by Blaze Ward
Javier had two ex-wives. And a former naval career. He understood that part.
At least he had gotten over himself, eventually.
“Room system, activate comm,” he continued. “Good evening, madame. I will be right there.”
Javier cut the audio and sipped a good hit of whiskey as he rose.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
The air vent cover was askew enough to let Suvi roam. Javier reached up and hung it back in place, pushing the screws into a handy drawer for now. Suvi had enough juice for weeks, and enough movies and books for at least one night.
He opened the door to his doom.
Whatever it was, she had it in spades.
Her smell embraced him as soon as the door opened. Light and sweet and flowery. The subtlest hint of just-blooming roses.
She wore black, possibly shrink-wrapped on, with panels cut out that just showed off the healthy glow of her golden skin and emphasized the curves and lines. He had already seen it all, but this just tantalized as a reminder that he had never touched.
Someone had braided her ebony hair up into a sort of mohawk, a blacktip shark’s fin set to slice the water as she attacked. She was already tall for a woman. This put the top of her hair even with the top of his head.
Subtle, but effective.
Predator.
Black widow.
And she was alone.
“I wanted to make sure you were well,” she murmured, stepping close enough to rest a palm on his chest. “They said you had an early dinner and then retired. And gave your Amazon the night off.”
“Time synch issues,” Javier lied blandly. “I was just having whiskey. Nightcap?”
Distracted women are less dangerous than thwarted ones. Bored girls like bad boys. Dilettantes didn’t even notice science nerds.
“Please.”
She smiled with perfect, gleaming teeth. Javier stepped back and to the side as she entered.
“So you’re safe here?” she asked, walking over to the wetbar expectantly.
Javier took his cue and materialized a second glass from underneath. He let his back-brain work while he ogled the woman.
“I’m not expecting an assassin,” he retorted wryly. “One is never sure about safe.”
“Your Amazon is off enjoying herself,” the woman purred.
“She only keeps me alive because she wants to kill me herself,” Javier smiled.
It was the honest truth. Probably the only truth that would see the light of day on this mission.
He handed her the glass by stepping too close.
“You know how dangerous some women can get,” he said.
He had to give her credit. The head tilt was perfect. The coy, coquettish giggle that escaped her lips could have won awards.
Her smell was desire itself.
“And Navarre isn’t dangerous?” she whispered.
Javier leaned even closer. Not as a prelude to a kiss, but just to get almost nose to nose with this woman.
“Navarre will do absolutely anything to win.”
Javier left just enough burr, just enough rusty razor blade in his tones, that the Khatum’s pupils dilated unconsciously.
Bored aristocrats. Even black widows.
Think they’re tough. Have no clue what dangerous really looks like, cocooned warmly in the swaddling clothes of money.
His eyes sneered at her and her money. At her power. Even her perfection.
Navarre would kill her just as simply, just as easily, as he had Abraam Tamaz, if push truly came to shove.
“Anything?”
Her musk was palpable.
Javier rated himself about a nine for the performance. Some nights, the stars just aligned. He’d won a good chunk of the down-payment for Mielikki on Merankorr, on a night like that.
Javier leaned back a shade. His glass was still sitting on the end table, forlorn and forgotten.
“Everything.”
Rough hands took her by the shoulders and turned her enough that his chest was suddenly pressed against her back, leaving his hands free to roam over the black silk, exploring the woman's perfection encased underneath.
He wasn’t a priest, or a Speaker of the Word. Sin in his definition involved denying one’s self the simple joys in life, like a beautiful woman demanding physical satisfaction.
There was nothing he could do about the ugliness that was her soul.
Maybe he’d have to send ’Mina here someday, to preach.
The Khatum leaned back heavily into him, purring, but otherwise still. He didn’t figure that would last long, not with a woman like this. But he wasn’t expecting either of the girls back anytime soon.
So he grabbed her by that lustrous, black hair, tugging it, just as bit, as he moved it to the side and nibbled on the woman’s neck.
It would be in character, for a man like Navarre.
Just one of the sacrifices he was willing to make.
Part Two
She knew she was in the right place by the lack of noise.
It wasn’t one of the dance clubs that Djamila found herself in tonight. No, this had the feel of a neighborhood dive, that corner bar back home where most of the seats at the bar were specifically reserved by name and time, for the locals who would come in at the end of their day. That long, glass-mirrored, back bar, stacked with exotic bottles that would be refilled from industrial drums. The bald, heavy-set Publican in the stained apron, the kind with a gruff word and a scarred ear.
Djamila might have called it home.
Aritza had always been an officer. Had never served on the lower decks. Never answered beck and call. Might know places like this, but had never belonged to one for longer than his credit or his leave time.
The shifts on a ship in space would be constant. The clientele would turn over smoothly, without surging up and down as daylight came and went. Most of the people in here wore gray, although there were a few Staff in brighter colors. Those looked the surliest. Probably with reason.
Djamila pointed at the bar and then silently drew her hand to the left to indicate every stool. Most of them were empty, right now.
The Publican nodded in response, moving to one end of the bar and setting down an empty glass for her.
Djamila followed and climbed onto the stool.
She was supposed to be acting right now. Scouting. Seducing.
First, she needed a drink. Something that would provide a layer of insulation, demarcation, separation between who she was, and what she had to do tonight.
She already owed Aritza. Now she was keeping score.
The bartender held a bottle ready.
She nodded, digging out a couple of coins and a tip. He had already earned it, as far as she was concerned, just accepting her here. She was an outsider.
Always pay attention to the invisible people. They’re the ones that make your life better or worse, regardless of your intent and actions.
The pour was blue. A subtle, bartender joke that actually brought a smile to her face, as hard and sour as it had been.
He grinned back, nodded that she knew what to ask for, and wandered to the other end of the bar, polishing a clean glass and surveying his bar like a bear roused mid-winter.
The liquor was potent enough that she could nearly taste the raw alcohol from here. She wondered if it was the man’s own slash, a recipe distilled down from generations of barkeepers. Designed originally to strip grease off industrial equipment.
She sipped.
Potent. Almost undiluted acid as it went down.
It was right at home with Djamila tonight.
Another sip, and the heat began to fortify her. Perhaps power a transformation of a Dragoon into a bimbo secret agent.
That appeared to be Aritza’s secret. Become someone else and everything you did left with them when you took the costume off.
If he could do it, she could. Would.
Anything you can do, asshole.
Djamila felt her shoulders come down. For
a moment, she considered pressing the warm glass up against her forehead, to see if she could absorb the potency of the fluid that way. Then she realized that the role she was playing tonight allowed it.
She did.
It might have worked.
“That bad, huh?” a voice asked quietly.
Djamila’s eyes snapped open, hands ready to lash out and shatter the glass into someone’s face and then beat them to death.
Self-defense. The oldest law in the universe.
She had placed the man mentally when she sat down, but otherwise ignored him as a prop on her stage, occupying the middle of three stools on the short end of the bar, when she was on the last chair on the long axis. An empty stool separated them.
And light centuries.
Light skin, almost pale compared to her tan, or Aritza’s natural brown. Short hair, dark enough under the dim quietness of the bar. The face looked forty. The eyes suggested four hundred.
If she radiated menace, he had all the emotional signature of a stone headland thrust into the face of the oncoming storm.
He wore gray. She remembered her mission. Even let a little truth out.
Those make the best lies.
“I would really like to kill someone, right now,” she drawled in a voice made up of all of her day.
“I could tell that,” he replied easily. “But you aren’t from around here.”
“And he would never be caught dead in a place like this,” she hissed. “Not money enough, unless he’s slumming.”
The stranger gave her an appraising look. Not sexual, but interested in her story.
Djamila had worn blue dungarees and a black tunic. It stood out against all the charcoal gray in here, but not much.
He was a bantam. That was the only word she could think of to describe the man. She had at least half a meter in height on the man, she guessed, and probably thirty kilos of mass.
She took another sip of angry courage and let the fire stoke her transformation.
“Bodyguard?” the man hazarded a guess.
Djamila shrugged.
“Lethal moll, at least,” she growled.
It was easier playing a part when you weren’t playing.
“Yeah, I got the lethal part,” he agreed. “Long day with a moron boss who won’t listen?”
Djamila nodded.
No. Hadiiye. This was a role. She was an actress. They were on stage.
Hadiiye fixed the man with a hard stare. Challenging his right to speak with her.
And then she softened it. Her purpose here required communication. She couldn’t lose track of that part.
“Dumbass with more muscle than brains,” she agreed. “Luck and timing are the only things that have kept him alive this long.”
“There are always other jobs out there, you know,” he replied in a quieter voice.
Whispering to a wild animal, perhaps.
Violence wasn’t far from her surface right now.
But not against this man.
Navarre. Aritza. Whoever he was.
And Sokolov, for even suggesting to her that Sascha or Hajna could have handled this job better than she could.
Someone else to keep score against. To prove wrong.
“Violence seems to be the only thing people think I’m capable of,” Hadiiye retorted.
“It has its place,” the little man agreed. “Some of us even get paid well and treated respectably for it.”
Her eyes narrowed and she studied the stranger closer.
Perfect stillness. Something learned, not a natural trait in anyone.
Callouses on his hands from striking things repeatedly in training. Like her own.
More dangerous than he had first seemed.
Or perhaps he had been masking that before. Actors, on a stage.
“Bouncer?” she guessed.
He shrugged with petite eloquence.
“They have a more polite title for it aboard ship,” he said. “But you are essentially accurate.”
“Gray?” she asked.
“Staff-side are the friendly ones in bright colors,” he smiled. “Ship-side wear gray. Makes us invisible. Until we need to not be.”
She considered the man. The implications. The danger.
The reward.
“Ever hire Amazons?” she hesitated. “Almost anything would be better than the asshole I’m working for right now.”
A hard gleam appeared in his eyes.
“Stand up,” he commanded in a light tone. “Turn around.”
She did, channeling everything Dr. Teague had ever taught her about Hadiiye.
The man’s eyes on her body were like fingers, exploring, probing.
Caressing her skin.
She faced him again.
“Can you contain the violence?” he asked.
Hadiiye felt a thrill spike her.
Aritza considered her nothing more than a gun-bunny. Point and shoot.
This stranger understood that violence was only half of the training. Controlling it was almost more effort than unleashing it. And more important.
“With my size, menace is almost more useful,” Hadiiye replied. “Most of the time.”
“How many people have you killed?” he asked. “Personally.”
“When I was a soldier? Hundreds, perhaps thousands,” she said. “Since then, dozens. Maybe scores. I don’t really obsess or keep score.”
“You might look good in gray,” he hazarded.
“Ha. You haven’t even got a uniform that would fit me,” she spiked him with her eyes.
Challenge.
Not menace. Dare.
His eyes got cagey.
Challenge accepted.
“If you have an hour, we could try sneaking into the quartermaster section and stealing you something,” he said, eyes lit with a mischievous fire.
She had learned the right way to arch an eyebrow from Dr. Teague. Compelling disbelief conveyed, without sarcasm or sound.
“Sounds like an excuse to get me someplace private and take advantage of me,” Hadiiye purred.
Not quite an invitation. Maybe.
The mission.
Again, his eyes roamed. Scales in his head weighed options.
“Maybe,” he said. “A little.”
He held out a hand.
“Farouz,” he introduced himself.
“Hadiiye,” she took his hand. “I don’t normally let strangers seduce me in bars, you know.”
“That’s because you intimidate the hell out of most people,” he replied.
“Most?”
“Most,” he grinned, sliding off the stool.
She joined him.
One hundred sixty-five centimeters tall. Maybe. Wiry and hard.
His eyes were about on a level with her nipples.
Probably a good thing that dancing wasn’t on the menu.
Presently.
She joined him, a tree next to a rosebush.
“Lead on,” she said.
This was when it was going to get interesting.
Part Three
Javier felt like ten kilometers of bad, gravel road.
Heaven forbid that if he ever decided to take up running marathons, he would probably feel like this for the first six months. Which would be the point he gave up and went back to less strenuous pursuits.
The Khatum didn’t snore, but she was purring, fast asleep on a cream, silk-covered bed that looked like a mugging. The chair by the door was in worse shape, with all their clothes thrown at it as they went by. Destructive whirlwind kind of night.
For a woman with four grown children, a topic he had researched before arriving, she still looked and acted like she was thirty-two standard. And possibly a nymphomaniac at that.
Or just bored with all the fashion-model aristocrats and boy-toys around here. Not much had changed.
If he was planning to stay long, she’d probably work him to death.
But that wasn’t going to be a problem. The
only risk was dying if she caught his lies, or decided to send ninjas after him later.
At least the bed was big enough he could stretch out on his side and leave three quarters of it for her. He pulled a couple of pillows up and leaned back, sipping a glass of water from the table. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep with this woman here. Not with the other two women due back at some point.
At the same time, he couldn’t go anywhere.
Javier could just see Suvi’s flitter returning, and him pulling the grate open for her, right as the Khatum staggered from the bedroom looking for him.
Talk about lethally awkward.
Sykora wouldn’t be as bad, but there was always a chance her mission would end up requiring her to bring a guy back here. He really didn’t want to end up being her dad, tonight.
The purring stopped.
She stretched in place for a moment, athletic beauty a distraction all by itself, and then rolled over to look at him.
“That could be addicting,” she murmured. “It’s a good thing you’re only passing through.”
Navarre’s cold mask studied the woman before it relented into something like a smile.
“Oh?” he asked.
“Some people are obsessed with wealth and power,” she said, pulling the silk sheets up to make a little cocoon fortress around herself. “They sniff around and try to worm their way in. Those I’ve already defeated.”
“Did you now?” he asked in a soft, lyrical tone. “How?”
“When I became the heir, I changed the rules,” she said. “Any man wanting me was required to make a set of deposits in a sperm bank ahead of time. I left them there for five years and let the men make their case.”
“And how did that turn out?” Javier asked.
This was certainly a novel way to handle men, and probably a pretty effective method.
“When I was ready, I used those samples to impregnate myself,” she smiled cruelly. “None of the men was told who, and they all looked close enough alike. I ended up with boy/girl fraternal twins on the second round, and now I have four children, with twelve fathers. One of the children will become the heir, and the other three will be married off well.”
“And did it succeed?” Javier asked, rolling a little onto his side to focus more of his attention on her. She felt vulnerable right now.
