Geared for Pleasure (30 page)

He shook his head without looking at her, placing a tube on the
board before lifting a shimmering silver flask to his lips. “No one has. Not in my lifetime, or my father’s.”

Hadi took his turn on the board, his brow furrowed in concentration. “He has always been there. Encouraging our inventions, bringing us messages from our queen, and aiding those of us who choose to travel about in the world with help and guidance.” He leaned back and patted the table with a smile. “Hah. Blocked you, Bodhan.”

“Always?” Dare asked the table at large. She did not say it, but Phina knew what she was thinking.

Always. Like the queen? Like the Scarlet Lord who flew through the darkest night?

Cyrus’s voice cut through their thoughts like a jagged knife. “No one but the queen is
always
there, regardless of their desire.” He stood while the rest sat, his body projecting his impatience and discomfort as he watched the others play their game. He, too, had a problem with Hadi’s choice of words. “That is, I would contend, the reason she has been taken. Queen Idony believed the Theorrean Raj was obsessed with longevity. Immortality. That they had tried, and would continue to try, anything to gain it for themselves. Including breaking into her rooms on a regular basis, to find something that contained her inheritance markers for testing. Perhaps this Khepri is similar.”

Phina tensed in her chair, ready to protect him when the rumbling started around the table. To compare the Khepri with a member of the Raj was not the smartest action the Wode could have taken, but Phina would not let anyone, not even the captain, injure him for saying it. The protective feeling was just because she owed him. And she did not believe the queen would approve of them killing her Arendal.

Bodhan sighed and placed his piece on the board. “Wulf, it is your turn. Cyrus, tread carefully. The Khepri is the hand of the
queen. He has proven his loyalty to her longer than you have been alive.”

Dare agreed, her gaze sincere and calming as they looked at Cyrus. “From his actions alone I would say the Khepri is nothing like the science ministry or the Raj. But Cyrus, the queen does not believe that, surely? They have always wanted to keep their family lines in power, keep their inheritance pure, but going to those lengths? She would have told me. I’ve been to every meeting between the queen and the council members. I would have known.”

Cyrus shook his head, regretful but still patronizing. “Dare, you have already discovered that she did not tell you everything. She protected you from many of her fears and feelings.
We
protected you. With your abilities, we did not want you to go rushing into danger. If they’d known what you could do, they could have used it against you. Against the queen.”

His words were hard, but they made Phina think. The attack in the marsh—those men had wanted Dare. Wanted to capture her. Was that why? Did it have to do with the queen? Or Dare’s abilities?

The hurt and anger in Dare’s expression was plain for everyone to see. Her words were flat. Cold. “Aren’t we lucky then that the Arendal Sword is here to protect the rest of us. We are saved.”

She stood up with an impressive amount of dignity for such a little thing and headed down the stairs toward the rooms belowdecks. Her box was still pressed against her chest.

Bodhan, too, rose and excused himself. “I’m afraid you will have to finish this game without me.” The look he sent Cyrus’s way was lethal. “
I
am needed.”

The captain’s hazel eyes narrowed dangerously on Cyrus and Phina stilled. Thankfully, Wulf’s frustrated swearing distracted them both. “Damn that Bodhan. There is no way to win. He has closed off every line.”

The captain shook her head. “What
is
the point of this game?”

Freeman moved past Phina and leaned, casting a giant shadow over Wulf’s shoulder. “I believe, if I am not mistaken in my rudimentary understanding of your little toy’s complexities—” He took a piece of brass tubing from the pile in front of the pale Aaruan, and attached it to another in the center of the board. A small jet of steam shot out of the tube, emitting a high-pitched whistle. Phina started at the noise, but Hadi looked up at Freeman with a newfound admiration.

Freeman stepped back and crossed his arms. “Beginner’s luck.” His tone did not contain the same humility as his words.

Cyrus stalked away from them and down the stairs to the main deck, ignoring the laughter and male posturing around him. Phina followed, waiting until she was far enough away from the others to speak. “Are you that much of a cretin to everyone? Or just the people who care?”

Cyrus whirled on the deck to confront her, snarling, “Are you saying you care? Is that why you are following someone who obviously wants to be alone?”

Phina looked down at her message, her fingers tracing the lines of the parchment envelope. “Just trying to understand why Dare could admire a man like you. A man she mourned, and then nursed until he was healthy enough to treat her as if she were less than Wode. Less than
your
equal. She has been through a lot to get here, you know. And she did it without you. Without anyone.”

“You think I don’t know that?” He curled his hands into fists at his side. “I know what she’s been through. I know no training I gave her prepared her for this. For what may come next.” He shook his head. “She is special, Seraphina. To the queen. To me. She cannot be harmed. Yet we did not prepare for this. Did not prepare her for the world outside of the barracks and Queen’s Hill that hates the Wode. For criminals who would use her naïveté against her. I was supposed to be there if trouble came. I was supposed to be
with
her.”

Phina felt her heart freeze with that feeling again. That guilt. And not a little jealousy for his loyalty and obvious love for Dare. He hadn’t been there because of her. Because she had been fool enough to believe he was just another mark. That Muller, her most reliable middleman when she needed something sold—the man she owed—had only wanted what he said he did from Cyrus’s room. A trinket. And she had let him in, believing that when Cyrus woke he would be without his goods but still aboard the Siren. And
she
would be gone.

His endless blue eyes bored into hers. “No one, not even you, has asked what I’ve been through. Where I’ve been. Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?”

She shook her head, a feeling of anxiety welling in her chest, but he hadn’t been asking permission.

“I was stripped of all my possessions, drugged, and sent into the desert as a slave. They are building something in the Avici, Seraphina. Something horrifying. Those who are not indoctrinated into their cult are chained and whipped and forced to drink that numbing vayun day and night.”

His cheeks were flushed and his eyes dark with remembered pain. “This is my fault. All of it, do you not see that? If I had been more careful, stayed focused on my mission, or escaped as soon as I’d been captured…”

He turned from her, burying his face in his hands, a moment of weakness she was sure he would hate for her to witness. Yet she could not make herself leave.

Phina lifted a hand slowly toward his back, wanting to comfort him. To touch his head, his shoulder and tell him he was wrong. That it wasn’t his fault at all.

Her fingers curled, nails digging into her palms as she pulled back and dropped her hand at her side. Comfort was the last thing he wanted from her.

She looked down at the crumpled letter in her hand. “Perhaps we should open these.”

She broke the seal and unfolded the parchment with trembling hands, seeing easily in the waning light. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard him do the same.

The words were blurred, but she forced herself to focus. The message was for her from the Khepri. Her sister’s name stood out as if it were etched in fire.

Nephi.

She had been like a mother to Seraphina, when there was no other to take on that role. Her champion when the rest of her family would have thrown her to the Wode for an extra room. It was for Nephi that Phina had made her initial vow to the queen. And for her that she needed to talk to the captain now.

Cyrus read his own message and turned to face her, crumpling the page in his fist. Phina looked into his eyes and knew that whatever he had seen had been just as bracing. And that he had no intention of sharing what the Khepri had told him. Not now. Not with her.

She could not blame him. Her family business had always been her own. Few people knew where she’d come from, how she’d grown up. Few people knew where her true loyalties dwelt. It was easier for her, and for all of those that believed Phina Fleet had no heart.

When this was over, she reassured herself, she and old man Khepri were going to have a serious talk. Face-to-face. Whips could be involved. But for the moment, there were other things to do.

Cyrus washed his face and torso in the warm recirculating water of the copper basin, his mind in turmoil. He was thinking of the Chalice. His sister shield guard. His friend.

Dare had not come out of her room since the night before, allowing only the captain and Bodhan inside. Both of them had given him looks that could freeze the hottest natural spring, turning him away when he came to apologize.

And he could not get Seraphina’s reprimand out of his head.

He was a bastard. Like his father and his father before him. An insensitive Wode bred for nothing but aggression. It was why his family line had been sent to the Faro Outpost in the first place. His inheritance deemed flawed. He had spent his life trying to earn his status as the Queen’s Sword, to be worthy of regard. To be as true a protector as his mentor, Commander Iacchus.

All his effort had been for naught. The thin veneer of civilization he had formed around himself had been scraped away by his time in the desert. He found it hard to recall the lessons of his youth. The tools the queen and his commander had given him.

He was also beginning to wonder
why
Dare hadn’t been as
prepared as he. Why she was told stories and protected from the machinations of the nobles and Raj members who wanted more power. More power. More life. Always more life.

Why had the two people he respected most in the world not seen the strength in her? She had been chosen, despite her size, to be Chalice. Yet she had been treated as more of a sibling to Queen Idony than her shield guard. Sheltered because of her ability to feel emotions. Perhaps, despite his deep and abiding love for his companion guard, he was jealous of her treatment. A ridiculous emotion for a Wode, for an Arendal, and one he had always striven to hide from Dare’s gift.

But it existed inside him for a reason. While Dare had searched for hidden notes within the palace walls and been told stories of daring adventure, Cyrus had been tested. Long hours of physical training, long hours of studying Theorrean laws until he knew them by rote. Then there were those times he had been forced to listen to the rabid ravings of the science ministers. Once, he was allowed to observe a section of their massive laboratory complex beneath Queen’s Hill after pushing forward the pretense that he was not as loyal to the queen as he appeared. He had only been allowed in one section, but he had hoped, eventually, to see more.

Under Her Majesty’s orders, of course.

His only true joy had been the part of his day spent with Dare and his queen, making them laugh or simply enjoying their company. Dare had always given her friendship and loyalty without hesitation, making his current outburst and past jealousies all the more petty and cruel.

All of his training, all of his groundwork meant nothing, if his letter from the Khepri were to be believed. His last mission had been more than a mere test. It had been crucial. It had also been a failure.

He had done everything right at the start. He had allowed himself to get knocked around and bloodied during training and, once
outside the Copper Palace, he had shaved his head and donned the clothing of a lowborn.

Cyrus followed the instructions of the queen, the ones Commander Iacchus had sent to him, to the letter. He’d arrived on the deserted beach and, when he was sure he had not been followed, turned on the small pocket watch he’d been given. It had no markings of time, only hands, which he moved to their correct direction. He wound the watch, hearing the gears buzz before holding on to the chain and dropping the body of it into the sea.

He recalled how hard it was to hide his surprise when the watch began to emit a brightly glowing pulse that seemed to travel farther than it should have. He could feel the vibrations that went with it as his fingers kept a grip on the chain. When it stopped, he’d turned it off, slipped it into his pocket, and hid behind the rocks nearby to wait.

Others came. Young nobles and old Raj members he recognized. All dropping their watches in the water, some joking softly with each other as a submersible began to surface once the sun went down.

The commander had told him of the Siren. Had warned him. But Cyrus had been unprepared. This was no random case of rogue Wode he had been sent to mingle with. No one attempting to sell replicated elixirs for strength to the lowborn. This was political corruption. Men speaking and dealing in secret without recording it for posterity. Highborn men making plans as they paid for women not of their caste to bed them. Or spank them.

Cyrus shuddered as he thought of some of the strange requests he’d seen fulfilled in the few days he spent there, splashing more water on his face to erase the images.

He had sought pleasure before. In truth, pleasure had been forced upon him in his thirteenth year. It was his father’s gift to him for being the first in their line to ever make good, the first of his inheritance to be chosen as an Arendal Sword—though the old man could not resist mocking his future career even as he bragged to his peers.
Laughing that his son’s future of blood and justice was to be replaced with adjusting the eternal queen’s cushions.

It had not been an unpleasant experience, once his father and the other men had left him with his new companion. She was a favorite of the outpost Wode, a Felidae who, for whatever reason, had been banned from her tribe.