Page 7 of The Devil's Viking

“Isthatthe really important question?” Gideon asked amiably. “What doyouthink, Guardian Michael?”

The younger man started. “Me, Master?”

“Yes, you.” Gideon tilted his golden head. “Doyouthink that Iris being capable of planning an escape without any help from anyone is the big question here?”

“I…” Michael hesitated, looked over at Jonah and shrank from his baleful glare. Jonah didn’t like him and never had, and contradicting him in front of the Master wasn’t going to help matters. But Gideon had asked him a direct question and he needed to answer. “I don’t think that’s the main issue, Master. I mean, the thing that I’m wondering is how she even… because at night…” He stopped, wondering how to bring up the spiked milk without actually stating it openly: the women were stunned cows who had no clue they were drugged nightly, and Michael wasn’t about to enlighten them.

Thankfully, Gideon seemed to know what he was thinking. He jerked his head towards the door and the three men stepped outside.

“You were saying?” Gideon asked Michael.

“To be fair, I would never have expected Servant Iris to get out of here on her own, Master,” Michael said. “But I’dalsonormally say that she’d never be able to even get up in the middle of the night. She should have been fast asleep by the time Servant Violet returned from the Ritual, and Servant Iris should have been out for another few hours. So… why wasn’t she?”

“Andthat’sthe question that we need answered,” Gideon said approvingly; Michael felt both pride and relief that he was in the Master’s good graces. “It’s very obvious that Iris wasn’t under the influence of any drugs, and so she was able to get up and walk around freely.Sofreely, in fact, that she walked right through the compound, slipped under the fence and disappeared into the woods.”

“The fence and the woods?” Michael repeated. “She didn’t go out the front gate, Master?”

“No.” Gideon shrugged. “Not according to the surveillance video that I watched.”

“She just – just walked into the woods?”

“With nary a stumble,” Gideon said. “She was fast, she was organized, she had a clear plan of action and she carried it out. She even made a quick stop in the library and grabbed what looked like an envelope that she’d hidden in the bookshelf. I’m assuming that it’s full of money, which means that she’s been planning all of this for a while. Not the actions of a woman drugged day and night, don’t you agree?”

The two Guardians shook their heads and then nodded.

“So!” Gideon exclaimed, making the other two men jump. “Since Iris arranged this as well as she did, she has a destination in mind. Where would that be?”

Eager to regain favor with the Master, Jonah jumped in: “The bus station.”

“Of course, the bus station!” Gideon said almost cheerfully. “Which is why I’ve sent Guardians Aaron and Ezekiel to town to investigate. Surely Iris was noticed when she stumbled into the bus station in the early morning, wearing a woman’s nightgown and men’s boots.”

“Can I help, Master?” Michael asked, determined to not be shown up by Jonah’s sudden enthusiasm. It was Jonah, after all, who had dropped the ball on checking that all the women were actually asleep. He knelt in front of Gideon, lowered his head, and uttered the words that had been drilled into his head day and night for almost two years. “How can I serve?”

Gideon stared down at the Guardian prone in front of him, his face suddenly expressionless. Jonah held his breath, marvelling yet again at how quickly the Master could go from joking and jovial to chilling and terrifying.

It still wasn’t clear how the Master really felt about that bitch Iris running away, it still wasn’t obvious which face being shown was his real one – and then it came to Jonah in a blinding flash thatneitherwas true in this moment,noneof his feelings or faces were true, ever. The real Gideon was a mystery and always had been; his strength came from keeping his followers off-balance and guessing. He gained power through the weakness of others, he used mind games and nothing more.

This was not a comforting thought to have: it was disloyal and weak, and Jonah banished it as quickly as it had appeared. After all, Master seemed to be able to read minds, and the last thing that Jonah should do was give anything away. He was on thin ice as it was… he had a punishment coming and if Gideon knew about his flash of awful, accurate insight, it would be worse than whatever was planned right now.

So he did all that he could to save himself and the situation. He fell to his knees next to that kiss-ass ex-pimp Michael and bowed his head, hoping that by lowering his eyes, his traitorous thoughts would stay hidden.

“Master,” he said, fighting to keep the tremble in his voice to a minimum. “How can I serve too?”

“Well, well,” Gideon said in a drawl that struck terror into the men’s hearts. “Here I’ve lost a woman-servant and gained two dedicated, honest,servilemen in her place. Pretty good deal. Unless…”

Both men literally stopped breathing.

“Unless, of course, one of my oh-so-honest Guardians, men who I trust with my life and values and property, actually helped my woman-servant escape.”

Thunderstruck, Jonah and Michael forgot themselves; in unison and without permission, they raised their heads to stare at Gideon’s hard, handsome face. Was he actually saying that one ofthemhad risked their necks to get a pathetic whore out and away? And then they voluntarily stuck around the morning after?

“Master,” Jonah faltered as Michael made inarticulate sounds of pure fear. “Please – I didn’t –”

“You didn’t?” The silken blade was back. “Really?”

“No. I mean yes, really! I mean no, Master, I’dnever–”

“You were the last in the women’s dormitory, were you not, Guardian Jonah?” Now the blade was a cobra’s hiss. “Hmmmm?”

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