I avoided the hostile gazes of Kilcoy’s mercenaries as I returned to the kitchen. I laid out twelve bowls and arranged the cutlery on metal trays. Selene’s voice cut through the ruckus in the dining hall, and the scrape of chairs and clink of tankards told me that the mage had settled down her fellows to eat.

I cast my mind out to the Swordsman. Knock three times on the glass, follow the elf into the kitchen, and position yourself by the stove. Keep quiet.

Then I sent a mental probe to the Slammers hidden in the stable. Move quietly to the back door of the kitchen and wait for the elf to open the door. Stay silent and hide in the pantry.

My Draught for Unwelcome Guests bubbled viciously as I scooped up the pot and poured it into the stew. I needed to eliminate the threat posed by the mercenaries as rapidly as possible. My homunculi were the contingency, and I had a gut feeling that I would need them to finish the job. I poured the last of the poison into the stew, swirled the savory broth to dilute it, and doled out twelve servings.

I still didn’t know what Selene’s game was, but my four homunculi and a blood mage could handle her if she turned out to be hostile.

Jeering voices greeted me as I stepped into the dining room with the first six servings of stew. My uncle’s long banquet table spanned out across the center. Carved mahogany chairs flanked the sides of the table, and I realized with a flash of anger that the soldiers had broken five to start the fire at the other end of the room. I wrinkled my nose at the stench of spilled beer, wine-laced breath, and old sweat. The mercenaries’ weapons sat beside them at the table.

They were still prepared for a fight, even at this level of inebriation.

“Where are the whores?” a man demanded.

I fed them an improvized story about a fault in the Replicator as I handed out their food.

“It’s a difficult process,” I said. “ I’m not used to making them. I’ll get right to it after you’ve all eaten.”

“You’d better,” snarled another. “We’ve been waiting far too long for a good fuck. Roarwind’s women are expensive, and most of them are disease-ridden bitches.”

The others roared their assent. Selene stood beside the fire and quirked an eyebrow at me. Brigmann drove a backward elbow into my gut as I served the man to his left, and a flash of pain knifed through my ribs. I gritted my teeth and turned quickly back to the kitchen.

Spoons clinked against the bowls behind me, and I doubled my pace.

The greedy pigs were already eating. I wouldn’t have time to poison all of them because the impatient ones would be halfway through their bowls before the last ones had eaten a single spoonful.

It was time for the second stage of my plan.

Alexia appeared through the back entrance of the kitchen just as I dropped the empty tray on the bench beside the stove. She unslung a quiver of bolts and my loaded arbalest from her slender shoulders. I took them from her as alarmed howls exploded from the dining room, followed by the sound of heads crashing into a solid table.

“We need to move quickly,” I said as I wrenched the pantry open.

The Swordsman barrelled out of it at my command. The Slammers stomped out behind him and hefted their shields.

I inhaled to calm my nerves. Alexia ghosted to my side. Her beautiful face was set with a dangerous calm as she glanced an unanswered question at me.

“Find that little ratfuck and bring me his fucking balls!” Brigmann shouted from inside the dining room.

I lifted my crossbow to my cheek, angled around a little, and then sent my order out to the homunculi with both my voice and my mind.

The Shield Slammers sprinted into the dining room. Kilcoy’s hired muscle scrambled to bring their spears to bear as my homunculi crashed into them like runaway colts.

My arbalest jerked in my hands, and a bolt punctured a soldier’s eye socket. His legs vanished from under him, and his skull bounced woodenly off the table as he went down. Six of my uninvited guests had been felled by my poison, their bloated faces resting on the table.

My Slammers collided with two mercenaries and forced them back while the Swordsman lunged after them with a sadistic grin.

I reloaded without looking at my crossbow.

The Swordsman impaled an unfortunate mercenary with a single thrust. The other mercenary’s head exploded when my Slammer’s struck him from both sides with their shields. A Slammer drove the edge of his shield into a soldier as the mercenary tried to scramble onto the table. I slid a bolt into my crossbow, lifted it, and pulled the trigger. The third of Kilcoy’s surviving guards took the bolt in the neck in a spray of scarlet.

I heard a harsh crackle and ducked back into the kitchen. Hazy energy whipped past my face and washed against the entrance to the dining room. Gray confusion clouded my mind for a split second, and the kitchen spun around me. I found my bearings and shook off the spell.

Selene had joined the fight, and it wasn’t on our side.

I swore as I slid my foot through the arbalet’s stirrup. Alexia raced past me and leapt onto the table like a dancer. The elf dragged her fingers through a widening pool of blood and and charged it with magic. I rammed a new bolt into the crossbow just as the blood mage sent a fist-sized orb of pure power at Selene, whose eyes opened wide before she dived to the left. Alexia’s orb of energy exploded against the fireplace in a cloud of burning cinders.

My Swordsman shouldered past a Slammer to behead a retreating mercenary. Brigmann lunged forward with a snarl. The Swordsman turned aside the man’s spear with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. Brigmann scooped up a bowl of poisoned stew and hurled it at the Swordsman, but my new killing machine was too fast. He shimmied to the side, planted a foot on a Slammer’s tower-shield, and vaulted himself into the air.

White light flared from his sword as he activated his special ability. Brigmann raised his spear to deflect the blow, but the Swordsman’s blade sheared through it like straw and kept going. Brigmann opened his mouth to scream when the Cleaving Blow ripped through his skull as if it were butter and continued slicing downward. The leader of the spearmen fell apart into two halves, and his intestines splattered onto the floor in a tangled mess.

A rippling haze filled the air as Selene countered Alexia’s explosive orbs with what her disruptive magic. The blond mage grinned as she wove energy into the air to ward off the elf’s projectiles. She seemed to barely notice all the mercenaries dying around her. She danced around Alexia, and it suddenly became clear that my own mage was outmatched.

The mercenaries were down, and Selene was as powerful as I’d anticipated. But she wasn’t making any move to hurt Alexia or kill my other homunculi, which meant that all of this was a game to her.

I wasn’t about to let her kill my homunculi. But I didn’t want her dead, either.

I backed out of the dining hall and sprinted through the kitchen. I rounded a corner in the hallway and moved through the dining hall’s other entrance. Selene went dead still as I lifted my crossbow and aimed it at her.

“Alexia, stop,” I ordered.

The blood mage lowered her hand at my words. Blood dripped from her fingers as she stepped backward and almost tripped over a soldier’s corpse. The Slammers flanked Selene, and my Swordsman climbed onto the table to level his sword at her throat.

“No need for such a show of power,” she purred. “I surrender.”

I didn’t let my crossbow waver. “You don’t strike me as the surrendering type.”

“Oh, I am. It just depends on the circumstance. I’m not here to hurt you. Any of you,” the mage said as she smiled at Alexia. “I wanted to see what you were all capable of. Why do you think I intervened when they wanted to kill you on the spot?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, “but since Jamin left, anyone who has set foot on this farm has either wanted to kill me, or wanted to take my homunculi. So forgive me if I’m a little twitchy.”

“You’re forgiven.” Selene laughed. “I don’t work for Longhorn, if that’s what you’re worried about. I hate the creature and any who follow him.” Venom colored her tone when she said the Shadow Lord’s name. “You want him stopped because he wants to kidnap your elvish friend here. I want him dead for other reasons. We could work together.”

I considered the thought for a long moment. “You knew I was planning this.” I gestured at the poisoned stew and the corpses.

Selene nudged what remained of Brigmann with her foot. “I sensed it. I didn’t think it would be something quite so effective, but then, auras are notoriously difficult to read.”

Alexia’s eyes widened. “You see auras? People’s potential, you can see it with your eyes?”

Selene nodded. “You’re colored with innocence, great power, and love.” She turned to look at me, and her smile took on a sensual edge. “And you, Caleb, radiate wealth, cunning, and violence. It’s really rather distracting.”

I lowered my crossbow and thought hard. “If you hate Longhorn so much, why did you come here with Kilcoy? Why were you willing to let these men die at my hands?”

She rolled her eyes. “I was following Kilcoy to get closer to his inner circle and get an audience with Roarwind’s Shadow Lord. As for these idiots, they were inconsequential. I’m willing to work with whoever it takes to bring Longhorn Martyn down and kick his screaming ass back to the Hells, where it belongs. And if I can profit from it, so much the better.”

“So you’re a mercenary?” Alexia asked.

“I certainly didn’t get this far by being a Kingdom-approved mage,” Selene replied. “Martyn used a demonic pact to possess Kilcoy and speak to you. Kilcoy obviously didn’t read the fine print.”

“A mercenary mage with demonic expertise who can read auras,” I said. “You’re certainly not the kind of person I expected to have turn up here.”

Stand down, I told my homunculi, and guard the front door.

The Swordsman and the two Slammers turned and left the room. Selene watched them leave and gestured for Alexia and me to join her. I pushed a corpse off the chair and offered it to the blood mage. Alexia couldn’t take her eyes off Selene as she sat down. A mixture of fascination and excitement shone through the elf’s eyes as she gazed at the mage.

“You’re certainly not what I expected to find on Jamin’s farm,” Selene said. “Illegal homunculi, a very potent piece of alchemy, and a crack shot besides. Half of Roarwind would be shaking in their shoes if they knew what you were capable of. You’re a man who’s going places, Caleb. And I intend to follow you there, wherever it may be—if you’ll have me.”

I held out my hand. “You’ll help me take down Longhorn?”

Selene’s sensual smirk crossed her features again. “Oh, Master Caleb, nothing would make me happier.”