by Deb E Howell
“So you see,” he said. “It’s nothing personal, at all. It is business. Just business.” Something flitted across his face; something so similar to Jonas’ customary expression: guilt.
“Killing his wife, pregnant with his child, was personal.”
“It’s not as though he doesn’t have others.”
Llew bit down on her anger. He was trying to provoke her, and he was succeeding. Of course it only made her more angry to feel herself react. Why should it bother her that Jonas was just a man like every other man?
“But he loved her. And he already loved that child. And you took them from him.” Braph was suddenly expressionless. Llew watched him for a moment and realisation dawned. “You didn’t intend to, did you? You went to fight him. You went to fight him, and he wasn’t there.”
“I think it would be wise if you stopped talking now,” Braph warned.
Llew was silent. It was time to return to planning an escape. She didn’t think she could do anything while she and Braph were in the middle of nowhere; he had superior speed even without the enhancement of his magic. But she had spent years sneaking through the streets of Cheer and had honed her skills not just in pickpocketing, but in making speedy getaways. She was almost certain that once they arrived back amongst civilisation she would be able to make a break for it.
“Are there any free Aenuks?”
“No.”
That meant that if she healed while on the run in Turhmos, she might as well paint herself red, pass round maps and wait for Turhmos to find her. Oh, and be ready to bear children for any number of unknown Aenuks. Her eyes settled on the knife now strapped to Braph’s hip.
* * *
The sparrow hopped in close for the crumb before flitting away again, head tilting this way and that, assessing the risk Jonas posed: far more than any other human physically, yet he wouldn’t hurt it. He pulled off another tuft of bread and threw it at the bird’s feet. It fluttered into the air for a few seconds, landed long enough to catch the bread with its beak and danced away again with its prize.
Jonas smiled.
“Explain it to me,” Hisham said, pulling Jonas’ attention from the bird.
Having crossed the Brurun-Turhmos border about mid-morning – a quiet affair, as most of Turhmos’ population lived toward the south-east of the country, avoiding civilian casualties when Quaver and Turhmos clashed – they ate their lunch in a clearing off the road. Jonas was almost surprised to find lush green grass within Turhmos’ borders. He had always assumed it would have been killed off by Aenuks. But grass didn’t take long to grow, and it had been months since Turhmos and Quaver had last faced each other in battle.
“Why are we in Turhmos trying to rescue an Aenuk?”
Jonas couldn’t help smiling. Less than a month ago, he would have thought he was crazy, too. “What did they tell you?”
“Not much. Only that you’d found trouble and needed support. I only guessed what she was when Braph turned up. Still working for Turhmos, is he?”
“He was alone on Aghacia. I think he’s workin’ for himself.”
“So . . . ” Hisham pulled a piece of bread from his bun and stuck it in his mouth. He was trying to act relaxed, but the reason for their mission had clearly been bothering him. “This Aenuk . . . that you, the last known Syakaran, slept with . . . ”
Alvaro shifted uncomfortably at the reminder, though Jonas doubted he’d been thinking of much else for the past couple of days.
“You’re still baffling me,” Hisham said. “Explain it to me. Why are we here?”
“She’s Syaenuk.”
“Syaenuk,” Hisham repeated quietly. “You mean– Shit, man. She could kill you.” He pulled off another bite of bread but didn’t lift it to his mouth; instead he waved it in front of Jonas. “If that–” He stilled his hand, pointing to Jonas’ jaw “–had been her, you’d be dead.”
“I know,” said Jonas, but he still couldn’t fully suppress his smile. He ignored Cassidy’s rolling eyes. “But she’s a girl who survived on the streets somethin’ like six years. She’s a sneak, a pickpocket. Once she knew what she was and what I was, she could’ve taken her chances on her own. But she didn’t. She chose to go with a man who could kill her rather than risk fallin’ into the wrong hands. That says somethin’.”
“I guess,” Hisham said, less than convinced.
“But I let her down. And now Braph’s got her.”
“Damn right you did!”
Jonas didn’t look at Alvaro.
“Not just her. That damn knife, too.”
“I know. But Braph doesn’t want her dead, does he? He won’t use it.”
“But she could use it on herself. You said yourself she’d die before letting Braph or Turhmos use her.”
Alvaro was right. She’d asked Jonas if he would be willing to kill her if she needed him to. He hadn’t answered because he didn’t know. But Llew was strong, capable of doing what needed doing. He didn’t know if that would extend to her taking her own life before allowing Braph or Turhmos to use her. If either of them succeeded, he would come up with a plan to deal with it. But if Llew died . . .
“Speaking of knives, where’s yours?” he asked Hisham. A select few Kara were trained in the use of the Syakaran knives, since Syakaran numbers were so small. Aenuks could be successfully killed without the knives, as could a Syaenuk, if they could be moved away from other living things – the centre of a road, or indoors, for long enough. There was a time limit on when life could be recovered. But there was always the risk that an Aenuk could be brought back if enough healthy Aenuks were around. Quaven knife-wielders were meant to ensure it wouldn’t happen, but carrying the knives was extremely dangerous. If used on an Aenuk still physically fit enough to lash out, then that knife wound became a sink-hole for the attacker’s own jin; that jin drained, though it could not be used by the Aenuk. If the wound wasn’t fatal, the Aenuk could go on to kill with a mere touch.
“Na, man. They locked them all up till there’s another war. Don’t want anyone doin’ what you did.”
“I heard about that,” said Cassidy. “Is it true you killed thirty or forty Aenuks single-handedly?”
“Somethin’ like that.” Jonas hadn’t been counting. All Aenuks were a part of the Turhmos army, so it wasn’t a difficult task to find a large number of them together. Jonas had been fast enough to get a knife in most of them before they knew what was going on and could retaliate. It had been reckless, though, and he’d come closer than ever to being killed. He brushed the knuckles of his right hand across the scar under his jaw.
On top of the danger involved in going in solo, he’d since realised that those Aenuks he’d killed had nothing to do with the deaths of his wife and unborn child. He’d stooped to the same level as the Aenuks who killed his parents; he’d killed away from the battlefields; He’d murdered.
The sparrow hopped in closer and chirped. Demanding bread now, was it? Jonas hadn’t eaten his last bite and supposed that subconsciously he’d been keeping it for the creature. He tossed the chunk. The sparrow dived in and, bread in beak, fluttered from sight. Jonas scowled after it, lips pressed together. Ungrateful bastard.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Duffirk bustled.
Cheer was busy during the infrequent markets but, by comparison with Duffirk, it was a ghost town. In Duffirk, people were everywhere and everywhere there were people. The cobblestone streets were lined by gutters into which the city’s waste flowed, adding its perfume to that of the tightly packed crowds. Grated holes placed at regular intervals let the liquid flow underground, but that just left a build-up of the solids. The piles weren’t huge, and Llew realised that someone must have had the job of clearing it; this was the price of civilisation, she supposed. As much as she wanted to earn an honest living, Llew thought she would stick to picking pockets before she accepted that job.
The buildings in the centre of town stood at least two storeys high, with some having five, maybe six sto
reys. They cast perpetual shadows across the streets.
And the air was thick with smoke. Llew and Braph had yet to walk past the source, but it choked every breath she took. How could people live like this?
People streamed around Braph under the shadows of tall stone and concrete buildings, and Llew only avoided being cut off from him by sticking close to his coat tails. If she let herself fall back a step, the crowd would close her out. She might have been dreaming of being free of Braph, but she hadn’t been prepared for this. She knew the rhythms of Cheer, and no matter how busy the town centre became, she could move between and around people unnoticed and yet continue to make her living. In Duffirk she kept bumping into people, and people kept treading on her. She just didn’t get it. People seemed busier, yet they were performing the same tasks as those carried out by citizens of Cheer. Maybe she just had to get used to the pace of city life again after days on the boat followed by the security of Lord Tovias’ estate, followed by the isolation of the Turhmosian plain and two days riding a lonely highway punctuated by only the smallest of towns.
It would be the perfect time to make a getaway. Braph had barely looked at her since they entered the city. But that very fact unsettled her to the point that she hadn’t been able to make a move. She would. She would veer off soon, into a gap. No, she would make a gap.
Why wasn’t he checking on her? Did he have some sort of invisible leash of which she was unaware? Was he just so confident that her skills didn’t extend to navigating through a Duffirk crowd? Well, he didn’t know much, did he, because she would be fine. She just had to . . . She would . . . Damn it!
The crowd thinned each time they turned down a new street. Llew was struggling to put her finger on why, but her nerve was gone. Suddenly, she wondered just how far out of Cheer she would have got if she hadn’t run into Aris and his posse. Would she have walked a few miles and then frozen at the concept of being truly alone? It shadowed her thoughts of escape: she would be on her own, in a country she didn’t know, in a huge continent she’d left when she was five. Sure, she’d been looking after herself for years. But that was in Cheer, and she knew Cheer, she knew how the people and the land worked. This was Turhmos. If she ran, where would she run to?
Finally, they turned down a quiet, almost deserted street. Braph pushed open a wrought iron gate into an overgrown garden. A concrete path led straight from the gate, up concrete steps to a carved wood, black-painted door of a dirty-white, almost grey, two-storey villa. Braph gestured her through the gate. With her nerve to run still shattered, Llew took a deep breath, closed her eyes, released the breath and stepped through the gate.
* * *
Jonas hefted the man from the ground, hurling the flailing body aside. The Turhmosian landed like a sack of potatoes, accompanied by a “Hmph!”. That distraction out of the way, he was free to draw two knives and face his next opponent.
They had been surprised by a small contingent of Turhmos soldiers soon after dawn. It wasn’t a serious problem, but it was a hindrance. He had no idea how fast Braph was able to travel with Llew, and he had no doubt of their substantial lead. To top it off, he didn’t even know where Braph was taking her.
At a high-pitched whistle, he side-stepped in time for an arrow to fly past, digging deep into the dirt several feet behind. Then he ducked a sword swipe, executed a leg sweep, pulled the oncoming swordsman to the ground and plunged a knife into the man’s flesh.
“Cass! Arrows! I’ll cover you!” He threw knives at two swordsmen near the blond man, freeing Cassidy to prepare his bow. Jonas pulled another two knives from his vest and went to fight by Cassidy’s side. Alvaro ran his sword through his opponent and moved closer to Jonas and Cassidy, helping to close Cassidy off from the nearby swordsmen, while Hisham fought three of the Turhmosians single-handedly. Perhaps Jonas should have been doing the same, but it was a risk. If any of the surviving men knew they’d been fighting Kara, it wouldn’t be long before Turhmos sent more men to find them. That would only serve to hinder their search for Llew, if it didn’t result in a new Quaver-Turhmos war – and Aris might have a few things to say about that.
Cassidy loosed two arrows in quick succession. One hit the tree the Turhmosian bowman hid behind, the other sunk through his skull when the man dared gloat.
An arrow came from behind them and Cassidy was quick to retaliate while Jonas returned to the closer fight. He was ill-prepared for the sword swinging at him and barely managed to leap out of the way. The blade caught his shirt, ripping it open.
“Syakaran!” the swordsman exclaimed at the sight of Jonas’ tattoo.
Jonas growled and lunged, but the swordsman leapt out of his way and ran back through the trees.
“Cassidy!”
“I’ve got him!” Cassidy released an arrow after the man. “I don’t got him. Sorry, Jonas, too many trees.”
“Damn it! Hisham!”
The other man nodded and joined Jonas in pursuit of the soldiers. Jonas caught the men up in a matter of seconds and sliced his knife through throats with a practiced ease. It was only as he dropped the last one that an image of Llew suffering the same wound in Stelt flashed behind his eyes. He shook his head to clear the image. A soldier didn’t think about loved ones. A soldier killed. And Jonas had been a soldier his whole life.
Hisham joined him on his return to camp.
“No Aenuks.”
“No,” said Jonas. “Just a patrol.”
“Still, you’d think they’d have an Aenuk with them.”
Jonas nodded.
“And us without our knives, in a forest teeming with life . . . You must’ve put a real dent in their numbers. Turhmos’ll be wishing that girl of yours was a teenage boy.”
Jonas turned a withering look on Hisham, who shrugged.
“I’m guessin’ she’d mind less, too– Hey, I don’t mean anything by it!” He held his hands up in propitiation. “What do you think Quaver would do to her if she weren’t your pet, anyway?”
Jonas didn’t answer. He knew: they’d kill her. They wouldn’t tolerate the destruction she’d caused in Aghacia, accidental or not. Actually, they probably wouldn’t kill her. They’d expect him to.
The ground around their camp was littered with dead Turhmos soldiers.
“Well, now we’re gonna attract trouble.” Hisham gave Jonas a wry look. “We’ve got to get you a new shirt. You can’t go anywhere like that.”
“You’ll have to get me one at the next town.” He looked around at Cassidy and Alvaro. Alvaro was holding his hand over his arm, stemming the flow of blood. “You alright?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s just a cut.”
“Here, I’ll take a look.” Hisham stepped over the bodies to Alvaro. “That’s pretty bad. I can tie it off, but I’ll have to stitch it later.” Alvaro nodded. Hisham tore a strip of cloth from one of the dead men and returned to tie it around Alvaro’s arm. “That should hold till I can get supplies at the next town.”
Without another word, they gathered their things and broke camp, leading the horses through forest cover to avoid being seen on the road.
By late morning the forest had ended and a settlement appeared over the hill several hundred paces away. Jonas and Alvaro sat silently amongst the trees while Cassidy and Hisham went into the town for the supplies they needed. On their return, Jonas changed his shirt and Hisham cleaned and sewed Alvaro’s cut closed with a tiny needle and fine silk-like cotton. Alvaro was staunchly silent through the procedure.
On the road again they travelled much faster, urging the horses on at a trot. They headed in a generally south-easterly direction, stopping the occasional traveller to ask if they had seen anyone that might fit Llew’s description. None had.
Jonas fought against the growing anxiety that they might not find her.
* * *
Any other hall with as many wall-hangings might have been considered cosy, but Braph’s walls exhibited a hardness and lack of warmth that seemed a reflection of his
character. Metal gadgets of manifold shapes, sizes and purposes decorated either side of the dim hallway. There were no windows, and what light there was ducked through those doors standing ajar. Large and small polished copper and steel cogs hung from hooks on the walls, their functions, if any over and above decorative, indiscernible by Llew. Copper pipes ran along the bottom of one wall, and the tinkle of water trickling through metal underpinned every creaky floorboard.
Noticing Llew’s interest, Braph said, “You haven’t had a hot bath until you’ve had gas-heated.” His smile had the same cheek Jonas exhibited at times – the resemblance was such that she nearly forgot to fear the man; a glance at their surroundings set her straight again.
A door opened and an old man poked his head through. “Master, it’s you. I thought I heard the door.”
“You should have opened it for me, Nilv.”
“Yes. Sorry.” Then his eyes lit up. “Is that her?”
Braph nodded and the man’s glee spread to the rest of his face, his cheeks almost entirely smoothing of wrinkles as they plumped into juicy plums below each eye.
“The room is ready if you want to use it right away.”
“I think I might. But first I thought we should welcome our guest.”
Nilv’s brow puckered in confusion and his smile dropped.
“Bring up the resident Aenuk.”
Nilv’s face lit up again and disappeared back through the door, letting it swing shut behind him.
Braph turned a smile on Llew. She suspected it was meant to be warm, but there was a look in his eyes that suggested he had to calculate just how much to stretch his lips and how tight to squint his eyes to portray what he thought she wanted to see. “I’d like you to feel at home.”
His lips twitched, but she couldn’t tell if he was laughing at her reaction. Her temper simmered and she looked back at the door. He hadn’t snibbed it. He was Karan, but Llew thought she might have a chance over that short distance. Come on feet. But her limbs would not move. It was as though her mind and body were disconnected. Then Llew remembered Anya unconsciously flailing a knife through the air, and swallowed hard.
