Page 82 of Company of Thieves
“Oh! That’s my cue,” Hallie said, and rushed to the window. She threw it open and leaned out to look to the north. “He’s there! At least, I think it’s William. There’s an airship where you said he would be.”
“Excellent.” Alan made a quick search of the drawers of small tables that sat on either side of the bed, pulling from one the imperial seal, which he pocketed before asking Hallie, “Would you go to the dressing room and collect some clothing for the imperator? Nothing too ornate. He is larger than William, and will need something to wear.”
“Sure. I assume it’s this way?” She pointed to a door on the far side of the room.
“Yes, that should lead to the dressing room, bathroom, and the body servant’s room. Do not enter the last one, as it will be occupied. Zand, do you see the strongbox anywhere?”
“No. Are you sure it is here, and not in the treasury?”
“The treasury is full of things he didn’t care about,” Alan said, peering into cupboards and drawers. “He always kept the most valuable items close by. Ah. Does this look different to you?”
He squatted to examine a square of wood in the parquet floor that looked a bit darker than the other pieces.
“It does indeed,” Zand said, pulling out a dagger while Alan did the same, the pair sliding their blades along the seam of the square, loosening it so that it could be lifted. “And that looks very much like an emperor’s hoard.”
“Which I will take great pleasure disbursing to those who have suffered the most from his atrocities.” Alan hauled up a small metal chest that was much heavier than it looked. “Az, you and Yussuf take the imperator. Zand, I leave the strongbox in your charge.”
Zand hefted the chest, grimacing at its weight.
“The emperor is waiting in the courtyard. Take the imperator to him, and tell him I’m right behind you.”
He waited until the men were through the writing room, the guards still crumpled blobs on the floor, before returning to the bedchamber. He glanced around it, mentally going through a checklist of items he needed to ensure the imperator’s supporters would have no ability to carry on in his name, then frowned at the door to the dressing room, opening it while he said, “Dove, you do not need to clean out his wardrobes—” He stopped when the room was empty of his wife.
A wave of cold fear hit him, followed immediately by heat, red-hot fury that sent him charging across the room, flinging open the door to the bathroom and, through it, the door to the body servant.
The vizier stood in a gold-embroidered nightdress, his bald head glistening in the gaslight, but it was the woman he held protectively in front of him, a dagger at her throat, that held Alan’s attention.
“I knew you would come, you murdering scum,” the vizier said, his high-pitched voice cracking with emotion. “I told His Imperial Majesty that you would come for him one day, but he did not believe me. Did you kill him? Did you slit his throat, and then send your whore in to steal his clothing?”
“No, I did not kill him, and do not speak of my wife in such a manner.”
“Wife?” the vizier snapped, then sneered down at Hallie’s head. “You wed the whore? Your father will have much to say about that.”
“I have no doubt about that,” Alan said mildly, his eyes on the dagger at Hallie’s throat. She was, to his infinite relief, looking more annoyed than frightened.
In fact, she sounded downright put-upon when, sighing, she said, “I told you I should have brought my bow. He grabbed me before I could jab him.”
Jab him.The words resonated in Alan’s head, pushing around the mental images of the sorts of torture he would enact upon the vizier. He leashed his anger, and forced himself to think coolly, one hand brushing against a hard glass syringe that was hidden in his pocket. If he could get close enough to the vizier, he could pull Hallie from the old man’s foul grasp and sedate him. ...
“You know,” she said with obvious meaning. “The jabby thing. Of which someone not a million miles away from here might have had two.”
“Be quiet, whore,” the vizier growled, tightening his grip on Hallie, yelling suddenly, “Guards!”
To Alan’s horror, the vizier jerked open a door to the hall and hauled Hallie backward out of it just as two guards, looking startled and hesitant, entered.
Alan snarled an oath and leaped forward, slamming the first guard into the doorframe, the man slumping to the ground just as Alan turned to the second. He had a disruptor out, firing at the moment that Alan lunged, the searing pain that bit deep into the left side of his chest warning him he’d been hit.
The thought of Hallie in the vizier’s grip was all that mattered, not the burning pain of flesh that had melted under the aether, nor the weakness that made his left arm feel like it was made of lead.
He could bear pain. He could bear losing the use of an arm. He couldn’t lose Hallie, not his bright, irreverent, enticing dove.
He couldn’t live without her love. He couldn’t live without her, period.
His dagger flashed in the gaslight, a spray of blood following. Alan didn’t wait to see how badly the guard was injured before he raced down the passage after the vizier. The man had dragged Hallie down a flight of stairs, spinning around at the bottom when Alan leaped down the stairs, his heart pounding in his ears, his soul calling for vengeance.
One of the vizier’s hands was in Hallie’s hair, her lovely amber hair, pulling her head back so that her throat was exposed, the curved dagger having evidently pricked her throat a few times, since several narrow lines of blood dripped down into her armor.
She squawked, her eyes widening at the sight of Alan stalking forward.
