Thick as Thieves (13 page)

“I think it would do you good. I think you could use a good kissing.”

“Oh, for Sun’s sake.” Madd frowned at Vorgell as he might a child. “I hate kissing, all right. It… it has to do with the collar. Remember I told you I broke most of the spell, just not all of it? Well, the damn collar doesn’t like it if I kiss anyone except… you know.”

Except the man who’d put it on him. Vorgell’s hopes deflated. “No one else?”

“It hurts me if I do. And I mean hurts. Like my head’s being ripped off.”

As if Vorgell didn’t have enough reasons to hate Baron Flemgu, he could now add this to the trove.
He
wanted to be the only man Madd could kiss. At least Madd hadn’t said he
wouldn’t
kiss Vorgell if the collar wasn’t an obstacle. He supposed he could hold on to that for a while.

“Was last night special to you?”

Madd looked mystified. “Special?”

“You and me. I thought perhaps….”

“What? That we’re going to hold hands and talk poetry while we walk in some garden and admire the stars? I’m not looking for that, Vorgell.” While the words sank in, Madd gazed off into the woods and looked for all the world like a deer ready to bolt for cover. “My life is way too covered in shit for me to even think about taking on something like that. I’ve got a cursed love collar around my neck! And you don’t know anything about me at all, about what I am or how that collar got on me, or what came after. I’m a witchkin male, the bottom of the barrel of magic users. To obtain magic, I have to eat living things—and I’ve done that, Vorgell. Mice and birds and… spiders! I’m as tainted as they come. Hell, you’ve seen what I do. The best occupation I can claim is thief! My promises are the same as my lies. I take advantage of men who have more gold than sense—”

“So do I,” said Vorgell with a grin. “Such men are gifts to the less fortunate.”

“What if I said you are such a gift? And you are, you know. You’re a gift to a man like me.” Madd shrugged and removed his hat. Red sunlight filtered through the woods to fall upon his face, gilding his skin. “It so happens we work well together.”

So they were partners. Only that. Madd was refusing to extend their relationship into anything deeper. Vorgell closed his eyes and turned his head in frustration. Perhaps he was pushing for too much and doing it too soon. That was a tendency of his and something other lovers had complained about. Even those men who had welcomed his lovemaking had not developed warm feelings toward him, however much he had wooed them.

And yet Madd was responding better than most. He hadn’t run away or said he wanted someone different. Furthermore, the young witch had spoken at least one word Vorgell intended to hold on to: together. They worked well
together
. They also fit well together in bed, and eventually Madd would realize the advantages of that partnership too.

“What do you need?” he asked, uncrossing his arms.

Madd’s rueful smile was reward enough. “You. Just try not to make more of that than it is, all right? Until this collar’s off, I can’t ever be anything else except a runaway and a thief. But I do need you now, and if it’s any help—I’ll owe you one.”

It wasn’t the light, or the weaving of afternoon shadows across Madd’s tense body that made him look small. The young witch looked scared.

“Then you owe me a kiss.” Vorgell laughed at the birth of annoyance on Madd’s face. He didn’t often get the better of his friend. He worked his cock free, showing it to be stiff and lusting to be buried in Madd’s talented throat. “Once we rid you of that collar, you will have no excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse!” With that snarl, Madd stalked toward him then dropped to his knees. He reached into Vorgell’s opened trousers, fingers pushing straight past his cock to grab him by the balls.

Vorgell yelped, but smiled at the reminder. No doubt about it, the little son of a witch owned him.

B
Y
NIGHTFALL
they had set up a blind near the castle. As promised, the Hidden Grove’s portal had been better than the first one. Vorgell had indeed needed to stoop, but that had been the worst of it. The portal had brought them to yet another grove of ancient oaks deep in some other woods nearly two hours walk from the baron’s castle. The pale oaks had shimmered and their leaves rustled like music. Madd knew the woods, he said, and led the way down a hill crowned by a ring of stone. Using the cloak of shadows and an invisibility spell to conceal their presence, they’d reached the castle and searched near the wall and the road until they’d found a hiding place. Darkness soon provided even more cover.

Vorgell didn’t like being too near a castle at night. For one thing, guards stationed on the walls tended to shoot at whatever moved. If they hit a man, it was someone not supposed to be there. And if it was an animal, it as often as not was either a dog—eliminating a nuisance—or a deer, which meant fresh meat. Shooting was a win-win situation for the guards. From the protection of the dense thicket they’d chosen for shelter, Vorgell kept a wary eye on the castle walls and windows for any sign they’d been spotted.

He was in his element when taking part in a raid, which was how he viewed this adventure. The only reason the baron’s soldiers had captured him that day—in this very forest, no less—was because his dalliance with the unicorn horn had left him preoccupied by an irresistible urge to fuck. Such thoughts still pushed at him almost constantly, so it was good to have a goal and better yet if his goal involved pillage or fighting. It also helped that Madd slept like one of the dead.

Madd’s quiet breathing reassured him. His young friend had gotten little enough rest until now. For the first few hours, he’d been tense as a cornered cat, watching the gate with the hot, fevered gaze of a man consorting with demons. Vorgell wondered if the sinister magic of the love collar possessed Madd somehow, or if it was the memories.

He caught a flash of blue-green at the base of Madd’s throat, and his skin prickled. The thing within the collar’s jewel watched him of late, he was sure of it. Though it had become a game of his to stare back, often for minutes on end while Madd was sleeping, the jewel-eye had yet to blink.

Cursing wizards and their magic, Vorgell reached for the food sack and grabbed a hunk of coarse bread. If the baron left the castle at all, he probably would not leave before daybreak. Even so, it was prudent to keep watch. And once the baron had left, he and Madd would make their way in, grab the basilisk egg, remove the collar, and leave. It sounded straightforward enough.

Madd twitched and lifted his head to look around. “Where are you?” he hissed.

“Here.” Vorgell lowered the hood of his cloak of shadows, revealing his face.

“This place gives me nightmares.” As usual, Madd had woken up grumpy. “Are you eating again?”

“It’s nearly dawn. Have some yourself.”

Bread in one hand and honey pot in the other, Madd settled beside him. “Honey?” he offered, extending the pot.

Vorgell accepted, using his short knife to slather the bread crust. “Are you sure the baron is going to leave today?”

Madd squinted at the closed castle gate and the flag hanging over the archway. “That banner says he’s in the castle, right? Well, he has to be in Gurgh in two days for the Sun Festival. All the barons attend, or risk offending the High Seat of the King and his court, who will be eyeing the lesser nobles for a candidate to sacrifice on the Long Night. So yes, he’ll go. If not this morning, then tomorrow.”

With a grunt, Vorgell accepted that logic. Drawing his brows together, he took another bite of bread and chewed slowly. He was feeling quite mellow, in large part because Madd had been especially accommodating. He hadn’t been sucked off three times in a night since his teen years and rather liked it. Madd could be infuriating, and he had a sharp tongue sometimes, but Vorgell could not get enough of the lively little mage.

“I think we need to reinforce the wards around this blind,” Vorgell said.

“Why? So the Sun itself can’t see us?” Madd shook his head. “Let me handle the magic end of things, all right?”

Blowing out a sigh, Vorgell resumed watching the castle. The faint dawn had turned pearly-pink, and he could almost see the fit of the stones making up the wall. Vorgell peered past the high gate to the castle’s two hulking towers, wondering which one had been his prison. The one near the far wall appeared to have the right situation.

“Tell me again how you know where the baron keeps this egg.” Vorgell didn’t like leaving even the least of details to chance.

“The baron himself showed me, because he’s an ass and loved fucking me while I was looking at it right in front of my nose the whole time. And he has to keep it safe, because the collar’s magic depends on the unhatched basilisk,” Madd tapped the jewel eye of the collar, which for once, and to Vorgell’s immense surprise, blinked, “and if the egg breaks, the basilisk dies, and the spell is broken. Which would be just fine by me, but not at all by him, because there’s one little problem with love-collaring a witchkin: when a love collar’s spell is broken, the magic flows straight to the witch.”

Vorgell envisioned some other magic flowing straight to Madd, but his friend was too busy frowning at the castle and its dawn-painted walls. He contented himself with listening.

“The baron’s wife told me all about the spells used to seal the vault. The castle belonged to her family before the baron married her to get his hands on it.”

“So why did the baron throw you in a cell, if he was having his way with you when and how he liked? You told me you stole a mandolin—”

“You think I lied?” Madd slashed his short, sharp knife into the bread again. “For months I was his toy, the laughingstock of his court. The only soul half-decent to me was his wife—and she wasn’t all
that
unhappy, because fucking me kept him off her too. Felt bad about it, though, and slipped me food and things I needed. She was all right. That stinking cell in the tower was where he kept me when he didn’t have me chained to his bed.” He leaned back against the tree and stared up at the branches overhead as he continued.

“One day the Grand Wizard came to visit, lofty and all wrapped in silk robes, and he brought this enchanted mandolin with him. Flemgu told me it was magic, that they were going to summon a unicorn with it. Because that’s what this mandolin’s music did—it summoned unicorns. The wizard would play it near a forest, and a unicorn would hear the enchanted music and pop up in the woods. They made plans to have soldiers nearby to catch the beast.”

Vorgell stared at him in surprise.

Madd allowed a bitter laugh. “It gets better. Flemgu gave me to the Grand Wizard for the night, because, you know, screwing witchkin is wizards’ favorite sport. So the wizard set to screwing me—which is no fun at all if you knew what wizards do—and I’m thinking the last thing I need is for either of them to get their hands on a prancing unicorn. Because I knew damn well what Flemgu was going to do with his share of the horn. He’d be throwing regular fuck parties, with me as the main attraction. That, and sell the rest because it’s worth a Sun god’s fortune.” He shrugged. “When the wizard finished his bout of necromancy with my ass, he fell asleep. But not me. All I could do was stare at that damn mandolin….”

Vorgell grinned. “So
you
played it.”

Madd scowled back. “The unicorn was supposed to show up early in the woods outside the castle, then leave before anyone found it. It was supposed to escape.”

“Maybe it did. It wasn’t that close to the castle when I found it. And I told you, it looked like a deer.” He flushed. “Tasted good too.”

“You
ate
the unicorn? I thought you just snacked on love berries and fucked the horn. For the love of the moon—”

“Hush.” Vorgell looked out toward the castle.

Daylight flooded the field, rays penetrating the leafy canopy of their blind. The castle gate opened with a rattle of chains, and men rode forth from the keep under the baron’s banner. At their center cantered five horses, one forward and two pair following. Madd leaned forward, peering intently at the men being guarded.

“Moon’s blood,” he said under breath. “That’s Flemgu’s lady with him. And wizards, too—”

Vorgell didn’t see how that mattered. The wizards were leaving, and the emptier the castle the better. His excitement rose, anticipating action. When Madd jumped to his feet, so did he.

“Now!” Madd whispered urgently. “Cover your big head!” Crossing his arms above his own dark head, the witch promptly vanished.

Fuck!
But Vorgell knew the plan. He tugged the hood of his cloak of shadows up to hide his hair and face and ran after Madd’s fleeting morning shadow. With the cloak swirling debris in his wake, he reached the road just as the last horses left the gate. Not knowing whether Madd was ahead of him or on his heels, he darted into the shadow of the wall and then past the wall itself. He passed beneath the gate just moments before it clattered down, barring the road.

T
HE
problem with invisibility was the same as its advantage: it made the person wearing it difficult to see. Vorgell made his way just as Madd had directed, with only one misstep when he tripped over a goose that dashed at his legs. He saw what looked like the doorway Madd had described and plunged through, goose on his heels, just before a stout woman emerged to beat the bird back with a broom. Vorgell saw just enough room to squeeze past her and did, and then he wedged himself into the shadow on the other side of the door. As he did, he stumbled over an uneven brick in the floor.

“Oomph! That’s my foot, you clumsy oaf!”

Not a brick, then. He stepped off. “There you are—”

They both went silent as the woman reappeared and, muttering about wanting goose for supper, swung the door closed before stomping off. As she lumbered down the narrow corridor and was lost to sight around a corner, they released their breaths.

“What now?”

“Hold my hand. Keep yours in the cloak.” Madd reached into the cloak of shadows and took hold of Vorgell’s hand. Just the touch of those warm fingers caused Vorgell to remember how they’d felt around his cock. Madd had talented hands. “This way.”