Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 19
I climbed the stairs to my rooms. I needed to write down everything I could remember about the Butcher. Any detail could make a difference.
Why had Reynald taken Kaiden with him? I’d have to ask him when he got back.
Twenty minutes later I stared at six sheets of paper. I had reproduced the Eliarde torture scene exactly. Word for word. Every gruesome detail.
How? I didn’t have a photographic memory. If I had, my college days would’ve been much easier.
What about something else from the books? Something random.
“I trusted you. I’ve known you since you were twelve years old. You’ve stayed at our house.” Solentine’s voice rose, raw with anguish. “You’ve eaten our food. My father taught you how to handle a dagger. You stood right here, in this hall, and swore to aid my family in every battle!” Solentine swept the bottle off his desk and hurled it against the wall. It bounced and rolled across the floor, coming to rest at Everard’s feet.
“You were the closest thing I had to a brother.”
Word for word.
This was not normal. Why was this happening?
A faint slapping sound pulsed through the room.
This had to have some sort of significance. In most portal fantasies, heroines who popped into books wrote down everything they remembered in some secret diary so they wouldn’t forget it. Apparently, that was not going to be an issue for me.
Slap.
Maybe I just thought this was perfect recall. I didn’t have the book in front of me, so I couldn’t compare. But it seemed right, it felt right . . .
Slap-slap.
What the hell was that noise?
I stood up, leaning over the desk.
An eighteen-inch fish lay on the floor between the open door and my desk. It was white striped with orange and speckled with red and turquoise, and it resembled a bug-eyed red snapper with long fins.
Was I seeing things?
I held still and listened. The study was empty.
I looked over my shoulder. I could see my bedroom through the doorway, and it was empty, too.
I looked back. The fish was still there.
No strange sounds. No intruders lurking in the corners.
The fish flopped, slapping its tail against the floor.
I jerked back.
Slap. Slap-slap.
The sound of someone’s steps as they ran up the stairs came from the hall, and Will appeared in the doorway. He saw the fish and halted.
“Fish,” I told him.
“I see it.”
Oh good. I wasn’t imagining it.
“Where did it come from?” Will asked.
“I have no idea. It wasn’t there when I came in.”
“How did it get here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it magic?”
“I don’t know.”
The two of us stared at the fish.
Slap.
“Is this some sort of Kair Toren custom I don’t know about?”
Will shook his head. “Nothing I ever heard of.”
“Could you please put it out of its misery?”
Will walked over, pulled out his knife, and sliced through the back of the fish’s head. The fish went limp. I handed Will a rag and he wiped his knife on it.
“This is the second fish that’s showed up in my rooms. The first time I thought it was Kaiden, but he’s out with Reynald now.”
“Why would Kaiden leave fish in your rooms?” Will asked.
“Why does a twelve-year-old boy do anything?”
“Good point.”
We looked at the fish some more.
“Did you want something?” I asked.
Will pulled a small, sealed envelope from his tunic and passed it to me. “Someone rang the bell and left this by the door.”
While we were waiting on the salt ship to come in, Gort had rigged a rope and a bell to our front door. Unlike Derog, we didn’t have the manpower to have somebody sit by it. If one of us went out, we’d pull the rope when we came back, which rang the literal bell in our courtyard.
“I might have seen a priest walking away,” Will said. “It was hard to tell with the cloak, but I think they had a blade staff.”
Blade staffs were polearms, like spears and halberds, but while spears thrust and halberds chopped, the long, sharp blades at the end of the blade staffs were used to slice. Rellas was a martial kingdom, and a lot of priests practiced martial arts. The blade staffs served as preferred weapons for a number of denominations, so much so that when people saw one, they usually assumed a priest wielded it.
I tore the envelope open and pulled out the paper inside.
Drugh knows. He’s coming.
Shit.
Drugh was Filderon’s sort of son-in-law. He was trained as a knight, although never knighted, and he ran his own mercenary company, acting as both a commander and a broker. He was also bad news.
I showed the note to Will.
“Hireling damn it. I swear, we weren’t seen.”
“I believe you. We don’t know what happened. Maybe he told Drugh he would be meeting you.”
I had a little bit of ammunition against Drugh but nothing that would knock him off-balance if he was truly determined to avenge Filderon. The relationship between the two men was strained, and they barely talked, but according to the note, Drugh had decided to do something about it.