Tajik's nostrils flared and color rose and fell in his face, but he couldn't hold Rain's gaze. With a bitter, snarled oath, he pivoted on one heel and stalked to the far side of the room. Jaw set, mouth grim, Rain seared each of the other warriors with a burning look. "We must win this war, no matter the cost. And you must protect Ellysetta with your lives until we do. When we defeat the Mages, we will find Shan and Elfeya and set them free. Until then, this subject is closed." His hand sliced across the air and he leveled a stony, unequivocal glare upon the six warriors. "Is that clear?"

"It's clear, Rain " Bel and Gaelen said simultaneously. The other warriors agreed more slowly—and more grudgingly— but they agreed nonetheless.

That left only Ellysetta.

"Shei’tani?" Rain prompted.

Her lips compressed and for a moment he thought she would spit defiance in his face. But then she nodded and looked away.

Melliandra pushed open the door of the cell housing Lord Death's mate and stepped inside.

The red-haired Fey woman lay frail and broken on the black stone of her cell. A large wound gaped grotesquely in the center of her pale, motionless chest, and scarlet blood ran across her ashen skin to gather in a dark, glistening pool beneath her body. Vadim Maur's umagi had struck a death blow and left the corpse to be hauled away by the refuse collectors.

Fortunately for the red-hair, Melliandra was the refuse collector for the lower five levels of Boura Fell... and she had tended the red-hair's mate enough to know not to come alone.

Beside her, the rag-shrouded Fey gave a gasp and began babbling in her native tongue.

"Hush!" Melliandra hissed. She rushed to close the cell door and spun around to glare at the Fey. "Keep your voice down, dim-skull! They'll hear you!"

But the woman had fallen to her knees beside the red-hair, and she was rocking and weeping and chanting in a broken voice, "Elfeya falla, Elfeya falla. . . ." The imprisoned shei'dalin's shaking hands hovered over the dying Fey's body. For a moment, Melliandra could have sworn she saw a weak golden glow around the healer's hands, but then the woman cried out and snatched her hands back to her chest.

"Ninnywit. You can't weave with those bands on," Melliandra chided. Not even the red-hair—who was as powerful a healer as any ever seen in Boura Fell—could work the sort of significant healing magic required to snatch a life back from the jaws of death when bound by so much sel'dor.

As she hurried to the woman's side, she dug a grimy hand into one of the hidden pockets she'd sewn in the folds of her skirt. Questing fingers brushed across a hard wad of bundled fabric. She pulled the bundle free and quickly unwrapped the layers of cloth to reveal a selection of crudely cut metal keys strung on a strip of braided leather.

The keys were copies of the ones she'd lifted from the umagi guards in charge of Master Maur's most important prisoners in the lower levels. A bit of somulus powder blown into one of the guards' face while he was sleeping had enabled her to relieve him of his key ring. She'd made an impression of the keys in a small clay tablet and returned the originals to his keeping before he woke from the drug's trance.

For weeks, she'd used every opportunity to scrape and file bits of broken blades and dinner knives into keys that matched the impressions she'd made, taking care to tuck all thoughts and memories of her activity in that part of her mind she'd learned to shield from the Mages. She hadn't finished copying all the keys yet, but she had managed to complete the one used for most of the lockable prisoner restraints.

Luckily for this newest shei'dalin prisoner, Master Maur had chained her in a set of those manacles rather than the magic-soldered ones that could not be removed by any means but Mage weaves.

"Let's hope this works," she muttered to herself as she fitted the crudely carved key into the keyhole and twisted.

For one tense moment, the key didn't turn, but after a bit of jiggling, the manacle on the shei'dalin's left wrist gave a quiet snick. The shei'dalin hissed as long, sharp spikes of sel'dor slid out of her wrists, leaving round, ugly boreholes that filled rapidly with blood when Melliandra removed the black metal bands.

The same key worked to release the shei'dalin's ankle restraints as well, but none of the ones on the strip of leather fit the collar around the woman's neck.

Melliandra cast a quick, grim glance at the body of Lord Death's mate. She'd seen death before, too many times to count, and she knew the red-hair's soul had already slipped free of her body. A few moments more and only the gods would be able to call her back in anything but demon form. "We're out of time. You'll have to weave with that on."

The dark-haired shei’dalin didn't waste time on conversation. She simply dropped to her knees and laid her palms on the dead woman's chest. Her hands began to glow.

Melliandra knew the effect sel'dor had on those of Fey blood. There was enough Fey in her own bloodline that she couldn't touch sel'dor for long without feeling her skin begin to burn. And she knew that for pureblood Fey, the black metal's touch felt like boiling, corrosive acid poured over their flesh. The sensation was even worse when they spun magic.

Despite the heavy sel'dor collar that must have felt like a yoke of fire around her neck, the dark-haired shei'dalin merely clenched her jaw and kept weaving until the weak glow Melliandra thought she had seen became a plainly visible orb of warm, shining, golden light.