Drake decided to start with an aggressive tack and raise what doubt he could. He looked to Oswell. “Why were you meeting with my maids? What were you negotiating?”
“That is not your concern,” Lord Skybreak said coldly. “It also has nothing to do with the matter at hand. He will not answer that.”
Drake simply nodded instead of protesting. He’d just confirmed that Lord Skybreak, just like Valentia, had no interest in having her private deal with “Lord Gloomwood” exposed in front of her people. Based on what Valentia had told him about how bad it would be if news got out, it was likely not everyone in this room knew her secret. Not even her bodyguards.
Could Drake use that as leverage? As he looked at Valentia, he saw her subtly shake her head. She remained unconvinced he was going to learn anything useful here.
Drake wanted to order Valentia to immediately proclaim Oswell was wrong, but first... he needed to know how Oswell had been fooled. That was where the rest of his questions needed to go. If he revealed Valentia’s side of the story without first learning how Oswell had come to his, he could fall into a trap he wasn’t ready to avoid.
Drake looked to the injured man in the chair. “I apologize if I seemed disrespectful. What you’ve told me is information I did not expect to hear, and I’m not pleased to hear it. However, it was rude of me to question your competence. I’m sorry you lost your friends.”
He glanced at Lord Skybreak again. She was still visibly annoyed with him, but it seemed his apology had the desired effect. She didn’t look like she wanted to kill him any longer.
Lord Skybreak looked away. “Thank you, Oswell. You may—”
“Hold up,” Drake said. “I have a few more questions.”
Lord Skybreak’s sharp gaze cut through him once more. “Oswell has given his testimony. What more could you need?”
“Specifics. This man saw my battle maid murder your steward in cold blood after working with mercenaries to ambush him, but as you know, I gave no such orders. So if we are to get to the bottom of what happened to your steward, I would like us to work together. I understand you want to interrogate Valentia. I also need to interrogate Oswell.”
“That will not happen,” Lord Skybreak said firmly.
“I’m not going to torture him or be mean about it. I just want to ask him some questions, right now, in this room, in your presence.” He held her determined gaze. “Don’t forget how nice I’ve been so far. I brought Valentia here of my own free will. I told her not to use her rarity. I’ve done nothing but cooperate with you despite the trouble it’s caused me.”
“Given one of yours murdered my steward, it seems the least you could do.”
“I’m still not convinced she did that.”
Oswell stared in visible shock, and Lord Skybreak now looked more alarmed than angry. “Is there something wrong with your hearing? Your mental faculties?”
“Nothing at all,” he assured her. “I just have a few more questions. What’s the harm?”
Lord Skybreak stared at him from across the room for longer than he was comfortable with. Her private retreat felt like a silent tomb. Finally, she crossed her arms.
“Ask your questions. But I’m granting you only a few, and I will not have Oswell answer anything that compromises the security of my manor.”
“I can work with that.” Drake looked to Oswell. “Here’s what I need to know first. How many traveled with you to the meeting with my battle maids?”
Oswell looked to Lord Skybreak. She nodded her assent.
Oswell looked at Drake again. “Myself and two others, plus Steward Rodney.”
“And Valentia killed all of them?”
The man nodded as he glared at the stoic battle maid standing silently at Drake’s side. “The ambush came just after we began our negotiations. There were at least two dozen men with crossbows and red armor, almost certainly Redbow mercenaries hired by your manor.”
That, at least, matched what Valentia had told him. “Yet I didn’t hire any Redbow mercenaries to ambush you.” Drake looked at Lord Skybreak for her reaction.
A brief flash of annoyance crossed her face before she hid it, but if she was going to take every word everyone spoke as truth, she couldn’t accuse him of lying now. This no lying bullshit cut both ways. She had to believe he hadn’t hired those mercenaries.
“Then... I can only assume Valentia hired them without your knowledge,” Oswell amended. “We assumed we could fight them off with your battle maids to help, or at least escape. Yet as we moved to defend ourselves, Brayden and Gray dropped dead. Frozen solid.”
“Someone else may have a rarity that freezes people. How do you know it was Val?”
“As I realized we’d been betrayed, I turned to face Valentia only to be knocked senseless by a blow from her invisible companion. The other battle maid. I recovered my senses just in time to see Valentia stab Steward Rodney in the chest with a sword made of ice.”
“That’s awfully dramatic,” Drake pointed out. “It’s also completely unnecessary, since Val could freeze Rodney’s blood with a snap of her fingers. You just told me she did that to your other friends. Val has no need to make a sword of ice and stab someone with it. So it seems oddly convenient she was so obvious about shanking Rodney in front of you.”
Oswell glared. “I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you do,” Drake said mildly. “I even believe you saw it.”
“Then respectfully, Lord Gloomwood, why are you asking these pointless questions?”
“Because I know some things you don’t.” Drake let the silence that followed hang in the room a moment, to drive his point home, then continued before anyone could ask him what he meant by that. “Second question. How did you survive?”
Oswell looked to Lord Skybreak again. “Lord?”
Again, she nodded. “The rarities of our soldiers are public record in Korhaurbauten. Since Lord Gloomwood has neglected to read about them, you may tell him yours. You may also tell him how you got back to us. I’m ready to be done with this farce of a negotiation.”
Oswell looked to Drake again. “My rarity, lord, is called coagulation.”
Drake raised an eyebrow at that. “So you can clot blood? Like seriously?”
“After Valentia’s ice sheared off my lower leg, I was barely conscious. There was so much blood on the ground I doubt anyone could tell what was mine and what belonged to others. I clotted the blood inside my stump so I wouldn’t bleed out. I played dead.”
Seeing a man covered in blood with his lower leg sheared off would be a pretty good way to survive a massacre, Drake admitted. No one without Oswell’s rarity would have lived through that. It seemed men did get some decent rarities in this world as well.
“And once the ambushers and my maids left, you hopped back here on one leg?”
“I crawled, lord.”
“Wow. Respect.”
Oswell glared at him. “My lord needed to know of your betrayal. I owed it to Steward Rodney. I owed it to Gray and Brayden. I couldn’t let their deaths go unanswered.”
Deluded though he might be, this Oswell was one tough son of a bitch. Drake hadn’t been exaggerating about being impressed. Still, Oswell had obviously been deceived during that ambush. The easiest explanation was that Oswell had seen some sort of illusion.
If his new enemy could make people see things that didn’t happen, they could make anyone believe anything. That would be absolutely deadly in a world where no one questioned another person’s testimony. Unfortunately for his new enemy, Drake now felt he knew all he needed to prove what Oswell had seen had not happened.
He smiled at Oswell. “Thank you for answering my questions.” He looked to Lord Skybreak. “It’s time for us to talk in private. There’s more going on here than you know.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve provided all the proof you asked for and humored your odd behavior more than I should. Surrender your battle maid and I will allow you to leave.”
She meant that. She was done with negotiation. Under other circumstances Drake wouldn’t have any cards left to play, but today he did.
Mutually assured destruction.
“Do you think you can kill me before I tell all those here why my battle maids were negotiating with Rodney? Or does everyone in here already know what we’ve been doing?”
Valentia gasped at his side. He’d finally been ruthless enough to impress her. As he glanced to find her staring at him with wide eyes, he wondered if she regretted pushing him.
Lord Skybreak’s expression darkened to the point where he was worried she was going to leap across that conference table and stab him. Even so, he’d played the last card he could. If her bodyguards didn’t know about her private little trading arrangement with the last Lord Gloomwood, they would once Drake admitted it aloud to everyone.
Lord Skybreak could just compel her bodyguards not to reveal the truth to anyone, but there was always the chance it could slip out. And if she did kill Drake after he revealed their illicit trading, the lord of Skybreak Manor would still have murdered Lord Gloomwood.
The debt would remain. Neither could afford that. Neither could afford a war.
As Valentia had told him, sometimes, he was going to need to be a bit ruthless. In this case, he was holding Lord Skybreak’s bodyguards and even himself hostage until he got what he wanted from her. She probably wasn’t going to want to be his friend after this.
“I will not harm you or use my rarity if you don’t harm me,” Drake assured her. “I also will not order my battle maid to harm you. But rest assured, if you do attempt to bring me down, you won’t like the result. My rarity is far more powerful than any of you know.”
None of that was a lie. If they tried to kill him, he was fairly sure he would rat out and kill everyone in this room. He didn’t want to do that... but he had already pushed this situation beyond where he could simply walk out. He wasn’t going to go with half measures now.
He looked back to the blond manor lord glaring daggers at him. “I request five minutes to explain to you in private why I won’t let you interrogate and execute Valentia. My battle maid will also remain long enough to deliver her own testimony to you. Then we’ll see.”
Lord Skybreak said nothing.
“Or I can tell everyone in here why Steward Rodney was out there meeting my battle maids, and we can roll the dice together.” Drake offered a pleasant smile. “Your call.”
“Kari.” Lord Skybreak didn’t stop glaring at him. “You and Ali take Oswell back into my private chambers. Mary, I’d like you stationed outside the doors.”
A chorus of complaints and denials sounded from all over the room, which Lord Skybreak immediately silenced with a glare that put his best glare to shame. “You have heard Lord Gloomwood. You know I fear nothing from him. Now, follow my orders. In five minutes, you will all return to this room. Until then, leave us to negotiate.”
Though more than a few of them grumbled about it, all three of Lord Skybreak’s lady bodyguards and Oswell himself cleared the room. That left Drake, Lord Skybreak, and Valentia alone in her personal chambers. Drake had no idea what Lord Skybreak’s rarity was.
Even so, he imagined it had to be pretty powerful if her thralls were willing to leave her in a room with him alone. Or maybe, unlike him, she simply didn’t give her thralls a choice. That suggested she was confident she could handle him alone.
Drake looked to Valentia. “Tell Lord Skybreak everything that happened before, during, and after you were ambushed by Redbow mercenaries while meeting Steward Rodney.”
When Valentia finished, Lord Skybreak sat down in the nearest conference table chair. She looked about as shocked and winded as if he’d just kicked her in the stomach.
Which, he supposed, he sort of had.
Drake took the opportunity to walk to the seat across the table. “May I sit?”
Lord Skybreak nodded.
Drake looked to Valentia. “Could you give us some privacy?”
“I’d be more comfortable watching over you.”
“Lord Skybreak has trusted me this far. That means I can trust her. And I trust you, Val, but not with what I need to discuss with her. So I’d like you to let us speak in private.”
“You’d be welcome to wait in my private chambers, Valentia,” Lord Skybreak said quietly. “You have my permission to enter.” She looked up. “Kari!” She shouted. “Valentia is going to join you in my chambers! Keep her safe and do not harm her!”
Then, the woman looked to Valentia. “I can’t order you.”
“I can,” Drake lied. “Valentia, go hang out with Oswell and Kari. They seem nice.”
He expected Valentia to argue or glare as she walked away. Instead, she simply nodded. As she walked by, she even touched his shoulder.
“You did well today, lord.”
Seriously? She’d just said that? Drake grinned from ear to ear. “Thanks, Val.”
“Don’t be long.” She strode off. “You now have four minutes.”
Drake decided to start with an aggressive tack and raise what doubt he could. He looked to Oswell. “Why were you meeting with my maids? What were you negotiating?”
“That is not your concern,” Lord Skybreak said coldly. “It also has nothing to do with the matter at hand. He will not answer that.”
Drake simply nodded instead of protesting. He’d just confirmed that Lord Skybreak, just like Valentia, had no interest in having her private deal with “Lord Gloomwood” exposed in front of her people. Based on what Valentia had told him about how bad it would be if news got out, it was likely not everyone in this room knew her secret. Not even her bodyguards.
Could Drake use that as leverage? As he looked at Valentia, he saw her subtly shake her head. She remained unconvinced he was going to learn anything useful here.
Drake wanted to order Valentia to immediately proclaim Oswell was wrong, but first... he needed to know how Oswell had been fooled. That was where the rest of his questions needed to go. If he revealed Valentia’s side of the story without first learning how Oswell had come to his, he could fall into a trap he wasn’t ready to avoid.
Drake looked to the injured man in the chair. “I apologize if I seemed disrespectful. What you’ve told me is information I did not expect to hear, and I’m not pleased to hear it. However, it was rude of me to question your competence. I’m sorry you lost your friends.”
He glanced at Lord Skybreak again. She was still visibly annoyed with him, but it seemed his apology had the desired effect. She didn’t look like she wanted to kill him any longer.
Lord Skybreak looked away. “Thank you, Oswell. You may—”
“Hold up,” Drake said. “I have a few more questions.”
Lord Skybreak’s sharp gaze cut through him once more. “Oswell has given his testimony. What more could you need?”
“Specifics. This man saw my battle maid murder your steward in cold blood after working with mercenaries to ambush him, but as you know, I gave no such orders. So if we are to get to the bottom of what happened to your steward, I would like us to work together. I understand you want to interrogate Valentia. I also need to interrogate Oswell.”
“That will not happen,” Lord Skybreak said firmly.
“I’m not going to torture him or be mean about it. I just want to ask him some questions, right now, in this room, in your presence.” He held her determined gaze. “Don’t forget how nice I’ve been so far. I brought Valentia here of my own free will. I told her not to use her rarity. I’ve done nothing but cooperate with you despite the trouble it’s caused me.”
“Given one of yours murdered my steward, it seems the least you could do.”
“I’m still not convinced she did that.”
Oswell stared in visible shock, and Lord Skybreak now looked more alarmed than angry. “Is there something wrong with your hearing? Your mental faculties?”
“Nothing at all,” he assured her. “I just have a few more questions. What’s the harm?”
Lord Skybreak stared at him from across the room for longer than he was comfortable with. Her private retreat felt like a silent tomb. Finally, she crossed her arms.
“Ask your questions. But I’m granting you only a few, and I will not have Oswell answer anything that compromises the security of my manor.”
“I can work with that.” Drake looked to Oswell. “Here’s what I need to know first. How many traveled with you to the meeting with my battle maids?”
Oswell looked to Lord Skybreak. She nodded her assent.
Oswell looked at Drake again. “Myself and two others, plus Steward Rodney.”
“And Valentia killed all of them?”
The man nodded as he glared at the stoic battle maid standing silently at Drake’s side. “The ambush came just after we began our negotiations. There were at least two dozen men with crossbows and red armor, almost certainly Redbow mercenaries hired by your manor.”
That, at least, matched what Valentia had told him. “Yet I didn’t hire any Redbow mercenaries to ambush you.” Drake looked at Lord Skybreak for her reaction.
A brief flash of annoyance crossed her face before she hid it, but if she was going to take every word everyone spoke as truth, she couldn’t accuse him of lying now. This no lying bullshit cut both ways. She had to believe he hadn’t hired those mercenaries.
“Then... I can only assume Valentia hired them without your knowledge,” Oswell amended. “We assumed we could fight them off with your battle maids to help, or at least escape. Yet as we moved to defend ourselves, Brayden and Gray dropped dead. Frozen solid.”
“Someone else may have a rarity that freezes people. How do you know it was Val?”
“As I realized we’d been betrayed, I turned to face Valentia only to be knocked senseless by a blow from her invisible companion. The other battle maid. I recovered my senses just in time to see Valentia stab Steward Rodney in the chest with a sword made of ice.”
“That’s awfully dramatic,” Drake pointed out. “It’s also completely unnecessary, since Val could freeze Rodney’s blood with a snap of her fingers. You just told me she did that to your other friends. Val has no need to make a sword of ice and stab someone with it. So it seems oddly convenient she was so obvious about shanking Rodney in front of you.”
Oswell glared. “I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure you do,” Drake said mildly. “I even believe you saw it.”
“Then respectfully, Lord Gloomwood, why are you asking these pointless questions?”
“Because I know some things you don’t.” Drake let the silence that followed hang in the room a moment, to drive his point home, then continued before anyone could ask him what he meant by that. “Second question. How did you survive?”
Oswell looked to Lord Skybreak again. “Lord?”
Again, she nodded. “The rarities of our soldiers are public record in Korhaurbauten. Since Lord Gloomwood has neglected to read about them, you may tell him yours. You may also tell him how you got back to us. I’m ready to be done with this farce of a negotiation.”
Oswell looked to Drake again. “My rarity, lord, is called coagulation.”
Drake raised an eyebrow at that. “So you can clot blood? Like seriously?”
“After Valentia’s ice sheared off my lower leg, I was barely conscious. There was so much blood on the ground I doubt anyone could tell what was mine and what belonged to others. I clotted the blood inside my stump so I wouldn’t bleed out. I played dead.”
Seeing a man covered in blood with his lower leg sheared off would be a pretty good way to survive a massacre, Drake admitted. No one without Oswell’s rarity would have lived through that. It seemed men did get some decent rarities in this world as well.
“And once the ambushers and my maids left, you hopped back here on one leg?”
“I crawled, lord.”
“Wow. Respect.”
Oswell glared at him. “My lord needed to know of your betrayal. I owed it to Steward Rodney. I owed it to Gray and Brayden. I couldn’t let their deaths go unanswered.”
Deluded though he might be, this Oswell was one tough son of a bitch. Drake hadn’t been exaggerating about being impressed. Still, Oswell had obviously been deceived during that ambush. The easiest explanation was that Oswell had seen some sort of illusion.
If his new enemy could make people see things that didn’t happen, they could make anyone believe anything. That would be absolutely deadly in a world where no one questioned another person’s testimony. Unfortunately for his new enemy, Drake now felt he knew all he needed to prove what Oswell had seen had not happened.
He smiled at Oswell. “Thank you for answering my questions.” He looked to Lord Skybreak. “It’s time for us to talk in private. There’s more going on here than you know.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve provided all the proof you asked for and humored your odd behavior more than I should. Surrender your battle maid and I will allow you to leave.”
She meant that. She was done with negotiation. Under other circumstances Drake wouldn’t have any cards left to play, but today he did.
Mutually assured destruction.
“Do you think you can kill me before I tell all those here why my battle maids were negotiating with Rodney? Or does everyone in here already know what we’ve been doing?”
Valentia gasped at his side. He’d finally been ruthless enough to impress her. As he glanced to find her staring at him with wide eyes, he wondered if she regretted pushing him.
Lord Skybreak’s expression darkened to the point where he was worried she was going to leap across that conference table and stab him. Even so, he’d played the last card he could. If her bodyguards didn’t know about her private little trading arrangement with the last Lord Gloomwood, they would once Drake admitted it aloud to everyone.
Lord Skybreak could just compel her bodyguards not to reveal the truth to anyone, but there was always the chance it could slip out. And if she did kill Drake after he revealed their illicit trading, the lord of Skybreak Manor would still have murdered Lord Gloomwood.
The debt would remain. Neither could afford that. Neither could afford a war.
As Valentia had told him, sometimes, he was going to need to be a bit ruthless. In this case, he was holding Lord Skybreak’s bodyguards and even himself hostage until he got what he wanted from her. She probably wasn’t going to want to be his friend after this.
“I will not harm you or use my rarity if you don’t harm me,” Drake assured her. “I also will not order my battle maid to harm you. But rest assured, if you do attempt to bring me down, you won’t like the result. My rarity is far more powerful than any of you know.”
None of that was a lie. If they tried to kill him, he was fairly sure he would rat out and kill everyone in this room. He didn’t want to do that... but he had already pushed this situation beyond where he could simply walk out. He wasn’t going to go with half measures now.
He looked back to the blond manor lord glaring daggers at him. “I request five minutes to explain to you in private why I won’t let you interrogate and execute Valentia. My battle maid will also remain long enough to deliver her own testimony to you. Then we’ll see.”
Lord Skybreak said nothing.
“Or I can tell everyone in here why Steward Rodney was out there meeting my battle maids, and we can roll the dice together.” Drake offered a pleasant smile. “Your call.”
“Kari.” Lord Skybreak didn’t stop glaring at him. “You and Ali take Oswell back into my private chambers. Mary, I’d like you stationed outside the doors.”
A chorus of complaints and denials sounded from all over the room, which Lord Skybreak immediately silenced with a glare that put his best glare to shame. “You have heard Lord Gloomwood. You know I fear nothing from him. Now, follow my orders. In five minutes, you will all return to this room. Until then, leave us to negotiate.”
Though more than a few of them grumbled about it, all three of Lord Skybreak’s lady bodyguards and Oswell himself cleared the room. That left Drake, Lord Skybreak, and Valentia alone in her personal chambers. Drake had no idea what Lord Skybreak’s rarity was.
Even so, he imagined it had to be pretty powerful if her thralls were willing to leave her in a room with him alone. Or maybe, unlike him, she simply didn’t give her thralls a choice. That suggested she was confident she could handle him alone.
Drake looked to Valentia. “Tell Lord Skybreak everything that happened before, during, and after you were ambushed by Redbow mercenaries while meeting Steward Rodney.”
When Valentia finished, Lord Skybreak sat down in the nearest conference table chair. She looked about as shocked and winded as if he’d just kicked her in the stomach.
Which, he supposed, he sort of had.
Drake took the opportunity to walk to the seat across the table. “May I sit?”
Lord Skybreak nodded.
Drake looked to Valentia. “Could you give us some privacy?”
“I’d be more comfortable watching over you.”
“Lord Skybreak has trusted me this far. That means I can trust her. And I trust you, Val, but not with what I need to discuss with her. So I’d like you to let us speak in private.”
“You’d be welcome to wait in my private chambers, Valentia,” Lord Skybreak said quietly. “You have my permission to enter.” She looked up. “Kari!” She shouted. “Valentia is going to join you in my chambers! Keep her safe and do not harm her!”
Then, the woman looked to Valentia. “I can’t order you.”
“I can,” Drake lied. “Valentia, go hang out with Oswell and Kari. They seem nice.”
He expected Valentia to argue or glare as she walked away. Instead, she simply nodded. As she walked by, she even touched his shoulder.
“You did well today, lord.”
Seriously? She’d just said that? Drake grinned from ear to ear. “Thanks, Val.”
“Don’t be long.” She strode off. “You now have four minutes.”
