03] ES) Firestorm (11 page)

Cactus was flat on his back, a large goose egg budding over his left eye. I ran one finger over it and brought Spirit forward again. It didn’t fight me as I wove its strength through Cactus’s body. I didn’t really know what I was doing, letting Spirit do as it would.

The bump shrank until there was nothing, not even a bruise on his skin. He blinked and sat up. “What the hell just happened? I was calling to you and then something slammed into my head and nothing until right now.”

I gave him a weak grin. “What do you get when you find a firewyrm, fight an Ender, and fall off a cliff?”

“Shit.” He stood and pulled me to my feet. “Where is the Ender?”

“Still in the cave down there.”

“Tell me you didn’t kill him,” Cactus said, reaching for me. I frowned at him.

“I’m not an idiot. I just knocked him out.”

Peta gave a full body shiver. “We must hide the fact that you attacked him, Dirt Girl. With Cactus’s injury gone, we will all say we have no idea what that Ender is talking about when he accuses you. Do you understand?”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure it would work. Especially not when we turned to see we were not alone.

Fiametta stood behind us, her eyebrows arched high over her brilliant blue eyes, and her black leathers glistening in the flickering light around us. She seemed backlit by a pale pink light. My heart clenched. Was someone manipulating her even now?

But who?

“What does the Terraling not understand, Peta?”

dropped to one knee and pressed my hands into the rock, feeling the essence of the earth under my skin as Spirit still rode high through my veins. I could feel the beating heart of everyone within fifty feet, including the queen and the Ender below us.

Brand stared at me from a few steps behind the queen. “Terraling, you are supposed to be helping my wife.”

Letting out a slow breath I nodded and stood, the instinct to connect to the earth something I’d not expected. “She sent me with Cactus, since I fell into the river helping her with the laundry.”

Cactus tugged at my arm; I knew what he wanted. We hadn’t addressed Fiametta yet. Faux pas number one.

“Your Majesty,” I said.

“Terraling, I see you are getting the grand tour while your friend awaits his punishment. How lovely for you.” Fiametta’s voice cracked like a whip through the air and the men flinched. Peta clung to my shoulders, shaking once more. Behind the queen stood her black panther, Jag. His eyes were full of sorrow as he looked at me and then away. But he said nothing. No doubt the queen would just ignore him anyway. I watched as he turned and walked away, leaving his charge on her own.

So it was as Peta had said. The queen didn’t use her familiar at all.

A scramble of rocks behind us stopped all conversation as the Ender who’d attacked me and Cactus pulled himself over the ledge.

The queen went to him. From where I stood, her movements softened as she held a hand to him. He kissed her offered hand, his lips lingering on her skin and I saw a quick flash of his tongue as it darted out.

Worm shit and green sticks, of course it would be her lover.

The epiphany hit me like a dozen redwoods crashing to the forest floor. If he was her lover, he was also the traitor. Son of a bitch, he couldn’t have made it easier on us. If in fact, he was one and the same.

Eyes that were dark as night locked with mine as the Ender looked past his queen. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced, you wyrm lover.” There it was, that same voice I’d heard in the memories.

Peta whispered in my ear. “He will not go down easy. Be wary.”

Fiametta turned so she faced me. “Wyrm lover? Coal, what is going on?”

Coal. Of course, his name would be the same as
my
ex-lover. Seemed fitting since I was about to ruin his life too. He stepped around her, a sly smile on his lips as he pointed a finger at me.

“She attacked me when I was trying to kill a pair of hatchlings.”

I laughed, feeling the weight of the moment laying on me. If I didn’t play this right, we would all be dead. I was not a consummate actress, but I had to try. “Please, why would I attack you? And what is this about a hatchling?”

He frowned and pointed to the back of his head. “I have a wound. And so does the prick. He tried to stop me and I clubbed him. Proof of my words.”

The furrowed brows on Fiametta’s face would have made me stop talking, but Coal kept on. She strode to Cactus who held very still, murmuring only a simple, “My queen.”

Her hands roved his face and head, looking for an injury. “I see nothing here, Coal.”

“Impossible. I heard his skull crack,” he said and then seemed to swallow his words as Fiametta turned toward him.

Fiametta’s eyes held flames. “You would attack my best defender, Ender? He is the first who stands between me and the firewyrms. That you would even admit this tells me how little you care for our safety. “

“Spitfire—”

I flinched as he used an obvious pet name for her. Her face paled and two bright red spots appeared high on her cheekbones. Coal swallowed whatever else he was going to say. Which was maybe his best decision of the day.

She raised her left hand and held it palm out toward him. “You are hereby stripped of your ranks, and all
privileges
. I see no wounds on Cactus, but he is a favored Salamander in our eyes and that you would even attack him leaves me questioning your loyalty.”

Confidence soaring, I had to fight the smile that wanted to creep over my lips. This really was too easy. “He has a scar on his hand, does he not? Hidden under his glove.”

Coal’s whole body jerked as if I’d jammed my knee into his family jewels. Fiametta looked from him to me. “Ender, do you know this Terraling?”

“No, my queen.” Interesting that his story was suddenly changing. Anything to keep on the queen’s good side.

“Oh, sure you do,” I said, feeling the weight of the situation as if a boulder lay across my shoulders and not a ten-pound house cat.

“I’ve never met her, my queen.” He was sweating, and I didn’t think it was heat. I glanced from him to Fiametta only to find her blue eyes staring at me.

I forced a smile to my lips as my mind raced. Think like Belladonna, that was all I could think. “Do you trust your Ender? Trust that he wouldn’t lie to you? Oh, what am I saying, he did lie to you just now. Right to your face.”

Her blue eyes narrowed to mere slits. “Terraling, you walk a fine line. Do remember that while you are here, you must abide by my rules until you leave. Or you will find yourself next to your friend making a last, short walk into the Pit together.”

Damn, a fine line indeed. I lifted both hands, palms up and shrugged. “If you wish to bed a viper and think his bite is not venomous, then be my guest. I will say no more, per your wishes.” Turning, I beckoned to Cactus whose face was slack as if I’d punched him in the mouth. “Cactus, you said you would show me the Pit as close as I could get?”

“Stop.” Fiametta said, her voice icy cold, but power rumbled under it and the lava below us picked up in noise, as though fountains spurted with the wicked fire. There was no emotion in Fiametta’s voice. I had her attention now. I turned expecting her command to be for me. It wasn’t.

The Ender—her lover and traitor—was attempting to sprint away. Cactus stepped beside me, lifted his hand and the doorway that the Ender would have run through crumbled, most effectively stopping him.

He spun and lifted his club, pointing it at Fiametta. The fear on him was so thick it seemed to fill the air.

“You bitch, you have ruined this family!”

I was the closest one to him and I acted without truly considering what I was doing.

Pulling Peta from my shoulder I pushed her behind me as I sprinted forward, putting myself between the Ender and Fiametta—of course, I had no weapon.

The Ender laughed. “You think to protect her? She doesn’t deserve your protection.”

I settled into a fight stance. “Leave that to me to decide.”

“Lark, here, you could need this.” Brand called out as the sound of metal and wood scraped along the smooth granite. Rolling to a stop at my feet was my spear, the curved blade, and wooden handle once held by my mother. I scooped it up, and spun it toward the Ender as he raced toward me with his club. The blade caught on the dark stone as we twisted our weapons against one another. My muscles strained and my shoulder protested but I held him back, if only just barely.

“Coal, stop this,” Fiametta said and for just a second I wanted to glance around for the dark hair and green eyes of my previous lover. But of course, this Coal was the Salamander in front of me. And I had no doubt he would kill me if I let my guard down for an instant.

“The last Coal I faced lost his hand,” I said as I thrust my spear toward his belly, turning the move into a downward slash and catching his knee. The tip of my blade cut through his leathers and the side of his knee. He went down but swept his club in front of him keeping me away. His black eyes glittered with hate, and I read the understanding in them that he was going to die.

I took a step back, spinning my spear loosely in front of my body.

Fiametta stepped forward so we stood side by side, but her eyes were all for her lover. “You would kill me?”

He never lowered his eyes and I waited for the moment he would strike. “A thousand times over.”

“Why?”

Coal shook his head. “I will say no more.”

Fiametta tipped her head and I thought for a brief moment I saw a quiver of sorrow flicker over her face. “Coal, drop your weapons.”

He shook his head as he slowly stood, hobbling on one leg. “No. Kill me and be done with it.”

Fiametta spared me a look. “Can you take him without killing him?”

Here was a chance I would not have again to gain her good graces. “If that is what you wish.”

“Do it.”

I stepped in front of her again and slowly shifted my spear so I held the shaft near the blade and the blunt end was aimed at Coal.

“I will force you to kill me.”

I had no doubt he would do just that. “Fiametta, will you allow me to question him?”

She snorted softly. “You think you can make him speak without torture?”

“I know more than he realizes,” I said, the balls of my feet aching with the need to move. I reached for the part of me that was anything but Terraling. Spirit flowed through me and I focused on Coal. On loosening his tongue and making him spill his secrets. Coal eyed me up as he spoke.

“We never met, you never even looked my way when we picked you and your friend out of the Rim.” His eyes bugged as he realized he spoke freely, doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t.

“The first night you bedded the queen, you were searching for something in her room. What is it?” I asked.

Behind me Fiametta sucked in a sharp breath and Coal’s eyes looked over my shoulder. Like the sound of a tornado being unleashed, the oxygen around me was sucked away in a gulping whoosh. A furred body hit me, slamming me to the ground. Peta in her full leopard form crouched over me as the wave of pure lava rolled through the air, and wrapped around Coal. The liquid fire shimmered and shifted in the air, a living coil of death rippling from the queen’s outstretched hands.