David Dalglish - Blood Of Gods

“Mother, don’t just stand there like a simpleton! Go back to the commoners. Our wives and children require counseling.”

The white-haired lady pivoted on her heel and gracefully loped away. Catherine gestured for a group of ten sellswords to follow her, which they did. She then stared rays of hatred into the back of Romeo Connington’s head.

This one hates women so much that even his own mother doesn’t rate.

With preparations underway to accept their people into the city, the brothers Connington considered Catherine once again. “My sweet Lady Brennan,” said Cleo, “shall we conduct our business here, or will you escort us to more. . comfortable accommodations?”

Offering her best charming smile, Catherine extended her hand to the carriage that awaited them a few hundred feet down the road, a pair of sellswords lingering outside it. “We will speak at the estate. Now please, do your host the honor of waiting for me in the cart. I will join you shortly.”

The brothers bobbed their heads and began to waddle toward the waiting carriage. She could hear Cleo’s excitable tone in his remark about some benign nonsense as they walked, though Romeo remained deathly quiet. This will certainly be interesting.

Bren sidled up beside her. “Boss, you sure about this?”

“I’m not one prone to fits of doubt,” she said. “Were the girls given their tools?”

“They were.”

“Excellent. And whom did you assign to protect me? I cannot see from here.”

“Tod and Rumey. The quiet and sinister ones.”

“Good.” She tugged on Bren’s sleeve. “Then we have nothing to worry about, do we?”

“If you say so, boss.”

“Oh, and Bren? One more thing.”

“What, boss?”

“Remember that you’re in a city that loves me. Remember what the women of Port Lancaster are capable of when confronted with those who would turn against those they love.”

Bren nodded and walked off to help the rest of his sellswords escort a hundred carriages and over a thousand people through the gates. Catherine made her way to the covered wagon. It didn’t escape her that Port Lancaster had barely sixty horses within its walls, and now that number would be more than tripled. In no time at all, the streets would reek with horse dung.

The carriage was covered and ample, yet with five people inside, including the portly brothers, seating was still cramped. Cleo and Romeo sat on one bench while Catherine took her place between the two blank-faced sellswords opposite them. She struck the carriage ceiling with an open palm and heard the female driver say “Hyah!” The carriage began lumbering forward to the sound of clomping hooves, clinking chains, and crunching gravel.

Catherine stared at the brothers, and they at her. No one said a word for a long while. They were like gamblers playing a game of switchback, waiting for the first player to give away his hand. Catherine remained stoic and unmoved. She would not be the one to flinch.

Romeo blinked, his eyes darting to the two sellswords sitting on either side of Catherine. He raised a plump hand and pointed at both of them. “Why do you still have your mercenaries?”

Catherine shrugged. “I keep them paid and fed.”

Tod and Rumey nodded but kept quiet.

“I think what my dear brother is trying to ask,” said Cleo, “is how they are still with you. I don’t know if Matthew ever showed you the note we sent him, but all our hired swords and Sisters were conscripted by the acolytes and Karak’s soldiers.”

Of course she knew about the note. She’d been the one to intercept it before Matthew could read it.

“I know. I read it. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Then you know we even lost the captain of our guard, our Crimson Sword. Yet Bren is still here, and a hundred hired men.”

“Eighty-one to be exact,” she said, adopting Romeo’s offensive tone from earlier.

Romeo grunted. “So, how are they still here? I assumed the acolytes would demand all you had to give.”

“They tried. We killed them before they could take any.”

The brothers Connington took a long moment to overcome their dumbfounded shock.

“You what?” asked Cleo.

“We killed them, my dear visitors. All of them. Acolytes and soldiers. Every man who stepped foot into our city demanding we give them our resources for nothing.”

“But how. .?” began Romeo.

“Matthew’s sellswords are resourceful,” said Catherine with a wink. On either side of her, Tod and Rumey grinned.

Cleo lurched forward and clamped his hand on Romeo’s knee, making the older brother yelp.

“Brilliant! I never thought Matthew capable of such treachery! Perhaps we were wrong about him. Why did we not think of doing so, Brother? We had twice the mercenaries our dear Matthew had, not to mention over a hundred Sisters trained with sword and dagger. Think of the possibilities!”

Romeo shot him a look, and Cleo retracted his hand, nodding knowingly. Catherine made note of that quiet exchange, though she did not now what to make of it. Then Cleo’s face brightened, and he leaned forward once more.

“But Matthew’s treachery was certainly not without cost,” he said, almost singing the words. “We’d heard your husband died, but how was always a bit of a mystery. Am I correct to assume now that it happened during the battle?”

She put on her best sorrowful face and nodded.

“And what of Moira?” he asked. “It’s surprising she is not guarding you.”

“Moira left. I sent her away.”

The fat man clapped his hands and kicked his feet. “Oh, how wonderfully incongruous! Dear brother, this trip gets better and better!”

In response, Romeo chuckled without mirth.

The carriage stopped ten minutes later, and the driver opened the door. Catherine stretched her legs, which were cramped from keeping them pulled up tight to her bench to avoid rubbing Cleo Connington’s knees, and then exited the carriage. Her two sellsword protectors and the brothers Connington followed her up the steps to her estate.

She led them through the foyer, down the hall, and up the staircase, heading for the solarium on the estate’s fourth floor. She heard soft murmurs when she passed the third story, and imagined her children sitting with their nursemaid Brita while the old woman taught them their lessons. She pictured little Ryan, staring out intently from beneath the tangled curls atop his head, absorbing Brita’s every word in silence. He was much like his father-his true father-in that way. Always listening, always learning, silent until he needn’t be any longer. I will be with you soon, my son. After my work here is done.

By the time they reached the door to the solarium, Cleo and Romeo were bent over at the waist, panting and clutching their crimson frocks. Catherine hid a smirk and opened the door for them. They entered in a wobbling fashion. The sellswords Tod and Rumey went to enter as well, but Catherine stopped them.

“Please wait outside,” she told them. “I’ll handle things from here.”

The two men nodded and took their places on either side of the doorway. Bren was right to assign these two to her. They were indeed quiet and sinister, but more important, they didn’t question orders, which was exactly what Catherine needed at present.

She shut the door and turned around. The Brennan estate’s solarium was a huge room that spanned the full fifty-foot width and forty-foot length of the structure below. Its walls were lined with display cases and ornate stands holding some of the more exotic sea life Matthew’s father and grandfather had discovered on their early ventures out on the open ocean. The merchant’s desk- my desk now -stood to the right, fronted by a heavy round rug colored teal and yellow. The rug was a new edition, for the bloodstains left by Matthew’s executed whores wouldn’t come out of the old one. As for those who’d been tasked with scrubbing those stains, they were present now: her maids Ursula, Lori, and Penetta were in the room, tending to the brothers’ needs, while two other young women in simple, white household garb sat in the chairs in Matthew’s old lounge area, playing lutes. The soft tinkle of music filled the air.