by SGD Singh
Every Jodha but Lexi turned to the Upperworlder with the golden-brown hair.
Dinesh straightened. “This is Zaiden Tavish Kartikeya Agurzil, crown prince of Tapas.”
“Just Zaiden,” he mumbled, sounding miserable.
Lexi dared a look at Ariella, and found her smiling right at her. She turned her attention back to the floor.
“Prince of Tapas!” Kai exclaimed. “Sounds like a great name for a Spanish restaurant.”
“I’m always still hungry after eating tapas,” said Kenda, reaching for another sandwich.
“That’s because you never order enough,” Koko pointed out. “I keep telling you. You have to order a lot.”
“So what’s a crown prince doing here?” said Ariella.
Lexi glanced at Zaiden and saw that the prince studied his hands.
“Yeah,” said Kai, his voice high and breathless. He flipped his long hair over one shoulder, and batted his eyelashes. “What’s a prince like you doing in a realm like this?”
Ariella and Koko laughed, while Kenda choked on his sandwich.
Dinesh and Satish took a step forward, but Zaiden held out a hand and they froze. Lexi shook her head, threw her napkin on the floor, and moved to stand at the window.
“All the Nivarin must serve the common good before taking governing positions,” said Dinesh. “Even those of the royal family. Some choose to join the Yodhaka, the warriors.”
“So you guys have war in your realm?” asked Ariella.
“No,” said Satish, deadpan. “But you do.”
Dinesh cleared his throat. “Our realm revolves around service and learning. Greed and evil are almost nonexistent. But we still train in case of breaches. Plus it’s good exercise for the body, mind, and spirit.”
“No greed,” said Lexi to the window. “That’s why you’re selling weapons to Underworlders.”
“That was an accident,” said Zaiden. “There may not be greed, but there’s still stupidity.”
Kai smiled. “So, no fighting. And everyone just happily being ruled while they serve and learn.”
“I bet you have a zero crime rate and really clean air,” said Kenda. “And live in pristine harmony with all creatures great and small.”
Satish crossed his arms. “So what if we do?”
Koko pointed his sandwich at Satish. “So you guys are basically here out of sheer boredom.”
Satish and Dinesh turned to Zaiden in surprise, and he smiled at his hands.
“Slumming it until coronation day,” said Lexi, and Zaiden’s smile disappeared. “Fun.”
Satish turned to Ariella. “Is she always this… nice?”
Ariella glared. “Is your hair actually feathers? It looks like feathers.”
Satish raised his eyes as if trying to see his hair. “I… guess so?”
“Oh!” said Kai jumping up. “Can I touch it?”
“No,” said Satish, backing away. “You can piss off! Ow!”
“Ariella! It’s feathers! But like, super unbelievably soft feathers. Come feel!”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
Kai was on the ground with Satish’s foot at his throat while Kenda and Koko burst into laughter.
“You would’ve let her feel your feathers though, am I right?” Kai coughed, still grinning.
Lexi left the church, slamming the door.
† † †
After checking the tracking device receiver for the hundredth time, Lexi sat in the dirt at the base of the fountain. Someone had turned it off, and the silent desert stretched out beyond the courtyard’s low adobe wall, the baked earth cooling in the fading light.
Movement to her left made Lexi shiver, then cringe, as she felt Zaiden’s presence.
“I didn’t come out here so you could follow me,” she said without looking up.
“I know.” At the sound of his voice, her eyes darted to him involuntarily.
Zaiden looked into the setting sun, his pupils like serrated knives against cracked turquoise. “The Underworlders don’t know how to use the device. It’s not easy to set it. Your… he’ll probably wake up sooner than they think.”
Lexi nodded at the ground.
“Is it true your friends took a civilian through the portal with them?”
“Yep.” Lexi smiled with no humor, nodding once. “That’s Asha. She’ll no doubt bring back some pitiful Underworlders we all have to be nice to.” She took a stake out of her leg holster and twirled it. “Now that the portal closed, we can leave as soon as…”
“Don’t you need to call in help, or…?”
Lexi snorted. “If five Jodha can’t rescue one of our own, we’d be a pretty sorry excuse for active-duty Guard, don’t you think?”
And I won’t be the one to call Mamono’s bluff and get Nidhan killed.
“But the portal…” The concern in Zaiden’s voice sounded genuine.
“Asha can take care of herself.” Lexi hacked at the dirt with the stake, trying not to think about Nidhan being tortured. Or worse. “You just worry about your own shit.”
“We’ll find him, Lexi.”
He was using her name again. She sniffed. “And what if he’s already dead? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Zaiden flinched, and Lexi ignored the tiny jolt of his anguish, anguish that she felt.
Lowering himself into the dirt across from her, Zaiden leaned against the low adobe wall. “Lexi…” His gaze focused on the church. “Don’t you understand? I… I can feel your pain. Why would I want you to endure more?”
Lexi lowered her forehead to her knees.
“He’s not dead,” Zaiden said, his voice like a soft lullaby. Lexi squeezed her eyes shut against it, even as her heart began to pound. “They won’t kill him before they get what they want.”
She wiped an eye with the back of one hand and sniffed again. “So you’re a prince. What does that mean?”
Zaiden smiled up at the church without humor, but even still, Lexi had to look away.
“It means there are many who expect me to come back and… govern.”
“Relocate the peaceful, loving dragons to a new field of flowers before their dung becomes a health hazard?”
Zaiden burst into laughter, and Lexi felt as if someone were squeezing her heart.
Holy fuck. Asha is going to experience a new kind of pain for this.
She turned her attention to the ground and began furiously digging.
“So, you volunteered for the Tapas Jodha unit? What was it again? Yodha…”
“Yodhaka. Yeah,” said Zaiden. “It’s… The only way to get out of there, is what it is.”
Lexi looked at him then, but quickly turned away when his eyes met hers.
“The other options are plant food, work in medicine, or study philosophy.”
“So you are here out of sheer boredom.”
His smile was like a sunrise over fresh snow. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Lexi stood, brushing dirt off her clothes. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to punch his teeth out, or make him smile again. “So tell me, Your Highness, what do dragons eat?”
“The—what?”
“I mean, dragons eat meat, right? So if everything’s so amicably dovish, what do they eat?”
Zaiden nodded. “Oh. They eat the dead. Well, and sometimes the dying. And they’re not exactly what you’d call dovish.”
“So Grandma’s on her last leg, you just leave her out for the dragons?”
“It’s painless,” he insisted, sounding shocked. “They have this venom that numbs the—never mind. You think our realm’s a joke, don’t you?”
Lexi raised an eyebrow. “How can a realm be a joke?”
“That’s okay. Compared to what it’s like here, our realm is… it’s like an island resort. All right for a vacation, if you like that sort of thing, but not much… happens.”
Lexi replaced her stake. “Poor, bored prince.”
“The food is better, though,” said Zaiden, and
Lexi stiffened, her eyes filling with sudden tears. She saw Zaiden wince at her pain, and actually felt him immediately regret his words.
Lexi strode back toward the church.
Dinesh and Satish burst out of its doors just as Lexi reached them.
“Car,” Dinesh called across the courtyard to Zaiden. “Ten minutes away.”
Lexi broke into a jog, issuing a high-pitched screech as she passed down the church’s aisle. Ariella, Kai, Kenda, and Koko jumped to follow her. Standing just inside the gate, Lexi gestured for Kai and Koko to check the perimeter as she inspected her revolver.
You don’t know they’re Familiars.
Get the fuck out of my head, Zaiden.
“Are you okay, Lex?” said Ariella. “You look… like you’re gonna puke.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just—”
Lexi’s eyes widened and she nearly dropped her revolver in her rush to detach her tracking device from her vest, the metal the size and shape of a pen. Ariella was already grabbing her own. Flashing green lights blinked across their faces.
“Nidhan,” they said in unison.
Kenda pushed the glowing button on the tip of his tracker first, and all three of them squinted at the holographic image that lit up.
“Brazil?” said Kenda.
Lexi snatched Kenda’s tracker and pushed the button again impatiently, and the image zoomed in.
“Rio de Janeiro…” She pushed the button again. “There… it’s Rocinha, the favela in Rio’s South Zone.” She looked at Ariella while her mind raced. “The nearest HQ is Cartagena. Nidhan doesn’t speak Portuguese…”
“What, and you do?” said Kenda.
Lexi ignored him. “First we deal with these Familiars. Then we move out.”
Zaiden appeared out of the fading light. “We’ll deal with the civilians,” he said.
Lexi started to argue, but Dinesh and Satish stepped forward, crossing their arms.
“We won’t let you kill people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Satish, the bright colors of his hair standing out against his golden skin.
“I wasn’t—”
Zaiden met Lexi’s gaze, a smile beginning to spread across his beautiful features.
Damn him.
“Fine!” she spat, turning away.
Lexi let out three screeches, and Kai and Koko’s birds landed smoothly in front of her a moment later.
“Get your shit together,” she told the four of them, waving her hand and taking long strides to the church as the others followed. “We’re moving out. Let’s go.”
“Hey!” Ariella shouted, and three Upperworlders turned to her. “You might want this.”
She threw Zaiden her tracking device.
Lexi shook her head and disappeared through the convent doors before she could see Ariella’s smile.
Chapter 21
Consciousness returned to Nidhan slowly. He was first aware of a hard floor beneath him. Rough cement against his cheek, his arm. Something was tied around his ankles tightly. He concentrated on staying completely still, but there was a jolt of pain in his right shoulder, and he realized his arms were held behind his back.
With metal cuffs.
It took all of the Tvastar’s concentration not to smile. Keeping his eyes closed, he forced his breathing to stay regular, and listened.
Noise.
He took in the traffic sounds directly in front of him. Blaring horns, the familiar sound of motorcycles, scooters, a car. A muffled television behind him, various competing music playing in every direction. People shouting in a language he didn’t recognize.
Spanish? No. Italian. Wait… Russian?
He’d only ever heard Russian spoken by villains in action movies. Three people seemed to be arguing passionately right outside a window directly above him in what sounded to Nidhan like a combination of all three languages, and he gave up trying to figure out what it was.
The last thing he remembered was a Witch who looked no more than twelve smiling at him as his head filled with the most excruciating pain he’d ever felt in his life. Just before Lexi killed her.
Nidhan lay without moving for a full five minutes, listening. Then he opened his eyes a fraction of an inch to see bare cement walls crumbling in one corner, revealing one dirty tile and some bricks. He opened his eyes all the way, waited, then lifted his head to look up and around. He was alone.
The room was small, no more than a closet, really. The window was badly constructed into the wall high above him, and barely large enough for a child to fit through.
Nidhan bit down on the molars in the roof of his mouth on the right, hearing Lexi’s voice, It’s in your mandibular right second premolar, or bicuspid. And no, chewing won’t activate it unless you’re planning on eating caramel candy. So don’t.
He held the pressure for the full five seconds and then an extra five, just to make sure he’d activated the tracking device.
He could almost hear Lexi’s laughter as he remembered pulling her to him, snapping his teeth at her ear. Mandibular! I like the sound of that.
He imagined her reaction to someone kidnapping him, and Nidhan almost felt guilty for activating his tracking device. If he wanted to avoid bloodshed, he’d better get his ass out of there.
Glancing down at his legs, Nidhan saw his ankles were tied with zip-ties and laughed out loud.
Seriously? First metal handcuffs on a Tvastar, for Christ’s sake, and now zip-ties? Who are these idiots?
He was surprised they hadn’t left him his weapons.
With one kick against the back of his thighs, the zip-ties broke, and seconds later Nidhan was out of the handcuffs. Tearing the lower hem off his grey T-shirt, he tied his hair out of his face and moved across the tiny room to peer out the window.
The fading daylight revealed thousands of roofs stacked and tangled together like a jostling crowd. It looked as if an enormous Punjabi village had been built on the side of a mountain, and Nidhan felt suddenly homesick. In the sloping distance, he saw tall buildings glittering in the warm light, and beyond them, the ocean. A motorcycle sped past the window, inches from his face, its driver shouting something to a pedestrian in the narrow alleyway, breaking the spell, and Nidhan realized he was hungry and pissed off, not homesick.
He began working the handcuffs in his fingers, barely feeling the metal’s heat, and tried to channel his anger into the knife that was slowly taking shape in his large, ringless, Tvastar hands, and tried to ignore his sudden thirst as the weapon drained his energy.
When I find the bastard who took my weapons and dragged me to God knows where, he’ll… He’ll be sorry, that’s what. Unless he returns everything and apologizes. Nidhan laughed silently, shaking his head. I’m starting to sound like a damn country song. He took my jacket, my rings, my turban, and my weapons. He shot my dog and tied me up and… and what the hell rhymes with weapons? Step-ins?
Nidhan’s checked his cargo pants again, confirming that every pocket had been emptied. Glancing around the room for anything else to use as a weapon, he confirmed it was also still empty.
Okay, time to go.
Crossing to the badly sealed door, Nidhan checked the handle and found it locked. Not that something this flimsy would stop him, but he didn’t know what was on the other side. He started pounding his fist against it and, trying to make his voice high, he began shouting and whining for help, sounding as annoying as he could, and sincerely hoped he wouldn’t have to keep it up for too long.
He wasn’t disappointed. Within seconds, he heard footsteps approach the door. Someone turned a key and pushed the creaky metal door open. Nidhan stayed out of sight behind the door and waited for the figure to enter, then lunged silently behind his captor, wrapping one arm around a small torso and pinning two skinny arms. With his other hand, Nidhan held the knife in front of the person’s eyes and tried to sound scary.
“Show me the way out of here or you’re dead, understand?”
The figure wen
t rigid under his grip, and Nidhan kicked himself for being too scary when a child’s voice shakily rattled off what sounded like terrified protests in the same unfamiliar language.
Flipping the blade into his belt, Nidhan spun his hostage around and held him by the shoulders, crouching in front of him. The boy was maybe twelve, small and malnourished.
“English,” Nidhan hissed. “Slow down. Breathe. Do you speak English?”
The boy’s eyes were wide, but he nodded.
“Where are we?” Nidhan looked through the door at what seemed to be a thread-bare living room. No one else was in sight. A TV was still blaring somewhere. “Can you show me the way out?”
Now the boy shook his head violently. “No. You stay. Please. They come back.”
“Who?” Nidhan made an effort not to shake the boy. “Who’s coming back?”
“Monstro. They say keep you here. They say kill me, my family, if you leave.”
What the hell? They left me in this kid’s house? Then Nidhan understood. The Underworlders didn’t expect me to wake up.
“Monsters,” Nidhan pointed the knife at the boy, hoping it would make him pay more attention, but instead he just looked as if he would pass out. Nidhan lowered the knife, feeling mean. “Okay, listen. My friends? They are coming here also, understand? Hide your family. My friends will kill monsters. Okay? Good? I leave now.”
“Your friends here, in Brazil? They come tonight?”
Brazil. So everyone’s speaking Portuguese.
Nidhan looked around the room. “Uh… my friends get here soon. Tomorrow. You hide for two days—no, four days, okay? Go.”
The boy just shook his head again, his eyes filling with terror, and Nidhan sighed. “Why’d you get involved with monsters in the first place, you dummy? It rarely ends well for Familiars, you know.” The boy just blinked stupidly. “Look, it’s not my problem. I can’t wait around here for them to come back and do whatever they planned on doing with me. And you didn’t understand a word I just said, did you?” Nidhan pointed the knife, and tried to make a fierce expression. The kid cringed against the wall; he’d overdone it again. He tried to smile, but that only seemed to scare the kid worse. “I go. You hide. Hide family. Stay away from monsters.”