by R Coots
“You saying I don’t know what I’m talking about?” The warlord poked at the holo in front of him and pulled out a light. As he drew the yellow glimmer away from the lines and dots that must have been a map of this solar system, the light resolved itself into a ship. Cargo class, small crew. Not a model Jossa recognized. Well, why should she?
“They’re trying to hide,” the warlord said. “They guessed right. You’ve been looking for military signals. Military profiles. And diplomatic markings. No one in their right mind is going to paint a target on their back like that.” He gave the ship a spin along its axis and left it there, wobbling in midair. “Rework your figures, go back over the tracking since the first push, and see what you get.”
“Not earlier, milord?”
He shrugged. “If this doesn’t work, sure. But they’ll have wanted to see exactly what they were dealing with. To be sure the comms weren’t intercepted or translated.”
The women nodded and bent their heads to their task. The warlord stepped away from the holo display and looked at Jossa. “You’re learning.”
She stared at him. He held up his hands. His empty hands. She realized he hadn’t touched her the entire time he’d been working at the holo. And she’d stayed put. Hadn’t tried to run. Hadn’t tried to find a sympathizer in this room of women. Had just . . . stayed.
Jossa glared at him and the warlord laughed. A few heads turned and someone in the holo group muttered in surprise, but otherwise, the women in the room ignored him to continue with their work. Why shouldn’t they? Jossa thought sourly. They had work. Actual work that meant something.
“Come on.” The warlord moved back towards the door and looked over his shoulder at Jossa. “We’re not done.”
Oona appeared next to Jossa, face flat but eyes full of of meaning. Without context, though, or a better knowledge of the woman’s personality, the warning or message was going to have to stay hidden. Jossa dipped her head to the woman, just in case that was what she was waiting for, and followed the warlord down the shallow steps and out the door. The thing he’d given her to carry dug into her fingers, and her dress stuck and pulled where the slime had saturated it. She knew she was trailing the reek of the stuff like a beacon for a wolfhound. Jossa stuck her nose in the air and kept going. Her place in life right now might not have much meaning, but she could make them think it did.
>><<
The piece of metal, wire, and sharp edges turned out to be a part of the warlord’s armor. Jossa didn’t make the connection until she found herself at the opposite end of the ship from the bridge, surely, in an armory surrounded by snarling men. The warlord wove through the crowd, one hand on her back as a guide, ignoring the shouts, calls, and looks of hostile intent that followed the pair as they passed.
She could feel his temper rising as they moved deeper into the room. The touch of his hand on her back was light enough that she only felt bits and pieces, but the more looks of greed came her way, the more insistent the warlord’s guiding hand. He was all but shoving her along by the time they reached a floating table at the back of the room.
A woman with pale skin and green eyes glowered at them from behind the table when the warlord finally stopped. He yanked the piece of armor away from Jossa, growled something to the effect of “Fix it” at the woman, and dropped the thing on the table next to a set of half-melted greaves. Jossa had just enough time to see that the thing she was carrying had probably been a pauldron before it was damaged. Then she found herself spun around and facing a wall of muscled, armored manflesh that went on the entire length of the room.
They were all looking at her.
She couldn’t help it. Her heart quailed.
Someone reached a hand out in her direction. Bare, reddish tan, and the purple of day-old bruises. Jossa looked up at the owner of the hand, who leered at her with a mouth of broken teeth. His lip was split and bleeding sluggishly. Dark brown hair straggled over his face, clotted with . . . something she didn’t want to identify.
Jossa shrank back against the warlord, trying to get her hands behind her body so she could grope for the knife hilt on his belt. Hopefully it wouldn’t be keyed to his DNA. Hopefully she could activate it in time.
It wasn’t there.
The man in front of her yelled and flailed away. Something hit the deck with a thud. Something else, warm and wet, hit Jossa in the chest and face. She looked down.
Not only was her dress covered in a crust of slime and dirt, but now there was blood in the mix. She looked back at the man. He clutched the stump sticking out of his shirt sleeve and snarled in pain as he glared at her.
No. Not at her. At the warlord. Who was holding the knife she’d been looking for. “You know better than to touch what’s mine,” he snarled at the man whose hand he’d just cut off. He glanced over at Jossa. “Pick it up.”
She looked at the warlord and then at the hand on the floor, oozing blood. He wanted her to give the man his hand back? Really?
Slowly, not taking her eyes off the one who’d tried to touch her in the first place, Jossa crouched and took the thing by one finger. It was still warm. Still warm.
Suddenly she was very, very, very glad for the crown on her head. As glad as she had ever been for a crown, to block out the emotions of others and contain what she herself was feeling. If she had been free, unguarded by anything at all, she would have tainted this whole room with her revulsion. Maybe permanently.
She was holding a severed hand. A hand that had tried to touch her.
Ew.
“Stick it in his belt,” the warlord said in a low voice. He hadn’t lowered his blade.
Jossa side stepped around the man until she found a mostly empty pouch hanging from his belt. The crowd in the room moved away from her like water from oil, but she was more focused on the fact that she’d have to touch this man. That she’d have to stick his hand in his belt. Never in all her time as a kuchru to the fuerrus had she been told to deal with severed limbs.
She finally managed to tuck the thing, wrist first, into the pouch on the man’s left side. She would have winced for the unsanitary condition it was going to be in, but given the circumstances, she hoped it turned septic.
“Come on.” Jossa had barely stepped away from the injured man when the warlord grabbed her elbow and started moving. “And get down to Med Bay,” he yelled over his shoulder as he moved through the room. Jossa heard a general shuffle and clatter of armored men behind her as she trotted along in the warlord’s wake. The men between them and the door moved out of the way, watching her with eyes that burned.
But none of them tried to touch her.
The warlord pulled her out into the corridor and kept on going. Apparently, she wasn’t done learning for the day. Jossa wanted to ask him why he’d cut that man’s hand off. Why he was dragging her all over a ship full of people who hated him so much. But she kept her mouth shut. The emotions coming to her through the filter of her sleeve roiled and churned so much that she couldn’t pick out anything but the ever-present thrum of dull anger.
Eventually he slowed down, then stopped. Jossa kept her mouth shut on her questions, sucking in air to her complaining lungs instead. After a second or two she realized he was watching her. She straightened, trying not to look as flattened as she felt.
He kept watching her. Not saying anything. Just . . . watching. Finally, Jossa ducked her head and asked, “Milord?”
“You’re learning.” It wasn’t quite a statement. Wasn’t quite a question either. Jossa opened her mouth to reply. Or to ask him what he meant. But he kept talking. “Keep learning.”
The wall behind him oozed open, revealing a door twice as wide as any she’d seen on the ship so far. And more people too.
Jossa gulped and looked at the warlord, but his attention wasn’t on her. It was on the milling throng in front of them, turning as a unit to watch the newcomers. The warlord moved into the room, and since he had hold of her arm, Jossa moved with him.
; The room bowed as a collective whole, fist to shoulders, and then its occupants went back to whatever they’d been doing.
Jossa wished she’d known what was coming. Wished her dress wasn’t covered in muck and slime. Wished . . . so many things. But the warlord had hold of her elbow and seemed to be looking for someone in particular, so she stayed quiet and concentrated on keeping the hem of her dress from getting caught under everyone else’s feet.
Occasionally that meant brushing up against this or that person. Luckily they were all clothed, in looser versions of the uniforms she’d seen so far. The slashes of color became flowing falls of synthsilk and gauze, depending on the gender of the wearer. The women’s torcs were on full display instead of tucked partially behind the collars of their shirts. Snakes and thorny brambles decorated sleeves and the occasional belt.
And every step she took brought more hard eyes to watch her passage. More bared teeth and flared nostrils.
Why the obsession with snakes, when they reminded her so much of wolves?
The warlord stopped, yanking on her elbow to make her stop too. Jossa bit back a yelp as his fingers dug into the half-formed bruises he’d already given her. She nearly crumbled as his emotional state finally clarified, bright and sharp. Hate. He’d happily kill this monster, as soon as he could.
Jossa looked up to see who the warlord meant. He was right. This man was a monster. She didn’t even have to touch him to see that. The twist of his mouth, the shadows of insanity in his eyes. She knew that look. She’d been intimately acquainted with that look in a life long ago.
“You are going to keep Warlord Kizen company,” said Warlord Syrus.
For a second, Jossa couldn’t understand what he meant. Who? Do what? The sharp pain in her elbow wasn’t going away, and it was a little hard to think with all the half-formed images coming through the contact with her warlord. Bloody images. Full of anticipated satisfaction and . . . relief?
She didn’t get a chance to figure that one out. He shoved her forward, and she stumbled into the waiting arms of the Warlord Kizen. No space in between. No way to gain a moment of sanity between one dangerous man and the next. The only saving grace was that Warlord Syrus let go of her as soon as Kizen laid hands on her. Which was a good thing, because those hands had a grip so strong as to break bones. And a heart so twisted, it might have been an experiment gone wrong.
Jossa screamed. She couldn’t help it. The things he felt. The images and thoughts that came to her through those feelings. The pain remembered. Relished. The pain he looked forward to inflicting. No reason. No logic. Just pain. Such a love of pain.
Some corner of her mind, protected by the crown or the leftovers of her bond with Delfi, managed to parse the images. The women she’d just met in the bridge, dead. The women in the warlord’s quarters, dead. The man from earlier, the one with ice-blue eyes, handing Kizen an ornate helmet covered in gilded snakes. Syrus’s head falling out of the helmet as Kizen opened the faceplate. The warlord putting the helmet on, gore and all, before pulling a gun and shooting his benefactor.
Triumph.
Satisfaction.
Someone had hold of her. Someone familiar. Someone with huge hands and shadows in his heart.
But not the monster. Or rather, not the worst monster.
“Still learning?” asked a rough voice in her ear.
Jossa nearly melted. Syrus. Her warlord. Never had she thought she’d be glad for his existence.
But she wasn’t allowed to relax. Wasn’t safe yet. The other warlord, Kizen, came for her. Spittle flew as he roared incoherently. Her translator was reduced to mechanical gibberish as it tried to translate the madman’s words at the same time as it worked on the ruckus that erupted around them. People shouted, pushed, and shrieked. Syrus wrapped an arm around her ribcage and braced himself. Jossa would have been ashamed to find herself clinging to his arm for protection, if it hadn’t been for the fact that there was a knife blade forming itself in Kizen’s hand. Then she panicked. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t get away. A soldier was one thing, but she wasn’t so stupid as to think Syrus would protect her here the same way he had in the armory.
A new man appeared. He grabbed Kizen’s waving arm and twisted, then pushed. The warlord staggered back, ran into the crowd behind him, and bounced to his feet with a snarl. He made it a full step in Jossa’s direction before Syrus’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Not so fun, is it?” Jossa’s warlord asked, the low rasp of his voice all the more dangerous for how softly he spoke. He shifted Jossa to his side with one arm and then set her down so that the new man was between her and the other warlord.
The rim of the man’s helmet cast stark shadows over his face, but the blue eyes that turned to look at her were unmistakable. Jossa gulped. Apparently the man who’d met them coming off the lift earlier was more important than she’d guessed.
“Move, Quinn,” Warlord Syrus said. The man with the blue eyes looked at him, then bowed and moved back. Exposing Jossa to Warlord Kizen in full. She nearly shivered.
“What did she do to me,” the warlord snarled. “Fucking bitch. The fuck did she do?”
Syrus opened his mouth to answer. The door at the far end of the hall slid open and an armored man staggered in. He hit the nearest table and stumbled along its length. Women scrambled out of the way and men grabbed for their weapons.
Jossa stared. Standing in the door, holding a blade that was far too big for her, was a very familiar figure. Coils of flaming red hair flared out from under the crown that capped her head. Blood covered her naked body from head to toe. A few sensor pads clung to her chest and forehead. An IV line hung from one arm.
Delfi.
The men in the room moved almost as one, surging forward like a planetside tide of death. Jossa snatched the hilt of a knife from her warlord’s hip and launched herself over the table before he could do more than bark a surprised curse.
She had another weapon in moments, stolen from the belt of a Fleet warrior. Half a heartbeat to remember what one of the concubines told her—that the Fleet men didn’t fight amongst themselves while on Campaign, and so went more lightly armored while on ship. Then her training took over. The first knife went into the man’s unarmored cervical vertebrae just as the blade solidified. She left it there, snatched another from his belt, and plunged the second into the eye of the next man.
She got about twenty feet into the fray before anyone realized they were being hit from behind. By that time, she’d lost half her dress and both shoes. All around her people shouted in the Kuchen tongue. She didn’t need a translator to know what they were saying. Somewhere ahead of her, Delfi was silent, in keeping with their upbringing. Shrieks and showy outcries were for exhibition matches. When it came down to business, you saved your breath for surviving the fight in front of you.
Which made what she was about to do all the more idiotic. Ducking low, she swept a man’s legs out from under him at the ankle, lunged forward to bury her blade in his throat, and filled her lungs with as much tainted ship air as she could. “Delfi!”
All the time spent in the infirmary paid off. Her throat was healed of its three hundred years of disuse. Her lungs worked far better than they had when she’d first woken up. She’d successfully drawn the attention of at least half the room.
Her enemies split. Those who couldn’t get to Del came for her instead. For a moment, her rational mind quailed in terror at the solid wall of warriors, each intent on breaking her in half and probably raping her after. Then her body kicked back to life.
Blessing all her Ancestors for the fact that no one had a firearm, she came in under a wild swing and drove a fist into the man’s throat. As he choked, she stabbed him in the eye with the blade in her other hand. She was on to the next by the time he toppled forward.
Three more went down, but she could feel herself tiring. Not enough stamina. Not enough strength. Delfi hadn’t answered her cry, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She had no i
dea if the clothing these men wore was armored. She couldn’t afford a wasted attack to find out, which made her targets that much smaller. Blunt force only did so much. She had no idea what she’d been thinking, throwing herself in the middle of them. Except that Delfi was here. If they were both going to die, better to do it fighting. Like they should have in the first place.
She kicked someone in the groin and found light armor plating instead. Reversing course, she slammed her heel into the nose of the man coming up behind her. And made the fatal mistake. The one in front of her caught her hair and pulled. She staggered and fell, twisting away from the reaching hand of the other man. She hit the floor on her side and gasped as her breath left her. No time to recover. Her knife went into the knee of her captor easily enough. He roared in pain and let go of her hair.
Jossa felt more than saw the boot coming for her spine. This was it. She wouldn’t get to see the person who would kill her. He’d break her. Beat her to a pulp and leave her a smear on the floor. The fuerrus would have had a fit if she’d still been in his service. Every instructor she’d studied with was screaming at her from beyond the grave. What did they expect, two against the might of enemies such as these?
She clawed for the bond. Screamed for Delfi with voice and spirit. Felt nothing. Thrice-cursed crown! Damn the man who’d put it on her!
The blow never came. None of them did. Except one. Someone grabbed her by the hair and pulled her upright. She tried to jam her blade into his elbow. He caught her hand in his. “Get your head together,” the warlord snarled. “Stay here.”
Before she could figure out what had happened, he shoved her into the arms of someone else. The man caught her in a grip of solid silsteel. She righted herself just in time to see the warlord dive into the pile of men surrounding Delfi, fists flying, roaring in the Fleet language.
“What?” she gasped, trying to come to terms with the fact that she was alive. Still scrambling inside herself for the bond and coming up empty. She prayed that it was only the crown blocking her and not Delfi’s death in the melee. “What?”