“The king isn’t shielded,” Mychael said in the barest whisper.

Tam’s head snapped toward Sarad Nukpana. The goblin black mage’s lips were curled in a half smile and he had moved a few steps closer to Cyran—and away from the king. The people in the crowd probably thought his smile was polite attention to his king’s speech, and his movement away from Sathrik as deferring to the king’s presence.

“—our only concern,” Sathrik continued. “Like myself, Lord Chancellor Nukpana has sworn to uphold and protect the sanctity of the goblin throne and…” Sathrik gestured to where Sarad Nukpana was supposed to be standing. The king froze as annoyance, confusion, then wide-eyed realization and terror passed in a wave over his face.

Sarad Nukpana’s smile broadened, and he regally inclined his head.

For all to see, he was acknowledging his lord and king’s compliment.

He had removed Sathrik’s shields, and had just given someone a clear shot at the king.

The assassin took it.

A bolt took King Sathrik Mal’Salin square in the chest and passed completely through, exiting his back and slamming up to the fletching in a royal guard standing directly behind his king.

His dead king.

A second bolt caught Sarad Nukpana in the upper chest, spinning him to the ground.

“Mortekal!” more than one voice shouted.

Deidre?

Oh, unholy hell.

“No!” Cyran Nathrach screamed, as guards quickly surrounded and dragged him off the balcony.

Tam’s head snapped around as if he could somehow see through the crowd to his mother’s killing perch.

“Protect the king! Protect the king!” Khrynsani guards surrounded Sarad Nukpana, lifted him from the ground, shielding his body with their own.

Deidre’s bolt was sticking out of his shoulder.

He wasn’t dead. The bastard was still alive.

“That monster has more lives than a cat!” Imala snarled.

Tam turned and started to run toward the last turn we’d taken to get under the square, the place where he could get to the street—and his mother. Mychael grabbed his arm and almost got his own ripped off in the process. There was some deadly serious wrestling, but Mychael got Tam pinned, their faces inches apart.

“Not now!” Mychael growled. “Everything your parents did will have been for nothing! Is that what you want?”

Tam’s fangs were bared and his eyes were blazing. One sharp twist of his head and he could rip out Mychael’s throat. They both knew it. Mychael could have moved out of range without releasing his grip on Tam. He didn’t. Instead he relaxed his hold.

“Tam, we strike when we can win.” Mychael’s voice was low and intense. “We will win; we will get them back. I swear it.”

Though until that time, Sarad Nukpana was the goblin king. He’d always been the one pulling Sathrik’s strings. Now it was official.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

Like hell.

Chapter 11

Sarad Nukpana was the goblin king.

Sathrik Mal’Salin’s assassination had reduced our archvillain population by one. Sarad Nukpana had taken a crossbow bolt in the shoulder. That would slow a normal person down for a couple of days. Unfortunately for the population of the seven kingdoms, Nukpana wasn’t normal. I wasn’t even sure if he even qualified as a person anymore. Regardless, he had to slow down long enough to get that bolt dug out of his shoulder. Then maybe he might even spend an additional hour going through the motions of mourning his king.

We had no way of knowing for sure if the mortekal everyone was screaming about was Deidre. But Cyran’s scream told us that he’d seen his wife—and probably had seen her either captured or killed. As to why Deidre went for Sathrik first… it might have been as simple as take the target you know you can hit. Sarad Nukpana had made it easy for her. That didn’t explain how she’d been able to stick a bolt in Nukpana, or how he knew of her plans. All of that didn’t matter, at least not now.

Sathrik Mal’Salin hadn’t needed to tell us his evil master plan. By setting him up for an assassin’s bolt, Sarad Nukpana had told the world his intentions. He not only wanted to wipe out the Resistance, but the entire Mal’Salin dynasty. My mind reeled at the implications. With Sathrik dead, Nukpana would step in and take the king’s place with his mother, Sandrina Ghalfari, ruling and terrorizing at his side, ousting the Mal’Salins and creating a new ruling family dynasty. The Resistance would take the blame for the assassination. Sarad Nukpana would claim it was their fault the kingdom was in chaos on the eve of their triumph that was a thousand years in the making. The Resistance would be hunted down to the last man, woman, and child.

Execution Square was chaos, but right now, chaos was good.

The assassination had caused a virtual stampede, and no one paid any attention to anyone or anything other than themselves and getting the hell away from the square. We were going away from it as fast as our legs and need for concealment allowed. Tam knew ways through the city where we could pass unseen or at least the risk would be less.

We had to get to the temple, and we had to get there fast. Unfortunately, with Sathrik’s Resistance roundup being carried out in the city, Tam’s house was no longer safe. There might still be a chance that the Khrynsani hadn’t raided it yet. We had to warn them—and get Piaras, Talon, and Chigaru out of there. We would take them with us as far as the tunnels immediately beneath the temple. We’d go after the Saghred, and they would be safe until we returned.

If we returned.

We smelled the smoke from two blocks away.

The Resistance had worked to make Tam’s house look deserted.

It was definitely empty now.

Deidre may or may not have escaped after assassinating Sathrik; no one could have escaped this. Windows were knocked out, smoke as if from a recently extinguished or burnt-out fire was still smoldering.

The air stank of smoke—and magic.

Even without mine, I could sense that people had been fighting for their lives here and using every spell and blade in their arsenals. Fought and lost.

Tam and I lunged forward; Mychael and Kesyn Badru each grabbed an arm.

“You going off half-cocked isn’t going to help you or your boy get to the end of this night alive,” Badru told Tam. The old goblin took a flask out of a hidden pocket in his robes. “Let a professional stagger in there first.”

He pulled his hat down so that the brim hid at least half of his face, and then proceeded to stumble out of the bushes, muttering to himself and weaving his way down the edge of the street, occasionally stepping in the gutter and barely regaining his balance and blistering the air blue with a few choice—and highly creative—words, his voice again dropping to a drunken mutter.

He stopped and stood swaying in front of a royal edict tacked to a streetlamp post outside of Tam’s gates. We’d all seen and read it. It warned of imprisonment for defying the military curfew and defacing the signs they were written on.

Badru belched noisily and fumbled around inside his robes again.

This time he didn’t pull out a flask.

The old goblin proceeded to take a piss on the sign.

I think we all needed that. Defy authority and boost morale at the same time. It just went to show that wisdom didn’t always involve book learning. That was one gifted old man. It also proved that whoever had destroyed Tam’s house wasn’t there anymore. I’d never heard of a soldier who could have resisted taking the shot when a drunken citizen was taking a piss on a sign that basically ordered him not to piss on that sign.

The old goblin had established without a doubt that the coast was clear.

Not wanting to tempt Fate any more than we already had, we still kept to the shadows. Yeah, it was night, but anyone who might be watching was a goblin, and we weren’t in a mood to take chances.

Badru was coughing and waving his hand in front of his face. Dammit. I didn’t consider smoke from whatever fire was burning might keep us out. Though smoke or no smoke, I was going—

“Not smoke, girl,” Badru said. “Well, not entirely.”

“Navinem,” Tam spat.

“What?” Smelled like burnt tar to me.

“A drug.”

“It’s almost dissipated, but I wouldn’t suggest we go running in there yet.” Badru gestured to me and Mychael. “Though these two might benefit from a snoot full.”

I took an experimental sniff. “Of what?”

“The elven military occasionally uses navinem for some of their elite troops,” Mychael said, looking up at the second-floor windows. They looked empty and he knew that, but staying among the living meant staying on your toes. “Makes them feel impervious. It’s a powder, and can be swallowed, but when you want to use it on large numbers of goblins, heating it turns it into a gas.”

“Why would someone shoot Tam’s house full of ‘elf ego boost’?”

“Because it doesn’t boost goblins,” Imala said. “Exactly the opposite. Panic, terror, whatever you fear the most is what you’ll see with just some of the hallucinations; the rest are worse.”

Meaning Sarad Nukpana could have had the house surrounded, gassed, and could then stroll in and herd everyone inside out.

Everyone except the elves.

The only two elves in that house were Piaras—and Carnades Silvanus.

I felt the growl building in the back of my throat. I didn’t have magic, but I had knives. If Carnades had hurt Piaras, no spell, incantation, or curse would keep me from killing him.

“Tam and I will lead,” Mychael was saying. “We’ll do a room-to-room search. Quick, methodical, and safe.”

“Not safe for any Khrynsani bastards still inside,” I said.

Or an elven mirror mage.

Mychael’s smile was more like a baring of teeth. “No, not for them.” He turned to Tam. “Do you want me to go in first and see if it’s dissipated enough for—”

Tam answered by taking the lead.