“None, but the assurances came from our own generals—” Selene cut herself off, realizing the tricky territory she had stumbled into.
“You will turn around and go back the way you came, and you will do it now. And your lieges will pay reparation for the harm done, and all our treaties will have to be renegotiated.”
Selene stared at her. The repercussions seemed only now to be sinking in.
“Can at least my troops cross back into Favre?” Selene asked.
“Where did you come in from?” Susa asked.
Selene paused, as if unsure whether to say.
“They came in from Harven,” Garek said. He pointed to the mountains. “From a camp up in the Range.”
“And how did you get to that camp?” Susa asked.
Selene glanced at Laman.
“The Favre troops came into Kadmine, marched north with us on exercises, and then we entered Harven from the far north and worked our way down through the Dartalian Range on the Harven side.” Laman's gaze didn't waver.
“That would have taken, what, a full month?” Susa asked.
They said nothing.
“If I find out Favre and Kadmine used this corridor to get into Harven, before using it to come back again, there will be more fines.” Susa lifted her hands. “And now, turn your zanir around and leave.”
“You're being unreasonable.” Calvin moved his zanir forward a step or two. “Let us pass through to Favre. It'll be faster.”
Of course, if they had to turn around and go back to Harven, it would take them at least another week to make their way into West Lathor, and they would have to do it through the inhospitable mountains, rather than the valleys of Favre. There was no way they wanted to turn around.
“I'm being unreasonable?” Susa crossed her arms over her chest. “You invade my state, and call me unreasonable?”
“We are not turning around.” Calvin made a chopping motion with his hand. “And it doesn't seem as if you can stop us. We'll leave, but it will be south, through the valleys, and we will pay whatever reparations the council decides.”
“You'll pay,” Susa agreed. “But you will not go south. I have an army gathered in the Corridor already to stop you. Do you think the foreign commander of another state's army can give orders to a liege on her own soil?”
Calvin seemed to blink, as if he had forgotten who he was speaking to. “I apologize for any offense, but we need to go south, and we will. As fast as we can.”
“No.” Susa stepped forward. “Be gone.” She pointed behind them, in the direction they'd come.
Garek wasn't sure what Calvin planned to do, whether it was to strike her down, or simply bump past her, but he surged his zanir forward, straight at her, and Garek reached out with his Change, and took the air from his lungs.
The Harven commander lifted his hand to his throat in a panicked, jerky movement, gasping, and fell off his mount as he clawed at his throat.
Dix walked up to him, skirting him as he flailed about, and her gaze lifted, and met Garek's. She gave a nod.
Then she lifted her sword and swung it down against his neck.
“You are here to declare war on Dartalia?” she asked Laman and Selene. She flicked her sword up, dripping with blood, as she spoke.
They both backed their zanir away. Garek could see the shock on their faces, the trembling of their hands on their reins.
“No. Calvin was too focused--” Laman must have suddenly remembered why it might not be a good idea to say what Calvin had been focused on. He stopped mid-sentence. His gaze went beyond the sky craft, toward the south.
It was starting to sink in that they were not going to get their easy run into West Lathor. And that far from it being a surprise, West Lathor already knew they were coming.
Selene sent a quick, nervous glance toward Aidan, then back down to Calvin's body. She swallowed. “What happened to him? Why was he choking like that?” Her voice was a little off-pitch.
Dix gave her a cold smile. “He attacked my liege. That's what happened to him.”
“Do I have to tell you again?” Susa asked them, her eyes on them, not the body of their colleague. She stepped forward. “Go. Now.”
There was a moment of silence, and then they wheeled their zanir around. They reached the other three officers at a walk, but by the time they were halfway back to their troops, they were at full gallop.
Chapter 16
There was a fine, arched spray of blood on Dix's cheek. It stood out on her pale skin, and made the blue of her eyes even brighter.
She was in sharp contrast to her liege. They strode together toward Garek in perfect step--Susa with her dark skin and her brown hair and eyes a foil to her golden-haired, pale-faced general, and it was clear there existed between them a rapport that needed few words.
“I would like us to have that same understanding between us.” Aidan spoke quietly in Garek's ear as the two women reached the ramp at the back of the sky craft and stopped to look behind them.
Susa's palace lay glowing softly in the early evening light, windows lit with warm golden lamps. Sixty guards emerged from one side of the building in tight-knit units of ten.
Adding them to the twenty already securing the Corridor would not stop a determined army of three states, but Susa wanted a better show of force.
“They will turn and go back,” Aidan said to her.
“What makes you say that?” Dix asked.
“Calvin's death brought home to them that they are not on their own ground. That they are committing a crime by any standard of the laws of Illy, and that there are further repercussions to pushing on. They are also aware that they have either been lied to or given incorrect information, because I don't think they were lying when they said they believed you'd given your permission. They're wondering now if they're going to be sacrificed afterward in whatever apology their lieges make to you. That you will be told they were acting without orders.”
“I agree, but I think Selene and Laman will think about it for a bit first.” Garek motioned to the guards gathered behind their liege, and they began to walk cautiously up the ramp. “They'll spend tonight huddled in their tents, arguing, and tomorrow, they'll pack up and go.” He looked at the guards standing uncomfortably against one wall of the sky craft. “We can fly low over them on the way to drop these troops off in the Corridor. It might remind them that we are not as impotent as they think.”
“You think they'll understand it's us, not the sky raiders?” Dix looked thoughtful.
“Selene and Laman will at least get a little fright, and it will focus their thoughts.”
“And if they don't turn. If they choose to forge ahead and make for the Corridor?” Susa looked at her guards.
“Then we'll fight,” Dix told her. She sounded quite satisfied with the idea, and certainly, none of the guards looked unhappy, either.
Susa exchanged a look with Dix, and what she saw there must have convinced her, because she gave a sharp nod. “So be it. I will contact the Council again, and call them to me. Garek, I know you cannot say when you will have a chance to return this way, but if you can come, I will be grateful for news, and to share my news with you.”
“We'll try,” Garek told her, and walked into the pilot's chamber to start the sky craft engines, leaving Aidan to take a more formal leave, liege to liege.
Night had fallen, and he still had far to go before he returned to Taya.
“You are very worried.” Ness put a hand on Taya's arm, interrupting her pacing.
Darkness had fallen a long time ago.
Garek must have encountered some trouble, there could be no question about that. The only question was whether he'd managed to get out of that trouble or not.
At her look, Ness dropped her hand.
Taya sighed. This wasn't Ness's fault. “How is Damin?”
“He'll be all right. Last time I checked, he was asleep in the hut. I'm glad you refused to go with the Iron Guard. I don't think he'd hav
e been able to march today.” She looked around the deserted camp. “I'm glad to be rid of them.”
Taya hugged herself. “I can't say the same. They were stolen as children. They have a right to look for justice, and they're not even seeking it for themselves--they're trying to help those coming after them. I have to respect that.” She bent and threw another log on the fire, the only one lighting the strangely forlorn camp.
She stirred the flames with a long stick and looked over at Ness.
“You'll have to work with them when we get back to Juli. It's best we put what happened here aside and move forward.”
Ness's lips thinned, and Taya guessed it would take her a while to forgive and forget. Damin's injury wasn't too bad, but Ness had been angrier than he was about it, not to mention the way they'd held Aidan.
She hoped the rest of the guard at Juli would be more welcoming. Vent would be, she knew that.
He'd get down on his knees and kiss General Hanson's boots in gratitude to have her back.
She poked at the fire with the stick again, and then everything in her soared at the sound of a sky craft overhead.
She spun, jumped a log, and was on her way to the river before it had even passed over, but she stopped when it came in low, turned just beyond her sight over the trees and came back in.
There were no lights on it, and it was hard to see in the darkness, but the engine noise told her it had landed on the flat area beside the river in front of her, not in the water itself like usual.
A light, tingling sense of worry ran down her arms.
“He can see there's only one fire,” Ness said. “He probably wants to know what's going on before he does anything else.”
She relaxed. Of course.
She moved forward, and took two steps before she remembered she had her knives on her hips. She would have to set them in their water bath before she got too close to the sky craft.
She turned back, and at Ness's frown, took out the knives and wiggled them in the air in explanation.
Ness nodded, and passed her, jogging with a spring in her step toward the craft.
As Taya got to the fire, a soft spill of light behind her told her the pilot's door had opened.
She ran the last few steps to the boxes laid out beside the fire and slid the knives into the correct one.
She rose up and turned back, but the light from the open door of the sky craft was gone, and apart from the low, red glow of the fire behind her, it was absolutely dark. Clouds obscured even Shadow itself tonight, and she strained her eyes to see what was going on.
There was no conversation, and she thought Ness would at least be chatting to someone by now. She took a few steps forward.
“Ness?”
A light suddenly blinded her, coming not from the sky craft, but from ground level. Too bright, too clear, to be from Barit.
Her heart spiked.
Sky raiders.
She shaded her eyes, protecting them, her hands going to her hips, closing over nothing.
She had just put her knives away.
With a hiss, a sky raider was in front of her. She only saw his boots and his legs to his knees, but then the light attached to his suit pointed downward, and at last she could look up.
He had Ness in his grip, but she seemed strangely floppy. Her eyes were aware, frantic, even, but her body lolled in his arms, and Taya finally noticed the little device the sky raider held near her head.
She knew what she was looking at.
It could shoot out the dreaded white lightning. It could kill.
She crossed her arms in front of her, gripping her sleeves. “What do you want?” It came out as more of a whisper than a challenge.
“Where is the yrintyh?” The hiss of his voice chilled her, the light from his bright torch reflecting off the ground and illuminating the underside of his helmet and throwing strange shadows over Ness's face.
“I don't know what yrin... what that is.”
He jerked Ness in his arms. “I will hurt her. We scanned and we saw two pieces of it, close together. And then when we landed, they disappeared. You are hiding them from us.” He shook Ness again. “Where are they?”
The knives.
Somehow they had seen the shadow ore knives from the air and come down for them. And then she'd stored them in their box full of water, and they couldn't see them anymore.
“I'll show you.” She walked a few steps backward and then turned, heading for the fire, thinking through her options as fast as she could. Her fingers worked at the thin sliver of the shadow ore needle threaded into her sleeve. She pulled it almost completely out, and then crouched beside the boxes.
The spears were in two of them, the knives, her sword and the sharp-edged circles that hung from her jacket in another, along with the few arrowheads Quardi had made her.
The knives were smaller, easier to throw, but the danger here was the white lightning. He could turn that device on her as easily as he could use it on Ness, and the spears could form a barrier and protect her.
She had used them to block white lightning on the Endless Escarpment and they had shielded her.
She reached for the lid on one of the spear boxes and lifted it. The fire was to her right, and her back was to it, her body throwing a shadow over the box. She hoped he wouldn't see what she was doing until it was too late.
She called her Change, and lifted the spears, lining all six up in front of her.
As they rose up, she worked the last bit of the needle in her sleeve loose and held it between trembling fingers. She looked over her shoulder, as if checking to see if he had followed her.
He was holding Ness at an angle, her head in the crook of his arm. He was open from the chest upward.
She turned, bringing the spears with her, and aimed the needle at where the helmet met the neck of his suit, sending it with force into the thick material.
The sky raider reacted immediately.
He almost threw Ness away from him, lifting his white lightning device with one hand, trying to pull the needle out with the other.
The device spat white lightning at her protective fence of spears. It hit the spears and danced across them, running up and down and then fizzing out.
She started moving toward him.
He shot at her again and again, and then, in panic, turned and ran back toward the sky craft. He tripped over something and fell, rolled to his feet and ran again.
Taya sped up after him.
Her boot glanced off something on the ground but she ignored it, pushing the spears ahead of her.
She rammed them into his back, holding them there for a moment and then pulling them back to a protective barrier again.
He fell a second time, twisting and jerking, and this time, it wasn't because he'd tripped. He was suffocating in his suit. The shadow ore had destroyed it.
She skirted him, kicking the white lightning device away from his hand, and kept moving toward the sky craft, heart hammering so hard she could barely hear the engines over the thudding in her ears.
She drew the spears closer to her, and when white lightning lanced out of the sky craft itself, she wasn't surprised.
She smelled a strange, metallic odor as it flashed out, and heard the spit and fizz of it crawling over her spears.
She ran toward it faster.
If she could reach it, if she could use the spears as a shield but still touch them to the craft, maybe . . .
The sky craft rose straight up, climbing so high, so fast, when she looked up, she couldn't tell where it was.
She stood, watching, for a long time. Trying to get her breathing under control.
When at last she did, there wasn't a sound to be heard, except for the chuckle and splash of the stream and the sighing of the trees.
The sky raider was silent.
She didn't want to look at him, but she forced herself to.
While she was running at his ship, he'd gotten off his helmet. She could see from the way he
lay he had convulsed as he breathed the air of a planet he should never have stepped foot on without permission.
From the way he lay, the light on his suit shone a path toward the fire, and she edged around him and headed toward it to get to Ness.
“Taya, what's happening? Was that Garek?”
Damin's call from the hut almost frightened her into a scream.
She blew out a breath, shaking her head at herself. “No. An attack. Sky raiders.” She looked up at the sky again, but the sky was silent.
“An attack?” His hushed horror forced her forward.
“They hurt Ness, but I chased them off. One of them is dead.” She jogged to the fire, crouching down beside Ness. She lay exactly where she'd been thrown, on her side, one arm above her head, the other resting on her stomach.
Taya gently moved her to her back, and looked into eyes that were clearly aware, frightened, and angry.
“They're gone. And the one that did this to you is dead.”
Ness blinked her eyes in acknowledgment.
“Just relax. It'll wear off.” Taya smoothed Ness's hair off her forehead, keeping her expression calm. She didn't know what had been done to Ness, but she didn't think Ness had been able to blink earlier, so she was already improving.
She rose up and walked over to the hut. Damin had crawled to the doorway, and he used the doorframe to help him stand.
“Can you pass me a pallet? I can't carry her to the hut, and neither can you with that injury, but we can roll her onto a mattress so she can sleep by the fire.”
Damin leaned in and grabbed two, one for Taya, one for Ness. “What did they do to Ness?”
“I don't know.” She looked back at the fireplace, and then turned to him, keeping her voice low. “She can't move, but she seems aware of what I'm saying so I think she can hear and see. It will hopefully wear off, like the effects of white lightning.”
Damin took the first step down, favoring his side. “What did you do to them?” He was looking at her with speculation in his eyes. “I didn't understand what I was seeing at first, but that sky raider was running away from you. And when you charged the sky craft, it flew away. Like they were afraid of you.”
Shadow Warrior (Sky Raiders Book 3) Page 11