EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (230 page)

“There, that’s easier,” she said in Nurian.

She lifted a finger toward the bowmen and opened her mouth.

Tikaya scrabbled for something to say, something to sway the woman from giving the kill order.

“Don’t tell them,” Rias blurted in Turgonian.

Barely, just barely, Tikaya managed to keep the bewildered expression off her face. The practitioner halted, finger still lifted, and frowned at Rias.

“I won’t,” Tikaya whispered back, also in Turgonian.

“They’ll torture us if they know what we know,” he stage whispered.

Did the Nurian understand? None of the expressions on the bowmen’s faces had changed, but an assessing mien narrowed the woman’s eyes. Yes, she understood, and Rias must be counting on that, trying to pique her interest long enough to have a chance to do something.

Tikaya lifted one placating hand and stepped toward the woman. “I understand you have orders to kill me,” she said in Nurian as she slipped her other hand into her pocket, “but I’m sure I can be of more use to you alive.” She caught the other woman eyeing Rias and added, “As can he. We’ve just escaped our cells on the Turgonian ship; we’ve no allegiance to them—they kidnapped us against our will.”

The practitioner seemed to be only half-listening. She stepped closer, peering up at Rias, whose head brushed the ceiling of the hold.

“You look familiar,” she said in heavily accented Turgonian. “Who—”

Tikaya hurled a handful of sand, and the woman gasped, swiping at her eyes. Rias lunged past Tikaya, pushing her to the deck. His body coiled, then he sprang, whipping the sword through the practitioner’s neck with a grunt.

He landed and charged, taking advantage of the startled silence gripping the hold.

For a stunned moment, Tikaya lay on her belly, staring at the decapitated head, the still-twitching body, and the blood. So much blood.

The Nurians recovered, and bows twanged. An arrow grazed Tikaya’s arm and pinned her sleeve to the deck.

“Move,” Rias barked. “Find cover.” He was already attacking a third man.

Yes, cover, of course.

Tikaya tore her sleeve free and rolled toward the closest set of legs. An arrow thudded into the deck an inch from her ear. She kicked as hard as she could, and her heel smashed the inside of a man’s knee. He yelped and collapsed on her.

Her first instinct was to shove him away, but another arrow slammed into the deck near her head. She tried to stay under him, to use him as a human shield. He drew back to punch her. An arrow lodged in his shoulder.

“Not me, idiot!” he screamed.

He thrashed, still on top of Tikaya as he clawed at the shaft. A wayward elbow nearly tore her spectacles from her face. His frustrated cries of pain reverberated in her ears. His face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth contorted with agony, loomed inches from her own. Fearful of more bows aimed at her, she wrapped her fingers into his shirt and kept him from pulling away.

Rias towered over the Nurians, head brushing the ceiling beams as he lunged about the space. He slashed bowstrings and pounded through the startled archers, who—after catching their own comrades in the crossfire—were dropping their bows in favor of short swords and cutlasses. Howls of pain and rage bounced from the wooden walls.

The Nurians stopped shooting at Tikaya and focused their attacks on Rias, obviously finding him the greater threat. She spotted a bow within reach and grabbed it. The wounded man writhed, still trying to pull out the arrow, and she rolled away from him. She pried a quiver off a fallen archer and ducked behind a chest-high wooden contraption bolted to the deck.

Her hands shook, and it took three tries to nock the first arrow. She willed her fingers to still. She could do this. Human beings or not, they were trying to kill her.

Her first arrow went a foot wide of its mark, thunking into the frame by the hold’s only exit. She wiped hands wet with blood and sweat on her dress and sucked in a deep breath.

A man with a raised hatchet drew up behind Rias as he squared off with two cutlass wielders.

Tikaya’s nerves disappeared and she let an arrow fly. It struck the attacker between the shoulder blades, and he pitched forward, crashing to the deck at Rias’s heels. The man lay still. She had found his heart.

She swallowed, mortified by the results of her reflexive act. Rias slashed his cutlass through the throat of the last man standing before him, glanced behind at the dead Nurian, and saluted her with the sword.

The rest of their attackers were down as well. Dead. A tremor coursed through Tikaya’s body. She could not rip her gaze from the one she killed.

Muffled shouts echoed from deeper in the ship. Reinforcements who had heard the skirmish. Her mind processed what it meant, that more would soon burst in, that she would have to fight, but the tremor returned to her hands, and she shied away from the idea of shooting anyone else.

She was not a killer. If her family knew what she had done...

Rias stepped before her, blocking the view of the body and breaking her thoughts. He gripped her shoulder with a bloodstained hand. She swallowed and met his eyes.

“More work to do before we’re safe,” he said, voice calm and steady, commanding her attention. “You can react later. Right now, I need you to watch my back so we can live through this. Concentrate on that, nothing else, understood?”

Before she could nod, four men burst into the hold, swords leading. A flash of silver streaked toward Rias’s head. He jerked back, and it split the air between them to land with a thunk in the wood wall. A throwing knife.

Rias leaped away from Tikaya and charged the Nurians.

“Curse me.” She tore an arrow from her quiver. He had almost been killed because he was trying to keep her from falling apart. She nocked the arrow, forced her hands to still. React later. Yes. She could do that.

Rias led the Nurians about the hold, dodging behind crates and apparatuses, slashing to keep the men at bay, and evading their attempts to surround him. With agility surprising in someone so large, he kept them in each other’s way and remained on the outskirts so he only had to face one at a time. More, he kept them from paying attention to her.

Good.

Tikaya lifted the drawn bow and selected the man farthest from Rias. She was not going to be the idiot who shot someone on her own side. The arrow took the Nurian in his chest, and he lurched backward, hands clutching the shaft. Horror and pain wrenched his face. Her own heart twisted in sympathy, but she smashed down the emotion. React later.

Her next arrow felled a second man even as Rias sliced the throat of the third. The fourth skidded to a stop, realizing he fought alone.

He backpedaled for the exit, and Tikaya had him targeted, but she hesitated. Even if he meant to run straight to his captain, how could she shoot someone fleeing?

Rias lunged after him, and the man jumped back. His heel caught on a downed comrade, and he pitched to the deck, cracking his head on a crate.

Rias dropped beside the man, gripping his throat, and Tikaya winced and looked away.

“Live or die?” Rias asked in accented Nurian.

Surprised, Tikaya looked back.

“Live?” the Nurian croaked, eyes darting with fear, as if he did not expect to be that lucky.

Rias glanced toward the door, then laid his sword on the ground while he tore pieces from the man’s colorful clothing. With quick efficiency, he gagged the Nurian and started on ankle and wrist bonds.

“Who would answer with die?” Tikaya asked.

“Most of my people,” Rias said. “To live when the rest of your team died would be an unacceptable disgrace to many.”

With some vague sense that someone should be standing guard, she stepped over the bodies to watch the exit. Another hold stretched before her, lit by glowing orbs hanging from the beamed ceiling. No one else waited to charge.

Rias finished the bonds, leaving the Nurian wide-eyed on the deck, and snatched arrows from partially spent quivers. When he had a fistful, he joined Tikaya.

“I want to take control of the ship,” he said.

“Take control?” She gaped at the audacity. Surely, the best they could manage would be to run for the upper deck and leap over the side. But, no, who would find them in the cold, dark waters? Even if the Turgonians spotted them, and that was unlikely, they had their own troubles.

“We’ll have another fight when they realize what’s going on.” He held out the arrows, enough to stuff her quiver, and watched her face. “You’ve got my back?”

She guessed at what he was really asking: can you, a philologist from an island full of peace-loving academics, keep from collapsing in a weepy heap when I need your help?

Tikaya grabbed the arrows and jammed them into the quiver, angry with herself for that weak moment that made him question her. “I’ve had it so far, haven’t I?”

“Yes.” Rias gripped her forearm. “You’ve been magnificent.”

She snorted. Right. He didn’t know how lucky he was her trembling fingers hadn’t loosed an arrow that turned him into a eunuch. “Will you still think that if I insist on taking a side trip?”

“What?”

“I want to search the captain’s cabin for orders and find out why these people are trying to kill me.” And maybe she could finally get answers about what this secret Turgonian mission was all about.

“We may not have time,” Rias said.

Tikaya lifted her chin. “We’ll make time.”

His eyebrows flicked upward, but the surprise lasted only a second. He nodded once and gave her a Turgonian salute, a fist thumped over his heart. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Jeela, is it done?” a tinny voice asked from the center of the room.

As one they stared at the dead practitioner. The voice emanated from within her black robe.

Rias pointed his cutlass. “Can you answer that?”

“Uhm.” Tikaya knelt by the dead woman, trying not to look at the bloody stump where the head should have been, and patted the blood-sodden robe. She found a glowing opal pendant, the chain broken, just as the voice spoke again.

“Is the Kyattese girl dead? Jeela, do you need help?”

Though her education in the mental sciences was not ecumenical, she could sense the soft hum of a practitioner-made device. She held it up to her mouth, then waved at Rias and mouthed, “Make some noise.”

She partially covered the device with her hand, hoping to disguise the fact that her voice would not match the practitioner’s, and spoke in Nurian: “Yes, mission complete. She’s dead.” Then, fearing further conversation would only hurt her chances at pulling off the ruse, she dropped the device on the deck, so it clanked against the wood.

“I doubt that fooled anyone,” she apologized to Rias as they exited.

The grim cast to his eyes suggested he agreed, but all he said was, “We’d best hurry.”

Chapter VI

T
HE
N
URIAN
CAPTAIN
’
S
CABIN
OFFERED
a distinct contrast to Bocrest’s quarters. Behind a desk painted with flowers and vines, lace curtains decorated a bank of windows. Velvet furniture and lush rugs covering the deck might have invited one to lounge, but the cannons booming in the distance suppressed the cozy parlor ambiance.

Tikaya and Rias slid inside, shutting the door behind them. For the moment, the Nurians were busy attacking—and defending against—Bocrest’s warship, but sooner or later someone would figure out “Jeela” had failed her mission.

“Check those trunks.” Rias jogged around the desk to the windows. “Let me know if you can tell if the captain is a wizard or not. If he is, he’ll likely have wards protecting his orders.”

Tikaya threw open the trunks and lifted a sword and a lacy brassiere. “I believe
she’s
a warrior.”

“Should be safe to search then.” Rias tore his gaze from the windows and cocked an eyebrow at the lingerie. “Unless you want to model that for me first?”

Startled, she dropped the sword. The hilt banged onto her sandaled foot.

Rias winced and lifted an apologetic hand. “Sorry, I, er, two years, you know.”

“It’s fine.” Cheeks warming, she threw the sword back in the trunk, relieved she had not cut off any toes. “I’ll just, uhm, find those orders now.”

Tikaya yanked open a desk drawer and rummaged through letters and supply receipts. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Rias shaking his head, fingers splayed across his face, before he turned back to the window. A grin tugged at her lips.

A moment later, he found his fearless-soldier-in-charge tone and reported: “All four Nurian ships are even with the
Emperor’s Fist
now, two on each side. Bocrest is doing damage, but...if we’re going to help, it’ll have to be soon.”

Tikaya tried another drawer. She wanted those orders, and she wanted them to say something significant to justify detouring here. Rias helped her search, checking cupboards under the bunk, but she sensed restless energy emanating from him. He wanted to assist his people, though she could not imagine how he planned to take over the ship.

Under a pile of log books in the bottom drawer, she found a parchment displaying lines of gibberish. “Got it. Encrypted though.” She tapped the nonsensical Nurian letters. “Given enough time, I can work it out, but it’d be helpful to have the key. The captain ought to have it, right?”

“Yes.” Rias joined her at the desk and opened and closed all the drawers.

“I already looked in there.”

He paused at the lower one, yanked it clear, dumped the contents on the deck, and ripped out the bottom. His vandalism revealed a secret compartment from which he plucked another sheet of parchment.

“Guess my looking skills need improvement,” Tikaya murmured.

“I get suspicious when inside dimensions don’t match outside ones.”

“Ah.” She laid both sheets on the desk and quickly memorized the key.

The clanging of a bell echoed through the ship. More footsteps pounded, this time on their deck instead of above.

“Alarm,” Rias said. “They know we escaped. Take that with us. We’re out of time.”

“Wait, I’ve got it.”

“Already? How could you...”