by Zoe Chant
“When I say collapsed, I mean collapsed.” Joey smacked his palms together. “We can’t get in. You’re one of the only people we know and trust who might be able to reach it, or at least get a reading from out here.”
Mikhail said, “Cang is risking far too much for a simple record of ancient wanderers. Even more disturbing, at the end of our last encounter with him, we both sensed that not only is there someone with him, or behind him, but that this someone is far more powerful.”
More powerful than a red dragon? Nikos cast a querying look Joey’s way, to see a sober nod. The oh-so-innocent expression was gone.
Good.
“All right.” Nikos stepped up to the weathered sandstone of the palisade. He stretched out the hand on which he wore a square-cut red diamond set in gold. As he bent his head, concentrating, the ring’s brilliant crimson refractions glowed brighter, as if a little bit of the earth’s molten core had been captured within the stone.
This incredibly rare diamond was a gift from the celestial empress. Each ruler of a mythic land who had taken the oath of alliance with the empress had received one. They were extremely powerful artifacts. Which meant that any of several more local rulers could have been summoned, Nikos thought—and his unicorn reappeared to say, Our mate has gone inside a building.
I don’t have a mate, not if I do nothing about it. Did you just snort at me?
Nikos resisted the impulse to clap his hand over his face, and exerted his mental shield to slam, lock, and bolt the inner door against his unicorn, who was clearly entering his second adolescence.
Joey’s friendly, helpful voice said at his shoulder, “Problem, Nikos? If there is anything I can do . . .”
Nikos exhaled sharply, and shut out everything except that blasted ward he could sense somewhere buried under tons and tons of rock.
The tiny glow deep within the diamond pulsed with light as he reached with an invisible tendril past the heavy stone slabs, through the fissures and cracks.
The oracle stone was like a pinpoint of blue-white light, caught in a protective sphere within the collapsed cavern. Mikhail had set his ward well: the glow was steady, strong. No one without the ability to deal with imperial wards was touching whatever that ward guarded, even if they used dynamite to blast down into the collapsed cave.
And Cang, Nikos thought grimly, had to know that.
Nikos drew a breath, steadied himself, and sent his questing tendril inside that ward. A pause, as his diamond flared. Then the ward recognized the diamond’s bearer as an ally, and the sense of pressure eased around his skull.
He braced himself again. Now came the trickiest part of an investigation from such a distance. It would take him hours to actually move that oracle stone, as he’d have to manipulate it from a distance, holding it steady between two dimensions. Getting a reading would be quicker.
He cautiously poked his mental tendril toward the pearly, glowing orb . . . . and a pulse of power snapped back at him, so strong that he felt it ring outward, as if a mighty boulder had dropped into a lake the size of the moon, sending a wave surging out in a widening circle.
Was that an echo . . . or a reflection?
Impossible. Impossible.
He withdrew with a snap, steadying himself against the rock as he regained his physical senses. He opened his eyes, and discovered Mikhail and Joey waiting. “You didn’t feel that?” he was about to say, except of course they hadn’t felt it, or they’d be demanding explanations.
Joey spoke, this time calm and steady. “You all right?”
The vertigo was already fading, leaving Nikos aware that he was the right person, after all, damn and blast. Why couldn’t things be simple for once?
You’re the one making it complicated, came the helpful comment from the unicorn—who had seeped past the bolted inner door. Exasperated, Nikos slammed the door again, this time imagining it as a steel vault. Boom. Lock. Shoot the key into space.
Then he dragged his mind back to the two waiting faces. Mikhail knew artifacts. Joey knew . . . people. This kind of power—whatever its precise nature—probably wasn’t part of either of their experience. Should he tell them what he thought he saw? But it was impossible—irresponsible to even mention it without being more certain.
Nikos opened his eyes. “I would have to be closer to determine what exactly is in that stone. But I can tell you this much. It’s not one of your old recording artifacts.”
He glanced around. The gleaming sand, the plashing waves in the calm sea, the wheeling and diving sea birds were all the very picture of peace. But instinct sharpened into the sense of danger unseen. Someone—probably whoever was behind Cang—had felt that concussion in the mythic realm. He hated this sense of lurking malice. He preferred to face enemies head on.
Instinctively he spoke on the mythic plane. There’s power there. A great deal of power. You’d have to have an imperial ring more potent than mine to penetrate the ward. He held up his ring, the red diamond catching the sunlight and throwing out brilliant lances of pure ruby light.
In fact, whatever that oracle stone contained was so powerful that he wondered who might be listening on the mythic plane. That required the mental equivalent of sitting by a radio, hoping to catch a signal. But someone very, very determined could be doing exactly that.
So he went back to speaking aloud, though in a low voice. “But anyone good at sensing artifacts such as this would know there’s something very strong here.”
“Then we had better set guards,” Mikhail answered. “Until we can plan extraction.”
Nikos glanced up, surprised to discover that while he’d been concentrating, the sun had jumped a finger’s width across the sky.
“You were focused for about an hour,” Joey said. “Your students will probably be finished with their class by now.” And then his mental voice spoke in the mythic realm, We both found our mates right here in this town. And you—
The unicorn tossed his head within Nikos, rejoicing in the rightness of this balance, three friends, three mates. All known to one another.
“No,” Nikos said aloud.
“No?” Joey repeated, his eyes wide.
Nikos struggled mentally, thrusting a hand through his hair as if to hold his skull together. “It was a splendid sparring match. Nothing more,” he said. “Will you make this report to the celestial empress or shall I?”
Joey ignored this lumpingly unsubtle subject change as if Nikos hadn’t spoken. “You should probably be aware that Jen is a widow. Fairly recent, I understand.”
The question forced its way out. “How long?”
“Three or four years, I believe.”
Not raw, then, but recent enough that she was likely to be completely unaware of . . . what hadn’t happened. Good. Nikos would feel worse than the nastiest, most villainous red dragon if any of his own turmoil inadvertently hurt her. “She’s human,” he observed. “Does she know about us?”
“No,” Joey said.
Mikhail gave his head a silent shake. “This is not a culture that would welcome our kind. We’ve said nothing, except to our mates. They keep the secret, though we regret having that secret come between friends loyal to each other for many years.”
Nikos heard that with a whoosh of relief. Jen’s complete unawareness would be her best protection. And he’d keep his focus squarely on all the problems facing him, which in turn would protect his island. Only then could he protect himself, and do what must be done.
In other words, it couldn’t be better. “So let me collect my students, and we’ll discuss the next step.”
“Follow me in my car,” Joey said, smiling, ever so friendly and helpful.
Nikos shot him a death ray look of suspicion, then leaped into the air and transformed to his unicorn, which would be invisible to the human eye.
THREE
JEN
“Rubber chicken?”
Jen looked up, startled to find Godiva standing next to her, black eyes unblinking.
It was just the opposite.
What she was feeling, for the first time in years and years, was fuel-injected, five hundred horsepower honest-to-high-school lust.
What do you even do with that when you’re a fifty-five-year-old widow?
The answer was . . . Nothing.
She was just telling herself that when Godiva was suddenly there, saying “Rubber chicken?”
Jen straightened up. “I told you. It was my anchor word—”
“I was listening. Stutter. Kid. Jen, in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you stutter, much less yelp rubber chicken like it was a secret code word in a really bad spy novel. You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m all right.” Jen tried a smile, which felt so fake her teeth were cold.
Sure enough, Godiva gave her another hairy eyeball. “Okay. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. It’s just, there aren’t many surprises at my age. I’m tough. I even survived the mullet era.”
Jen snorted, and before she could think, out came a retort, “I was married to a mullet.”
Godiva gave a hoot of laughter, and for a moment Jen felt as if she’d somehow been disloyal, except that Robert wouldn’t have cared. He’d gotten that terrible haircut before they boarded a plane to South America, to chase down some crooked plutocrats bent on destroying the rain forest.
When she’d pointed out you got what you paid for in a five dollar haircut, he’d just shrugged, saying it would be easy to take care of. They’d won an award for that expose—and Robert had shaved his entire head in celebration, which she privately found even more dismaying than a mullet, if that was possible: some people could carry off the look, but Robert had not been among them. “It’s cool and airy,” he’d said happily—for he’d never been a man to care for appearances. His or hers. “Here, want me to shave your head?” he’d offered. “I promise, you’ll love the total freedom.”
Feeling somewhere between a laugh and a wince, she blinked away the memory—and realized that thinking about Robert no longer hurt with that horrible stab of guilty grief, as if she’d done something wrong by surviving him, when they had done everything together from the time they first met.
Or, almost everything: except for her writing group.
She said to Godiva, “What happened today was just a sudden case of hot pants.”
“You say it like it was a dose of fungus.” Godiva looked puzzled.
“It was fine. Even fun! Just took me by surprise, is all. I wasn’t ready for that, especially with a stranger.”
“Okay. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready.” Godiva gave a short nod. “Nuff said.”
“I’d better get inside.” Jen flicked her thumb toward the studio door. “I need to be in there before the students arrive.”
“Speaking of. I’m pretty sure those cute little foreign girls are going to turn up any second. They really seemed to be taken with you.”
“Well, this class has teens in it,” Jen said. “They get credit for P.E. at the high school.”
“Yeah. It’s just, there’s something . . . funky about the way they dropped out of nowhere. The hot dude, too. Not that I’m complaining. Damn, no. If I can wrap words around that scrap you and he got into—which was something between a Hong Kong film of the sort I used to watch decades ago, and a tango—which is basically art porn with clothes on—I guarantee it’ll be my most popular book yet.”
Jen laughed as she opened the door to the studio. “I’m glad it worked for you.”
To her surprise, Godiva followed her inside. Jen couldn’t remember Godiva ever having been in there before.
“Whee-yoo,” Godiva whispered in what for her was an undervoice. “Does it always have this distinctive aroma of eau de sweat?”
Jen almost asked “What aroma?”
She breathed in. The studio was scrupulously clean, but the evidence that people had been working out hard here for a couple of decades was bound to seep into the woodwork. Even the air conditioning never quite did away with the faint whiff of clean sweat, but it was so familiar that she never noticed it. She smothered a laugh.
Godiva said, “What’s so funny? You think I’m a snob.”
“No!” Jen’s chuckle came out in a surprised squawk. “It’s just, I’ve been used to it ever since I was a kid.”
Godiva raised her brows. “A kid? I thought this karate-kung fu stuff was something you did with Robert.”
“True.” Jen looked back cautiously, and again the awful stab of guilt—that she was still alive and he wasn’t—was a mere echo of what it had been. “Robert hated sports. His study group, which included me though I was only a freshman, were all nerds and bookworms. When they were told they couldn’t graduate until they got their P.E. requirement in, he suggested we all take a martial arts class, which would be more aerobic than boring stuff like baseball, and maybe useful if anyone got mugged. I was so intimidated by their brains and academic awards that I didn’t dare tell him my dad had been teaching me Krav Maga since I was a kid.”
“Krav Maga? Even I’ve heard of that.” Godiva’s black eyes rounded. “Hardcore!”
“I think my dad learned it in Eastern Europe during the war. We were living in a tough neighborhood in those days.”
“But I take it you did tell Robert?”
“I kind of had to when we all went to our first lesson, and I knew a lot of the basic forms, and the instructor asked what I was doing in a beginner class.” Jen felt another bubble of laughter, small, but there. “It wasn’t long after that Robert asked me to join the Peace Corps with him. He was sure I could handle anything the world threw at us.”
“I take it that was Robert’s version of courtship?”
“Probably!” Jen shook her head, smiling. “I was so clueless, I had no idea he thought of me that way until he said we should get married first, to save trouble with paperwork and insurance while overseas.”
Godiva snorted a laugh. “Married, but not a wedding, I take it?”
Jen shook her head. “It was the seventies! Marriage—weddings—were Establishment. We went to City Hall to do the paperwork.” Jen hesitated, then said in her lightest voice, though it still cost her a pang all these years later, “And the next day he told me my wedding present was the vasectomy he got, so I would never have to take birth control.”
Godiva’s eyes narrowed. “Was that his idea or yours?”
“Oh, I followed his lead. I was barely out of my teens, and he was so idealistic. So dedicated to the Cause of Planet Earth. I was so proud that of all the women in our group, he picked me, though I was the youngest and the most awkward.”
“I well remember seventies attitudes.” Godiva smiled, then said, “Well, I’ve got to get this masterpiece loaded onto my computer, and the phone recharged before it goes totally dead. The rest of you can transfer stuff with a tap here and a swipe there, but I need to follow the steps.” She saluted, two gnarled fingers flicking her forehead, and walked out.
Jen turned away, lifting a hand to greet Master Reynaldo, the studio owner. Five students were inside the training area, the two older women already getting out the practice pads. The three teens giggled and whispered back and forth as they examined themselves in the floor to ceiling mirrors all down one wall.
“Start warming up,” Jen said.
Though she had already warmed up before meeting the others at the bakery, she took her place at the front and established a rhythm, which the four fell into. Students streaming in took their places and joined in. The class had nearly filled when four people walked in—Bird, Doris, and the two teenage girls, one in shorts and the other jeans. Both wore T-shirts, one with a Gintama character on i
t, the other with Captain Marvel.
Reynaldo Valdez, the studio owner, was over at the counter. As Jen counted off front kicks, she caught Bird’s fluting voice. “. . . how much for a lesson? . . . Petra and Cleo, visiting from out of town.” She indicated Petra, tall and slender, her short, shiny blue-black hair swinging about her ears, and short, round Cleo, who wore the T-shirt depicting Elizabeth, the huge sort-of penguin from the anime. Cleo was already tying her cloud of ringlets back into a practical bun. Both girls wore leggings, which could easily serve as workout clothes.
“If you’ll just fill out this form, for legal coverage,” Master Reynaldo said.
Jen was afraid that that would put an end to the girls’ visit, as Master Reynaldo was scrupulous about such things, for both students and instructors’ protection. To her surprise, Doris took over and began filling out the forms. “Their guardian will be along soon to sign it,” Doris assured Master Reynaldo.
“Are you beginners?” Master Reynaldo asked, clearly doubting.
Cleo and Petra both shook their heads.
Jen found herself moving toward the counter. “I’ll take full responsibility for them,” she said, and couldn’t help the warmth she felt inside when the two wide-eyed faces broke into smiles.
“Well, this is a class for beginners, so there won’t be any sparring. Just practicing the forms. I will need a legal guardian’s signature if you take any more advanced class,” Master Reynaldo warned.
The girls both bowed, hands on their thighs, put their shoes in the cubby lining the opposite wall, and scampered inside, onto the studio floor. Here, they bowed to Jen.
“Must we do the stretches?” Cleo asked. “We are ready!”
Jen said, “I’ll tell you what I tell all my students. I realize that defending yourself on the street seldom allows you time to warm up, but it’s better for your body to stretch when you can.”
Cleo sighed. “Yes. So says our . . . kyrios.”
Petra said earnestly, “That means our teacher. It means boss, in our language.”