by Tara Janzen
Blood gushed where the blade sliced into her thigh, and she stumbled backward, roaring in rage and pain, her orange mane flying, her green face marked with a smoking purple scar from a Night Watcher’s thread.
Jesu, he swore. Skraelings and Night Watchers.
A dozen screams rent the air as more of the whiplike threads streamed down from above, burning whomever they struck and clearing a place around him and the Lyran, cordoning them off. Outside the web-like structure, the skraelings were regrouping from their feast. To the right, an armed troop was breaking through the crowd—the Third Guard.
Worse and worse, he thought. He was bent half double in pain, his gun arm nearly numb from the Lyran’s wrenching, his body aching from her crushing weight. He took a deep breath, trying to straighten himself, and the Lyran snarled, her lips curling up to reveal the extra-long canines curving down from her upper jaw. She crouched low to pounce, her arms flexed at her sides. In the next instant, her gaze shifted, her golden eyes fixing on something behind him.
Morgan whirled around, his finger on the lasgun’s trigger—and came to a dead halt.
Llynya.
The sight of her hit him like another blow. His hand tightened on Scyld’s hilt, threatening to break it with the force of his grip.
Llynya... dressed in black, the wind wrapping her cloak about her. Llynya... here?
Confusion flooded through him. Had she fallen into the weir during the battle? Spent a frozen eternity in the hell of the wormhole?
Had she spent the last ten years lost in this godforsaken time?
He started to take a step toward her, drawn by the face that haunted his dreams, the last face he’d seen from his time—so wild and pretty, so determined, her eyes as green as a thousand trees in deep summer. Except the eyes that shot him a brief glance were gray, not green, a lucid, piercing gray as clear as mountain water and just as cold.
He stopped short, suddenly unsure of what he was seeing.
Her hair was a tumble of braids and knots—but shorter, much shorter than he remembered, and the wrong color, a whole array of the wrong colors, all blonds and silvers, not the rich darkness of a velvety night. ’Twas much more poorly knotted, too, less skillfully braided, and without a single twig, without a single leaf to adorn the silken strands.
He thought of his chest and the mark of the leaf permanently traced on his skin, the leaf he’d stolen from the elf maid in Lanbarrdein.
So not the fair and wondrous Llynya, not without leaves in her hair. Cold truth replaced his confusion.
“Friggin’ wine,” he growled, shaking his head. He didn’t have time for its illusions.
He hazarded a glance at the Lyran, holding steady in an attack position under the threat of his lasgun, all eight feet of her, then looked back to the woman.
The illusion hadn’t evaporated as Carillion illusions were wont to do.
He narrowed his gaze and took another step forward, willing her to be gone, to go the path of all the drunken, self-indulgent images he conjured with the wine. To his surprise, she lashed out with a fighting thread, the end of it snaking by him and finding its target behind his back.
The Lyran roared her rage and rushed forward, only to be brought up short by a firm command.
“Creassa, Ly-ray! Creassa!” the woman shouted, threatening with another thread. “Chak ga, bey bey Rhayne. Bonse bey bey.”
To Morgan’s astonishment, the Lyran fell back, snarling and snapping, and when the woman advanced on her, the beast turned and ran, retreating through an opening in the hastily strung web, heading toward the armed troop.
Llynya had fought with a sword and a bow, and none better, Morgan remembered. No one in his time had known fighting threads. They were weapons of the Waste, weapons of the Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers, like the men forming up behind the woman—desert wraiths all, her included, judging by her outfit. No elfin maid.
But the resemblance—Sweet Jesu. ’Twas enough to hurt, as everything had hurt since Sonnpur-Dzon.
“Har maukte! Har!” The skraelings sent up their war cry.
“Corvus! Corvus!” came the answer from the right. “Har maukte, har maukte! Har!”
Time had run out. From beyond the Sha-shakrieg’s web, York burst through the crowd and threw him a tech-jaw. The small silver ball flew through the air, breaching the threads. Morgan caught it with the hand holding the lasgun and dropped it in his mouth. The web, no matter how poisonous, wouldn’t hold the beasts off forever.
“Tri-opt Four,” York said, giving a location outside the square.
“Aye. Aja, point,” Morgan said, taking command. “And pick up the damned dragon.” Forget the Carillions. He couldn’t get a damned drunk right anymore, either.
“Aye.” For once, the boy did as he was told, scooping the statue up off the floor as he did a lightning-quick reconnaissance to find the fastest way out of the web and out of Racht.
Morgan swung back to the woman. Whoever she was, she obviously hadn’t been sent by Van or the Warmonger. That made her less than an enemy, if not exactly an ally.
Yet she and her guards had saved him from the Lyran and, with their deadly web of threads, had bought him time to escape—or they’d captured him for themselves. He’d been carrying a hell of a bounty lately.
Her face. He still wasn’t sure that she wasn’t an illusion. Everything about her was too familiar, too perfect, even her less-than-perfect hair.
A commotion behind him jerked his attention back to the crisis—which, for all its fascination, wasn’t about some woman’s face. Three skraelings had dared the threads. More brute force than grace, they brought the smell of burning hair and scorched skin with them—and the sound of lasguns winding up for a showdown.
Morgan dove for the floor as the skraelings let loose with a round of fire. Sliding across the slick, wet stone, he rolled onto his back, his lasgun pulsing. He took out one of the skraelings before a Night Watcher retaliated with a blastpak and pitched the area into an impenetrable fog of smoke and flame bursts.
“Tri-opt Four, Captain,” Morgan ordered, sheathing his sword. “Relay! Go!”
He twisted around, squinting against the smoke, searching for the woman. She’d been less than three meters from him.
“Seven points west.” Aja’s voice came over the tech-jaw. “Stay low and watch for the cable canal.”
Morgan glanced at the locator on his comwatch, marking the direction. From somewhere east of him, he heard the captain of the Third Guard shout orders to surround him, and he knew he had to make a break for it or lose his chance. Yet he hesitated. She was out there. Close. He could feel her, some sense telling him she was just out of reach.
Suddenly, a hand appeared out of the smoke, small but strong, and wrapped around his wrist.
“I’ve got him, Dray,” the woman said breathlessly, sliding to a stop next to him. She quickly rose to a crouch, a modified lasgun gripped in her other hand. “Disburse. I’ll meet you at the rover.” She slapped a tracking bracelet on Morgan’s arm. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of the web before the smoke clears.”
Morgan scrambled to his feet, all hesitancy gone. He’d obey her—up to a point. It was time to get the hell out of Racht, and she was going with him. He grabbed her hand and took off, following Aja’s directions. He didn’t know what the woman’s plan was and he didn’t care. He’d trust his captain over a bounty hunter any day.
And she was a bounty hunter. That question had been answered beyond a doubt. No one else carried around tracking bracelets, pairs of locking metal bands tuned to a single frequency. He glanced down at her wrist and saw a bracelet that matched his, the lights in both cycling synchronously. They had an odd glow about them that he hadn’t seen before on tracking bracelets, but tech-trash innovations were Aja’s specialty, not his.
She’d banded him, though. He had to give her that. He’d outmaneuvered Van’s beasts and the Third Guard for three months, and been drunk most of the time. The Lyran had been a close call, a
real close call, but hell, he was still in one piece—except for his head, which felt even more like someone had cracked it open with a jagged pike.
I’ve got him, she’d said to one of the Night Watchers.
Not for long, he could have told her. As soon as they were out of Racht, he would get the bracelet’s lock sequence from her and be on his way to Tri-opt Four.
Another skraeling went down in front of them, his blood spilling onto the floor like a red tide, the neatness of his slit throat and the throwing star sticking out of his chest proclaiming him a piece of Aja’s work.
Good, Morgan thought. The boy was only seconds ahead of him.
They dodged tables and overturned chairs. Broken glass littered the floor. Black cloaks swept by them in the smoke as they ran—her Night Watchers taking up the fight behind them, guarding their backs instead of stopping him cold as he made off with one of their own.
It didn’t make sense, and that bothered him. Not enough to slow him down, but it bothered him.
Something else bothered him too. He didn’t know how in the hell she thought she could hold him with just a tracking bracelet. The bounty hunters he knew, and there were quite a few, always backed up their bracelets with something a little more deterring, something with a lethal component. Maiming devices were popular, something triggered by a break in the frequency connection.
His bracelet was completely smooth, without any devices attached, the only oddity being the glow that seemed to emanate from the metal itself. ’Twas strange, but apparently not deadly or drugging, or he’d probably know it by now. He felt nothing—nothing except the warmth of her hand in his, holding him at least as tightly as he was holding her.
Stranger yet, he thought, bemused. He ran, and she kept up with him, offering no resistance.
“Take the canal southeast under the threads, then due east at the first intersection. I left a zip line,” Aja said, and Morgan knew the boy had made it beyond the web and was running through the canal. His captain would relay directions to him all the way to Tri-opt Four. From there they could circle around and pick up their transport.
“York,” he said, expecting the mercenary to report.
“Four points east of the intersection. I’ve got the boy marked, and if he’d quit pingin’ off the friggin’ walls, I could keep up with him when he flies by,” the older man muttered. “Unless you want me to wait for you.”
“Nay. I’ll meet you there.” He was deliberately vague. He’d heard the woman giving orders through a tech-jaw and didn’t want her relaying their destination to the Night Watchers, not until after he, Aja, and York were gone.
The web loomed ahead of them through the smoke, a drape of silvery threads interspersed with darker ones. Sheathing his lasgun, Morgan tightened his hand around the woman’s, wanting to make damn sure he didn’t lose her.
“Hold on,” he warned.
A shadow beyond the web heralded the canal. Morgan unhooked a descender from his belt and snapped it open in readiness. When he saw the opening in the threads, he looked for the zip line. It was there, thicker and duller than the threads, looped around a hunk of Racht junk no bigger than a table.
He swore under his breath. The piece of twisted metal had held Aja’s weight, and it might hold his own, but unless it was bolted to the floor it sure as hell wouldn’t hold his and the woman’s. Somewhere in the last thirty seconds, he should have told Aja that he’d taken a hostage.
Another blast of skraeling fire exploded behind them. He was out of options and out of time. Three more running strides and he dropped to the floor, pulling her down with him and reaching out to snag the zip line. He thought he heard the descender click closed and hoped he felt the line catch before they slid under the threads and over the edge into the canal—and into darkness.
Chapter 4
She was smart. Morgan had to give her that. They’d no sooner hit the floor than she’d wrapped her arm around him, angling her lasgun across his chest and holding on like he’d told her, like her life depended on it. And even as they’d gone over the edge, she’d managed to release a descender of her own and snap onto the line.
Quick. She was damn quick, almost as fast as Aja, and obviously used to being in tight places. He knew a few female bounty hunters, all good, but none quite so slick as the woman who had caught him. Under other circumstances, he’d be tempted to take her on for a job or two. He sure as hell would like to know what she’d said to the Lyran to scare the beast off.
Damn, they were falling fast.
The zip line hummed through his descender, the speed of their descent increasing with each passing second, which could only mean the piece of Racht junk was not bolted down and was giving way above them, scraping across the floor, pulled by their weight. Any moment it was going to come tumbling down right on top of them.
With luck, they would reach the bottom and have time to get out of the way before they were crushed.
With the desert woman wrapped around him, feeling so alive, Morgan hoped he still had some luck to call on.
~ ~ ~
So did Avallyn, but she had her doubts and plenty of them. The man was insane. No one in his right mind would have jumped into one of Racht’s canals on the off chance that awash in Carillion wine he could snag a zip line anchored to a piece of scrap metal—a small piece that by her calculations was sliding across the floor above them at roughly the same speed as their descent, effectively negating any advantage the zip line had given them over simply throwing themselves off the edge.
Her heart racing, she swore under her breath. They were moving too fast, and she’d used her last thread in the attempt to save him, a futile endeavor. The only way the situation could be worse would be if the zip line ran short of reaching the bottom of the canal—which it promptly did. They jerked to a halt, their descent slowed to the rate of the pile of metal moving across the floor.
“Hold on,” he shouted, his arm tightening around her.
Shadana. What was he going to do next? She twisted her head around, trying to find a way to save herself.
“Dray—” she started, but the thief didn’t give her a chance to finish. Kicking off from the canal wall, he lofted them out into space, the two of them hanging from their descenders off the end of the zip line.
“Mother,” she prayed. He was mad, mad beyond reckoning, as Au Cade had foretold. Then she saw it, the opposite canal wall coming into view, the face of it encrusted with cables and pipes. They had a chance, if they weren’t impaled on contact.
He took the brunt of the impact, but the jolt still shuddered through her, jarring her bones. She grabbed for the nearest cable and scrambled for a foothold on the pipes bolted to the wall.
“Release your descender,” he ordered, unhooking his from the line with a flick of his wrist.
Knowing the danger, she did the same, then watched as the line swung away from them, back into darkness. No sooner had it disappeared than it returned into view, followed by the twisted hunk of metal it had been tied to above. She felt the wind of the metal’s passing, heard the tinny whoosh as the air set some part of it vibrating, and for an awful second she feared it would scrape both of them off the canal wall. So much then for the future of the White Ladies and everything else she held dear, the whole of their planned destiny wiped out by the damned time-rider they had awaited for thousands of years.
The piece of metal hit the canal floor with a resounding crash, sending dust and chunks of debris flying into the air. The thief’s reaction was too fast to be anything other than instinctive. He covered her body with his own and pressed her hard against the wall, protecting her from the fallout. Avallyn had one hand clenched around a cable and the other fisted in his shirt. He said something into her ear, but she couldn’t hear him over the echoes of the crash. She could feel him though, everywhere.
He was bigger than he’d looked in Racht, a wall of tensed, active muscle between her and the emptiness beyond, hard and lean, and overwhelmingly male. Her sen
ses were twitching with information overload: the length of the legs flanking hers, the breadth of the shoulders blocking her view, the sleekly muscled torso pressed against her chest, and the strength of the arms holding her to the wall of the canal. She’d shackled herself to a man more physically powerful than she’d thought. It was a disturbing realization, especially since she now found herself alone with the mad thief.
The scent of wine was thick in the air around him, richly overripe, lushly drenched with the fruits of half a dozen planets: grapes and plums from the Eastern Dominion; ashoki and haesa from the Friina Group; shampberries and blood oranges from Russ II. The fumes alone were said to be enough to intoxicate a person, and Avallyn feared she was succumbing. The thief’s head was angled toward hers, his chin grazing her cheek, the unprecedented intimacy of their position enough to steal her breath.
His hand came up and gripped her shoulder, a silent gesture for her to be still, and she realized she’d been tensing her muscles in readiness to flee. She forced herself to relax, squelching her fight-or-flight response. She could do neither while hanging off a wall.
The last pieces of junk and debris settled, plunging the canal into silence. He immediately swore, a softly muted word, barely audible.
“Are you hit?” she asked, her voice carefully neutral, belying the effect his nearness was having on her. She wanted nothing more than to squirm out from under him and run.
“No,” came his curt reply, followed by another whispered curse that sent a blush across her cheeks.
They were tangled so closely together, it was as if he’d spoken the words directly to her, and the curse’s distinction was its crude sexual connotation.
He hadn’t been speaking to her, of course. The words were common, and commonly used by tech-trash and their ilk. Regardless, her mother had assured her there would be none of the physical intimacies normally expected between a priestess and her consort. In fact, she’d expressly forbidden such activity with the thief.
