Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy)

by Charity Santiago

  "Why, you -" She tried to slap him, but he caught her hand smoothly in his and hooked it over his shoulder, standing and hauling her upright with him in one swift motion.

  Ashlyn gritted her teeth when she slumped against him, unable to put any weight on her left leg. "Oh Gods, that hurts," she muttered, tears springing to her eyes. She wasn't the type to cry over pain, but then she wasn't sure that 'pain' was enough to describe the agonizing, throbbing, pulling-apart-at-the-tendon-and-shredding slowly sensation that was settling deep within her ankle.

  "How's it feel?" Aaron asked, swapping his unlit cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other.

  "Crappy," she mused, and stared harder at her foot, as if that was either gonna cure it or reveal what exactly was wrong with it. "Where's Skye?"

  "Went after your friend," the old pilot grunted. "Took off that way." He jerked his chin in a spastic motion to some direction that Ashlyn couldn't identify.

  She fumbled uncomfortably at Vargo's shoulder, trying to get a better grip. "He's not my friend!"

  "Hey, I ain't passin no judgment," Aaron said, holding his hands up in front of him. "I really don't give a crap 'bout that anyway. I just don't want you joinin' your fr - uh, that ninja in the ship's holdin’ cells. Ain't too comfortable in there."

  "Tell me about it." She shifted her gaze to Vargo, staring at his chin instead of his eyes, determined not to give him any more satisfaction from her predicament than necessary. "I need to get up to Aik's house, and I can't do it alone - and don't you dare try to pick me up!" she snarled when he reached to slide a hand behind her thighs. "Just help me hobble up there."

  "Fine." Vargo grinned as he slid an arm around her waist, the other one holding the hand that was draped around his neck. "I think I like this way just fine."

  Ugh. Ashlyn tried very diligently to minimize physical contact as the Spartan began half-carrying her over to the stairs. Climbing the ladder to reach Aik's house proved to be a problem, but finally (after some hand-slapping and death threats) Ashlyn conceded enough to let Vargo climb up behind her, leaning back against him and using him for support when she had to lift her uninjured ankle to the next rung.

  Of course he insisted on carrying her the short distance into Aik's living room, but she didn't make it easy for him.

  "Ow, ow, ow," Ashlyn chanted as Vargo settled her on the couch. "OW!"

  "Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all. His hands were contradictory to his careless tone, though, carefully arranging her with her back against the armrest and her legs stretched out in front. And as much as Ashlyn wanted to catch him trying to feel her up and give him a good solid slap, Vargo's hands on her skin were totally businesslike, lingering no longer than necessary as he tried to make her comfortable.

  Ashlyn folded her arms across her chest and fixed him with a grumpy stare, determined to stay angry. Carrying her up two flights of stairs and a ladder didn't make up for blabbing to Skye.

  He caught the look and raised an eyebrow. "Take a picture," he told her, choosing to interpret her loathing as some kind of come-on. "It'll last longer."

  "The only way I'd do that would be if I could burn it afterwards," Ashlyn said darkly.

  "After what?" he replied, and looked like he was going to continue, but then he hesitated, looking a little unsure of himself. Ashlyn allowed herself a moment of satisfaction - she'd insulted Vargo and he'd been unable to think of any kind of suitable comeback.

  But then Skye walked into the room, slamming the door open so hard that it hit the wall and made the whole house rattle.

  "Your friend is in the airship," he growled. "Restlyn's keeping an eye on him."

  Ashlyn noticed that Skye's hair, which usually stood straight up on end, was slightly rumpled and dusty-looking. She wondered if he'd had to struggle with Lysato in his quest to catch the other man. Probably, she thought uneasily. It wasn't likely that the ninja had gone down without a fight.

  Skye yanked a chair away from the wall, shoving an assortment of books and parchments out of the way as he did so, and straddled it backwards like she and her friends used to do in grade school. Even now, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, he still sometimes looked like an overgrown kid to Ashlyn, but she kept that thought to herself. Telling Skye he looked like a child probably wouldn't earn her any points with the swordsman. She shifted on the couch, uncomfortable under his creepy glowing stare.

  "Whose side are you on?" he asked bluntly.

  Er. Not what she'd expected him to start out with, but it was good enough. "Yours," Ashlyn said automatically. "But - "

  He held up a hand, silencing her. Ashlyn frowned; her sixteen-year old self would not have been happy at being hushed by a simple gesture. Her twenty-three year old self didn't like it much either.

  "Did you know we were in Storim?" he said, gloved hands clenching the back of the chair tightly.

  "No."

  "Have you ever met Devlyn?"

  "No."

  "Then why did you - " Skye stopped, visibly trying to quell his temper, and took a deep breath. "If you've never met him," he started over, voice low, "then . . . why didn't you tell me when this Toryn contacted you? I've told you how ruthless Devlyn is. I've told you what he's done, what he wants to do."

  "Yeah," Ashlyn muttered, suddenly feeling nauseous. She'd been completely distraught when she'd thought that maybe her friends were fighting for the wrong cause - she could only imagine how Skye felt now, thinking she might have betrayed him.

  "Look, Skye," she began, but he cut her off again.

  "I don't want to hear your excuses," he said, holding up a hand to silence her. "Just choose your battle and be done with it. If you're intent on going to Toryn, I'm not going to stop you as long as you don‘t hurt anyone. If you stay here, then we will continue with the plan as decided before."

  He stood, not bothering to grab the chair before it fell on its side with a loud thunk, and glanced at her outstretched leg. "You'd better get someone to look at that," he said, and walked out of the room before Ashlyn could think to retort, his boots clunking angrily against the floor.

  "Gee, thanks," Ashlyn said belatedly.

  Vargo snickered from where he'd been standing, slouched against the wall with his usual graceless posture. "Be seein' you," he told Ashlyn, moving towards the doorway.

  She didn't give him the satisfaction of answering, instead focusing her attention on her ankle. Slowly she unlaced her sneaker, being careful not to jostle her aching foot, and eased the shoe off. The agony that shot through her as she bent her ankle slightly was indescribable.

  Ashlyn bit down on her lip, hard, the taste of metal on her tongue, and winced. A single tear squeezed out the corner of her eye, and for a long moment she seriously deliberated breaking down and sobbing. 'Cause…like…ow.

  Then Aaron stuck his head into the room, and all thoughts of crying fled from Ashlyn's mind as she unconsciously sat up straighter, fixing him with what she hoped was an annoyed look. Damned if she'd cry in front of him.

  "What are you doing here?" she demanded.

  Grinning, his cigarette preventing his teeth from actually meeting, Aaron stepped into the room and brandished a bright green heal stane. "I'm yer knight in shinin' armor," he said.

  "Skye sent you?"

  "Naw, but I told him I was comin'. I saw your ankle, doesn't take a doctor to figure out something like that. Sprained?" he asked amicably, pulling up Skye's chair so he could sit beside her outstretched foot.

  "Something like that," Ashlyn repeated his words with no trace of humor. "What about the Cosmea healers? Couldn’t they fix me without using stanes?" She was thinking about the Conservation Act, but even as she said it she realized that Jackson was probably giving FLD free rein to use magic as needed.

  Aaron shrugged. "You really wanna wait for one of 'em? Or should I just fix yer leg right now?"

  "Fix me now. Please." Ashlyn gave her best polite smile and leaned her head back against the wall, sighing as Aaron put one ha
nd on her shin, just above her ankle. The old man's touch was uncomplicated and platonic, a big relief from all the electricity she'd been feeling with Skye, Vargo and Drake in the last three days. Chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip, she watched as Aaron slid the stane into his armband, letting it settle in with a metallic clink before putting both hands back on her ankle.

  "Don't turn me into a frog or anything," she told him as an afterthought.

  He muttered a few words under his breath, but Ashlyn couldn't tell if he was retorting to her comment or working the spell. A few moments later his hands glowed green against her skin, and she could feel the hurt inside her leg shifting, changing, the strained muscles and tendons snapping back into shape.

  It was excruciating, but she said nothing, instead choosing to dig her short nails into the fabric of the couch, bracing herself against the pain. She'd had to deal with a lot of it in the past three days, but it was nothing new. Living on your own meant surviving on your own, and she'd had more than a few close calls in the past few years.

  As the discomfort intensified, she let her breathing grow shallow, calming herself, concentrating hard and at the same time trying to let her entire body relax. If she could find her center, that semi-sleepy state somewhere between the pain and complete unconsciousness…almost…

  There.

  Ashlyn smiled drowsily. Ah. That was better. Her ninja training came in handy sometimes.

  "You know, Aaron," she said, letting her head loll to the side as she focused on the old pilot's rough features, "you're forty years old now."

  He snorted ungracefully. "Don't remind me, kid."

  "I'll be twenty-four soon," she continued, staring hard at the wall just beyond his head. "Another month or so. Twenty-four with nothing to show for it. You, at least, have the airship and Sara." She paused. "You do still have Sara, don't you? You married her at some point in the past eight years?"

  Aaron said nothing, and Ashlyn's eyes widened. "Aaron?" she prompted, her voice hedged with warning.

  "I had to marry her, or she would have left," he admitted finally. "Said she'd go off to live with her sister in Rode." He grunted, and said, "Dunno why ya women gotta be so friggin’ disagreeable."

  "Rode, huh. She'd rather live in that slag heap than continue at your beck and call as an unpaid, unappreciated slave? Ugh. That must have been a blow to your ego," Ashlyn said slowly, laboring over the words, and winced as a sliver of pain edged into her self-induced stupor.

  She took a deep breath and centered again, pushing the physical away and focusing on something else - anything else, anything to take her mind off of what he was doing.

  "Drake Lockhart and I have the same blood type." She blurted out the first random fact that came to mind, sufficiently squashing any link her mind was maintaining with the discomfort in her ankle.

  Aaron raised an eyebrow. "How'd ya figure that out?"

  "Medical logs in the ship," she answered automatically, over-enunciating the "L" sound for no particular reason except to amuse herself. "I read them. I don't know why they're still there after all these years."

  "I knew we'd all end up back together at some point," Aaron said, pulling his hands away from her leg and slapping his palms against his thighs. "Figured there was no use throwing all those records away if we were just gonna be needin’ 'em again someday."

  "Mm." She closed her eyes, still half-drowsy.

  "Yer all fixed, kid," Aaron growled, and she could hear the chair legs scrape on the floor as he stood up. "Don't come cryin' to me again if you mess yerself up anytime soon."

  Thrust back into reality in a hurry, Ashlyn blinked, a bit light-headed. "Okay," she said stupidly. "Thank you, Aaron."

  He grunted again and was out the door without bothering to give her a response.

  Chapter 6

  Betraying Trust

  It was cold when Ashlyn's eyes flew open later that night. She had no idea what had awoken her, but as her eyes searched the dark room uselessly, her fingers clenched at the covers, pulling them up to her chin.

  The darkness was strange. It wasn't the usual, scarlet-navy moonlit night, but rather an oppressive blackness that sent shivers up her spine with its still, ominous presence.

  "Restlyn?" she whispered. When she'd fallen asleep the martial artist had not yet returned to their shared room at the inn. Perhaps her entrance had been what startled Ashlyn. "Are you there?"

  There was a rustle next to her bed. Ashlyn froze, listening.

  Suddenly something clapped over her mouth- a hand?- and in the same instant something heavy grasped at her belly. Her stomach lurched at the unexpected contact, and as her assailant fumbled around, she realized he was searching for her hands, trying to bind her before she could gather her wits enough to fight back.

  Ashlyn brought one arm up and over to slap the hand off of her face, then yanked away, rolling over and over again until the bed dropped away from beneath her and she fell to the floor. Her hands and knees hit the floor hard, jarring her painfully. She scrambled into a crouch, scanning the room, but it was much too dark to see anything.

  She heard him grumble in a low voice, securing her assumption that her attacker was a man, and then he began tearing at the bedcovers, apparently trying to find her.

  Fear tinged the edges of Ashlyn's consciousness. Restlyn hadn't answered. Did that mean the brunette simply hadn't returned to their room yet, or had this man already incapacitated the female martial artist? Had he gotten to any of the other members of FLD before coming to Ashlyn's room? She didn't even want to consider it.

  Something hit her in the face, and Ashlyn yelped and squirmed sideways before realizing that it was her blankets, tangling over her arms and legs like a net. She wriggled out from under them, biting back the curses on the tip of her tongue as she once again struggled to see in the pitch-black room.

  Climbing to her feet, she edged sideways, racking her brain for the room's layout. It had changed since her previous visits, so it was difficult to recall, but she knew that she had rolled off the bed in the opposite direction from the door.

  Ashlyn breathed shallowly, in through her nose, out through her mouth, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. For all her arrogance, she'd never achieved the level of balance and skill that other Toryn ninjas boasted. She had left before completing her training, brash and hot-headed and full of herself simply because she'd defeated the five Toryn Lords and gained the respect of her peers.

  Respect wouldn't help her now, trapped in the dark with an attacker between her and the door. Arrogance wouldn't, either.

  Clenching her fists at her sides, Ashlyn dropped her chin to her chest, closing her eyes. Listening. Focusing.

  The sound of his feet against the floor was soft, barely audible. Ashlyn guessed that he was wearing soft-soled boots or sandals. His motion as he moved out from behind the bed was anything but clumsy; she could hear the shifting of his clothing as he eased sideways, just a few feet in front of her.

  His breathing was controlled, also, but louder than hers. He was nervous. Good. She had him at a disadvantage.

  Ashlyn drew one hand back, holding it up behind her head, fingers curled, palm braced. Her other hand she extended in front of her, folding her ring and pinky fingers down, keeping her thumb, index and middle fingers outstretched.

  She heard him stop in front of her, and then the unmistakable metallic slide of a sword being drawn from its sheath.

  The door creaked open the slightest bit, sending a tiny sliver of light into the room. In the sudden illumination, she could see the man turn, tensing, but there was no one there.

  She didn't wait for him to finish drawing his weapon. Ashlyn leapt forward, digging the toes of her left foot into the floor as she jumped up in a spinning kick. He had one hand up over his head, still drawing the sword from the sheath on his back, but he managed to clumsily block her attack with his opposite hand. She countered with an immediate uppercut, going for her trademark deathblow to the nose, but his s
word clattered to the floor as he used his hand to stop her palm's upward motion.

  She tried to spin away to stay out of his grasp, only to find that he'd caught her wrist and now twisted it viciously. Ashlyn went with it, not wanting to injure herself by struggling, and ended up bent over at the waist to avoid strain to her weaker arm. Quickly she brought her elbow up to his stomach, landing a solid blow despite the awkward position.

  He cried out when she connected with his ribs, and fell to his knees. But his grip remained solid, dragging her down with him.

  Her mind raced, her eyes searching for something to use to free herself, and her gaze came to rest on the sword. When her left hand snaked out to grab it, her captor twisted again, his booted foot coming down none too gently on top of her wrist.