Blood Tempered: Book 1 of the Sword Monk Saga

Blood Tempered: Part 9

When Stench finally appeared in her chambers, late, reeking of alcohol and body odor, and without even knocking, she exploded. Just seeing his unpleasant face had brought her anger back with a vengeance.

"You useless, stinking excuse for a sorcerer! I came within a hair's breadth of dying today. It is your responsibility to shield me from magical threats. Can you do your job or not?" She wanted to throttle the vile little man.

Stench stood in her chambers, shoulders hunched, chin down on his chest, her verbal deluge washing over him. Once she came to a stop, he fixed a bloodshot eye on her.

"About done, then?"

She threw the lead-crystal wine decanter at him. He twitched a finger and it veered off course to crash into the wall. Stench was very, very good at one thing—protecting his own hide. She was his master in power, but there wasn't a sorcerer alive that could match his defensive capability. She knew that. It was part of the reason she'd hired him.

"I had no part in making the flawed shabok," he said, "and I refuse to accept any responsibility for the effects of its demise."

"Why didn't you tell me its death could backlash like that? What the hell am I paying you for?"

"As to the first, you didn't ask, and besides, I told you not to do it. As to the second, you're paying me to keep any mage from divining your intentions or your location using the Art. Which I am doing."

She threw herself into a chair. Her anger was spent. As much as it ever was. In any case, she no longer wanted to throttle the disgusting little troll. "Are you so certain? Someone knew to burn the shabok. How could they be prepared for such a thing unless they had already divined I intended to create one?"

He raised a bushy eyebrow. "Believe me, I am certain. And it isn't easy, keeping you hidden from the mages of three different lands, especially when you go mucking about with ancient necromancy from the last age. You think that doesn't light up the landscape like a bonfire? You aren't paying me half enough for my valuable—no, indispensable!—services."

She snorted. "You are a convenience, Heirus, not a necessity. Do not forget it. Or else."

"Or else what, fair princess? You'll burn me down to bone and ash? Perhaps you might be able to at that, considering your startling power. But in doing so, you'd take this fortress down as well, and everything around it for a quarter league or more." He smiled. "Not exactly the best way to remain inconspicuous, even in Wyeth."

"The fact that you are still breathing is magic in itself," she said. "Someone should have killed you a long time ago."

"Now you sound like my mother, Dureg gnaw her soul."

"Never again compare me to whatever spawned you. Get out, Heirus. You tire me."

"With pleasure, lady. I have a hogshead of imperial ale I was just starting to get acquainted with." And with that, he shambled out of her rooms.

Dismissing Stench from her thoughts, she turned them once again to the shabok. She had had high hopes for the creature. True, her knowledge of their creation had been incomplete, but the result had seemed to match everything she had read about them. She had transformed the imperial scout as an experiment. She disliked having to rely on people such as Stench, Jaga and Olvera, with their maddening tendencies to do what they wanted, rather than what she told them to do.

A shabok army would have made her life, not to mention her plans, much simpler.

She sighed and rubbed her temples, and reluctantly shelved the idea. She promised herself she would revisit the idea when there was time. Perhaps she could puzzle out what went wrong given a few weeks of study and experimentation.

Such a luxury of time would not come soon, she admitted to herself.