Page 83 of Company of Thieves
“Stay back,” the vizier called, shifting and glancing nervously around him. “Guards! Guards!”
“There is no one here,” Alan said, his fingers twitching with the need to throttle the man. “No one but me. Release my wife, and I will let you live.”
“You do not frighten me—” the vizier started to say.
“You have three seconds, and then you die.”
Hallie stared at him in surprise, but he kept his eyes on those of the old man, allowing him to see the depth of his fury, and the inevitability of his intentions.
The second the man wavered, he’d be on him.
To his amazement, the vizier must have read just as accurately as Hallie what his fate would be, because he dropped the dagger and shoved her forward at him, spitting out an oath that Alan ignored.
“Are you hurt badly?” he asked her, his eyes still on the vizier.
“No, but please tell me you’re going to knock that bastard out so I can administer a few kicks in his kidneys. Oh! Well, that was fast.”
Alan moved while she was speaking, spinning the vizier around and jamming his face into the wall while he stabbed the syringe into the man’s upper arm. The vizier screamed and moved feebly for a few seconds before slumping to the ground.
“I totally rescind that comment about taking down your dad as being anticlimactic—hey. What’s wrong with your sleeve? Why is it black ... oh my god, that’s your arm! Alan!”
He grabbed her with his good arm and gently pushed her from him. “Do not touch it, sweet. I will have it attended to later.”
“But you’ve been hurt! Oh my god, the whole left side of your armor—Alan! What happened?”
“One of the guards had better aim than I supposed.” He grunted painfully when he tried to heft the vizier one-handed, but it was impossible to get the man onto his shoulder. “Can you help lift this bastard without harming yourself or the babe?”
“What? Oh, yes, but you shouldn’t carry him, not with you being shot to hell and back again—”
“I can’t leave him here.” Alan took a couple of bracing breaths. “I don’t think he has the support of the courtiers to challenge me, but I would prefer him being out of the way regardless. On three.”
A very painful five minutes followed during which Hallie helped him hoist the vizier’s deadweight onto his good shoulder, after which they mounted the stairs and retraced their steps.
As they left the royal apartments and reached the staircase, a dark figure emerged from the opposite direction.
For a moment, Alan and Etienne considered each other. Like him, Etienne bore the limp form of a person over his shoulder, this one a woman in gauzy nightwear whose long golden hair brushed the floor.
“Etienne,” Alan said, with a nod at the other man.
“Alan.” Etienne nodded back, his gaze on the vizier’s unconscious form for a second. Then without another word, he strode off.
“Was that—” Hallie started to ask, staring after Etienne.
“The duchess? Yes.”
“Ah.” She turned and yelled after Etienne’s disappearing figure, “I hope you treat her a damned sight better than you treated me.”
They made it out to William’s airship just as the pain that Alan had tried so hard to ignore started to overwhelm him, the weakness growing across his chest and spreading down to his legs. He staggered the last few steps when Zand and Az burst from the hold, the latter holding him up while Zand pulled the vizier’s limp body from him.
“He’s been shot,” he heard Hallie say from a long distance away. “I hope to god you guys have a doctor on board, because I am not losing him. Do you understand? I refuse to let him die! Alan! Alan, my love, don’t you dare die on me! I will make your life a living hell if you do!”
He smiled to himself even as he slid slowly into the red haze of pain that had crawled across his mind. She wasn’t being a dove now. She was a fierce little falcon, fighting for him, fighting for them both. And for that, he would be eternally grateful.
