Chapter 9 – Part 17

They’d torn the provisional commander’s uniform from him before beating him and placing him in chains. The beating had been vengeful at first, and then purposeful. They’d knocked out half of his teeth, one at a time. It would be a while before he could imitate another. His natural ability to change color and texture didn’t include growing new teeth.

They’d left the back molars, too hard to get to. They hadn’t even looked at the left, lower back molar.

The front teeth were all gone, however. He’d not pass for anyone other than a toothless backwoods dweller until he bought himself some dentures. Which it was doubtful that he’d live long enough to do.

He kneeled, naked and bleeding from his mouth and nose, his hands with the broken fingers bound behind his back and then tied to his ankles. He’d tried slipping his bonds, but they were tight, and hardened by some druid spell.

And the two shifters guarding him had clouted him under his ribs mightily each time he’d tried.

The tent flap opened, and someone came in. The changeling blinked against the light, tears leaking from one swollen eye. The flap closed. Two figures stood before him.

To the left, a shifter woman in hide armor, her face covered with light hair and raccoon-like markings. She wore a wooden shield strapped to one arm, and an owl sat perched on her shoulder, eyeing the prisoner with a gaze that held far more intelligence than any animal should have.

To the right, a medium-sized humanoid figure in leather armor, a longsword on his left side and a wolf crouching at his right. The medium-sized figure had the insignia of the Wardens of the Wood on him, two officer’s stars pinned to his collar, and a red scarf on his neck.

And his skin was waxy and white, his eyes mostly white with barely a pupil, and his close cropped hair thin and gray.

The spy who’d been pretending to be the provisional commander spat blood. It was pinker, paler than human blood, but still red enough. In his bound position, he couldn’t reach the Warden of the Woods’ boots, but he’d tried.

“Race traitor,” he coughed. “Serving their plants.”

The Warden crouched, and stared directly into the prisoner’s eyes. Not a word was exchanged between the two changelings for a good two minutes. Finally the Warden smiled.

“I can break you,” the Warden said. “I know I can. You’re a coward. We figured out who you killed to get close enough to the provisional commander to garrote him. We figured out who you pretended to be before that. We traced you back to the stones that you rested against when you swam to shore after slipping off the boat.” He smiled slightly, but with no warmth. “It’s easy to find things if you know what to look for.” The smile left. “Now, who hired you to get us to stand down?”

“Go have relations with yourself,” snickered the bleeding spy. “I don’t even know who hired me, you know how it works.”

The Warden turned to look at the woman and she shook her head. He then gestured to the shifters on either side of the spy, and they simultaneously kicked him in the shins.

The changeling spy howled in pain and pitched forward, his bleeding mouth scraping the cold, hard ground. He felt the Warden grab hold of his ear, and his head was cruelly turned upwards.

The Warden changeling’s face was large in his vision, through the tears and pain. “The Dream Catcher says that you lie. She’s good at spotting lies. Even from people like you and me. You know something of who hired you, even if they said nothing. You’d want to be sure that you had cover. I’m guessing that they assured you that the Medani would be busy chasing low-level saboteurs and other changelings in Varna, so that you’d slip in unnoticed and push us all loose.”

The spy considered his options as he lay bound like a lamb for the slaughter. He swore to himself in his mind. When he’d heard that Parnain had been dispatched he’d nearly lost control of his bowels. His half-sister had a different reaction to Parnaian’s name. She’d attempted to back out then and there, and they’d killed her. A grimy claw had reached out from a bandaged hand and paralyzed her with a scratch, and then they’d fed her to something that stank of the grave.

He hadn’t needed to force himself to place the accents. Only Karrnath used undead. He’d been all set to mourn his half-sister, maybe entertain some revenge, but then they’d promised him her half.

Five thousand gold down, fifteen thousand more on success. In a Kundarak escrow. With that type of money, he’d be comfortable in a Cyran townhouse until the end of his days.

He’d rushed things. He’d done it too fast. The damned gnome butler had found the body. He should have figured out a way to bury it.

Something in the back of his mind tickled. It seemed familiar.

“He’s thinking of accents,” the shifter woman said suddenly. “It’s hard to get information from his mind, he has been trained well.”

The changeling spy froze. She was trying to get into his mind. Druid magic or the thing that his uncle had warned him about? The mind magic? His uncle had trained him to resist mental probes, but the mind tired as did the body.

He swallowed. And if they found the tooth? And if the Karrns raised him from the dead to torture his ghost? The Reachers could only kill him once, the necromancers of Karrnath could kill him many times.

The tickle again, and it was deeper in.

“Grab and hold his mouth!” shouted the shifter woman.

He didn’t give them the chance. He bit down on the lower, left, back molar, and the poison filled his mouth.

He was dead before they even pulled his head back.