FIERCE: Sixteen Authors of Fantasy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “We’ll say hello to him later, dear. They are talking to a counselor.” Molly patted her arm and led her to a stand of drinks like a goat with a leash.

  They hadn’t been there two heartbeats before Shanti heard, “Hello.”

  Sterling was standing to her right, straight faced and grim, as usual, this time with his hand held out, palm up. He was a handsome man, if a girl didn’t have a sense of humor.

  Shanti stared at his hand in confusion. He didn’t have the Gift, why would he request a mind link?

  “Shake his hand, dear,” Molly whispered.

  “It’s okay.” Sterling lowered his hand to his side. “That is just our custom. How do you greet someone in your land?” His stare was flat and intense, his complete focus on the conversation. Shanti tried not to squirm under the heavy gaze, strangely wanting to punch him.

  “We offer a slight bow. If we are great friends or feel so inclined, we’ll touch, as you just did, but that represents a deeper intimacy. However, since I’m in your city, I won’t be rude.” She extended her hand, palm up.

  “The woman has palm down, dear,” Molly murmured.

  Shanti flipped her hand. Without hesitation, gaze locked with hers in a flat stare, Sterling raised his hand, palm up, until it met Shanti’s. Warm and calloused—if her eyes were closed, she’d know he was good with a bow and decent with a sword. Which was strange, since he was excellent with a bow and more than decent with a sword. He must’ve taken pains to soften his hands. Interesting.

  The touch lingered for a second, then he pulled away. “You know that I have been trying to find your trainings.”

  “You know that I’ve been trying to evade.”

  He smiled slightly. “Yes. Not at first—I thought I was unlucky. Then you started having them when it was most convenient for me. Always a step ahead. It was not a subtle clue.”

  Shanti laughed. “It was good training for us. Is good training, I should say.”

  “They’re getting better.”

  “That’s funny, I would’ve said the same about you.”

  He laughed this time. “No. I’m learning the signs. I thought I was learning faster than you could teach. Then you sent me on a ghost trail.”

  “That was Leilius.”

  Sterling glanced over Shanti’s shoulder then back to her. “I have left my date. I should get back to her. Before I do, I would just like to say… I wrongly judged you. I see that you’re not like… I see that you mean well, and are what you say.”

  She couldn’t repay the sentiment. He was exactly how she’d judged.

  “Have a good evening.” He gave her a deep bow, his interpretation of her custom, and walked away smoothly.

  Without a moment for reflection, Molly took her by the arm and led her across the room. Why? Who could say. They picked a new place to stand seemingly at random, that spot just as good as the first. The next spot was, too. If Molly wanted exercise, they could have walked to the ball in the first place.

  “How long do we have to stay?” Shanti asked as they followed a slowly moving crowd around the room like cattle.

  “At least until the dancing. Do you want something to drink besides water?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  For the next couple dozen minutes Molly chatted, introduced her to a handful of people who stared, and walked around the room slowly. It was boring and awful and Shanti just wanted to go home. Until she saw Jerrol. He was with a woman who had many gems on her neck, all different colors, and a bright purple dress. She was pretty and he was beautiful. Shanti wanted him if only to make love while looking into those earth brown eyes, so like Romie’s she got a tight feeling in her gut every time she saw him.

  “Shanti.”

  And that ruined it.

  She turned to Cayan, standing tall and broad, no willowy woman in sight. In fact, Molly had wandered away as well. Just great.

  “Hi Cayan.”

  His gaze connected with hers, giving her a similar stare as Sterling had, but not as strangely flat. He raised his hand slowly, palm up. It wasn’t a good idea, but then, people were watching—he probably wanted to look normal.

  After a brief hesitation she touched her palm to his, holding her mind in check and ready to battle. Instead of his torrent, though, she got a pleasant vibration of power, available but not used. In addition, that strange spicy feeling unfurled deep in her stomach, sizzling up her ribcage and fizzing through her limbs. She asked him about the latter.

  “The spicy feeling—yes. I like it. Is it not normal?”

  “I don’t know. No one has ever mentioned it to me if it is. You’re doing well with your control.”

  “I’ve been practicing religiously.”

  “Good.”

  They broke contact, Cayan letting his focus flick to her dress and back. “Your dress is exquisite. It is risque but covers everything. Artistic but simple. Cut beautifully. I think the dressmakers are already trying to fabricate it. Many women are jealous.”

  “Jealous of a dress. Silly.”

  “Jealous of the enchanting woman, not the dress she is in.”

  “Enchanting—spell casting?”

  Cayan’s eyes twinkled. “If you please.”

  Shanti turned away to look at the crowd laughing and chatting, most of the party often glancing toward her and the Captain. “I’ve never heard witches talked of in a positive way. I think the jealousy is of your date. She is the staple of beauty, is she not?”

  Cayan’s gaze was still on her. “She is, yes. How are your nightmares? Lucius tells me you have them every night.” To her scathing glance he said, “Your walls are thin and your screams loud.”

  The Captain had stuck her in a tiny, one bedroom house, more aptly called a hut, attached to Lucius’ much larger house at the back of the city. She had been given the illusion of privacy while Lucius’ duty of spying was made easy.

  “Enough about me, let’s talk about me…” Shanti articulated in a voice so dry it was amazing one of the nearby candles didn’t light it on fire. She looked away.

  “Sterling spoke to you earlier. What did he say?” the Captain asked.

  “Aren’t real nosey, are you?”

  “Not real nosey, no.”

  Her glare promised eternal pain. He answered by smiling, his dimples transforming his face into something just shy of perfection. Why did she want to punch everyone she talked to tonight?

  “My clothes are easy to move in, and yours aren’t. There isn’t much you can do,” the Captain said easily, reading her mind. Or her face.

  “Isn’t there?” Like a needled child, wanting to get even, she gathered power and let it blossom, the air around them crackling with the electricity of it.

  His smile disappeared immediately. He grabbed her arm with a quick hand, turning her body toward the wall, probably trying to hide her glowing eyes from onlookers. Her power leapt to him, mingled and spread, vibrating between his body and hers, traveling across their skin like a fizzling plague, igniting little pulses that pooled into their bodies. The spicy feeling became a pleasing scent. His own power rose, unasked, calling to her, desperate to open out and join, barely kept at bay by his massive strength of will.

  The seconds ticked away, chaotic power surging around them, threatening to break free. Shanti desperately forced it down, trying to collapse it, using her life’s training to try and tuck it away. She struggled against Cayan’s answering attraction, the power so intense it seemed to draw from deep in the earth, quaking the air around them with his raw power.

  “He informed me of his amendment to his previous judgments,” Shanti said in a strained voice, trying to control her breathing, jerking her arm away from his bare hand, then grabbing his arm, encased in fabric, to turn him to the wall, too. His eyes glowed more now than they ever had.

  “I don’t know that I can hold it, Shanti,” Cayan whispered in a tension-filled voice.

  “Step outside. Look at the sky, and envision throwing your mind up to the nearest
star. If that isn’t enough, envision roaring with the power. Just make sure to direct it up or we’ll all get a blast. I’ll find Lucius and send him out in case you throw all your life’s energy with it.”

  He nodded, his whole body tight, and walked swiftly to the door. Their power ripped in half, fizzling in his wake. Shanti clutched her own power tightly, used to managing its surges, although struggling with the amount now battering against her. She spotted Lucius across the room, speaking to a pretty girl with lust-filled eyes. Still struggling for control, though grappling with less of a burden now that Cayan wasn’t coaxing her power higher, she walked gracefully, attempting to fit in. But when older men edged away warily, she realized her grace was another man’s nightmare. So she settled for a fast walk and a lazy hand on Lucius’ arm.

  Lucius turned to her with a question in his eyes.

  “The Captain needs you outside. Quickly. Possibly Sterling, too. But only you two. You might need to… carry the conversation…”

  Lucius barely gave a parting word to the woman he had been leaning into a moment before, leaving Shanti with the impression that they were either very close, or she wasn’t all that important to him. One would understand, and the other didn’t matter. And since she had nothing else to do, she figured she might as well meddle.

  “Hello, I’m Shanti.” She couldn’t hide the strain in her voice, wondering when this flux would die down.

  The woman, sweet and delicate, tore her gaze from Lucius’ back and met Shanti’s. She smiled in a practiced way. “Yes, hi. Lucius mentioned you. You are foreign.”

  There was no movement toward hand touching. Possibly only men and women shook? A glance at Molly told Shanti that the older woman was irritated, but that didn’t help much.

  “I am foreign, yes, that’s right. Did you come with Lucius?”

  “No. We are friendly, but I am just getting to know him.”

  “Ah. Well, he should be ba—“

  A burst of power rocked her body, making currents in her blood and wiring her jaw shut. She reached for the wall and just barely found it before toppling. Molly was there in a minute, straightening her. Asking if she was all right. Shanti heard a ripple of nervous laughter around the room, everyone having felt something bizarre with no explanation.

  “I’m okay,” Shanti managed, her voice shaky and her body starting an answering growl. Power started to build on its own, reaching away from her body, thrashing against her ironclad self-control. It was reaching toward Cayan. It was reaching toward its mate. The little mouse had been right.

  Blood boiled, bubbling up her spine and infusing her with an elation, the equal to which she had never before felt. She stumbled outside, Molly trying to cover for her. Once there she broke away and ran, not knowing what her body was doing, not understanding what this power was, or how to control it. Her dress tore down the sides, her hair flew from her back. She pushed faster, trying to run it off, feeling the night embrace her, feeling like a wild animal on the hunt.

  She made it to the park and kept going until she was at the wall. Flipping off her sandals and scraping all available skin, she was up and over and running again, trying to overcome the feeling. Trying to outsprint it. Trying to get to a safe distance where she could figure out a way to extinguish it.

  She felt the minds of sentries around her, watching, in their trees, protecting the people, wondering why this half clothed, bloody woman was running. She felt an arrow nock. She didn’t know how she knew—it was an action, not an emotion, but she did. They probably thought she was trying to escape. She stopped and knelt, grabbing each mind with ease, the power bubbling, needing action.

  Using a trick she’d learned from the nasty little mouse, she cut out the function of their minds. Not dead, just unconscious. A sleeping spell of sorts, like a coma. One sentry fell and she hoped he’d be okay. Following her own advice, feeling ripped in half, she looked up to the sky, and ROARED.

  It all went black.

  Chapter XXIX

  SANDERS OPENED HIS EYES SLOWLY. His head pounded. The last thing he remembered was a swarm of little guys descending on his trade party. He’d planned for that, of course. He hadn’t planned on the feeling of needles prickling his eyes. That had hurt. Real bad. He’d tried to keep fighting, but fighting three guys when you’re nearly blind wasn’t an easy chore. And now he knew.

  He hated that that foreign girl had been right. She’d probably insist on rescuing him just to rub it in his face.

  “You are awake.”

  “Yes, that is exactly the accent I was expecting to hear,” Sanders said, not bothering to sit up. He lay on cold, hard stone in near darkness. The only light came from one torch on the opposite wall. Being that it was a dungeon, there wasn’t a ton of natural lighting. “Did I piss myself, or is that smell just an added attraction of his lovely little bed and breakfast?”

  “I am told you are the leader of this outfit.”

  “Yup.”

  A soft scrap sounded somewhere to the right, beyond the bars. “I am not planning to kill you. I simply need to know some information.”

  “You might as well just say ‘the shoe’s on the other foot’.”

  “The shoe on the foot?”

  Sanders snorted in a self-deprecating sort of way. “Never mind. What did you want to know?”

  “Would you like some food?”

  “Easy ones first, huh? Food would be great. Unless it’s poisoned. Then no thanks.”

  The gloom was dank and smelt musty, the space he was imprisoned in barely larger than his outstretched body. Men shifted at the door, keeping watch.

  Well, he hurt too bad to escape anyway, so before the torture started he might as well just take a little nap.

  Chapter XXX

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY THEY even gave you your own place. You always end up in mine.”

  Shanti was in the familiar hospital room with the familiar nightgown that tangled her legs and gave her nightmares of people tackling her. And, of course, the same dry witted doctor who thought lecturing her would do some good. He’d made it clear he didn’t care about her sleeping preferences.

  “Did they find me outside the wall or did I stumble in somehow?” Shanti asked as she wiped the sleep from her eyes.

  “Same old story. The Captain miraculously found you even though Molly had nearly the whole town looking, then brought you in, yelled for everyone to drop everything and see to the foreign girl who can’t stand on her own two feet for longer than ten minutes, and left with a promise to return. Well, promise and threat are synonymous.”

  “He was okay?”

  “Actually, no. But that might be the first time you’ve asked. Finally starting to think of someone other than yourself?” The doctor stopped putting his items into a leather bag for a moment as he looked at Shanti. “Ah, the permanent scowl must mean no. Dare to dream. Oh well. To answer your question, the Captain could barely stand. He apparently walked out of the ball fine but didn’t return. He wouldn’t let me see to him, though, so I have no idea what ails him. Though it seems you do. Care to enlighten?”

  “I don’t make a habit of messing around in the Captain’s business.”

  “Hmmm, I see a shocking lack of proof to that statement. Regardless, I must leave you. I have five sentries to care for. It seems they all fell asleep at their posts. One even fell out of his tree. Amazingly, he didn’t wake up upon hitting the ground. Suspiciously, they happened to be in your vicinity at the time. How strange. But the Captain says there is no correlation so, as the lowly working man, I must defer.”

  “I didn’t catch half of what you said, but you seem bitter.”

  The doctor stopped halfway out of his crouch and gave Shanti a flat look intended to portray his suffering at her presence. She smiled in response.

  “I used to have an easy life,” he said whimsically, picking up his things. “Colds, muscle strains, the occasional accident with a weapon. Now I have unexplained mental weakness, everyone has holes in them,
broken limbs—“

  Still mumbling, the doctor left the room. A second after that, still in her nightgown, Shanti left behind him. Her head was fine, her body felt great, and that bloody power was starting to build again. She needed to start working with the larger flow or move out of the city. Only two choices at the moment.

  As she neared her small bedroom, she breathed in the rich smell of living forest. Her living quarters, which were barely big enough to turn around in, were an add-on to Lucius’ much larger residence. Currently he either wasn’t home or had someone over because his front door was closed. It was too bad—she wanted to ask him about Cayan’s release of power. She knew Lucius would be honest with her.

  Halfway through her door she froze, sucking in a familiar masculine smell she hadn’t realized she recognized. Lying on her bed with one arm thrown over his face and the other resting on his flat stomach was none other than Cayan. He was in his normal blue uniform but his shoes were off and set neatly beside the bed. His large feet hung slightly off the end.

  “What are you doing here?” Her words sounded like a hasty release of breath.

  He lifted his arm away, revealing his clear blue eyes with their dark blue rim surrounded by a tired red. Seeing her, he sat up slowly, moving as though he was a hundred years old. “I needed a place to rest without disturbance and without being in a hospital room.”

  “What about Lucius?”

  “He’s entertaining a young lady. And he judges. Then lectures.”

  Having the city’s hub in her room without the proper control over her power was bordering on disastrous. Plus…what about privacy? She didn’t need much, nor did she have many possessions, but having someone lying in her bed who wasn’t a lover was a bit…awkward. Her personal things, such as they were, were out in the open. He needed to know a few things about her, sure, but those were historical in nature so as to arm himself and his city with knowledge of what would come. There was absolutely no need for him to know the color of her undergarments, or how she liked her weapons stowed, or… how sometimes she wasn’t the most tidy of people. That stuff was embarrassing and bordering on intimate. It was stuff to share with people close to you, not a city leader, handsome army Captain, and serious pain in the ass.