Shadows and Light

riding out to warn them that they needed to watch for two riders, but they killed me before I—” He struggled to breathe.
    Liam sat back on his heels. “You were going to betray me? Why?”
    “They— They said I had the gift. That I didn’t have to remain a servant. They said if I did a good job of keeping a watch on you for them, they would train me to be an Inquisitor. I’d be a powerful man then, even more powerful than a—a baron. But... they ... killed me.”
    Kayne stared up at Liam with dead eyes, his expression still baffled.
    Padrick cursed softly. “He must have sent word to them somehow the moment he was told to pack your things.” He dropped to one knee, placed his hand on Liam’s shoulder. “Liam, we have to get away from here. Now. This attack couldn’t have happened that long ago or he wouldn’t have still been alive. There’
    s no way of knowing if the men working for the Inquisitors are ahead of us or behind us, but they can’t be that far away. And either way, we’ve got to put some distance between us and this road.”
    “Hogan was a Willowsbrook man,” Liam said. “He wouldn’t have let someone else drive the cart and leave him behind to make his own way back home. Which means he’s wounded or dead, back on the road somewhere.”
    “We can’t look for him,” Padrick said firmly. “And we can’t stay here.”
    “I wonder if the footman Kayne replaced actually ran off with the parlor maid. Or was that the first death?” He shook his head, struggled to his feet with Padrick’s help. “Where do we go?”
    “Where’s your estate?”
    “Northwest. Near the Mother’s Hills.”

    “Then that’s where we go. Without the cart, we don’t have to stay on the roads. That’ll make it harder for anyone to find us.”
    Padrick led Liam to the horses and held the reins while Liam mounted.
    “I’ll do,” Liam said, answering Padrick’s unspoken question.
    Nodding, Padrick mounted his horse and turned toward the west. “Then let’s ride.”
    In the early dawn, Ubel boarded the yacht and quietly entered the cabin.
    “Well?” Adolfo asked softly, his doe-brown eyes giving no hint of what he was thinking.
    Ubel bowed his head. “We failed, Master. That bastard eluded us. He shouldn’t have been able to, but he did.”
    “It was a sound plan,” Adolfo said quietly, calmly. “Even if you didn’t receive my consent before starting it.”
    Ubel accepted the gentle-sounding reprimand, knowing that, even crippled, Adolfo could inflict a harsh punishment.
    But it angered him. He wasn’t an apprentice Inquisitor. More often than not, especially in these last few months, he’d made his own decisions about what needed to be done, had given orders to other Inquisitors. He’d never been reprimanded for it—until now. That, too, was one more thing he was going to lay at Baron Liam’s doorstep, one more thing the baron would pay for.
    “It was a sound plan,” Adolfo said again. “Why didn’t it work?”
    “He had help,” Ubel replied, resentment swelling inside him. “First with avoiding the guards who had waited for him at his club, then in getting out of the city.”
    “Who?”
    At least he could offer that much. “Padrick, the Baron of Breton.”
    Adolfo poured a glass of wine, drank slowly. “So. There will be two barons missing from council later today. Probably not enough to change the outcome, not after that young bastard’s speech yesterday, but it means we can’t afford to have any other barons becoming indisposed right before the vote. That would cause too much talk, too much speculation of the wrong kind.” Setting the glass on the table, he reached down, pulled up a bag, and dropped it on the table.
    Ubel heard the clink of shifting coins.
    “There’s nothing we can do about the coming vote, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take care of other problems,” Adolfo said. “Send four men to Willowsbrook.”
    Ubel smiled.
    Adolfo shook his head. “We’ll prepare the ground this time. Ripen the people until they’re ready to listen.
    No one is to go near the baron’s family. Three of the men will draw as much magic as they can from the land and turn it back on the baron’s estate and the village. The other will find a reason to spend time in the village tavern and use his Inquisitor’s gift to plant a few thoughts in the minds of the people around him. By the time he leaves, I want the tavern owner to be certain that the cause of the village’s