Azure bonds - Kate Novak [147]
"They could always just brand another victim to sacrifice."
Alias shook her head again. "I don't think that would work. Remember, Moander said I drew my independence from Dragonbait, that we're linked until his death. They won't kill me; they've even taken precautions to see that I'm not injured. But all the rest of you are targets."
Akabar harumphed. "They haven't shown a tendency to talk before. Bully, threaten, and battle, yes, but never talk. They won't negotiate with you. As far as they're concerned, you're no better than a horse, to be owned and ridden and slain as need be. If they already have you in their sights, it will be that much easier for them to accomplish their ends. All they'll have to do is search out Dragonbait. Running and hiding won't do us any good."
"Maybe not, but if you stay here you're at risk. Please, Akabar," Alias pleaded. "I don't want to see you killed."
"There are worse fates. You and I both know that."
Dragonbait knocked on the side of the bed, summoning their attention. Using a charred stick, he drew on the flagstones the four sigils he and Alias both wore and also the unholy symbol of Moander.
"Yes?" Alias prompted.
Dragonbait pointed to Alias and himself and then scuffed out the flaming dagger-the mark of the Fire Knives.
"Yes, we beat the assassins," Alias agreed. "They weren't very tough, were they?"
He pointed to Alias and himself and Akabar and then scuffed out the sigil that might or might not still belong to Zrie Prakis, the sigil of interlocking circles. Then he pointed again to himself and Alias, drew an inverted tear drop with a mouth and scuffed it out along with the insect-squiggle of Cassana's mark.
"We beat the crystal elemental and the kalmari. The kalmari belonged to Cassana?" the mage asked.
Alias nodded. "She told me in a dream. You dreamed the same thing, didn't you?" she asked the saurial.
Dragonbait nodded. He pointed to Akabar and rubbed out the unholy symbol of Moander like he was squishing a bug. Alias noted that the paladin gave all the credit for the god's death to the mage. Then he pointed at the three of them and splashed water from the kettle onto the flagstone.
Akabar laughed. "He's right, you know. Between the four of us we've defeated everything your would-be masters have thrown at us. If we remain together, we can defeat the lot of them."
"Only if you continue to cooperate," a sharp female voice said from the doorway, "and if we do not. But your little demonstration this afternoon persuaded us to unite."
Alias, Akabar, and Dragonbait leaped to their feet, their eyes fixed on four people who had entered their cottage apartment. Three men, dressed in black leather, and the woman from Alias's dream in Shadow Gap.
"Cassana," Alias breathed.
The woman lowered her hood. Her chin was sharper, her features older, her hair longer and better tended, but her features were Alias's. She might have been her mother. "Yes, Cassana. I've come to take you home, Puppet."
Favoring his good leg, Dragonbait sprang for the upper bunk bed for his sword, and Akabar began chanting a spell. Alias grabbed a poker from the stove tools.
Cassana laughed.
Akabar's spell was disrupted as the floorboards beneath him erupted and skeletal hands grabbed him from the hole and pulled him through the floor. He disappeared with a scream.
A trio of daggers arched from the black-clad assassins, embedding themselves unerringly in Dragonbait's hide. The weapons could not have caused much damage-they were small and had struck only his shoulder, his arm, and his tail-yet the saurial dropped like a sack of laundry. Poison blades! the swordswoman realized.
With a cry of anguish, Alias charged the Fire Knives. She cracked one assassin in the head with the handle of the poker, then rammed the tip into the throat of a second. Snatching the sword from the scabbard of the third one, she turned it on him instantly. He fell over the bodies of his brothers, staining them with his blood.
Only Cassana stood between Alias and the doorway. She muttered no spell, nor did she look alarmed. Alias