Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (8 page)

Rathe laughed too, but there was no laughter in his heart. During the moment it took to glance at Fira and back, the stranger he had locked eyes with had vanished. He searched the common room, but the man was nowhere in sight. Rathe thought first of the Shadowman, but quickly dismissed the idea. The two men looked nothing alike. His next thought was that the stranger had left to relieve himself.
Possible … even likely
, Rathe considered,
but how did I miss seeing him go?

~ ~ ~

After begging leave from Master Tyron, Rathe slid off his stool and made for Loro. He walked at an unhurried pace, shamming interest in Fira’s newest song, and offering greetings to a few regular customers he and Loro had gotten to know.

When he reached Loro’s side, he leaned over and whispered, “There are strangers here, and they seem too curious by half.”

“I saw them,” Loro whispered back, then laughed uproariously, as if Rathe had just told a fine joke. Wiping false tears from his eyes, he warned, “Could be King Nabar’s men.”

“They don’t have the look of common bounty hunters,” Rathe said quietly.

“Might be they’re new to the game.”

“Just so,” Rathe allowed, but didn’t quite believe it.

Loro laughed again, but this time his mirth was real. “We ought to take them out back and work the truth out of them.” Not only was the fat man clever, he took immense pleasure in cracking heads, which explained why he had made a fine soldier—at least until his penchant for causing trouble had put him on the same path as Rathe.

Rathe knew questioning the strangers was exactly what they should do, but hearing it spoken aloud, envisioning the bloody outcome of such a confrontation, gave him pause.

“For now, just keep an eye on them.”

Loro looked disappointed. “Are you
sure
?”

“As much as I can be,” Rathe said, not sure of anything at the moment, especially why he resisted what instinct told him he must do.

“Good enough,” Loro said, rattling a cup of bone dice at the insistence of his opponents. They were a surly lot, clad in rank, untanned furs, but with Master Tyron about, they minded their manners.

Rathe left them to their game.

At the top of the stairs, he came face to face with the vanishing fellow. Even as Rathe’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, the man caught his arm and leaned in close.

“I’m Edrik, a
vizien
priest of the Munam A’Dett Order. You must come with me.”

Putting on an apologetic smile, Rathe extracted himself from the man’s grasp. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you.”

Unbelievably, the fool drew a dagger. Its blade was clean and bright, with golden crossguards fashioned after a winged serpent.

Rathe set his feet. “Unless you intend to clean my nails, you’d best put that pretty blade away.”

“You
must
come with me,” Edrik insisted. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. That didn’t settle Rathe’s mind a whit. The most dangerous men he had ever faced were the nervous ones. They tended to do stupid things, heedless of their own safety.

“
Why
must I come with you?” Rathe asked, his tone reasonable, as if he might consent.

The dagger lowered a bit. The man licked his lips. “You’re known as the … the
Scorpion
, yes?”

Rathe schooled his face to calm, but his blood went to ice. It seemed this fellow was not a merchant, adventurer, or even a priest, but rather a bounty hunter. “You’re mistaken, friend. I’m only a traveler seeking to return to warmer lands before my balls freeze solid.”

Edrik gawped at him with sheeplike stupidity. “But … you
must
be the one I seek. The Oracle described you, foretold where you would be. Please, you must come with me.” He cut off, licked his lips. “If you do not, many thousands will perish. You are the hope of Targas.”

That set Rathe back a step, but he recovered quickly. “I do not know this Scorpion, but I ceased being the hope of anyone or anything some time ago. I suggest you tell your fellows, and this Oracle, that you should save yourselves, and leave me be.”

A stubborn look crossed the man’s face. “You
will
come with us.”

Rathe shrugged. “Since you put it that way….”

The instant Edrik’s face relaxed, Rathe caught his wrist and bore down with all the strength of a swordsman who had spent most of his life swinging killing steel. With a strangled whimper, Edrik’s fingers sprang open, and the dagger popped free. Rathe plucked the weapon out of the air, twirled it against his palm, and presented the hilt to the priest.

Still holding the fool’s wrist, Rathe said, “Take this knowing I could’ve buried it in your heart. As it happens, I’m feeling
benevolent
today—now there’s a priestly term, yes?” The man nodded, hesitantly reached for the dagger, but Rathe drew it back. “Come at me again, and you’ll learn that all the gold in the world cannot buy back your life.”

The man stared in confusion. “The Munam a’Dett has no need of gold. We only seek your help.”

Rathe decided then that the man truly was a priest, and was glad he had decided not to kill him. Helping Edrik, though, was out of the question. “Take yourself and your friends out of Iceford, and go back to Targas, or wherever it is you really came from. What you seek is not worth the price you’ll pay to have it.”

Rathe dropped the dagger and shoved Edrik aside, every muscle tensed to strike, every sense alert for a sign that the man had ignored his advice, and was coming after him.

Before he reached the door to his room, he heard clattering footsteps descending the stairs.
Some fools
can
learn
, he considered, and breathed easier for the first time in days. He had been jumping at shadows and looking for trouble that, save for Edrik and his band of idiots, had refused to show itself. Perhaps he really had escaped King Nabar’s bounty hunters and, too, the Shadowman.

He reached for his door, but found it standing open a crack. Neither he nor Nesaea ever left without closing it. His sword flashed out, all his good thoughts blowing away like ashes. Rathe slammed open the door and dropped into a guarded crouch, sword poised.

Instead of an intruder, he found Nesaea sitting on a cushioned chair, her legs crossed. She was facing partly away from him, peering into a small mirror hanging on the wall. She held a hairbrush frozen in mid-stroke through her fall of dark waves. She was also completely naked.

“Gods, woman,” he growled, shutting the door behind him. Without taking his eyes off her, he ran the bolt home. “I could’ve been anyone bursting in here.”

She finished pulling the brush through her hair, and then placed it on a low dresser. “Not unless that ‘anyone’ could mimic your footsteps,” she said, voice husky.

He thought to tell her about the foolish young priest, but when she stood up, his mouth became too dry for words. Before she could take a step toward him, he set his sword aside and went to her.

Chapter 6

Caught in a pleasant and satisfied reverie, Rathe slowly ran his hands along the smooth length of Nesaea’s legs, one settled on either side of his waist. His caress continued over the narrow flare of her hips. Her breasts seemed to float before his eyes. He reached out, cupping them in his palms. At his light touch, she rocked gently, a wicked smile playing over her lips. A ripple worked its way from his belly to his loins, and he bit back a groan.

She abruptly sat up straight and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, her smile widening. “We’ve only just finished, and you’re ready again?”

Looking into her violet eyes, he matched her grin. “You give me little choice.”

“You must forgive me,” she said playfully, her breath coming quicker, her rocking more insistent.

“Of course,” he said, pulling her down for a lingering kiss that gave rise to many more.

Sometime later, they were both lying crosswise on the bed, Rathe on his back, and Nesaea on her side with one leg thrown over both of his.

“I could get used to all this lolling about,” he said.

“Is that what you call this?” Nesaea asked, running her fingertip around one of his nipples.

Laughing, he caught her hand and kissed the palm. “Gods, woman, do you ever stop?”

“I was merely getting ready for dinner, when you barged in and threw yourself at me.”

“I’d say you laid a trap for me … unless most women are given to sitting naked in cold bedchambers while brushing their hair?”

She laughed.

“So you
did
lay a trap for me?”

“I suppose I did.”

“As far as ambushes go, yours was not half bad.”

“I deserve more praise than that,” she said, her fingertip now tracing a scar angling across his chest.

He tried to remember how he had gotten it, but each time he reached into his mind to pluck out a particular battle or face, they all converged on one another.

“So much hurt for one so young,” she said distantly.

He turned his head, eyes wandering over her own marks of past pains. Before she had founded the Maidens of the Lyre, Nesaea had been sold into slavery. She had told him very little of the abuses she suffered as a pleasure slave in Giliron, but he knew those wounds were deeper than any made by a sword. “Seems I’m not alone.” He hesitated, then asked, “Does it ever end?”

She met his eyes. “The pain?”

Rathe looked back to the ceiling. “Not just pain … but all that causes it.” After the silence stretched long, he began to fear what she might say, so he abruptly changed the subject.

“It seems we’ll not be sailing for a few days,” he said, and told of Captain Ostre’s problems with the
Lamprey
. Then, still trying to keep from going back to his vague, yet unsettling question, he said, “Stiny and the others haven’t seen anyone suspicious around the village, so I paid his final wages and told him to stop looking.”

“Perhaps that’s for best,” she said. Like Loro, Nesaea was of the mind that after Rathe had bested the Shadowman at Ravenhold, he had fled.

“I think so, too.” He didn’t tell her that Stiny had offered to find him an assassin.

Nesaea propped herself up on one elbow and peered intently at him. “You never let me answer you.”

“I’m not sure what I was asking, so maybe you shouldn’t.”

“I want to.”

“Very well,” he sighed, but she remained silent for a time.

“Every day begins a new round of battles,” she said at last. “Not all of them are bloody or painful, but they are battles nonetheless.”

He could agree with that, but the idea of such endless struggle wearied him. “What if we choose not to fight?”

“Some folk can decide to flee their troubles, but
your
troubles cannot be outpaced.”

“Because of the Black Breath,” Rathe said. He had never believed in demons harboring in folk, until he had seen the Khenasith with his own eyes.

“Once the demonic spirit of the Khenasith has chosen its quarry,” Nesaea said, “it feeds off the misery inflicted upon its prey.”

Rathe shuddered at the memory of that creature of smoke, with its horned head covered by four ghoulish faces. He saw again how it had ripped free of the woman who had briefly taken it from him in a bid to tap the demon’s power for her own ends. Yiri, Horge’s sister, had been little more than a waif, but she had also been a born witch. The powers she sought to hold had ultimately destroyed her. Afterward, the demon had returned to Rathe, making his soul its home.

“I turned my back on a fight today, if not a true battle,” he said, frightened and exhilarated at the same time. Nesaea gazed silently at him, and he added, “Just before I came to you, I met a man, Edrik, some priest or other. He wanted me to come with him. When I told him no, he drew a dagger, and I took it away. I itched to plant that blade in his heart…. Instead, I let him go. I let him
live
.”

She touched his face, her fingers cool and soft. “It’s good that you denied the Khenasith its desires, but the demon won’t always
allow
you to do so.”

“I know,” Rathe said just above a whisper, imagining he could feel the demon’s ire building in his heart.

“I have something for you,” Nesaea said at length.

“A gift?” Rathe asked, surprised.

“Yes … but after what you told me, I’m not sure I want to give it.”

He laughed wryly. “There’s nothing you could give me that I would not want.”

“Very well.” She bounded off the bed and padded lightly to the wardrobe shoved against one wall.

He watched the sway of her hips.
She cannot help but dance wherever she goes, my goddess of snow and silver
. He tried to look away when she opened the doors and bent to root about on the lower shelf, but his eyes had a will of their own.

“Here it is!” she announced, spinning with a scabbarded sword held in her hands. He guessed her delighted expression had more to do with catching him looking at her, than with the weapon she held.
Trapped me again.
He smiled, because her traps were hardly traps at all.