our lands, they had better mean something. You can’t take on the

whole kingdom army or Korvann police force.”

“That one intended to imprison you.” Lornysh pointed to Zenia.

“To question me about… something. Whatever it is, it’s nothing I had

anything to do with, so I would have been released.”

“That’s not what she believed,” Lornysh said with so much certainty that

Jev suspected he had a magical way of knowing. “She believed you were