Guardian Queen: Epic Fantasy Romance (Hardstorm Saga Book 3)

by Dana Marton

  “Before the feast began, I ordered the servants to clean Lord Tahar’s bedchamber and find some fresh sheets. I will have you tonight, all night, all to myself, in a real bed. I confess to being unable to think of little else but that.”

  * * *

  After the feast, I walked back to Pleasure Hall with Marga and two guards—Atter and Hartz—the tiger pushing between the men and me as we went. I absently patted her head, my mind on Batumar. I looked forward to the day’s end, when I could finally settle into the warlord’s arms.

  Prince Graho departed with Tomron to inspect our troops and search out what weapons and food they could find to take north with us the following day. Lord Karnagh strode off with the Selorm lords and their tigers to see if the tigers might yet discover some enemy still hiding in the ruins. Batumar went with Urdy to interrogate a handful of captured soldiers. Urdy spoke better Kerghi than I did.

  I had healed scores of soldiers before our meal, but more injured men had been found and brought from the battlefield. I needed the work. I needed to restore life after having to watch the taking of it all day.

  Work I got, more than I had anticipated. Pleasure Hall had filled with bleeding soldiers in my absence. Their injuries were grievous and needed as much of my power as I could give them. When Boscor sought me out to offer his assistance, I gratefully accepted.

  There were so many cuts, soon we ran out of ninga beetles. I sent Atter again to bring more from the creek. He knew by now what to look for. Soon after he left, I used up all the cold water in Pleasure Hall’s tall jars, so I turned to Hartz.

  “I need you to bring me clean water, by the bucketful. Grab what servants you come across on your way to the creek and tell them to help.”

  “I cannot leave you alone, my lady.”

  “Kumra and Keela are dead. I have no other enemies here. I have the tiger and Master Boscor for protection. I shall be safe. Please go and bring water.” I fixed him with a hard look. “As fast as you can.”

  Hartz followed my orders, but his tight expression as he left said he did not like them.

  I moved on to the next person, not a soldier but an injured child, one burned in the fire the night before. She was stripped to the waist, angry red blisters covering her chest and stomach. Tears ran down her sooty face. She was surrounded by three similarly injured women.

  “Who is this child’s mother?” I looked from one to another, then the next, but they all shook their heads.

  “The Kerghi killed her mother,” the oldest of the women said.

  I focused on the little girl, on her uncombed hair and slim frame. I could count her ribs through her ruined skin. “I am Tera. I will help you feel better. What is your name?”

  She watched me with distrust, but, after a moment did open her mouth to answer. Of course, Marga had to pad closer to us just then. The girl snapped her mouth closed, drawing back, eyes going wide and filling with fear. Marga nudged me from behind, then thrust her giant head through under my arm to sniff at the burned flesh. I pushed her back.

  “The tiger is my friend. She will not harm you,” I promised, but the girl scrambled out of reach and wedged herself between the women, who were themselves pulling back.

  Marga lost interest in the girl and began pacing the empty space that opened up around us, shaking her head and huffing, clearly bothered by the thick smell of blood in Pleasure Hall.

  “She is just hungry.” I tried to explain, but none looked reassured at my explanation. In hindsight, perhaps those were the wrong words to say.

  I reached out to rub Marga’s shoulder as she passed me. “Let me see about finding you something to eat.”

  I turned back to the child, who was now crying, her fearful gaze riveted to Marga. I could work my healing more easily if I calmed her first.

  “I will take the tiger out, then I will come back,” I promised her even as I drew the worst of her pain. When I returned, if she’d settled down by then, I could begin repairing her skin.

  I needed a short break, in any case. I had already taken on the pain of many, and there were still dozens more waiting. Burn wounds required a lot of healing power. The transfer of pain was sharp and real, and I had worked on a great many burn wounds that day.

  As I stood, dizzy for a moment, Boscor moved to come with me, but I shook my head. “See if you can ease her fear with one of your stories.”

  Marga was nudging me once again, so I put a hand on her giant head and scratched behind her ear. “All right. We shall go to the kitchen and find you some leftovers.”

  I wanted to make sure she would get nothing that Kumra and Keela could possibly have touched. I also did not want some scared servant to throw something at the tiger and startle her into an attack.

  “The kitchen is close by, in the next building. Finding Marga a meal will not take long,” I promised Boscor before we left him.

  When I found the cook, I asked him for meat.

  “I am sorry, my lady.” The man bowed his head, casting worried glances at the tiger by my side. “Meat has been in short supply in the city for some time. Perhaps bones?” he rushed to suggest. “I saved them for the soup tomorrow, but if you wish—”

  “Bones are fine for her as playthings, but they do not provide enough sustenance. Have you any chickens?”

  “Only the egg-laying hens,” he said with reluctance. “We are most dependent on them.”

  “I shall need a dozen.”

  These the cook unwillingly gave, butchering them quickly and carrying them behind the kitchen for Marga while we waited.

  More time than I had anticipated passed by the time I was walking back to Pleasure Hall, leaving a happy tiger behind with a pile of poultry. Boscor would have had time for a dozen tales or more. I hoped he’d put the girl to sleep. I could heal her so, and she would wake healthy.

  I was about to step into the main building when a distraught voice called from behind me. “Are you the Lady Tera?”

  I turned to find a boy of maybe ten summers running toward me across the dark courtyard, tears washing his face. His drab clothes were stained and torn; his mousy hair hung in tangles.

  “Are you the Lady Tera?” he begged the question once again as he stopped at a respectful distance and bowed.

  “I am.”

  “It’s Prince Graho, my lady.” The boy was breathing hard from his run, gasping for air, barely able to finish. “At the harbor. Please hurry!”

  Chapter Twenty

  (New Enemies)

  I rushed to the panting boy. “Has there been more fighting?”

  Had I been mistaken to think the battle was over? Had our men come upon enemy soldiers hiding in the burned warehouses?

  The boy’s eyes were wide with bewilderment. “I do not know, my lady. He is in the harbor. Please, hurry.”

  I looked toward the creek, hoping to see either Hartz or Atter returning. I could not spot either.

  “Boscor!” I shouted. The windows were open; he might yet hear. I did not want to waste time by running off to find him.

  I had no time to wait for him either, I realized then, and headed in the direction of the harbor. The boy scrambled to lead me.

  We were halfway across the yard when Boscor called after us. “There you are. I was coming to find you, my lady. The child is asleep. Where are you going?”

  “I will see to the girl later. Prince Graho is hurt.”

  The chronicle keeper broke into a run. “Are the prince’s guards with him? Speak, boy,” he snapped.

  The boy whimpered, tears clinging to his eyelashes, looking from Boscor to me, then back to the chronicle keeper. He was scared out of his wits, no doubt from the night of fire, followed by a long day of battle, and now all the dead lying in the streets.

  “I was out looking for my brother when a man came running and said to bring the Lady Tera and quick from the House of Tahar,” he told Boscor as the chronicle keeper caught up with us. “He might have been a guard.”

  Boscor grabbed the boy�
�s shoulder. “Show us where he is.”

  The boy pulled from his grip and took off in the direction he had come from. We followed close behind while I checked my belt, glad for my numerous bunches and bags of herbs. I had rolls of bandages tucked up my sleeve. But oh—

  “My knife!” I left it at Pleasure Hall.

  “I have it,” Boscor said, right behind me.

  I let him keep it for now as we hurried on. Truly, if Prince Graho was as badly hurt as I thought he might be, I would simply use my healing powers. Whatever the price, I could not let the crown prince of Landria, my friend, die here.

  The boy led us past the burned harbor, past our beached ships. When I glanced back, I could no longer see the charred and collapsed wharf. The jumble of half-collapsed fishermen’s huts we were walking through blocked the view. The huts stood deserted, a small army of dark ghosts in the night.

  “Why did the prince come down here?” I asked Boscor, just as I finally spotted Prince Graho lying on the sand, catching a glimpse of him through a gap between rows of destroyed shacks.

  Three men huddled around the prone form at the edge of the water. I thought I recognized Durak as one of them, the commander of the prince’s guard, by his wide shoulders, but I could not make out his face.

  Boscor thanked the boy for his help, and the boy ran off, calling for his brother.

  I broke into a run too, toward the group on the beach, seeing nothing but that deathly still form on the sand. I jerked back violently as Boscor caught me by the wrist.

  I twisted to look at him. “What is it?”

  When he silently pulled me back into the narrow gap between two rows of huts, I went without hesitation. I trusted he had a reason. Yet as I scanned the night, I saw no danger, nothing alarming. Even so, a cold shiver ran down my spine.

  “What is it?” I asked again, this time whispering.

  The chronicle keeper did not let me go. His fingers were suddenly an iron manacle around my wrist. My knife flashed in his other hand.

  “Boscor?” My mind tried desperately to catch up with what was happening.

  His expression hardened. His familiar, kind face turned into that of a stranger. “I am afraid, my lady, your journey ends here.”

  I could make no sense of the words, yet I knew he meant me harm. The shock was so great that I could not even push out the single word, Why?

  He read the question in my eyes and answered anyway. “The Great Khan wills it so.”

  I blinked at him, so stunned, I even forgot to struggle. “Are you the khan’s man? But on Rabeen…”

  His gaze remained cold, all warmth and friendship thoroughly gone, his bearing suddenly that of a much younger man. “I am the khan’s assassin.”

  My heart lurched. A host of questions assailed me, but I understood that there would be no time to ask them. And if the spirits granted me any time at all, I would not waste them on questions. I had a more important task to accomplish. “Let me heal the prince first. Please.”

  “The princeling will have to take his chances.”

  His voice had no inflection, his eyes held no emotion. Boscor my friend was gone. I did not know the man who stood before me.

  Something Urdy had said a while ago came back to me and made sense suddenly. “Black Rock?”

  Anger sparked in Boscor’s gaze. “The damn dwarf.” And then he added in a low voice filled with exasperation, “Assassins tell no tales.”

  I racked my brain for what Urdy had told me about Black Rock assassins. They were hired if information had to be gained before the assassination. They became whatever the victim needed—they gained trust first, to gain the information.

  I have been missing the old Guardians who had each been like a father to me. So, to get close to me and gain my confidence, Boscor had become a friend and something akin to a father figure.

  Boscor’s fresh wound when we had found him made more sense now. He had not ripped his injury open while reaching for dindin fruit.

  “You cut yourself when you saw our ship sail into port.”

  A wry smile spread on his face. “Last I heard, you were healing all who came before you. I did not expect to find you reformed and my wound left to poultices.”

  He always stayed on deck on the Shield, never went below. To stay away from Ina and Nessa? Because they could have told me he had nothing to do with the Merchant League of Rabeen or the chronicles? He had been safe with Urdy. Urdy was new to the island. The dwarf could not reveal him for an impostor.

  Anger began to gather in the pit of my stomach. “How did you know we were coming at all?”

  “Drav, the emperor’s sorcerer, saw it. Emperor Drakhar sent word to Khan Verik.”

  “What knowledge did the khan ask you to gain from me before you killed me?”

  “Khan Verik wants to know if you can be pressed into his service. The emperor has his sorcerer. Rumor has it that you were revealed as a sorceress on the mainland.”

  Understanding dawned. “The khan wants his own empire. He wants his own sorceress to stand against the emperor’s sorcerer.”

  Boscor’s knife hand moved, and my free hand snapped to his wrist on instinct to hold him off.

  “Last chance to swear fealty. But I do not think you would serve the khan,” he said as the knife slowly moved toward my throat. “Am I mistaken, my lady?”

  He was much stronger than I. I could not hold his hand still, could only slow him. “You are not.”

  “I thought as much. And so Khan Verik’s question is answered. If you cannot be turned into an ally, you are a threat. You are the leader of an army.”

  The blade reached my neck and pressed against my skin.

  As I stared into Boscor’s face, his expression returned to that fatherly look I had come to know. “I will make it quick and painless. The khan has given no instruction to that end. I can do as I wish.”

  Was he delusional enough to think he was doing me a kindness?

  Marga! I called for the tiger through spirit song. Marga! Quick!

  I listened with all I was for her roar, a sign that she heard me, that she was on her way.

  I heard nothing but the waves crashing against the shore somewhere behind me.

  Batumar! Batumar! But Batumar had always been deaf to the spirit song. It worked much better on animals than it did on people.

  Think. Delay.

  “Why did you help us last night? You gave us the idea for burning the enemy fleet.”

  “The khan paid me for your life, not for me to win him this war. Your life or to deliver you to him willing to serve.” He paused. “I did not like his fleet. I did not like thinking he might sail those ships to Black Rock someday.” Boscor held my gaze. “Let go of the knife. I would make this easy for you and without pain. In truth…” He sighed. “You have earned my admiration, my lady. I have killed many men, most of them worthless, a few less so, but you… I would follow you were I not an assassin.”

  “Wait!” I would not let go of Boscor’s wrist. I fought him with all my strength, stalling for time. “How did you know so much about the chronicles of Rabeen?”

  “Of the chronicles of Rabeen, I know nothing. But Black Rock has a very large library,” he said with honest pride. “Black Rock assassins are learned assassins.”

  “Oh!” I gasped as a thought barreled into my mind with the power of a tidal wave. “The man my mother married… Jarim. Was he…?”

  The emperor had sent Jarim to kill my mother and kill me in her womb. But Jarim had fallen in love with her. He decided to wait until I was born and kill only me, then stay with my mother to console her. Except, every time they came together, my mother left a little of her goodness behind in the man. When I was born, he let me live. I had grown up knowing him as my father. I had not learned the truth until after my mother died, after Jarim sold me into slavery.

  “A Black Rock assassin whose name has not been spoken on the rock in decades.” Boscor scowled. “He failed most disgracefully.”

 
My mind reeled. Question after question tumbled through my brain. Yet I could not dwell on the past, not with a blade at my neck.

  Marga! I called again, but the tiger did not call back.

  The spirit song worked only when we were near each other. She was behind the kitchen back at the House of Tahar. Marga! I tried again anyway.

  “I will not beg you for my own life,” I said to Boscor, “but I will beg once again for the prince’s.”

  Even as I spoke, I tried to reach Prince Graho with my healing power, but I could not. I could not even sense his pain. My powers were weakening faster than I had thought. I should not have been surprised, not after I had spent the entire day and most of the evening with healing.

  I opened my mouth to keep begging, but even as I drew a deep breath, the blade pressed harder into my neck. I swallowed in panic, my throat dryer than the sand beneath my feet.

  My arms shook. I scrambled to find something to say that would stall Boscor for another moment. Movement flashed to my right, before I could find the words. Almost at the same time, Boscor released the knife, the cold metal sliding off my chest before it fell to the ground at my feet.

  I was not sure if the surprised grunt was his or mine. Then he whirled, shoving me to the ground in the process, and I caught sight of a dagger sticking out of his forearm. He pulled the blade from the wound and threw it at his attacker in a single motion.

  A small shadow darted between two huts.

  Urdy.

  I scampered back, thinking only to get away from Boscor. The dwarf flew forward. He had rearmed. He had a dagger in each hand, the tips as thin as needles.

  Watching the two assassins was like watching tigers fight each other. They came together in a crash, in a burst of violence that stole my breath. Everything happened too fast. In a blink, one of the needle daggers was sticking out of Boscor’s left eye, the khan’s hired assassin sinking to the sand. One heaving breath was all he had time for before life left him. He lay on his back, one hand over his stomach, almost in the exact position he’d been in when Batumar and I had found him on Rabeen.