Danae’s heart clenched and she quickly put her hand on her arm. “Yes, of course.”
“Thanks.” Larissa gave her a quick hug, sniffling.
“You can see more of our son after we get home, when I up-load some more pictures.” Sasha gripped his wife’s elbow.
“Watchers? Even here?” she hissed.
“Turner? Damn right,” he retorted under his breath.
Danae’s stomach dropped out from underneath her soy latte. She’d found a little soot above the electric plug in the bathroom this morning, making last night’s scare a reality rather than a nightmare.
Alekhsiy slipped his hand into hers, giving her strength.
“We’d better be going.” Larissa looked over their heads from the step below them. “Jenny’s shaking out the banner and Feodor is pumping up his bagpipe.”
“Coward!” It felt good to tease Larissa again. “Just because you’re not marching in the Corps this year doesn’t mean you get to skulk indoors for an extra fifteen minutes.”
A smile broke across her pal’s face. “Oh yes, it does—if it means I don’t have to listen to Feodor massacre ‘Scotland the Brave’ again. Although I heard he’s finally managed to memorize the ‘Homage to the Red God.’”
Alekhsiy spluttered and choked on his chai. Then he signed himself, using a Torhtremer rune, and bowed his head in prayer.
The line of warriors shuffled forward again, like a Zemlayan millipede sauntering across the desert sands, lazily certain it could destroy anything who challenged it. It was a smaller parade than the one that had filled Atlanta’s streets less than an hour ago. In some ways, this group down in the earth’s bowels formed the kernel for that gaudy procession.
They were compressed into a single narrow corridor, supposed to be cowed by decades of administrators’ maxims. Yet they joked and aided each other to appear their best, tweaking a leg guard here or retying a gorget there to better protect a vulnerable neck. They ranged from youths fretting over their first bout to narrow-eyed veterans looking to add one more to their roster of accomplishments. They all had the same goal—to appear their best and be authorized to fight in GriffinCon’s great tournaments.
They were going to war against bureaucrats and tasteless bits of paper that sought to rob a warrior of his chi. Surely they would win, with the Red God of War’s blessing and each other’s aid.
Alekhsiy stepped to the other wall and assessed them yet again. Good men and women, by and large, certainly of character and solid fodder for an army. If he could take them back to Torhtremer . . .
His lady giggled very softly and his heart lifted. How long had it been since he’d enjoyed her? An hour? Too long, at any rate.
She shifted slightly, readjusting the paraphernalia hanging from her waist. She was his squire at this event and therefore wore the straps and belts with all of the magical pouches containing the gear he didn’t need for battle. After last night, leaving it in the room had seemed the poorest of options. Fire Wind, his axe, had been forged in dragon’s breath. Legends surrounded it, as much as the imperial armory’s trappings had when Mykhayl gave it to him. It had settled far too easily into its pouch, bespeaking the generations of magic around it—more swiftly than Ice Wolf, the sword his father had created for him. Heart’s blood had gone into that and an ocean of love—but no spellworking except that of a master smith.
Alekhsiy hadn’t been surprised that his warrior’s gear looked well on Danae’s cadet’s uniform. He had been considerably startled that it had accepted her. But it was bespelled to understand battle necessity, such as the need to match the strange materials used in this tournament. Similar pragmatism must rule its choice to hide itself against her.
“Danae!” The deep young voice rang through the hallway, utterly joyous and completely sure of its welcome.
Alekhsiy immediately, thoughtlessly, drew his dagger and whirled to face the challenger. No man, however young, would take her from him.
She was so beautiful, so strong and supple. Her elegance was so perfectly summed up by her swan neck under her intricately braided hair—clean, graceful, and yet complex.
“Hi, Colin!” Danae jabbed Alekhsiy in the ribs hard enough to be felt through unenchanted chain mail. “You sound great—and so adult,” she added sotto voce.
Ice crashed his veins and his hand shook, making it hard to sheath Finger Nipper. Somehow the gray gods of Chaos had not been watching and only Danae had noticed his folly, not his fellow warriors. Had their hours of passion so deepened her sorceress’s hold on him that he guarded her more ferociously than any white-collared lynx circled its mate?
At least he didn’t have to worry about her wanting another man’s child. Although if he thought she’d willingly bear his own, he’d happily hatch a thousand plots to destroy those condoms she always insisted on.
“Colin.” He forced himself to hold out his hand.
“Awesome.” The youth pumped it thoughtlessly hard, more interested in staring at his armor than Danae. “Your mail looks incredible without the surcoat over it. How heavy is it?”
“Enough.” Considerably heavier than it had been, since it had apparently deemed the lightness spell inadvisable for the tournament.
“What are you doing down here?” Danae queried. “Aren’t you in the youth tournament?”
“Oh yeah, but I’ve already got my papers.”
Braggart. Alekhsiy reminded himself again not to be jealous. Every warrior surmounted the different stages in his own time.
“Morning, all.” Nora strolled up. “My pushy son wants to ask you about your GED.”
“Now?” Danae’s eyebrows flew up. “And why’s that?”
“If it doesn’t bother Alek,” Colin said hastily. “I wouldn’t want to distract him before a bout.”
“No, of course not.” Danae had already filled out the paperwork for him and the practice bout with Kyle should be pure joy.
“It’s the only time I could be sure to catch you,” Colin added.
“If it’s okay with Alek, it’s fine with me. Why do you want to know? Are you thinking of leaving school?” Her usual vivid openness had changed to the steady discipline of an experienced bureaucrat, all wary eyes, thin mouth, and still hands. Why such a difference?
“To work with my dad and grandfather. There’s more than enough business now, what with the Torhtremer reproductions and all.”
Nora crossed her arms over her chest and tightly folded her lips.
“I know Mom has advanced degrees but she says you don’t. And you’re the one who became a professional ballerina. So what’s in it for me?”
Danae flinched subtly, shadows flickering through her green-gold eyes.
Alekhsiy quickly calculated the distance to the end of the line. Not soon enough. He should have followed his first instincts and gutted the assertive cockerel.
“I got serious about ballet when I was thirteen and took so many dance classes I basically forgot about high school. I was a full-time dancer by seventeen, at the company where I met your mother.” She slipped her ring out from inside her tunic and stared down the hallway, turning the heavy gold over and over.
Her voice was so soft Alekhsiy had to strain to listen.
“They had a program where you could mix ballet with school. You could come out of there with a Bachelor of Fine Arts or you could leave with a GED, no ability to even balance a checkbook, and the prospect of a broken-down body in a few years because you’d performed so much.” Her voice trailed off into pain-shadowed huskiness. “I chose dance before all else.”
“That won’t happen to me!” Colin protested.
“Want to bet?” Danae hurled back, looking him in the eyes for the first time. “Do you know how many charities specialize in helping people who are injured and out of work? Do you know how many high school dropouts are helpless and starving because they can’t read or write or handle money?”
“You can make bucks without school,” he protested. “Besides, I’ve go
t family to help.”
“Oh crap, Colin.” Nora rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes.
“That’s right—but they can disappear at a moment’s notice.” Danae’s voice lurched into heartrending pain, like the memory of tears shed for so long they’d stamped themselves into her vocal cords. “When I was twelve, my family called to say they were picking me up at dance camp. Next thing I knew, they’d been burned to death on the interstate and I had nobody.”
His poor, poor darling. Alekhsiy’s heart lurched to a stop. How could she have endured so much and still survived? His mother and younger sisters cried extravagantly at the least threat to their loved ones. But his lady was lost and utterly alone. He couldn’t imagine such darkness.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, giving her the only comfort he openly could. She leaned against him, strands of dark hair drifting against his mail like ghosts. The warriors around them had turned away slightly, giving them an illusion of privacy.
“I’m sorry,” Colin offered. “I forgot.”
“I’m luckier than most.” She shrugged and brought herself erect, tearing away a piece of his heart.
“Getting a GED was easy because I already had a very good education,” she stated brusquely, as if restating an old argument still sharp-edged by ancient grief and anger. “I figured out how to beat the system and became an emancipated minor. It wasn’t that hard to pull off, since I had no parents and was living on my own, and the trustees didn’t want the hassle of looking over my weird contracts. Plus, I had plenty of money from the insurance settlements after my folks’ deaths.”
“Trustees had a field day suing the bastards who caused the accident,” Nora muttered, her lips pulled back in a snarl.
Alekhsiy nodded to her, baring his teeth slightly in perfect agreement. Money was not enough of a penalty for him. He’d have chosen something more creative, such as boiling tar or slow poison. Still, if that was how this strange world chose to mete out justice, he’d reluctantly accept it.
“And left you alone with paperwork for family,” Nora grumbled.
Danae frowned at her.
“Hey, I’m working on my college degree. So don’t think I’ve given up on school just because I pretty much live, eat, and sleep ballet.”
“You are?” Nora gaped at her.
“It’s a bitch, but correspondence classes help. All of us kids promised Dad we’d do it, and how do you say no to a Navy fighter pilot?”
Of course, she’d be a warrior’s daughter. Alekhsiy tilted his chin a little higher and forced his thoughts away from her heart’s emptiness.
“That’s why you wear his Annapolis ring. Cool.” Colin looked like he’d found another new horizon.
“It survived Vietnam and the fire that killed my dad. It’s got gold from other family class rings and my great-grandfather’s diamond. Plus, it’s been baptized in every ocean. I figure it’ll see me through my bachelors’ degree.” Her jaw jutted stubbornly.
“I’m sure you’ll make it.” Nora hugged her.
“You’ll be a superb scholar.” Alekhsiy gave her a quick hug, laced with gentleness.
“Thanks. It’s got to be easier than writing my first story was. That one took me a dozen tries to come up with anything I liked.”
“Your first with Alekhsiy, where his lover was that temple priestess. I loved reading how she got that uptight soldier to loosen up. Yum.” Nora licked her lips.
Alekhsiy stared at Nora, then shuddered. She knew about that episode, too? How many women—and men—had read Danae’s stories, anyway? Did Nora and Larissa, perhaps even Sasha and Kyle, know everything Danae did about him? He’d always enjoyed having his little dancer share his adventures but how many strangers? And especially that moment in his life.
Bhaikhal custom dictated that every highborn male and female mastered the carnal arts, as if it was another skill such as swordplay or music. Northerners, like his clan, did not set a similar premium on its formal knowledge and he’d been too consumed by warfare—in the academy and the army itself to pay much attention. Plus, his own fastidiousness had kept him well away from camp followers and most hasty liaisons with other soldiers. But after Mykhayl had emerged as the heir, Alekhsiy’s lack of high-level carnal skills had become a vulnerability for spies to exploit. Yet once again, his little dancer had protected him with one of her most sensual and lengthy adventures. He’d greatly enjoyed flaunting himself to her—but he could cut out the eyes of anyone else who’d seen it.
“And there was the one where Alekhsiy got involved with that tavern keeper’s wife. Oh yeah.” Nora hummed a dance tune, a beatific smile floating across her face.
Alekhsiy suspected he shared a similar expression. He wouldn’t have foregone those adventures for a thousand dragon rides, even if it meant occasionally displaying himself.
“No, I visited Torhtremer in my original story,” his lady announced.
“What?” She’d traveled between worlds? Hell-born terrors sank their claws into Alekhsiy’s skin.
“Really?” asked Nora. “I never read it. What did you do?”
“I wanted to be present for the muster of the clans in the first book, to actually see and feel it. But there wasn’t much plot so I destroyed the story.”
Praise be to all the gods. The tale could not have been significant, else he would have felt its events. When he returned home, he’d sacrifice a hundred—no, a thousand baskets of the finest red and white roses on Bhaikhal’s high altars.
“I’d have liked to read it. Your writing is so vivid,” Nora mused.
“It happened the night Corinne Carson and her sister were killed in that huge condo fire. In all the panic and excitement, I forgot to tell you about it.”
“Well, that explains it.” Nora pursed her lips. “And when you say you destroyed something, you go all the way.”
“Mom, how good would my grades have to be if I wanted to attend Annapolis?”
All three adults stared at Colin.
“Superb,” answered Alekhsiy, the first to recover. If that was the academy that had trained the warrior who’d bred his lady, then only the finest need apply there.
Or here. They turned the final corner and came face to face with an open foyer, backed by a solid desk. A man and a woman, dressed in sheets of armor rather than woven links, stood on a colorful carpet. Two men, dressed in brilliant, flowing linens and silks, sat behind the desk, rapidly scribbling in what Danae had termed “laptops.”
They had finally reached GriffinCon’s marshals. Alekhsiy’s mouth went a little dry, despite years of experience in dueling.
“We’ll see you upstairs.” Nora clapped him on the arm. “Good luck; I’m sure you’ll be approved in no time.”
He tucked his conical helmet in the crook of his arm and advanced to meet his judges, hoping the spell would successfully color Ice Wolf’s edge and not take the amateurs’ safety requirement as an insult to its honor.
Boris Turner took another swig of vitaminwater and surveyed the gymnasium, his binoculars close to his hand. He could observe all of the approval bouts from the stands, although normally he wouldn’t bother.
Swords hissed and clanked against each other, accented by the crowd’s ebb and flow of conversation and applause. New sweat lightly stung the nose, like the promise of pain to come.
GriffinCon had used the standard tournament setup, including the high platform with the stupidly expensive floor he’d donated to this stuffy local college. Just another one of the little things he’d done to make sure ConComm would listen to logic for once this year. The overall conference committee had to come to its senses sometime.
Next year he might donate better seats for the gymnasium. Solo bouts on Saturday and team bouts on Sunday, with finals on Sunday night at the big arena—hell, no, he didn’t spend much time in these stands. But that didn’t mean he enjoyed squeezing his ass into a steel-and-plastic trap, either. Losing all that weight had helped but not enough. The publicity from improving ever
ybody else’s comfort might finally win him a place on ConComm, too. Prissy bastards who didn’t recognize a good argument when they hear it . . .
Dammit, he’d built his empire off good technology—whether using, creating, or selling it. He knew how to make a winning pitch, whether it took sweet words or a strong arm. He’d get GriffinCon to change its programming so others could start hearing the truth about Torhtremer, no matter what it took.
And he’d have the right seventh book written for them to read, too. The loser finally wins it all, gets the crown, and all the girls.
Boris grinned. He paid for women regularly but what would it be like having a Dragon’s Hoard at your beck and call? A hundred women just begging to do anything you want, any time you want it? And next year, when you get bored or they wear out, there’s another hundred more on the way to liven things up all over again.
Oh yeah, baby.
He replaced the bottle in his duffel bag and picked up his binoculars again. The current approval bout featured a duel between two Torhtremer personas, who were both fighting at full speed—or close to it—while their squires watched from the holding area.
He’d never thought to see Danae Livingston, the proud dancer and veteran of so many GriffinCons that ConComm sought her advice at least once a year, waiting submissively behind ropes.
She broke into applause, followed a moment later by people in the stands.
He gritted his teeth and refocused his glasses.
Harrison slid into the seat next to him.
“Well?” Boris demanded, certain nobody was close enough to listen in. The rest of his men would see to that.
“No news on what happened to the first set of bugs. The second set died this morning—”
“Exactly when the targets returned to their room after the parade?”
“Yes, sir. But we don’t know where those electronics went either.” Harrison’s voice was as carefully colorless as the rest of his appearance. It was only one of the reasons the FBI had taken so long to put him between bars. “So I can’t confirm the identity of CrystalTiger, although no other candidates have appeared.”
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