Barkus glanced around the room. "Do you have pen and paper I could borrow?" the woman nodded and bustled off, returning almost immediately. Barkus studied the mark carefully, closely, and copied it to the paper. "I think we need to speak with His Highness."
Growling softly in agreement, Najlah gladly led the way out of the foul-smelling room back to less offensive parts of the castle. "Has he been moved yet?"
"Should have been. I had him put in the suite directly across from yours. So keep it down when you're fucking your wolf, hornless."
"Shut up, useless," Najlah replied, flicking his tongue out.
Ajith only rumbled in amusement and headed off with the woman from the dead-body place.
"Morgue, I think," Barkus said. "We have something similar, though it's very rarely used, since we can smell better than humans, and that goes a long way toward solving mysteries. Ours is just a small shed. More often, we use it for storing bodies when it's simply too cold to properly burn them."
Najlah snarled. A place too cold for burning? That was a living nightmare.
"Well, I never thought I'd find myself bound to a creature that is just short of living flame. Is it true dragons can breathe fire?"
Najlah rumbled and chittered, eyes swirling green. No. Seems pointless when we're surrounded by it. We're just good at using the available fire, and panicked humans see what they expect of demons. Spikes and claws and venom are far more useful in a fight than breathing fire in a place where everyone is built to be flame resistant.
"That's what I figured, but I had to ask," Barkus said with a laugh. "You're certainly deadly enough without adding that to the pile."
As they reached the hall where Najlah's rooms were located, he finally took full note of the smell of strangers, flicking his tongue out several times to get a better sense. Three people, not counting Tevra, all of them with a particular metal-leather scent unique to Gormestian soldiers.
"Three is a damned sad retinue for a royal prince."
He has you and me now. We're worth fifty piddling human soldiers.
"Only fifty? What has you feeling modest?"
Najlah flicked his tongue at Barkus.
At the door to Tevra's new room, the soldier stationed there saluted them. "His Highness says you're to be given immediate access, my lords."
Najlah prowled into the room as the door opened—and stopped short when he saw Tevra was not in his bed as expected. Paying more attention, he followed sound and scent to a door across the room. A dressing room. Why was Tevra out of bed? He growled, tail lashing, as he waited for Tevra to emerge.
Behind him, near a table set with food that had not been eaten, Barkus chuckled. Were you hoping he'd be abed and at your mercy?
Be quiet.
Barkus just laughed some more.
Najlah hissed and started to cross the room to knock him right off his feet, manners and decorum be damned, when the sound of approaching footsteps snapped his attention back to the dressing room.
He growled in a frustrating mixture of concern and confusion and unexpected lust as Tevra emerged. He looked nothing at all like the man in the throne room, or the one who'd been confined to his bed, pale and trembling from barely surviving excessive stab wounds and blood loss.
For one, Tevra suddenly had tattoos. Across his cheeks, forehead, and chin, intricate marks that smelled faintly of magic. More ran down his arms in complex, interwoven chains, all the way down to the backs of his hands and even onto his fingers. Every last mark seemed to be more of the sigils like those Najlah and Barkus had found on Ranteth.
He was dressed in leathers and had a sword at his hips, along with daggers and pouches and other things Najlah didn't recognize but which reeked of blood and magic.
"You're a battle mage," Barkus said. "That's not the term you use in Gormestia—I'm sorry, I don't recall what it is."
"Warlock," Tevra replied. "Yes, I am. Normally it doesn't matter, because these days most of my duties are more diplomatic." His mouth tightened, and for a moment he looked and smelled close to tears. "Were diplomatic, rather. Given all the effort my father put forth to have me murdered, however, it seems prudent to return to my old ways. I am sorry if my appearance alarms. I generally mask the tattoos, but between my injuries and the resumption of old habits, keeping them masked proved to be too taxing."
Najlah chittered loudly, eyes swirling bright green, tail thumping the floor.
Tevra quirked a brow. "I can tell you're laughing at me, even if I don't know why."
"Your Highness, do you honestly think someone like Najlah is going to be alarmed by tattoos."
Tevra stared blankly a moment, then shook his head and laughed. "Fair enough. I'm so used to people seeing me and running for the hills, it never registered there was someone more alarming than me in the room. Two, even. Next to a Lukos and a Tahjili, a Gormestian warlock is positively boring."
"You're legend enough that I don't think that's true."
Najlah growled, eyes swirling pink as he looked between them. Explain everything to me. I've never heard that term. Warlock. You said battle mage. Didn't we face such in the caves?
"Are you different than the mages we fought and killed in the caves?"
"Those are ordinary soldiers trained in magic," Tevra said. "I'm something else entirely. It's difficult, painful, time-consuming, and above all, expensive to craft something like me. There are only about a hundred warlocks in the whole country, and they all come from noble or, at least, wealthy families, with a very small handful of exceptions. I have sigils tattooed into my skin to make casting certain spells easier. It took about fifteen years to acquire all of them; many people cannot endure having more than a few. Only two others have anywhere close to the same number as me. I'm the only one in the kingdom with two full arm sleeves and all the facial markings. It's why I'm so baffled my father wanted me dead—I was infinitely more useful to him alive and loyal, which I have always been. Unquestionably." He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. "That is not a problem for you, though. I apologize for whining. What did you need? I am afraid I cannot linger long and will have to delay our dinner. I felt my three spies in the city die; someone activated their curses, even though I'm the only one who should have been able to do that."
"They're down in the morgue," Barkus said. "I'm sorry. We were actually coming to ask if you might know who they are."
Tevra sighed, looking weary and worn, but he only set his shoulders and said, "Lead the way."
Barkus took the lead in the end, and as they left the room, Barkus's cousins stepped forward to join them, falling into place at the rear. That left Najlah to walk at Tevra's side, which suited him fine, claws clicking on the marble flooring, tail occasionally striking it, though never enough to cause damage.
Back in the foul-smelling morgue, Tevra examined the bodies with a blank expression, though there was no mistaking the smell of distress and anguish on him. "They were spies for me; they were also my friends. They've worked for me, and only me, for a very long time. I sent them into the city to do reconnaissance when we first arrived, and when everything went wrong a couple of days ago, I gave orders to wrap up what they were doing and return to me. They should have returned by this morning. When they didn't… and then I felt it when the curses activated. Damn it. This wasn't necessary. It was just vindictive."