Hot Zone

by Cindy Dees

  “You may approach, white woman.”

  Tessa’s steps faltered. She hadn’t intended to stop and wait for permission to approach. Good thing the queen had granted it before Tessa insulted her.

  Now what was she supposed to do? She did not want to commit a serious etiquette faux pas with this woman.

  Artemesia gestured to a low bench beside her. “Sit.”

  Grateful for the instruction, Tessa sank down onto the hard surface, which placed her in a position of having to look up at the queen. Close up, the woman was even more beautiful. Her dark eyes were large and faintly up-slanted, her mouth sensuously full, her skin golden and flawless.

  “What is your name?”

  “Tessa of Marconi, Your Highness.”

  “From whence do you come?”

  “My home is a year’s journey or more to the north and west of here, far into the unconquered lands of the barbarians.”

  “And how is it you speak our tongue, then?”

  She obviously couldn’t tell the queen that, in setting up a time jump, Professor Carswell managed to infuse the process with what she called “Intent,” resulting in the time traveler absorbing details of the location, including language, customs and culture, even knowledge of common plants and animals.

  She looked up. Artemisia had turned away from the mirror a servant held up for her, and was staring at her expectantly. Tessa answered hastily, “Is not the Persian Empire the greatest in all the world? Even in the untamed lands, we have heard of you and study your ways.”

  Artemesia nodded, as if the fact was self-evident. She turned to one of her maids and snapped, “Where is my pearl brooch? If you lost it, you clumsy girl, I shall have you whipped.”

  The servant paled, trembling. Tessa closed her eyes quickly. Pearls. A brooch. Warm emanations of water, with a bit of metal undertone. It ought to be immediately evident where the piece was. Yet, she had to struggle to get even the fuzziest of readings on it. What in the world was going on with her powers?

  “Ten lashes—”

  Tessa interrupted the queen quickly. “Perhaps if she looks under those cushions in the corner, your maid will find the brooch.”

  Artemesia’s brows flew together thunderously. But she waved a hand, gesturing for the maid to do as Tessa had suggested. Quickly, the panicked girl fell upon the pile of pillows, digging through it frantically. “Here it is!” she cried, holding up a large, round pin encrusted with pearls of various colors, creating a flower motif.

  “How did you do that?” Artemesia demanded of Tessa.

  Crap. Crap, crap, crap. “Just a lucky guess,” she replied meekly.

  The queen eyed her entirely too speculatively for Tessa’s taste. “Why are you here? Do you seek to capture the eye of the emperor?”

  “Heavens, no!” she exclaimed.

  Artemesia looked her up and down. “Properly garbed and appointed, you could catch his eye, mayhap. You are certainly strange and beautiful enough. Yet you answered without hesitation that you seek this not. So I ask again. Why are you here?”

  Because a group of scientists from twenty-five hundred years in the future is trying to find the pieces of a puzzle that will earn mankind entry into the galactic community and gain us protection against the Centaurian Federation, which is apparently deeply unfriendly to Earth. “I am lost, Your Highness. Shipwrecked by a great storm.”

  “The same storm that sank so many of our ships, no doubt,” Artemesia said bitterly. “I told them to build vessels that were less top-heavy, but would they listen to me, the fools? Not one of my own ships sank.”

  “You are wise, Your Highness.”

  “’Tis no feat to appear brilliant when you are surrounded by idiots.”

  “Or by men,” Tessa quipped without thinking.

  Artemesia glanced over at her, startled. Then toward the man snoring in her bed. And then burst out laughing, loudly enough to make him stir in his sleep. “Walk with me.” The queen rose, her bearing regal.

  Tessa berated herself fiercely. She had to corral her tongue and think before she spoke, or she was going to get herself into serious trouble!

  Relieved to have dodged disaster so far, she followed Artemesia out into a garden. The sound of the army was louder here, but the sweet scent of jasmine hung thick in the air and a breeze cooled them under the shade trees.

  They walked for nearly an hour, while servitors read letters to the queen and passed along various requests and problems for her to deal with. A new sail was needed for one of her ships. Drunken soldiers from Halicarnassus had gotten into a fight with some other satrap’s soldiers and were duly fined. Lengths of cloth had arrived from a merchant in Jerusalem and were in need of distribution to various servitors. Offerings for a temple had to be chosen. And tax income was reported. Lots of that.

  Artemesia handled it all with careless efficiency. Her management style was rather more autocratic than Tessa’s, but two millenia and the democratic form of government separated them. The queen completely ignored her while conducting her business.

  Tessa wasn’t quite sure why she was out here trekking around and around the walled garden in the woman’s wake, but had no idea how to take her leave without offending the queen.

  “How do you plan to proceed from here?” Artemesia asked her suddenly.

  Tessa started. She’d been absently watching a bee fly from blossom to blossom on a vine while she tried with no luck to sense the medallion. “I suppose I shall seek a caravan headed toward my home.”

  “No caravans pass by here. All who can flee before the army of Xerxes do so, for it is worse than any swarm of locusts, stripping everything in its path bare to feed itself.”

  Tessa shrugged. “I will find something. A trader’s ship, perhaps.”

  Artemesia tapped a front tooth with a long, buffed fingernail. “Xerxes upon occasion sends envoys to far-flung places. Mayhap you could arrange passage in the retinue of one.”

  Tessa nodded. “An excellent suggestion, Your Majesty.” Was this all an elaborate ploy to get a potential rival out of the court?

  “Artemesia!” a male voice called out. The baritone was compelling as it vibrated deep in Tessa’s gut. A hypnotic sound of pure machismo.

  The queen’s eyes went limpid, then seductive, then calculating in the blink of any eye. “Hippoclides,” she breathed.

  Forgetting Tessa instantly and entirely, the queen whirled and hurried back toward her bedchamber, almost as if mesmerized.

  Wow. That guy must rock in the sack. Tessa turned to take a peek at the Greek general who held an imperious queen at his beck and call.

  He stood on the steps, a powerful-looking man with a toga draped carelessly around his large frame. Artemesia rushed up to him and the two embraced, kissing with a fire that would burn a lesser building down around them. The man clasped Artemesia’s behind, hauling her up against him while she tore his toga off his shoulder. They were half-naked before they reached the doorway.

  Tessa looked around the walled garden in dismay. How was she supposed to get out of here? The only exit was through the queen’s bedroom.

  Malah appeared from out of nowhere. “Come with me, my lady. Your interview is over.”

  Is that what that was? An interview? Bemused, Tessa followed the servant, oh, joy, back into the bedchamber. Artemesia and her lover were going at it like a pair possessed, and Tessa averted her gaze. But the slap of flesh on flesh, Artemesia’s cries of ecstasy and the man’s grunts were self-explanatory.

  Tessa breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief as she slipped, unnoticed, out of the chamber.

  And ran straight into an immovable wall of muscle.

  A thoroughly annoyed voice muttered, “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you. We need to talk.”

  She closed her eyes in chagrin. Rustam.

  Four

  “What in the high god’s name were you doing with Artemesia?” Rustam demanded under his breath, taking her none too gently by the arm. He waved of
f Malah with his free hand, and Tessa was dismayed to see the servant scuttle away.

  She shook off his grip, or at least tried to. Unsuccessfully. “I have business to take care of, Rustam. Let me go. I’m not your plaything to drag around.”

  “I will make you my plaything if I wish,” he muttered direly as he hauled her outside the temple and into the street.

  The promise in his voice stole her breath away. “Where are we going?” she demanded.

  “Some place private. To talk.”

  “Is there any privacy in the middle of a million-man army?”

  “’Tis closer to three hundred thousand. Maybe five hundred thousand if you count servants, artisans and other hangers-on.”

  Well. That answered one of history’s great questions. Historians had debated forever whether Herodotus’s report of the million-man army was a gross exaggeration or not. Too bad Tessa would never be able to tell modern military historians the true figure.

  She half-ran to keep up with Rustam as he propelled her through the streets of the Greek city and out into the sea of tents. It was a matter of pride not to ask him to slow down. Besides, she was in good enough shape to keep up with his long strides. The U.S. Army saw to that.

  The men swarming around her looked rough. Mean. Eyed her in a way that made her want to crowd close against Rustam’s side. Wow. These steely, scarred men made the highly competent soldiers she served with back home seem like pampered sissies. Of course, these warriors had already survived a grueling march all the way from Central Asia and several major battles.

  She and Rustam walked for more than a mile before the tents gave way to long rows of paddocks filled with elephants, then camels, and finally, horses. Rustam held his free hand out, and horses lined up by the dozens along the fences to nuzzle at his palm.

  He made small sounds under his breath, and the animals arched their necks and nickered back. He was good with equines. Great with them, in fact. Of course, it was probably a required skill for macho warriors of this time period.

  A rocky outcropping rose in front of them, and what had to be Mount Oeta loomed, blue and forbidding, in the distance. Rustam’s pace never slowed as he stormed up a narrow, winding path, apparently assuming she would follow along like an obedient dog.

  Finally, she groused, “Slow down, already. I’ve got flimsy sandals on.”

  He glanced down at her feet, which were dusty and scratched, then bent quickly and picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder.

  “Hey! Put me down!” She beat on his back to no avail. The man was a rock. A big, muscular, overwhelmingly male rock. Something in her gut went hot and liquid. Oh, for crying out loud. She did not melt around macho jerks.

  The macho jerk in question stopped all of a sudden and dumped her in an unceremonious heap on the ground.

  “Ouch!” She glared up at him. “You are such a…I could really learn to dislike you.”

  “You lie,” he replied smoothly.

  “I do not—”

  He cut her off. “You want me. I can smell it.”

  “Smell…? Excuse me?”

  “Desire hangs on your skin like the flower petals you crushed in your fingers this morning.”

  Whoa. He had a great sense of smell. “Okay, Tarzan. You dragged me up here on top of this rock to talk. So talk.”

  “Tarzan?” His eyebrows drew together.

  “Another character out of a story from my home.”

  “You know too many stories.”

  “And you’re still a…never mind.”

  He held a hand down to her. Were she not hopelessly entangled in her skirts, she would have ignored it. But given the circumstances, she reluctantly grasped it and let him lift her easily to her feet.

  He didn’t release her hand when she was vertical, though. He pulled her uncomfortably close to his chest and glared down at her. “You still want me.”

  She didn’t deign to reply. She tugged at her hand, and he let it go. When he said nothing, she snapped, “What do you want?”

  “You.”

  She gulped. Managed to say glibly, “Since that’s not happening anytime soon, what else do you want?”

  “What do you seek in this place?”

  Interesting—and alarming—that he assumed she was looking for something. “I merely seek a way home.”

  “Don’t we all?” he muttered with surprising bitterness. He glanced at her again. “Give me your hand.”

  “You just had it. And besides, it’s mine.”

  “Woman, you are as prickly as yon cactus. And more contrary, I vow.” He gestured toward a prickly pear clinging to the poor soil.

  She shrugged. “You’re the one who hauled me up here.”

  He turned away to gaze at the distant mountains. “Two days’ march from here lies the road to Athens. And the pass at Thermopylae. It is a highly defensible position, and with every hour the Greeks can delay Xerxes there, the more time they will have to prepare Athens for his assault. Know you what will happen when Xerxes’s army comes to the pass?”

  Of course she knew. Three hundred Spartans, led by their king, Leonidas, and helped by a handful of Thebans and Thespians, would make a heroic and ultimately suicidal stand in the pass.

  They would die to the last man, but they would buy the populace of Athens enough time to evacuate the city and avoid wholesale slaughter, thereby saving the Greek civilization and ensuring its influence on mankind for millennia to come.

  The battle and the Spartans’ stand still resonated through history as one of the greatest acts of heroism ever accomplished.

  “I’m no soldier,” she replied, “I have no idea what will happen at Thermopylae.”

  He glanced down at her, perplexed. “Why do I hear untruth in your voice? Surely in your home women are not warriors?”

  She forced a laugh. “The weaker sex? Why, we can barely lift a sword or shield, let alone wield both in battle.”

  How in the heck had he heard untruth in her voice? If he was so perceptive, she might as well stop talking to him altogether. No way was she going to get through a conversation of any length in this place without lies, and lots of them.

  “Thermopylae is a good place for the Greeks to make a stand. They will cost Xerxes many men and rob his army of its swagger.”

  He sounded as if he already knew the outcome of the battle. He must be well versed in military strategy. “Will you fight in the battle?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Artemesia will not hear of it. I am her personal sorcerer.”

  “She would keep an able-bodied warrior out of the fight to do parlor tricks at parties?” The military officer in Tessa was offended at the idea.

  He laughed gently. “’Tis for the best. I have no wish to write history.”

  She knew the feeling. “How soon will Xerxes march for Thermopylae?”

  He shrugged. “A few days. A week, maybe. His men are almost whipped up to a sufficient pitch of battle fever.”

  The sun was beating down mercilessly and Tessa feared for her fair skin. “Unless you wish to see me turn as red as a…pomegranate…I need to get out of this sun.”

  He reached out to rub the pad of his thumb lightly across her cheekbone. “Indeed, you are a creature of snow and ice, far too fair for this clime.”

  She really wished her breath would quit going all wobbly like that every time he touched her.

  He continued in a husky murmur, “Is your heart likewise carved of ice?” He moved nearer, his dark eyes ablaze. “Nay. I think not. I think you but hide from the fire within. You fear it.”

  “I fear nothing,” she retorted.

  His mouth curved up almost cruelly and his eyes went as black as sin. “Maybe you should.”

  His hand slipped behind her neck, under her hair, and slowly drew her toward him. He was too big and strong to bother fighting with. He would just toss her over his shoulder or pin her with a wrestling move.

  But by way of passive resistance, she kept her eyes open,
staring up at him. Disconcertingly, he stared back as their mouths drew close. Sparks flew between them—of challenge, of friction, of incendiary attraction.

  She commented dryly, “Let me guess. This is the part where you kiss me senseless, and I’m supposed to swoon with desire for you and give in to whatever you want.”

  His lips curved in a sinful smile. “Yes,” he murmured. “It is.”

  Okay, so give the man brownie points for honesty. And for making her knees go weak, dammit.

  He closed the last few inches between them. Their lips touched.

  He groaned under his breath, and her knees nearly buckled under her. It was all there again. The driving need, the overwhelming pull between them, the tingling electricity racing across her skin.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she actually thought she saw colored lights dancing around them. Last night hadn’t been an anomaly.

  She was in serious trouble, here.

  Surprisingly, it was Rustam who broke away first, panting like a racehorse, a fine sheen of perspiration glistening across his bronze skin. “You seduce me as easily as a courtesan giving a green lad his first kiss.”

  Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, an irregular flutter that was totally unlike her. “I think you’ve got that backward,” she managed to retort.

  Their gazes locked, startled. Mutually alarmed, even. She had all kinds of logical reasons to avoid this man. But darned if she didn’t want more of that electricity zinging between them.

  “We need to talk,” he rasped.

  “About what?” she asked reluctantly.

  “The court. You are as a lamb to slaughter within it.”

  Okay. Not where she thought he’d been going. “How so?”

  “’Tis a serpent’s nest of treachery and plots. You must proceed with utmost caution. Drawing the attention of Artemesia and her ilk can only lead to disaster.”