2. Chapter Two

“You know, you weigh a bloody ton.”

“It’s all coat. Though… feel free to put me down and STOP with the kidnapping.”

To my surprise, he obliged. Immediately. Dumping me on the floor of the maze of sewers we had entered some half hour ago like the sack of potatoes he had carried me as. I mentally considered my options as I looked down the passage we had turned into and tried to see if my memory was good enough to see me back to the entrance. It wasn’t. So I stayed put.

“Kidnapping? I thought it was more ’saving your bony ass’”.

“First I’m fat, now I’m bony? Make up your mind.”

Unlike above ground, the sewers were protected from the cold winter wind and free of the falling snow. In fact it felt quite warm. A little too warm and I soon found myself pulling at the heavy woollen coat from my shoulders, eager to be rid of it.

“So, if I am not being kidnapped, I assume I am then free to go?”

“No.”

I attempted what should have been a cool glare, but found myself studying his face again. What I had first thought to be perfection, I now could see was not. His nose was just a fraction too large. He had a small scar on one side of his neck. His lips a little too thin and dark eyes too narrow.

Was my vision really so blinkered when he first entered the shop? Was the lighting in there so bad? The light crystals were starting to dim and had been needing to be changed for over a week now. Or is my sight now blurred by his distasteful personality?

My thoughts were interrupted by gruffness of his voice when he spoke.

“We need to find Jarek.”

“We? You. This has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

“You are Zarina?”

His lips gave my name an old inflection that I had not heard before; the ‘rina’ given more focus than the ‘Zar’. I nodded, not really seeing the point in lying.

“There was a man who lived a long time ago known as Viscount Aanson Doraster. He had numerous mistresses over several decades and he was almost as well known for his bedroom hopping as he ever was for his Kha wielding. But few of these couplings produced any viable off spring. And those that did, never amounted to much. There was one exception. You.”

Okay, not only was he rude, annoying and arrogant, he was also completely insane. I blinked and nodded in a manner that I hoped was reassuring as I started to get up to my feet. “That’s lovely. Now, excuse me, I really do have this thing I need to get to and I’m already late.”