I can handle this, she thought, wondering why, aside from the sudden nausea and the aching in her heart, she wasn't reacting more violently.
"You are Lady Li," Kou murmured, touching a hand to her shoulder. "I have done my best to lead the city of Toryn in your stead, but now it is your time. They will trust you to defeat this new enemy. They will follow you into death, if that is what you ask."
"That's a little melodramatic, don't you think?" Ashlyn said, insane laughter bubbling up in her throat. She fought to keep from giggling out loud. "I think…I think what you just suggested sounds a hell of a lot easier than the whole leadership duel I was counting on."
He didn't answer, and she cleared her throat. "Where are the rest of my friends?"
"I believe they're in Heaven," Kou said. He dropped his hand from his shoulder. "You should speak with them and decide your strategy. I will keep watch."
"Thank you," Ashlyn said faintly. She turned and made her way slowly down the rickety stairs, each time moving her foot to the next step slowly and deliberately, as if it took a great effort just to descend.
Restlyn met her at the bottom. "Are you all right?" she asked, concern showing in her sweet mahogany eyes.
Ashlyn looked out at the hundreds of Toryn soldiers still staring at her. They were unwavering in their stalwart observance; she couldn't even see if any of them were blinking. No familiar faces were in the crowds. She didn't recognize anyone. Had all her friends gone with her father?
"Ash?" Restlyn prompted, touching her hand where it lay on the railing.
Achieving leadership had been the plan all along. Ashlyn couldn't bear to think of herself as Li. The house was broken, the bloodline impure, and the blood soaking through her sock was proof enough that she no longer carried the mark. She would defeat her father's army and find someone else to lead Toryn. That was what Drake had suggested in the first place, right?
Ashlyn took a deep breath.
"Yes," she said, meeting Restlyn's eyes. "I'm fine."
Chapter 13
The Bridge is Crossed
The way the Toryn army watched her was beyond weird. Ashlyn walked across the bridge and made her way briskly towards the Heaven tavern, careful not to limp and trying her darnedest to ignore the hundreds of pairs of eyes boring into her back as she did. What the heck was wrong with these guys? Restlyn was walking not five feet away from her, and yeah, although there was never anything even remotely come-hithery in the brunette's mannerisms, she was always totally sexy. Restlyn couldn't not be sexy if she wanted to. It was in her pores. If a couple hundred Toryn men were going to stare at somebody, Ashlyn would've bet credits that it'd be Restlyn.
But no. Right now all they could do was look at her.
And frankly, that sucked.
Besides that, the story thus far had Ashlyn thoroughly confused, and the more she tried to sort it out, the more holes popped up in the scenario that Kou and Tag had provided for her. The biggest dilemma was obviously her father. Ashlyn was assuming leadership of Toryn in place of Lord Li, who had, according to Kou, been driven somewhat out of his mind by the shift magic. Ashlyn didn't doubt that the magic was completely capable of rendering a man insane, but her dad had always seemed…well…
No, if she was being realistic, then she’d have to admit that he was never really level-headed, and rarely thought things through. So as much as she hated the idea, she wasn't surprised that he had been the first to succumb to the effects of the dark magic.
She took a deep breath, trying to clear her head as she stopped in front of the huge double doors marking the entrance to Heaven. Restlyn stopped just in front of her, one hand poised to push the doors open. "Are you going inside?"
"Oh yeah," Ashlyn said. "But maybe you could-" She broke off as Vargo appeared beside her, raggedly stylish in his blue jeans and suit jacket. His clothes were rumpled, the half-buttoned dress shirt underneath his jacket revealing a wrinkled t-shirt that had seen better days. Meeting her gaze evenly, he flipped open a lighter and lit his cigarette, not breaking eye contact.
She suddenly remembered that the last time she'd seen Vargo alone, she'd kissed him. And knocked him unconscious immediately following. Of course, she hadn't exactly thought that whole development through before she'd acted, and she certainly hadn't expected to have to explain herself. Dang.
Mental note: only kiss and knock unconscious men that you will never ever have to see again.
"You go on in, Restlyn," Ashlyn said, giving the other girl a slight smile. "I'll be there in just a second."
One of the things that she had always liked about Restlyn was that the girl didn't question much. That was not to say that the look in her eyes wasn't curious, but Restlyn was much too smart to ask what was going on in front of Vargo. Instead she simply nodded and slipped inside, leaving Ashlyn and the redheaded Spartan alone.
Well, alone save for the several hundred soldiers that were watching Ashlyn's every move. She suddenly had the intense urge to pick her nose or hock a loogie across the bridge- anything to save her from being regarded as the immortal future savior of Toryn and the new Elder Lady.
Ashlyn leaned back against the wall of Heaven and stared at Vargo. "You have something you want to say?" she asked, and was pleased with how calm and level her voice sounded.
Vargo smirked as he took the cigarette out of his mouth, flicking the small paper cylinder above the stone trash can to remove excess ash. "I might," he replied. "You got something to say in return?"
She was silently running through her options before he had finished his sentence, and it didn't take long for Ashlyn to decide that a good defense might be the best offense. "Depends on what you're going to tell me," she said, tossing her head in a way that might have looked a little more dramatic if her hair wasn't tied in a big ugly knot at the base of her neck. Eh.
"You know what I'm going to say," Vargo retorted. "You kissed me, princess, and whether or not it was to distract me long enough to get a solid hit in or not, it was still a kiss and you know it."
She shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. "So?"
He hesitated for the slightest fraction of an instant, then said, "You can deny it all you want, but there was something there."
An image of Drake flashed before her eyes, unbidden, followed almost immediately by the still-painful memory of Tag's awful transformation into the shift monster. Ashlyn shuddered, closing her eyes for just a second in an attempt to clear her mind.
The people of Toryn were counting on her. FLD was counting on her. She couldn't handle this right now. Not from Vargo, at least. She liked Vargo- well, a lot more than she had a week ago, anyway- but she didn't need to be deflecting his come-ons at the moment.
"If by 'something,''" Ashlyn said slowly, "you mean revulsion, you're absolutely right."
The red-haired man smiled, accustomed to the insults she so casually flung at him. "Is that so," he drawled, taking a step closer.
Crap. Crap, crap, crap. She was in way over her head.
Ashlyn met his eyes. "Yes," she said. "That's so."
For a torturous moment there was a tension that reverberated between them, singing Ashlyn's skin with its electricity and forcing her to acknowledge the brutality of her remark. She'd never said anything so openly cruel to him- and meant it- before, and the shock in his eyes was obvious as her meaning sank in. Vargo stared at her for a long, long time before he looked away, swallowing as he regained his composure, and a heart-wrenching coldness settled over his face like a mask.
"My mistake," he said softly.
Ashlyn clenched her fists beside her, pursing her lips to keep herself from taking it back. It was strange. Before, she'd had no qualms about insulting Vargo. Now, she was so ashamed that she could hardly stand to look him in the eye.
He looked as though he wanted to say something more. She wanted him to say something more. She wanted him to laugh it off and smirk at her in that completely irritating way that he always did; she wanted him to grab her and kis
s her senseless. She wanted him to drag her out of this place and away from this war.
She wanted to forget everything and go back to being a nobody, wandering the world for another eight years until once again, everyone thought she was dead. When you were dead, you didn't have any responsibilities.
But she wasn’t dead, and running away wasn’t an option.
Ashlyn brushed past Vargo and pushed open the door to Heaven, hit with a sudden blast of warm, sake-tinged air from inside the bar and immediately feeling better. She didn't look back at Vargo, but she could feel his eyes upon her until the door swung shut behind her, effectively cutting her off from the world outside.
As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the bar, she began to realize that Skye must have set the place up for their headquarters. There were no other Toryn in sight, and the tables were cleared of their usual jugs and teacups. Various members of FLD were scattered throughout the room, striking poses that were oddly similar to what they'd been doing the night Ashlyn had come in from the rain at Restlyn Place.
That was so long ago, Ashlyn thought suddenly, when she'd finally said goodbye to Jenn’s house, the beautiful garden that had somehow managed to stay alive all these years, and tromped across the plains to Storim. How innocent things had seemed them. How uncomplicated by men and birthrights.
No one had even looked up at her when she walked through the door, and Ashlyn cleared her throat now, fighting the ridiculous urge to run to Drake (who was brooding predictably in a corner, looking none the worse for wear for having a friggin' sword buried in his shoulder just a few days before) and throw her arms around him, babbling something really stupid about being glad that he wasn't dead, how great he was looking without that ghetto bandanna tied around his head, and that she was truly sorry for leaving him there in Cosmea when he'd been all near-death and stuff.
Somehow she didn't think that would go over too well, though. So Ashlyn stood there, smiling stupidly at him when he apparently hadn't even noticed her existence.
"Ash," Skye said, appearing in front of her and successfully blocking her view of Drake. "Are you feeling better?"
Well, that was a tactful way to put it. Ashlyn immediately wiped the goofy grin off her face and met Skye's eyes, trying her best to look dignified and responsible. "Yes, thank you," she said. "I'm, uh, assuming that you know we're under attack?"
He nodded silently.
She bit her lip. "Kou told me…like he expected me to, you know, do something. But there's kind of a serious problem with that."
"You don't know what to do?" Skye immediately picked up on the reason for her discomfort.
"Yeah. I mean, that's a fairly big issue there, right? The Toryn leader has no frigging idea what the hell's going on." She laughed nervously. "They could drop right in on us and I have literally no plan whatsoever except to run like hell."
"Don't underestimate running like hell," Vargo said from behind her. "It's saved my life a couple of times."
Ashlyn turned to look over her shoulder. He stood leaning against the door as though he'd always been there- and she hadn't even heard him come in. "Oh really?" she said, for lack of anything else to say. He was actually talking to her? Why?
He gave her a tight smile. "Well, it kept FLD from kicking my ass eight years ago, didn't it?"
"Running isn't going to help the people of Toryn," Restlyn spoke up. "This is their home. What we need is a plan of defense."
"I know," Ashlyn said. She looked around the room, watching the expression of each person closely in an attempt to see if anybody was trying to glare daggers at her- she had just caused FLD a big ol' headache by running off with Kou, after all. But they were all stone-faced, waiting for her orders. Her orders. Talk about pressure.
She moved to the bar and stopped herself just short of hoisting herself up to perch on the edge. Skye had never perched anywhere when he was delivering big expositions about how they were going to save the world, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea now.
"I'm…um, thinking we should split the Toryn army into sections and post them at every possible entrance," she announced shakily. "The…most likely point of attack will be either at the front gate…or at the path to Na Michico." That sounded reasonable so far. She went on, "If possible, I'd like to move all the citizens out of my father's house and get them underground. There's a ton of basements in this city, and they're much more defensible locations than any of these paper-walled houses."
She paused for breath, surprised at how easily the words had come.
Skye nodded. He, for one, didn't look surprised at all by her sudden leap to eloquence, but Ashlyn was secretly ecstatic, despite the gravity of the situation. She was a leader! She was well-spoken! She was-
"Who are ya assigning as captain of each section?" Aaron asked. "Not that I'm volunteerin' or nothin', but this place don't exactly seem to be crawlin' with natural-born leaders."
Uh. All right, message received. This was no time for ego.
"Okay, veiled insult much?" she replied incredulously. "For your information, mister, this place has more natural-born leaders in one district than all of friggin' Endro had in its heyday."
Her declaration was met with silence, and Ashlyn pursed her lips. "Okay. But…um, since you guys are my most trusted friends and all, I was kind of hoping that some of you would volunteer to manage each section. Skye, Aaron, you guys have a lot of, uh, experience with that, right?"
"If ya need us, sure," Aaron said. "But I ain't got much know-how for the layout of this place. Don't hardly remember where anything is."
"That's okay. I'll assign each of you to a specific area and you'll just patrol that area, nowhere else. We've got enough people, it shouldn't be too difficult." Ashlyn chewed for a second on her lower lip. "Okay, Vargo, Ellis, Trace- I'm going to send Kou with you to my father's house. Do your best to keep the families together, but split everyone up into three groups, and try to get all the small children into just one group. Take the kids and hide them in the basement at my house, and watch your step. There's enough traps in that place to stop an-" She halted just short of saying army, which was exactly what the traps would have to stop, if it came to that. "Kou will tell you where to take the rest of them. I'll send a small troop of soldiers with each of you. That's your assignment- protect the innocents. I don't think it'll get that far, you probably won't need to defend yourselves, but if you do…" She trailed off, unsure of what to say next.
Ellis stood up from his place at a table to her left. "We can handle it," he said gruffly, nodding to her.
"All right." She was gaining confidence with every word, which felt damn good after eight years of nothingness and a week of sheer guilt. "Restlyn, Skye, Aik, Aaron- I need you to be my captains. While I take the Spartans to my father's house, you need to sit down and figure out all possible entry points for the enemy, and go about setting up a web of defense to block them out. The Toryn army isn't big enough to establish a complete perimeter defense, but if we space ourselves accordingly, we should be able to set up decent enough cover for the city." Ashlyn took a deep breath. "Do you understand?"
"We'll get right on it," Skye said. He seemed perfectly happy to take orders from her- another surprise.
"Does that cover everything?" Ashlyn asked.
"What about Drake?" Restlyn said softly. "You didn't mention him at all."
Ashlyn glanced over at Drake, who was still in his corner, and found that he was staring right back at her mid-brood, burning through her with those intense crimson eyes. "I didn't expect him to be well enough to fight yet," she said. "How are you feeling, Drake?"
He stood and walked to the table in front of Ashlyn, pausing by Restlyn's side and causing Ashlyn some intense unbidden jealousy. "I am well enough to carry out any orders you might have for me, Lady Li," he said, and although the new name sounded strange on his lips, there was no humor in his tone.
"You heal fast," Ashlyn said, and almost slapped herself for saying something so incredib
ly dumb. Argh! What a moron! Would she ever learn to keep her mouth shut? She took a few steps sideways, intending to put some distance between them, but her uninjured ankle twisted beneath her and Ashlyn fell back against the counter, slithering awkwardly towards the floor.
Oh, that was graceful. She leaped up and pretended like she'd been standing there doing nothing the whole time.
Denial may not have been smart, but it was effective because nobody said a darn thing.
Drake merely inclined his head, waiting for her to go on, but Ashlyn was tempted to shove her fist into her mouth. Instead she said, very calmly, slowly and deliberately, "If you are indeed capable, I'll assign you to a post as captain on the perimeter defense, and take Aaron with me. I have need for him elsewhere." She sounded like a textbook, but textbook tromped moron any day of the week.
If she'd wanted Drake to jump up and down and exclaim YIPPEE! she was sadly disappointed, or maybe not disappointed, because that would have meant she expected Drake to actually jump up and down and yell YIPPEE!, which is not something that he would ever do, under any circumstances.
So she wasn't really disappointed.
True to character, Drake said nothing, just stared at her. The man might have been sexy- and off-limits, remember that, Lady Ash- but he seriously needed to brush up on his socialization skills. Gorgeous looks and super-sexy red eyes did not an instant prom king make.
"Okay," Ashlyn said. "There's…just…one more thing…" My dad is the enemy that we're about to fight. If you see him, try not to kill him, okay? I'd like him around a bit longer on the off chance that I might someday get married and need someone to give me away.
"What is it?" Restlyn asked. The other girl always had the most amazing intuition; she could tell when something big was coming up.
"If you happen to encounter the general of this, um, army- you know, the enemy- try to capture him. Alive, preferably, because dead he's not much good to me."
"Someone you know?" Trace said with a smile, leaning back against the table and folding her arms across her chest.
Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy) Page 19
