Blood and Fire

Chapter 2-3

Kelwyn looked at the bottle and saw the neatly inked paper label. Poppy milk. Despair washed over him. He was going to be drugged and taken to another country, to live with this madman, and there was nothing he could do to escape.

“All right,” he said, bleakly, and he opened his mouth when Lucretious put the bottle to his lips. He took one swallow, then turned his head away. It was a small dose, but he was a small person, and it would be more than enough.

Lucretious let go his grip on Kelwyn’s hair and sat back on his own seat, stoppering the bottle. Kelwyn let his head fall and his eyes close. He lay still, dark despair filling him, until finally the poppy milk began sending its creeping numbness over him and he escaped willingly into the darkness it offered.

* * * *

“Harun, come on. We’re leaving at noon.” Velanis, the royal mage and more or less head of the Queen’s Own made a beckoning gesture. Harun had just left his room, and it seemed Velanis had done the same, as he’d shut his neighboring door behind him.

“I’ll be right there. I expected Kelwyn to come see me off, and I haven’t seen him all morning. I’m going to check in on him and make sure he’s okay, and I’ll be right there.”

“Kelwyn is an adult now, you know. If you’re late, we won’t wait for you. This mission is too important to delay.” The mage’s dark-bearded face was serious, his tone chiding.

“I know. But I’m not all that vital to it. And adult or not, Kelwyn needs a keeper. He’s far too good at finding trouble.”

Velanis smiled a little wryly. “I understand. Do what you must.”

“Thank you.” Harun slung his travel bag over his shoulder, touched the hilt of his sword, and then set off down the stairs, toward the base of the tower.

When he reached Kelwyn’s room he knocked loudly, expecting the young avian to be still in bed. He kept late hours and tended to sleep in whenever he could. So when Harun didn’t get an immediate response he only knocked again, louder. Loud enough that the next door down swung open, and another young avian, one of the other couriers that shared Kelwyn’s job, poked his head out. “He’s not in,” said the dark-haired young man.

“Do you know where he is, then? He’s not on duty today.”

The avian shrugged. “He left about midnight last night and wasn’t here when I woke up. He probably is still out somewhere.” He youngster grinned. “Maybe he finally found him a pretty girl to stay the night with.”

Harun blinked. “He’s been gone all night?”

“Far as I know.”

Harun sighed. He hoped it was merely a case of Kelwyn having found a lover, but he suspected it probably wasn’t. He’d probably lapsed back into thieving again and had gotten caught.

The head offices of the guard were here in the tower, of course, but all the real work got done at the central station out in the city, so that was where Harun went next. Noon was approaching, and he knew he’d be late for the expedition, but he could always catch up later.

At the guard station Harun got the immediate attention of the Guardsman General, the head of the city guard. Being in the Queen’s Own had certain benefits. He usually tried to not take too much advantage of that status, but in this case he’d make an exception.

Kelwyn wasn’t in the central jail, that was easy enough to discover, but there were holding cells at many of the local stations, so it would take a while to find if he’d been taken in last night. Harun gave a good description of him, and it was copied out and sent by runners across the city. Meanwhile Harun sat and waited, and resisted the urge to pace. He could be glad, at least, that Kelwyn was very distinctive. There weren’t that many avians in the city, and fewer still were cute, freckled ginger boys.

Noon came and went, and Harun sighed, accepting that he’d be late.

Then one of the runners came back, with a guardsman in tow. The man saluted the Guardsman General, looking more than a little nervous as he did so. He was in civilian clothes, apparently having been off duty but still at the guard station when the runner had arrived there.

“Report,” said the impassive senior officer.

“Yessir! I saw the avian in question, ‘bout an hour before dawn. Didn’t take him in, sir. He was with a gentleman who said he’d had too much to drink, and was being taken home. He looked drunk, sir, he was staggering about and shouting nonsense.” The man swallowed and shot Harun a shamed look. “I thought it was nonsense. But he said that some fellow from the Queen’s Own would come for him, and I guess he was right, so the rest of it…” He trailed off, and Harun noticed that he was sweating.

“Well, spit it out, man,” said the Guardsman General.

“Yessir. He said he was being kidnapped, sir.”

Harun felt his heart skip a beat. “Where was this?”

“In front of a house on Pering Street, sir.”

“Show me.”

Twenty minutes later Harun was standing in front of a marble-faced town mansion, like many in the richer parts of the city. It butted up against its neighbors using every bit of its lot, though it was taller than any of them.

“You’re absolutely certain it was right here?” he said to the guardsman.

“Yessir. The other fellow, a gentleman, dressed very fine, but kinda of foreign, was carrying him down the steps right there, and he started to kick up a fuss, and the gentleman dropped him. He shouted to me, and the gentleman told me he was drunk, and he was staggering about like it, I swear, and slurring, and the things he was saying sounded like total nonsense. I’m sorry, sir.”

“You didn’t know. Then what happened?”

“The gentleman put him in a carriage, one with some foreign livery, blue and white, and they went off down the hill, there.” He pointed.

“Thank you. You can go now.”

“Thank you, sir.” The guard saluted, which was absurd, he was out of uniform and the Queen’s Own didn’t have any military or police rank, but Harun was used to such treatment. He looked around the street. It wasn’t as bustling as the more mercantile areas of the city would be, but there were people enough moving about their business on it. He needed a moment of privacy.

Fortunately even the wealthy parts of the city had dark little alleys connecting them in places. Harun found one, made certain it was completely unoccupied, and began to swiftly strip. He tucked the clothing neatly into the empty pocket in his travel bag designed for just that purpose, putting the scale mail shirt in as well and strapping his sword to a pair of loops on the bag made to hold it. Then he slung the bag over his shoulder again, positioning it carefully.

That done, he began to shift.

It always felt strange, in a way that bordered on pain. He could feel bone and muscle and skin stretching, contracting, changing proportion drastically. His balance changed and he fell forward onto his hands, but they weren’t hands any more, they were paws, with velvety golden fur that hid razor-sharp, retractable claws. His whole body was covered in the same fur, except around his neck and shoulders, where his mane of curly red hair had become a literal mane of deep crimson.

His eyes were still the same, a deep emerald green, but his face had a long, square muzzle, and behind him swept a tail that was tipped with a literal brush of flame, magically burning with no fuel to feed it.

He was a fire-lion, a particular and very unusual species of were-cat. This was his true form, and not the human shape he normally wore. He lived among humans, and their world was more easily navigated with hands, yet it always felt good, comfortable, to return to this shape.

Harun gave himself a shake, settling the bag, which fit snugly around his chest and shoulders in this form, then padded out of the alley to the front of the mansion once more. He inhaled deeply, and immediately caught Kelwyn’s familiar scent. A hint of masculine musk, more than a bit of damp feathers, a touch of sesame cakes, a favored snack that he’d no doubt eaten recently—it was a unique combination that was impossible to mistake.

The scent accompanying it was less familiar, the details those of a stranger, an unknown, but Harun recognized one thing about it. It was the blood-heavy scent of a vampire. His nose wrinkled, his muzzle crinkling up, long ivory fangs showing. A vampire. Kelwyn had been kidnapped by a vampire. Harun tried to suppress the surge of fear that ran through him at that. It would be fine. He’d catch up with them soon.

The paired scents went from the doorstep to the street, where they were largely covered over by the scent of horse. Moving at a brisk pace, he followed path the carriage must have taken down the road, tracking it largely by that pungent, animal scent, like the scent of dozens of other horses that also used these streets, but just unique enough for him to follow this specific pair. He got a hint of both the vampire’s and Kelwyn’s scent at one spot in the merchant quarter, where the carriage had apparently halted, and the scent of an ordinary human led both away from and back to it, no doubt the carriage’s driver.

The trace continued from there to the edge of the city, and then turned onto a road leading out into the countryside, going north.

At that point Harun halted. If Kelwyn had been held within the city’s limits, Harun was confident he could mount a rescue and still catch up with the others of the Queen’s Own on their way south. But the carriage had better than half a day’s lead on him, and while he was certain he could catch up with it eventually, he didn’t know how long it would take. They might use a horse-changing station, which would mean the carriage wouldn’t have to stop, while Harun definitely would require at least a little bit of rest. It might take days to make up the distance between them.

So he halted at the last post station at the edge of town, much to the surprise of the postmaster there, and dictated a message to be sent to the Tower, and from thence on to the party already making their way south. He would not be coming, they would have to do without him.

It twinged at him to do so, yet he knew that his particular skills were of little special use against a necromancer, so he felt less guilt than he might have otherwise.

That done he continued down the road, moving at a steady lope. He could run faster at need, lions were capable of extraordinary speed over short distances, but the guard had mentioned foreign livery, and that meant he was probably in this trip for the long haul, and shouldn’t exhaust himself.

A heavy, leaden weight of fear sat in his gut as he ran, and part of him wanted to sprint, to rush as quickly as possible to Kelwyn’s rescue. The youngster was being held by a vampire, and it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t survive the coming night. Yet if Harun exhausted himself now, he’d do Kelwyn no good at all. So he ran on, pacing himself, and desperately hoped that he’d catch up in time.