by Tara Janzen
Aye, Morgan agreed. Having his bones bleaching on a temple door would have been far less painful than the “derangement” he’d suffered, but what in the hell could she know about it?
“What makes you think I was ever in the desert?”
Her gaze went to the stripe in his hair. “All rogue time-riders come out of the desert. It’s the only place on Earth with enough natural chrystaalt to lure the weir-worms in from deep space.”
Weir-worms.
Sweet Jesu.
Morgan forced himself to take a steadying breath and bent down to check the knives he kept on his boots—and he did his damnedest to ignore the trembling of his hands.
“It’s no wonder you drink to wretchedness,” she continued, and mayhaps would have gone on to list more of his faults, if not for the sound of marching feet coming from the east.
Absurdly, Morgan was relieved. In the very few minutes since he’d met Avallyn Le Severn, he’d felt his whole life start to unravel. If he could have left her, he would have without a backward glance, but he couldn’t, and he couldn’t reach Aja with the tech-jaws down and the finder blown and who knew which group of slags hoofing it down the canal between them. Aja would do his best for York. Morgan didn’t doubt it, any more than he doubted that York would tell the boy to get lost if escape began to look unlikely.
Damn. He should be with them.
“Do you want some tea?” he asked, squinting at the desert woman through the rain. He sure as hell could use a cup, and it was well past time to go home. His head was killing him, and any mellow afterglow the wine might have given him had been annihilated by the turn of events.
“Tea?” She looked at him like he was crazed, which no doubt he was for even offering.
“Aye.” He rose and pulled his carbine over his shoulder to check the load. “There’s a chai wallah at Thirty-aught-two near the East-West Ninety: Ferrar’s, home of the best chai to be had this side of the Middle Kingdom.”
“You’re so sure we’re going to get out of this canal?” She sounded skeptical at best.
“Aye.” He nodded, releasing a strip of throwing stars and casting her a hard glance. “This isn’t where I die, princess.” He didn’t know what prompted him to call her “princess,” but it seemed to fit her a hell of a lot better than priestess or death-witch.
Her face paled. “You’ve seen your death?”
“Nay,” he replied, surprised by her reaction. “I’ve lived it. Come on. It’s back to the west with us.”
~ ~ ~
In the deepest part of the night, Corvus suddenly awoke. The throne room was dark except for a lone streak of light coming from a doorway at the end of the hall, the doorway leading to Vishab’s tower.
The witch never slept.
An odd, scorched scent was on the air, and though he wondered what she was burning, he knew it wasn’t the smell of Vishab’s latest cremation that had awakened him. It was the smell of fear.
Someone else was in the hall.
“Abase yourself,” he commanded, and was rewarded with the sound of nervous footsteps. A helmed, corpulent figure approached the throne and prostrated itself on the floor.
By the faint light, Corvus saw the offered dispatch and the trembling hand that held it. He was in no mood for failure, but the very fact that another dispatch had been sent did not bode well. If the Third Guard had been successful, the thief and the dragon statue, not more messages, would be en route to Magh Dun.
He took the missive and broke the seal. A quick scan of the top few lines revealed the unfortunate news: The thief had escaped, but not without help.
Corvus read on, straightening in his great chair. His brows furrowed. Sha-shakrieg Night Watchers had come to the wretched sot’s rescue. Even more interesting, the desert wraiths had been led by their most notorious captain, Dray.
He paused in his reading and pressed a sequence of light keys recessed into the arm of his throne, calling the captain of Magh Dun’s Home Guard. His spies should have known Dray was in the Old Dominion. A raid should have been launched against Claerwen. The death-witches knew far more than he or Vishab had ever been able to torture out of them. It was their damn book that had told him about dragons destroying the darkness. Maybe without Dray to lead the defense, Corvus’s troops could have finally broken the priestess’s resistance. Then he would have had the run of their temple and the power to call the golden worms, the dragon larvae, out of the sky. He would be Lord of the Time Weir, and the desert septs would bow to him.
His blackened hand clenched into a fist. There was untapped power in the septs, those scraggly bands of desert nomads who seemed to do naught but survive and breed their damn wild boys. Something kept them alive in the Waste, some life force, and as with all other forms of power, he would have it to use for his own ends.
An answering sequence of lights flashed on the screen: The captain was on his way. Corvus keyed in another sequence to summon Vishab. Let the captain explain himself to her, Corvus thought, and returned his attention to the dispatch.
His gaze dropped quickly to the bottom of the page, and as he read, his entire body tightened with rage. He scanned the final lines again, disbelief warring with his anger.
Avallyn Le Severn had been in Racht Square. His most loathed nemesis, the woman who had turned her back on him and left him to his doom, had overcome the Lyran and saved the thief.
The dispatch crumpled in his hand, crushed within the vengeful grip of his fist. Sacred bitch, she had finally put herself within his grasp, and for that she would die.
“Vishab!” he roared.
The messenger at his feet let out a strangled cry of terror, expecting the worst—and the worst it would have been if the news had been any less grim. But with Avallyn’s involvement, the whole problem of the thief took on unprecedented proportions. Now more than ever, Corvus was convinced of the statue’s virtues. Torture would have to wait until he returned from the Old Dominion. Where the Lyran had failed, Vishab would triumph. The dragon statue would finally be his, and so would vengeance. The useless thief would be killed outright, fed to a skraelpack as a warning to anyone who would steal from the Warmonger.
But for the Lady Avallyn, death would not be so swift. No, it would not be swift at all, but night after night of endless suffering. Youngest of all the ordained priestesses, she was the one Vishab would break. She was the one who would betray her sisters and give him Claerwen.
Aye, Corvus would take his revenge not only in her death, but in her shame.
Chapter 6
Morgan slogged through the last canal leading out of the Old Dominion, keeping a north-northwest heading, making toward Pan-shei Market, toward home. Three times he and Avallyn had been forced to deviate from the course he’d set because of the sound of troops on the march, weapons clattering, voices shouting, and twice because the desert woman had smelled skraelings up ahead. By the time they pulled themselves up out of the maze, the rain had stopped and dawn was breaking across the sky.
Morgan stood at the edge of the canal where it crossed the East-West Ninety, his gaze scanning the marketplace coming to life in the streets below. Light from the rising sun spilled into the grim alleyways and over the rickety storefronts and stalls of Pan-shei, cutting through the ever-present haze that hung above the Old Dominion.
West of the market the desert began, low undulating dunes of endless sand stretching the length of the horizon. To the east the city lay quiet, a jagged skyline of broken buildings and lightning towers backlit by the coming day.
Wincing, he pressed his hand to his rib cage. It had been a hell of a night. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck, and not one of the small scant-ton chassis that roamed the quarters, but a full-size rover. His own transport had most likely been confiscated by now, meaning he’d have to deal with the cretins at the City Guard impound lot.
A soft curse sounded behind him, and he turned around.
“Buggers,” the woman said again, her tousled blond head rising out
of the canal.
“We’re clear,” he said, bending down and offering her his hand. Her fingers gripped his and he pulled her up to stand by his side, an act of chivalry that damn near killed him. He gritted his teeth and tried not to groan.
“Rotting kudges,” she muttered, dusting herself off. She shook the sides of her cloak and half a dozen of the tiny, furry animals dropped to the street, just a few of the hundreds that had been dogging her steps and clinging to her on and off for the last three hours, turning her—she feared—into a prime piece of sewer snake bait. He hadn’t told her that the reason there were so many kudges in the northern canals was because there weren’t any sewer snakes.
No, he hadn’t told her. He’d just walked on and listened as her stoic arrogance had turned into bitchy whining, and he’d grinned, his own mood lightening as hers had deteriorated.
He wasn’t grinning now, with the sunlight stabbing into his eyes and his head pounding. He watched the animals scurry back into the darkness of the canal and almost wished he could go with them. He wasn’t ready to face the day or the bounty-hunting priestess with her damned tracking bracelets.
The last kudge went over the edge, and with a weary sigh Morgan turned his attention back to the woman, making yet one more mistake in a long line of mistakes.
She stood looking out over Pan-shei, her slight form cast in profile against the rising sun, her face into the wind. Though her tattered black cloak swirled around her, the shadow raiment of a Night Watcher, she was luminous, and the sight of her sent a strange and unexpected ache right down through the center of him.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anything so beautiful, any creature so radiant—except in his memories. Her hair was bright and shining, the gold and silver strands framing a delicately curved face whose sun-warmed skin brought to mind nothing so much as a kiss, his kiss; the chance to feel her soft cheek, to inhale the green scent that had driven him crazy half the night with trying to figure out where it was coming from, and after realizing ’twas hers, with wondering how a desert woman could smell like crushed grass in a birkland glade.
A soft curse escaped him, deriding the wanderings of his mind, and he turned his attention back to the market. He felt like warmed-over hell and she looked good enough to eat—another typical encounter of his with the opposite sex of the future. In his other life, he’d been as quick as the next man to sing the praises of a maid, but the maids of old hadn’t been as dangerous as the women of the Old Dominion and its environs. There had been some deserving caution—Madron, the witch of Wydehaw, being one, and the predatory Lady D’Arbois of Wydehaw Castle being another. On the whole, though, the women he’d known in the past hadn’t made a habit of killing their mates during climax, as Lyrans were known to do, or of selling them into slavery, as York’s wife had done. Nor had they gone around armed to the teeth and hunting bounty in low-life bars as Avallyn Le Severn had been doing in Racht.
Which brought him back to the question of why. She hadn’t denied that she wanted something, only doubted that she’d banded the right man. He wasn’t so sure, after listening to her talk about desert septs and Desert Law and friggin’ weirworms.
He hazarded another glance at her. She was beautiful, aright, but in truth no less tired than he. Blue smudges marred the skin beneath her eyes, a sure sign of weariness. Her mouth was tight, her shoulders stiff, as if she was holding herself together by pure will.
She stood so very still, her attention so intensely focused on the market, he could almost feel her gaze searching the streets below, more a hunter than the prey they’d been all night. For certes she had the look of a hunter, with her lasgun holstered next to a dagger sheath on her belt and the top edge of another knife glinting out of a sheath on her left boot. Her knee-length tunic was pure camouflage, patterned in black and gray swirls like her leggings, the whole costume meant to disguise her in darkness. A pair of garnet brooches secured her cloak. Dulled by shadows in the canals, they shone blood red in the sunlight.
Her ears twitched as he stood gazing at her, and he wondered again what to make of them—so oddly pointed, like some wild creature’s.
Aye, and she was, he conceded. Wild. No tame priestess from the desert, but a hunter who had come seeking him with her Night Watchers—yet no more a hunter than he, mayhaps.
A shiver of warning ran down his spine, for all the good a warning would do. ’Twas more than a kiss he would have from her, and a more dangerous turn he could hardly imagine, but like so much of what he wanted or desired, he wasn’t likely to get her. No doubt, that was a saving grace in this instance. The wine must have finally rotted away his last shred of common sense for him to feel such a sweetly damning lust.
He looked down at his wrist and the tracking bracelet, and a slight smile twisted a corner of his mouth. He still couldn’t believe she’d banded him. Just how drunk had he been last night?
Her Night Watcher captain must be going crazy trying to find her. An acolyte of the White Ladies of Death was probably worth a small fortune on the open market, and Pan-shei was as open as they came. Slaves could be bought and sold on at least ten street corners that he knew about. Her ears alone would class her as an exotic. Given the jaded appetites of the wealthier Old Dominionites, he could probably get more for her than he could for the Sonnpur-Dzon dragon. Not that he’d be selling her off while he was still attached to her, or—hell—that he’d be selling her off at all. If he could just get rid of her before the Night Watchers found them, he’d count himself lucky.
But even as the thought crossed his mind, Morgan doubted if getting rid of her was going to be as simple as breaking the frequency code on the tracking bracelet. Her resemblance to Llynya was no coincidence. He felt that truth in his gut.
A church bell sounded in the distance, ringing clear in the rain-freshened air, calling the pious to prayer. He poured the water out of the empty slots on the munitions belt he wore diagonally across his chest, like a baldric, and checked his lasgun. He still had half a charge left.
“Come on.” He gestured toward the market, moving out. If they didn’t want to get picked up on the East-West Ninety, ’twas best not to delay. He would as soon have her tucked into his lodgings at the back of Ferrar’s chai shop before the City Guards started their patrols. With luck, Aja and York would already be home. News of the fight in Racht was bound to have reached an official ear. If his name was attached to the report, it might be best for them to leave the city for a while—and it would be best if they didn’t have to take the desert woman with them. He was counting on Aja to get him free, lock sequence or no lock sequence.
He got no farther than thirty feet before his bracelet tugged him to a stop.
God’s blood, but she tried his patience.
He turned around and found she hadn’t moved so much as an inch. “What’s the matter now? I thought we had an agreement.”
“An agreement to get out of the canals, not to go in there,”—she pointed to the market—“the biggest cesspool in the galaxy.”
Cesspool? It might not be the priestess temple complex she lived in, but he wouldn’t call Pan-shei a cesspool.
Hell, no, he called it home.
“I guess you don’t get out of the desert very much,” he said, giving her a long-suffering look as he massaged his temple. “The biggest cesspool in the galaxy is way out on Europa.” The pain in his skull had gone past headache to full-blown hangover. He needed a drink, preferably Carillion.
And the woman, damn her, was looking at him as if she had expected better of him, though he’d be damned if he thought she had the right to expect anything from him.
“And just where do you think we should go?” he asked. They had two choices, Pan-shei or the Old Dominion, and going back into the Old Dominion was out of the question. Even she must realize that.
“The desert.”
Fine, he thought. They could walk into the desert and die, and when their bones were all nicely bleached out, some priestes
s could come and tack them up on a temple wall.
“We don’t have a rover,” he said.
“No thanks to you.”
Honestly, he hadn’t thought she had the energy to argue. God knew he didn’t.
He looked up at her through what he knew were two very bloodshot eyes and agreed to her suicidal plan. “Aye, then. First tea, and then the desert.”
If his head had hurt any less and they had truly been companions, he might have been concerned at how easily the lie came to his lips. In an odd way, she reminded him of Aja, and he’d never lied to the boy. As it was, he didn’t give a damn. All he wanted was to get her to Ferrar’s, where she could have tea and he could get a wine boost, not enough to take him anywhere, just enough to take the edge off. The last thing he needed was to slip into a detox wine fever, and that was exactly where he was headed. His temperature had been rising over the last hour, and he’d suffered a couple of reality shifts in the canals, brief moments when the walls and rubble had slid off their bearings in a hallucinatory meltdown. That was the problem with drinking Carillion wine. You couldn’t stop without facing some dire consequences.
She gave him a slight nod, and he considered the deal done. Ignoring his aches and pains, he started walking. Ferrar’s wasn’t far.
Hardly mollified but too exhausted to argue the point any further, Avallyn fell in behind the thief. She was amazed that he was still on his feet. He’d been falling down drunk when she’d first seen him in Racht, and the Lyran had worked him over pretty well, yet he hadn’t faltered. For herself, she was weary beyond measure from their night-long trek. Her feet ached from scrambling over endless piles of junked metal. She’d cut herself twice, and worst of all, she smelled like a kudge.
But by the Bones, she wouldn’t stop until he dropped, which didn’t seem likely anytime soon. Her gaze flicked over him again, and she had to stifle a surge of annoyance.
In the desert, people wore loose-fitting tunics and robes. The thief’s pants hugged the lower half of his body like a second skin. Black with a thin gold stripe up each side, the supple cloth moved with every one of his loose-hipped strides, revealing far more of his body and its musculature than it concealed.