All Spell Breaks Loose by Lisa Shearin

him. The kid understood just fine; it didn’t mean he was going to do it.
    It wasn’t like Tam to not cover all contingencies. Seeing his mom again after a couple of years must have rattled his cage. Though anything Talon promised not to do was going to get done anyway if the situation presented itself. Tam should have simply saved his breath.
    Besides, Talon keeping his nose clean would signal the end of the world as we knew it.
    Unless Sarad Nukpana and the Saghred beat him to it.
    Imala and Tam were greeted with smiles and handshakes. Prince
Chigaru was welcomed with respectful bows.
    I felt about as wanted as something that came in the house on the bottom of someone’s boots.
    It wasn’t disgust exactly, more like they saw me as something useful, but something that no one wanted to be anywhere near. Kind of like a having a rat problem and being forced to get a really big snake.
    “Ain’t it grand to feel wanted,” I muttered.
    “Pay them no mind, Raine,” Imala said. “It’s your powerthat frightens them. You’ve become quite legendary, you know.”
    I snorted. “If only they did know.”
    “And they can’t,” Imala whispered back while smiling reassuringly to an older gentleman who looked ill at ease in his armor. He had a single long dagger tucked into his belt. Probably the only weapon they trusted him to have. Others looked much the same: all armed, all scared, but all determined to topple their king.
    It was a mass suicide waiting to happen.
    They were probably hoping that I’d go first.
    Deidre Nathrach ushered us into what she and Tam called the dining room. I would have called it a banquet hall, albeit a banquet hall that’d had a rough time of it recently: shredded wallpaper; most of the gilt trim hacked off; and holes either punched, kicked, cut, or chopped into the walls.
    However, the dining room had the benefit of being in the back of the house. The windows were boarded up from the outside and the curtains were drawn on the inside. We could light candles, but couldn’t have a fire in the fireplace and risk smoke from the chimney giving us away. The table was intact. I guess it’d been too big for Sarad Nukpana to get it out the door, and he decided not to have it chopped to bits. The thing was big enough to seat at least two dozen people. The Khrynsani had left enough chairs so that we all could sit down. My feet and back had never been so grateful. Our supply packs were necessary, and they weren’t particularly heavy—for the first couple of miles. After that, I’d started wondering how much I actually needed food and weapons.
    “Tell me what happened to Father,” Tam asked his mother.
    “He had taken a team to intercept a shipment of weapons going from the harbor to the Gate construction site. Your father knew we needed those weapons.” Force of will kept any emotion from her face. “They were ambushed.”
    I remembered the old goblin with the one dagger. Perhaps it was all they’d had to give him.
    Imala scowled. “Betrayed.”
    Deidre nodded once. “The Khrynsani were waiting for them. Four were killed; the other four captured. Cyran was among those captured.”
    “Do you have proof that he’s still alive?” Tam asked.
    “One of our lookouts witnessed the attack. They saw Cyran loaded into a prison wagon. He’d been wounded, but not fatally.”
    Tam shifted uneasily. “I take it he knows where all the cells are based.”
    “Yes,” she said tightly.
    That one word said a lot. It implied another word. Torture.
    “We’ll be in another location before tomorrow night,” she added.
    As the leader of the Resistance, Cyran Nathrach would know where their bases of operation were, their plans, the names and cover identities of their agents. Everything. He would definitely know about this house. Tam’s father would probably be more valuable to Sarad Nukpana alive than dead, but with Nukpana, “alive” covered a lot of ground. It didn’t matter how strong you thought you