Return (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (14 page)

She offered a brief prayer to the heavens for their safety, fisting her hands in the flaxen mane as she urged Suki towards the edge of the deck.

True to form, the little mare did not hesitate, muscles bunching as she leaped over the railing. It wasn't a difficult fall for a horse of her caliber, but when her hooves touched the rocky surface of the cliff beside the airship, they slid, and the horse skidded to one side and then the other as they descended the cliff‘s steep face, fighting to keep her balance as  Ashlyn clung for dear life.

Finally, at the bottom of the cliff, Suki managed to gain her footing and halted unsteadily, chest heaving. Ashlyn glanced at Kou, who was standing just beyond the edge of the circle of light, sword at the ready. "Kou! Come on!" she yelled, motioning him over with her hand- as if her words weren't obvious enough.

He stared wide-eyed at her- probably wondering if she'd lost her mind, jumping off the deck like that, Ashlyn thought wryly- but seemed to snap out of it at the sound of her voice. Shifting his sword to his left hand, he ran towards her. Running on the slippery grass proved no difficulty for the light-footed ninja.

Ashlyn started as a black-clad figure emerged from the shadows to her left. "Look out!" she exclaimed- spotting the blood-red cape just moments after her words.

It was Drake Lockhart.

Drake
had been throwing all those spells at them? No, there was no
way
. His revolver was snug at his side, secure in its holster, and he wore no armband. It couldn't have been him. As he moved further into the light, Ashlyn realized that he was dragging someone with him- dead or unconscious, a Toryn ninja, wearing the trademark green mask. It must have been the man Ashlyn had hit with her shuriken.

Kou turned, his hand coming up, the sword poised above his head.

"No!" Ashlyn yelped, digging her heels into Suki's sides and spurring the horse forward. "Don't!"

The ninja paid her no heed- no surprise, really; in his mind this was the man who had been trying to kill them both, why should he spare Drake's life? Drawing his arm back, he threw the sword at the gunslinger.

Anticipating his move already, Ashlyn snatched at her shuriken, yanking it free of its straps, and tossed it on the downswing. The two weapons flashed towards each other in the light like rogue comets, but Ashlyn's aim was
low-
no no no- and the shuriken merely glanced off the sword, deterring the larger weapon only inches off-target before planting itself uselessly in the ground.

The sword gleamed once, twice, seemingly moving in slow motion as Ashlyn watched it close in on Drake. The red-eyed man had no time to draw his weapon, but his left arm moved lightning-fast, releasing the unconscious ninja and coming up to block the machete.

The razor-sharp weapon sliced across the silver glove with an awful grinding sound. For a horrible moment there was only the repetition of her own frantic breathing and the sound of Suki's hooves on the grass, and Ashlyn thought he'd done it, he'd saved himself when she couldn't- but then there was a sickening wet
thud
, and Drake lowered his arm, slowly, shock etched across his features.

The blade was embedded in his shoulder.

Oh gods oh gods oh gods- "
Drake!
" Ashlyn shrieked. Her blood turned to ice in her veins as she watched her friend fall to his knees. She was off her horse in an instant and running before her feet knew they'd touched ground.

Kou caught her with an arm around the waist, less than ten feet from where Drake knelt. "We have to leave," he said, using his opposite hand to grab Suki's reins.

"We're not going anywhere, you stupid…stupid
jerk!
" she screamed, and thrashed against him. "
Drake!
Look at me!"

She was panicking so badly that even her inherent fighting skills fled her, and if she'd had any sense she would have realized that the way she struggled futilely against Kou now was an insult to her ninja heritage. Her eyes fell on the shuriken, half-buried in the grassy soil just a few feet away. A
heal
stane glittered cruelly at her from the weapon‘s slots.

Drake reached up and pulled the sword from his shoulder, dropping it into the grass beside him. Then, as if the simple movement had been too much for him, the gunslinger slumped forward, barely supporting himself from falling completely with one hand on the ground in front of him.

Reality began its slow creep into Ashlyn's mind as she watched Drake, still fighting Kou's insistence on leaving, though her heart wasn't in it. The wound was not deep- at least not deep enough to kill a vampire, she hoped- but it was still her fault. Skye would blame the injury on her, and likely throw her in the airship's holding cells besides.

There was no way she could stay behind now. If she didn't leave, then there would be no way to prove herself to FLD, ever again.

Kou wisely took advantage of Ashlyn's distractedness to shove her up onto Suki’s back before jumping up behind her, clutching her leather saddlebags- which she'd dropped in her desperation- in one hand and the reins in the other. He clucked to the mare, urging her on with his heels, and Suki obediently moved forward, taking them out of the circle of light surrounding the airship and into the darkness of night.

"Is this west?" he hissed in her ear.

She didn't answer for a moment, and Kou thumped her awkwardly in the ribs with his hand, his movements halted by the heavy saddlebags he held. "Is this west?" he repeated harshly.

"Yes," Ashlyn forced herself to answer. Her voice was thin, reedy.

There was a silence. Ashlyn felt the tears start to course down her cheeks, the sharp hollowness in her chest, and she folded forward, burying her hands in Suki‘s mane, letting the sobs rack her body.

It was a long time before Kou spoke again. When he did, the tone of his voice had changed. "He was your friend," he said. There was no intonation at the end, no hint of question. He knew.

Ashlyn closed her eyes, suddenly wishing she'd never left Endro.

"Yes."

They rode on, as the sky began to brighten with the promise of dawn.

Chapter 7

Electric

During her father's reign as Elder Lord of Toryn, he had been afforded a certain celebrity status, and as a result both he and Ashlyn were regarded with wary respect, and a kind of awestruck admiration reserved only for those who were deemed royalty.

It had been different when her mother was alive.

Ashlyn harbored only a few memories from the time before Susyn Li had passed away. She held them close to her heart, loving even the vaguest recollection for the brief insight it provided into the life of the mother she'd never known. Most of her memories directly followed her mother's death - her father's emotional withdrawal, the sympathetic looks the Toryn people bestowed upon Ashlyn when she ventured outside.

Five years old and yet fully aware of what had happened, she'd struggled with growing up while her father turned his focus onto a suddenly downtrodden and war-torn Toryn.

From the beginning, Ashlyn had been alone.

Maybe it had been better that way, she reflected bitterly, brushing raindrops from her face. Growing up in Toryn and then later, fumbling along a thief's existence as a teenager, she had been too removed from people to care about how her life affected theirs. She hadn't grown close to most of her peers, because no one besides Restlyn had the courage to befriend the Li heir. She'd collected stanes with the useless, mechanical notion given to her by her father- it was for the “good of Toryn,” a faceless ambition that Ashlyn owed her loyalty to, though it had brought her nothing but loneliness.

Skye and his comrades had been her first attempt at being a part of something larger than her own petty whims and desires. For weeks she had traveled with these people, lived with them, fought and faced death beside them.

It would have been impossible not to care for them, after a full-scale immersion like the one she'd gone through.

She had never wanted to hurt anybody, certainly not her friends, and least of all Drake, who had already suffered enough pain and betrayal to ruin a dozen lifetimes.

Ashlyn's mind at the moment was a jumble of emotions and accusations, a mirror image of the fickle sky above them, which alternately churned with rain clouds and collected itself to spew forth harsh, unforgiving sunlight.

She wanted to be angry with somebody, anybody. Skye for not trusting her, Drake for following them, Kou for throwing that stupid sword- but she knew that in the end, when it was all sorted out, laid on the table and glaring up at her, presumably with a typically annoying
I told you so
look plastered on its face, the fault was hers and hers alone.

She had forsaken her birthright to travel the world, avoided her responsibilities to gain independence. Devlyn was the Elder Lord of Toryn because of her rash behavior. Assassins had come to Cosmea because she was there.

And Drake Lockhart, her friend, one of her
only
friends, lay bleeding because she hadn't been able to protect him.

Kou shifted behind her, slowing the horse to a walk with an easy pressure on the reins. Ashlyn remembered worrying that he might not ride well without a saddle- ha! From what she'd seen so far, he was far more adept than most. Not her, of course. But most, especially the hopeless ones like Aaron, who Ashlyn remembered as clinging fiercely to the saddle with a look of sheer horror on his face, curses spilling out with the same chattering consistency as the machine guns on the airship‘s hull, their rhythms nearly the same (
rat-a-tat-tat
and "
Damn-useless-horse-slow-the-hell-DOWN!
").

She was startled out of her reverie by Kou's hand on her shoulder. He said nothing when she turned her head to look at him, simply pointed ahead. Ashlyn followed the line of his arm, and her gaze fell on a mountain range in the distance. Even this far away she could see the colorless plains surrounding the jagged hills, the foliage, rock and even bare soil taking on an unwelcoming grayish tint as it drew closer.

Eastern City, Eastern Mountains and Eastern Canyon were actually on the western side of the continent. The moniker was amusing to most, but few knew the reason for the name- it had once been part of the Toryn kingdom, before Lord Angelo had taken the land from the Toryn elders and made it part of his domain. In relation to the island of Toryn, the Eastern City was east, but to the rest of the world, it was just a backwards name for a western city that always seemed to have snow, no matter what time of year.

"The Eastern Mountains," Ashlyn said. Her voice was raspy from disuse; the last words she'd spoken had been many hours ago, long before they had crossed the river that divided the Cosmea and Eastern areas. It was two days' travel on foot, but Suki had cut that time in half with her exceptional speed and endurance. Ashlyn had a feeling that they could reach the Eastern City just after sundown if they kept the pace.

Kou’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on her shoulder before he dropped it to his thigh. "Eastern City is north of Cosmea. You said we were going west."

"We were. We are. Well, northwest. More north than west, really-" Ashlyn could feel the onslaught of a nervous babble building behind her words, and made a conscious effort to quell it- "but we'll be past Industry before we turn to cross over to Toryn. We're still heading in the right direction, don't worry."

"You know this area well, then?"

Well
didn't even begin to cover it. She could find her way from Eastern City to the town of Industry blindfolded. Granted, for the past decade she'd stayed away from Industry for the most part, but she had traversed these hills and plains more often than she cared to admit.

Even though Eastern City gave her the absolute
worst
case of spine shivers, Ashlyn had made an effort to go back every now and again, partly to make sure that Drake hadn't reclaimed his oh-so-broody coffin of doom, but mostly to check if Skye had finally made the move back to his hometown.