by Val Roberts
Each of his guardsmen had killed one, plus his two, plus the commander's three—a long knife nearly brushed his nose as it sailed past on its way to another eye socket. Make that four. Damned woman had doubled his effectiveness, and she had a narrow target area. Was there something psychological about eyes to these people? The metallic clash of blade on blade had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the alley was quiet except for a lot of heavy breathing. And then there was the stench.
Nothing, Blade had discovered, smelled quite like the aftermath of a close engagement, the all-too-familiar mix of blood's metallic tang, the adrenaline bite of fear, burnt pork, human feces, urine, every bit of it nauseating and emasculating. And war was supposed to be such a manly pursuit.
He worked his free hand against the shakes that came with unexpended adrenaline and looked around for the Zonan commander. One of her opponents had bled all over her shirt and supportive vest, even on the edges of the cloak. As soon as the liquid cooled and congealed it would suck heat from her body and be a gruesome dead giveaway as to who had caused the massacre in the alley, even if the fabric was dark to begin with. Even if they had been attacked.
She had to get rid of those bloody garments before they went back into the market square, because the direct route to the palace was out of the question now. He pulled the dagger out of his belt as the thought occurred and strode over to where she leaned against a blank wall trying to calm her breathing. Her eyes widened in something like disbelief and the wet, red end of the blade rose to the vicinity of his throat.
Of course she was edgy. And he was a moron, exactly like his father thought.
"Get those soaked clothes off,” he said, flipping the dagger to offer it to her hilt first, “before you freeze to death.” Her expression changed minutely, from controlled fear to confusion, then she looked down.
"Oh.” The sword dropped to a neutral position. Oh, indeed. Drenched clothing—even if it was drenched in something as horrible as human blood—was not exactly disguising her figure, and she was bustier than she'd originally appeared. Not a good thing to notice under the conditions. They had five minutes, maybe ten, before the city police arrived.
She didn't take the dagger. “Be sure to take any of the goods your dead comrades were carrying,” she advised as she fished the blood-soaked laces out of the bodice. “I'll have to get you to the palace by a back route and talk to the Captain of Silvergard."
Blade grunted his impatience, flipped his dagger again, pulled her closer by the neckline of the damned bodice and sliced through half of the neat Xs that closed it. “We don't have time for niceties.” He grabbed both halves of the stupid thing and yanked hard, almost pulling her off her feet. “Besides, you really don't want to wear these again. Trust me.” Cut cord ends whipsawed through eyelet holes and it came apart. “Dorcan, get her a clean shirt. I don't care where."
He looked into her gray-blue eyes and almost started. Her pupils were dilated and her lips were parted in an unmistakable invitation that his body suddenly really wanted to accept, but the fact was that she had just killed four people and was now feeling the after-effects, much like his shaking hands. Nothing more. Although he had a feeling he would remember that look for the rest of his life.
She seemed to come back to herself and dropped her eyes, crossing her arms over the breasts outlined by her wet shirt.
Perversely, he was irritated by that. “Enough prudery, woman, I've seen mammaries before. Get it off so we can get you into something dry and a lot less gory.” She bit her lip but complied, which gave him the luxury of looking around for a body that hadn't bled all over its outer coat to replace her cloak. He unstrapped the scabbard, wrestled the heavy garment off the dead man and stood just in time to watch her pull the dry shirt over her head, framing her breasts for a half a second before they disappeared. Two perfect orbs crowned by cold-hardened areolas, and though he hadn't been lying about having seen them before, that particular image seemed to have been burned into his retinas. And he was drooling. He swallowed hard and stepped forward to spin her around with her back to him and her face to the blank wall.
"Put this on and button it up.” He set the coat over her shoulders and turned away to find Galen smothering a knowing grin. Definitely a white wine, but the flesh wouldn't be charred and the method of devouring was best not thought about if he wanted to stay alive. Blade raised one eyebrow and ignored the rustling behind him. If only he could ignore the way his pulse had spiked. And why was he sweating when he could see his breath? No, he knew why, just as completely as he knew there wasn't anything he was going to do about it.
"We have enough horses for the remainder of the escort and Commander Penthes, my lord.” Galen had collected himself and reported without even a hint of a leer, and he had to have seen more of her body than Blade had. He had his moments, Galen did, for all that he was a glorified babysitter on this trip.
"How many did we lose?” Blade asked, but his train of thought was interrupted by a decidedly female gasp. He spun and saw the woman staring at the body he'd taken the coat from, her face ashy white. Now she was ready to faint?
"Commander?” Galen asked in a tone of concern while Blade was still trying to find his tongue. The question seemed to snap her out of her shock.
"Ride. Now.” Her voice had dropped nearly an octave and was suddenly hoarse. “You have to get out of Balsom before the city guard arrives if you value your lives.” She suited action to word by trotting for the nearest horse.
"Yes, ma'am,” Blade replied and made for the horse Maris was holding. “How do you propose we get through the gate?"
"Getting out of the city is considerably easier than getting in,” she said as she swung into the saddle. “But we won't be taking the gate.” She surveyed the lot of them from horseback, and something tingled in the back of his mind. She looked good on a real horse, every inch a warrior. “Hurry up. We can't take out a company of Silvergard even with your laser, and that's what will be coming after us."
"Why would the Silvergard come after us?” Blade asked as he cleaned the saber on a nearby corpse. “We're here for a peaceful negotiation with Silean, and you're one of their own.” He strapped the scabbard he'd taken off the dead man over his back, the way she was wearing hers, and slid the sword into it.
"And all of it means nothing now, nor does the fact that you were defending your lives against an assassination attempt.” She wheeled the horse with a seat that made it look like she'd been glued to the saddle. He mounted and nudged his horse into a trot and left the stench of death behind, hoofbeats multiplying as his escort caught up. Thank the gods the two obvious non-riders had died quickly, because they would have slowed the survivors down and suffered immensely.
* * * *
"What do you mean, the negotiator isn't here yet?” Crown Prince Talyn, Heir to the Matriarchy, yelled at the Lady Palace majordomo. “He should have been here half an hour ago. I purposely cleared this time in my schedule to welcome him to Balsom.” She had even shaved her legs for the occasion, because she'd heard that Bariani perversions included liking their women hairless, like children, and it had taken nearly an hour. She only had another hour to seduce the drooling imbecile that her spies had assured her was the Barian Crown Heir before the Dozen Worlds representative showed up to check on her again. She didn't have time for this.
"I'm sorry to inform you of this, Your Highness, but the Bariani party has not arrived at the palace,” the majordomo said again, bowing more deeply this time. His forehead wrinkled with concern. “I sent one of my clerks to inquire almost fifteen minutes ago."
"Great Goddess, not even a Silvergarder could have gotten lost between Eastgate and the palace. Who was their escort?” She fisted her hands on her hips.
"Commander Penthes was assigned to that duty,” he said, face so stiff his lips hardly moved. Talyn felt an icy hand clench around her stomach. Not her. Not now, when all the carefully laid plans depended on getting to him first.
"Your Highness, are you all right?” the majordomo asked with concern.
Talyn pushed her dread away. “I'm fine, but I'm surrounded by incompetents. I'll send someone to find them myself.” She forced herself to walk away from the lackey as if she were merely irritated, waiting to turn the corner at the end of the corridor before she broke into a sprint. The only person she could trust on this errand was herself, and the offworlder would have to wait.
When she got to her quarters, she slowed back to a walk, then flung the door open, pretending irritation again. All of her performance was for nothing, because the living room was empty. Talyn felt herself frown.
"Mychell?” Her call echoed through the luxuriously appointed space. Now uneasy, she headed for the bedroom, wondering if he could still be asleep after last night. Her lips curved faintly at the memory of their activities of the night before, but one swift look was all she needed to verify that not only wasn't he there, the maids had been in. She didn't even know what he was wearing today, so she had no idea where he might be. The unease intensified. First her Bariani mark had gone missing, and now her Prime. This wasn't shaping up to be a good day, and it wasn't even mid-morning yet.
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and started looking for riding clothes.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Two
The commander took them out of the city through another stench not all that different than the alley abattoir's smell, but only after they learned more of the back streets of Zona's capital in the next quarter-hour than Blade had ever wanted to know.
"I didn't know there was a sewer pipe this big in the world,” Maris complained. “Or the smell that goes with it."
"It will confuse any dogs they send after us,” Commander Penthes called back over her shoulder. “It smells dreadful, but we have only a couple of miles more."
"Miles?” The appalled question came from his left and sounded like Dorcan's voice.
"Easy,” Blade said loud enough to be heard over the echoing. “If it stinks to us, it stinks worse to anything tracking us."
"Yes, Your—” Blade snapped his head up and to the left, and the remainder of his title died on Grigor's lips. “Sorry, Blade.” It was a sign of how badly rattled they all were that it had started to come out at all, since every one of them had been in the Jags with him. He could relate. The only thing that had rattled him more than the situation was Commander Penthes. Any woman who could throw a knife and hit an eye socket was more than capable of herding a bunch of adolescent Stassos brats, or the Barian Upper Diet, into proper behavior. But she was hiding something, and it wasn't the breasts he could still see if he closed his eyes. What was wrong with him? Why did he even care?
Sure it had been a few months, but—no, it had been more than a few months, because he'd been in the Jags for six straight months, too busy to look for a casual bedmate. He counted mentally and was surprised to come up with nearly a year of celibacy. They passed some sort of grating to the street above and clear winter light gleamed off her hair. Someone sighed. A second later he realized the only sigh he would be able to hear in the echoes was his own. What was wrong with him? She was Zonan.
They came out of the pipe onto the edge of a pond about half an hour later. “Stay along the sides,” she instructed. “There's a shelf, so it's shallow there. If you get more than four feet from the wall, it gets deep."
Four feet—a meter and a quarter, give or take. He nudged his horse a bit closer to the wall as the riders obediently strung out behind her in single file. Blade gritted his teeth. It was very open, every single one of them a perfect target if anyone had guessed how she was going to sneak seven obvious Bariani out of the city.
Almost halfway around the pond, there was a spot where the wall lowered into a lip. The Zonan urged her horse up onto the dry concrete and walked it carefully up along a sort of spillway before clambering off to the left. As soon as they were on actual ground, the escort formed up around him again, also surrounding their guide in a subtle ring of protection. He felt something relax minutely between his shoulder blades.
He might be a throwback, but protecting women was an instinct that had helped all of Timarron survive the dark times. Zonans would sneer at it as patriarchal, based in the belief that women were property, but it was deep in Bariani genes and he felt better without her on point.
She led them through thin forest along what appeared to be an infrequently used trail. There were still traces of snow on the ground and any prints he could see came from wildlife. Amazing that there would be fallow deer this close to a major city; maybe the Zonan distaste for technology wasn't all bad. Soon he could hear the sound of moving water. Ten more minutes went by before she pulled up her horse and dismounted, then walked it forward to peek out of the trees.
"It's safe,” she called before she led the animal to a low beach and let it drink.
Blade followed suit, and in another couple of minutes all eight horses had their noses to the water. “Now what?” he asked.
She looked up at him warily. “Now we disappear into the Jags. The border is more permeable there than the government admits, as I'm sure you already know. You should be able to sneak back to Barian with little trouble, and let your people know what happened."
Blade fought not to laugh out loud. He'd spent the last six months of his life sneaking around the Barian side of the Jags until he knew every crag and hollow of the eighty-kilometer border. It was strangely fitting that his one journey into Zona would end by sneaking around in the crags and hollows on this side. There was just a loose end or two that he would like to have tied up first.
"Why can't we just circle the city and go to the consulate? Even the Silvergard can't touch us there.” He patted his horse as he said it and tried to phrase it casually. Of course, if he were planning such things, he'd hide until dark, but ... he wanted to know what she was thinking.
"The consulate is the first place they'll look for you, and you'd have to hack your way in, because Barian sovereignty ends at the gates.” She didn't sound happy, but her logic was sound. “Good luck on that."
"All right,” he agreed, then hit her with the bomb. “Who was that guy?"
She studied the ground. “Guy?"
"The one that scared you."
That made her stand up straighter. “I'm not scared of any man, living or dead."
Uh huh. “You're wearing his coat,” he commented in a mild tone just to see her reaction. She winced, but she didn't cringe. “Who was he, Commander?"
"The Prime of Crown Prince Talyn.” The words were dragged reluctantly from her and she shuffled her feet, obviously uncomfortable with the whole topic. That meant it was important.
"Prime?"
She blushed at his prompt. “Her principal lover.” The blush deepened, giving her an attractive rosy glow that almost matched the color of her nipples. There he went again, and they still weren't in a situation where it was anything other than insane. And she was still Zonan. And he kept going there anyway.
"How do you know who's warming the sheets with the crown, uh, prince?” It sounded weird to call a woman a prince, but she probably wouldn't recognize any other term. The first Matriarch had decreed the title, because princess made her heirs sound less worthy, simply because they were female. At least that was the story. “Does it have something to do with that?” Blade reached out to touch her scar and she flinched away.
"Don't!” Her tone of command made him pull his hand back. “Don't touch it."
"You touch it all the time,” he said in self-defense. He knew he shouldn't have invaded her personal buffer zone like that, but the scar fascinated him. Somehow, she wore it like armor; he almost expected it to feel cool and metallic instead of alive. Now he would never know.
"It reminds me.” She glared at him, but he was pretty sure his mild amusement wasn't the effect she was going for. She just looked so ... he wasn't even sure what, but he liked it. “And I forgot when I killed the Crown Pr
ince's Prime. I have presumed too much in my duty, and I have committed treason.” In spite of the fierce expression, she sounded lost.
He curled his hands into fists to keep from doing something intensely stupid, even if he could blame it on the after-effects of adrenaline. “He committed treason when he tried to murder a diplomatic envoy."
She shook her head and stared across the water. “It doesn't matter. I killed him, and I will be executed after due process."
"Then come with us.” She looked back at him and blinked while he wondered what he would do with a technophobic Zonan in Krystale. “To Barian."
"Don't be stupid.” Her horse nickered, seeming to echo her. Well, at least that much of his persona seemed to be working. “We need to get going. The horses have rested, and I can't hide a trail forever. We have a day, maybe less, before things get interesting."
"Where are we going?” He had gotten used to planning during his sojourn in the Jags, and now he didn't like being fed information on a need-to-know basis. Come to think of it, he'd never liked the sensation that everyone was in on a secret but him, even though it had grown familiar. Fortunately, secrets were easy to worm out of courtiers; he had a feeling she would hold onto secrets a lot more closely.
"North.” The word was spoken slowly and distinctly, as if to someone slow. “Into the Jags.” Then she turned and clucked at her horse. It came away from the water reluctantly, seeming to know it was in for a long ride all uphill. Blade did the same with his own horse, wincing a little when he mounted and felt old saddle sores already coming back to life.
Back into the Jags, but with a difference. This time he was being led by a woman who was becoming increasingly interesting, so very much unlike all the women thrown at him in Barian. And he still didn't know her name. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the rest of the party moving into formation.
As soon as they figured out her direction, she would be surrounded and protected the same way he was. She would end up on his left, so that neither weapon arm would be obscured if they were surprised, and probably a little in front of him as she was leading. Something about the fact that she fought left-handed was significant, because his mind kept coming back to it, but he didn't have a clue as to what it was. At least he would have several days to figure it out before he kidnapped her, forced her to emigrate, and got rid of that scar.
