by Devin Hanson
Jules nodded. “He’s right. Alchemists are too dangerous to risk that.”
“We fight to save my people,” Iria pointed out. “Any risk I am willing to take.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Jules said, holding up a hand, “and we’re with you all the way. But if we’re going to make ourselves the target, we need allies. There must be those among the balai that you trust.”
Andrew nodded. “I swore to do everything in my power, and I won’t back out of that now.”
“Thank you,” Iria bowed her head. “I do not know who to trust. Rajya, I trusted. Hashim, Yusef, Saifu, I trusted. They were my spear, and I knew them better than I know myself. But they are all dead.”
“What about Nasim?” Andrew asked.
“I trust her, but I do not,” Iria shook her head. “I have been gone too long, I do not know how deep the corruption of the balai has spread. Was Colonel Mohandi the only one who had given in to the lure of the Incantors? It is too soon to tell.”
“Who else might have a connection to the Incantors?” Jules frowned as she spoke, thinking. “If Nasim’s inquiries don’t turn up anything, we need to have a second place to start looking.”
“How about those Speakers, the Emperor’s advisors? They’re questionable, aren’t they? If they’re forcing the Emperor to make policy, might they have an Incantor agenda?”
Jules shook her head at the same time as Iria. “No,” the balai said first, “we do not have the time to play power games in the palace. It would be days before we even got an audience, weeks before we could ask them a dangerous question like that in private.”
“And kicking in the door isn’t an option?” Andrew said doubtfully.
“There are hundreds of balai in the palace,” Iria said dryly, “such a tactic would be a sure path to failure.”
“Had to ask,” Andrew sighed. “It looks like we’re back to square one. No allies, no leads, and no time. So, Iria, you know the city, how do we cause a ruckus that gets us the right kind of attention?”
“I have an idea,” Jules said. “Our original goal in coming to Nas Shahr still stands. We came to prevent a war between Nas Shahr and Salia. I could get us an audience with the Emperor tomorrow. It won’t be private, but at least it’s a start. I doubt his Majesty will have the answers we’re looking for, but it gets us close to the advisors, and we can shake the branches and see if anything falls out.”
Iria looked confused at the colloquialism until Andrew said, “We bring up the Incantors and watch their reactions.”
“I see, yes. With the Lady Vierra present, they would not be able to simply throw us in jail or have us shot. It might work.”
Motion caught Andrew’s eye, and he looked up to see Nasim walking toward them. He could see the tension and excitement in her stride. “Heads up,” he said. “Looks like your friend came through.”
“I has news,” Nasim announced in broken Salian, “the questions I ask, some interest found. Tomorrow someone will meet in morning.”
“That’s great news,” Jules said with a smile. “Thank you, Nasim.”
“Then we have our plan,” Iria said. “If Nasim’s contact provides us with the answers we need, we can move forward. If not, we call on the Emperor.”
“Sounds good,” Andrew said. “What could go wrong? All we have to do now is catch the dragon by the tail.”
Returning to the suite took longer than Andrew would have liked. He was exhausted, having been up for almost thirty-six hours. The excitement of the new city had kept him going this far, but a period of nothing trying to kill him followed by a good meal had his eyelids sagging. He was only awake because of some salty, bitter brewed beverage they had over dinner that sent a renewed energy surging through him. The balai said it was made from stewed seaweed, which was less than appetizing, but he couldn’t deny the effects.
The walk back to their rooms was peaceful. Through the thick stone walls, Andrew would never have guessed that they were in the middle of the largest human city he had ever heard of, let alone been to.
Iria opened the door using her key then locked it behind them. “See you in the morning,” she said and went to her room, shutting the door behind her.
Andrew heard the snick of the lock turning over, leaving him in the foyer with Jules. “Um, I thought you were going to be sleeping in there.”
Jules turned to look at the locked door, a manufactured look of surprise on her face. “I’m sure we’ll work something out.” She walked over to the service set into a wall and poured herself a drink of something amber-colored. Andrew could smell the alcohol from where he stood. “Scotch,” she said, giving it a sniff. “You want some?”
Andrew nodded. The butterflies in his stomach had gone through a second metamorphosis into squirrels. He was so nervous he felt sick; his hands were trembling and his knees felt stiff as he accepted the glass from Jules. This close, all he could smell was Jules’s perfume, a light scent of citrus blossoms that reminded him of the rolling green hills of Salia under the open spring sky.
The alcohol burned going down, and he winced as the drink seared his abused mouth tissues. Warmth settled into the pit of his stomach and drove off the worst of the squirrels. Jules hadn’t moved away after handing the drink to him. Without her typical heeled boots, she was shorter than he was used to, the top of her head barely coming up to his chin.
Jules tilted her head back to take a drink and Andrew stared at the elegant line of her neck, the way her hair fell back, the way her eyes sparkled in the lamplight as the alcohol bit.
“Did I ever tell you,” he husked, his throat tight from the alcohol and nerves, “how green your eyes are?”
“I don’t think you have,” Jules returned. She lifted a hand and laid it on his arm. Her lips twitched in a smile as he started. “You’ve grown a lot since I first met you, a timid gunny in Milkin’s house.”
“You’re not talking about my height,” Andrew said.
“No, I’m not.” Her hand tightened against his arm briefly. “Being a Dragon Speaker suits you, Andrew.”
A cynical part of Andrew thought, for a moment, that Jules was only interested in him because of what he was, but he dismissed it. Jules was many things, but power-hungry she was not. If she was just looking for a power coupling, there were plenty of options in the Salian court; she didn’t need to travel halfway across the continent to be with him.
“Uh, thanks,” he said, and cleared his throat. Cursing his woeful lack of experience, only painfully aware the ball was still in his court, he said, “I’ve never seen you quite as beautiful as you are tonight.”
That seemed to be the right thing to say, as Jules smiled, her left cheek dimpling. Without thinking, Andrew lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across the dimple. Jules tilted her head a little against his hand and lifted her chin just a hair, her eyes sliding almost shut.
Even Andrew could read that invitation like it was a bold-typed instruction. He leaned down to kiss her, felt the roughness of his stubble brush across her chin. The first contact of his lips against hers threw a shock down his spine. He pulled back and saw Jules watching him. Her hand slid up his arm, tangled her fingers in the hair on the back of his head and pulled him back down.
Andrew wrapped his free hand around her waist, pulled upward against the small of her back. Her mouth tasted vaguely of alcohol, but it wasn’t enough to mask the faintly sweet taste of her mouth. Jules fumbled behind her to the service and tried to set her drink down but knocked it rolling, spilling scotch everywhere. Heedless, she got her other arm up around his shoulders and leaned in, pressing her body against him, the soft pressure of her breasts firm against his chest.
That second kiss seemed to last forever. By the time Andrew came up for air, his heart was pounding loud enough to mask the scotch dripping off the service. He set his own drink down in the puddle and turned his attention fully on Jules.
“Why now?” he asked. He almost didn’t care, but he wanted to make sure b
efore things went any further.
Jules looked up at him and smiled a little uncertainly, a look Andrew hadn’t often seen. “Tomorrow will be bad, I think. I’ve wanted this long enough that it would kill me to miss out on this chance.”
That was reason enough for Andrew and he pulled her back in for another kiss. He had both hands on her back, marveling in the conflicting sensation of steely strength buried shallowly under feminine softness, all encased in the slippery layered silk of her dress.
Things were rapidly progressing past his admittedly limited experience. Giving his childhood sweetheart a peck on the lips was vastly different from the thorough kissing Jules was giving him. He followed her lead, surprised and delighted at the sensations it evoked.
Somewhere along the line, Jules had managed to get his shirt unbuttoned and the feeling of her nails dragging across his chest set a fire burning within him. He gasped as shivers raced across his skin raising goose bumps. Andrew lifted a hand to Jules’s chest, felt the weight of her breast fill his hand. His other arm was tangled up in his jacket as Jules tugged it free.
Andrew pulled up from the kiss long enough to locate where the door to his – their – room was, then swept Jules up into his arms. She felt light in his arms, both of her arms wrapped about his neck, her dress falling away to reveal the smooth length of one leg nearly to her hip. Jules gasped out a little shriek that broke into a laugh as he carried her through the door and kicked it shut behind him.
He set Jules back on her feet and stripped the rest of the way out of his shirt and jacket. He only had a single lamp lit in the room turned down low, and in the shifting shadows Jules was even more alluring. The frantic pace from a moment ago seemed to ebb away as he stepped up to Jules and wrapped her in a gentle embrace, kissing her softly.
Jules’s arms shifted off his neck and he felt the play of muscles as she did something behind her back. Then, in a soft cascade, her dress slipped off her shoulders and ran through Andrew’s hands to pool about her feet.
Andrew woke with a start, uncertain of where he was. The perfect blackness was broken by the wavering orange glow of a lamp turned down low. He shifted, and found his arm was pinned down by something. Memory crashed back in and his heart seemed to skip a beat as turned his head and saw Jules sleeping beside him, her face peaceful, her lips turned up in a tiny smile as she slept.
His arm was numb from the elbow down from Jules’s weight cutting off the circulation, but he was loath to move it. With his free hand, he brushed a stray strand of hair from her forehead. The sheet shifted down and he saw the angular jag of the dragon scale Jules wore about her neck nestled in the pale swell of her cleavage.
She shifted in her sleep and Andrew took the opportunity to free his arm before drawing the sheet back up to cover her. He smiled, thinking about the way the scale had interfered earlier, yet neither of them had suggested she take it off. In the dim light, Jules’s mussed hair had a certain eroticism about it, and he felt his heart rate pick up as he remembered how it had gotten that way.
Abruptly, he realized Jules’s eyes were open and she was watching him. A smile split her lips and she said, “What’re you looking at?”
“You,” Andrew said simply. He had no capacity for witticism at the moment.
A tinkle of glass sounded outside the door, followed by a crisp shatter. Andrew turned his head and saw the light under the door was gone. Sometime during the night the lamps in the main room had burned the last of their oil and gone out.
“Woops,” Jules laughed, “guess Iria found our mess.”
Andrew saw up and yawned. “What time is it anyway? It’s hard to tell without seeing the sky.”
“I don’t know,” Jules stretched. “But I feel like I’ve slept for at least –”
The door smashed open, sending a spray of splinters into the room from the shattered doorjamb. Andrew gaped as a man stumbled into the room. He was limping and wore dark robes with a fold of cloth covering his face.
“Laq’niganir!” the man cried, one hand out-flung.
Andrew was still flinching when he heard Jules cry out behind him, “Ban!” at the same moment as foot-long shards of ice shot forth from the intruder’s hand. The ice shattered against Jules’s shield as Andrew tumbled from the bed, his leg tangled up in the sheets.
Jules shouted another runeword and the door ripped off its hinges and slammed into the intruder, sending his next blast of ice wide. Andrew pulled his leg free and lunged at the man. He was still groggy from waking up, stunned from the abruptness of the intrusion, but Jules’s training paid off as he acted without thinking. Andrew’s shoulder caught the masked man in the stomach and Andrew heard the air whoosh out of him.
They tumbled to the floor and Andrew grappled with the man’s arm, found the intruder’s fist clenched around something and dug his fingers into the man’s wrist, slamming it against the floor until his grip sprang open and something hard skittered across the stone floor.
The loss of the flux seemed to drive the fight out of the intruder and he slumped in Andrew’s grasp, still struggling to catch his breath back. Andrew flipped the intruder onto his stomach and wrenched one wrist up high between his shoulder blades and knelt on the small of the man’s back. With his free hand, Andrew patted the man down carefully, searching for another flux.
Satisfied the man didn’t have a second flux hidden somewhere, Andrew spared a glance for Jules. She was just finishing wrapping the sheet about herself in a makeshift covering, her eyes hard on the man pinned under Andrew’s weight.
“It’s too late,” the man gasped. “The Order knows you’re here now. You won’t last the day.”
Iria’s door swung open and the balai surged out, a long knife in either hand. She was naked but for the wrappings of a few bandages. Andrew flushed and turned his head. Iria saw Andrew had the man pinned, sniffed, and went back to her room, kicking the door shut behind her.
“The Order?” Andrew asked.
“Your death, alchemist!”
“He’s probably talking about the Incantors,” Jules guessed.
The man laughed and choked it off as Andrew twisted his arm a little higher. “Answer the question.”
“Doco’lani!” the man screamed.
Andrew felt a searing pain in his shoulder as a bolt ripped out of the ruined door and slammed into him, knocking him off the pinned alchemist. The man surged to his feet and dived at Jules. Andrew threw out an arm and hooked a leg. He cried out as the wound in his shoulder stabbed searing pain down to his fingertips, but the man stumbled, giving Jules a few extra seconds.
The man had a slender blade out, and he caught his balance before lunging at Jules. Jules caught the man’s wrist and turned with him, using his own momentum to fling him over her shoulder. Andrew had been the victim of the move many times during their practice sessions, but Jules had always released him. This time, Jules didn’t just throw the man to the ground, she threw him at the ground and kept her grip on his wrist.
With a crackling pop, the man’s shoulder dislocated and he screamed. Jules wrenched him back, spun the knife from his limp grip and slammed the blade home under his armpit. His scream cut off abruptly and he coughed blood.
Jules let him drop and kicked him carefully in the head before hurrying over to Andrew. For his part, Andrew forced himself to a sitting position, one hand clamped over his shoulder. The door bolt was deep in the muscle of his shoulder, the head protruding from his flesh a good two inches.
“Burn me, that stings,” he gasped as Jules knelt beside him, her face twisted with worry.
“Let me see.” Jules demanded and pried his hand away. She tsked and prodded the side of his shoulder. “Doesn’t seem too deep. You had me worried there. Normally that runeword hits with a lot more force.”
“Sure feels like it did.”
Iria’s door banged open again, but this time she was dressed. Her face hardened when she saw Andrew, blood running down his shoulder. “Where is he?” she called.
Jules nodded back into the room and Iria ran in to kneel by the assailant. The balai pressed a finger against his throat and waited for a few seconds. “He yet lives.”
“I don’t know how he used that runeword. I searched him. He didn’t have a flux.”
“You must have missed one,” Jules said. “Iria, search him thoroughly.”
Iria nodded and yanked the knife out of the man’s ribs, then proceeded to cut all his clothes off with it until he was down to his smallclothes and tossed the shredded clothing into a pile. Jules looked through it, then did it again more carefully.
“Nothing,” she said, puzzled. “How, then? There’s no flux here.”
“He is coming to,” Iria called.
“Put him in the chair and tie him there,” Jules said. “If he so much as opens his mouth, kill him. I’ll be right back.” She stalked from the room and retreated to Iria’s chamber, where her pack was.
Andrew made his way to his feet and helped Iria get the intruder into a chair and tied firmly in place using strips of his torn clothing. The bolt stuck in his shoulder throbbed, but as long as he didn’t try to move the arm, he could grit his teeth and bear it.
The man groaned and coughed, blood dripping from his mouth and running down his side. Iria slapped him and he opened his eyes groggily. “Remain silent,” she said, showing him the knife then pressing it up under his chin. “Do not move, do not nod, do not speak.”
Seeing that Iria had the intruder under control, Andrew took a moment to find his pants and awkwardly slid into them, wincing as the movement bumped his arm. He was glad that he slept in his smallclothes, but he still felt indecent until he had his pants on properly.
Jules returned, dressed in her traveling clothes; the wide belt with her runed blade and revolver hung on her hips. Andrew felt a brief moment of regret that his time with Jules had come to such an abrupt end.
“I’ve got this,” Jules said. “Take a look at Andrew’s arm, see what you can do for him.” She drew her runed blade and took Iria’s place in front of the intruder. By this time, Andrew could see the man was awake and aware. There was fear in his eyes, but it wasn’t the fear of death, despite the wound in his chest that was certainly fatal given a few more minutes.
