"I have."
"And what have you to say?"
"I may say that I am Kou Lunai of the clan Lunai. I am Toryn ninja, servant only to Lord Devlyn and no other." He tilted his head to the side, a curious gleam in his eye. Ashlyn knew that he was expecting her to introduce herself as well.
"I am Scorned," she said slowly, trying to remember the proper etiquette for the situation, "and I am of no people. I seek to gain knowledge of Lord Devlyn's reasoning."
"His Lordship's reason for waging war, you mean," Kou said.
"Yes."
"Are you Toryn?"
She hesitated. "I . . . was."
"Then I will share his reasons with you in hopes of gaining your alliance."
She sighed, glad that he was making this easier. "Do not compromise your oath on my behalf."
"I will not. I may say that Lord Devlyn was merely a boy when the power of stanes was discovered. The DEMON army drained the magic from our world, and began to drain the sun soon afterwards. After the war was over, Lord Li revived our city. When we did not resist, Toryn was scarcely affected by this super-power known as the DEMON army, but had Lord Li's daughter not assassinated Lord Angelo and saved the sun, our way of life would have been destroyed forever."
"Lord Li's daughter?" Ashlyn repeated, swallowing her laughter. He made it sound as if she had defeated Lord Angelo and saved the world on her own.
"Yes, peace be with her soul. I may say that she lost her life shortly after, continuing to fight for the good of Toryn."
Strange, how distorted the story sounded so far.
"But now another super-power rises. They are called the Free Lands Democracy," Kou said, serious despite the overall ridiculousness of his material. "Lord Devlyn knows that if he ignores FLD as Lord Li chose to ignore Lord Angelo, war may be brought to our city a second time. He seeks to prevent the establishment of worldwide domination by President Jackson."
He pronounced FLD as “flood,” just like Jackson did. Ashlyn still couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the nickname, but it was pretty commonplace now.
"I see." Ashlyn stared down at her hands, weighing the scales in her mind. As twisted as Kou's story sounded, he had a point. If Skye and the rest of her friends had the means to keep the entire Toryn army trapped on their island, then what was to stop them from also obliterating every other army on the face of the planet?
Power could be a good thing in the right hands, but in the wrong hands it was lethal. She had already seen that with Lord Angelo.
She stood, picking up the hira shuriken. "I thank you for your speakings, Kou of Lunai. I will see that you are not - not . . . not treated dishonorably," she finished, uncomfortable with saying anything else. She couldn't exactly promise that he wouldn't be thrown in jail for the rest of his life.
"I am pleased to have answered your questions, Scorned Elder." He nodded to her but did not rise - meaning that he didn't believe her story of being one of the Scorned, a Toryn who had somehow disagreed with the current Lord or Lady's doctrine and had decided to leave the island, forfeiting identity and all blood ties.
Well, she wasn't going to break her back trying to make him believe a lie. Ashlyn nodded curtly and walked away.
The scent of red-tinged earth greeted her as she walked down the exit ramp from the airship. Her step faltered, the familiar smell bringing back memories of their journeys before, so long ago. The first time she had seen the sheer cliffs surrounding the tribal village, she had stopped and gawked openly, thinking that maybe, just maybe Toryn had been like this once.
Everything about Cosmea was instinctive, unpretentious . . . primal. It was the salt of the planet, the flavored whisper of the wind. There were no tourist traps, no fluffed-up warriors to relay tall tales to the constant stream of visitors. It was simply living beings communing with the earth, studying its history and struggling to keep it alive.
"I better get a room with a darn bed in it or I'm crashing in the ship," Aaron said grumpily, pushing past Ashlyn, dragging her away from her thoughts. "I ain't sleepin' on no friggin’ mat this time."
She couldn't help but grin. Same old Aaron. He would never be happy unless he was on his beloved airship, despite its stained linens and rickety bunks. Restlyn had sworn up and down that morning that she could feel the outline of a skeleton through her sagging mattress, but nobody had mustered the courage to go and look.
Ashlyn personally had suffered no trouble sleeping, but then she was used to camping out on lumpy ground, surrounded by unfamiliar sights and sounds. And although sleeping on top of a skeleton wasn't something she'd tried yet, she didn't imagine it would be so very different than rolling over and nearly impaling herself on a tent stake and/or a shuriken.
Ah, the joys of solitude. Little things like that became such a big deal when you had nothing else to occupy your thoughts.
Shifting her saddlebags to the opposite shoulder, Ashlyn skipped up the steps to her room at the Inn. She was pretty sure that she'd have to share with Restlyn, but that didn't bother her too much. Except for the other girl's smelly old boots, there wasn't much Ashlyn didn't like about her childhood friend, and she'd much rather bunk with the dark-haired martial artist than try to sleep in the same room as one of the others.
Like Aaron. Gods, his snoring was awful. She could hear it through the walls even in the ship. It was like a strange combination of a beaver gnawing on wood and a rat being tortured with a hot poker, and it was enough to keep her wide awake even on her sleepiest nights.
And then . . . Skye! UGH. Nightmare roomie number two. He probably spent hours in front of the mirror trying to make the spikes of his hair fall just so.
Ashlyn didn't pay attention to her surroundings as she pushed open the door to her room - first door in front of the staircase, just like old times - and tossed the saddlebags on the first bed before flopping down next to them. Idly she waved a sneaker in the air, reaching up with two fingers and trying to untie the shoelace.
"Lady Li?" a tentative voice broke into her thoughts. Recognizing the accent immediately, Ashlyn bolted upright.
"Yes - not me! - what?" she exclaimed in a rush, jumbling her impulsive responses together into a single sentence and pretty much sounding like an idiot.
A dark-haired, almond-eyed man who looked very close to her own age stood in the doorway. As she stared at him, open-mouthed, his face lit up like a paper lamp.
"It is you - I had hardly dared to hope," he said fervently in Toryn, stepping into the room and dropping to one knee. "I am honored to look upon your face again, Lady Li. Lord Devlyn sends his regards."
Ashlyn squeaked out a reply, her vocal cords nearly frozen in shock - "His regards?"
"Yes. My companions and I were dispatched to locate you on the possibility that you were still alive," the young man said. He stared at her blissfully, the clueless gleam in his eyes making Ashlyn extremely uncomfortable. "Lord Devlyn will be overjoyed to hear that you are well."
"Overjoyed?" She sounded like a parrot but she couldn't stop herself.
"I will immediately notify the other members of my search party, and we will make arrangements to have you transported back to Toryn. Your father searched for you for years."
"My . . . " Ashlyn trailed off, continued hesitantly, "My father?"
"He believed you to be dead, Lady Li. But that is no matter; every Toryn in the city will welcome you back to our noble land with open arms. I mustn't keep you - time is of the essence. Lord Devlyn gave explicit orders for me and my companions to bring you to him. He wishes to establish you as a co-Leader so that the Li bloodline may remain intact."
This was happening so fast.
Ashlyn couldn't think straight.
What was he saying?
"I will meet you here in three days’ time. Dusk will be easiest for you to slip away unnoticed," the man said, taking no notice of her confusion. "Until then, Lady."
She could not respond, the shock rendering her brain incapable of simple thought. As s
he watched dumbly, the man turned and walked away, brushing past Drake Lockhart, who was standing at the head of the staircase.
Staring at her.
Her first urge was to say, You won't believe what just happened.
But then she remembered that this was Drake, and that she hated him, and she also remembered what Skye had said earlier. She had virtually no idea which side she wanted to be fighting for.
She didn't have to tell Drake anything . . . at least not yet. The entire conversation had been in Toryn, so he probably hadn't understood a word of it anyway.
"Drake," she acknowledged him quietly, standing and pushing the door shut, cutting herself and her thoughts off from the rest of the world.
Chapter 5
Found Out
“Eeuuuch," Ashlyn said, wrinkling her nose at the dusty book Aik set in front of her. "That's disgusting. How can you put that in your mouth?"
He fixed her with a gray-eyed stare that would have been enough to turn Lord Angelo himself into stone. Ashlyn knew better, however, and she wasn't fooled for a moment. The wolf's gentle nature was apparent even in his most aggressive battles.
His race was non-confrontational, despite the persecution and violence they had suffered for centuries at the hands of humans. Through their war with Lord Angelo and the quest to save the sun, Aik had maintained his cool attitude, fighting only when necessary, killing only when there was no other option. He was a warrior of peace.
So naturally Ashlyn felt totally safe sticking her tongue out at him. Which she now did. With relish.
He ignored the childish gesture and padded silently back into the stacks to resume his search for more disgustingly filthy old books.
Eyeing the leather-bound tome disdainfully, Ashlyn flipped it open with the tip of a fingernail, not wanting to touch any of the nasty bacteria that might have accumulated on its yellowed pages.
A STUDY OF THE TORYN CULTURE
by Nanka Grulich
Hmmph. Not a Toryn name. How much could one foreign chick figure out about the ancient traditions of Toryn? Probably not much. Ashlyn glanced lower on the page, studying the table of contents and looking for something that might be helpful in her quest for information.
Chapter 1: Initiation into the Tribe
Initiation? Tribe? Ashlyn snorted gracelessly. Unless this girl had somehow squirmed into the affections of a specific clan lord, initiation was pretty much impossible. This whole book was probably a total crock. She flipped to that chapter and skimmed the first page, noting words like traditional acceptance ceremony, sacred speaking words and probationary trial period.
Eh. These were all things that the Lunai and other eastern clans embraced, but not the Li bloodline. Both she and her father were of the belief that if you weren't born a Toryn, then you would never be a Toryn.
She turned back to the table of contents.
Chapter 2: Learning the Status of Tribesmen
Oh man. There was no way she was going to last through this yawner. "This one's useless," she announced, slamming the book shut with a loud thump. A cloud of dust rose unceremoniously in front of her, and Ashlyn coughed. "I'm gonna go get a drink of water," she said, hoping that Aik would be able to hear her above his muttering.
Okay, so she'd somehow been wrangled into researching moldy old books with Aik. That wouldn't have been so bad in itself, but she'd been stuck in that smelly room for what seemed like hours already, and she wasn’t going to have any time to get ready for the Landslide Festival opening ceremonies tonight. It was a three-month festival that only came around once every ten years, and this time, it was being hosted in Cosmea.
Yeah, she was gonna be the leader of Toryn, but probably only for a week or two until they found someone better. That didn't mean she had to spend all her free time poking her nose in old tribal customs and boring herself to death. And Ashlyn would rather fight off a dozen of the angry alligator-like monsters that prowled the Cosmea borders than show up bleary-eyed and unfashionable to the Festival.
A girl had her limits, after all.
And all this researching hadn't afforded Ashlyn any time to ponder over what the strange man had said to her earlier at the Inn. As much as Skye irritated her, she knew his intentions were always honorable, and she also knew that there would have to be one heck of a good reason for him to join in on a war. He hadn't even bothered to pick sides in the fight against Lord Angelo until he knew that there was no other option.
But Devlyn offering her co-Leadership of Toryn? That didn't sound like the plan of a madman bent on world domination. It sounded more like someone who was in over his head and wanted some assistance in straightening the mess out. If Ashlyn could get in as co-Leader, at least temporarily, then this war wouldn't have to take place at all. She wanted that more than anything . . . but she wasn't entirely sure about this man she'd only just met.
After edging out of the library and climbing down the ladder leading up to Aik’s old house, Ashlyn jogged easily down the stairs, glad that all her fighting and training had kept her in shape well enough to navigate the endless climbing at Cosmea. She ducked into the small rooms around the weapon shop and continued, hardly stopping to wave at the owner as she stepped outside again.
It was there that she paused, peering over at the Eternal Flame with renewed interest, wondering why the hell Drake Lockhart would be sitting in front of it, staring dully into the flames while the rest of FLD helped the natives to prepare for the Festival.
Well, the staring dully part was pretty much a given. After all, Drake was about as interesting as a pile of pony dung. But Ashlyn's curiosity won out - maybe he'd had a fight with Trace, or maybe he was actually enjoying his solitude, which meant she had no problem heading down the stairs and over to where he was sitting.
"Hiya, Drake," she said snidely, plopping down next to him and using one hand to shield her eyes from the sun. "How's it goin'?"
"Have you already tired of researching with Aik?" he replied, evading her question with all the subtlety of a punch in the nose.
"Duh. He may be fifty-something years old, but I'm only twenty-three, and I'm pretty sure I have no business sticking my nose into a book that's at least twice my age." She pulled one knee up, propping her elbow on it as she stared openly at Drake.
Deep breath. Wow. He may have been a bastard, but she'd never get tired of looking at him. His scarlet eyes seemed to hold secrets that no one would ever uncover.
"So it's probably been a while since you've been back here to see the Eternal Flame, huh?"
He nodded. The flame reflections danced across the sunlit, angular planes of his face, shards of light upon light, as he glanced at her. "I have had no desire to travel since Lord Angelo‘s defeat."
She waited for a moment, wondering if he would continue, but in true Drake form, the cryptic sentence was all he was saying. It was hard to stay mad at Drake in the flesh, she realized, and wondered just how dangerous it would be to stay around him this time and have to say goodbye again afterwards.
"I know what you mean," she said finally. "I really wanted to settle down, too, find a place where I could just . . . relax for a while. Take the time to find out what I want to do with my life, who I want to be."
Ashlyn sighed, drawing her knee up closer so she could brace her chin against the heel of her newly-healed hand. "At least you've found peace, right? And you're what, eternally twenty-eight? That means I can hope to figure out my life sometime in the next four years, if you're any example to go by."
"I'm not," he said.
"Not what?"
"An example to go by," he said patiently. "I've done some things I'm not proud of."
"Oh." She paused, deliberating. He was expecting her to say something about his past, which even after all this time he obviously still hadn't come to terms with. But Ashlyn wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of sympathy.
"Yeah, I'm definitely not going to look to you for fashion advice, that's for sure. The vampire guise is kind of
freaky, or at least it was for me until I got to know you. Maybe you should think about changing your look or something. You might be scaring off potential customers at your weapon shop."
Expecting at least half a smile, Ashlyn deliberately chose not to acknowledge what she thought he was really talking about - his years as one of Lord Angelo‘s Spartan assassins, his affair with an Angel, Lord Angelo‘s discovery of the betrayal…and more recently, the years he spent pining in a coffin after he thought he had killed his own lover, the Angel named Loritta.
Ashlyn was one of the few that didn't feel sorry for Drake and never had, and although it might have seemed callous, she suspected that eventually he would appreciate her flippant attitude towards his somewhat freakish past.
Her ridiculous ramble got what she'd been looking for. Drake threw her one of his rare grins, more genuine than anything she'd seen before because she knew it was real, and as always, it was like dawn breaking on his face. Ashlyn grinned back, pleased with herself.
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