With a snarl of disgust, Dillon turned away. “You really are an asshole, Naos.” He cursed himself for falling for her amateur hour bullshit. Ever since she’d fucked with him when he’d thrown the renegades out of Gale, she came back every now and again for shit like this, and if he called her Dué instead of Naos, she only did it more.
“How can you say such things to your fairy godmother?” she asked, her voice echoing around his head. Her mouth didn’t move with her words as she stepped to his side, but her vacant right socket glimmered with starlight.
“Fuck you.” He crossed his arms and knew he should ignore her, wait for her to get bored, but she pissed him off so much.
“Are those all your unborn children?” she asked.
“Just fuck off.”
“Trying to make a new Simon Lazlo from scratch?”
“I said fuck off!” The sound echoed across the courtyard, and even with the tree, most of the yafanai stared at him. When any caught him looking, they tried hesitant smiles.
Naos jerked a thumb in their direction. “Ooh, that’s not good. That’s a smile to foster rebellion, a my-god-is-crazy smile.”
“You’re one to talk.” He closed the shutters. “Get out of my room.”
“Or you’ll what?”
He crossed to his bed and pulled his sidearm out from under the pillow. He’d brought a rack to the temple so he could charge it and the set of armor he’d claimed for his own. It made him feel better to have it around, just like now, when he was holding a gun even though he was having an argument with someone in his goddamned mind.
Naos grinned and slinked closer, her subtle curves draped in a long black evening gown streaked with nebulae. “I’ve heard all the ladies like your big gun.” Her face and form flowed into Lazlo’s again. “It’s a shame you won’t share it with the boys.”
With shaking hands, he put the gun down, not wanting to fire random holes in the wall. “What do you get out of this shit, hmm? Does fucking with me get you off? Or are you mad you drove all the others away, and now you don’t have anyone to play with?”
“I visit because I care.”
He snorted and turned away, but the back of his neck tingled, and he knew that if he turned, she’d be right behind him.
“They’re coming for you, you know,” she said. “I put them on the path.”
He told himself not to fucking listen, but he couldn’t help thinking of the graffiti he’d seen, of Paul Ross’s last words, of the looks he’d seen in the streets. When the renegades had left, they’d taken more than just a few nonbelievers. They’d taken the faith of some of those who’d remained.
Unless she meant someone else entirely. “Who?” He knew in his gut he’d hear from the renegades directly again. Former Lieutenants Cordelia Ross and Liam Carmichael were their leaders, and he’d killed her uncle and his mom, mayor and paladin captain. If he was them, he’d sure as shit be plotting revenge.
And then there were former lieutenants Christian and Marlowe, the Sun-Moon. He’d banished their followers from his city, killing a few just to make sure the point got across. That might have gotten back to the lieutenants themselves, and they wouldn’t be happy about it. Could be another revenge plot in the works.
A feeling of emptiness behind him told him she’d left. He sighed, but as he cleaned up, he felt lighter than when he’d started his workout, his annoyance with Naos gone. If someone was coming for him, he needed to prepare, especially since he didn’t know much about the drushka and their walking tree. He’d talk with Captain Brown. She’d been in the swamp, had fought the trees face to…bark. His spies kept an eye on the renegades from afar. Maybe he needed to get a little closer.
The lieutenants he could easily make a plan for. That would be a numbers game, follower against follower. A big enough storm might render their powers all but useless, except for the telepathy. For that he’d need an expert.
Down the hall, he took a quick peek in on Caroline, only weeks away from bearing his first child. She was asleep in the hammock chair she’d sworn was more comfortable than her bed. His most powerful telepath, she’d be able to better understand just what the lieutenants could do. He didn’t want to wake her to ask. He slipped out and walked to the set of rooms near the Yafanai Temple gates, those he’d adopted as his study. Captain Brown waited for him as if summoned by his need. The thought made him smile, but she didn’t return the look, all business, another reason to admire her.
“Captain,” he said as he entered. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She bowed. “Storm Lord. A drushka came to the city.”
He froze, his belly warming in anticipation. “One of the renegades?”
“She says she’s a representative of the Shi, the leader of the old drushka. We’ve got her in the keep if you want to take a look.”
He did indeed. Here he was wanting someone who could tell him about the walking trees, and a drushka showed up on his doorstep. He almost thanked Naos and then wondered if he was getting religious in his old age. The thought made him chuckle out loud, and when Brown glanced at him, he waved her concern away. “Lead the way.”
Dillon didn’t shake hands or speak to the populace as he walked from the temple to the Paladin Keep. He didn’t like to glad-hand anymore, not after the boggin attack. Even after every story he’d made up about how the boggins had killed Mayor Ross and Captain Carmichael, with the departure of some popular people among the renegades, some of the townspeople still didn’t believe. Popular graffiti included, “Paul Ross Lives” and “Where is Our Real God?” He’d like to meet the author of both of those so he could address them personally.
It was a shame that Gale wasn’t as happy as it used to be. There’d been plenty of time to rebuild, but he still saw empty lots where burned-out buildings had been cleared. Some people clearly didn’t want to move on. He’d made many a speech about how they all had to come together, but with the loss of so many, it seemed the living found that harder than necessary. After too many suspicious looks, he usually stayed in the temple or the keep, leaving the daily stuff to Brown and whomever she chose to take care of the city side of things. They hadn’t elected a new mayor, though Dillon supposed Brown fit the bill well enough. Maybe he should’ve installed someone, though, so the populace would have someone else to blame.
Still, his paladins gathered to greet him. He nodded at those ringing the large open floor beyond the keep’s bailey, but when a few turned in surprise, he realized they weren’t waiting for him but staring at a drushka loitering in the hall.
No one had seen a drushka since the renegades left. He supposed any one of them would cause quite a stir, but this one was worth a second look. Her hands sported poisonous claws on her middle fingers, the only way to spot a female. She tapped both claws against her leather-clad thighs as she slowly turned. Dillon followed her long legs down to the floor before he took his time looking up again. She was tall, like all drushka, nearly his height, and she had long, lean limbs. Her hair glimmered silver, braided in three plaits that reached her waist before looping back up to her head. All the drushka he’d seen before kept their hair cropped short. He’d thought it was a fighting thing, but maybe it meant they were from different tribes.
This drushka’s skin was nearly the same silvery color as her hair, like gray tree bark, and she had the lines and whorls that all drushka had, dark patterns like tattoos. As she turned full circle, eyeing everyone in the room, her yellow eyes finally found Dillon, and she inclined her head with a slight wrinkle of her narrow nose.
She took a step toward him, and the susurrus of the paladins’ shuffling feet echoed through the hall. Dillon raised a hand to calm them. If she made a threatening move, he could blast her across the room faster than anyone could draw a gun. He smiled, and she did the same, cupping her chin as she looked him over. She tapped her claw against her cheek, and he didn’t know if she was offering danger or threatening it.
“Looking for me?” he asked.
“If you are
the Storm Lord.” Her voice was husky and her accent thick. It sent a shiver through him. “I am called Enka.”
“Let’s go upstairs to the captain’s office.” He sauntered past her, letting her take all the looks she wanted. Brown followed on his heels, between him and the drushka, and Lieutenant Lea brought up the rear. Dillon went into the captain’s office and took the seat behind the desk while Brown stood at his side, and Lea guarded the door. The drushka draped herself across the one other chair with lithe fluidity.
“Well,” Dillon said, “what can Gale do for the drushka?”
“We have learned that trading with humans can be useful.” She flashed those sharp teeth. “A hard lesson, learned during the last battle.”
“That was the old regime. Tell me why you and I should be friends.”
She spread her hands. “Why not? Friends share weapons, information…” She gave him another slow glance. “Many things.”
An old ploy, but one he could still appreciate. “Captain Brown, would you excuse us?”
She glanced at him with doubt written on her furrowed brow, but when he nodded toward the door, she left. Dillon stood, and Enka followed suit. When he came around the desk, she met him, molding her lean body to his and kissing his chin with thin lips.
“I see you’ve negotiated before,” he said.
“I sensed your liking of me. I enjoy the sight of you, too.”
“Good to know.”
“We will trade, ahya?” Her tongue flicked out and teased his earlobe as she caressed his chest. “Weapons?”
Dillon smiled and grabbed her wrists. She tried to jerk away, and he pumped the tiniest amount of electricity into her, making her gasp. She stiffened and stilled, staring at him with wide eyes.
“As if I’d ever be stupid enough to trade weapons for a piece of alien ass, never mind how much I ‘enjoy the sight of it.’”
She tensed, and he hit her with another jolt, enough to make her teeth click together. She gasped but stilled again, and when he let her go, she sagged into the chair.
He stepped behind the desk and sat again. “Nice ploy, though, one I’ve used myself a time or two, but it’s not going to work here. Now, if you and your people want to stay in the swamp, be my guest. You’ll get no trouble from me. But if you come into my house, you play by my rules.”
Enka licked her lips and sat up slowly. He noticed her hands shaking, but she smoothed them across her legs. “What do you want in return for weapons?”
“We could spare some slings. No guns, no metal. As for what I want…” He tilted his head back and forth. “Hoshpis, for a start. Maybe the services of some of those walking trees.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You do not know of what you speak.”
He shrugged. If she didn’t want to talk about the trees, he’d just have to find someone who would. “I’m guessing you want weapons to go after your renegades? Better work fast, before they dig in. Hell, I know where they are. Maybe we can have some kind of joint mission, but not before we have trust.”
She stared before lifting her chin. “I will consult with my leader.”
He nodded toward the door. “Feel free to come back and stick your tongue in my ear anytime.”
She looked back over her shoulder, and he expected to see offense, but she grinned. “I shall.”
He chuckled and turned his attention to Brown’s desk, seeing what she had going on, but someone said, “A piece of alien ass. I like that.”
He sighed as he recognized Lessan’s voice. Over two hundred years since she’d died, but he hadn’t forgotten what she sounded like, a side effect of Lazlo’s immortality treatments. And of course, Naos wouldn’t let him forget. He turned, and Lessan was leaning against the wall, hands in the pockets of her blue flight suit.
“I know that’s you, Naos,” he said, “Why do you bother?”
She kept her eyes pinned on him, and Dillon waited for her to explode or melt.
“Trading with the drushka was quite lucrative,” a man’s voice said.
Dillon turned and saw the former mayor, Paul Ross, leaning against the wall opposite Lessan. Blood covered his torso where Dillon had stabbed him after electrocuting him, and he scratched idly around the wound.
“Lucrative but still dangerous,” the ghost of Captain Carmichael said as she walked through the wall beside Paul, a bloody mark across her forehead.
“Oh, this is a new one,” Dillon said. “We almost have enough for a parade!”
“You always did like flirting with danger,” Marie Martin, the former Contessa, said as she appeared beside Lessan, arms crossed in front of her blackened torso.
Dillon nodded. “I was wondering when you’d get to her.”
Lazlo materialized in front of the desk, hands outstretched. “All your kills! I thought you might like the company.”
Dillon sighed and hoped she’d get whatever the hell this was over with soon. “But Lazlo’s not dead.” A chill crept up his spine. “Is he?”
Lazlo blew him a kiss. “Miss me, big boy?”
“Just tell me.”
“All these dead people not good enough for you?”
“Oh, fuck off if you can’t be useful!”
“Storm Lord?” Brown poked her head in, Lea looking over her shoulder. “Drushka’s gone, Storm Lord. Can we help with anything else?”
He marched around the desk and past her. “I don’t think anyone can.” The laughter of the ghosts echoed behind him. He hurried past the paladins and out into the street, but halfway back to the temple, he stopped. Someone had scrawled, “God Is Dead,” on a half-finished shop, the words a dull black like charcoal. It hadn’t been there earlier.
He whirled around, and several people avoided his gaze or hurried back from it. “Who the fuck did this?”
Heads shook, and people backed away. One man even dropped what he was carrying and held up his hands as if Dillon might throttle him right there in the street.
“Someone clean that shit up.” He strode away. Fucking people didn’t know how lucky they were.
*
Enka paused inside the tree line and let the rhythms of the swamp embrace her. She wished she had a safe pond handy to wash away the city stink, but she supposed that would have to wait, like many things. With a long sigh, she jogged into the trees until the ground gave way to liquid, and then she climbed high among the ropy branches of the proper swamp where each tree’s long limbs entwined with the others.
“Hunt leader?” Thesta, her second, called to her. “Are you well?”
Enka waved the younger drushka to her side. “Frustrated.”
“The Storm Lord did not succumb to the scent?”
“He seemed as if he might, then bent in another direction.” She rubbed her aching arms, her chest. “His power is great.”
“A shawness is within call,” Thesta said.
“I am not badly hurt.” She stalked into the branches, and her band fell in behind her. They hurried deeper into the swamp until they found the seventh queen, Daishi, waiting for them. Enka climbed among the queen’s branches, and the great tree moved even deeper into drushkan territory.
Enka found the queen’s perch, where drushka and tree joined, the seventh queen nearly encased in the wood. Enka sat and opened her mind, letting the seventh queen serve as a link to the Shi, the ninth queen, leader of all drushka.
Well, all real drushka. The renegades only followed one queen, she who had torn the drushka asunder two centuries ago, she who must now be returned to the fold at any cost.
“Your will, Queen,” Enka said.
She felt the mind of the Shi envelop her, taking over the seventh queen’s mind as if it was her own. “The Storm Lord did not take you for bait.”
“Ahwa. We will have to find another way.”
“He seeks hoshpis. That could be the seed of his undoing.”
Enka sucked her teeth. “How?”
“We will weaken the humans, and then no one will stand between us and the An
ushi queen. With her human allies decimated, she will have nowhere to run but back to her home.”
Enka squirmed, anxious to see it done.
“Patience,” the Shi said. “We acted too hastily before. We did not know of all the human weapons. Now we will be as saleska, waiting, biding our time, and when we strike, the humans will be dead before they know they have been attacked.”
Enka thought quickly. “Poison?”
“Not all at once.” The Shi paused, and Enka felt her amusement. “Gather hoshpis for the humans and feed them spyralotus leaves. It will not kill the animals, nor the humans who eat the meat. But it will linger in their bodies, and then we will give them veira pollen, perhaps in their water.”
“The two will combine inside the body to make poison,” Enka said. “And the humans will be weakened.”
“Too weakened to stand against us.”
Chapter Three
Simon awoke with a twinge in his back. Even after eight months, he still had a brief flash of confusion. Spending two hundred years with the ability to heal himself and everyone around him had made him forget pain. In the few days following when he’d burned out his power, small pains had even made him smile, such a strong reminder that he was alive. Now they were simply annoying. He wondered if Horace felt the same way.
But he’d stolen Horace’s power. His intentions had been good: to make sure the crew of the Atlas could never make a healer their slave again, but he doubted Horace saw it that way. If he woke up with an ache, he probably cursed Simon’s name to hell and back.
Even as Simon thought about it, the twinge faded slowly. He and Samira had slept on the ground a lot in the months since they’d left Gale, but the twinges had followed him east, into Sun-Moon territory and all the way to Celeste, the capital city of former Lieutenants Christian and Marlowe. He’d finally had to conclude that he just had a bad back, but he knew that being almost three hundred years old should probably come with an ache or two.
Snug in her own bed, Samira muttered in her sleep and turned over. Simon heard footsteps going downstairs outside their door. It sounded like the man with the limp who’d checked into the wayhouse just before them. Simon sat up, pulled on the loose fitting trousers he’d bought just outside of Celeste, and slipped on the long robe that sported slits from the ankles to the waist. He hated the way it slapped his legs as he walked, but wherever they went, he and Samira endeavored to fit in, so in this country, he wore the embroidered sun of the men, and she the moon of the women, making them seem like a bonded pair.
Widows of the Sun-Moon Page 4
