The Lone Warrior Read Free Page B

I had a . . . had a commission.”
    His lips compressed. “Don’t dress it up. Murder, pure and simple.”
    “The Guild Master calls them commissions.”
    A dark brow winged up.
    Desperately, Mehcredi stumbled on, wishing he would look away, give her even a split second of relief. “He said he’d help me, seeing it was my first, so he gave me . . . gave me—May I have some water? Please?”
    “No. Gave you what?”
    “The . . . the poison. P-prettydeath.”
    “And you didn’t know what it was? Is that the story?”
    She shook her head. “He didn’t say. Only that it never failed.”
    The hunter’s hand dropped to the hilt of the long dagger in his belt. He straightened, his lip curling. “Then you must have crawled from beneath a rock. Prettydeath is notorious here, and among all the known worlds.”
    “I’m not from Caracole, or anywhere near it.”
    He grunted. “Where, then?”
    “Lonefell.”
    A shrug.
    “Beyond the Cressy Plains. In the high hills.”
    His hard stare shifted to the tangle of her pale hair. “To the north?”
    She nodded.
    Another grunt. The hunter returned to his seat. “You kidnapped Prue McGuire, didn’t you?”
    Mehcredi’s nerve cracked. “Who are you? What do you want ?”
    Another of those dreadful silences. At last, he said, “My name is Walker and this is my House of Swords. As for what I want?” His lips pulled back from his teeth. “I will see you pay for your crimes, assassin.”
    “ But what did I do to you? ” she cried, almost sobbing.
    “To me? Why, nothing.” Again that feral expression, like a tygre crouched for the kill. “But on the floor below is a man who can’t make a sound louder than a kitten, though he needs to scream. Your poison stripped the flesh from his throat.”
    When she opened her mouth, he overrode her. “You kidnapped a woman from The Garden of Nocturnal Delights, an innocent you delivered into the filthy hands of unimaginable evil. Even now—”
    When he broke off frowning, his hair shifted on his shoulders like a shawl of midnight silk. “She might be dead. And Erik’s likely to get himself killed finding her.”
    “I don’t understand.” Unimaginable evil . Mehcredi’s skin crawled. She searched the hunter’s face, but regardless of what he might be feeling, it told her nothing. Faces rarely did.
    “Why do you care? What are they to you?”
    “Why do I—? It’s none of your concern, assassin, but Dai works for me. As for Prue McGuire, she audits my accounts.”
    Prue . Oh yes, she remembered Prue. Unconsciously, Mehcredi rubbed the bruise on her thigh, wincing. Who’d have thought someone so small would be so fierce? Sister in the sky, the woman had very nearly got away. If it hadn’t been for the special cloth saturated with the stupefying drug . . . She owed that to the Guild Master too.
    Walker’s gaze was fixed on her flexing fingers. The corners of his mouth turned up, very slightly. Did that mean he was amused? Was it safe to relax? “She hurt you, didn’t she?” he said. “Good.”
    Mehcredi blinked. “Why is that good?”
    A vertical crease formed between his brows. “Don’t be stupid,” he said, biting off each word.
    “I’m not.” Mehcredi chewed her lip, feeling the heat rising in her cheeks.
    Half-wit , they used to call her at Lonefell. A casual clout across the ear from the housekeeper. Get out o’ the way, ye great daft lump! Followed by the muttered aside to a visitor. She’s not all there, ye know .
    But she was , she was all there. She just didn’t like staring eyes and hard, cruel hands—or things she didn’t understand, like the human race in general.
    Mehcredi forced herself to concentrate. From what she’d seen at the keep, people cared only about those they loved or feared, but it didn’t sound as though Prue and Dai were Walker’s lovers, or that they scared him. At least, she didn’t think so. Which left . . . “These two, they’re your, uh, friends?”
    Every vestige of