Authors: M.J. Scott
Shadow Kin (36 page)
Nerves dried my mouth and I swallowed once before answered. “Yes, Lucius
owned
me.”
owned
me.”
“I’m also assured that you have had a . . . change of heart?”
“A change of heart?”
“You’ve seen the error of your ways?”
“Oh. I see.” I looked at Simon for some clue as to whether I was meant to tell them that I’d agreed to testify. His face remained blank. “You mean, now that Simon and Guy stole me from Lucius and he seems to want to kill me, I don’t want to go back to him. Yes. That’s correct.” I couldn’t help the slight snap in my voice. I was growing tired of being questioned and manipulated.
The Abbott General smiled sharply. “You would return to Lucius, if he didn’t wish you dead?”
That was a leading question, if ever I’d heard one.
Simon gave me the faintest of nods. Time to tell the truth. I had the feeling that Father Cho was fairly astute at sorting fact from fiction anyway. “No, Father. No. I would not choose to go back to him.”
“Or do what you formerly did?”
“No, Father.” I breathed deeply, not wanting to remember what I had done. All those dead faces. All those bodies. Too much death and blood at my hands. I spoke the truth, I realized. I didn’t want to go back to that. “No, I would rather not return to the Night World. I do not agree with Lucius’ . . . tactics.”
Father Cho’s gaze sharpened. He steepled his hands, head cocked. “What does that mean?” he asked. “That you do not like what he does or that you want to stop what he does?”
“Both,” I said shortly. “I will give the evidence you need against him. I will tell the Fae he sent me to kill a human.” Then had to stop as a wave of fear iced my skin. I’d done it now. Taken the step that couldn’t be taken back. For a moment the room seemed to shrink around me, caging me in. The carving on the arms of my chair dug into my palms as my grip tightened.
Breathe.
I tried to slow the racing of my heart. The three men stayed silent as I concentrated on drawing oxygen into my lungs.
Finally, “Will you swear to that?” Father Cho asked.
“Is there an oath I can give that you would value?” I asked. “I don’t believe in your God, Father.”
“What do you believe in?”
Right now I wasn’t at all sure. “I offer you my word,” I said. “It’s up to you if you choose to accept it.”
He smiled at me suddenly, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepening. “You are not what I expected,” he said.
“You’re not the first person to say that to me.”
His smile widened. “I expect not. All right, then. I will take you at your word. You are granted Haven here at the Brother House until such time as your testimony to the Fae can be arranged.”
“How long will that take?”
“A few days,” Simon said. “The council will have to be told of our plans and then they’ll liaise with the Speaker for the Veil.”
“That’s a lot of people,” I said. The Speaker for the Veil was supposedly the sole voice of the Fae queen, but in reality he had a retinue of aides and bureaucrats. The human council had twelve members of itself and the human government only spread from there. Too many tongues that could wag. “What if Lucius finds out?”
“We can take steps to prevent that,” Simon said.
Like he’d taken steps to keep his work with Atherton secret? But I couldn’t bring that up as an objection. “And afterward?”
“I would imagine that you will need protecting until after the negotiations,” Father Cho said. “You will stay here.”
My heart sank. They were going to keep me locked up—or try to. “What if I don’t want to?”
The three of them looked at one another. “Let’s not borrow trouble, child,” Father Cho said eventually. “The most pressing matter is to get your testimony to the Fae.”
The stone walls seemed to press in on me as my stomach churned. I’d made my choice. Now I had to live with it. I made myself relax, taking another deep breath.
The room smelled faintly of incense but mostly of cool air and the three men around me. Those three and many more, I realized. Other fiercely masculine scents hung in the air. Traces of sweat and leather and smoke. It made me want to breathe deeper still. My stomach tightened at the thought. Was that the need talking? I clasped my hands tightly together in my lap, studying them for a moment.
It couldn’t be the need. I wouldn’t let it be.
“Which rather leaves the question of exactly what you are to do for the next few days,” Father Cho said.
I raised my head. I hadn’t thought about that. I could help Simon search for Lucius’ source, if he would let me, but I couldn’t tell the Templars that. “Perhaps I might help Simon at the hospital, Father.”
It was the best I could do. We needed them to be willing to let me move freely if I was going to hunt a spy. Otherwise I would be limited to what I could do at night. Limiting my hunt to half the available hours of the day would hardly be helpful.
Father Cho looked to Simon. “Would that be acceptable to Lady Bryony?”
Simon’s mouth went flat. “Leave Bryony to me.”
He shifted in his chair and his leg brushed mine. Heat flared through me. Hunger for him or something else? I dropped my gaze to my hands again, not wanting my expression to betray me. Were they shaking? Apart from the hunger for pleasure, the need brought with it tremors and cramps and other unpleasant symptoms if it wasn’t fed. I thought last night that it had been more than sated. Was I wrong?
Hells, I needed to talk to Atherton again.
As we left Father Cho’s office, I stayed silent, thankful to be leaving under my own power and with some degree of freedom. Guy didn’t leave us as we walked and we’d gained an additional escort in the form of Liam. I was still all too aware of the scent of healthy males around me. It wasn’t quite the burning of the need. Not quite, yet it still unnerved me.
Though not quite as much as what I had just agreed to do. Contemplating that particular folly made the rest of my surroundings fade into the distance somewhat.
“I think we should move Mother and Hannah,” Simon said to Guy. “If word of this gets out . . .”
“Yes,” Guy agreed. “I’ll do that. Saskia should be safe enough at the Guild Academy.”
“I’ve already sent a message to the Master of Iron that there may be trouble. He’ll take appropriate action.”
That got my attention. Simon’s sister was a mage too? Or one in training? A metalmage from the sounds of it. Who was at risk now, because of me. Much like the rest of his family.
Another weight to bear if something went wrong.
I shook my head to chase away the thought, as my nails dug into my palms. I needed something to work off some of the confusion of nerves and fear and anger I was carrying. “Where are we going?”
“I’m headed to the weapons hall to drill the novices,” Guy said. “You could come along.”
Weapons hall? Where I’d be surrounded by Templars with lots of naked steel in their hands? Not exactly the sort of exercise I’d had in mind. “I really think—”
Guy grinned at me. “Scared, are you? I was hoping you could assist. I’d imagine you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve the puppies won’t have seen before.”
Beating up novices. Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, it held a certain appeal, I realized as my stomach suddenly steadied. Training was something familiar. And a smart fighter never passes up an opportunity to study the technique of a potential foe. I hoped I would never have to fight a Templar, but who knew what the Lady might bring? I brushed a strand of hair back off my face. “I’m not scared of baby knights,” I said.
“Good,” Guy said. “That’s settled.”
Simon’s expression was concerned as he looked from Guy to me. “I think I’ll come too, just to make sure no one ends up bleeding to death.”
Guy laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt her.”
I tilted my head at him, hands on my hips. “What makes you think I’m the one in danger?”
The weapons hall was exactly that. A single-storied stone building standing squatly on a substantial portion of the grounds to the rear of the Brother House. Inside, it was one huge rectangle, divided into smaller rectangles only by the changing surface of the floor. One-quarter flat slate tiles, one-quarter packed dirt, one-quarter cobblestones, and the last pale yellow sand.
The walls were lined with long, low wooden benches and hung with row upon row of swords, axes, longbows like Liam had used, crossbows, pikes, and other various metal and wooden instruments of destruction. High windows let in plenty of light.
Which meant that I’d be limited to only my physical abilities. Looking over the twenty or so assembled men, most of them even younger looking than Liam, I didn’t think that was necessarily going to be a problem, despite the scowls of disapproval several of them directed at me. Not happy with a female in their hallowed halls?
Guy bellowed at them to line up and then Liam started taking them through a series of moves I was familiar with—stretches designed by the priests of a sect from the Silk Provinces. But I merely watched, trying to get a feel for the men I could be fighting.
The novices wore loose wool breeches and sleeveless tunics in various shades of gray and dirty white. The Templars, apart from their crosses, didn’t seem to be overly fond of color. They all had cropped hair and sported identical looks of concentration as they began the drill.
Beside me, Simon and Guy watched too. Guy’s expression was finely calculated between intimidation and intent study. I wouldn’t want to be the student who fumbled a drill in front of him. But no one made any overt errors at this point. Simon, on the other hand, wore an expression that I couldn’t quite interpret.
The novices moved smoothly through the sequence, muscles flexing in unison. Some of them shot hostile glances my way whenever they faced me. I resisted the urge to smile. They were like the young Beasts, full of swagger and ego. And like the young Beasts, they were well trained. To a man, they were tall and strong and moved in the same lithe powerful way as Simon and Guy and Liam. Nerves balled in my stomach. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea after all.
But I wasn’t about to act like a weak female and prove their prejudices correct. I channeled the nerves into concentrating even harder on the men, picking out weaknesses. Eventually the sequence came to its conclusion and Guy barked a few more orders. The knights fetched swords from the racks on the walls—no wooden practice weapons here, it seemed—and paired off in neat rows along the length of the hall.
“Do you want to watch or work?” Guy said to me.
“Work.”
He nodded toward the racks. “Pick a sword.” He turned to Simon. “Do you want to drill with her?”
Simon shook his head. “You know the answer to that.”
They exchanged one of their inscrutable looks. Guy shook his head and turned back to me. “You can drill with Liam.”
I did as I was told. But I took my time, testing the blades to find one with the correct balance and weight, wondering why Simon had refused as I did so. He knew how to fight; he’d said Guy had trained him. Why deny himself the opportunity to practice? I pushed my puzzlement away as I studied the swords. If I wasn’t focused, then I’d come off second best on the practice ground. None of the blades was perfect, given they were sized for men, but I can handle a heavier sword than any human female my size and I found a close enough match without much trouble.
I took my place opposite Liam. We were working on the dirt, which was perfectly fine by me. I’d been trained to fight anywhere. I rarely met resistance. My powers allowed me to use stealth and most of my victims never saw me. But assassinations weren’t the only thing I did for Lucius, and, even with my training, Simon’s sunlight had given him the advantage when it mattered most. I frowned, remembering, and almost got clobbered by Liam when Guy yelled out the first command.
I ducked just in time and came back to full alert, shaking off embarrassment. Liam’s white teeth gleamed at me as he grinned. I set my own teeth. There was no way I was going to let myself be bested in front of all these knights.
Guy started shouting instructions in rapid succession and we moved to his commands. Blocks and thrusts and parries blurred together. Liam was good, but despite his height advantage, my experience let me hold my own. Still, he didn’t hold back and I rapidly started sweating.
It felt good to move. To do what I was trained to do. To lose myself in the rhythm of combat and not
think
.
think
.
But slowly, even through the dance of strike and counterstrike, through the need to focus on the sharpened steel being swung at my head and the man swinging it, I became aware that part of me wasn’t paying attention to the fight. Instead, part of me was tracking the sight of all the male bodies around me, the play of their muscles, the smell of their sweat.
Tracking and wanting it.
Wanting them.
Not just Simon, who stood on the sidelines, as strong and sure as any of them, the light through the windows making his hair glow bright gold. No, this wasn’t caused by him.
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