There was disbelief mirrored in her eyes. “Maybe so. But I don’t feel that way. I don’t know that you should either.”

He sighed, bending his head close to hers. “Right now, I’m struggling with it. I’m haunted by what the magic does to me. There’s more to this than what I’ve told you. I just can’t talk about it right now.”

She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. “Then you don’t have to. You never have to with me.”

And she kissed him again and again.

“We’re not finished here yet, are we?” Usurient asked as they navigated various fresh corridors and passed through several more steel doors, realizing suddenly they were not moving in the direction of the entry. “Is there someone else you want?”

“One more,” Mallich acknowledged. “Then we can go.” He glanced over. “Stop worrying about who it might be. This isn’t someone you know.”

Usurient couldn’t decide whether to feel relieved or concerned. On balance, he thought, it was better just to wait and see.

They moved from the wing of the building in which Etris was caged to a different section, descending a stairway to the ground floor. But soon they were going down another set of stairs and then another, and Usurient realized they were moving into a cellar level, an area of the prisons to which he had never been and about which he knew nothing at all. How Mallich, who was no longer affiliated with the Red Slash and lacked the requisite standing to enter these prisons without a member of the Federation in tow, knew his way around so well was a mystery.

Eventually, they were deep underground in a warren of tunnels and passageways with steel doors inset on both sides, all of them closed and locked. Although Usurient listened for sounds coming from behind those doors, he heard nothing.

“Never been down here before, have you?” Mallich asked suddenly.

“Never. What is this place?”

“This is where they put the prisoners no one ever wants to see alive again—either because they are already dying or because someone in power in the Federation wants them dead. The prisoners down here are refuse, garbage. Nothing is ever said about them. Their names are never spoken once they’ve been sentenced.

“But Etris isn’t here?” Usurient asked. “Why not?”

Mallich smiled. “I thought he should be kept where he is—that I might have need of him again some day. A bribe to the right person can buy you anything.”

They walked on, the echo of their footfalls in the corridor the only sound that broke the silence. Smokeless lamps lit their way.

“How many are down here?” Usurient was unable to keep himself from asking.

“Not many. Most of these cells are empty. Men don’t last long down here.”

“Are there women?”

“Now and then. You don’t want to know.”

What he was hearing about the prisons was unsettling, but what he was seeing in Mallich was even worse. Until now, he had thought him a hunter and a trainer of fighting animals. But he was clearly something more. There was a side to him revealed by this visit that was beyond disturbing, and Usurient was catching glimpses of darkness in the man that he didn’t want to get too close to. Again, he wondered if he had made the right choice in deciding to send him after Arcannen—not because he thought he was incapable of succeeding, but because there was clearly more to the man than he had realized and not knowing the men with whom you surrounded yourself was dangerous.

“You’ve chosen to take someone out of these cells?” he asked finally. “Why would you do that?”

Mallich shook his head. “We aren’t taking any of these men out. These men aren’t all that useful. Not like Etris. It’s their keeper I’m interested in.”

Usurient frowned. Their keeper?

They reached a bend in the corridor and found themselves standing before a desk tucked into an alcove in the wall. A solitary individual sat behind the desk, bent over pieces of metal rod that he was twisting together to build something. He was using his bare hands. He made it look easy. As it should have been, given his unusual size. He was easily seven feet and three hundred pounds, but none of it looked as if it had been acquired by accident or neglect.

The man remained hunched over the rods as they stopped before him and didn’t bother to look up. “What?” he rumbled.

“I need you to come with me,” Mallich answered.

Piggish eyes shifted momentarily. “Mallich? Where this time?”

“The Tiderace. Somewhere around what used to be Arbrox.”

The big man lifted out of his hunched position and regarded him. “Who is this?” He pointed at Usurient.

“The man who is going to pay you a lot of money for your services. Will you come with me?”

The other man shrugged. “Why not? I have time coming. I need to get away. Just you and me?”

“And Bael Etris.”

A smile now. “Must be blood involved if he’s going. Whose blood?”

“Arcannen.”

“The sorcerer. Well, now.” He rose, towering over both Mallich and Usurient. “That’s blood that won’t be shed easily. Arcannen has more lives than a dozen cats.” He paused. “I don’t trust Etris, even if you think you can.”

“I don’t trust him, either,” Mallich said. “But he can be useful even so.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“I’ll pick you up here tomorrow at sunrise. Upstairs.”

The other shifted his gaze to Usurient, then back to Mallich. “I’ll be there. The money had better be good.”

This last was spoken sideways to Usurient, who nodded almost without thinking about it.

Then he and Mallich were retracing their steps down the hallway toward the cellar stairs. Usurient realized suddenly that he had been holding his breath back there, unsure of what might happen.

“Who is that?” he asked finally.

“Don’t know his real name. Everyone calls him The Hammer. He rules the basement level of the prisons and those given over to his tender care. He decides who lives and who dies. How he does this is anyone’s guess. No one asks that question. Look at him; you can see his value.”

“You’ve used him before? But not asked me?”

Mallich glanced over. “Not everything I do concerns you and your Red Slash. Some things I do are for other people and different reasons. The Hammer has been useful in a few of those.”

He stopped suddenly when they reached the basement stairs and turned to face Usurient. “Don’t question me further on this or I will let you find someone else to handle it. You’ve done your part, all but the payment. I make the decisions on how we get to Arcannen and how we dispose of him. You stay out of it.”

He turned away and started up the stairs with a dismissive gesture. After a moment’s hesitation, inwardly seething at the other’s treatment of him, Dallen Usurient followed.

SIXTEEN

IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDDAY WHEN ARCANNEN PILOTED HIS Sprint over the last of the coastal landscape separating him from the ruins of Arbrox and made a cautious landing in the sheltered area he had chosen earlier for his craft’s concealment. On the coast, vessels were in constant danger from high winds and sudden storms, but he faced an equally daunting prospect from the risk of discovery. If anyone found his vessel and commandeered it, he would be trapped in his lair. Escape without a flying vessel was out of the question. Between the miles of barren terrain surrounding his hiding place on three sides and the churning maelstrom of the ocean on the fourth, the only way a man could flee with any hope of success was through the air.

So hiding his Sprint was a necessary effort each time he returned. His current choice was a deep depression in the rocks inland from the coast proper about a mile from Arbrox, tucked back in a mass of boulders and broken rock that no one could successfully navigate on foot without knowing how to do so beforehand. Using rock walls and cliff overhangs, he was able to place his airship almost completely out of sight. Finding it on foot would require an extraordinary stroke of luck. A careful air search in the right weather and with sufficient sunlight might reveal it, but the persistent marine layer and frequent rains reduced the chances of that happening considerably.