The Bargaining (7 page)

“Not that way,” she shouted back. “You’ll lead us right into more guards. We’re going out through the stables. Follow me.”

She didn’t wait to hear his protest, just took off down the long corridor in the opposite direction, her petite strides covering a surprising amount of ground before he surrendered with a growl and headed after her.

He caught up in a couple of strides and kept pace with her around a series of corners and down three different hallways. When she led them through a small courtyard and into the stable, though, he grabbed her and stopped her before she ran right through. “Hold up.”

She turned to look at him, confused. “What is wrong? We must hurry before someone stops us. I told you, this is the best way out of the palace. We have no chance if we try to leave by one of the other exits.”

“I heard you before,” he said, not looking at her. His attention was focused on the contents of a nearby box stall. “But that plan is pretty much shot. It’s nearly five klicks to the shuttle and if we try to make that on foot, we’re screwed. Time for Plan C.”

Kili frowned. “What was Plan B?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell you later.” He handed her the blaster and opened the stall door. “Shoot anything that moves on less than four legs.”

Leaving her in the wide aisle, Deacon grabbed the horse’s bridle from the hook beside the door and stepped into the stall with an enormous and clearly unimpressed gray stallion. The horse flicked its ears, tore a mouthful of hay from the net in the corner, and ignored Deacon’s presence.

“Sorry, old man,” he said softly, approaching the horse calmly but deliberately. “Lunch is over. I got a job for you.”

Chapter Twelve

Kili clutched the blaster nervously. She had never held a weapon before in her life, wasn’t sure she’d be able to fire it if she tried, despite Deacon’s brief commands. Then again, a few hours ago, she had been pretty positive she’d be spending the rest of her life in slavery, and now, she could almost taste her own freedom. A lot, it would seem, could change in a little space of time.

She heard the creak of the stall door opening and moved out of the way while Deacon led the horse into the aisle. He motioned her over to him and she went, eyeing both oversized beasts with a sense of apprehension.

“Gimme your foot,” Deacon ordered.

“My what?”

“Your foot,” he repeated, making a step out of his two hands and holding it in front of her.

Taking a deep breath, Kili complied and found herself boosted up through the air to land on the back of the horse who seemed a lot less surprised by the whole process than she was. A second later, she felt Deacon’s weight settle in behind her.

“Hang on to the blaster,” he said. “We might need it.”

Then he wrapped one arm around her waist, took the reins up in his other, and urged the horse into motion down the wide stable aisle. Before Kili could accustom herself to the rocking sensation of the animal moving beneath her, Deacon guided them out through the stable doors and into the haze of predawn.

“Which way is the outpost?”

Kili took a second to orient herself, scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes. “That way.” She pointed toward a low, gray plain beyond the palace yard. “About three or four kilometers.”

Deacon didn’t bother to answer, just tightened his grip around her waist and put his heels to the horse’s sides, sending the animal into a gallop in the indicated direction. Kili cradled the blaster to her with one hand and wound the other in the horse’s mane, hanging on for dear life. The speed and power of the animal unnerved her, but it also reminded her of the man behind her. Both moved with unconscious grace, fluid in their motions and powerful in their strides. And both were helping her get away from the hell behind her. She owed each of them for that.

The horse’s gallop ate up the distance, carrying them infinitely faster than they could have managed on their own. Instead of an hour’s walk, the trip to their first sight of the outpost took them only ten minutes, but Deacon spent most of them watching over his shoulder.

“Are we being followed?”

He shook his head. “Not so far. But I’m not ready to take that for granted. Someone is already after us, I’m sure. We need to get to the shuttle.”

“How much further?”

“Fifty paces west of the outpost. About a thousand paces beyond.”

She tried not to let excitement take over. They were so close to freedom, but that didn’t mean they were safe. She eyed the outpost on the horizon and shifted uneasily. “I don’t think we can ride past them unnoticed. The horse is too large and too noisy for that.”

“We’re walking.”

He dismounted in a smooth slide and reached up to tug her to the ground as well. He patted the horse on the neck and removed its bridle. The contraption of hide and metal fell to the ground and the horse took off after a firm slap to its rump.

Kili protested. “But why did you release it? Won’t it run directly back to the palace? Then they will know exactly how we escaped and they will know to follow the horse’s trail. It will lead them straight to us.”

Deacon grunted, took the blaster from her, and set off in the direction of the outpost, hugging the tree line. “They’re already on us, little bit. Even if the horse drew them a map and told them our shuttle coordinates, it wouldn’t be giving them much information they don’t already have. Now come on.”

She quieted and fell into step behind him. She found herself moving at a near jog in order to keep up with his much longer paces, but she discovered she didn’t mind. The faster she moved, the more ground she could cover, and that meant she drew further and further away from her old life in the prince’s harem. She would have decorated herself with feathers and flapped her arms if she thought she could escape faster through flight.

The sun broke over the treetops at about the same time that they drew abreast of the outpost tower. Looking up, Kili could see the figures of two guards standing along the ramparts with their eyes on the terrain below. She instinctively shrank back against a tree trunk. Deacon halted just ahead of her and scanned their surroundings, including the outpost and its guards.

She kept her voice barely above a whisper. “What do we do now?”

Deacon eyed the guards, gave a last glance around them at the meeting of forest and plain, and shrugged. “Be very, very quiet.”

Chapter Thirteen

Deacon’s casual answer belied the hair standing up on the back of his neck. Or rather, the hair that would have stood up, if it existed. His instincts and his training all told him to expect pursuit, so that wasn’t causing his unease. The problem had more to do with his gut telling him the pursuit had already started and he just hadn’t spotted it yet. That was pissing him off.

He had to give his companion credit, though. She had kept her cool during their botched escape plan, and she’d been keeping up with him since. She had determination going for her, that was for sure. Deacon had led trained mercs in the past without as much gumption as this runaway slave. How sad was that?

Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw her carefully picking her way along the path behind him. He wished he had something for her to put on, and not only because the bouncing of her breasts as she walked could distract a stone monument from standing. Her pale golden skin was too visible even in the shadow of the trees. If the guards had left him his shirt, he’d have given her that. His much darker skin wouldn’t call so much attention.

Kili noticed him watching her and offered a tentative smile even as she quickened her pace. He didn’t have to say a word to her, didn’t have to keep reminding her of the urgency of their predicament. She seemed fully aware of what was at stake. Hell, she had to be -- she had a lot more to lose than he did. All Deacon risked with a failed escape was maybe a beating and a quicker execution. Kili risked an entire lifetime of retribution and abuse from the hands of her captors. He wouldn’t have traded places with her on a dare.

Just thinking about her life on this shithole planet made his blood simmer. He turned his back on her again, partly to refocus on their path, but mostly so she wouldn’t see the spark of rage in his expression. He didn’t want her to mistake his anger and think it was directed at her, especially if he looked half as homicidal as he felt. The idea of any man enslaving women and forcing them into sex as their only method of survival made his stomach churn, and the idea of a whole race of them made him wish he’d taken up a career in demolitions instead of navigation. Powers, what he wouldn’t give to be able to blow each and every one of these foul, thrice-cursed pieces of rat dung to hell and gone. Now that was a thought that could give him a happy.

He felt the tingling in the back of his neck intensify and he stopped abruptly. A soft current of air caught him when Kili froze just behind him. He held his hand up to his mouth to signal for quiet and scanned the area around them. The guards stood in the same places atop the outpost tower, so that didn’t account for his sudden unease. In fact, nothing he could see did account for it. So what was going on?

She placed a hand on his shoulder, feather-light and tentative. He could feel it tremble. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him the question in her eyes, but he shook his head. Not only was silence imperative, but he had nothing to tell her. He had no evidence to support his gut feeling of something wrong, only half a lifetime doing the sorts of jobs where instinct became a survival tactic.

In this case, it was instinct that had him tackling her and pinning her to the ground before he finished taking his next breath. He felt the heat of blaster fire radiating from overhead, exactly where they had stood a second before.

“Fuck!”

Kili jerked beneath him. “Where did that come from?”

Deacon lifted his head and checked the outpost, then the horizon. The nonchalant tower guards of a moment ago now had their blasters trained into the tree line, clearly searching for something. He still saw nothing on the horizon, but now, pressed against the ground, he felt something that tore another curse from him. He pressed his ear to the soil for a moment, and when he lifted his head, Kili momentarily recoiled from his expression.

“Riders. At least half a dozen. No more than a couple hundred yards away.” He eased up into a crouch, telling her with a hand on her back to keep still. It didn’t take him more than a second to weigh their options. Option, really. He didn’t see more than one. “We’ll have to make a break for it.”

He felt another shiver rip through her, but he shouldn’t have been surprised when she quickly followed with a tensing of muscle and a look of resolve.

“All right,” she said. She turned her head and spoke in the same near whisper he’d been using. “Which way? I’ll follow right behind you.”

Keeping his gaze on the outpost guards and the open land beyond, Deacon took her by the arm and lifted her into a crouch beside him. “You’ll be right beside me. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

He didn’t give her a chance to protest, just pointed her in the direction they needed to go, pressed her head down, and gave her a good shove deeper into the tree line. “Move fast, little bit,” he growled. “We’ve got ground to cover and our asses to save. Now go!”

Chapter Fourteen

Kili didn’t need to be told twice. Staying low as he’d indicated, she shot off toward the shuttle as fast as her slightly awkward position would allow. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Deacon right beside her. He didn’t seem to even bother to glance at the path they were taking. All his attention was focused on whoever might be following them.

She knew who it would be -- the Protectorate soldiers who had been crawling all over the palace in the day since the rebel and the false
nitara
had escaped from the very home of the prince. They seemed to regard Deacon as a highly valuable prisoner. She wasn’t sure if it was because of his ties to the rebellion or his ties to the rebels who had escaped, but she didn’t suppose it mattered. They wanted him back. She would merely be a side-benefit of the capture. If only she had been missing, a minor guard or two at most would have been dispatched to bring her back, and then only to save face. She had no real value to the prince, but no member of his harem could be allowed to leave of her own free will. It could undermine his authority, and that would never be allowed to happen.

Kili pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She had more important things to concentrate on -- like getting the hell out of here -- and she refused to jeopardize the best chance she would ever have by being distracted when she needed to be focused. If Deacon could do it, so could she.

Sparing a glance over at him, she read his focus in the set of his features and saw the fierce determination in his eyes, which stayed constantly on the lookout for pursuit. She knew there was no way anyone could sneak up behind them with Deacon on guard. She turned back toward the path ahead and the small smile faded from her lips. Now if only she had half so much confidence in her own part of this escape attempt.

She felt a nagging sense of guilt over how bungled things had gotten so far. The rational part of her knew it wasn’t her fault that the prison guard had decided they didn’t need privacy for her to service him, and she hadn’t asked Deacon to save her. It had astounded her when he had. Kili had been fully prepared to do whatever she needed to do to make their plan work, and it wasn’t as if she’d never used her mouth on a man before in the last twelve years. To her, it had been one last duty to get out of the way before she won her freedom. Somehow, though, Deacon hadn’t seen it that way.

She remembered the sound he’d made as he launched himself off the cot toward the guard. He’d sounded more animal than man, and she would never forget the mindless rage she’d seen burning in his eyes. It had taken her half the trip to the outpost before it had really registered why he’d reacted so violently. His rage had been on her behalf. That knowledge had nearly sent her tumbling off their horse’s back, and she would have, if not for the death grip of her fingers in the animal’s mane. No one had ever been angry for her before. At her, certainly. Almost daily. But never
for
her. It gave her an odd feeling in her stomach, a strange, twisting tickle she’d never felt before. But now wasn’t the time to think about that. She had a hard enough time keeping her attention on moving forward and pretending she couldn’t already feel an unwelcome stirring somewhere a bit lower than her stomach.