My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Nets

They did not go to supper.

Valdemar took one look at the letter, in the last red light of dusk, and tore it in half.

"It is a trap," he said. "He wants his priests to watch me change."

"So we don't go."

"So we do not go. And they come to us." He pulled on the trousers she'd found him and turned in a slow circle, listening. "I count four at the east gate. Perhaps six. Silver nets."

"How do you know that?"

"Because that is what I would send."

He was right.

The first crash came a few minutes later, when the tower door burst inward, and a dozen soldiers in plum livery poured through with torches.

Behind them came the grey priests in single file, each carrying a coil of shimmering net.

"Take him alive!" the captain bellowed. "Alive!"

Valdemar stepped in front of her.

He had no sword, and no shirt, and his silver collar gleamed in the torchlight.

He picked up the iron poker from beside the stove.

"Stay behind me," he said.

"I'm not staying behind anyone."

"Hinata."

"I'm the tamer." She pulled out the little silver key. "Hold still, because this has to happen right now."

He bent his head.

She unlocked the collar in one motion, and ripped it free, and shoved it into her tunic, and the runes went dark.

For the first time, Valdemar Ravenholt stood in front of his enemies without a leash.

He moved.

The poker rang off a sword, and then off a helmet, and two soldiers went down.

A priest threw a net, and he ducked, caught the edge in his fist, and hurled it back over the man's own head.

The man screamed as the silver wires burned through his robe.

Hinata grabbed the horse-trough bucket and swung it into the captain's knees.

He folded over, swearing.

"The floor!" Valdemar shouted over the noise. "Under the cot! There is a drain grate!"

She dived.

The iron grate was rusted shut, but she'd found a crowbar in the tack box that morning.

It came up with a groan, and a smell of old water rolled out of the dark.

"Go!"

"After you!"

"Hinata, go!"

She went down feet first into black slime, and a moment later she heard him land behind her.

Something hissed over their heads, and a net settled on the grate and sizzled.

They ran.

They ran through the dark for longer than she could count, with water to their ankles and the sound of boots thundering behind them.

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