Shattered Past

by Lindsay Buroker

  “A paleontologist.” Therrik frowned at Lilah. At least he’d pronounced the word more easily than Sleepy had, albeit with less respect.

  “Allow me to introduce Professor Lilah Zirkander.” Ridge extended a hand toward her.

  She started to offer the man her hand, but Therrik’s eyebrows flew up. “Zirkander?” The name came out of his mouth like a curse, a very distasteful curse.

  For once, Lilah had a feeling that being related to the famous pilot might not be a boon. Oh, well. At least he wouldn’t be asking her to talk Ridge into autographing his undergarments.

  “She’s my cousin,” Ridge said, “but don’t let that fool you. She’s much smarter than I am.”

  “That wouldn’t take much.”

  “I expect you to treat her better than you treat me.”

  “That wouldn’t take much,” Kaika said with a smirk.

  “No kidding,” Ridge said.

  Therrik’s nostrils flared.

  “Since I know you sometimes have trouble honoring my orders,” Ridge said, eyeing Therrik’s torso long enough to make it clear he had noted the missing jacket, “I’ve brought handwritten orders from the king.”

  “Of course you have,” Therrik said.

  Ridge handed him the paperwork. “Will you have any problems being hospitable to your guest?” he asked, his tone cooling a few degrees. He glared at Therrik, managing the challenging eye contact that Lilah had shied away from. Usually, she could face down anyone, but there was something about Therrik that made doing so seem more dangerous, as if violence simmered beneath the surface for him, waiting for an opportunity to boil over and destroy anything—or anyone—nearby. She was surprised Ridge didn’t back away from him, superior rank or not.

  “Is she a witch or dragon in disguise?” Therrik asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then I won’t have a problem.” Therrik accepted the envelope with his orders without further comment.

  “Where shall we put our stuff, sir?” Kaika asked. “Same quarters as last time?”

  “You’re staying?” Therrik raised his eyebrows.

  “To make sure none of your grubby miners or soldiers manhandle the professor, yes, sir. I believe the king mentions me in the orders he wrote up.”

  Therrik grunted. Or maybe it was a grumble. He waved his hand. “Take whatever you can find open. Some of the bones are in the artifact room. Lots more still stuck in the rocks. Bosmont can show you whenever you’re ready.”

  “Some have been removed already?” Lilah grimaced, imagining the damage that a bunch of unschooled soldiers might have done to ancient fossils. “I would have preferred to have looked at them in place.”

  “Be happy you can look at them at all. Some grimy thieves tried to filch them right out of the mountain.”

  Ridge frowned. “How did grimy thieves know they were in the mountain?”

  “Your father isn’t around, is he?” Lilah asked.

  Ridge gave her a flat look. “As far as I know, he’s only interested in lost treasures, not lost dragon bones.”

  “Do what you want,” Therrik said and walked away. “I have work to do.”

  “And the rest of your uniform to find,” Ridge called after him.

  Therrik trotted down the stairs without acknowledging him.

  “Are you sure you outrank him?” Lilah asked.

  “I’m sure. I’m not sure he’s sure.”

  “He’s a difficult man,” Kaika said, shouldering her huge duffel bag and ambling toward the stairs. “Come with me, Professor, and I’ll show you what kind of luxury accommodations this place offers.”

  Sleepy climbed up and retrieved the rest of Lilah’s bags for her, including the tool box she’d brought, with gear for examining fossils. He also handed down the hunting rifle she had, at the lieutenant’s suggestion, retrieved from storage for the trip.

  “Lilah?” Ridge asked. “Sleepy and I won’t be staying, at least not for the long-term, but how do you feel? Do you want us to wait until tomorrow to go back? Or until after you’ve looked at the bones?”

  “I’m sure we womenfolk will be fine without you.” Lilah patted the rifle case. “Besides, Colonel Therrik didn’t seem to like you very much.” She didn’t mention that he had looked like he wanted to spit his teeth out when he’d heard that she was related to Ridge. “It’s possible he would be more hospitable toward us if you weren’t around.”

  Ridge snorted. “That does seem likely.”

  She gripped his arm. “It was good seeing you. Thanks for thinking of me for this project.” She kept herself from calling it an adventure, even if she hoped it would become an educational and enlightening start to her summer.

  “You’re already thinking about those bones, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe so.”

  He offered her a salute. “All right. Be careful, and find Captain Bosmont if you need anything. He knows the outpost better than anyone here. If you need to get word back to me, he’ll make sure your report goes out with the supply ship. There’s supposed to be a radio tower in construction around here too. I saw it when we flew in.”

  “I’ll be fine, Ridge,” she said, shooing him toward his flier.

  “Yes, good.” Ridge waved and shouted, “Take care of her, Kaika, or I’ll tell everybody back home your first name.”

  “What? Who told you my first name? You’re bluffing!”

  “Am I? I have sorceresses, dragons, and sentient swords for housemates now, remember. And they’re all nosey telepaths.”

  “That begs an explanation,” Lilah murmured as Ridge vaulted into his cockpit.

  “You probably shouldn’t miss the family picnics,” Kaika said, waiting at the top of the stairs.

  The pilots did not start their engines until Lilah headed that way too.

  Lilah followed Kaika down the stairs and around to the front door, pausing there to take in more of the facility. Buildings were spread around the edges of the courtyard, interspersed among towers supporting tram cars. Closed doors in the ground lay next to those towers. Was that where the miners worked? Down shafts beneath those doors? She shivered to imagine herself in some dark tunnel with the only exit closed off up above her. Did the prisoners sleep down there too? Several of the buildings looked to be barracks, so she hoped that meant they were allowed to come up at night.

  A few dirty faces peered in her direction from one of the tram towers, the only one with the shaft doors next to it standing open. Even from across the courtyard, she felt the brazen appraisal as the men’s gazes dipped to her chest. It made her shudder and hustle through the doorway, realizing that Ridge had sent along a bodyguard for a very real reason.

  She found Kaika waiting for her inside, keeping an eye on her. It was the expected thing, Lilah supposed, but strange, too, to have a bodyguard. She thought of all the battered men who had been outside, having apparently lost their sparring match with Therrik. Would Kaika truly be able to stand up to him in a brawl if he decided that something should happen to his visiting paleontologist? Lilah could imagine the tall woman clobbering one of the gaunt, dirt-smudged miners who had been looking her way, but there was nothing gaunt about Therrik.

  “Ridge said you would be better able to handle Colonel Therrik than a lot of the men in your unit,” Lilah said quietly as she followed Kaika down a first-floor hallway laid with cracked tiles that had to be several decades old. “Is that true?”

  “Hm, possibly.”

  “Because you’re faster and cleverer than he is?”

  “Because I know where all of his tattoos are.” Kaika smirked at her, then stopped at the end of the hall and poked her head through a doorway. “This one’s empty and has two bunks. You all right with sharing? I think it’s what the general had in mind, though I doubt any miners are going to wander into headquarters to harass you. All of the officers bunk on the first floor in here, and then the barracks on that side—” she pointed out the window, “—is for the soldiers. You shouldn’t walk around the
compound on your own here, though, especially after dark.”

  Kaika entered the room without waiting for a response and slung her gear on the bunk on the left side. Judging by the way the duffel clanked, very little of it was devoted to spare clothes and toiletries.

  “I will let you know if I need to walk anywhere.”

  Lilah put her toolbox, which also clanked, on the floor at the foot of the other bunk, and dropped her bag on the thin mattress. There was only one four-drawer dresser for them to share, so she was glad she had packed lightly, much as she had when she and her husband had gone on safari. He had usually been the one with all the gear, bags full of art supplies so he could draw and paint out there on the savannah. Even if he had been the one to first get her into hunting, he’d always seemed as pleased to paint a portrait of a lion as he had been to shoot one.

  She shook her head, wondering why she was thinking of him this afternoon. She opened one of the dresser drawers to tuck her toiletries away, but paused.

  “Is there indoor plumbing?” She made a face, imagining waking Kaika up in the middle of the night to escort her to some outhouse.

  “Yup. I told you the accommodations are luxurious.” Kaika had checked her rifle and her pistol, and now pulled out a cleaning kit and sat on the edge of her bunk. “Just one lavatory, though, that we share with everyone in the building. How are you at using urinals?”

  “Ah. Rather unpracticed.”

  “Kidding. They’re optional. Do you want a tour when you’re done? Probably a good idea to do it before dark. There’s always a guard on the miners’ barracks, but nobody pays much attention if the men sneak out for liaisons with the female prisoners. Or if female prisoners sneak out for liaisons with the soldiers. I suspect either sex would sneak out for a liaison with you if given a chance.”

  “You make it sound like I’m some nubile young virgin here for a sacrifice.” Lilah opened the case for her hunting rifle, since she had stuffed socks into it to conserve space. She tossed them into a drawer.

  “Trust me, you’re a lot more nubile than the female prisoners. And female soldiers don’t even get sent up here, unless there’s a dragon to slay and they have some special talent.” Kaika patted her bulky bag.

  “Ah, and what exactly is your talent?” Lilah assumed she was excellent with those firearms and perhaps in hand-to-hand combat, but she didn’t think that either would be useful against a dragon.

  Kaika squinted into the barrel of her disassembled pistol and poked a bore brush through it as she answered. “Demolitions, explosives, explosive ordnance disposal, languages, firearms, unarmed combat, and, oh, I’m wicked with my tongue.”

  Lilah glanced over at her, expecting another smirk or perhaps a leer, but Kaika merely blew specks of carbon out of her pistol barrel.

  “Is that useful against a dragon?”

  This time, Kaika did grin. “I don’t know yet. But they can shape-shift into human form, and I have a deal with Ang—with my lover that if I get a chance to sleep with a dragon, I get to take it, no questions asked, whether it’s mission-critical or not.”

  “Does he get to watch?” a dry voice said from the open door.

  Lilah jumped, dropping the panties she had been about to put into a drawer. They hadn’t closed the door, but she hadn’t expected company, certainly not company that would be standing out there and listening in. Of course, Kaika was the one who had been speaking of tongues, not she. She did not drop anything on the floor. She merely grinned over at Therrik as she stuffed her bore brush back into the barrel.

  “He can join in, if he wants,” she said. “I’ve been trying to broaden his horizons.”

  Therrik’s face twisted into something between bemusement and horror. Both were better than the expression of flinty, barely-controlled anger that he had worn on the rooftop. He had since donned his uniform jacket, the dark blue material ironed and pressed, the sleeves rolled up and buttoned below his elbows. He looked more like a soldier now than a random thug, though the tattoos—were those daggers dripping blood?—still lent him a malevolent air.

  “That’s more information than I needed.”

  “Walk up on a women’s barracks room, and that’s usually what you’ll get,” Kaika said.

  Therrik dropped his head and pushed a hand through his black hair. Unlike the rest of him, it looked soft, touchable.

  He looked up, his gaze locking onto Lilah, and she almost jumped again. Why was she having such thoughts? She barely noticed men at all anymore, at least around campus, and he was far rougher—and ruder—than anyone she would ever consider.

  “I can show you the artifact room now,” he told her. “It’ll be dark soon, so the field trip around the mountain will have to wait, but the bones in there ought to keep you busy for a while.” His gaze flicked downward, to where her panties still lay on the ground.

  She had forgotten about them, too busy thinking about touching hair. She forced herself to calmly reach down, pick them up, and toss them into the drawer, instead of hastily snatching them up and sticking them in her pocket or somewhere else inappropriate but out of sight. Kaika, she imagined, wouldn’t have been embarrassed by panties. She probably would have twirled them in the air before putting them away. Lilah settled for shutting the drawer.

  “I’m ready now,” she said, meeting his eyes, wondering if she would catch a smirk there.

  But all of the almost-humor he had displayed in bantering with Kaika was gone, covered with an impassive mask. His gaze did perk slightly as he noticed the rifle case on her bunk, the weapon still half hidden by socks.

  “That’s a Brasingher 980, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “A 960. My husband had the ’80, but I always liked the lever-action reload better than the pump.”

  Therrik walked in, uninvited, though his gaze remained on the weapon, rather than roaming inappropriately around the room. He had yet to give Lilah the hip-to-chest appraisal that she usually got from men, though her long-sleeve shirt, buttoned to the collar, didn’t invite a huge amount of speculation. She moved aside so he could approach the bunk.

  Therrik reached for the rifle, but paused. “May I?”

  Kaika made a choking sound. Lilah raised her eyebrows as she waved for Therrik to do what he wished with the rifle.

  “He’s not usually so polite,” Kaika said.

  “You’re not supposed to be polite with soldiers,” Therrik said. “It confuses them.”

  “Yes, confusion is the reason why your house on base gets vandalized by disgruntled privates.”

  His face hardened, his jaw tightening, but he did not respond. He merely examined the rifle, running his hand along the decorated wooden stock. Taryn had painstakingly carved lions and elephants into it as a birthday gift to her, and she was relieved when Therrik did not mock it. He did pick up the box of ammunition, arching his brows at the caliber.

  “You planning to hunt bears while you’re here?” he asked.

  “Lieutenant Sleepy implied I might need to defend myself against a grumpy commander the size of a bear.”

  Kaika snorted, amused, but a different emotion flashed across Therrik’s face, first surprise, then irritation, his mouth turning down into a scowl. Standing this close to him, the change was alarming, and Lilah had to brace herself to keep from stepping back.

  “Zirkander’s pilots are a bunch of cloud-humping prisses, just like he is.” Therrik returned the rifle to the case and walked out, saying, “The artifact room is this way,” as he disappeared into the hallway.

  “I knew that politeness wouldn’t last long,” Kaika said.

  Lilah felt a flash of indignation on the colonel’s behalf and found herself wondering what he was like without any of his soldiers around. But then, she’d been the one to irritate him, not Kaika. She had meant the comment as a joke, not realizing until afterward that it was a dig at his honor, if he was a man of honor. She did not know at this point.

  “I better go look at his room,” Lilah murmured.

/>   She grabbed her toolkit and walked out, aware of Kaika snapping her firearm together and following her. Lilah wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not that she would have company. With her knack for offending people, being alone with Therrik might not be a good idea, especially since he apparently possessed a special hatred for Zirkanders.

  • • • • •

  On the second floor of the headquarters building, Vann unlocked the door to the artifact room while he waited for the professor to join him. His own office, complete with a never-ending pile of paperwork on the desk, stood open at the end of the hall. It would be a damned shame if the supply ship forgot to include reams of paper the next time it floated into the valley. Unfortunately, he needed to get back to that paperwork. He’d taken more of a break than he should have for his evening exercise session. His muscles, less tense after going a dozen rounds of wrestling and boxing, thanked him for the diversion, but General Zirkander’s arrival had added to what should have only been an hour delay. Vann would be going over reports by lantern light tonight.

  Professor Zirkander’s head appeared as she climbed the stairs, her reddish-brown hair falling about her shoulders. He’d outpaced her, his strides irritated after the implication that he was someone whom women needed a rifle to fend off, but there weren’t many places to get lost in the rectangular two-story building. A long hallway on each level granted one access to all of its rooms.

  Kaika ambled after the professor, appearing relaxed, if not bored, but she’d had much of the same training as he’d had, and he knew she was always alert and ready to react. He clenched his jaw, feeling irritated anew that she—or maybe the professor—thought her services as a damned bodyguard were needed inside of the headquarters building. Of all people, Kaika ought to know that he wasn’t going to maul a woman, not a civilian woman, anyway. He tried to treat soldiers the same way, regardless of sex, though he always felt uncomfortable forcefully demonstrating combat maneuvers with women on the training field. He was relieved he hadn’t had to deal with them as soldiers for his first fifteen years in the army. Only when he’d gotten promoted to colonel and had been taken from the field to the academy to teach unarmed combat to all upcoming officers, not just infantry ones, had he encountered mixed genders. As he would admit to nobody but himself, he had been equally inept with men and women when it came to instruction. He missed fieldwork like a lost limb. He felt more than a little envious of Kaika for still being sent on covert missions, though he allowed himself a bit of a smug smile as she approached with the professor. He knew she must hate this little mission and would look forward to its end. Bodyguard duty. How tedious and unexciting.