The Vestal's Steward

by Ailx Nichols

  “Yes.”

  The sound of broken glass made him look up. One, two, three windows blew out on the second floor, and shards cascaded to the ground. Red and amber flames blazed through the openings.

  Haysi shouldn’t linger here.

  It was unwise to remain so close to a burning house, and there were additional risks. Sooner or later, someone would notice the smoke and call the fire brigade. Voqras might ping one of the cyborgs he’d left behind for an update. And then he’d be back with reinforcements.

  “Go there.” Iyatt pointed out the bushes by the gate. “If you’re able, continue to the woodland behind, and keep going. Walk through shallow streams. Lie low until things settle down.”

  “What about you? Will you join me?”

  If I make it out of here in one piece. “It’ll take a while to get all the women and Rhori to safety.”

  “I’ll wait for you.” She turned around and traipsed toward the bushes.

  There was no time to argue with her. He filled his lungs with air, held his breath, and sprinted back into the house.

  As he ran to the basement, he saw that the wood railing of the main staircase had caught fire. From the landing above came the sounds of the brutal fight between the two hive cyborgs.

  Rhori was on that landing, too.

  As long as there was a chance Rhori was alive, Iyatt was coming back for him.

  In the basement’s doorway, he crossed two women, dragging out a third one, whom they held by the underarms.

  Good. Four out now. Eight or nine still inside.

  In the basement, he spied Lippin draping one of the unmoving women over his shoulders. They acknowledged each other.

  Iyatt picked up the other woman who’d passed out.

  “Follow me!” he said to the rest.

  Two of them did. The others remained seated by the wall, unable to walk or go on hands and knees.

  Iyatt and Lippin made two more rounds until all the women were out.

  They hurried back in for Rhori, but before they could go up to the first floor, the staircase shifted with a loud screech. Its top steps collapsed. Its bottom caught fire.

  The ceiling above them began to sag, threatening to cave in at any moment.

  That was when Derren alighted next to them on the ground floor and removed his helmet. His armor was torn in multiple places. He looked battered and bruised, but whole.

  “He’s dead.” Derren glanced at the blazing fire. “We must leave now.”

  “Not without our friend!” Lippin said.

  Stepping away from him, Derren spread his mechanical wings and disappeared in the smoke.

  A moment later, he came down clumsily and let Rhori’s limp body slide off his shoulder. “You should’ve warned me organics come in cyborg size on this planet!”

  Behind Iyatt’s back, a commlet pinged. The sound was coming from the cyborg he’d fried with his blaster earlier.

  Derren spat a curse and heaved Rhori up, buckling him into a harness that he’d pulled from his chest plate.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said and flew away.

  Iyatt collected his blaster and ran to the bushes by the gate with Lippin behind him.

  Haysi was still there, taking deep breaths. One of the unconscious women lay next to her.

  Iyatt pulled a small flask from his pocket and thrust it into Haysi’s hand. “Drink. Where are the others?”

  “In the woodland, heading to their homes.” She drank greedily. “One of the women who’d fainted in the basement came around.”

  Iyatt picked up the other one from the ground.

  “It’s too late for her,” Haysi said, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  A flare-up roared into the sky, and suddenly the fire was ripping through the walls of Ultek’s house. Within seconds, it devoured them. The house swayed, a cloud of gray smoke rising over the charred structure.

  Iyatt turned to Lippin. “Run, we’ll be right behind you!”

  Lippin bolted through the gate, engulfed at once by the foggy night.

  Iyatt picked up Haysi and tore out toward the spot on the edge of the woodland where he’d left Timm’s motor vehicle.

  Twenty-Six

  It wasn’t until they entered Iyatt’s house, that Iyatt drew a proper breath.

  While Maggi smothered each of them with hugs, Iyatt took stock of how well Haysi and he had fared. She didn’t have any visible injuries. He’d take her to a healer vestal later to get help cleansing the smoke from her lungs.

  But first, she needed to wash. Both of them would need to wash so they didn’t stand out when they left the house.

  He surveyed Haysi. Tears and smudges streaked her grimy face. Her eyes were red. Her usually shiny auburn locks were matted and gray with ash.

  She’d never looked lovelier to him.

  Fighting the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her, he shifted his attention to himself. He was parched. His muscles ached from the exertion of the last few hours and from the fight with the hive cyborg. But otherwise he was fine.

  “We need to drink,” he said, ushering Haysi to the kitchen and turning back to Lippin. “You, too.”

  After they drained several glasses of water each, Haysi touched his upper arm. “You’re injured. Let me clean your wound before it gets infected.”

  He looked down at his shoulder. A deep red gash sliced his flesh. Judging by the state of his shirt, the wound had bled quite a bit, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped now.

  The cyborg’s claws. He’d forgotten all about it.

  A police siren wailed outside, then a second one. Iyatt tensed. Fortunately, the sounds grew quieter as the vehicles raced away. They were headed in the direction of Ultek’s house between Orogate and Iltaqa.

  Iyatt waited for the firemen’s bell, which came a good five minutes later. While all the cops in Orogate and Iltaqa now had level-two motor vehicles, the firemen still used horse-drawn pumpers. Boggond’s government clearly had its priorities straight.

  Lippin stepped forward. “May I wash up quickly, so that Maggi and I can go home?”

  “I’ll get you something clean to change into,” Iyatt said with a nod. “Do you mind taking Timm’s vehicle to one of his sheds in the forest? If I get a visit from the cops or the cyborgs tonight—”

  “Of course,” Lippin said.

  Thirty minutes later, Maggi and Lippin had left. To save time and hot water in the tank—or maybe for a completely different reason—Iyatt and Haysi got under the shower together.

  At first, they kept things as focused and businesslike as they’d done ever since Iyatt had heard her voice in Ultek’s basement. They soaped each other. Their touch lighter over the abrasions and bruises, they lathered, rubbed and rinsed, and repeated until all the sticky soot and dirt was gone.

  The moment Iyatt turned the water off, she melted into his embrace.

  A shiver ran through him as he felt her soft breasts against his chest, her arms around his neck. He drew her closer, listening to her heartbeat. His hands slid up and down her back.

  For a moment, they stood like that, stroking each other gently, finding solace. Then he caught her chin between his thumb and index and tipped her head up.

  Haysi was crying.

  She sniffled and smiled. “Don’t look so worried, Samurai! It’s just the tension releasing.”

  He wiped her tears with his thumbs.

  “When I thought that was it,” she said, “when I thought I was going to die in that basement, choking on the smoke, I actually felt thankful.”

  He puckered his brow.

  Her smile grew sad. “A death like that was a better option than what Ultek had in store for me.”

  “I wasn’t going to let that happen.” His face tightened.

  She pulled a funny face. “I love when you’re so determined, so sure of yourself!”

  “Haysi, I—”

  “But the truth is, you could’ve failed.”

  That was a very distinct possibil
ity, indeed.

  “I knew you’d come for me,” she said, “but I feared it would get you killed.”

  The odds were it would.

  She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t bear that thought, Iyatt. I couldn’t bear the thought that you’d die, and that I’d die without getting a chance to hold you once again, to kiss you, to tell you—”

  Suddenly, it was more than he could handle, more than his heart could hold.

  Cradling her face with both hands, he kissed her forehead, her eyes, nose, cheeks, lips, and chin. Her skin tasted of salt and of lavender soap. It tasted of Haysi.

  He couldn’t stop kissing her.

  Later, after she slipped into one of his tunics and bandaged his wound, they recounted to each other the events of the night. Iyatt shared the news about Derren.

  In his bedroom, he kneeled before Aheya’s shrine and begged the Goddess not to let Rhori die.

  Then he said his usual prayer, appealing for divine clemency for his past sins. And then he prayed some more, asking forgiveness for the one he was about to commit.

  Tonight’s experience had taught him something about himself. Yes, he wanted to be a good man, an upright man. But he wanted to make love to Haysi more than that. He wanted it more than anything. Even if it meant he’d never earn his place among the righteous and never enter Aheya’s Garden.

  When he was with Unie, abstaining was easy, almost natural. His feelings for his fiancée came from his mind and from his heart. Their bodies were secondary, barely an afterthought. He used to think that was the only way to truly love someone. The right way.

  But he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  This second love he’d been granted—because it was love in its purest form—had originated in his body. Deep in his loins, to be more exact, the day he saw Haysi dancing. He’d labeled it mindless lust at the time. Surely, it had been just that at first. But then it changed. And he changed. Perhaps more profoundly than he knew.

  By the time Iyatt blew the candle out in the shrine and slipped under the covers, Haysi was already asleep. He gathered her to him, breathing in her scent. Shortly afterward, he drifted off, too, lulled to sleep by her deep, steady breathing.

  His commlet’s insistent pinging roused him at first light. Unknown caller. Grabbing the device, he rushed from the room so it didn’t wake up Haysi.

  When he answered, the first thing Derren said to him was, “Your friend is alive, recovering in his parents’ house.”

  “May Divine Aheya be thanked!” Iyatt leaned on the brick wall and slid down, suddenly weak with relief.

  “Um… yes, let’s thank her,” Derren said. “That is, if you’re sure she exists and that she saved your pal’s ass. And yours, for that matter.”

  Iyatt smiled. “You certainly had something to do with it, too. Thank you! I owe you my life, and Rhori’s, and Haysi’s.”

  “You’re welcome.” Derren paused. “I must admit you know how to fight. Hat’s off, Samurai. In another life, I’d train with you.”

  “You can do it in this one.”

  “How is the medium doing?” Derren deflected.

  “I’ll take her to a healer for detoxing when she wakes up.”

  When she wakes up in my bed.

  Suddenly, a wave of shame washed over Iyatt. He was talking with his late fiancée’s brother. Unie had passed away only four months ago, and he’d already fallen in love with another. He felt like a traitor.

  “How did you know when to turn up at Ultek’s house?” he asked, changing the topic in his turn.

  “I’ve been here for two days, sleeping in the cyborg squadron barracks,” Derren said, “I know some of the men stationed here from before. We’ve done joint drills or assignments.” Iyatt heard him snort. “The hive cyborg world is small, and most of us ended up working for the same man.”

  “Horbell.” Iyatt knew this from Geru.

  Derren didn’t confirm or deny. “Anyway, some things about the op they shared freely, others I overheard. When I pieced it all together, the trail led me straight to Ultek’s house.”

  “But how did you know Haysi and I were in there?”

  “The truth? I didn’t.” Derren let out a dry laugh. “For someone who enjoys action, Ultek’s house sounded like a fun place to be last night. The last person I expected to find there was you.”

  “Were you going to get in touch at all?” Iyatt asked.

  “Yes, eventually.” He hesitated. “I think so.”

  “Would you like to talk with Unie again?”

  There was a silence and then a firm “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said, no, I won’t.” Derren sucked in a heavy breath. “Please tell her I can’t do what she wants me to do. I’ve signed a contract, which I intend to honor. My employer pays me handsomely. Tell her I won’t desert and unhive. And that I’m sorry if that causes her pain.”

  “But, surely, you can’t stay with them after what you did last night?” Iyatt rose to his feet and began to pace along the wall. “You left the barracks without authorization. You sabotaged Voqras’s plan. You killed one of your own!”

  “Did I? Says who? And who can prove it?”

  His reaction took Iyatt aback.

  Derren laughed. “Iyatt, I’d been smart enough to pack a spare uniform when I traveled to Hente. I know you won’t report me, nor will your friends. In other words, it doesn’t matter what I did last night. What matters is that I don’t get caught.”

  “What about Voqras’s cameras?”

  “I deactivated them as soon as I got to the house.” He chuckled again. “Which is good news for you, too, Samurai. Looks like you and your friends will get away with your misdeeds, just like me.”

  “Do you realize what your choice means, Derren? Do you intend to keep working for a tyrant? A war-mongering criminal?”

  “Watch your tongue,” Derren said with mock affront. “He’s a governor.”

  “He’s a growing threat to the peace in the galaxy. How can you choose to stay on his side?”

  There was a pause before Derren spoke. “I don’t blame you for your choices, Samurai. Don’t judge me for mine. Thraton, over.”

  Iyatt turned his commlet off. When he returned to the bedroom, Haysi was by the window, dressed in his tunic.

  He went up to her.

  She turned around, looking… different. Looking very much like—

  “It’s Unie,” she said. “I asked Haysi if I could use her body one last time, and she kindly let me.”

  Iyatt held her gaze. “I just had Derren on the commlet. He won’t talk to you again. And he won’t quit his mercenary job. I’m so sorry, Unie!”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  He frowned. “I failed you. I was unable to put him on the right path.”

  “That was never your task.” She smiled Unie’s gentle smile. “I wouldn’t have asked the impossible of you.”

  The lines on his forehead smoothed.

  “All I wanted was a chance to talk to him, at least once, and for you to talk to him,” Unie said. “You succeeded on both accounts.”

  “Except, it’s the result that matters,” he said.

  “Very true.”

  He gave her a perplexed look.

  “We planted the seed, Iyatt,” she said. “Something clicked in him, something’s been set in motion in his mind and in his heart.”

  “You think?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “How can you be so sure? Can you read his mind?”

  “No.”

  “Then how?”

  “Because I can leave now, my darling,” she said. “The invisible chains that held me here in Middleworld, are gone. My soul is free to fly home.”

  “Home?”

  “To Aheya’s Garden.”

  Oh.

  She’d sounded so happy, so thrilled about her destination that the sadness squeezing Iyatt’s chest receded. Drawing in a deep breath, he let Unie’s joy
pour into his soul. He nearly swayed from the power of it.

  “Thank you, my valiant knight,” she said.

  A pang of guilt shot through him. He had to come clean about his feelings for Haysi.

  Unie smiled brightly. “She’s worthy of you.”

  “So, you know.”

  “Of course, I do, and I’m happy for you.”

  She looked happy, too.

  Unie spoke again. “Take good care of her, Iyatt Martenn.”

  “I will,” he said. “With Aheya as my witness, I will.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Haysi returned to her body. While she acclimated, Iyatt held her and considered what he would do next.

  He would tell her about his conversation with Unie. Then he’d take her to the Healers’ hospital. He’d leave her in the vestals’ care for a few days until the dust settled, and he was sure it was safe for her to come out of hiding. And then he’d declare his feelings and let her do with them what she would.

  It was a good plan.

  Taking her hand, he led her to the bed and asked her to sit down.

  She did.

  He pushed her hair from her face. “There are so many things I need to tell you that I don’t know where to begin.”

  “I was there when you talked with Unie,” Haysi said. “She’d asked that I stick around.”

  He searched her face for signs of what she thought.

  Haysi opened her mouth, preparing to say something, then closed it again. Iyatt tilted his head to one side, waiting.

  She drew in a breath, then lifted herself off the bed, gathered the hem of the tunic she wore and pulled it off.

  She was naked underneath.

  He studied her gorgeous body in the early morning light sifting in through the curtains. How far they’d traveled from the day he’d first feasted his eyes on her form in the Lanterns show hall!

  That night, he’d fought not to stare. He’d been embarrassed by the way his body reacted to her. This morning, he looked his fill.

  When her eyes darted to the steep bulge in his slacks, he didn’t recoil.

  Let her see it. Let her know what she does to me.

  He didn’t mind. In fact, he wanted her to know. He wanted her to be aware of the power she held over him.