Vicious Circle

by Elle E. Ire

  Padding across the carpet, I moved to stand about a meter from my target. Jaren lay face-up. He slept shirtless, and the low-lying covers exposed his neck and pale, hairless chest. His expression was beatific in the innocence of sleep.

  I slid my blade from its sheath, then grabbed a muffling throw pillow from those scattered on the floor. Before I could cross the last few steps between us, the young lord snorted, then coughed and inhaled deeply.

  Hells.

  Instead of going back to sleep, Jaren sniffed, then sniffed again. My heart stopped. The perfume. Kila’s perfume. I’d grown accustomed to it, enveloped in it as I’d been, but now I could smell it on my clothing and in my hair from when she’d touched me.

  Jaren smelled it too.

  “Kila?” he muttered, eyelids fluttering as he attempted to focus in the dark room.

  Of course he recognized the owner of the scent. He’d been close enough to it.

  Jaren shoved the blankets the rest of the way off and sat up, calling for the automatic lights.

  We stared at each other in the lamps’ glare.

  Jaren didn’t shout. Instead, he looked from my face to the blade in my hand and back again. I watched comprehension dawn in his changing expressions. He appeared more saddened than afraid.

  “I really hoped she’d found someone,” he whispered, almost too low for me to hear.

  “Why?” I snarled. “You like threesomes? Not going to happen.”

  Jaren’s face twisted in a mixture of disgust and confusion. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood in loose-fitting pajama pants, then reached for a robe tossed over a nearby chair. My muscles tightened. I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet and turned so I could see both him and the door where the guards would enter.

  The young lord drew on the robe one casual sleeve at a time, the long, soft brown material falling around his too thin frame. I wondered, with his lack of physical build, how Kila hadn’t managed at least once to fight him off and get away. She abhorred violence, yes, but to defend herself from rape? Maybe she’d seen it as pointless to resist the inevitable.

  Or maybe something was wrong with this whole scenario. And still, Jaren didn’t call for help or make a move to stop me.

  Queasiness formed in the pit of my stomach, a subtle churning that made me regret the meal I’d consumed in the banquet hall.

  “You do care for her. I could see it at the party. Will you leave her, once this is done and over with?” Jaren finished tying a sash around his waist.

  A buzzing took up residence in my ears, a distraction I didn’t need with everything falling apart around me. I reached up with my free hand to viciously rub the left side of my head. It didn’t help. The buzzing continued like insects swarming my brain. Something told me if I killed him, it would stop, but I had to sort this out first.

  “What happens between me and Kila doesn’t matter to you. You won’t be around to worry about it.” I took an unsteady step forward. What in hells was the matter with me?

  With one long stride, he stood before me, and there was no breaking from his intense gaze. “What happens to Kila matters to me. It matters to me very much.”

  I believed him.

  Wrong. All wrong. All of this. Everything.

  The nausea increased tenfold when he bared his chest to my blade. An incomprehensible compulsion to kill him warred with my absolute certainty this was a mistake. “It’s time. Finish it. Just promise me you won’t leave her alone.”

  In my profession, squeamishness and nerves over a potential kill weren’t things I generally worried about, but the queasiness in my stomach didn’t relent and finally became unmanageable. I staggered to the corner of the bedroom and gagged, then vomited.

  Chapter 16

  WHEN MY stomach had emptied itself, I straightened, wiping my mouth on the back of my glove. Jaren tried to assist me, supporting my arm, but I flinched away as if burned. “You never raped her.” It wasn’t a question.

  The young lord’s eyes flew wide. The buzzing in my ears abruptly stopped. Weird. “Raped who? Kila?” Now he was the one to look ill. “I’ve never raped anyone. I’d never hurt anyone.”

  No, he wouldn’t. Not this soft-spoken young man with the sad green eyes and a longing for death.

  Kila played me, lied to me from the beginning, used her false friendship to gain my trust and more, spun her rape story to convince me to end Jaren’s life. And I’d come so close to finishing it, so close, just like with the child Micah assigned me to kill. Sooner or later, I was bound to take an innocent life. I caught the armrest of a chair and pulled myself into it. My legs would no longer support me.

  You won’t want me then. Kila’s last words echoed in my head. She must have thought I’d figure out what I’d done sooner or later. And here I’d been worried she wouldn’t want me after killing her brother, regardless of what he’d done, regardless of her request. She probably never wanted me in the first place. Tonight had been all part of the act, or a delaying tactic due to second thoughts. The bile rose again, and I swallowed it down.

  I was an idiot.

  “Why?” My voice sounded ragged. I raised it to be heard over a new clamor outside. “Why do you want me to kill you? If you wanted to die, why didn’t you kill yourself?” Why put me through all this?

  Jaren picked up the knife I’d dropped. I didn’t even realize I’d lost it until now. He handed it to me and sat in the opposite chair. “Suicide condemns me to eternal punishment.”

  Like I couldn’t have seen that coming.

  “The rest is hard to explain.”

  Rage replaced hurt and disappointment. I gripped the handle of the blade until my knuckles whitened, not because I intended to use it. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. But it gave me something to crush my fingers around. “I suggest you try.”

  Jaren exhaled, resigned. “If I live, thousands, perhaps millions, will die.”

  I snorted with disbelief, sheathed my weapon in one violent shove, and stood to pace in front of him. “How?”

  “I have something a lot of people would kill for.” Jaren dug his toes into the thick carpeting. His hands clutched the armrests.

  Talk about an overinflated sense of importance. “You mean your inheritance? Lissex is a rim world. Nobody off the planet, probably nobody off Triumph cares that you are going to rule your little island and be the decision-maker around here!” It took everything I had to keep from shouting. Shouting would bring the guards.

  He looked at me, searching my face and seeming to come to a decision. “It has nothing to do with property or politics.”

  The noise from outside swelled into an uproar that drowned out his next words. The tone of the voices sounded commanding, and an authoritative male barked orders in crisp, precise phrases I couldn’t quite make out. Others responded, and a cacophony of argument and scuffling ensued, coming from just below Jaren’s window.

  At first I thought someone had spotted my climbing wires, despite their thinness. Then a heavy black cylinder flew through the double-paned opening, clanged, thudded against the carpet, and rolled across the floor.

  Without knowing why, I threw myself at Jaren, knocking him over backward in his chair and tackling him to the carpet. We ended up behind the couch when the flash bomb exploded, filling the suite with glaring white light.

  The couch’s protection prevented complete blindness, but even so, I blinked furiously from my perch atop Jaren’s chest, and tears poured from my oversensitive eyes. Behind me, I heard metal scraping on stone. I turned, and despite the pain from the glare, made out grappling hooks on the windowsill.

  I jumped to my feet, dragging Jaren up with me, and scanned the room. “Grab some shoes!” That would take precious seconds, but he’d be even slower barefoot once I got him out of the suite.

  He flew to the bed, pulled slip-on sandals from beneath it, and yanked them on in two quick jerks.

  “Come on!” I yelled from the door, but he hesitated, then dug into
the top drawer of his dresser and removed two pairs of sunglasses. He tossed one to me. I nodded and put them on. The world dimmed to a manageable brightness.

  I drew my pistol from my thigh holster, holding it at the ready. Then I slammed open the bedroom door, hoping to take the hallway guards by surprise. I turned right, then left, aiming the gun up and down the corridor in two quick motions. Jaren skittered into the hall behind me, staring in surprise.

  There was no one there. Footsteps pounded down the stairs. They must have been headed out to assist the security on the grounds.

  At the head of the stairwell, Jaren took a step toward his sister’s room, but I caught him by the sleeve of his robe. “They’re not after her.” In spite of Kila’s betrayal, leaving her behind twisted my insides into knots, but my practical side won out. “If you want to live—” I caught myself. Jaren rolled his eyes at me. “If you don’t want whoever it is to get you, then we need to leave, now.”

  I don’t know what motivated me to help him. Maybe I was determined not to let him satisfy his death wish in this new conflict. Whatever the reason, we hurried down the stairs together.

  Halfway to the first floor, we came up behind his bodyguards. All their attention was focused on a group of camouflage-wearing military types trying to battle their way up. I recognized the sergeant from the squad of mercs I’d fought earlier in the day. He spotted me as well, and renewed his assault on the guards between us with increased vigor.

  For party-colored house protection, I had to admit the T’ral guards fought well. They leaped into the fray without hesitation, and though it required both guards to take down one merc, I admired their courage. More T’ral security poured through the front doors and into the entry hall, swinging shock sticks and carrying stun pistols. Nonlethal weaponry, of course. Their religion would discourage the use of killing force. They launched into the struggle with the mercs, trying to haul them off the stairs but effectively blocking our escape route.

  I had no such concerns. My work clothing blew my cover. I shot two mercs with my pistol, one in the chest, another in the head. When I turned to Jaren, he’d paled. The young lord stared at me with wide-open eyes.

  “Your sister hired an assassin, not a pacifist,” I growled.

  Below, more activity erupted. Kila’s father burst through the banquet hall doors, took one look around, and ducked back inside. I heard more shouting from within.

  Above, the sound of boots stomping on carpet came from Jaren’s room. I took a deep, cleansing breath. No matter how good I was, I couldn’t shoot them all. I holstered my weapon, seized the banister with both hands, and swung myself over it to drop in a feline crouch on the floor below.

  “Jaren, jump!”

  He obeyed my command, landing with less grace and more noise. I grabbed his arms to steady him.

  “Jaren! Cor!”

  Kila’s pale face appeared at the upstairs railing, hands gripping it for balance in her semidrunken state, as two men and a woman swarmed out of Jaren’s suite. The new arrivals looked from Kila to us, decided we were the better targets, then made for the stairs to pursue. Kila’s expression showed chagrin at giving us away.

  Gun in hand once more, I glared at my former friend with pure hatred. She probably couldn’t see it behind the dark glasses, but the grim set of my jaw and the tightness of my mouth backed her up a step. I turned and shoved Jaren through a door at the far end of the entrance hall.

  I’d found the kitchen, and Jaren and Kila’s parents, and the priest from the village, along with a number of servants cowering behind a central island of long metal cooking surfaces and storage cabinets. Three cups of unfinished tea rested on a glossy wood table, and a candle of Therix wax burned beside them. The narcotic smoke wafted through the room, and I wondered, very briefly, what the trio discussed under its haze.

  Shaking myself from its influence, I scanned the rest of the room. No exterior doors, but the rear wall boasted a floor-to-ceiling window, and I blasted it with one shot from my pistol. Glass blew outward into the yard and clattered on some stone surface, a walkway perhaps. The men ducked as a few bits of debris showered them. Lady T’ral screamed.

  My patience ended. I’d been teased, frustrated, betrayed, half blinded, and now I had paired up with the number-one target on Lissex. “Can you draw any more attention to us?” I shouted, waving the gun in her direction. I must have looked insane to her in my assassin gear and Jaren’s sunglasses. She covered her mouth with one hand to prevent another shriek.

  “Corianne.” Jaren wrapped gentle fingers around my forearm. I almost backhanded him.

  “What?” He didn’t release me. He was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

  “We should leave.”

  His composure surprised me, keeping cool under pressure. Maybe his unwavering religious faith kept him on an even keel. Or maybe he wanted the crazy lady with the gun as far from his parents and the preacher as possible.

  The buzzing in my head began anew, and a calming sensation doused my fried nerves in soothing relief. At first I thought the Therix candle was getting to me. But there hadn’t been a candle in his bedroom that I remembered. I blinked at Jaren, really seeing him for the first time tonight. “It’s you.” I felt my eyes widen. Puzzle pieces dropped into place, forming a solid picture. Kila’s humming. The healing of my injuries, past and recent. My affection for her. “Just how much can you—?”

  His father stepped in front of us. “My son has a mission to fulfill, a role in the order of things. If you think I’m going to stand by and let you take him—”

  Jaren interceded. “She’s on our side, Father. I can’t do anything if they capture me. She’ll keep me safe.”

  “She’s an assassin.”

  Oh, very good, Lord T’ral. A little late to the party, but not unfashionably so.

  “If she wanted to kill me, she would have done it by now.” Jaren headed for the broken window. His mother watched him and burst into tears.

  “You should not accompany her,” the preacher said to our departing backs.

  Jaren hesitated, and I resisted the urge to shove him out the opening. I didn’t want to fight him all the way to, well, wherever we were going. He’d either go with me by choice or not at all. After a moment’s consideration, Jaren shook his head and climbed out, waiting for me beyond the sill.

  “What if she wants to use you? Control you?” the religious leader tried one last time.

  One foot over the threshold, I turned to him. “I don’t. And that’s all the reassurance I have time to give you right now.” I followed Jaren into the night, ignoring his mother’s despairing wail.

  Chaos continued to reign outside. Teams of guards and invaders jogged about the grounds in groups of three and four, patrolling, searching. Wherever they met, conflict ensued and created unintentional distractions for us. In addition, a healthy fog rolled in off the water. I removed my sunglasses, no longer needing them in the darkness, and tucked them in a jacket pocket. Jaren hung his off his robe tie.

  “I take it boats are the only means of transportation off the island? We have to get to your family’s yacht.” I leaned in close to him, uncomfortable with his audible mind control but not wanting to be overheard.

  “We try to keep things simple,” he said, no trace of apology in his tone. No buzzing in my head, either. Apparently he could turn his power on and off. “There’s a spaceport on Paradise, on the far side of the main island, away from Wayfarer’s Wharf, if you’re thinking of getting me off-world.”

  That meant another day and a half boat trip, and that’s if we went directly, but what choice did we have? I nodded. Taking Jaren by the sleeve, I pulled him toward the gate.

  A light sprang on at the side of the house, illuminating a small garden trampled by booted feet. In the glow, I spotted the preacher, arms raised and head turned toward the heavens as if seeking divine guidance or aid.

  He’d better be. A team of angry mercs surrounded him.

  The
y didn’t shoot him. He wasn’t their target, after all. Instead they watched as he lowered his hands and gesticulated around the grounds, maybe ordering them to leave the premises.

  Unfortunately, he ordered them to leave in our general direction.

  I grabbed Jaren’s sleeve, tugging him toward the perimeter. The mercs hadn’t seen us in the shadows, and their entry had ripped down the fencing in several places. I chose a flat section, and we climbed over it, trying to make as little noise as possible. Every creak and groan ramped up my pulse rate.

  Once beyond the property, I held us off the main path, creeping between the bushes and shrubs that lined it. The fog shielded us from attackers, but also made the going difficult, and we both tripped several times, almost tumbling headlong down a steep hill.

  In town, we took backstreets, angling our way toward the docks. Pockets of local resistance had sprung up. Shopkeepers and residents barred more mercs from trying to get to the T’ral mansion. Their willingness to lay down their lives in the face of a superior force impressed me. As I watched, an elderly man was taken out by a single blast from a pulse rifle. His wife carried on the fight, stepping over him and swinging a makeshift club of broken shutter. Jaren made a move to assist, but I yanked him into the shadows and slammed him up against the stone wall of a small eatery. His eyes were wild.

  “I have one gun,” I told him in a harsh whisper. “The charge is low. You can’t save everyone. Best thing you can do is escape and draw the battle away from here. When they figure out you’re gone, they’ll leave.”

  He looked from me to the dying man and back again. In the dim yellow streetlights, his skin had gone green. He nodded shakily.

  Heading away, I softened my hold on him but didn’t release. “Is everyone on this island a Believer in the Givers of Life?”

  “Everyone. And most on the other islands as well.”

  We came within sight of the boardwalk. The fog cleared a bit, and I could make out the T’ral yacht bobbing in the first slip. “I thought the Believers were nonviolent.”