Men! They needed to talk first, dammit.
“Well, I didn’t bruise myself like an idiot. I’d learned by the time I was eighteen not to cuddle a dude in chain mail. Why did it work with you?”
“Bron’a,” he explained simply.
She gaped at him. Another chunk of the wall of disbelief shattered at his matter-of-fact tone.
“The enchanted armor that feels like silk but is stronger than steel?” She gulped, cold air suddenly wracking her bones.
He picked her up and sat down in the big armchair, casually wrapping a blanket around her.
“Are you carrying any other magic?” she asked faintly. Magic. She was talking about magic with somebody who sounded like he knew how to live with the stuff. “That you can tell me about?”
“I can obtain fresh garments easily or hide the ones I’m wearing. These offered protection, in case I met enemies upon arrival.”
“Instead you’re bruised and battered, as if you were rolled around in a cement mixer.” He couldn’t be hurting too badly, judging by how they’d enjoyed each other last night. But the tournament would be a nastier test.
“I know not what a cement mixer is. But the void deposited me here with little ceremony.”
“How did you come? Can you return safely? Corinne mentioned that Khyber can travel between worlds but . . .” Danae stopped cold, afraid she was prying.
“My wizard’s amulet has been soaked in dragon’s blood and spellbound. When it is full of chi, it will take me or anyone else back to Torhtremer.”
“Full of chi?” She blinked at the stone. It had been a dark brown lump last night, when she’d first assessed his jewelry.
“Coming here drained it, until it had no spark inside. Now, thanks to you and our pleasure making, its fire is growing once again.”
“Are you saying . . . ?” The amber was still brown but held stripes of light gold running through it, like invisible flames. She tried again.
“Are you telling me that you need to make love to power that thing up so you can return to Torhtremer?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life! That sounds like an excuse to get into my pants.”
He raised a very superior, very masculine eyebrow.
“Okay, so you’ve already accomplished that.”
She fumed and racked her brain for another comeback. Surely somebody had to have used an amulet for traveling during the Torhtremer Saga.
“The Wizard and The Wisteria,” she announced suddenly.
“What?”
“Your sister needed to reach the Amazons.” She poked him in the chest. “So she stole a travel amulet from that ancient cache. But it was so old, it had gone totally dormant and she needed help to revive it.” Some very hot chapters of the book surged back into her memory. “Oh shit.”
“Which my future brother-in-law provided very well, correct?”
Danae nodded, blushing. Those scenes still ranked among fan favorites for all-time sexiest love scenes.
“Can you manage?” Alekhsiy gently rubbed her back.
Cocooned in his arms, with a blanket around them, in an aerie too high to hear any sounds from below, they could have been anywhere. The world fell away until there was only the man cradling her. She had so many more questions she wanted to ask about why he was here, but could sense he wasn’t quite ready to answer them.
She sighed and lightly kissed his chest. “Oh yes, if you can.”
“That will not be a problem, sweeting.”
“But we both have meetings and so on.”
He harrumphed.
“You’re in Kyle’s fighting troupe and I have to strut Larissa’s costumes.”
His hand insinuated itself under the blanket.
“Plus, there are my morning exercises, and I’m sure you’ll need to work out—Alekhsiy!”
Alekhsiy held Danae’s chair in the hotel’s restaurant and glared at the latest male daring to ogle her.
The fellow jumped back, his eyes wide behind round black spectacles, and tripped himself on his cheap woolen cloak’s hem. He tumbled into three others, dressed in colorful knitted—stockings, perchance?—and sent them all to the ground.
Alekhsiy sniffed, somewhat mollified. If it had been his choice, he’d still be in the hotel room, helping Danae don her black leather impression of a Torhtremer mercenary’s attire. Long leather trousers, high leather boots, sleeveless leather vest, and long dagger were all common enough. Even her cuffs and jewelry were very familiar, as was the small pouch holding the old ring.
But the black bustier, which lifted her breasts to be admired? He’d never dreamed of such an enticement before. Veins he’d thought too sated to flicker had promptly rushed into life and his lungs gasped for air. His hands had reached to grab her.
Goddess knows how he’d barely managed to restrain himself long enough to help her dress. Now he’d never permit any mere passerby to do more than glance at her politely.
She patted his wrist briefly and he sat down beside her, careful to once again mind his manners. The restaurant was crowded and the noise high, with the seats very close. A series of golden terraces towered above the lobby, while golden cages crawled up and down its sides. Great panels hung from the lowest balcony, displaying notices or images regarding GriffinCon. Corinne’s spell described them as the audiovisual system, naming them this world’s equal of the town crier.
Hordes of people streamed past in a bizarre variety of clothes, from sturdy canvas to fragile feathers to stiff, unusable armor. They came from all ages and all races, in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes. Their colors—whether skin, eye, or hair—frequently owed little to nature. Some stalked, others raced, and a few strutted.
All in all, a man could scarcely breathe for the magic workers assembling here.
“Larissa! Nora! I’m so sorry we’re late,” Danae cooed, holding out her hands to the other two ladies. “It took us longer to get dressed than we expected.”
Alekhsiy concealed his smirk.
They tore their gaze away from him to greet her.
“Larissa, this is Alek Alekseiovich, who’s come on a quest from a far country.” Danae waved her hands and Alekhsiy bowed formally. “Alek, this is Countess Ramona von Havelland of the Northern Horde.”
Larissa’s eyes lit up and she extended her hand to be kissed. He saluted it with all the care he’d offer to the greatest of court ladies.
She sighed happily and Nora clapped.
“Mistress Nora.” He lifted her hand to his lips and she twinkled.
“Kyle and the boys said to say hello if I saw you. They’ll see you at the tournament intro this afternoon, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed. He took a sip of water, watching for the waiter. He’d had coffee the night before at that restaurant but he’d prefer tea.
“You are so lucky to have found him, Danae,” Larissa enthused, examining him as if he were a new horse. He raised his eyebrow but said nothing, relieved he’d followed Danae’s advice. He’d shifted to his field uniform, relying on its simple dark green tunic to conceal his chain mail. His beloved axe now rested in a pouch at his waist, a disposition that had fascinated his lady. He still blatantly wore his sword and dagger, plus the silver badge of Yevgheniy’s Spears as token of his right to bear arms.
“What’s underneath all of that? What about his underwear? Is he wearing any?” Larissa reached toward his sleeve.
Underwear? Alekhsiy choked on his water. What kind of world would permit new acquaintances to demand details of his most intimate garments?
Totally unruffled, Danae handed him her napkin and batted Larissa’s hand down toward the tablecloth. “Yes, he’s wearing undergarments, and no, you can’t see them.”
“You’re cruel.” Larissa narrowed her eyes at the other woman and Danae sniffed, unimpressed.
“You told me that when I was five, remember? When I wouldn’t give up my favorite Barbie costume because y
ou were three inches taller.”
Alekhsiy relaxed slightly, relieved by the conversation’s more sedate turn.
The panels’ images shifted again, with words crawling over some, while others flashed images of oddly garbed individuals or beasts. No two panels displayed the same pictures at the same time.
Nora hooted and Larissa tossed a rude gesture at her, then laughed. “Okay, okay, I give in. We’ve got too many years between the three of us to blow it all now for a man. Besides, your mom was always my inspiration as a costumer.”
Danae’s smile twisted a little. Alekhsiy shot a sideways glance at her, unable to study her more closely and still remain polite.
“Look, I’ll tell you what everything looks like.” Danae leaned forward.
“Oh yeah?” Larissa tilted her head, her eyes’ close-held caution at odds with her mouth’s hopeful quirk. “What’s in it for you?”
“I get to point all questions to you.”
“You’ll get a million of ’em.” Larissa goggled at her. “This is a huge event for costumers, even if we are limited to fight-related styles. Everybody will think I made his outfit.”
“So? How much can you say, since you have to honor a LARP?” Danae sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “His stuff is very traditional, anyway. As good as or better than anything up there on the silver screen.” She waved a hand at the panels, some of which were now showing scenes from what looked like the Torhtremer throne room.
Nora whistled softly.
“Just answer the questions,” Larissa mused. “If they ask too much, like if I actually made them, then back off and start sounding like an accessory to his LARP.” Her gaze rotated between the three of them. “Yes, I can do that. I wouldn’t be lying, and I’m doing your costume.”
“Cool.”
Tension Alekhsiy hadn’t known existed eased out of his shoulders.
Danae had found a plausible explanation for his clothes, as Kyle had arranged for his weapons. Now he could walk openly through this strange place without fear of being challenged as a stranger before he so much as spoke.
He squeezed her hand under the table and she flicked a smile at him.
The table behind him signaled urgently and a harassed waiter poured coffee into a cup only a few hand spans from him. The bitter stench filled his nostrils and he fought not to jerk away.
Faugh! Even the most overburdened mess hall would never produce such poison lest the troops revolt and brew the cooks in it. Danae had warned him but he hadn’t believed her. He would pay more attention to her cautions the next time.
“Here’s your room key.” Larissa slid the small, shiny rectangle onto the table. “I finished fitting all your clothes so I shouldn’t need to use the connecting door anymore.”
“No, you keep it.” Danae frowned. “Won’t you want to come back and forth between our rooms as usual, in case you want to tweak the costumes? I’d planned to hang on to my key, in case you wanted me to drop anything off for mods.”
A long, considering silence fell, broken only by the high-pitched whine from the great panels overhead. Was that a common practice among their kind?
“Gotcha.” The wee bit of plastic disappeared back into the side of Larissa’s purse.
Danae waggled her fingers at them in thanks at the same instant the waiter arrived with their drinks.
“What do you mean by fight-related styles?” Alekhsiy asked to give himself time to learn a new style of tea. Thrice-damned barbarian mess hall, tea should be brewed carefully and with ceremony. He grimly accepted the small pot of boiling hot water and tried not to smell any of Larissa’s vanilla latte. If there was anything worse than the local coffee, it was the stench of its sweetened form.
“You know GriffinCon specializes in fighting,” Nora began.
He nodded and ripped open the tea bags Danae had given him. Bags. He shuddered again, dipped them carefully into the water, and started to count. They were, as she’d so acidly remarked, better than nothing.
“Everything here is supposed to relate to fighting, especially costuming. There are no prizes for anything just because it’s pretty, inspired by something historical or science fiction-y. Oh no. It’s got to be for a fighter or somebody accompanying one.” Larissa sounded a trifle bitter. “Of course, that doesn’t stop ordinary fans from dressing as anybody they like.”
“Cheerleaders always win great prizes,” Danae added, and offered Alekhsiy the cream. She’d sworn the result would be chai, the spicy brew that had fueled a thousand marches.
“Refuge of the lazy.” Larissa made a very rude noise. “Freaking celebrity guest judges don’t have the brains to look past tits and ass to find creativity, hard work, and solid research.”
The great panels flickered, lingering on horizontal black and white stripes, not the audiovisual system’s gaudy colors or crisp text.
Nora snickered. “So you can present Eowyn as a Rider of Rohan, but not Eowyn as a simple princess,” she contributed, clearly trying to offer a common example.
Alekhsiy took his first sip of chai and nodded, hoping he looked better informed.
“But everybody comes anyway, since GriffinCon is so old and big. Fifty years, isn’t it?” Nora asked.
“Something like that,” Danae agreed. “Plus, Hollywood’s been finding extras here for years. They’ll recruit them, shoot a battle scene or two at one of the local parks somewhere near GriffinCon, then come back the following year with the finished movie to find a ready-made audience.”
The great screens hummed again. The stripes began to revolve faster.
“What with that and the photography prizes, we’re almost as big as Comic-Con now. We even have a big international contingent.” Larissa nodded toward a trio of girls armed with parasols and wearing frilly, short skirts. They tittered and bowed, then ran off, darting glances back at Alekhsiy.
“Gothic Lolitas,” Larissa muttered. “They’ll probably want their picture taken with you later on.”
“Along with a gazillion other people,” Danae snapped and yanked open her menu.
The panels reached a high-pitched whine. It sliced through all other sounds like the Imperial Armory’s finest saw.
A girl yelped. Nora put her hands over her ears.
“What the hell?” Danae looked up and around.
The great screens keened again, higher and louder. The entire room went dark from its highest point to its lowest, from its farthest distance to its nearest. Even the golden balconies became only the faintest glimmer.
Women screamed in the fast-rising note of pure panic. Men began to shout, some urging caution but others falling toward chaos
Alekhsiy shoved his chair back so hard it fell over and reached for his knife. He knew that noise all too well. Nothing on this world could create it. Yet, by the Red God of War, he should not draw his sword here.
The panels simultaneously flashed from solid black to the same vista of endless, ice-covered wastes. No land survived there, only barren ice and salt sea. Wind blew snow pellets across it, so bitterly that the crowd flinched.
A deep, harsh, disembodied voice laughed.
“Look at my deeds, fools, and know who you fight!” Azherbhai, the Imperial Terrapin snapped.
How had that thrice-damned spawn of Chaos come here?
Could he fight him? No, only a sorcerer or another imperial beast could do that, such as Khyber, the Imperial Dragon.
On the screens a single, small steading loomed up out of the storm, its chimney offering a small beacon of warmth and hope. A gust of wind blasted in the door and an earthquake ripped out the walls. The walls crushed a screaming babe, while its father struggled futilely to reach it.
Alekhsiy’s heart lurched and he closed his eyes. Would he ever stop seeing his nephew’s death in his dreams?
The images flashed past faster after that. The first skirmish by the far northern river, when Mykhayl’s men had fought valiantly to protect him. Knowing now that Mykhayl had survived did not
make it any easier to watch bloodstains cover the river’s icy edge.
The trenches filling ever higher with the dead at the ice fortress’s long siege; the nightmare forced march through the mountains when his men’s flesh had been more carved by frostbite than wounds—at least until they reached the battlefield; the civil war’s endless, futile battles between fools who had no claim upon the throne and only cost the land more blood. All of it pitilessly displayed, at a scale far larger than life, in a style designed to appall even the hardiest.
Several people became horribly, loudly sick somewhere close by.
Alekhsiy envied them. He’d had to school himself to block that escape from a young age, lest he fail his men in battle. Only the strongest could lead their troops past carnage wrought by Azherbhai’s monsters.
Danae hid her face against his back, shaking. It was a canny move, since she wouldn’t slow him if he needed to do battle.
He patted her hand, wishing he could offer more comfort.
Azherbhai laughed again. “You see? Your quest is hopeless, fools. Yield and send me my warrior!”
“Never!” Alekhsiy shouted. “Torhtremer forever!”
“Torhtremer!” Danae echoed him immediately.
“You have no hope!” The Imperial Terrapin roared, shaking the great lamps above the lobby. Icebergs spun through the panels, seeming to charge toward the crowd. They were covered with warriors who were both fighting scaly monsters from the deep and struggling to stay on the bucking, ice-covered sheets, lest they vanish into the mountainous seas.
“Torhtremer!” Alekhsiy shouted again, lest he start reliving that nightmare conflict.
“Torhtremer!” Danae was with him in the same instant and came to stand at his side.
“Torhtremer! Torhtremer!” First Nora, then Larissa joined in, the words deepening as if the Horned Goddess’s three-part self was helping.
To Alekhsiy’s complete shock, the crowd around them picked up the same chant. “Torhtremer! Torhtremer! Torhtremer!”
Music swelled, faint at first, then louder and louder, to pour into the lobby. Torhtremer’s national anthem? How did they know it here?
The great panels hissed and popped angrily, then turned to black.
Captive Desires Page 6
