Night Quest

by Susan Krinard

  Abruptly she looked up at him. “You asked me if I was more concerned about saving human lives or only about Freebloods killing each other,” she said. “I do not believe that Opiri should be dependent upon human blood. It is a weakness in us, a source of corruption and violence that harms both my people and yours.”

  Garret sank down beside her. “Then you’re opposed to the practice of serfdom primarily for the benefit of your own people.”

  She flinched as if she sensed his disappointment. But he knew he had no right to feel that way; the very fact that she was against human slavery for any reason put her far ahead of most Opiri. Even Roxana, in the beginning...

  “I understand now,” he said. “I’m a corrupting influence.”

  “No!” She shot to her feet. “You... You and I...it is different.”

  “Because I’m not actually a serf?”

  Artemis began to tremble, and Garret cursed himself for his clumsiness. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve asked a lot of you. But I’m going to have to ask a little more.”

  Almost before he’d finished speaking, Pericles called from the beach. “They’re coming,” he said.

  “We’ll be traveling with the refugees,” Garret said. “They’re headed to the same colony, and it’ll be easier for us to take Beth in with a group of serfs seeking a safe place away from the Citadels.” He laid his hand on Artemis’s shoulder. “Can you deal with that?”

  “Will they not be frightened of me and Pericles?” she asked in a very soft voice.

  “They’ve heard that Coos Bay might be a mixed colony,” he said. “They’re prepared to deal with peaceful Nightsiders. But I’ve given them certain assurances that you can be trusted.”

  “What assurances?”

  Garret hesitated. “I didn’t have time to consult with you,” he said, “so you’ll have to act a part until we’ve returned Beth to her caretakers.”

  Her shoulder tensed under his hand. “What have you done, Garret?”

  “I’ve told them that you’re my wife.”

  * * *

  Artemis took the offered hand, careful not to grip the serf’s fingers too firmly. The woman smiled with obvious unease and quickly dropped her hand, but not before she had unwittingly triggered Artemis’s empathy.

  After the long days of attempting to suppress her emotional connection to Garret, Artemis was surprised that merely touching another human could have such an effect. But the emotions of the former serfs were strong and unguarded, in spite of their reticence around her. They were afraid and uncertain, and yet brave and resolute...willing, as Garret had said, to risk everything for the mere possibility of freedom.

  Artemis smiled at one of the male serfs and edged away as Garret began to speak with the group. Her anger with him had gradually subsided, but she was left to play a role she was ill prepared for—pretending to be his mate. In spite of his efforts to shield her from any real intimacy with the serfs, she still had little idea of how to behave as the Opir “wife” of a human.

  The fact that the humans accepted her, she thought, was due more to Garret’s efforts than her own playacting...efforts that included frequent brief touches, many smiles, and words of affection meant to prove his devotion to her. He was so good at it that, for moments at a time, she believed he really meant it.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, drawing her aside. His hand on her arm made her breath catch, and something of his feelings transferred into her mind: relief, determination and pride—in her.

  “You should tell me,” she said, managing what she hoped was a persuasive smile. “Have I convinced them that I am your devoted mate?”

  “You’ve even convinced me,” he said lightly, though his gaze was anything but casual. “They’ve fully accepted our background story, and they’re sure you’ve always believed that serfs should be free.”

  Artemis ducked her head. “Will we wait for daylight to travel again?”

  “They’re prepared to leave now, and if we stick to the highway we shouldn’t have any difficulty. Pericles will carry Beth until he becomes tired.”

  “And what am I to do?”

  “I hope you’ll stay at my side,” he said. His green eyes were like the sea itself, calm one moment, stormy the next. Now they were dark and mysterious, holding a world she imagined lay deep beneath the surface of the ocean.

  And she could feel everything she had tried to shut out, a maelstrom of emotion that left her gasping and desperate to get away—or to fall into Garret’s arms as if she truly were wife and lover and the chosen companion of his heart.

  A human heart.

  She broke free. “I will travel beside you,” she said formally. “I will play my part for as long as it is necessary.”

  His eyes clouded. “I know you will,” he said.

  He walked away, and Artemis stared after him, wondering what she had done...and what she was becoming. As often as she resisted it, the empathy fought to return.

  But that “gift” wasn’t the source of her feelings now.

  She put the thought out of her mind and retrieved her pack as Pericles secured Beth to his back with the sling and Garret finished speaking to the serfs. The group formed a loose column, and Garret nodded to Artemis, indicating that she should join him.

  After a time, she took drag to watch for pursuit. A few of the serfs cast uneasy glances over their shoulders, but none of them faltered, and by dawn they had traveled over fifteen miles south on Highway 101, hugging the coastline.

  Four days and nights later, they approached Coos Bay. Remarkably, the tall bridge crossing the eastern portion of the bay was still intact, and, except for its lack of inhabitants, the city beyond it seemed to have missed most of the War entirely.

  Pericles, who knew the location of the colony, led them south and west across deserted suburbs and through a forest to a cluster of buildings that had obviously once been a public facility. An old, almost illegible sign identified it as a community college. The forest growing alongside the buildings provided the compound with a natural defense.

  Closer to the buildings, the colonists had built a flimsy stockade around a section of the college, though not one that could hold off a concerted attack by Nightsiders who wanted to get in. Only a few humans were patrolling the stockade, and their weapons seemed to be in poor condition.

  “They’ve been lucky,” Garret said, stretched out beside Artemis in the small clearing among the trees and underbrush. “No one’s been interested in going so far out of their way to bother them.”

  “Except for the rogue kidnappers.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Artemis, I want you and Pericles to stay outside while I go in with the others. We still don’t know the exact circumstances of how Beth came to be with the rogues. We need to find her parents first. If only a few of the colonists were involved in selling her, we’ll be exposing them when we return Beth, and that could get tricky. I want you to be safe.”

  “Surely these people can be no threat to me.”

  “Believe me, Artemis,” he said, “you don’t have the experience to judge. Will you stay here?”

  Reluctantly, she agreed. But as Garret went to join the other serfs, she couldn’t shake the feeling that matters were not going to turn out quite as they hoped.

  Chapter 10

  “Beth’s mother isn’t here.”

  Garret crouched beside Artemis, gazing at the humans with whom he’d been speaking moments before. They stared in his direction, heads together in conversation, and then returned to the compound through the door in the stockade. It closed with a finality that made her very glad that Garret was with her again.

  “What happened to her?” Pericles asked, quietly coming to join them.

  “The colony is not what we hoped,” Garret said. He turned back to Artemis. “
We expected a mixed colony of humans and Opiri. Until fairly recently, it was.”

  The heaviness in his voice put Artemis on the alert. “Where are Beth’s parents?” she asked.

  “Her mother was a Freeblood from Oceanus,” he said, “and the father was a serf she helped to escape. They came to this colony in search of a sanctuary where she could give birth.” Garret grabbed a twig and snapped it in half. “Beth was born here, and soon afterward her mother died of an infection, one of those few that are fatal to Opiri.”

  “A sad fate for the child,” Artemis said.

  “And for her husband. He raised Beth with the help of his sister, who had come to the colony before him. There were six or seven other Opiri in the colony at the time.”

  “But they are not here now,” Artemis said.

  “Four years after the death of Beth’s mother, her father left on a hunting trip. He never returned. Not long after that, the colony...” He sighed. “They didn’t tell me this, not officially, but I was able to figure out the truth. I don’t know why, but the human colonists gradually made the Nightsiders aware that they weren’t welcome, and one by one the Opiri left the colony. In the end, Beth was the only colonist who had Nightsider blood.”

  Feeling a little ill, Artemis closed her eyes. “Who cared for her?” she asked.

  “Her aunt. She has Beth now.”

  “She’ll keep the child?” Pericles asked.

  “She didn’t know that certain members of the colony wanted Beth gone, as well, or that they intended to trade Beth to the rogues,” Garret said, his lips thinning in disgust. “But she seems to have her suspicions.”

  “I don’t know what they said to Chares,” Pericles said, “but he decided not to risk attacking the colony once we had Beth.”

  “And the men who sold her are still in the colony?” Artemis asked, baring her teeth.

  “If they are, they’re keeping a very low profile. The leaders here didn’t know what had happened to Beth, but they did know that the rogues who had approached the colony suddenly decided to leave and that was when her absence was noted. They sent out search parties, but gave up after two days.”

  “We should not leave her here, among such people,” Artemis said. “How does her aunt expect to protect her?”

  “She believes she has allies in the colony.”

  “But are they enough? The fact that the humans virtually drove the Opiri away suggests otherwise. You spoke of peace between Opiri and humans in colonies such as this, and yet here is proof that such a thing cannot last.”

  “It’s only proof that these people couldn’t handle living at close quarters with Nightsiders,” Garret said. “Every one of the colonists here is a former serf, and none of them have forgotten their lives in the Citadels.”

  “And you find this easy to understand?” she demanded.

  Garret gazed at her in silence, and a little of his emotion leaked through to her. She tried to shut off the connection, but not before she realized that he was considering whether or not to trust her.

  After all the time they had spent together, she found it remarkably painful to sense his doubts. She was angry, yes, but it was more than that. Her chest ached, and her ribs seemed to contract into a tight, hard coil. She had agreed to all his plans, even playing the part of his—

  “I was a serf in Erebus,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “So I do understand their resentment. Even their hate.”

  Astonished by his confession, Artemis scrambled to her feet. “You were a serf?” she asked.

  “For many years. I saw how most humans were treated in the Citadel.” He pushed his hair away from his face. “I was lucky. I was chosen by a Bloodmistress who treated her serfs well. But most serfs in Erebus were regarded as cattle, as they are by most of your people.”

  The ache in Artemis’s chest spread throughout her body, twisting her stomach into knots and making her head throb. Garret seemed so superior to the serfs she had seen in Oceanus, or the men and women they had found in the town on the beach. He had courage and will equal to that of any Opir.

  But she knew he could not be the only human like this.

  “I’m not very different from those people in there,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “I was sent as tribute from the San Francisco Enclave because I’d committed the crime of trying to help other convicts. I was just like the other serfs, except that I learned to love my mistress. And she learned to love me.”

  Suddenly Artemis knew what he was about to say. “Roxana was your mistress,” she said.

  “Yes.” He took a long, slow breath. “Roxana and I cared deeply for each other almost from the beginning. She treated me as an equal in private. In public, we had to play a game. But when she became pregnant...”

  “You had to hide her condition,” Artemis said, forgetting her own anguish.

  “They would have forced her to give up the child and raised it as Darketan. Roxana would have been punished, and of course I would have been executed as an example to the other serfs.”

  “So you escaped.”

  His gaze grew unfocused, looking into a past Artemis could scarcely imagine. “Yes. Because serfs and Opiri were prepared to risk their lives to help make it happen. We had an Underground in Erebus, humans and Nightsiders trying to make serfs’ lives easier and sometimes help them escape brutal masters. I joined it before Roxana and I... Before we became lovers. When she found out, she became part of it and met with other Opiri who were willing to help. Eventually they were able to get us out of Erebus, along with dozens of other serfs.” His voice thickened. “Timon was born in freedom.”

  “And then Freebloods stole him from you.” Artemis sank back into a crouch. “If you had told me this earlier...”

  “Would it have made a difference? I’m the same man either way.”

  “Yet you hesitated to reveal your past,” she said. “Did you think I would refuse to help you if I knew?”

  The slight rustle of undergrowth marked Pericles’s sudden disappearance, and Artemis realized that the young Freeblood had felt like an intruder in a very intimate world. She wished she could run after him.

  Coward, she thought. She was ashamed of having felt a twinge of disgust at the idea of a Bloodmistress bearing a human’s child; she couldn’t bear to acknowledge the possibility that she might have treated Garret far worse than he deserved if she had realized he was an escaped serf.

  “You gave your blood to me, even though you knew so little of me,” she said softly. “How is it that you could trust me at all?”

  “If it hadn’t been for Roxana and the other Nightsiders I knew in Erebus, I might not have,” he said. “But as I said, I was fortunate. Many serfs have nothing to help them survive but hate, even after they escape.”

  “Then how could these serfs bear to come near me?”

  “It wasn’t easy for some of them, but they knew I would never have married a Freeblood if I didn’t believe she could be trusted.”

  “And the colonists?”

  “I don’t know what they might have experienced that turned them against the Nightsiders here, but—”

  “It makes them no better than Opiri in their prejudice. More evidence that expecting humans and Opiri to live together in harmony is a foolish dream.”

  “I’ve seen it work,” he said. “I’ve learned that civilized, rational Nightsiders and humans are far more alike than they want to acknowledge.” He looked into her eyes. “You and I, Artemis, are not so different.”

  His words filled her with a kind of nonsensical joy, as if they had somehow relieved her of the burden of this new and unexpected guilt. It wasn’t quite so simple, of course, but she was grateful. Grateful and warmed by the acceptance in his eyes.

  She had learned to value the judgment of a human. This human.

 
; For a moment she dared to open her mind, to let the empathy awaken again. Garret’s aura flared around his head, radiating heat like a fire. The heat was not merely sexual but inextricably intermingled with emotions that frightened her with their potency.

  But she remembered how it had ended the last time, when Garret had spoken another name. She hesitated, torn between giving way and holding back. At last she leaned forward and kissed him. Then his arms were around her, and he was returning the kiss with a passion that filled her mind and redoubled her own need for him.

  “Artemis,” he murmured into her neck, tracing her ear with his lips and tongue. She could so easily have cast aside all her fears, stripped off her clothes and relieved him of his. But there was another need even more pressing. She felt him recognize and accept that need gladly, suppressing his own.

  She had fought so rigorously to keep this from happening again, but now all her former worries seemed unimportant, of no greater interest than the way she cut her hair. Her defenses crumbled. She kissed his face from forehead to jaw, sucked on his neck without breaking the skin. She licked his shoulder and then grazed the base of his neck with her teeth. When she bit, he exhaled as if he had been holding his breath and whispered words she couldn’t quite understand.

  She drank lightly, because she didn’t want to make him weak for the return journey to the north. But something happened she hadn’t expected. She felt not only the vibrant blaze of his emotion—a pleasure as sensual as any joining of bodies—but also a slight but noticeable change in the taste of his blood, a change that made the sharing almost painful in its intensity. It was far more than mere nourishment; it rolled over her tongue like the sweetest ambrosia, unlike anything she had ever tasted before.

  When Artemis realized what seemed to be happening, her heart stuttered to a stop. Surely it couldn’t have occurred so quickly. Surely it was all in her mind. Blood-bonds didn’t occur until an Opir had taken a human’s blood for some time, and then only under extraordinary circumstances.

  Even if it was only beginning to happen, she had to stop it.