Kari perked up, remembering her in-laws’ tale during the Tsalbrin journey. “She helped betray Curlamanx—a vassal of Arku—during the Apocalypse.”
“I bet if you dug deep enough, you’d find she helped betray Arku when he set foot on Terrassia during the War, too,” Eli said with a nod. “I don’t know who she’s enslaved to, but whoever it is, they’re bent on sabotaging the efforts of their enemies on the council.”
Kari cocked her head, but not because of his knowledge of the underworld or its workings. “But you trusted her? You worked with her?”
Eli gave a slight shrug. “We had a common enemy. She’s ridiculously powerful. You don’t sense it when she’s just standing there, but she does this thing—I don’t know if it’s common to wizards and sorcerers—where her power just sort of flares up around her, and you can feel it. It makes your hair stand on end, and you get this feeling here,” he said, gesturing between his eyes, “like a massive pressure in the front of your brain. If she wanted to kill us or force us to work for her, I don’t think we would’ve posed much trouble to her. But once Sekassus and the portal were dealt with, I never saw her again. I suppose it’s because she had to go get ready to betray this Curlamanx you mention.”
“Hard to figure,” Kari said with a sigh. “I wonder if she’s mixed up in this situation.”
“That,” Eli said, “will probably depend on whether there’s a demon king behind all this, or if it’s just Kaelin Black or one of his enemies masterminding things.”
Kari nodded, feeling weary under the weight of what Eli had told her. She bid him goodnight, but watched him glance toward the door one last time. After he stared at it for a few moments, he turned back to her, smiled, and lay down to sleep.
Kari remained awake for a while, thinking about Emma and, more pointedly, whoever Emma worked for. Kari had heard enough about how strong Emma was, and she had seen the results of the mallasti female’s machinations on Tsalbrin. Her mind swam as she tried to consider how powerful one would have to be to keep such a creature as a slave…
13
Resistance
Eli was already gone when Kari woke the following morning.
Kari was an early riser, so it was unusual for anyone else to be up and about before her. She wondered if Eli had gone looking for the Black Dragon Society, and whether Black had sent word regarding his contact within the assassin’s guild. The room was warm. Based on the trace amounts of sunlight coming through its little window, Kari guessed the day was just dawning. She put on her undergarments and her padded clothes, picked up her swords and the brush from her pack, and made her way downstairs. She resolved to take a bath in the commons—assuming there were public baths—and then finally begin the actual hunt.
Kari replayed the events of the previous day in her mind as she descended the stairs. Kaelin Black knew Sherman and Katarina were working with Kari, which meant that if Black was in some way connected with the assassin, then she would know as well. Such put the twins in more danger than Kari had anticipated, but it also presented the possibility that Kaelin Black would expose himself as the criminal her Order assumed he was.
It was hard for Kari to know what to expect; it was entirely possible Kaelin Black was a victim in this scheme, in more ways than one. Still, her Order had considered him a problem for centuries, and it was hard for her to dismiss that based on a few minutes’ worth of civility from him. In deciphering Black’s place in things, Kari was glad for Earl Lajere’s help. She was sure with the paladin occupying much of Black’s time, it would be tougher for Black to manipulate events from within the shadows if it turned out he was a part of the problem.
Despite the appearance that Black was as much a victim as a problem, Kari was in no position to trust him, nor did she believe his innocent façade was real. After all the time she’d known Aeligos and Eryn and watched the way the two so easily manipulated people—whether in a game of cards or during their mission on Tsalbrin—she figured it safest to assume that Black was playing her for a fool. Kari considered how much better she was getting at reading people and countering their schemes but resolved to neither overbalance herself nor become complacent with her own game. She was involved in a deadly match of chess, and while she had learned a lot from Eryn and Aeligos, she knew she was still badly outclassed when facing so many foes at once—particularly when she wasn’t sure who all of them were.
Alyssa was already up and preparing food for her morning patrons when Kari reached the common room. The innkeeper asked Chelsea to prepare a bath for Kari. The bath commons was separate from the kitchen despite the appearance that both of the back doors led to the same room. Once the bath was ready, Chelsea left to go help her mother prepare breakfast.
Kari stripped completely to wash her undergarments. Once they were clean, she hung them on a rack near the bath commons’ little hearth, and then she settled into the steamy water herself. She wanted to wash her padded clothes, but they took much longer to properly wash and dry, and while she could wear her paluric armor without them, it was uncomfortable and dangerous.
Kari wasted little time relaxing in the bath and set to washing quickly. There was a lot of work to be done, and she knew it was going to take some time not only to find the assassin, but to unravel the mystery of why she’d drawn Kari to Barcon. The demonhunter was sure there was more at stake than just some simple killings or a plan for revenge against her; the syrinthian-succubus clearly needed Kari in Barcon for a specific reason.
No other explanation made sense; if she’d just wanted Kari dead, she could have made good on her attempts in DarkWind and Lajere. If it was murder and mayhem she was after, she would’ve been better served not drawing the attention of the Order. The fact that she hadn’t moved immediately upon Kari’s arrival in Barcon was also strange; if it was a matter of killing Kari here, it didn’t make sense that the succubus was hesitating to strike.
Kari’s thoughts turned toward her mate and child, and she couldn’t help but smile and laugh as she thought of bathing her son. She normally ended up just as wet as her child by the time his baths were done, something he took an immense amount of pleasure in. Kari longed to find and kill the assassin quickly, regardless of whether it exposed Kaelin Black or the Black Dragon Society. She wanted to get home and have another child with Grakin. By her best estimation, Kari figured she was nearly forty years old, and she understood that between her age and Grakin’s disease, their window for having more children was closing quickly. A part of her wanted to continue to hunt and reach the rank of Avatar, but she was finding that she wanted a daughter much, much more. The fact that her windows of opportunity for both were closing made the decision a fairly simple one, in her mind.
She tried not to dwell on her desires or wondering when her in-laws would have mates and children of their own. She finished washing. Her undergarments were still damp, but she put them on anyway once she’d dried herself off. After giving her padded clothes an appraising sniff, she put them on as well. They didn’t smell terrible, but since it was unlikely she’d be wearing leisure clothes around the city, she knew she’d be wearing them a lot. She made a mental note to wash them when she returned to the inn later in the evening and made her way upstairs to put on her armor, swords, and retrieve her pack.