Poison Study (Poison Study 1)

Taking my grappling hook from my pack, I dug at the spot. My efforts revealed some fabric. I tossed my hook aside and clawed at the ground with my fingernails, uncovering my lost amulet.

It was dull and covered with dirt. The ribbon that held it was torn and stained. Pressing the flame-shaped amulet against my chest, I felt warmth emanating from it. I put it down to fill the hole, humming a tune. Cleaning the palm-size medal on my pants, I strung it onto the necklace chain with Valek’s butterfly.

“Not the best hiding place. Wouldn’t you agree?” Valek asked.

I jumped. How long had he been standing behind me?

“They’re searching for you. Why did you run?” he asked.

I briefed Valek on the Commander, Mogkan, the factory and the advisers, hoping he would draw the same conclusions I had.

“So Mogkan is using Criollo to take control of their minds, but where’s he getting the power?” Valek asked.

“I don’t know. We need to search the manor.”

“You mean, I need to?”

“No, we. I grew up there. I know every inch.” The first place I wanted to look was in Reyad’s laboratory wing. “When do we start?”

“Now. We have four hours till dawn. What are we looking for?”

When I explained that we were seeking either a circle of diamonds or a painted wheel, Valek’s thin eyebrows puckered as if he wanted to question me about how I had come by this information. He held his peace and headed back toward the barracks.

I hid outside while Valek changed into his black skintight sneak suit. He brought me a dark-colored shirt to wear over my bright red uniform shirt, and carried an unlit bull’s-eye lantern. My cloak would be too cumbersome for creeping through the halls, so I hid it in the bushes.

We found a back door near the servants’ quarters. Valek lit the lantern. Pushing the slide almost closed, he allowed only a thin ray of light to escape. Inside the manor, I took the lead.

Reyad’s suite was in the east wing on the ground floor, opposite the laboratory. The entire wing had been his, and there were a number of doors that he’d kept locked while I had been the resident laboratory rat.

Old horrors haunted me as we searched. My skin felt tight and hot. I recognized the faint acidic aroma of fear that mixed with the dust stirred by our footsteps. It was my smell. I had worn it like a perfume whenever Reyad dragged me to his test.

The thick air pressed down on me, filling my mouth with the taste of ashes and blood. I had bitten my hand without conscious thought. It was an old habit, a way to stifle my cries.

Exploring the laboratory room, the thin lantern’s beam spotlighted instruments hanging from the walls and piled on the tables. Each revelation sent a cold numbing pulse through my body, and I shrank away from the large shadows of equipment unrevealed, unwilling to even brush against them. The room resembled a torture chamber rather than a place for experiments.

Feeling like an animal pierced in the metal jaws of a trap, I wanted to scream and bolt from the room. Why had I brought Valek here? Brazell’s advisers were housed on the second floor. Mogkan’s diamond device, if there was such a thing, was probably hidden near his room, not down here.

Valek hadn’t said a word since lighting the lantern. In the hallway outside Reyad’s bedroom, a physical force prevented me from entering. My muscles trembled. An icy sweat soaked my uniform. I waited at the door while Valek went in. I could see the dark malevolent shape of Reyad’s sadistic “toy” chest lurking in a corner of the room. If I burned that chest to cinders, I wondered, would my nightmares cease?

“Not if I can help it,” Reyad’s ghost said, materializing beside me in the hallway.

I jerked back, hitting the wall. A yelp escaped my lips before I could shove my hand into my mouth.

“I thought you were gone for good,” I whispered.

“Never, Yelena. I will always be with you. My blood has soaked into your soul. You have no chance of cleansing me away.”

“I have no soul,” I said under my breath.

Reyad laughed. “Your soul is drenched black with the blood of your victims, my dear, that is why you can’t see it. When you die, that heavy blood-filled essence will sink to the bottom of the earth where you will burn in eternity for your crimes.”

“From the voice of experience,” I whispered with a rage that made my voice hiss.

Valek came out of Reyad’s room. With a face pale as bone, he stared at me with a horrified expression so long that I wondered if he had been struck dumb. Finally, closing the door, Valek walked past the ghost without seeing him, then stopped at the next locked room, pausing a moment with his head bowed to press a hand to his forehead.

“There’s someone who really needs to be haunted,” Reyad said, stabbing a ghostly white finger at Valek. “It’s a shame he doesn’t let his demons bother him, because I know a certain dead King that would love to plague him.” Reyad looked at me. “Only the weak invite their demons to live with them. Isn’t that right?”

I refused to answer Reyad as I followed Valek. We continued our search but it was obvious that, other than the laboratory, the wing had been abandoned. There were three doors left.

While Valek picked the two locks, Reyad chatted on. “My father will soon send you to me, Yelena. I’m looking forward to spending eternity with you.” He leered and wiggled his fingers at me.

But I was no longer interested in the ghost. The contents of the room before me riveted my attention. Inside, dozens of women and a few men flinched from the yellow beam of Valek’s lantern. Greasy hair obscured their dirt-streaked faces. Rags clung to their emaciated bodies. None of them spoke or cried out. To my increasing horror, I realized they were chained to the floor. In circles. One outer circle and two inner rings with lines painted between them.

When Valek and I stepped into the room, the foul stench of unwashed bodies and excrement wafted through the air. Gagging, I covered my mouth. Valek moved among them, asking questions. Who are you? Why are you here? His queries were met with silence. Their vacant eyes followed his passage. They remained where they were chained, staring.

I began to recognize some of the grubby faces. They had lived in the orphanage with me. They were the older girls and boys who had “graduated” and were supposed to be employed throughout the district. The sight of one girl, her ginger hair dull and matted, finally made me cry out in pain.

Carra’s soft brown eyes held no sign of intelligence as I stroked her shoulder and whispered her name. The free-spirited girl I had cared for in the orphanage had become a mindless, empty shell of a woman.

“My students,” Reyad said. His chest puffed out in pride as he floated in the middle of the room. “The ones who didn’t fail.”

“What now?” I asked Valek with a shaky voice.

“You’re arrested and thrown in the dungeon,” Mogkan answered from the entrance.

Valek and I spun in unison. Mogkan loomed in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. Valek charged him; fury blazed in his eyes. Mogkan stepped back into the hallway. I saw Valek stop just past the doorway and raise his hands in the air. Damn, I thought, racing to help him.

Mogkan stood like a coward behind eight guards. The tips of their swords were aimed mere inches from Valek’s chest.

30

AS SWORD POINTS PRICKED my back, I watched Valek, expecting him to spring into action during the whole miserable trip to Brazell’s holding cells. I waited for him to blur into motion as they stripped and searched us, enduring the humiliation of being prodded and poked by rough hands as they confiscated my backpack, switchblade and necklace. Losing my clothing didn’t upset me as much as losing Valek’s butterfly and my amulet.

I prepared for a sudden jailbreak when we were led down into the prison, and was still waiting as we were shoved into adjoining cells.

I held my breath as the heavy metal lock clanged shut on our underground chambers. The soldiers tossed our clothing in through the bars. Then they left, abandoning us

to blackness. I fumbled with my uniform, trying to button my shirt in the dark.

Here I was again. A nightmare turned real as we went through the guardroom, down one flight of steps, and into Brazell’s small dungeon, which only contained eight cells, four on each side of a short corridor. Valek and I were in the two cells closest and to the left of the steps. A familiarly loud, rancid stench permeated the prison. The thick, silty air so overpowered my senses that it took me a while to realize we were the only occupants.

Unable to bear the sudden quiet, I asked, “Valek?”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you fight the guards? I would have helped you.”

“Eight men had drawn swords pointed at my chest. Any sudden movement and I would have been skewered. I’m flattered that you think I could win against those odds. Four armed opponents, maybe, but eight is definitely too many.”

I could hear the amusement in Valek’s voice.

“Then we pick the locks and make our escape?” My confidence was based on the fact that Valek was a master assassin and trained fighter, a man who wouldn’t stay confined for long.

“That would be ideal, provided we had something to pick them with,” Valek replied, dashing my hopes.

I searched my cell with my hands. Finding nothing but filthy straw, rat droppings and unrecognizable muck, I sank to the floor with my back against the one stone wall I shared with Valek.

After a long moment, Valek asked, “Was that your fate? If you hadn’t killed Reyad, were you slated to be chained to the floor, mindless?”

The image of those captives burned in my mind. My flesh crawled. For the first time, I was content to have failed Reyad’s tests.

As I thought more about them, I remembered a comment Irys had made regarding a magician’s ability to steal magic from others. Finally, the significance of the women and men sitting in circles hit me. Mogkan’s extra power came from those chained captives. Brazell, Reyad and Mogkan must have screened the children of the orphanage for magical potential. Then, while experimenting on them, Mogkan had wiped their minds clean, leaving them mindless vessels from which to draw more power.

“I think Brazell and Reyad were determined to reduce me to that mental state. But I endured.” I explained my theory about the captives to Valek.