"Ashlyn," Kou said, shaking her shoulder. "Are you all right?"
"No," she mumbled irritably. "My life sucks."
Wordlessly, he pulled her up to a sitting position again. "Try to stay awake," he said, and Ashlyn wondered if it was just her lethargic state that made it seem like his tone was concerned. She fought to maintain her own grip on the reins, kept her eyes wide open, tensing every time another cramp zigzagged through her abdomen and growing more and more angry with Vargo. (Although in all likeliness and considering her history of motion sickness, this probably wasn't his fault, Ashlyn still felt better having somebody to blame for her pain.)
"How are we going to get past the Toryn forces?" she asked at length. "Jackson- I mean the, uh, president- said that he's been holding the army on the island for the past three months."
"Is that what he said?" Kou muttered, so low that she could barely hear him. "How nice for him." He paused for a moment, and continued, "The invading Toryn forces have been restricted to the southern half of the island. We only have to be concerned with shore guards, this far north."
Ashlyn nodded and fell into silence again. When the sky lightened just a shade or two, the night nearer to sunrise than sunset, she squinted, barely able to make out Toryn Island just in front of them. She felt a spurt of relief- followed by a sudden wave of nausea, and on the tail of that, a sense of impending doom. Not only was she supposed to meet Devlyn and challenge him, but she was sick, getting sicker, and unless Devlyn had a serious gross-out reaction to her vomiting all over his shoes, she doubted that the duel would end well for her.
She was so focused on their forward momentum that when another boat suddenly veered towards them from the left, Ashlyn overreacted, grabbing the steering wheel and yanking it so hard to the right that the tiny boat nearly capsized. Kou cursed and slapped at her hands, trying to regain control.
Ashlyn stared at their assailant, unable to look away from him. A shore guard stared at them from the other boat, dressed like every other ninja she'd encountered in the past week, and staring suspiciously at them, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. Ashlyn swallowed hard, trying to fight her nausea, and closed her eyes- no sea sickness- then heard the distinct shhhhink of a katana being drawn from its sheath.
"Stay your weapon." Kou's voice rang out, clear, concise and with an unmistakable air of authority. He somehow managed to pry Ashlyn's hands off the steering wheel and eased down on the throttle, letting the boat coast to a halt in the water. Another boat suddenly slammed into them from behind, jolting them forward, and another ninja leaped onto the back, much too close for comfort.
Okay, this sucked, Ashlyn thought, clamping her hand over her mouth as she lost her balance and fell forward, struggling valiantly to keep from tossing her cookies. She felt like her dinner was going to make its grand, post-consumption debut any minute now.
When Ashlyn raised her eyes to look at the cloaked ninja in front of her, she found him staring back at her, his moonlit eyes above the mask unmistakably shocked. She didn't recognize him, but he seemed to know her. Or maybe he just recognized the greenish tint of her skin. Lis weren't exactly known for their love of traveling. (What, did people think she came by this motion sickness thing on her own? Please. It was another trait that ran in her family, right up there with indecisiveness, procrastination and sticky fingers.)
The ninja finally dragged his gaze from hers, eyes flicking to Kou. "My apologies," he said, inclining his head and sheathing his sword again. "I did not recognize you."
He started, grabbing for purchase on her seat as the boat ran ashore, but his eyes remained locked on Kou.
The hum of an engine grew louder as Skye pulled up beside them, grim-faced and wet, his hair plastered against his head in dripping spikes. He was flanked by two ninjas in the boat with him. And if looks could kill, Ashlyn had a feeling she'd be swimming with the fishes.
"I have brought the Li heir," Kou said.
"The Li heir?" Ashlyn exclaimed, just a little late in her realization. She scrambled out of the boat and landed on her knees in the shallow water, the impact jarring her teeth and her upset stomach painfully. She looked up at Kou, using one hand to scrape her wet bangs out of her eyes, the other clutching her shuriken, "Oh, no. You're not bringing me here just to turn me over to the Toryn army so Devlyn can take some kind of perverse delight in severing my head from my body."
The guard behind her burst out laughing, and she craned her neck around to glare at him, in turn only making him laugh harder. "She's feisty, all right," he said, sounding- what?- relieved, of all things. "I should have expected as much from the Elder Lord’s heir." He smiled down at Ashlyn. "I should extend my welcome, Lady Li. Devlyn-" here he inclined his head towards Kou- "has been searching the world over for you. I am glad to see he has found you at last."
What?
Ashlyn froze.
Not literally, of course, although that was going to be one option if she didn't get out of the wind and rain pretty soon.
"Devlyn?" she repeated stupidly.
Still shivering, she turned, staring at Kou as he sat motionless in the boat. His dark eyes were completely unreadable.
Okay, for some reason it just wasn't processing.
"Lord Devlyn?" Ashlyn said, wondering why he hadn't denied it already. It just couldn't be possible. Kou was a ninja, captured on the airship and held hostage for days. He was…well, he was her friend.
He was Kou.
He was not Devlyn.
"Kou," she said, laboring to her feet. Her water-logged skirt made it difficult to move. "Tell me what's going on."
"You didn't tell her?" the younger ninja exclaimed. "You were supposed to-"
"No, Tag. I didn't tell her." Kou's gaze was steady as he met Ashlyn's. "I didn't know if she would come after hearing what I had to say."
"What?" Ashlyn growled, getting angrier by the moment. If it was possible, her nausea was intensifying. "Okay, if somebody doesn't tell me what's going on right the hell now, I'm going to puke- and then I'm going to hit someone really, really hard, and I don't freaking care who it is!"
As sick as she felt, and as dark as the near-dawn night remained, she didn't miss the meaningful look that the other ninjas shared. She glanced at Skye, but he seemed just as perplexed as she was.
"She has not yet been exposed," Kou said at length. "She is exhausted, but healthy. A day to recuperate and she’ll be ready."
Exposed? Ready? The heck? "I warned you," Ashlyn began furiously, but then her stomach heaved, and she clamped a hand over her mouth again. Great timing, she thought. The last thing she needed was to blow chunks all over her potential captors.
"All will be explained in due time, Lady Li," Tag said. "For now I will assure you that Devlyn, although he is captain of the Toryn guard, is not and never will be Elder Lord of Toryn. Your father retains that title. And we are not your enemy." He vaulted crisply out of the boat, reached up with his right hand to remove his mask. As the cloth fell away, Ashlyn felt a jolt of recognition. He looked like Kou, close enough to be a brother.
"Tagawa Lunai, of the clan Lunai," he said, bowing low. "I welcome you, Lady Li, and trust you bear no wounds from your ordeal."
She stared at him incredulously, absolutely amazed that he would revert to tradition at a time like this. "I…um…these wounds will heal," she said slowly, too shocked to respond with anything but the proper answer. "And you?"
"I am well." He held out a hand. "Allow me to escort you to your home, Lady Li."
Ashlyn glanced at Skye. He looked absolutely homicidal, but she didn't want him to leave her alone with these people. "Will you escort my…companion with me as well?" she asked. Her words were stilted, but she hoped that perhaps they would attribute that to her sickly state instead of her surprise.
"Certainly, Lady." His hand was still extended, and after some hesitation Ashlyn put her fingers in his, allowing him to guide her towards a horse waiting on the shore. He gave her a leg up, but kept
the reins in his hands so that he could lead her. It was just as well. As violently as her stomach was churning, she didn't feel that she had the strength to guide the horse just now.
Ashlyn glanced back at Kou, wondering what the heck was going on, but his stoic face betrayed nothing. Skye refused to meet her eyes.
This was just super, Ashlyn thought dryly, curling her chilled fingers into the horse's warm mane. She didn't know whether she was being captured or invited to stay for tea. (Actually, tea right now would be great. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had real tea from her actual homeland. It was enough to make her stomach growl, despite its current discomfort.)
When they neared Toryn, however, all thoughts of tea fled her mind.
The sun was almost up now, enabling her to see the giant stone wall that framed Toryn, a city which had once been open to anyone who wished to enter. A gate of sturdy metal- iron, perhaps- was barred from the inside. Throngs of people stood outside the city demanding entrance, some even encamped at the base of the wall, some looking so hollow-eyed that she wondered what horrors they might have seen. But the gates remained shut.
Tag turned and held up a hand, signaling the rest of them to stop. "Cover yourself, Lady," he said, removing his cloak and handing it up to her. "Now is not the time to reveal your presence."
Ashlyn pulled the cloak around her shoulders and drew the hood up hesitantly. It had all seemed simple before- Devlyn was the declared enemy. If she defeated him, everything would go back to normal. Now she wasn't so sure.
People stared unabashedly at them as they rode up to the city gates. Ashlyn kept her head down, her shuriken concealed within the folds of her cloak, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that both of the guards flanking Skye had drawn their katanas.
"My lord, we seek entrance," a man pleaded, running up to Tag and falling to his knees in the withered grass. He bowed, clasping his hands together fitfully as though he thought he might be punished for asking.
Ashlyn looked at the man, trying not to be obvious about it. He was dressed in Outlander clothing, similar to samurai in style, but he wore his hair short, without the traditional topknot. If the clothing was a little threadbare, it was clean, and the man did not look as if he were starving. At least she could take comfort in that.
"I do not have the authority to grant your family sanctuary," Tag answered in Toryn. "You are safe outside these walls, for now. If we are attacked, I will ask Lord Devlyn to place you under his protection. You have my word."
The poor man looked absolutely miserable. "Thank you, my lord," he said dutifully. "A thousand blessings on your clan."
"And yours." Tag led Ashlyn forward again. At a gesture from him, a ninja standing atop the stone wall shouted to his comrades below, and the gates began to open.
They entered, and Ashlyn nearly fainted with relief when she saw that the inside of Toryn was not changed, not in the least. The bridges stood solidly, every house just as she had left it- even her own. It was so heartbreakingly beautiful that it brought tears to her eyes. There was the bridge where she'd broken her nose at the age of seven, trying to prove to her father that the river was deep enough to dive in (lucky it hadn't been her neck). There was Heaven, the old bar where she'd conned her uncle into letting her try his sake (and she still didn't know how she'd pulled that one off).
And beyond it all, beyond her dad's house, beyond even the pagoda where she had once faced the Elder Lords in battle for leadership of Toryn, was Na Michico.
Ashlyn slid off the horse. This was her home, the land of her ancestors. It was an entire world apart from the rest of Kresmir. The ground beneath her feet was so familiar that she could have closed her eyes and danced a thousand steps without falter.
"Thank Drago," she breathed. "I thought I'd never see it again."
Then she turned and threw up all over Tag's boots.
Chapter 11
Tainted Blood
"Ungh," Ashlyn groaned, mashing her cheek into her pillow. The air was cold, colder than she was accustomed to, anyway, and she'd managed to kick off her blanket at some point during the night. Keeping her eyes shut and refusing to acknowledge that she was waking up, she fumbled around in front of her, looking for the woolly blanket she had bought from an old lady in Landi a year or so ago.
Instead of soft wool, though, her hand settled on something warm. And firm.
Er…wait a minute. It was all coming back now.
"You're finally awake," Skye said from beside her, amusement in his tone.
Ashlyn pried one eye open and looked at where her fingers had ended up. "Heh," she said weakly, removing her hand from Skye's thigh. "Um, sorry."
Mental note: no touching of Skye. Ever again.
Skye shrugged, apparently deciding to pretend like he hadn't noticed her shameless groping. "How are you feeling?"
Ashlyn rolled onto her back, blew out a breath. Her stomach was still roiling a little, but it wasn't horrible. "I'm better, I guess." Belatedly she noticed the presence of a soft pillow, and glanced quizzically at Skye. Traditionally, Toryn slept on thin rugs on the floor.
"I couldn't stand seeing you bang your head on that useless mat anymore," he replied. "There are a few traditions around here that I just don’t get."
"Me, too." Ashlyn stared at the ceiling of her house- her house, she realized, looking much the same as she had left it. Well, the ceiling anyway.
She frowned, noticing also that she was wearing one of her old kimonos. (It was actually a little tight across the chest area, which pleased her immensely, although she'd never admit it.)
"Did you bring me here?" she asked curiously. Did you change my clothes too? Please say no.
Skye shifted, his boots clunking on the solid wooden floor as he stretched his legs out in front of him. "Actually, you brought yourself here. Don't you remember?"
"Not really." She screwed up her eyebrows as she tried to recall. "I puked on Tag's boots, and then…um…"
"Then you announced to the world that you were done with being polite, and you were going to sleep." He shifted, looking irritated with the available seating options. "You dragged me in here, babbling on about how we weren't going to be out of each other's sight at any point, not even if you had to handcuff yourself to me during your baths."
"Oh, gods." Ashlyn rubbed at her forehead, trying to cover her embarrassment. "You're kidding me, right?"
Giving up on finding a comfortable spot, he settled back against the wall and grinned. "Sorry." He ignored her indignant glare and continued, "Devlyn said you needed your rest. He must have been right, because you changed into…that…and conked out."
Ashlyn's first reaction was that he had just called her kimono a that. Granted, it was pretty old and a little threadbare, but Ashlyn held strong in her belief that kimonos were sexier than lingerie. Her mother had always looked blindingly beautiful in hers. In Ashlyn's humble opinion, even a moth-eaten kimono should warrant more than a that from Skye. Particularly with her newfound bustline.
Her second reaction was: Ugh. Devlyn.
Ashlyn grumbled an obscenity, sitting up and running a hand over her hair, which had come loose from its knot and now fell down her back in a tangled, sweaty mess. Okay, boobs aside, he probably hadn't glanced below her neck out of sheer horror. Ick.
"I swear I didn't know that he was Devlyn, Skye. If I'd had any idea, I would have challenged him to the leadership duel and been done with it, but he lied to me. He said his name was Kou."
"I know." The blond swordsman drew up one knee and rested his arm across it, leaning his head back against the wall. "What's done is done, Ash. We can't change it now."
"I know, I know. But that doesn't mean I can't feel like a total moron for a lifetime or two." She pulled her knees up and propped her chin on the shelf they made.
The silence that followed was thick with tension, and it seemed to get worse with every unsaid word that passed between them.
"He seemed nice enough, though," sh
e ventured finally. "I mean, here we are, unshackled, free to roam. No lopping of heads so far. That's a good sign, right?"
Skye laughed; low, raspy and just a little gruff. Any other day- any other place- and that laugh would have been enough to turn her insides to jelly. Today it had no effect. Odd.
"You're trying to convince me to forgive you for leading me here," he said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"Maybe." She grinned weakly. "Is it working?"
A corner of his mouth quirked. "Maybe."
"Good." She took a deep breath. "Then I'm sure you're getting used to the idea that I'm not a traitor, and I'm not trying to betray FLD in favor of Toryn. All I wanted was to come here- alone, actually, although that plan didn't work out so great- and try to resolve this without any bloodshed."
She lied back on her mat again and put a hand to her temple, feeling the first throbs of a headache. "I think I picked up some kind of flu bug on the way, though. Man, I feel like crap. I hope you don't think I still make a habit of puking on my friends' shoes. That is totally a thing of the past- I got over that years ago- and- and Tag is the first time since…well, since you guys."
Skye reached out a hand to brush his fingers across her forehead. "I don't think you're running a fever," he observed.
There was some light coming through the window on the far side of the room, behind the screens that served to separate living area from bedroom, but it was still faint enough for Skye's eyes to catch her attention. In sunlight, their glow seemed to dim. In darkness, or even semi-darkness, they shone brighter than any stanes she'd seen.
Ashlyn had always felt the same way about Skye as she had about Drake; she'd never get tired of looking at him. They were both beautiful in a masculine sort of way, both devastatingly handsome. Eight years ago, Skye had still been making that awkward transition from child to adult, and she had only occasionally seen the glimpse of the man that he would become. Now that he was just a year older than Drake- physically, anyway- it was easy to draw comparison between the two men.
Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy) Page 15
