Okay, this sucked, Ashlyn thought, clamping her hand over her mouth as she lost her balance and fell forward, struggling valiantly to keep from tossing her cookies. She felt like whatever was in her stomach- she hadn’t eaten much in the last day and a half- was going to make its grand debut any moment now.
When Ashlyn raised her eyes to look at the cloaked ninja in front of her, she found him staring back at her, his moonlit eyes above the mask unmistakably shocked. She didn't recognize him, but he seemed to know her. Or maybe he just recognized the greenish tint of her skin. Lis weren't exactly known for their love of traveling.
The ninja finally dragged his gaze from hers, eyes flicking to Kou. "My apologies," he said, inclining his head and sheathing his sword again. "I did not recognize you."
He started, grabbing for purchase on her seat as the boat ran ashore, but his eyes remained locked on Kou.
The hum of an engine grew louder as Skye pulled up beside them, grim-faced and wet, his hair plastered against his head in dripping spikes. He was flanked by two ninjas in the boat with him. And if looks could kill, Ashlyn had a feeling she'd be sleeping with the fishes.
"I have brought the Elder Heir," Kou said.
"The Elder Heir?" Ashlyn exclaimed, just a little late in her realization. She scrambled out of the boat and landed on her knees in the shallow water, the impact jarring her teeth and her upset stomach painfully. She looked up at Kou, using one hand to scrape her wet bangs out of her eyes, the other clutching her sword, "Oh, no. You're not bringing me here just to turn me over to the Toryn army so Devlyn can take some kind of perverse delight in severing my head from my body."
The guard behind her burst out laughing, and she craned her neck around to glare at him, in turn only making him laugh harder. "She's feisty, all right," he said, sounding almost relieved, of all things. "I should have expected as much from the Elder Heir." He smiled down at Ashlyn. "I should extend my welcome, Lady Li. Devlyn-" here he inclined his head towards Kou- "has been searching the world over for you. I am glad to see he has found you at last."
What?
Ashlyn froze.
Not literally, of course, although that was going to be one option if she didn't get out of the wind and rain pretty soon.
"Devlyn?" she repeated stupidly.
Still shivering, she turned, staring at Kou as he sat motionless in the boat. His dark eyes were completely unreadable.
Okay, for some reason it just wasn't processing.
"Lord Devlyn?" Ashlyn said, wondering why he hadn't denied it already. It just couldn't be possible. Kou was a ninja, captured on the airship and held hostage for days.
He was Kou.
He was not Devlyn.
"Kou," she said, laboring to her feet. Her water-logged skirt made it difficult to move. "Tell me what's going on."
"You didn't tell her?" the younger ninja exclaimed.
"No, Tag. I didn't tell her." Kou's gaze was steady as he met Ashlyn's. "I didn't know if she would come after hearing what I had to say."
"What?" Ashlyn growled, getting angrier by the moment. If it was possible, her nausea was intensifying. "Okay, if somebody doesn't tell me what's going on right the heck now, I'm going to puke- and then I'm going to hit someone really, really hard, and I don't freaking care who it is!"
As sick as she felt, and as dark as the near-dawn night remained, she didn't miss the meaningful look that the other ninjas shared. She glanced at Skye, but he seemed just as perplexed as she was.
"She has not yet been exposed," Kou said at length. "She is exhausted, but healthy. A day to recuperate and she’ll be ready."
Exposed? Ready? "I warned you," Ashlyn began furiously, but then her stomach heaved, and she clamped a hand over her mouth again. Great timing, she thought. The last thing she needed was to blow chunks all over her potential captors.
"All will be explained in due time, Lady Li," Tag said. "For now I will assure you that Devlyn, although he is captain of the Toryn guard, is not and never will be Elder Lord of Toryn. Your father retains that title. And we are not your enemy." He vaulted crisply out of the boat, reached up with his right hand to remove his mask. As the cloth fell away, Ashlyn felt a jolt of recognition. He looked like Kou, close enough to be a brother.
"Tagawa Lunai, of the clan Lunai," he said, bowing low. "I welcome you, Lady Li, and trust you bear no wounds from your ordeal."
She stared at him incredulously, absolutely amazed that he would revert to tradition at a time like this. "I…um…these wounds will heal," she said slowly, too shocked to respond with anything but the proper answer. "And you?"
"I am well." He held out a hand. "Allow me to escort you to your home, Lady Li."
Ashlyn glanced at Skye. He looked absolutely homicidal, but she didn't want him to leave her alone with these people. "Will you escort my…companion with me as well?" she asked. Her words were stilted, but she hoped that perhaps they would attribute that to her sickly state instead of her surprise.
"Certainly, Lady." His hand was still extended, and after some hesitation Ashlyn put her fingers in his, allowing him to guide her towards a horse waiting on the shore. He gave her a leg up, but kept the reins in his hands so that he could lead her. It was just as well. As violently as her stomach was churning, she didn't feel that she had the strength to guide the horse just now.
Ashlyn glanced back at Kou, wondering what the heck was going on, but his stoic face betrayed nothing. Skye refused to meet her eyes.
This was just super, Ashlyn thought dryly, curling her chilled fingers into the horse's warm mane. She didn't know whether she was being captured or invited to stay for tea. Actually, tea right now would be great. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had real tea from her actual homeland. It was enough to make her stomach growl, despite its current discomfort.
When they neared Toryn, however, all thoughts of tea fled her mind.
The sun was almost up now, enabling her to see the giant stone wall that framed Toryn, a city which had once been open to anyone who wished to enter. A gate of sturdy wood was barred from the inside. Throngs of people stood outside the city demanding entrance, some even encamped at the base of the wall, some looking so hollow-eyed that she wondered what horrors they might have seen. But the gates remained shut.
Tag turned and held up a hand, signaling the rest of them to stop. "Cover yourself, Lady," he said, removing his cloak and handing it up to her. "Now is not the time to reveal your presence."
Ashlyn pulled the cloak around her shoulders and drew the hood up hesitantly. It had all seemed simple before- Devlyn was the declared enemy. If she defeated him, everything would go back to normal. Now she wasn't so sure.
People stared unabashedly at them as they rode up to the city gates. Ashlyn kept her head down, her sword concealed within the folds of her cloak, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that both of the guards flanking Skye had drawn their katanas.
"My lord, we seek entrance," a man pleaded, running up to Tag and falling to his knees in the withered grass. He bowed, clasping his hands together fitfully as though he thought he might be punished for asking.
Ashlyn looked at the man, trying not to be obvious about it. He was dressed in Outlander clothing, similar to samurai in style, but he wore his hair short, without the traditional topknot. If the clothing was a little threadbare, it was clean, and the man did not look as if he were starving. At least she could take comfort in that. As she stared at him, he looked up, and his gaze met hers. His eyes widened.
“The Elder Heir!” he shouted suddenly, struggling to his feet. “They have brought the Elder Heir back to Toryn!” The man flung himself towards Ashly, and her horse shied sideways, tossing its head.
“Guards!” Kou shouted, and two of the ninjas jumped forward to restrain the man. The entire crowd of people began surging forward, eager to see if the man’s words were true, if the Elder Heir had truly returned.
The gates creaked open, and Kou rushed forward, with his soldie
rs following. In all the commotion, Ashlyn could barely see what was happening, but she kept an eye on Skye’s head of blond hair, which was very noticeable in a sea of black-haired Toryns.
The gates swung shut behind them with a loud boom, but Ashlyn could hear the shouts of the Toryn outside, calling her name.
“I’m sorry,” Tag said breathlessly as he drew up beside Ashlyn. “We can’t have word of your arrival getting out. It would cause a massive uprising.”
She didn’t quite understand, but Ashlyn pushed her confusion aside as she noted that the inside of her city was not changed, not in the least. The bridges stood solidly, every house just as she had left it- even her own. It was so heartbreakingly beautiful that it brought tears to her eyes. There was the bridge where she'd broken her nose at the age of seven, trying to prove to her father that the river was deep enough to dive in (lucky it hadn't been her neck). There was Heaven, the old bar where she'd conned her uncle into letting her try his sake when she was barely ten.
And beyond it all, beyond her dad's house, beyond even the pagoda where she had once faced the Elder Lords in battle for leadership of Toryn, was Na Michico.
Ashlyn slid off the horse. This was her home, the land of her ancestors. It was an entire world apart from the rest of Kresmir. The ground beneath her feet was so familiar that she could have closed her eyes and danced a thousand steps without falter.
"Thank Drago," she breathed. "I thought I'd never see it again."
Then she turned and threw up all over Tag's boots.
Chapter 11
Tainted Blood
"Ungh," Ashlyn groaned, mashing her cheek into her pillow. The air was cold, colder than she was accustomed to, anyway, and she'd managed to kick off her blanket at some point during the night. Keeping her eyes shut, she fumbled around in front of her, looking for the woolly blanket she had bought from an old lady in Landi a year or so ago.
Instead of soft wool, though, her hand settled on something warm. And firm.
"You're finally awake," Skye said from beside her, amusement in his tone.
Ashlyn pried one eye open and looked at where her fingers had ended up. "Heh," she said weakly, removing her hand from Skye's leg. "Um, sorry."
Mental note: no touching of Skye Damien. Ever again.
Skye shrugged, apparently deciding to pretend like he hadn't noticed her shameless groping. "How are you feeling?"
Ashlyn rolled onto her back, blew out a breath. Her stomach was still roiling a little, but it wasn't horrible. "I'm better, I guess." Belatedly she noticed the presence of a soft pillow, and glanced quizzically at Skye. Traditionally, Toryn slept on thin rugs on the floor.
"I couldn't stand seeing you bang your head on that useless mat anymore," he replied. "There are a few traditions around here that I just don’t get."
"Me, too." Ashlyn stared at the ceiling of her house- her house, she realized, looking much the same as she had left it. Well, the ceiling anyway.
She frowned, noticing also that she was wearing one of her old kimonos.
"Did you bring me here?" she asked curiously. Did you change my clothes too? Please say no.
Skye shifted, his boots clunking on the solid wooden floor as he stretched his legs out in front of him. "Actually, you brought yourself here. Don't you remember?"
"Not really." She screwed up her eyebrows as she tried to recall. "I puked on Tag's boots, and then…um…"
"Then you announced to the world that you were going to sleep." He shifted, looking irritated with the available seating options. "You dragged me in here, babbling on about how we weren't going to be out of each other's sight at any point, not even if you had to handcuff yourself to me during your bath."
"Oh, no." Ashlyn rubbed at her forehead, trying to cover her embarrassment. "You're kidding me, right?"
Giving up on finding a comfortable spot, he settled back against the wall and grinned. "Nope. Sorry." He ignored her indignant glare and continued, "Devlyn said you needed your rest. He must have been right, because you changed into…that…and fell asleep."
Ugh. Devlyn.
Ashlyn grumbled an obscenity in Angelic, sitting up and running a hand over her hair, most of which had come loose from its ponytail.
"I swear I didn't know that he was Devlyn, Skye. If I'd had any idea, I would have challenged him to the Leadership Duel and been done with it, but he lied to me. He said his name was Kou."
"I know." The blond swordsman drew up one knee and rested his arm across it, leaning his head back against the wall. "What's done is done, Ash. We can't change it now."
"That doesn't mean I can't feel like a total moron for a lifetime or two." She pulled her knees up and propped her chin on the shelf they made.
The silence that followed was thick with tension, and it seemed to get worse with every unsaid word that passed between them.
"He seemed nice enough, though," she ventured finally. "I mean, here we are, unshackled, free to roam. No lopping of heads so far. That's a good sign, right?"
Skye laughed; low, raspy and just a little gruff. Any other day- any other place- and that laugh would have been enough to turn her insides to jelly. Today, she was just relieved he wasn’t angry with her.
"You're trying to convince me to forgive you for leading me here," he said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
"Maybe." She grinned weakly. "Is it working?"
A corner of his mouth quirked. "Maybe."
"Good." She took a deep breath. "Then I'm sure you're getting used to the idea that I'm not a traitor, and I'm not trying to betray FLD. All I wanted was to come here- alone, actually, although that plan didn't work out so great- and try to resolve this without any bloodshed."
She lied back on her mat again and put a hand to her temple, sighing. "I hope you don't think I still make a habit of puking on my friends' shoes, though. That is totally a thing of the past- I got over that years ago- and- and Tag is the first time since…well, since you." Sadly, Skye and Ashlyn had learned about Ashlyn’s motion sickness at the same time- three years ago, about five minutes after the airship’s take-off.
Skye reached out a hand to brush his fingers across her forehead. "I don't think you're running a fever," he observed.
There was some light coming through the window on the far side of the room, behind the screens that served to separate living area from sleeping area, but it was still faint enough for Skye's eyes to catch her attention. In sunlight, they shone bright obsidian, but in the semi-darkness his eyes were each like a bottomless inkwell, pulling you in effortlessly.
Ashlyn had always felt the same way about Skye as she had about Drake; she'd never get tired of looking at him. They were both beautiful in a masculine sort of way, both devastatingly handsome, both unique because of their distinctive eyes. Skye typically wore dark glasses to cover his, preferring to avoid the questions that came with being acknowledged as a former DEMON soldier. Drake, on the other hand, never bothered to hide his eyes. Maybe he simply didn’t care about people’s reactions anymore.
"Drake!" She bolted upright and turned to Skye. "Is he okay? He's okay, right? I mean, you were with him, you wouldn't have left him alone if he wasn't okay. Right?"
Skye rested his hand across his knee again. "Right."
Ashlyn waited for him to continue. When he said nothing else, she flicked her fingers, palm-up, as if to say, Well?
"He heals fast," Skye admitted. He gave her a grudgingly admiring glance. "He told me what happened. You tried to stop the sword."
"Yeah, and I lost my shuriken doing it," Ashlyn said, not at all distressed about that fact now that she knew Drake was all right. She crawled over to sit next to Skye. "Did he say anything else?"
"About what?"
She really had no idea. "About…anything."
The blank look that the swordsman gave her made her words sound lame, even to her own ears. What had she expected Drake to tell Skye? That her crazy attempt to save his life had proved to him without a doubt
that she was the woman he'd been looking for all his unlife? That he was abandoning Trace to throw himself at Ashlyn's feet and worship her for all eternity?
No. That was unreasonable.
Ashlyn tried to think of all the things she didn't like about Drake. Musty coffin. Icky old coat. Red eyes.
Really sexy red eyes.
"Stop it!" she yelled, smacking herself on the forehead. "Give it a break, will you?"
Skye jumped, staring incredulously at her like she'd just sprouted three heads. "What the hell?"
"Never mind," she said grumpily, finger-combing her tangled hair and trying to secure it back into a messy ponytail. She blew upwards, trying to get her bangs out of her eyes. "I just hope I can see my dad soon. Nothing like coming back from the dead to make you appreciate your family again."
There was a grinding sound as the door slid open, and illumination flooded the room behind them, light glaring around the edges of the screens that bisected the room. Ashlyn blinked at the interruption, and turned to see Kou- Devlyn- outlined in front of her. Tag stood at his side.
"We don't have much time," Kou said, looking at Ashlyn- and, she felt, looking over her, probably finding her unkempt appearance somewhat lacking. He motioned towards the basement steps and told them, "If you want to know the truth, there's only one place to begin."
Ashlyn stood, brushing off her hands. "The one place to begin is my basement?" she said skeptically. "Do you know how long it's probably been since anyone's been in there? There could be man-eating spiders down there. They could be huge. They could be the size of draynors, as long as they've had to set up house."
"There are no spiders in your basement," Kou said. His expression did not change.
"How do you know? They could be ten feet tall. They could be as big as this house. They could have hairy legs and fangs as long as my arm-" Ashlyn stopped, feeling a little queasy at the thought of enormous incisors and creepy spider eyes.
Tag and Kou shared a frustrated look, and if Ashlyn had been in a better mood then she probably would have smiled. Obviously the great and noble Li heir wasn't making such a great and noble impression.
The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) Page 13