Hot Zone

by Cindy Dees

  Twenty

  Tessa thought fast. She shot back mentally to Rustam, Tell her Athens is being evacuated by sea right now. If the Persian fleet hurries, they can trap the Athenian navy and force it into battle to protect the retreat of the citizens. That’s what happens, anyway.

  Rustam retorted, We risk speeding up how soon the Persians get to Athens. For all we know, it’ll cause Xerxes to annihilate the Athenians.

  As a guard grabbed her roughly by the arms and yanked her elbows behind her back, she responded frantically, The fleet’s too unwieldy and the straits are too narrow for it to speed up, as long as it stays together in one flotilla.

  “Off with their heads!” Artemesia snarled.

  Rustam laughed lightly. “Temper, temper, my dear queen. Trust me. You want to hear what I have to say.”

  Artemesia threw up a hand, stopping the soldier beside her in the act of lifting his scimitar for a swing. Tessa exhaled carefully. With her arms held behind her back like this, she had no access to her emergency cuff. Of course, she had no idea if Professor Carswell could get her out of here fast enough to avoid a beheading, anyway. Athena had said she could usually pull out operatives in a few seconds. But what was “usually” and how long was “a few seconds”?

  At the moment, one or two extra heartbeats could mean life or death. And that was assuming Tessa could wrench her arms free and activate the cuff at all.

  “Speak,” Artemesia purred to Rustam, her voice silky and dangerous.

  He nodded. “Athens is being evacuated. It’s an exodus by ship. The city’s entire navy is assembled en masse to protect the retreat of the civilians. If Xerxes strikes now, he can wipe out the Athenian navy and most of its population in a single blow.”

  Artemesia stared. “Truly?” she half whispered.

  “I swear it upon my life and my honor,” Rustam replied solemnly. Tessa felt the wave of sincerity he sent the queen to reinforce his vow.

  “How do you know this?” the queen demanded.

  He stepped forward, and Tessa, sensing his intent, dragged her guard forward a step so she could stay in close proximity to Rustam. He would need the extra strength she could lend him for this stunt.

  “May I touch your exalted highness?” he murmured deferentially.

  Artemesia started. Cautiously, she held out her hand. “You may. But take no liberties with my person,” she added sharply.

  Tessa grinned inwardly. Always had to be in control, that lady. But she supposed she didn’t blame the queen. The woman held her own in a time and place that gave new meaning to male domination.

  Ignoring the proffered hand, Rustam reached out and gently placed his fingertips on Artemesia’s temples. As the queen’s eyes drifted closed, Tessa carefully pulled her right arm free of the guard’s grasp. She was surprised when he let her go. But apparently, permission to touch the queen put the two of them firmly in the class of non-threats. And then, of course, there was the soldier’s fear of and fascination with Rustam’s “magic.”

  Regardless of the reason for her release, Tessa reached out quickly and laid her hand on Rustam’s back. She allowed her own aura to flow over him, blending with his in a familiar swirl of indigo.

  As Rustam shaped the energy and formed a mental image, which he projected into Artemesia’s mind, the image also flowed through Tessa.

  For someone who hadn’t actually seen the evacuation of Athens in person, he created an amazingly vivid image of it. The Parthenon stood proudly on the Acropolis, bathed in moonlight, its white marble architecture so perfect it stole Tessa’s breath away. Is that what it looked like new? It was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen.

  The view shifted to an Athenian port. Long lines of people crowded the shore, waiting impatiently to board small rowboats that would shuttle them to larger seafaring ships moored close by.

  Artemesia’s eyes grew wide as the vision flowed through her mind. Tessa’s mouth twitched with humor when Rustam blasted the queen with the absolute belief that what she’d just seen was real. Heck, it probably was close enough to real.

  The monarch whirled away from Rustam to face the captain, who’d come up on deck by now, rubbing sleep from his eyes, “Take me to the imperial barge,” she ordered.

  The man looked alarmed. “I cannot maneuver in this crush. If we get broadside of the fleet, we’ll get rammed and sink.”

  “Then put a barge in the water,” Artemesia ordered impatiently.

  Rustam cleared his throat. “With all due respect, my queen, I would not see you risk life or limb in such a flimsy craft.”

  She shot him a suspicious look. “A barge was good enough to bring you to me.”

  “Ahh, but I would gladly risk my life to return to your side, my lady.”

  Tessa winced at the heavy wave of sexual attraction he sent along with that remark.

  Artemesia visibly preened for a moment, but then turned her formidable mind to the problem at hand. “Shout word to the next ship that the Queen of Halicarnassus has tidings of great import for the emperor. At his earliest convenience, I request an audience to relay my news.”

  Obediently, the ship’s captain bellowed to the next vessel over. In retreating volume over the next several seconds, Tessa heard the message shouted from boat to boat. Hopefully, the meaning wouldn’t get too mangled by the time it reached Xerxes’s ears.

  “Now what?” the captain asked.

  Artemesia shrugged. “Now we wait.” She cast a speculative glance at Rustam. “And in the meantime, my slave shall attend me. Come to my bed, slave.”

  Tessa had to clench her jaw—hard—to stand there and listen to Rustam being called that. He was such a magnificent, intelligent, powerful man, a star navigator, for heaven’s sake. It was obscene to hear his name and the word slave in the same sentence. And she didn’t even want to think about him in Artemesia’s bed.

  Tessa couldn’t help herself. Her aura surged, flying around her in shades of violet and angry purple.

  Easy, love, Rustam warned. Artemesia can sense a strong enough energy field. Do not give her a weapon like your jealousy to wield against you.

  Tessa had to dig her fingernails cruelly into her palms to distract herself, but she managed to wrestle her emotions back under control by sheer dint of will.

  She counted backward from ten to one, forcing her expression to go blank as Rustam stepped away from her, following the queen toward the hatch that led below deck. And it was a good thing she did so for, without warning, Artemesia cast a triumphant look over her shoulder at her.

  Go ahead, Your Highness. Pretend you’ve won and the man is yours. I am the one he named his consort and put his child into.

  A cobalt-blue wave of amusement so strong it nearly made her burst out laughing slammed into Tessa.

  As Artemesia disappeared down the hatch, Tessa scowled fiercely at Rustam, who was grinning back at her like a cat with a big, fat canary in its mouth.

  Petulantly, she flung at him, I hope she makes you have sex with her.

  No, you don’t. Do not be ashamed of your jealousy. It pleases me.

  Go to he—

  He cut her off. Search the ship for your map while I’ve got her distracted, my love.

  The Karanovo fragment. Her mission. She’d completely forgotten why she was here, in her irritation at Artemesia taking her man to bed.

  Tessa froze. Her man? Since when was Rustam her man?

  Grimly, she turned to face the ship. She glanced over at the captain, who hovered unhappily on deck. He looked as if he would love to go back to bed but wasn’t sure he had permission from his queen to do so.

  “My dear sir,” Tessa said sweetly, “would you do me the honor of showing me your most excellent vessel?”

  The man looked relieved to have something to do. Tessa reached out with her mind to search for the medallion…and realized all of a sudden that she was getting absolutely nothing. No pinprick of energy, no general direction, nothing. Dammit. As soon as Rustam had left,
he’d taken every bit of her skill with him. Well, she could always do it the old-fashioned way and hunt with her eyeballs. With a sigh, she turned to follow the captain.

  At night, with no moon, and no torches nearby, she didn’t stand a chance of spotting the medallion. And it didn’t help that her stomach was roiling and queasy in short order. She’d never been prone to seasickness before, but then, she’d never been on a tiny Persian ship in the middle of the Aegean Sea with her lover below her feet, in bed with another woman. She had every right to be seasick, thank you very much.

  It was a long night. As Artemesia had made no provision for her to have quarters, the ship’s crew wasn’t inclined to offer them to her. She eventually dug Rustam’s big cloak out of his pack and wrapped herself in it, but it wasn’t quite enough to stave off the damp chill as the wee hours of the night came and went.

  It was silent below deck, but her mind still conjured any number of lurid scenarios involving Rustam and Artemesia. And every successive one made Tessa a little crazier.

  It shouldn’t matter to her that Artemesia had reclaimed her lover. Tessa knew they’d slept together before, and she also knew that Rustam wasn’t particularly fond of the woman in bed. He’d expressed respect for the woman’s mind and her leadership abilities, but a closed, unpleasant look entered his gaze anytime the subject of Artemesia’s sexual proclivities had come up in conversation. Not that it had more than once or twice.

  Still, Tessa was miserable. She paced the decks, swathed in Rustam’s voluminous cloak, surrounded by his scent and residual bits of blue energy that clung to the coarse wool and suffered the torments of hell.

  Eventually, a single thought coalesced and took root in her brain. This had better not be love, because if it was, it sucked.

  But as the stars wheeled about overhead and the Aegean Sea slapped the sides of the vessel, she gradually came to accept the truth. Somewhere along the way, she’d fallen in love with the big lout.

  And without a shadow of a doubt, that was an enormous mistake. He was Centaurian, the enemy. From what Professor Carswell had told her, the Centaurians were actively trying to interfere with mankind’s progress toward space travel. For all Tessa knew, Rustam was one of those sent to Earth to impede mankind’s progress!

  A person did have to wonder why his spaceship was even in this corner of the galaxy when it crashed in the first place. Without his overwhelming presence to distract her from rational thought, she actually chewed on that question seriously for the first time.

  She didn’t like any of the possible answers she came up with.

  Had he intentionally played on her intense attraction to him to keep her completely distracted from his purpose—distracted from her purpose, too—in being here? Had he managed to pick out of her brain what she was actually searching for and realized he had to prevent her from succeeding? Yes, he’d helped her make this journey through a war zone. But here she was, potentially mere feet away from the fragment, yet with no means of actually locating the wedge, thanks to him stealing her skill.

  Funny how he’d accused her time and again of stealing his psychic abilities, when all along he’d been taking hers. Clever man. Had she really been that blind to what he was up to?

  The gall of betrayal blossomed, hot and bitter.

  Oh, yes. She’d been blind, indeed.

  She found an out-of-the-way corner on the crowded deck between a pair of massive, fat-bellied amphoras of what smelled like lamp oil and sank down, huddling into the folds of Rustam’s cloak.

  Now what was she supposed to do?

  It was time to get back on track. Do her job. Find the disk, activate her cuff, and get the hell out of here.

  It would be a relief to leave behind the temporary insanity that had taken hold of her and return to her own place and time. Rustam was good, all right. He’d completely befuddled her. She probably owed Artemesia a giant thanks for dragging him away from her and distracting him so he couldn’t maintain the control he’d obviously insinuated into her mind.

  Tessa swore under her breath. She’d been so gullible. The first sexy, handsome man who’d ever given her the time of day, and she’d fallen head-over-heels for him. Had she been the least bit suspicious when he was freely bedding the greatest beauties of an entire age yet mysteriously turned his affections upon her?

  Noooo. She’d believed he actually found her that attractive and had blithely jumped into his bedroll, swallowing his whole “I choose you for my consort and to be the mother of my children” line.

  By his own admission, scores of women mothered his children. She was just another conquest to him. And an easy one at that.

  Worse, he’d managed to divert her from her original purpose in coming to Greece. Tessa might physically be close to the fragment, but she may as well be halfway around the world, given how much progress she was making at actually finding it.

  Renewed resolve flooded her. If it took searching the entire ship from stem to stern on her hands and knees, so be it. When the sun came up, she would find that wedge, come hell or high water!

  She must have dozed at some point because she jerked awake with sunrise blasting light into her eyes. She felt like hell. She needed another four or five hours of sleep. The grueling pace of the past week and the unfamiliar strain of riding a horse for hours on end had apparently caught up with her.

  She was hungry for real food. Right now, a big stack of pancakes smothered in maple syrup with bacon and orange juice, and a steaming hot cup of coffee, sounded like manna from heaven. She wanted to drink water that didn’t taste of goat skin or dust, and she wanted a hot shower with real shampoo.

  And then last night’s long vigil and its unpleasant realizations caught up with her. She dragged herself to her feet, her heart heavy. Time to search the ship. She was near the rear of the vessel, so she started there with the intent to methodically work her way forward. She would do the top deck first. If need be, she would figure out a way to sneak below and search there, too.

  She’d been at it for maybe a half hour and had worked about a third of the way to the front of the ship when the sound of a horn drifted across the water. The single long blast was followed by two short, sharp ones. The ship’s crew responded with alacrity, racing to drop the sails and hurrying aft to throw the anchor overboard. Startled, she gazed across the water and saw that all nearby ships were doing the same.

  Apparently, the fleet was coming to a halt.

  Artemesia burst up on deck wearing a barely there gauze gown that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Tessa had to admit the woman looked pretty good for having never heard of aerobics or macrobiotic diets.

  Rustam came up on deck behind the queen, his tousled hair loose about his shoulders. He yawned and stretched like a sleepy lion. Tess scowled. The two of them could have each other, for all she cared.

  Someone from the next ship over shouted, and Artemesia jumped as if a bee had just stung her. She turned and raced back below deck, dragging Rustam with her.

  Tessa had caught part of the message, something about an immediate audience. Indeed, a few minutes later, the queen returned, fully dressed in a gorgeous red gown, her hair pulled back from her face with a pair of beautifully jeweled combs. The woman really was lovely. Even in harsh morning light with no cosmetics, she was exotic. Commanding.

  A good-size rowboat pulled up beside Artemesia’s ship just as Rustam stepped back up on deck, fully arrayed in an elaborate scarlet toga. He wore a gold circlet around his forehead, and his bare, bronzed biceps were clasped by a matching pair of gold cuffs encrusted in thumbnail-size rubies. He looked every inch the prince he claimed to be.

  Tessa’s traitorous heart flip-flopped before her head reminded it sourly that he’d used her and played her, shamelessly distracting her and preventing her from accomplishing her mission. Still, he was beautiful to look at. She felt his mind reach out to her, but she forcefully cut off her own response. No more freebie mind reading for the alien, thank you very much
.

  His gaze went bleak. Hard. He spared a single, arrogant glance at her and then turned to murmur in Artemesia’s ear. The queen laughed, a throaty, seductive sound that set Tessa’s teeth on edge.

  She turned away from the lovers and watched the sailors below expertly guide the rowboat close and hold it steady while Rustam and the queen were lowered aboard. The vessel pulled away.

  Pain stabbed Tessa like a dagger in the gut, and she forced her mind away from naming it. Who cared if it was envy or loss or a broken heart? It didn’t matter. She had to find the disk and get out of here…hopefully before those two returned.

  She took the opportunity to duck down the stairs and search below deck in the queen’s absence. The space was dark and damp, the ceilings so low she had to duck every time she came to a support beam. Rustam must have had to crouch over like a hunchback to move around down here at all.

  Stop thinking about him!

  She explored every inch of Artemesia’s quarters, to no avail. A large, locked chest in one corner of the space worried Tessa. It looked like something that might contain jewelry and valuables…and the Karanovo fragment could easily have ended up in something like that.

  Tessa got chased out of the crew’s sleeping quarters by a grumpy, half-conscious soldier who told her to ply her whore’s trade elsewhere. But not before she’d had a quick look around and seen nothing that looked even faintly like a bronze disk emblazoned with an image of a constellation.

  She was appalled at the sight of the twin rows of oarsmen amidships, slumped over, asleep at their oars. She surreptitiously checked their ankles for shackles as she looked for the piece of bronze. The men weren’t chained at their posts, thank goodness. But still, they were skinny, filthy, bearded and pale. None of them saw the light of day often, apparently.

  The ship’s cargo hold was a pain in the butt to search, but search it she did, barrel by barrel, crate by crate. The disk was nowhere to be found down there.

  Frustrated, she returned to the top deck to continue her search. She’d finished about another third of the ship when the imperial rowboat returned, interrupting her.