Warrior Knight

by Aarti V Raman

  Ziya looked at the menu and said, “I’ll have the lobster bisque. And a glass of Pinot Noir.”

  “Me too,” Krivi said.

  She shot him a quick look but didn’t comment on it. With a determined smile, she turned back to Sam and said, “So, tell me all about the battle of the musicians, honey. The empress has declined to let me in on the details, because she believes I always tend to take your side.”

  And Krivi knew, it was going to be a hard, uphill battle trying to get her to look at him, much less anything else.

  ~~~~~~

  “Dessert anyone? I am full,” Noor announced as she looked regretfully at the dessert cart coming their way.

  Sam shook his head and patted his flat stomach.

  “Nope. I gotta look great for the pictures tomorrow or the empress will never let me live through the night.”

  Noor rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out, before breaking into a wide grin that soothed Ziya’s bruised heart. “You got that right, mister. Your tummy is not going to spoil my wedding pictures.”

  “Engagement pictures, Noor,” Ziya corrected her absently, patting her mouth dry with the napkin provided.

  “From what little I could gather from the major, it might as well be your wedding, right?”

  Ziya’s lips tightened, her eyes flashing quicksilver bright in annoyance.

  He had been doing this the whole time.

  Every time, she made a comment, spoke up, asked a question of the table, he would join in. Adding to the comment, or a question of his own, to go with hers. As if they had any kind of wavelength going on.

  She wanted to kick him, just go to town on his face and punch the crap out of him.

  But she knew, oh, she knew, it was exactly the kind of response he was looking for. Master spy that he was. First would come anger, then would come grief, and then he would console her and cajole her and she would end up right wherever he wanted her.

  Ziya was having none of that.

  Show no emotion, that was her game plan.

  And she was sticking to it like white on rice.

  Sam grinned, while Noor had the good sense to look a little ashamed.

  He brushed back Noor’s hair from the neck, a gesture that caught at Ziya’s lacerated heart and said, “Well, the way I see it. She is getting the grand prize. So she might as well flaunt it.”

  Noor nudged him none too gently in his already full stomach. And he howled.

  “Haah! It’s the other way round and don’t you forget it.”

  “Desserts, anyone?”

  Noor looked at the tiny delights, the Pavlovas and mini cupcakes and the tiny shot glass of pure chocolate. She frowned when Ziya picked out the tiny chocolate shot glass and dug into it with obvious relish.

  “Dammit, Zee,” she complained. “Why did you have to go and pick that one?”

  Krivi reached one long hand and picked the identical shot glass.

  Ziya barely paused in her enjoyment of the dessert.

  “Leave her be, honey,” Sam advised his fiancé. “She is too thin as it is.”

  Noor glared at Sam and muttered something to the likes of you can never be too thin.

  “I think she looks amazing,” Krivi announced to the table, in general. “She always did. I had the hugest crush on her ears.”

  It was an effort but Ziya kept her eyes and her hands to herself and swallowed chocolate that felt like paste in her throat.

  “Do tell?” Noor invited.

  He shrugged. “Nothing to tell. I have a thing for ears, and Ziya’s are the prettiest. Is all.”

  Sam shook his head while Noor had the gooiest expression on her face.

  Ziya was determinedly shoveling down her dessert as if it was of supreme importance to her.

  “Tell us more,” Noor begged.

  ~~~~~~~

  “Well—" Krivi shot the object of his interest a quick look.

  The ends of her fire-engine red hair gleamed in the recessed lighting. He wished he could see the murderous fire in her eyes. Wished for a lot of things, which surprised him because wish fulfillment had not been in his makeup.

  Ever.

  “There wasn’t a list or anything, but she pretty much fits the bill…my ex-boss.”

  Noor hooted, and Sam grinned and shot Ziya a cautious look. She finished her dessert, and kept her tiny dessert fork down carefully.

  She smiled vaguely around the table. “I am done. I am walking.”

  She pushed away from the table and started for the exit.

  Krivi sat and watched her leave, before Sam nudged him in the stomach with his elbow.

  “She wants to walk,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Krivi muttered, a desperate feeling sinking to his stomach like deadweight. “So she just announced.”

  Noor sighed and reached over and rapped him on the forehead.

  Krivi blinked; surprised that he hadn’t seen the move coming. Maybe he was becoming soft in his old age.

  “So go after her, you big lug,” Noor ordered. “Men. You people need a goddamn map with GPS instructions to figure out the simplest things. How you p think you run the world is laughable!”

  Krivi grinned, because she was so right, it was laughable. He dropped his car keys on the table. The logo on the ring was Porsche.

  “Navy-blue. Opposite this place,” he instructed Sam. “Thanks for the advice.”

  And he stalked out, his pace confident and eager.

  Sam shook his head and smiled fondly at Noor.

  “What?” she asked him.

  “I love you, you inveterate romantic. Never forget that.”

  She smiled, a gooey little smile. “I know, Major Sameth Qureshi.”

  ~~~~~~

  Krivi caught up with Ziya just as she stepped off the pavement of the restaurant. “Ziya?”

  She didn’t turn to look at him.

  “I would like to talk to you.” He kept pace easily with her as they dodged the afternoon restaurant rush.

  “I don’t believe we have anything to say to each other, Mr. Iyer.”

  He grabbed her arm and she whirled on him, all the fury of the angels spilling out of her eyes.

  “Take your fucking hands off me, right now.” She gritted out.

  Krivi unwrapped his fingers, one by one.

  She stepped back a full step, uncaring that they were in a public place. “What makes you think you have the right to come here, into my life, my friend’s lunch date and just…pretend that everything is fine? You have no right, anymore. No right.”

  “I just wanted your forgiveness,” he said, quietly.

  “You can’t have it,” Ziya shot back. “You can’t have anything, Krivi. I hate you, you hear me? I wish I had never met you. I wish I was the terrorist’s sister, because then I could at least think of a horrible enough punishment for what you did to me. Payback, it’s called, isn’t it?” she hurled at him.

  He said nothing in his defense.

  “I didn’t ask to be born to a trampy mother. I have had a shitty childhood, and I learned to live with it. But you came and made me question, made me question…” Her voice trailed off.

  Broke.

  “I hate you.” There was a world of hurt and anger on her lovely face.

  ~~~~~

  Hurt and anger, he had helped create all because he couldn’t get a handle on what he felt for her. Because he had wanted to punish her for being who she was…not a terrorist’s sister. But the woman who had made him want to…live again.

  “I know.”

  In the distance, over the din of the people, the hubbub of cabs and buses trundling past and the vendors in the market shouting out their wares to tourists and browsers alike, he heard the sharp, animal thrum of his car.

  The car he had bought on a whim, precisely because he knew he was expected to drive something low-key and understated. Unmarked Sedan was the technical jargon for the wheels they used in the spy business.

  But, he had wanted speed, power and the abili
ty to control both.

  And he had wanted his own drive because no ex-spy worth his salt would depend on public transport for a quick getaway.

  Always map out your exit. It was Spy Defense 101.

  You didn’t forget something as basic as that.

  “You know nothing.”

  Ziya shoved him back a full step, and he went back, because he was pretty sure she was this close to losing it. And he didn’t want to anger or alienate her even more.

  “You know not a thing about what you’ve done to me.”

  The engine purred, which meant that Sam, no Noor, was probably gunning it down for full speed. The throttle really opening up under that much smooth power.

  “I was happy and now I just—"

  And the world exploded into a million tiny bits as Krivi looked on.

  Watching his beloved navy blue, conspicuous Porsche turn into a fireball of energy and shrapnel that mushroomed into a spectacle of absolute and final death.

  Twenty-Three

  Ziya thought she had gone deaf.

  Deaf and blind.

  And maybe crazy.

  Maybe she was dead.

  She wasn’t sure.

  There was a moment of absolute, deafening silence, when all she did was look at Krivi’s horror stricken face. It was frozen in a rictus of such terror she couldn’t even process it.

  Krivi Iyer put the fear of god into others, man and God alike. He wasn’t scared of anything. He didn’t love anything enough to be scared of it.

  But, no, this wasn’t fear of something.

  This was fear for…

  Krivi grabbed her and shoved her behind him, then under him as the world went mad in a sound of such terrible magnificence; she knew she had gone deaf.

  She was surrounded by a wall of muscle and man, as the ground shook and shivered and debris kicked up. As the noise reached a level of crescendo that should have made her deaf.

  Explosion.

  The word trickled into her mind from the depths of a consciousness that had gone to sleep. Gone numb.

  There had been an explosion somewhere. She was part of an explosion.

  Ziya turned her head into Krivi’s shoulder, because he was biting his fingers into her scalp. His fingers hot and burning as the asphalt they were lying on. Hurting her skin, forcing her to breathe as she tried to suck in lungfuls of desperately needed air.

  She tried to open her eyes, but they were squeezed shut against the force with which he held her under him.

  She couldn’t move.

  Couldn’t see.

  A second later, he was off her and dragging her upright in a fast, jerking motion.

  His hard face had gone stone-cold. No emotion, nothing visible on it. The whites of his eyes were the only color on his black body. His black face.

  Ziya couldn’t speak because her ears were still ringing, her mouth was completely, uncharacteristically dry.

  She felt dizzy.

  Krivi tugged at her hand, as he lifted her up by his own force.

  The hand he held tightly clasped between his own. The pressure terrible and somehow, reassuring at the same time.

  She looked down at his brown hands holding hers, and there were bits of gravel on them. Bits of stone and pebbles, detritus of a London pavement.

  Her vision swam. She swayed on her feet, and he tugged her straight, hauling her close to his side. Keeping her near his chest.

  “Wha…what happened?” Ziya whispered…tried to whisper, because no sound emerged from her desert-dry throat.

  “We have to walk, okay?” Krivi told her quietly.

  In a voice that she somehow heard even though her ears were ringing, her vision was double and she wasn’t altogether she was alive. Or crazy.

  Or dead.

  Dead.

  The word impinged on her consciousness and murmured with a horrendous memory.

  “Okay.”

  The word came out, dusty, scratchy. As if Ziya was speaking for the first time ever.

  “We have to walk now.”

  He led her back inside the restaurant, pushing through the crowds of onlookers that had come out of the back. He took her into the blessed cool of the restaurant interior and then swiftly, through the Employees Only door, into the kitchen and out back.

  Then he was running.

  Literally taking off as if demons, as if the devil himself was after him.

  Ziya ran to keep up with him, stumbling, stumbling, her mind shut down, her brain on autopilot. Dodging the people when he did, walking swiftly, briskly, when he did it. She had no will, no mind of her own.

  They walked across Notting Hill, right into Westminster, then he hailed a cab to an address in Chelsea.

  Behind them, Ziya could hear the wails of sirens. The wails of ambulances and police vans as they made their way to Notting Hill. The First Response Team, FRTs, they were called. And they arrived when there was a…there was a…

  ~~~~~

  Krivi knew their job as thoroughly as he knew his own. So he knew how fast, how thorough, how fucking efficient they were.

  They would find out where he lived in five minutes or less, and he was going with the less, so he knew they only had about three hundred seconds before every cop in the city was looking for them.

  He knew of nothing else to do except call for backup. Harold.

  He pulled his cell phone out, punched in a series of numbers while Ziya sat quietly, ominously quietly beside him. Her eyes blank and large on her pasty face. She had no animation, no life inside her.

  Shock.

  The blessed numbness of shock.

  He wanted her stashed somewhere safe and quiet when it wore off.

  The pain would be gut-wrenching.

  The cab stopped and he threw money at the driver. Then he pulled Ziya out and, with one hand around her waist, the other one holding his cell phone, he walked into his hotel.

  ~~~~~~

  Ziya didn’t know what was going on.

  Her brain had stopped functioning, sometime ago.

  And there were some words, large, terrifying words running inside her numb brain that she couldn’t make any sense of.

  Explosion. Dead. Bomb. Run. Run. Run.

  She followed Krivi into a room, and watched passively while he tore around the room, stuffing things into a duffel bag, swearing fluently into his phone when it was not answered.

  “Come on,” he ordered her, as he shut the door behind him with the Do Not Disturb sign.

  Ziya grabbed onto his hand and they ran down three flights of stairs and out the back exit, where he hailed yet another cab and gave an address she couldn’t hear. It sounded like Surrey, but she wasn’t sure.

  She was deaf.

  Ziya turned her head a fraction of an inch, every movement creaking in her bones, rattling them like a ghoul in chains.

  She found a strange red trickling around his temple. It ran down his hard jaw, disappeared down the strong, brown column of his throat and into the collar of his cool, leather jacket.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said.

  Her voice was lifeless, bewildered. “You’re bleeding, Krivi.”

  He gave her a quick look, like the looks a doctor gave a patient, before delivering really bad news to them. A sympathetic, impatient look, which gauged exactly how much bad news the other person could handle.

  “You’re bleeding,” she repeated.

  The cab took a hard right and exited the city, by getting on the motorway to Manchester.

  Ziya looked out the window in surprise. “We’re not in London, anymore.”

  More of the same childlike bewilderment coated her voice.

  “No, Ziya, we aren’t.” Krivi’s voice was low, soft. As if he wanted to reassure her.

  But what about…

  What was going on?

  Explosion. Dead. Bomb.

  Run.

  Run.

  Run.

  Ziya closed her eyes as a wave of nausea consumed her and she made a
gagging sound.

  He quickly reached across her seat and rolled down the window, and she put her head out and vomited everything she had eaten for lunch. Her stomach roiling, her head spinning.

  He didn’t even touch her.

  He just let her finish throwing up before offering a clean handkerchief and some mouthwash from the backpack he carried.

  “You’re going to pay for cleaning that up, man!” The cabbie screamed.

  Krivi gave him a single look in the rearview mirror and said, “Yes. I will. Now shut the fuck up and drive. But stick to the speed limit. We don’t want any trouble.”

  Ziya turned her head a little bit more and looked at the strangle halo that surrounded Krivi’s hair. It was bits of orange and navy blue and…

  She retched again, her eyes burning with the force of her nausea.

  “Wha…what happened?” she whispered, gripping him by the shirt front.

  He put an arm around her back, drew her close to him and whispered in her hair, the words she had been trying to deny, deny with every fiber of her being.

  Deny because if they were true, if these words were true, then nothing else in the world was. And nothing ever could be.

  Nothing.

  Krivi said, “I am sorry, Ziya. I am so sorry. Sam and Noor…I am so sorry. It was meant for me and they sat in the car and I am so sorry…”

  And she closed her eyes and closed her mind because she didn’t want to hear anymore.

  ~~~~~~

  The Woodpecker watched.

  It had never given Wood any particular pleasure to watch the handiwork before. Bombings were just a job, well-executed. And Wood took pride in well-executed jobs. It wasn’t necessary to be there when said job actually took place.

  But, this time it was personal.

  It was fucking personal.

  This ex-spy with his hotshot credentials and his hero complex had thought he could get to Wood.

  Catch Wood?

  What a joke!

  Now, look what had happened to him.

  Krivi Iyer was no more.

  Krivi Iyer was dead.

  Krivi Iyer was dead in a blast that had been triggered with a full pound of C4 and Semtex, an automatic ignition relay fuse that would have ensured the deaths of anyone caught in its immediate vicinity. The bomb had been remarkably simple to place, because all Wood had had to do was ask a nearby running tourist child to place a small packet under the car.