Quinton rose with slow thoughtfulness. "I… could do it," she finally said, the words anything hut a guarantee.
Collins could not afford to let it go at that. "And will you?"
"I… will." Quinton continued to study Collins. "With conditions. You take me to whoever can fix me. Korfius stays."
Though relieved Quinton had taken the bait, Collins tried to appear circumspect. "Korfius?"
"Sorry. Your partner. He stays."
Collins attempted to control his response, but he couldn't conceal the horror he felt over this proposal. "No!"
"As collateral. To assure you take me to the right place and don't try to hold me prisoner."
Collins could understand why she might need such reassurance, but he could not afford to agree to it. "Release both of us or no deal."
Quinton ran her fingers lightly over her ruined cheeks, shuddering as she did so. "I can't agree to that."
"How do I know you'll release my friend, then?"
"How do I know you won't just kill me?" Quinton shrugged. "One of us will always have an edge. That's what brought us to negotiation in the first place. Since we captured you first, I think it's only fair that we have it."
Collins did not agree but saw no benefit to arguing the point. She did have the upper hand. "Maybe you could keep me instead. Is that enough of an edge?" The words came out before Collins could consider them, and he appreciated and cursed his own courage. Zylas would do a better job of leading Quinton to Prinivere, keeping both safe, and rescuing him afterward. Collins just did not know whether or not he would survive long with his identity revealed. Longer than Zylas would. Though Collins dreaded the thought of staying, he hoped Quinton would accept his sacrifice.
"Very noble of you."
"Thanks…"
"But no."
Hope died before Collins could even savor it. "No?"
"You take me; your friend stays."
"But-"
Quinton cut him off with a wave. "That's it.
Collins knew no argument would change her mind on the matter. If he became too insistent, she might figure out the true identity of the man she now believed was Korfius. "All… right," he finally said. "But, since you get the advantage, I get one more condition."
Quinton's brows beetled, a look that might once have made her look sensuously angry. Now, it made her features appear even more homely. "What?"
Collins minced his words. To speak them directly would expose his claim to have come to see her as a lie. "You'll… talk to me. See if we're still… compatible." He gauged her expression as he spoke, pleased to find a glow coming to her ruined cheeks. "Tell me if and why you still want to stay in Barakhai and what's happened with your dragons."
Quinton stiffened. "My dragons?" she said, honing in on exactly the words Collins had tried to soften.
Damn. Collins nodded. "They're what was keeping you in Barakhai the last time we talked, remember? You're a geneticist." He reminded her of his own interest. "I'm a biologist. You were raising them, studying them, wanting to breed them eventually."
"Right." Quinton seemed to look through Collins, then her attention returned to him and she met his dark gaze with her icy blue stare. "And when I get my face back you'll… want me again?" The hardness left her eyes, replaced by a desire that seemed more grasping than sexual.
Collins approached her, winding his arms through the bars. He could not understand how the self-esteem of a woman as competent and beautiful as Carrie Quinton had been could hinge upon the interest of an undistinguished, plain-looking man like himself. Is it real, or is she bluffing as much as I am? "Come here."
Warily, the woman approached, allowing Collins to wrap his arms around her, to draw her face near his. He forced himself to keep his eyes open, to look upon the fleshy carnage he had wrought. "It's not your face I'm in love with." Nor any part of you, he added to himself, the only way he managed to force out such a heinous lie. His lips found hers, and he kissed her with all the passion he could muster. To his surprise, his young body responded even to this feigned ardor. "It doesn't matter to me if you never get restored. Looks don't matter," he repeated, "to a man in love."
Benton Collins hoped his own conscience would forgive him.
Chapter 6
THOUGH every second dragged like an hour, Benton Collins found himself outside with Carrie Quinton extraordinarily quickly. He could scarcely believe any bureaucracy could act so swiftly, yet they moved with a brisk and obedient efficiency that would startle any governing body of his world. Even so, the guards clearly disliked their duties. Each one gave Collins a narrow-eyed glare, and some whispered chilling threats against him and the partner he left behind should he fail to return Quinton in at least as good shape as he took her from them.
The day seemed too cheerful for the somberness of Collins' thoughts. The setting sun glared into his eyes and ignited chips of quartz like diamonds in the walls of the palace. The stretches of open pasture resembled a soft, emerald sea, and the animals that grazed it watched them with clear contentment. Only the horses gave them shrill, grating greetings, their ears flattened and their hooves grinding up clods of dirt. Several dogs followed them to the drawbridge, some snarling softly behind bared teeth; but none crossed the moat. At length, Collins found himself alone with Quinton and suddenly missed the animals and their hostility. At least, he did not have to carry on a dishonest conversation with them, heaping lie upon lie and hoping to remember all of them.
Quinton mirrored Collins' discomfort. A wary frown pinched her lips, and she glanced around them in every direction, as if expecting hordes of renegades to surround them at any moment. As she swung her head back and forth, the last rays of sunlight shimmered from hair as yellow and soft as corn silk. A bit behind her, ignoring the bald scars, Collins could almost imagine her as he had first seen her: a young coed with dancing blue eyes, skin like cream, high-cheeked and full-lipped, with the body of an angel. Yet, he knew, madness tainted a beauty that, like the old sayings warned, lay only skin deep. She had seemed nice enough, but her upbringing had left her with a clingy desperate need for love. He did not want to betray her again, but, at some point, he would have to do so.
Quinton spun suddenly toward Collins, her face hidden by a fluttering, translucent veil. "You have to lead."
Collins hesitated, uncertain where to take her. Likely, Prinivere had moved since he had last seen her. She did not tend to stay in any one place long, and she had a massive network of renegade helpers to keep her safe. He knew the durithrin or wild ones, the creatures of the forest, reported to a kindhearted mouse/man named Vernon, who remained staunchly loyal to the dragon. Surely, some shrew, vole, or sparrow would observe and report them. He only hoped they would send help, rather than simply watch to see what they did and where they chose to go. Time, for Zylas, was running out.
The grassland turned to forest. They remained on the cleared pathway; and, as they slipped between the trees, Quinton took Collins' hand. Her palm felt small and smooth, her fingers clammy against his. The reason for her amiable gesture escaped him, and he muddled through a thousand explanations in an instant. Is she holding on to slow any escape I might attempt? To keep her balance on uneven terrain? Is she really trying for reconciliation or playing into my own con? Or is this all just a part of her insanity?
Collins gripped Quinton's hand firmly, protectively. She seemed small and helpless; though he knew her tall, slender figure hid a ticking time bomb. Though not physically powerful, she was clever and emotionally volatile, with the force of a king and a kingdom behind her. He wished he could love her enough to marry her. She deserved someone who could look past her injuries and bond with her soul, a mate who would forever find her the object of his desire. Although she apparently believed otherwise, that man was not Benton Collins, and he doubted even the right man would look beyond ruined features he had never seen at their best. Instinctively, Collins knew he belonged with someone else, and he was beginning to believe he might know
who.
As it grew darker, Quinton took out a mag light, probably the one confiscated from Collins himself. Turning it on, she passed it to him to light their way.
"So," Quinton said suddenly, her voice startling in the otherwise silent woods. Her tone still contained a trace of hostile mistrust. "Who is this secret person who can fix my face?"
"You'll just have to wait until you meet…" Not wanting to reveal gender, he finished lamely, "… it."
Quinton pounced on the impropriety. "It?"
"I'm not giving anything away."
"No, you're not." Quinton's fingers tightened around his. "You're taking me to… it… anyway. What does it hurt to tell me now?"
Collins glanced through the trees, uncertain where to veer from the well-worn path. He wondered if the king's guards followed them stealthily through the underbrush and whether the renegades would notice and prepare for an ambush. He had escaped the only way he could conceive of and had not fully considered the danger he might inflict upon others. "It's not my right to give away anything. It's up to… it… to decide when and where to reveal… itself."
Quinton punched Collins in the shoulder with her free hand. Though clearly intended to seem playful, the gesture felt forced. "You're phenomenally weird, Ben Collins."
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Collins thought, but said only, "Thanks."
A sudden squawk shattered Collins' hearing and sent him skittering for cover, dragging Quinton with him. Collins aimed the mag light toward the source of the sound. A blue and gold macaw that clambered beak over claw from a nearby trunk, dropped cautiously to the ground, then trotted toward them with a rolling gait.
Collins watched, trying not to laugh. "Aisa?"
"Who else?" the parrot said. She glided to his shoulder, a thousand times more graceful in the air than on the ground. "Where ya goin'?"
"I'm not sure," Collins admitted, swiveling his neck to look at her and finding one steel-blue eye boring into his. "I need to take Carrie to… the… elder."
Aisa squawked again, the sound ringing through Collins' ear long after it finished. He imagined owning such a bird as a pet might guarantee eventual deafness. "Who?" She fluffed up her feathers, tossing out a spray of dandrufflike dust.
"The elder," Collins repeated, using the term Vernon and Zylas had chosen when they had conversed about Prinivere for the first time in front of him, before he knew the details and they felt they could trust him.
Aisa scratched her head with one claw, loosing more parrot dust. "Who?" she repeated.
"Who? Who?" Quinton emitted a tight laugh, and Collins hoped that meant she was beginning to trust him. "Is that a parrot or an owl?"
Aisa made an affronted squeak. "I'm a blue and gold macaw."
"Yes," Collins said soothingly, "You're a blue and gold macaw, Aisa. A parrot. But I need to find… " Though he hated to give away anything, it seemed preferable to standing here trying to explain things to a bird with only partial overlap. "… the lady."
Quinton smiled with wicked triumph. "Ah, so we're a couple of X chromosomes closer to the truth."
Aisa cocked her head toward Quinton, fixing an eye on the woman.
Collins ran a gentle finger along Aisa's head, and her attention rotated back to him. Quinton carried a magical stone the renegades had given her on her arrival in Barakhai, when they had expected her to remain on their side. It translated for her, the way Prinivere's spell did for Collins; but he doubted the genetics concept came through clearly.
"Scratch backward. Feels best. Gets the itchy stuff off the new feathers."
Collins obeyed, carefully watching for the bird's reactions. He did not want to take a chance on losing a finger to a hard, black beak built for cracking nuts. He explored the hard, plastic-like prickles of new feather sheaths against his fingertips, and the bird lowered her head, twisting sideways, to enjoy the full effects of his grooming.
"Can you lead us to the lady?" Collins asked as he stroked.
"Oh, yes." The bird slurred, though whether in response to his ministrations or his inquiry, he did not know. Her head flicked toward Quinton in a not-so-subtle gesture, though she did not seem to have the words to ask the obvious question.
Collins doubted the bird could understand the subtleties of the situation in her current form. "She'll have to go with us."
Aisa flapped and screeched, clambering up and down Collins' arm twice before shooting between the trees.
Quinton watched her disappear among the branches, targeting the parrot's path with the mag light. "Walk this way?" she guessed.
Collins perverted the old Groucho Marx joke. "If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need a helicopter." He headed in the direction the macaw had taken, following the glimpses he got of the brilliant sapphire and amber feathers amidst the duller browns and greens of the forest.
Quinton laughed out some of the horrible tension that had existed between them since their reuniting. She took Collins' arm in both her hands as they walked. "I like a man with a sense of humor, even if he is wearing a dress and tights."
She's flirting with me. Collins could scarcely believe it, and that raised suspicion. Is she playing me? Or just crazy. He ran with the change, reinforcing it with more humor. He pretended to ash a cigar, still imitating Groucho, "And I like a woman who feeds me straight lines, especially if she's wearing a tight dress." He appreciated her softening attitude toward him but worried that it might abruptly degenerate into the same expectation of a lifetime relationship as it had before. Not that I could wholly blame her. I started it this time with desperate talk of love and marriage.
They found Aisa a short distance ahead, perched on a low branch. "Hello," she said in her gravely bird voice, flapped once, then took off again into the forest.
And so it went, the bird leading Collins and Quinton between the trees, the woman seeming to lose more of her inhibitions as anticipation overcame mistrust and anger, and Collins exhausting his repertoire of one-liners. Occasionally, they lost Aisa, but she always returned to lead them deeper between the packed trunks, intertwining bushes, and scraggly overgrowth.
Collins tried to avoid the plants he recognized as skin irritants, but those became too numerous to do much more than work to keep bare skin away from them. He hoped they would find a lake or clear stream near Prinivere's current cave so he could wash the oils from his face, hands, and hair; and that she would have brought his backpack so he could change his clothes. Despite his flippancy, he felt distinctly uncomfortable in woman's face and garb, especially speckled with bruises and smeared with poison ivy. He worried about Quinton's instability and changing moods; she seemed capable of flipping from love to hate, from kindness to cruelty in an instant. At least, he counted on Aisa's meandering route to confuse Quinton and any pursuers as much as it did him. He could not have found his way back should his life depend on it, which, he realized suddenly, it very well might.
At length, they came to a rocky cliff amidst all the plants. Aisa alighted on a shelf, flapped, and screeched out, "Wait here."
Collins found a large stone and sat. Something sharp poked his behind, and he leaped back to his feet almost immediately. He looked down, only to find his leggings and the lower half of his shift covered with burrs.
"What's wrong?" Quinton followed Collins' gaze. "Ouch."
Collins looked at her linen boots and dress, similarly decorated. "I guess we have something to do while we wait."
Quinton looked at her own clothes and groaned. "Why don't we start with the ones stabbing me in the butt?"
Walking behind his companion, Collins began prying out the pointy seeds with his thumb and first finger. He found long ones with a single barb in the tip and round ones, like puffer fish, with points in every direction. The former slid out easily with a single sharp tug. The latter tended to cling and to jab painfully into his fingertips with even a light pull.
When one of those became wedged under his nail, Collins jerked back with a curse. "Ouch, d
amn it!"
Quinton twisted her head around toward him but did not inquire about his welfare.
Collins cautiously closed his teeth around the burr clinging to his finger, ripping it free but leaving the barbs deeply embedded. "I don't mind the little spears. But the caltrops really hurt."
"Spears? Caltrops?" Quinton shook her head with a sigh. "Leave it to a guy to weaponize even the most banal and benign."
"Benign, hell." Collins sucked on his sore finger. "Real caltrops may hurt more, but at least they don't leave shrapnel."
Quinton worked on the front of her clothing. "I think of them more as sewing needles and porcupines."
Collins nodded. The description seemed at least as apt. "You've got to admire their survival skills. I bet we spread their seeds over a mile."
"Just what we need. More spears and caltrops."
Collins looked at the ground, where trampled leaves and brush hid the burrs they had managed to dislodge. "You gather them up and throw them away. I'm not touching those things any more than I have to."
"Me, either." Quinton walked around Collins. "I guess it's only fair I get your back, too."
"Thanks." Collins hauled out as many burrs as he could from the front while Quinton attended his back. Believing he finally had her trust, he tried, "So, where are those little dragons anyway?"
Quinton jabbed him with a burr before removing it.
"Ow!"
"You know the deal. Healing first."
Collins could understand her reticence. "Yes, but-"
"And they may be young, but they're hardly 'little.'"
A man appeared. Thin, draped in an overlarge tunic and hose, with brown hair and a dark mustache, he wordlessly ushered the pair inside.
As Collins shut off the mag light, Quinton reached out and took it back from him.
It occurred to Collins suddenly that, if Aisa had held parrot form for at least the last hour, and that they had needed to use the mag light for even longer than that it had to he later than 10:00 P.M. Less than two hours to rescue Zylas. A wave of panic flashed through him, and all of the humor of the last few minutes seemed wasted.
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