Page 109 of Take No Prisoners
"We didn't attackhim," Hannah hollered from somewhere near the middle of the crowded room. Efren couldn't see them, but he was glad they were there.
"Silence!"
"Hannah's right," Vadim said. "They were very careful not to attack me, personally."
"How did they attack you at all?" Martiz asked. "You had twenty air weavers on board, and ten air stations, if I'm correct about the size of your vessel."
"We did."
"Stan and Tovey can only do so much. You could have outrun them with four moderate air weavers."
"I didn't hire them for their exceptional ability to weave air," Vadim said. "I hired them because I knew we'd be captured, and I wanted them to die."
"Fuck's sake, Vadim, we're trying to save your ass," Efren said under his breath.
"You wanted them to die?" Martiz's eyes seemed to glow with internal glee. "Why?"
"You heard Klaus's testimony," Vadim said. "They hurt him. They've killed seekers in the past. I knew Efren was coming for me, and I wanted the chance to prove myself to him while also removing some of Coryn's worst offenders."
Martiz turned back to Efren. "Did you know Vadim was on a secret mission for Beatrice?"
"No. Would have saved us all a lot of time, if I had."
"Explain your secret mission," Beatrice said. "Some on the council were not aware of it."
Vadim shared the details of his five-year mission to seek out information about Emperor Hugo's state of mind and to get a firm layout of his whereabouts in the palace for a rescue attempt.
"We need to get him out of there," Vadim concluded. "Eventually, Coryn will tire of using him as a pawn and rule on her own."
"What of the two youngsters they invited to the palace to be his companions?" Beatrice asked.
"His cousins are dead. One supposedly fell off a horse. The other drank poison. There's still a rumor that he drank the poison of his own accord, but how it got to the palace is a mystery."
"You had nothing to do with it?" Martiz asked.
"Why use poison? If I'd wanted him dead, I would have drained him when he threw a knife at me instead of the dart board." Vadim cleared his throat. "This is old news. They were buried together two springs ago. You don't relay messages to and from Hearthstone?"
"You were supposed to be our eyes and ears there," Martiz said. "It's your fault if we're uninformed."
"I didn't relay most of your messages to the council," Beatrice said. "They would have demanded your return when those children died, and I knew you weren't ready yet."
Vadim nodded. "Coryn has a way to create a doppelgänger for the emperor. It's the same type of illusion that allows her to cloak her ship and make it appear invisible."
Olivia and the rest of Efren's crew nodded.
"Without a seeker who can sense someone's level and type of power, I didn't dare try to rescue him, for fear we'd get one of her loyalists instead. Now that we have Klaus, we can tell the difference between Hugo and someone else, even if it looks like him. Once I confirmed Klaus's ability, I was ready to come home, and I knew Efren would take me. Any other ship would have killed me on sight."
Efren couldn't argue with that.Wildfireand her captain Nola wanted Vadim dead.
"Why didn't you kill him?" Martiz asked.
"Beatrice would have strung me up on the gallows the moment I returned," Efren said. "Besides, have you tried to kill him? I've seen him put his own head back on his neck after it was rolling on deck." While not exactly the truth, it wasn't far from it. Vadim had nearly lost his head to a sailor's cutlass. The cut had been so deep, Efren had seen his spine between the gouts of blood gushing from the wound. Vadim had calmly ripped his shirt into strips and wrapped them around his neck while the battle raged around them. By the time the battle was over, his neck had completely healed beneath the scar, and half the naval ship's crew lay dead from a single weave of death magic.
"That's a bit of an exaggeration." Vadim's chair squeaked as he stretched his shoulders.
"My point is, you only get one shot. Vadim's counterattack is swift and deadly."
"Martiz knows." Vadim traced over the scar above his eye with his index finger. "Care to tell the room how I got this?"
