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“Hm.”

I glanced sidelong at him. “Man of many words this evening. Makes a refreshing change.”

He narrowed his eyes, his gaze never leaving the wall. “I’m concentrating.”

“Ah. Of course. Not quite enough brainpower spare to manage watching and talking at once. Typical Minotaur.” I rolled my eyes and pointed toward the gate, ignoring his fake laugh. “So., We get down to that section of wall, scale it before guard one turns back around, cross the courtyard unseen and…”

“Two.”

“Two what?”

“Two courtyards.”

Of course, the Gorgon King had two courtyards, because one was not enough, clearly.

“Fine, we cross two courtyards unseen by guard number two, get inside without being spotted by guard three, locate the single most dangerous ruler in all the Badlands…” I spread my hands. “Piece of cake.”

Aster nodded slowly. “And then?”

I looked back at the fortress and sighed. “Then we pray to every god there is that he’s not standing there sharpening his blades but somewhere soft and vulnerable instead so we actually have a chance at grabbing him.”

“That’s the plan?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a plan, exactly.”

“Then what would you call it?”

A flower on a nearby vine, startled by his deep voice, swayed toward him as though it meant to taste him, and I yanked him away before it could take a bite.

“I would call it a strong opening suggestion,” I said, eyeing the thing warily. “An optimistic one. But unless you’ve a better one to offer, then it seems mine wins by default.” And with neither the time nor the patience left to argue it, I started forward, ignoring the colorful stream of curses that followed me.

Unfortunately, getting in proved a great deal harder than I had hoped. The first wall was easy enough. The second courtyard was anything but. We spent the better part of ten minutes pressed flat behind statues whose eyes followed us as we moved. Then we spent equal amounts of wasted time crouched among decorative hedges that grew, I noticed with deep unease, straight up through the bones of some creature I very much did not want to identify.

Then something large and scaled and possessed of entirely too many teeth caught our scent. Fortunately, it took a liking to chasing Aster, who led it a merry dance through the corridors before shutting it neatly inside a room somewhere down a deserted hall.

So, not a piece of cake. No, more like a piece of a cook’s roast after a three-day bender. Another delightful slang word I learned recently from Aster that I would definitely be using often. Especially when this was all over, as I planned to spend a great deal of time in an alehouse sampling the local beauties and catching up on time missed… or should I say, time stolen.

Bastard.

Weapons drawn, we moved through the fortress with all the stealth of trained assassins, hunting a Gorgon King I was beginning to suspect did not exist at all.

And then a long, mournful wailing drifted toward us.

“By the gods,” I hissed, “what in all the realms is that? It sounds like somebody is torturing a Harpy.”

We followed it down a corridor, the sound swelling until it was very nearly deafening. We reached a solid, unremarkable, rather plain-looking door.

Steam curled out from beneath it. Somewhere behind it, running water cut suddenly silent. The wailing went on, lurching up and down in pitch every few seconds.

“Wait,” I pressed an ear to the wood. “Wait, wait, wait…”

Aster pressed his ear beside mine.

“Is that him?” I asked, and Aster frowned at me.

“How the fuck should I know? He didn’t exactly try serenading me last time we met,” I smirked and looked him up and down and said with a snigger in my tone,

“No, I don’t suppose he would.”