by Eve Langlais
He’d sent Anita a mental poke on his way down to the tunnels. Felt the anger in her mind at having been duped. One of his most loyal soldiers, Anita arrived with her expression grim and wearing black. It showed fewer stains.
“Your Majesty.” Anita didn’t bow, but she spoke with deference as she entered the chamber and circled to the prisoner’s left.
Liandra didn’t know who to watch. As if she’d see his attack coming if he chose to go after her.
“I take it she’s the reason half the castle guard was sleeping on duty.”
“Yes.”
“Who is she?” Anita asked, completing her circuit.
“Port scum, looking to collect on a bounty.”
“Another assassination attempt?” Anita cocked her head, her springy hair not caught back in its usual tight bun.
“Not this time. Liandra went after the princess.”
That drew Anita’s hardened gaze. “You attacked a little girl?”
“I never hurt her,” Liandra hotly retorted.
“But you planned to. You were going to take her away from her home, her family,” Roark said softly. “The cruelty of it stuns even my jaded heart.”
“Attacking little girls is wrong.” Anita stepped closer, and he knew this was personal for her. That it brought back dark memories.
“Then punish me like you punish the others who disobey. Put me in your arena to fight for my justice.” Liandra was apparently passingly familiar with some of their customs.
“You think you’ll get a chance in the arena?” He chuckled. “Dear Liandra, that’s only used for regular crimes. You acted against me. Made it personal. I take that kind of assault very seriously.”
Now Liandra appeared worried. “I’ve told you everything I know.”
“You have.” He didn’t disagree. Whoever hired her had hidden their traces in the more obvious layers of her memories.
“Then what else do you want?”
“To see you suffer,” Anita replied. Knowing she didn’t need permission, she snapped a fist, slamming it into Liandra’s face.
Her head rocked. She glared defiantly despite the swelling of her lip. “So much for the justice you’re vaunted for.”
“If you wanted justice, you shouldn’t have come after my daughter.” Roark’s voice was deadly quiet.
“Sit your ass in the chair.” Anita pointed.
“Make me,” Liandra spat.
“With pleasure,” Anita growled, making it unnecessary for him to act. Anita might have been a bit rough in her handling of the prisoner. Anita wasn’t happy. Not because she’d been drugged but because she was soft on the little princess. Everyone who met her was.
Especially her father.
Once Liandra was seated and tied to the chair, he gazed coldly on her. “Tell me everything.”
The spittle showed defiance that barely hid the fear. “Fuck you.”
“Wrong answer.” By the time Roark left the room, Liandra wasn’t the same woman who’d walked in and he knew nothing more.
A deeper dive into her head showed she’d truly come here based on a rumor circulating in a tavern in the port. Kidnap his daughter or bring his head. The surprising part was Charlie appeared to be worth more.
Anita, who’d stood silent while he sifted the woman’s mind, snapped to attention when he stepped back from the bowed head of the captive.
“You know what to do with her.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Roark left Anita to it, exiting the room to see his captain of the guard waiting for him.
“You didn’t need to come.”
Titan, a man with a metal arm and leg and a serious mien, pushed off the tunnel wall. “You should have sent someone to my house the moment you knew something was wrong.”
“I needed to act quickly.”
“Did you find anything out?” he asked.
Roark shook his head, trying to pretend his temples weren’t pulsing. He’d exerted a little too much effort. “Just more gossip and rumor. She knows even less than the last one who infiltrated the castle.”
“Surely someone knows who’s seeding the bounty rumors,” Titan grumbled. “After all, if they do the deed, someone will have to pay.”
“It could be proof of success is required before the next set of instructions is delivered.” Roark shrugged, doing his best to swallow a yawn. “In the meantime, we need to do something about Charlotte’s protection. Anita can’t be with her all the time. She needs help.”
Titan grimaced. “I can’t believe none of the guards noticed a thing. I’m going to send them out in the marshes to patrol. Maybe spending their nights with stuff that can eat them will make them sleep more lightly.”
“Not entirely their fault. They were drugged,” Roark said as they made their way up the floors to the main level of the castle, each step an agony to his throbbing head because it reminded him how many more he had to go.
“I don’t give a fuck if they were drugged. The fact it happened at all means we need better detection. We can’t be taken so easily unaware.”
“Not so easily.” Roark had stepped in and managed to avert disaster.
“What if you hadn’t woken?” Titan’s low words were a grim reminder.
Roark would prefer not to think on that. Just like he hoped to get a few hours’ sleep before the next disaster struck. “We need motion detection cameras tied to an alarm.”
“You know they only work half the time.” The fate of most electronics in the Marshlands.
“The ones Riella make never fail.” The advantages of having a metallurgist psion, and former Enclave princess, working for him.
“She’s busy working on connecting the hamlets to the city.”
“This takes precedence.” Roark slashed his hand though the air, hoping Titan didn’t see the tremor. “Charlotte is to be protected.” He’d never forgive himself if something happened.
As Roark stalked back in the direction of his room, Titan followed.
“Was there something else you needed?” the king snapped.
“Just making sure you’re not attacked.”
He paused and eyed Titan. His new captain of the guard had been tightening down on his freedom since the first pathetic attempt on his life. “I can protect myself.”
“Can you right now? Because I’m pretty sure I could take you one-handed. And I mean with my flesh hand. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard lately.”
“Because I have to.”
“Never said you didn’t, but that does mean you’re a tad more vulnerable right now.”
Roark glared. “I don’t need protection for myself. Just Charlotte.”
“You’re just as important.”
“Are you defying me, Tin Man?” The name Titan used to wear when he was fighting in the arena as the king’s champion. A strange twist of fate had brought him to Roark.
“If you wanted people who always agreed with you, you’d have never asked me to work for you.”
Roark glowered. “You could agree some of the time.”
“When you make sense. Right now, you’re letting panic make your decisions.”
Not panic, fatherly concern. An intense disquiet about the safety of the one person he loved most in this world.
“My life won’t be worth a thing if something happens to her,” he admitted softly.
“And if you’re the one killed first? What do you think happens then?” Titan arched a brow.
“Bossy fucker. Do what you think is best,” Roark growled. “So long as it doesn’t get in my way.”
“On it.” Titan veered off, and Roark spent a moment watching the man, wondering what fresh security hell he’d suggest next.
He stomped toward his tower, almost tripping twice on Sachi along the way. For a cat whose agility stunned, she could be obsessively annoying on stairs, darting between the legs to unbalance. He knew she did it on purpose. Mangy feline.
Sachi tried to distract him from what he’d do
ne to the woman downstairs. Just another memory he’d live with of the things he did to keep those he loved safe.
Chapter 2
The things she did for those she loved. Casey missed the days when she and her gang were trying to stay alive in the Ajatarai forest. When it was humans against everything. Where she felt alive, even if she worried she’d get eaten in her sleep.
However, they’d left the woods and its dangers because the displaced crew of almost fifty was offered a place to call home. The abandoned village that Haven had settled into was actually fairly nice once you looked past the neglect and the recent fire. Even nicer once it got cleaned up. Safe, too.
Almost a month here and Casey was bored to tears. Repairing roofs and learning how to build boats for sailing the river wasn’t exactly her idea of productive use of her time. Food proved to be plentiful with the fish in the river providing meat and the trees that survived abandonment and fire ripe with fruit. The grass outside the village contained edible bulbs easily dug up.
What was a hunter and accomplished marauder such as herself supposed to do? She knew what she wanted to do. Leave. She wanted to explore parts unknown. Apparently, there wasn’t as severe a restriction on travel in these parts. The Marshland city and seat of power, a place known as Eden, welcomed travelers. Even Port City in the opposite direction beckoned her with curious fingers.
But that would mean leaving. How could she abandon the friends and families she loved to go elsewhere? What if they needed her to fight?
Then again, she wouldn’t be much use if her skills got rusty from soft living. Perhaps she should ask Axel if he needed any messages delivered in person. Eden was only a few days’ travel and the ocean only a day’s ride.
What if she left, though, and never wanted to come back?
She stalked out of the civilized parts of Haven, noticing the difference since their arrival. The crushed rock streets were swept clean and the stone block houses sported proper roofs. The trees overhanging the docks by the water had been trimmed for better visibility. New wood showed where it had replaced the rotted gaps on the pier. A few vessels bobbed by its side.
While soot—from a fire Gunner claimed was set by a sorceress—still stained some of the homes, the refugees from Hilltop Haven didn’t care. They finally had a place to call their own.
Except for Casey. She had to share with Cam because her twin—who looked nothing like her no matter how hard people squinted—insisted she not live alone. Why not? She loved her brother, but she was getting older and wanted her own space. From him at least. Cam needed to move on and do his own thing without her.
Yet telling him that he needed to find a new partner would only hurt the brother who loved her, who’d spent his life looking after Casey. Why did he have to be a nice guy?
She hated nice guys.
She stalked along the shore of the river that meandered toward the Ajatarai forest a few days’ hard ride from here. It formed part of the border between the Emerald and Sapphire Kingdoms. It was a hairy trip through those woods and then across the ravine, but how could they resist when offered a place to call their own by the self-appointed Marshland king.
What kind of ego did you need to give yourself such a lofty title?
She still recalled their time in the woods, hiding from the Enclave patrols out to exterminate them. The trees themselves almost as dangerous. The trek through the forest once Gunner found them and told them of a place they could settle took longer than she had the patience for. She’d let others herd the slower-moving members while she ranged ahead.
The massive tree fallen over the crevasse seemed a little too fortuitous to her, the chasm below rife with danger. They crossed it, moving quickly, and not stopping until they were far away from that crack that led to the bowels of the planet and its fiercest denizens. She’d wrangled with ghouls a time or two. She had the scars to prove it and didn’t recommend it.
The village the Marsh King gave them—because apparently he thought they needed permission to take over an empty place—seemed relatively safe. Almost a month here and the worst danger they’d dealt with came from the river monster with snapping teeth.
The monster—named Big Crunchy by little Kylie—was killed, and people now sported boots made of its skin. The meat tasted great in stew, and its teeth were perfect for making buttons, arrowheads, and even utensils. The excitement and usefulness of Big Crunchy spawned hunters in Haven, who went actively seeking another.
Casey was after bigger game. Something that offered a bit of a challenge; hence why she often roamed alone. Or tried to.
She made it to the rotted pier by the first bend in the river, hidden almost entirely in reeds, before she heard him.
“Casey!” Her brother never could wait to get close enough to talk in a normal voice. He always had to bellow.
She whirled and yelled right back. “What?”
“Titan’s here. He wants to talk to you.”
“The Tin Man himself.” She walked toward Cam. “What’s he want?”
Ever since Titan lost his limbs, he’d been different. He’d also gotten hitched to some princess and taken to living in Eden—more pretension, as the name alluded to the ancient garden of the gods.
Gods. Ha. More like tall tales for the gullible. Casey didn’t believe in a higher power, nor kings. She’d made the vow a long time ago to always make her own choices. Luckily for Axel, Haven’s current leader, his decisions aligned with her own.
“He wouldn’t say why he wants you. Just that it was important.”
“Are you sure he didn’t mean to say he thought he was important?”
Given Titan worked for the king, they rarely saw him, but they’d heard of his exploits—which her jealousy hoped were exaggerated. Apparently he’d had a hand in the Emerald queen’s demise. It caused much rejoicing, given the hardship they’d suffered under her reign.
Sometimes she wondered what was happening back in the old kingdom. Then she gave herself a shake. The Wasteland couldn’t compare to the lushness this side of the forest. The freedom was nice, too, even if it came with boredom.
Entering the village, she noticed more than a few new faces. It seemed other people had come to join their outpost on the edge of the marshes. Some were previous inhabitants who fled after the attack that led to the emptying of this place. Others were wanderers looking for a home.
Haven didn’t turn folk away until they’d had a chance to prove themselves. If a person had something useful to offer, even if it was just minding the little ones, they could stay.
Harm the group? Well, let’s just say Haven didn’t set those miscreants packing into the world for someone else to deal with. They handled it. Just like that supposed Marsh king did. She heard he had a taste for blood sport and no tolerance for those who broke the law.
Approaching the center of the town where most of the shit tended to happen, she heard high-pitched excitement. Probably because Riella—Titan’s wife, as they called it out here in the Marshlands—was handing out little gadgets that had the children running off, shrieking something about a race to see who was fastest. Casey was tempted to go watch. Riella made the neatest things. For a princess, daughter of a now dead despot, she didn’t entirely suck.
“You here to install more stuff?” Casey nodded to Riella.
The last time she had come for a few days to install a working communication system. It did the unthinkable by keeping them in touch with the capital and the other hamlets. While most electronics fizzed in the damp climate, and just plain died in certain areas, Riella’s always worked. People claimed it was her magic. They weren’t entirely wrong.
“I’m not here to work this time. Titan came to talk to Axel about something for the king. I’m here because he insisted I take a break from the workshop.” Her nose wrinkled.
“I don’t know how you can stand to be cooped up in a room.” Casey had a roving foot.
Riella shrugged. “I like the comfort of having my own things and ro
utines around me.”
“Whereas I like change. Speaking of, I should probably go see what they’re talking about.” As she wheeled toward the biggest house, used as the administration building for the town, she realized Cam had ditched her now that his message had been delivered. Good. She didn’t need him breathing down her neck.
Inside, Karlos was talking to a group of people. He had a knack for organizing, especially trade, and had a way of making things run smoothly. His partner, Benny, another voice of reason, was probably in the building they’d turned into a public dining hall.
Since most of the houses they’d commandeered had kitchens, people could cook for themselves, meaning Benny could have fun with his cuisine and used that skill to help out those that proved inept at it. Those partaking of the dishes he made paid in trade. It was turning out to be lucrative for Benny by all accounts. He’d hired Sally to help him.
Trading was the thing to do if a person wanted to travel. If only trading interested her. It didn’t. She wasn’t a merchant.
Outside the main building, she slipped into a shadow when no one was looking and made her way to the room sealed from the rest. The door was closed, and she had a dilemma. Entering would expose her. She wanted to listen first.
She got her chance when it opened and Axel stuck his head out. He didn’t see her and pointed at Karlos. “Where’s Casey?”
“Cam went to get her.”
“While we’re waiting, come in. You should hear this.”
When Axel pulled back, she slipped in behind Karlos, sticking close to his shadow. She took up a position against the wall in the shade of a bookcase. Only part of the gang was here.
Axel stood at the head of the large table cobbled together with planks. To his side, Gunner, his right-hand man. He’d offered Casey his left. She’d waved it off in favor of giving it to Cam.
Cam hadn’t returned to the meeting, but she saw Nikki, without her companion, Vera. Probably on guard duty. Laura was missing, and Casey wondered where she’d gone to. Usually she sat in on the items that concerned Haven.