Jane Carver of Waar (21 page)

“Sai. Sai, ease up. I can’t...”

He let up a little and I sucked in a breath.

Sai whimpered. “Thank the Seven. Safe.”

The rope went slack. We dropped like a stone. The bastards up top had done what I was afraid of and chopped it through. Fortunately we were already on the cliff face. Okay, maybe fortunately is too strong a word. I felt like a ball bouncing through a pachinko machine, but after a terrifying second I managed a one-arm grab that sprained two fingers and almost pulled my arm out of its socket. Then the rest of the rope fell on my head. Wile E. Coyote doesn’t have days this bad.

I pulled myself to a better position and caught my breath, feeling for broken ribs. I glared over my shoulder at Sai. “Never say things like that! Never say ‘thank god, we’re safe!’ You tempt fate like that, it’s guaranteed to walk over and shit in your salad.”

Sai didn’t hear me. He was totally frozen in fear. Fine. At least he wasn’t talking. I started down the cliff as fast as I could. The last thing I wanted was to find Kedac’s welcome wagon waiting for us at the bottom.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DISGUISED!

L
han gave us the silent treatment when we got back, but that didn’t stop him from getting out his bandages and funny-smelling pots of goo and going to work on us. Silent was okay with me. I wasn’t much in the mood for talking. I hurt so bad in so many places I didn’t know which one to cry about. I had road rash and bruises on my forehead, elbows and knees from slamming into the cliff. All my muscles on my left side were wrenched from my one-hand save, and my hands were so raw I couldn’t take off my own armor, which meant I hadn’t been able to see what the crossbow bolt had done to my shoulder. And what was it all for?

Far as I could see Sai had nearly got us killed hoping to hear that Wen-Jhai didn’t want him anymore so he could get out of his fight with Kedac. And then he wimped out and ran when he found out that she still loved him after all. At least he felt the same way himself.

“I have ruined everything! Wen-Jhai despises me now. She professed her love as fully and sweetly as the poets of old, and when she asked me to avenge her and claim that love, I... I asked her to run away with me, like a thief instead of a Dhan.” He flung out his arms. “Oh, Lhan, bind not these wounds. Let me bleed to death as I deserve.”

Lhan tied off a scrape with a little too much force. “First, Dhan Sai, you do not bleed enough to kill a linfa, thanks entirely to the valor of Mistress Jae-En, I have no doubt. Second, you have only to meet Kedac-Zir as you should, and you will be instantly redeemed in Wen-Jhai’s eyes.”

“But the opportunity has passed! Do not Kedac-Zir and Wen-Jhai leave tomorrow at sunrise on a ship for Ormolu? How can we hope to catch them?”

Lhan smiled wickedly. “Because we too leave tomorrow at sunrise on a ship for Ormolu. A trading caravan has assembled for safety around Kedac-Zir’s naval escort. Anticipating your
failure
—” he really leaned on that
failure
, “—I booked passage on one of the merchantmen.”

The sarcasm went right over Sai’s pretty little head. He practically kissed Lhan, he was so grateful. And now that Sai was safely back on the path of honor—and suicide as far as I was concerned—Lhan was all smiles again. Weird people.

Lhan handed me a pot of goo and started unbuckling my armor while I smeared gunk on all my scrapes and cuts. It stung like Ben Gay, but smelled kinda like coleslaw. Ewww. As I moved one of my bikini-straps to get at my ribs, one of Kedac’s coins fell out and clunked on the floor. Lhan looked at it, then at me, eyebrow raised like a question mark.

I blushed, which pissed me off. What did I have to be ashamed of? “Kedac liked my show.”

Lhan’s face tightened. “Oh.”

I dug the second coin out of my other bra cup. “I’ll have to get the third one later.”

Lhan turned white. “The beast.”

Sai didn’t notice any of this. “But how do we reach our ship? Kedac’s men will be watching for us.”

Lan gave me an appologetic look and turned to Sai, Sarcastic. “Forgive me, Sai, for momentarily forgetting your plight. ’Tis true, Kedac will know it was you by now, and Mistress Jae-En is inconveniently distinctive in appearance. We shall need disguises.”

Sai groaned and flopped back on the bed. “I am thoroughly sick of disguises.”

Lhan shot him a look, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything either, but it took some doing. The words “And I’m thoroughly sick of you,” were knocking mighty hard against my teeth.

Lhan touched the shaft of the bolt that went through my shoulder armor. “Does it pierce the muscle?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. It doesn’t catch when I move my arm.”

“Good.” He lifted the shoulder piece off. There was a jab of pain and a gush of blood. The bolt had passed through the armor at a shallow angle and mostly missed me. There was a pencil-size groove in my shoulder. Messy, but not serious.

Lhan started to patch me up.

Sai turned a little green. “Mistress!”

I don’t know why, but that’s where I almost lost it. I mean, there Sai was, feeling sorry for me, and for some reason it made me totally furious. Maybe it was because it had taken him until then to get over himself enough to notice that I was fucked up. Sai kept going. “I beg you to forgive me, Mistress. That my folly has caused you injury is more than I can...”

I put a hand in his face. “Don’t start.”

“But, I...”

“Just don’t.”

I almost walked out the door. Fuck Sai, the self-centered little fuck. All of a sudden I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. There had to be someone else on this shit-ass planet who could help me figure out the teleport stones and get my ass home. What the hell did I need him for?

I sighed and let my hand drop. I did need him, dammit. Not just because he could hook me up with a way back to Earth, but now, after what had happened tonight, I needed to stick with him because sooner or later he was going to lead me to Kedac. Things had changed. I had something to do before I went home. I had to kill Kedac.

But, Christ, even that was Sai’s fault. If he hadn’t dragged me into the castle, Kedac wouldn’t have got his greasy paws on me, and I wouldn’t be planning my first premeditated killing. Yeah, I’d killed before—that poor bastard back in Panorama City, One-Eye, that other Aarurrh, but those had been crimes of passion or self-defence. Kedac? That would be straight up cold-blooded murder. Sai had a hell of a lot to answer for, but I couldn’t call him on it. Not if I wanted to get to Kedac.

I looked up. Sai and Lhan were eyeing me, worried. I shrugged. “Sorry. Uh, apology accepted.”

Sai bowed his head and crossed his wrists. “My thanks, Mistress. You relieve me.”

A twinge of guilt ran through me. From here on I was tricking Sai, pretending to help him. When we got to Ormolu for the showdown I was going to cut to the head of the line and kill Kedac before Sai got a chance.

For a second I felt like a heel, but there was more than one way to look at the situation. On his best day there was no way Sai could kill Kedac, right? So if I killed Kedac first I was actually doing him a favor. I was saving his life for fuck’s sake—not to mention getting Kedac out of the way on the marriage front. Once the dust cleared and everybody had time to think about it, Sai and Wen-Jhai would thank me. They’d probably send me postcards from their honeymoon.

I let out a breath and put on a big smile. “So, okay. What about disguises?”

Lhan looked relieved that the tension was over. “Sai and I are easily disguised. A change of costume will be sufficient. You as I said before, pose more of a problem.”

I pinched my arm. “Right. Wrong color.”

Lhan smiled. “That is actually the least of our worries. There is a paste I know of from my service in the navy. Our spies used it to stain their skin a deeper shade when traveling incognito among our southern neighbors. The ingredients are easily obtainable and the formula simple.”

“Great. So it’s just everything else about me you can’t fix.”

He shrugged. “It requires some thought, is all.”

Sai’s head popped up. “Soldiers? Mistress Jae-En is certainly warlike enough.”

Lhan shook his head. “True, but armor will not cover her more, er, feminine attributes.”

Sai blushed. “Yes. Of course. Er, scholars? Surely a scholar’s robes would cover, er, all difficulties.”

Lhan’s eyes lit up, then faded again. “A good suggestion, but no. Robes would cover everything but her height.” He looked at me again. “And the color of her eyes. Hmmm, this may prove more difficult that I anticipated.”

No shit. The problem was that there were just were no six foot women—and very few men—in this neck of the woods, no matter what color they were. I stuck out like a giraffe on a gerbil farm.

Sai raised a hopeful finger. “Circus performers?”

Lhan coughed. “You forget, Sai, that they are looking for circus performers.”

Sai blushed. “Oh yes.”

We all got quiet after that, trying to think. I don’t know why I bothered. What I knew about Oran society you could write on the back of a matchbook. All I could think of was putting on a fake moustache and sombrero, but I was guessing there weren’t many of those to be had around these parts.

Finally Sai groaned and threw up his hands. “’Tis impossible! What disguise will make her shorter and... er, smaller of frame? If only we could just put her in a sack.”

I snarled at him. “Funny, I was just thinking the same about you.”

All of a sudden Lhan clapped his hands together. “A sack! I have it!” He was grinning from ear to ear. He leaned forward. “Earlier this evening, while you were sneaking into women’s bedrooms, I was drowning anxiety in a jar of tisol downstairs. Among my fellow imbibers were a group of Andag priests and their hulking guard.”

Sai made a face. “But...”

Lhan turned to me. “Andag is a country of barbarians to the far north. Their priests wear sack-like masks and clothing that covers their entire bodies.”

Sai pouted. “And they smell terrible.”

“Which means they have a private room, since they’re not allowed in a roost. And when I saw them last they were well on their way to unconsciousness.”

***

The priests were sprawled out in their room like a crime scene photo. They were all big guys by Oran standards. Guess they grew ’em large up north. Lhan picked the two smallest and started to peel them. He pointed to their bodyguard, propped up in a corner and snoring like a freight train. He was gigantic. Well, about my size actually. I got to work.

It should have been Sai doing this. I hurt so much I could barely move, but Sai couldn’t have shifted this big bastard with a forklift, so I got elected while Sai watched outside the door.

Ugly smelled pretty ripe even before I stripped him; equal parts piss, booze and herd animal, but when I got his armor off, a wave of B.O. that would have dropped a horse came up and smacked me in the face. I gagged. “You sure this is a good idea?”

Lhan grinned, wicked. “Think how much Sai will enjoy it.”

I chuckled. After the shit Sai had put me through that night he deserved to stink, even if it meant me stinking too.

“Er, Mistress Jae-En?”

I looked up. Lhan was giving me a strange look.

“Mmm?”

He hesitated. I’d never seen him this nervous. “Er, I... once, in the past, I too had my person... violated against my will, and I know the shame and rage that follows.”

I froze, what was he leading up to here?

He blushed. “I only want to say that I understand, in a small way, your anger, but hope, for Sai’s sake, that you’ll not do anything—rash.”

My face got hot. I couldn’t look at him. “Don’t worry, Lhan, I’m over being rash.”

Lhan let out a breath. “My thanks, Mistress. You ease my mind.”

Christ. Now I was lying to Lhan. What a piece of crap I was.

***

Sai must have guessed that we were getting a little tired of his whining. He put on the priest’s reeking rags without a word, but Lhan and I could see him shuddering. We could hardly keep from laughing.

Before I could get into my gear, I had to paint myself up. Lhan went out and came back about an hour later with the makings; fat black berries, some kind of alcohol, a special sort of clay. He mashed it all together in the chamber pot, but I had to do the painting by myself. Gentleman to the core, Lhan wouldn’t think of laying a hand on me while I was naked, damn it.

He left the room with Sai and I smeared the stuff all over, even in my hair, which turned a dark maroon, making it at least a little closer to the usual Waarian purples and blacks. I had to bind my boobs too. Lhan had found a length of sailcloth and I strapped down as carefully as a butch taking a straight girl to a Baptist high-school prom. I ended up looking like I had Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pecs. Good for intimidation I guess.

After a lot of groaning and swearing I finally got my banged-up and bound-up self dressed. The rags fit. Too bad they had a funk like a week-old dead cat. A long cloak went over a bulky, knee-length coat of leather plates like dragon scales. Under that I wore a shirt and leggings and boots that were a little too big. My mask was a curtain of fine chain mail mesh. I could look out through the links, but no one could see in, like standing inside a screen door on a sunny day.

I called Sai and Lhan back in. They were dressed in long robes so dirty you could barely see the twisting tribal designs embroidered on them, and witchy leather masks like something out of a goth fetish ball. We all had a good laugh at each other.

***

On the way to the shipfield at daybreak, Sai told Lhan about overhearing Vawa-Sar and Kedac. Lhan nodded, thoughtful. “So Vawa-Sar dabbles in politics? Likely ’tis your sister Shayah who pulls his strings. That rube has never had the sense of a krae, while she has always had an avaricious heart. Shayah would not be content with Vawa as he is, a rustic with an inheritance of rocks and cliffs. She would want him to make something of himself, and so sends him to play at court intrigue.”