Time Raiders: The Protector

by Merline Lovelace

  Her obvious distress held Cassie back as the little maid scrambled to her feet.

  “I will send another to assist you, mistress. Must make tea for you and master.”

  Cassie let her go but vowed to get to the bottom of those finger marks ringing the girl’s neck. They looked as though someone had lifted her by the throat and shaken her like a rag doll.

  The obvious candidate was Tai. Peony was terrified of him. But why would the eunuch hurt her? What had the maid done, or not done?

  Cassie was still puzzling over the matter when she finished in the bathhouse. Dressed in her elegant new finery, she started back through the courtyard. The sun had chased away the dawn shadows, she saw with relief. Empress Wu Jao could safely proclaim the gods smiled benignly on her assumption of power.

  Just as she was about to skirt the ornamental pond, Cassie stopped dead. Good God! Was that a tremor she’d just felt under her feet?

  She went ramrod stiff, waiting. Listening. Straining every sense until a shiver rippled down her bare arm.

  Maybe it was just the cold she’d felt. The shock of hitting the chilly morning air after the bathhouse’s damp heat. She almost had herself convinced when she glanced down at the pond’s surface.

  Jagged cracks forked through the thin sheet of ice that had formed during the night. While Cassie watched, another crack snaked across the surface. And this time there was no mistaking the small tingle that passed through the soles of her feet.

  She stood still, waiting again. Listening again. Scarcely daring to breathe. Thirty seconds. A full minute. Icy sweat pooled at the base of her spine when she finally went in search of Max.

  She found him in the sitting room, chowing down on a breakfast of congee—a watery rice gruel flavored with chicken and pork—and deep-fried dough sticks that tasted much like French crullers.

  “Did you just feel anything?” she asked him.

  He paused with a dough stick halfway to his mouth. “Like what?”

  “The floor shuddering under you? A tremor in the earth?”

  “No to both.” His chopsticks came down. “Did you?”

  She nodded. “I think so. Out there in the garden. And earlier this morning. That could have been what woke me up. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the plates under this corner of the earth are preparing for a major shift.”

  “Do you know better?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  Her mind churning with doubt, Cassie dropped onto the cushion beside his.

  “I spent weeks researching meteorological and topographical data in preparation for this jump. Professor Carswell put her whole team at the lab on it, too. Nowhere in that exhaustive research did we find a record of any significant seismic activity during this century.”

  “So what makes you think there was? Or will be?”

  “I felt it. I’m sure I did. And the ice in the pond cracked.”

  “How soon?”

  Cassie wavered, consumed by uncertainty and self-doubt.

  Just like last time.

  No! This was worse than last time. Jerry Holland had clouded her senses. Max completely overwhelmed them. He was in her head, in a way Jerry never had been. And in her heart, dammit! She’d yielded more than her pride last night.

  Suddenly, urgently frightened for him, she laid her hand over his and gripped it hard. “I don’t know when it’s coming. It could be today. It could be tomorrow or next week. Whenever it hits, my gut says we won’t get much warning. I think…I think you should activate your ESC and return to our century.”

  “Right. I’ll just beam myself home and leave you here, searching for the medallion piece all by your lonesome.”

  “You have to!”

  She needed to make him understand. Had to keep him safe. She couldn’t bear it if her faulty instincts cost him his life, as they had his friend.

  “We both knew it was crazy to let down our guard last night, but we did it anyway. I can’t let that kind of…of hunger overwhelm my senses now.”

  “You’re right. Last night was crazy. We’ll put the brakes on until the mission’s over and we’re back in our own time.”

  Cassie’s heart leaped at that “until,” but the scars from Jerry’s death went too deep.

  “You got your signals crossed, Brody. The sex was good. Very good. That doesn’t mean I want you in my life, past, present or future.”

  “Too late,” he countered with a smile. “According to the imperial astrologer our destinies are intertwined, remember?”

  The awful fear that she’d screw up this mission and put him in danger reduced Cassie to begging.

  “Please, Max. Please go!” Her nails gouged into his hand. “What if I miss the signals? What if I read them wrong? I can’t be responsible for your death, too!”

  His smile faded. The ghost of Jerry Holland hovered between them for a moment, until Max banished it.

  “I was wrong to read so much into those e-mails Jerry sent me. I know you weren’t responsible for his death. You couldn’t be.”

  “Max…”

  “Listen to me, Cass. I’ve just spent the toughest week of my life with you. We’re in a different time, a different culture, yet you haven’t stumbled once. I’ve watched you hold your own with secret police inspectors and imperial astrologers, and show nothing but kindness to little Peony. Your courage amazes me. I know in my heart there’s no way in hell you caused Jerry’s death.”

  “You’re wrong!”

  If it would convince him to go, she would share every sordid detail of her last, disastrous mission.

  “I need to tell you what happened.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do! You have to understand.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling the steamy heat of the tropical jungle, seeing the sluggish brown river meandering by their campsite.

  “Jerry was our squad leader. We were doing a forward terrain assessment. I can’t tell you where. I can tell you we would have made it out if he hadn’t waited until morning to call for an extraction. Fool that I was, I didn’t realize he needed one more night in the jungle. With me.”

  Her voice went flat.

  “He sent the other two squad members on a recon that night. Told me how much he loved me. Had me melting all over him. The next morning, I heard him bragging to one of the other squad members that he’d won the Jones bet.”

  She met Max’s eyes, unflinching, but tortured by the memories of what had happened next.

  “I demanded to know what bet. He tried to wiggle out of it, but finally admitted the truth. I was mortified. Hurt. Furious. Especially after he admitted my ‘psycho-skills’ really creeped him out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The river must have started rising during our fight. I saw some debris sweep by. I heard what sounded like a distant rumble. My instincts started pinging, but I was too angry to listen to them. Then it roared down on us—a solid wall of brown water five feet high. We learned later that a storm had hit upriver and sent it bursting through an earthen dam.”

  She could still see that churning brown wall, still hear its thunder.

  “The riverbank crumbled under Jerry’s feet. I made a grab for him, got hold of one arm. He was too heavy and the current was too strong. The other two squad members testified that I tried to save him,” she finished in a ragged whisper, “but I knew in my heart I killed him.”

  “The hell you did.”

  “I did, Max! I did! I ignored my instincts and Jerry died as a result. Now those instincts are pinging again. I’ve got to trust them. You’ve got to trust them.”

  “I do.” Releasing her hand, he framed her face with both of his. “I believe in your skills, Cassandra. Implicitly. You’ve proved them over and over again on this mission.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. I’m not leaving you. We landed in this century together. We’ll get out of it together.”

  She started to protes
t, but Max cut her off with a swift, hard kiss. When he raised his head, she could see further argument was useless.

  “Whether or not we find the medallion piece,” he said fiercely, “we’ll both activate our ESCs the moment you sense an earthquake is about to occur.”

  And Confucians thought women were stubborn, intractable creatures!

  Dread sat like a stone in Cassie’s belly, but she let out a ragged sigh and made a feeble attempt at a smile. “If that’s the case, we should have departed last night, when you made the earth move. Several times.”

  “Which I intend to do again,” he said with a quick, slashing grin. “Once we’re out of here.”

  He kissed her again, slower and more thoroughly, then shoved a dough stick at her.

  “Eat some breakfast, woman. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

  Despite Max’s insistence, Cassie couldn’t force down more than a few spoonfuls of congee. Her nerves jumped with every sudden sound. While Max outfitted himself in the armor that befitted his new rank, she went back outside to stare at the now-melting ice in the ornamental pond.

  She was wound tight as a wire when the gongs sounded to assemble for the first phase of the celebration, a procession to Chang’an’s oldest and most holy temple. There the empress and her court would say prayers and make offerings to Buddha.

  Tomorrow the whole entourage would ride to the tomb of the first Tang emperor, the man Wu Jao had enthralled as a junior concubine, the father of her current husband. According to the published agenda, she would honor his spirit and those of his ancestors by burning offerings of pearls, jade, rich silks and precious scrolls.

  The feasting would begin the following day—in private homes, in public gathering places and most especially at the palace. Jao would host a great banquet with all her nobles in attendance. At the culmination of the feasting, the proclamation that gave her full and absolute plenipotentiary powers would be read aloud.

  The entire three days had been carefully scripted—every event, every offering. Yet Cassie couldn’t shake the uneasy sense that nature might serve up an unexpected surprise.

  Her antsy feeling intensified when she walked to the outer courtyard with Max. The scene was one of controlled chaos. She’d thought the processional to view the mounted drill was an incredible display of color and pageantry. It didn’t compare to this one.

  Every noble and lady of the court had turned out, all dressed in their glittering best. Horses with braided manes and tails stamped and tossed their heads. Chariots scraped wheels as they jostled for position. Officers shouted orders, echoed in booming voices by sergeants-at-arms, to line up troops sporting colorful banners of red and royal yellow on their tall pikes.

  As a new duke, Max would ride with the nobles. Cassie should have been relegated to the ladies’ clique, but had finagled a spot next to the imperial astrologer. She fully intended to hold Lord Sing to his promise to tell her about the bronze medallion he claimed to have seen.

  Standing on tiptoe, she searched the ranks of mounted scholars until she spotted Sing’s white beard and gleaming ruby hat button.

  “There he is.”

  “I see him.” Max signaled the attendant holding the reins of the two horses he’d purchased with his new wealth. “Let’s get you in the saddle and in line.”

  The attendant led the animals forward. Cassie’s was a sturdy chestnut bred on the fertile Three Rivers plain. Max had chosen a sleek, muscled bay for himself.

  Cassie had stepped onto a marble mounting block and was just about to put her foot in the stirrup when the massive gates to the inner courtyard opened and the royal party emerged.

  The empress led the entourage, accompanied by her sons, daughters and close relatives, all aligned strictly according to protocol. The entire party was resplendent in furs and shimmering silks sewn with pearls. Jao wore the Tang dynasty royal yellow trimmed in sable. Combs with cascading gold and jade ornaments adorned her hair. An attendant holding an umbrella suspended from a long pole rode behind her to protect her porcelain complexion from the sun.

  She was a superb horsewoman, sitting easily on her mount. It was an Akhal-Teke, one of the golden racers bred in the far deserts and highly prized for both speed and endurance. The magnificent stallion moved with a liquid gait, head high, iron-shod hooves striking against the cobbles.

  Its trappings were almost as glorious as the horse itself. The saddle cloth shimmered with gold thread. The high-pommeled saddle would be a work of art in any century. But the elaborate bridle with its fringed brow band and decorated cheek pieces sent Cassie’s heart straight into her throat.

  “Max!” she squeaked. “Look!”

  “I am. That’s one fine piece of horseflesh.”

  “Not the horse. Look at the bridle’s brow band!”

  He leaned forward, eyes narrowed against the sunlight flashing off the irregularly shaped decoration set dead center in the leather headpiece.

  “That’s it!” he muttered with fiercely restrained excitement. “Our piece of the Pleiadian medallion!”

  Chapter 11

  The cautious seldom err.

  —Confucius

  C assie practically shook with excitement. There it was! The piece of the medallion she and Max had come to find. She was sure of it! The bronze had been polished to a sheen that made it glitter like gold, but the odd shape and the markings were unmistakable.

  Her heart in her throat, she followed the empress’s progress through the outer courtyard. Jao was about to move to the head of the processional when she caught sight of Cassie and Max. With a twitch of the reins, the empress brought her mount over to where they stood.

  “So, Seer. You and Lord Sing chose this day well. The gods smile down on us.”

  “They do indeed, Most Gracious Majesty.”

  “If the sun continues to shine throughout the festivities, you shall be amply rewarded. What is your wish? Jewels? Lands? Your freedom?” Her gaze flicked to Max, standing at Cassie’s shoulder. “Or perhaps a husband to protect and shield you?”

  Whoa! That was all Cassie needed. A wedding in the seventh century before jumping back to the twenty-first.

  Would it be legal? Was her destiny intertwined with Max’s for all time, as the imperial astrologer had predicted? The thought popped into her head. Just as quickly, she shoved it out. This was no time for any concern but her mission.

  Deciding to take full advantage of the opportunity the empress had just handed her, Cassie gestured to the decoration in the center of the brow band.

  “If you would gift me with anything, Most Gracious Majesty, I would have this piece. It is most unusual.”

  Jao bent forward to see what she referred to and arched her delicately winged brows. “This is all you would ask of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is yours. I’ll have it delivered to you at the conclusion of the ceremonies.”

  Cassie managed not to whoop and dance on the mounting block, but it took some doing.

  “I regret it’s just a copy,” the empress commented as she gathered her reins in her small hands. “The original was rumored to have great magical powers.”

  Cassie’s wildly careening excitement plummeted like a dove shot through the heart by one of the imperial archers.

  “This…this is a copy?”

  “Indeed it is. Legend says the original was Emperor Qin’s personal amulet. He carried it in every battle, mounted like this one in his warhorse’s bridle. The ancients say both horse and bridle were buried in his tomb with him. I had this copy made from sketches found in an old text.”

  Jao’s dark eyes glittered with satisfaction.

  “It’s fitting, is it not, that the first woman to rule all China should adopt the amulet of the emperor who created our vast empire?”

  With a nod to Max, the empress flicked her reins and rejoined the royal entourage. A general scuffle ensued as the rest of the procession jostled into line and prepared to move out.

  Thoroughly
chagrined, Cassie used the bustle to cover her groan of dismay. “Emperor Qin? Wasn’t he the one who built the Great Wall?”

  “Portions of it,” Max confirmed grimly. “And the terra-cotta army.”

  “Qin ruled, like, two hundred BC!”

  The implications were staggering. They’d missed their mark by almost a thousand years.

  “Did Professor Carswell interpret the message on the third piece of the medallion wrong?” Cassie asked, her stomach sinking at the possibility. “Did she send us back to the wrong century, to confront the wrong emperor?”

  A muscle ticked in the side of Max’s jaw. The hand gripping their horses’ reins showed white at the knuckles.

  “I don’t know,” he replied tersely.

  “And what about the tremors I felt earlier this morning?” Desperation added an edge to Cassie’s voice. “Oh, God! Did we get that wrong, too? Was this part of China devastated by an earthquake before Jao took power into her own hands? Did she have all record of it expunged so history would look more favorably on her rule?”

  “I don’t know, dammit! But I’m—”

  The boom of a massive gong drowned him out. A chorus of deep-throated horns answered. The acrobats and tumblers began to move toward the palace gates. Pennants fluttering, the advance guard fell into ranks behind them.

  Max gripped Cassie’s elbow with his free hand and pulled her and their horses back, out of the way.

  “I’m beginning to think history may have it wrong,” he said urgently. “I’ve been to Qin’s tomb. Or at least the small portion archaeologists have excavated. The conventional wisdom is that rebels broke in and rampaged through the vast underground area housing the terra-cotta army. They smashed thousands of the clay figures and set fire to the wooden supports holding up the roof. When the supports collapsed, tons of earth crashed down, burying the army and sealing off the entrance to the rest of the tomb. But…”

  Cassie gulped. “But?”

  As the royal party rode by, the grip on her elbow tightened and Max’s gray eyes blazed with sudden certainty.

  “But I’m thinking now it could have been an earthquake, not fire, that caused the roofs to collapse. How sure are you it’s going to happen?”