by Anne Bishop
“One other thing,” Surreal said before Merry had a chance to escape. Because that was what the other woman clearly had in mind—bolting before this last detail was mentioned. “How do you want me to pay for the food and lodging? By the day or week?”
“That’s not necessary,” Merry said, her eyes looking bigger and darker in a rapidly paling face.
“Yes, it is,” Surreal countered politely.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Damn him, I told him I was going to pick up the tab for my own lodging. So you’ll give the bill to me.”
“No. Uh-uh. If you want to argue with Prince Yaslana about this, you go right ahead. But he was very clear about what he expected from me.”
Of course he was. The prick. And wasn’t it interesting where the line got drawn between Lucivar the friend and Prince Yaslana the ruler of Ebon Rih?
“All right, fine,” Surreal grumbled. “I’ll deal with him in my own way.”
Merry made a sound that might have been a squeak, and the next thing Surreal heard was the woman clattering down the stairs.
“Don’t be such a bitch,” she scolded herself. “You know what it’s like trying to deal with your male relatives. You wear the Gray and they roll right over you. How do you expect Tiger Eye to face down someone like Lucivar?”
No recourse. Daemon would tell her not to be an ass about who paid for what, since the SaDiablo family as a whole was not only the most powerful family in Kaeleer; they were also the wealthiest. Lucivar wasn’t going to feel pinched by the tab for her lodgings, but that wasn’t the point. Paying for it herself wouldn’t pinch her pocket either.
On the other hand, whenever she had accepted a job as an assassin, her client sometimes paid for her expenses as well as her fee.
Which circled back to the question of why she really was staying at The Tavern.
Going to the window, she pulled back the sheer curtain and stared at the mountain Lucivar called home as she lobbed a thought on a Gray psychic thread. *Yaslana.*
*Are you going to start whining already?*
He sounded amused. He sounded like he’d been waiting for her to contact him.
Damn him. His wife, Marian, either was crazy in love with him or had more patience than was natural.
*We need to talk,* Surreal said. *Privately. And if you give me any excuses, I’ll kick you so hard your balls will end up lodged between your ears.*
*If you bring a crossbow to this meeting, I will smack you brainless.*
She grinned. Couldn’t help it. The last time she’d wanted to discuss something with Lucivar, she’d threatened to shoot him in order to assure she would have his undivided attention. *Fine. No crossbow—unless I have to come looking for you.*
He laughed. They’d come out even in this little pissing contest, so she was pretty pleased too.
*This evening,* he said. *Once the little beast is tucked in for the night. Do you know the house in Doun where my mother used to live?*
*I’ll find it.*
*I’ll meet you there.*
Are you sure you want to meet there? Apparently Lucivar also wanted to meet without attracting attention. She couldn’t think of another reason for him to choose that location.
She unpacked her clothes, then got acquainted with the room. The small desk held a supply of paper, as well as pens, sealing wax, and a couple of decorative seals for guests who might not have a family seal. The bottom of the bedside table had a stack of books—mostly collections of stories, but there were a couple of Lady Fiona’s Tracker and Shadow novels, including the newest one, which she hadn’t read yet.
No books by Jarvis Jenkell, the writer who had tried to kill her and Rainier. Was that because Merry hadn’t liked his work, or had the woman removed anything that would remind her guests of that nightmarish effort to survive?
Any reminder that wasn’t still lodged in flesh, Surreal thought as she felt the rasp in her breathing. She would need to take care for the rest of this winter, but her lungs would eventually heal completely. Rainier’s leg, on the other hand, would never be the same.
She opened the bathroom door, intending to claim her half of the shelves and storage space, and heard movement in the next room. She rapped on the door.
“It’s open,” he said.
She opened the door, then leaned on the doorframe to study the Warlord Prince who was one of the few men she thought of as a friend.
When they returned to Amdarh after spending Winsol at the Keep with the rest of the SaDiablo family, he’d retreated during the last half of the holiday, claiming he needed time to get ready for this little “adventure” in Ebon Rih. She hadn’t challenged him because she had her own preparations to make for this stay.
Looking at him, she regretted that decision.
He’d lost weight in those few days. All the Blood burned up food faster than landens did, and the darker the Jewel a person wore, the more food was required to keep the body from consuming itself. Rainier obviously hadn’t been eating enough to sustain what had been a very fine build. His face looked leaner and harder, those dreamy green eyes were shadowed by more than one kind of pain, and the brown hair that was usually worn stylishly shaggy looked unkempt.
Rainier’s leg would never be the same, no matter how skilled the Healer—and he hadn’t been helping. What none of them could figure out was why he seemed determined to prevent that leg from healing as completely as possible.
“Want some help unpacking?” she asked.
“I can still take care of myself,” he snapped as he grabbed several carefully folded shirts and fisted wrinkles into all of them.
“I didn’t say otherwise, sugar.”
She knew he heard the warning in the word “sugar,” because he gave her a long look.
Have you seen Falonar yet?
It was there, on the edge of being said, a deliberately hurtful punch to the heart. But he didn’t say it. She saw the decision in his eyes not to throw that emotional fist.
“Have you finished your own unpacking?” he asked.
“Mostly. I was just about to claim my share of the bathroom space when I heard you moving around in here.”
He snorted. “Will I have any room for my things?”
“As our friend Karla would say, kiss kiss.”
He laughed and held out the shirts. “Fine. Just put the clothes where it will be logical to find them. And I mean male logic, not what passes for female logic.”
“My, my. Aren’t we feeling pissy today?”
He limped over to the corner of the room that had a stuffed chair and footrest, as well as a reading lamp and side table. Settling in the chair and stretching out his legs, he sighed wearily. “Did Lucivar not consider the stairs when he chose this place, or were the rooms being on the second floor one of the reasons he chose it?”
“I’m not sure that was a consideration at all,” she said slowly as she put Rainier’s clothes into the drawers and closet. Before she could decide how much to tell him—especially since there wasn’t anything definite she could tell him—someone knocked on the door.
“It’s Jaenelle,” Rainier said before she had a chance to send out a psychic tendril and find out who was in the hallway.
“How do you know?” she asked as she walked to the door.
“Her psychic scent was always unique. It’s a little different now that she wears Twilight’s Dawn, but there’s no mistaking it.”
Which just proved a Queen was a Queen whether she ruled officially or not. Unless there was a reason to pay attention, psychic scents were ignored in the same way as physical scents. But a male who served in a court would always know when his Queen was nearby.
“Is the fact that you’re all still that observant something you don’t want to call attention to?” Surreal asked as she opened the door.
“Call attention to what?” Jaenelle asked as she walked into the room.
“An unobservant man makes a poor flirt,” Rainier said. His green eyes glittered
with a warning to drop the subject.
“If that’s the case, you’re very observant, Prince,” Jaenelle said. “No, stay there,” she added when he started to shift in order to get to his feet. “I can check the leg just fine where you’re sitting. Surreal, do you want to sit on the side of the bed or go back to your room for privacy?”
“That depends on what we’re doing,” Surreal replied warily.
“I’m here to assess your current health and report it to the Prince of Ebon Rih, along with my requirements for what can and cannot be included in your training.”
“I get tired easily, and my lungs still get raspy if I exert myself too much, especially outdoors,” Surreal said. “And I still feel weak, so I won’t be able to do much of the training Lucivar has in mind.”
Jaenelle waited a beat, then looked at Rainier. “No protest or snarls from the Warlord Prince, which means he was aware of these limitations—and your Healer was not.”
Rainier winced when Surreal stared at him. *Sorry. I didn’t know you hadn’t talked to her yet.*
*Yeah.* Surreal looked into Jaenelle’s sapphire eyes, judged the sharpness of the temper she saw there, and meekly sat on the side of Rainier’s bed.
Jaenelle rested her hands on Surreal’s chest, her fingers spread wide. Warmth flowed from that touch. Surreal felt it on her skin, then in her muscles. A slow, soothing, pleasant sensation—and as she drifted on and in that sensation, her body told Jaenelle every secret it had.
*So,* Jaenelle said on a distaff thread, *are you just trying to avoid some of the training or are you exaggerating the severity of the damage you sustained while in the spooky house to misguide Rainier for some reason?*
The chill that flowed along that psychic thread surprised her. She hadn’t expected Jaenelle to be so pissed off about what was, after all, a ploy to get out of spending more time with the Eyriens than she absolutely had to. Then she realized she hadn’t taken into account that Jaenelle wasn’t just a Healer and she wasn’t just family. She was also a Queen who had never hesitated to defend a member of her court—and no matter whom he worked for or served in the future, Rainier would always be hers. Lying to him would not be acceptable behavior.
*I told Rainier the truth,* Surreal said. *But I didn’t want everyone to know.*
The chill faded and was replaced by sharp humor. *You don’t want Lucivar to know that you haven’t recovered fully because he’ll fuss over you, but you still want him to release you from a lot of the training?*
When put that way, the logic sounded more than a little fuzzy. *I was hoping that, as a Healer, you could . . . Hell’s fire, I hate feeling weak.*
*All the more reason to do the work that will make you strong again.*
Surreal sighed. How could you argue with a woman who, just by standing there, was proof of how doing the work could help a body to heal?
She studied Jaenelle’s face, looked into the eyes that saw too much. It wasn’t just her body that had been damaged and felt weak. Her heart, too, hadn’t healed since she left Falonar’s eyrie and Ebon Rih. That was almost a year ago. Wasn’t that long enough to let go of something other women could have shrugged off in a few weeks?
“Give me a half an hour to work on Rainier’s leg and go over a few things with Lucivar,” Jaenelle said. “Then you and I can take a walk around the village. That will give me a better assessment of what your lungs can do in this weather and in this valley.”
“Lucivar is downstairs now, waiting for a report?” Had the prick been sitting there a few minutes ago when she had contacted him?
“Of course he is,” Jaenelle said.
“Shit.” She wasn’t ready to deal with Lucivar. Not yet, anyway. Meeting him tonight to discuss The Tavern was one thing; meeting a bossy relative when he had nothing to do except keep an eye on her was quite another matter. “I’ll meet you downstairs after your chat with Lucivar.”
“Smart plan,” Jaenelle said. “Now shoo.”
A friendly dismissal was still a dismissal. Surreal scurried to her own room and looked around again. No clock. She called in a one-hour hourglass that she carried with her, turned it, and set it on the dresser. Meeting Jaenelle a few minutes late wouldn’t matter. Being a few minutes early and running into Lucivar . . .
As a way to pass the time, she pulled out the stack of books and took a better look at them. Some she put aside, having no interest in them; others she set with the Tracker and Shadow books to read in the evenings. Maybe she would find a story in one of the collections to share with the rest of the family during one of the evenings when they gathered together for a story night.
She looked at a story, read a few paragraphs, then glanced at the hourglass to see how much time was left before she could go downstairs and not run into Lucivar.
And wondered when she had become a coward.
Rainier hobbled around the room, putting the rest of his things away as he tried to ignore the pain in his leg—and the deeper pain in his heart.
As a Healer, Jaenelle wasn’t pleased with him. As a friend, she was furious with him. And he didn’t want to think about how she would have responded if she’d still formally been his Queen.
He didn’t want to talk about this. Not with Jaenelle, not with Daemon Sadi, and certainly not with Lucivar. He didn’t want pity. He’d had a bellyful of pity when he went to Dharo to visit his family. Worse than the pity was the unspoken hope he’d seen in too many of their eyes that a crippled leg would somehow diminish the nature of a Warlord Prince so they wouldn’t feel as uncomfortable being around him. He was less now. He had no future now. A dancer who couldn’t dance? He’d need to depend on his family and take whatever pity-work they could find for him to help pay his way, since, of course, he would have to return to Dharo and live with one of them.
They didn’t understand the depth of their cruelty. He’d seen that too when he’d talked to them. They did love him in their own way, but they saw his being born into the caste of aggressive, violent, dominant males as a failing of the bloodlines instead of seeing him as strength. He wasn’t like them. Had never been like them. Had never fit into the family. Different tastes, different temperament—and a difference in caste that had made him an outsider even as a child.
He didn’t know what to do. He was too damaged to go back to the life he’d known, but he wasn’t damaged enough for his family to feel safe in his presence. He’d never done anything to harm any of them, but they couldn’t quite hide their regret that his power hadn’t ended up as crippled as his leg.
He loved them. He truly did.
And he never wanted to see them again.
Which left him wondering what a maimed Warlord Prince was supposed to do with the rest of his life.
A hard rap on the door. Before he could respond, Lucivar walked into the room.
How was he supposed to explain to an Eyrien warrior like Lucivar what his leg couldn’t do? He’d seen Lucivar on a practice field, and he’d seen him in a real fight. The Prince of Ebon Rih was another kind of dancer, and he was brilliant on a killing field.
Right now, that fact scared the shit out of Rainier because, for the next few weeks, Lucivar controlled his life.
“You need to understand a couple of things about your stay in Ebon Rih,” Lucivar said as he walked up to Rainier.
Rainier saw Lucivar’s mouth curve into a lazy, arrogant smile. He never saw the fist that smashed into him so hard the blow knocked him off his feet and tossed him on the bed. While he lay there, struggling to breathe, Lucivar leaned over him and pressed a hand against his painfilled ribs, pinning him to the bed.
“Listen up, boyo, because I will only say this once,” Lucivar said. “I don’t know what’s riding you, and I don’t care. From now on, you work it out some other way than damaging that leg. I know exactly the condition you’re in right now. I know exactly what you need to do to heal and bring that leg back to the best it can be. And that’s what you’re going to do. But if you need to be a cripple, I will
help you be a cripple. I will shatter your other leg into so many pieces, even Jaenelle won’t be able to give you back more than the ability to hobble around with a pair of canes and spend most of your life in a chair. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” Rainier gasped.
“Do you have any doubt that I will do what I say?”
“No.”
Lucivar eased back. “There are places an easy walk from The Tavern where you can get breakfast. Think of not dealing with the little beast first thing in the morning as a reward for sincere effort in the training. You start getting sloppy . . .”
Lucivar using breakfast with his boy as a threat made Rainier curious about what really went on in the Yaslana household in the morning.
Then again, Lucivar didn’t bother to bluff, so it probably was a real threat.
“I’ll see you on the practice field tomorrow,” Lucivar said as he walked to the door. “Don’t be late.”
A bitter anger filled Rainier. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
Lucivar stopped. He turned and gave Rainier a hard stare. Then he was gone.
Rainier waited another minute before he struggled to sit up. Hell’s fire, he hurt. He pulled his shirt up and gathered his courage before he looked down.
A fist-sized bruise was already rising dark along his ribs, but there was nothing broken. Nothing even cracked, if his timid probing could be believed. A punishing blow, but Lucivar must have done something to temper that blow to avoid breaking bone.
Still hurt like a wicked bitch.
Rainier lowered his shirt and carefully stood up to finish his unpacking.
But if you need to be a cripple, I will help you be a cripple.
Lucivar Yaslana didn’t bluff, and he rarely gave second chances.
How was he supposed to explain to such an active, physical man that there were things he could no longer do?
“I’m trying to decide how hard I should kick your ass,” Jaenelle said pleasantly as she and Surreal strolled down Riada’s streets.
Mother Night, it was cold in the valley. Surreal felt the burn in her lungs, and she couldn’t hide the raspy sound of each breath. She began to dread the time she’d have to spend higher up in the mountains, not just because she’d be around the Eyriens, but because of how hard it would be on her lungs.
