allies and enemies 02 - rogues (28 page)

Narasmina.
She rolled the fabled name against her tongue. One of two lovers from a long-ago tale. Ismenio, a brave ship’s captain and Narasmina, his lady-wife. She lost him to the pitch and froth of stormy sea. In the end, she gave her body over to the gods of the water that lived beneath its inky depths. A sacrifice so that no other lovers may bear the same lament.

Someone is watching.

Erelah whirled.

A young girl stood in the middle of the room. Perhaps seven or eight, she was slim with yellow-gold hair that hung to her shoulders. A wizened gaze regarded Erelah with more maturity than any girl her age should have. She was dressed in a simple white tunic and leggings, similar to the valet’s garments
,
with the same Kindred crest on her shoulder.

“Hello.” Erelah thought about moving toward her. The girl tensed, ready to flee, but she kept her hands tucked behind her back. “Who are you?”

The eyes that regarded her were the same rich maroon as Asher’s. A Binait.

Erelah stepped closer. The girl took a wary step back, but answered, “Mim.”

“I’m Tilley.”

The girl smirked. “No. You’re not.”

Definitely a Binait.

“Did you do this? Bring this?” Erelah gestured at the table of food. “It’s very nice.”

Mim half-shrugged. Her eyes measured Erelah. Hands still tucked behind her back, hiding something. Erelah took a few more slow steps. The girl shied away, drawing even with the doorway.

“What do you have behind your back?”

A frown wrinkled the porcelain of the child’s forehead. Another shrug.

Erelah glanced back at the dressing table. The pulse gun was gone. Her attention snapped back to Mim. But the girl was a blur of white disappearing around the doorway.

66

The house was a maze. It could have easily fit two of her home on Argos. Erelah lost the girl immediately as she rushed from empty room to room. The whole time she cursed her stupidity, fearful the child would hurt herself or someone else with the weapon. She called out in a hushed voice: “Mim!”

The rooms she passed through were heavy with age and seemed to demand reverence.

Passing through a heavy set of doors, she entered a large room dominated with shelves along its walls. Each surface was crammed with books and maps, trinkets and sculptures. It was lovingly disorganized. Two great windows allowed more of Narasmina’s single yellow sun to peer into the dusty air. Erelah breathed in the warm smell of age and old tomes.

No sign of the girl.

She paused in her search. To her right, a portrait of a young woman graced the wall above the hearth. Her rich auburn hair framed deep brown eyes glinting with mischief. The artist had captured a playful smile that belied the staunch severity of the woman’s high-necked dress. There was something in the portrait’s challenging expression that seemed familiar.

Erelah squinted, canting her head.

“You’ve found my Ravinia.”

A matronly Eugenes woman glided into the room with a grace that defied her aged appearance. A wimple covered her head, its ends brushing the shoulders of a heavy blue dress. Everything in the woman’s bearing spoke of refinement. There was an underlying shrewdness to her. The warm brown eyes in that time-worn face caught every detail.

“Fates blessings.” The greeting in High Eugenes spilled out of Erelah. She chewed her lip. An ingrained habit of childhood that had just disclosed volumes about her. So much for caution.

“And with you, my lady,” the newcomer replied in the same tongue, holding her hands out to her sides. For a surreal moment, Erelah thought the woman was about to embrace her. Then she dropped her hands to squeeze Erelah’s shoulders in greeting.

“I am Kelta pra-Corsair, Mistress of this house. Please forgive me for not seeing you sooner, my lady…”

Her voice trailed off as she waited for an answer. The woman’s avid gaze told her that the tired lie about her name would not serve here.

“Erelah Veradin.”

“Ah. A Kindred of the Miri sect.” Kelta nodded. “Rare as an honest Rhobgic.”

Erelah released a single perplexed laugh.

“There was a little girl in my room…Mim.” Erelah blurted. “She took—”

“Your weapon. Yes.” Kelta held a hand up. “It is in a safe place now. I apologize.”

Erelah sagged with relief.

“Mim knows of my dislike of weapons,” Kelta tsked. “Doubtful she would have harmed herself, considering her wretched life before coming here.”

“Oh.” Erelah stammered. “That’s—I wouldn’t...”

The skin around Kelta’s eyes crinkled. “I understand your need for caution, my lady. I suspect you have been through much, considering Asher’s condition. Thank you for bringing him home to me.”

“Is he alright?” Then she frowned. “Home?”

“He sleeps now. Back to himself, Fates help us.” Kelta turned her palms to the heavens. “It’s as if he never left.”

A tightness loosened in Erelah’s chest.
Thank Miri.

Kelta gestured to the portrait. Her voice softened with heartbroken pride. “So much like his mother. Willful girl. A wild streak as wide as the days were long. I was her mother’s handmaid, then became Ravinia’s, you see, as was the custom of the time.”

Erelah gave a shallow nod. She did not really
see
, but was content to feel the scrutiny drift from her. She never had a handmaiden. There had only been Old Sissa and Uncle’s valet, Somvel.

Her confusion must have shown. Kelta patted her arm. “I see Asher told you nothing. Fates knows what he let you think.” She shook her head. “I love him like my own. Practically raised him. But he is only a male after all.”

Erelah scoffed, caught off guard by the candor. The woman responded with a mischievous smirk then wove her arm through Erelah’s.

The presumptiveness of a stranger should have been unsettling, but there was something comforting in Kelta’s presence. Erelah allowed her to guide their stroll into the open sky of a walled garden, rich with flowering vines and diminutive fruit trees.

“I’m pleased to call you a welcome guest. You are safe here. Feel free to take your rest. Consider this house…yours. I grant you every courtesy and protection of the Corsair Kindred…what is left of it.” Her hand flexed on Erelah’s bicep. She tsked. “We must get you fed. There’s nothing to you.”

Corsair. An ancient Kindred name. That explained the crest.

A part of her instantly liked Kelta. Perhaps it was the assumed familiarity the old woman used when addressing her, as if she had been witness to her life and only now decided to reveal herself.

Erelah found herself feeling guilty about her earlier guardedness. “You’re very kind, madam.”

“The Fates teach us that kindness to the traveler is rewarded, for we may entertain gods disguised as the godless.” She briefly patted Erelah’s wrist. “Besides, I’m a bored old woman who is destined to ply you for gossip soon enough. Asher tells me nothing.”

Regardless of the strange circumstances, she enjoyed this woman’s acerbic wit.

“I have a sensitive question for you, my lady.” Kelta stepped back, sizing her up. “What in Nyxa’s name are you wearing?”

67

For two days he had avoided this.

Asher found her in the room Kelta had always insisted on calling a salon. Even as a boy he knew it for what it was: a place where men went to evade the nagging of women, smoke peppervine and get drunk.

Leaning in the doorway, he watched Erelah explore the room, now drenched in the deep orange of sunset. Kelta had been fussing over her, it seemed. That battered shipsuit was gone, replaced with new clothes that better complimented her lithe form. A wine-colored blouse in soft-looking fabric and slimmer fitting trousers, boots. Needlessly expensive, but nice, he added begrudgingly. Her dark hair was a smooth cascade down her back. She seemed less like a skinny girl, pretending at being a pilot.

She’d not noticed him yet, and he was tempted to leave it that way. He could slip back into the hallway. Besides, his ribs still ached. The newly grown skin along his flank pulled and itched beneath his clothes.

Perhaps tomorrow.

It was a coward’s way out. He’d done enough that was cowardly. Neesa was right about one thing: he was not a hero. A hero would not look at some lost girl and hatch a scheme to sell her out to serve himself, or have this self-hate twisting in his gut.

There was such a draw to be near her, like a pulling in his veins. It was stronger in her presence. With it came that queer familiarity, as though he’d lived in her skin. He could never put this into words without dulling it into inane babble. Maybe that is what kept him there, this drive to be near her, with her, the way living things crave light or one body seeks the warmth of another. It was not the same carnal want he knew too well. It was a sense of completion. Another half that created wholeness in him.

Perhaps he was already doomed to fail her but he was still stupid enough to try anyway.

She approached the dusty relic of a gaming table and examined the Torquiv tiles that lay scattered on its felt covered surface. Her eyes widened; quickly she put the tile down. Asher stifled a laugh. He had discovered those same etched tiles as a boy: each bore tableaux of a man and woman nude, entwined.

“Ever try it?” he asked. “I can show you.”

She whirled, clearly flustered.

“What?” She swallowed.

He nodded at the tiles on the cloth-covered table. “The game. Torquiv. Ever hear of it?”

She ignored his question, her eyes hard. “You’re alive.” It sounded like an accusation.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Is it?” He meant it as a joke. Her mouth compressed as if she were truly considering.

I deserve that.

“I’m sorry.” He stepped closer, careful to keep his hands out. As if he were approaching a frightened animal. She did look as if at any moment she’d sprint away.

“For what…in particular?” He knew she waited for his next awkward comment that would make his apology not count.

“Everything.”

A small wrinkle forged between her brows. There was distrust and a healthy dose of surprise behind those haunting green eyes. She took a step to the door.

I’ve done nothing to earn her trust. Just one bad decision after another.

“You were ready to die for your brother.” His words surprised him. She allowed him to step closer still.

“I had placed him in peril.” Her voice was thick. “It was the only way to remove that. It was the right thing.”

“I can’t imagine the ‘right thing’ would ever involve you dying.”

Her lips twitched. She held his gaze. Her brain was always buzzing. When was she not thinking?

Moves cautious, he took her hand from where it rested against the table. She frowned, but permitted it. Her body stiffened, as if waiting for something harsh.

Well, she was not half-wrong.

He settled the jdrive into the palm of her hand. “I am not a man that has always done the right thing. I want that to change.”

She pulled away, cradling piece of tech against her chest like an injured bird.

“I was not lying about Hadelia. Poisoncry guards the flexers too heavily. You’re smart enough to get this to work with another velo to make the journey. You can avoid the flexers altogether.”

She began to speak, but he drove on, before he lost his nerve. “It’s still dangerous to go alone. Let me help you. I’d give you my word, but you know what that’s worth now. ”

Some of the hardness left her gaze. “Asher, I—”

He kissed her. It was a sudden clumsy rush. His fingers combed through her hair to cradle the back of her head. His other hand rested on her waist. Her body went rigid against him, trapped against the edge of the table. She made a startled noise in her throat and pushed at his chest. Then, feeling foolish and wrong, he pulled away.

He shut his eyes. No stinging slap against his jaw. No hissed curses from her. He opened his eyes as she slipped past. Moves trance-like, she paused at the door to regard him over her shoulder. He waited for her to say something, anything. The look on her flushed face was maddeningly unreadable.

68

Erelah shut the heavy carved door to the bedroom and leaned against it. She’d sprinted up the stairs and through the twisting halls in her escape from the parlor. Catching her breath, she slid down to the floor and drew her knees up. The tears that had threatened finally came, fueled by a strange frustration. Restlessness burrowed into her very skin.

His doing. Damn him.

He’s not going to fool me again.

Cursing him did not feel right either. Perhaps he was being honest. A man so unused to it would have seemed as awkward and out of sorts as he had.

Absently, she traced a finger over lips, gaze unfocused on the growing shadows of the room. For one weak moment, standing in that salon, pressed against him, she had allowed herself that tiny lie. That she could have something so normal. That a man wanted her for the right reasons, wanted to purge his sins and do right by her.

It had felt…nice. He’d tasted like salt and nerves and—

What are you thinking?
This is just what he wants. You, distracted, while he plies another scheme.
The Tyron-voice was a sudden swell of fury.

She made her way to the gauzy shape of the terrace, the delicate shape of the jdrive still pressed to her chest. None of the pin-lights were active. Devoid of an external catalyst, it was now an inert sculpture of wire and metal. Far from innocent. It had engineered the ruin of so much. With a fingernail, she dug a dark substance from one of the crevices.

It was dried blood. She grimaced. How appropriate.

Destroy it.

The spheroid would require the power of a sun to consume it entirely. But she could make it unusable for anyone else. End it all forever.

Not yet. She had to know. Had to find Jon. He lived. She knew it.
Felt
it.

The light from the terrace deepened to rust. Movement in the growing shadows near the tapestry. The sound of small feet over tile. Mim.