Лорел Гамильтон - Strange Candy

M ILON Songsmith was dying. Brown hair clung to his face in limp, sweat-soaked strands. His skin was gray-tinged, like dirty snow. Breath was a ragged choking sound, his body trembling with the effort to draw air into his lungs.

Sidra Ironfist stood looking down at her friend. Her strong, callused hands gripped the hilts of her swords until her hands ached. Sidra’s solid gray eyes stared down at her friend and willed him to live. She ran a hand through long yellow hair and turned to the wizard leaning against the wall.

Gannon the Sorcerer was tall, as tall as Sidra. His hair was yellow, his eyes the fresh blue of spring skies. But his face was set in cynical lines, as if he had seen too much of the world, and it all disappointed him. Today his eyes held anger and sorrow.

“I will not let him die like this,” Sidra said.

“It is a death curse, Sidra. You cannot stop it. The bard is a better friend to me than any man alive, and I am just as helpless,” Gannon said.

“Can nothing stop it?” Her eyes searched his face, demanded he give her some hope.

“It is the most powerful death curse I have ever seen. It would take days for another curse-maker to remove the spell. Milon has only hours.”

Sidra turned away from the sorcerer and his compassionate eyes. She would not let Milon die. He was her bard. They had ridden together for eight years. Even with a bard’s safe conduct, accidents could happen. If you rode into battle, unarmed, you took your chances. But this—this was a coward’s way of killing. By all laws, Milon should have been safe in the tavern. Harming a bard, save in self-defense, was punishable by death.

Someone had hated him enough to risk that. But who? And why?

Sidra Ironfist knelt by the bed. She reached out to touch Milon’s forehead with one scarred finger. She could feel the heat before she touched his skin. The magical fever was eating him alive.

She whispered to him, though he could not hear her, “I will not let you die.” She turned to the sorcerer. “What of the curse-maker who placed the curse?”

Gannon frowned. “What of him?”

“Could he remove the curse?”

“Well, yes, but why would he?”

Sidra smiled, tight-lipped. “I think we could find ways to persuade him.”

Gannon nodded. “We might at that, but how to find him in such a short time?”

There was a knock on the door. Sidra pulled her long sword from its sheath and called, “Come in.”

A woman hesitated at the doorway. Her hair was streaked with gray, and she wore the robes of a white healer. “I was told you had an injured man.” She caught sight of the bard and stepped into the room past Sidra’s bare steel. “That is not a wound.”

Sidra sheathed her sword. “Tell her, Gannon.”

He explained briefly. Outrage showed on the healer’s face, then anger, a white burning anger that Sidra found comforting and frightening all at the same time. “By all the civilized laws, bards are sacred. A death curse on one such as this is an insult to all we hold dear.” The healer asked, “Who has done this?”

“Unknown,” Gannon said, “but we will find out.”

Sidra said, “Yes, we will find out.” There was something—in her voice, in the steel gray of her eyes—that was frightening.

The healer stepped away from the tall warrior woman. “You look like calm death, warrior.”

“Can you keep him alive until we return?”

“I will keep him alive, but be swif t. There will come a point from which no one can bring him back.”

Sidra nodded. “Keep him alive, healer. He’s important to me.”

“That I knew when I saw your face, warrior.”

Sidra looked away from the healer’s wise face. She was uncomfortable that anyone could read her so easily. “Come, Gannon.” She was through the door and on the stairs before Gannon had time to move. He jogged to catch up with her. “Where do we begin?”

“Malhari.”

Malhari was a big, beefy man. The muscle of his mercenary days had run to sof tness but not to fat. He was still a formidable man. His black hair was close cropped, framing a nearly perfect roundness of face. His right arm ended abruptly a span above the wrist. A metal-studded leather sheath hid his stump. It had given the tavern its name: The One-Armed Man. His dark eyes caught them as they came down the stairs; no words were needed. He called one of the bar-lads over to pour drinks and motioned them into his office—small, neat, and orderly, the way Malhari had run campaigns years ago.

He eased his big frame into a chair and motioned them to sit. They remained standing. “What has happened to your bard, Sidra?”

“A death curse. He has only hours to live.”

Malhari’s eyes went wide. His fingers curved over the metal studs as another man might drum his fingers. “Why come to me?”

“Where in Selewin do you go for a death curse?”

“I go nowhere for such things. Curse-makers are unlucky, Sidra. You know that.”

She sat down across from him, hands spread on her legs. Gannon remained standing like a guard at her back. Sidra said, “You did not pay for that splendid house in the hills from this small inn. You are the person in Selewin to come to for information, for a price. Tell me what I need to know, Malhari. Do it for friendship or money; I don’t care which.”

“If I am what you say I am, and if I had your information, how much would it be worth to you?”

Sidra’s eyes narrowed, as if from pain. “Not friendship, then, but money.”

“You cannot spend friendship on a cold winter’s night.”

“I think you would be surprised what you can do with friendship, Malhari.” She did not wait for the puzzled look on his face to pass but threw a leather pouch on the desk. “Gold, Malhari, twenty-five pieces.”

“And,” he said.

Sidra hesitated.

“You would quibble over the life of your friend?”

Sidra pounded her fist into his desk twice—violent, painful, but it helped the anger. It kept her from drawing steel and slitting his throat. Her voice came low and sof t, the whisper of steel through silk. “That is three times your usual pay.”

“This is a seller’s market, Sidra. Supply and demand.”

“Our friendship is no more, Malhari.”

“I know.”

“If Milon dies because of this delay, I will kill you.”

“You will try,” he said.

Sidra leaned toward him, and suddenly Malhari was staring at six inches of steel. The knife caressed his throat with no pain or blood, yet. He did not try to move, though he had several secreted blades of his own. He knew better than to try.

Sidra’s words came careful and neat, sof tand angry. “You have grown soft, Malhari. In the old days, I could not have taken you without your at least clearing a blade of your own. I will kill you if I want to.”

He said nothing but felt the blade dig into his throat as he swallowed. “You have paid a fair price. The one you seek is Bardolf Lordson. I saw one of Bardolfs lackeys talk to your bard tonight. Bardolf is powerful enough to have done the spell.”

Gannon cursed. “When we worked for Duke Haydon, I detected magic on Bardolf. I thought that it was not quite enough to warrant training as an herb-witch. But a curse-maker! It suits him.”

Sidra nodded. Bardolf had thought to bed a warrior. Sidra had broken his arm for the insult. Neither she nor Bardolf mentioned the incident to Duke Haydon.

“He is Duke Haydon’s favorite son, bastard or not. We cannot kill him af ter he has cured Milon. I will not risk everything we have worked for in one act of vengeance. If Milon dies, things are different. But our true purpose is to save the bard, not to get revenge.”