The Lone Warrior (8 page)

His meaty hand had caught her upper arm and hauled her back to safety. Cold brown eyes under shaggy brows had raked her up and down. “Ye got work to do, lass?”

Rubbing her arm, she’d nodded. “Yes, lots. I have to—”

Pounder had turned on his heel and left her standing.

Every night, she waited ’til after midnight before slinking out to the small bathhouse. It was worth losing sleep to soak in one of the deep stone tubs, though more than once she nearly slid right under the surface when she nodded off. There was a small cupboard filled with standard medical supplies too. She’d already worked her way through the best part of a jar of healall, slathering it over the purplish blotches marring the pale flesh of her throat. The gods knew what would happen if Serafina missed it.

Bending to dry a leg, Mehcredi stared determinedly at her toes—anything to avoid a glimpse of the smooth white breast flesh he’d desecrated. Sister save her, a shaman’s Mark! She shivered, though it wasn’t with cold. The slightest touch still set off the strangest reaction, part burn, part tingle, part pain, part . . . something else. She hated it. The soft flesh would tighten almost unbearably—and not only on the Marked breast. The right side would draw up too, until both nipples had ruched up into pink velvety points, so sensitive she couldn’t stand even to brush them with her fingertips.

Every time she passed Walker, in the cool passageways, in the garden, the salle, she felt compelled to stare at his hands, wondering. Like the rest of him, they were beautifully proportioned, strong and graceful. Ah gods, he’d
touched
her! Not casually, not violently, but with a deeper intimacy than she’d ever known. Wrapping her arms around herself, she hunched over, waiting it out, this unfamiliar rush of sensation. Behind her eyelids, she seemed to see the pads of his fingers creating the swirling patterns, slipping lightly, so very lightly, over warm resilient satin, never pausing, never doubting, a flowing stream of Magick caressing the outer layer of skin, sinking deep into the flesh beneath . . .

Gods! Mehcredi twisted the thin towel so hard it creaked with the strain. Not that the swordmaster lowered himself to speak to her. His dark eyes might flick over her, but his expression never changed, not that she could discern, even though she’d made such a thorough study of his features they were graven on her soul. If she closed her eyes now, she could see him, standing by the bed looking down at Dai, a crease between his straight black brows.

Oh yes, everyone in Walker’s House of Swords loved Dai. Without exception, they detested her for what she’d done to him. There wasn’t a single one of them, or in all of Caracole for that matter, who didn’t find the swordmaster’s forbearance as inexplicable as it was misguided. Or so Serafina informed her, as if Mehcredi were too stupid to work it out for herself, finishing with an emphatic sniff. But then she’d turn away, dabbing at her eyes with her apron, and Mehcredi came to think the housekeeper really did love Dai, like she said.

On the whole, Lonefell might be preferable. And she couldn’t believe she’d had the thought.

Sighing, Mehcredi obliterated all traces of her presence, wiping over the bath and hanging up her towel. How she loathed everything about bloody Walker’s Sister-forsaken House of Swords!

Well, not everything.

He was waiting for her in the quiet peace of the garden, sitting bolt upright on the bench near Walker’s rose beds.

“Get down from there, you filthy little beast.”

The Sister and the Brother shone high in the night sky. In the moonslight, she watched the shaggy head turn to glance at the greasy packet of scraps in her hand. Nimbly, he hopped down, tail waving in happy expectation. Mehcredi coughed. Not even the heady perfume of dark roses could mask the almost visible miasma of filthy canine.

It had taken her a full five minutes to parcel up the disgusting bits of gristle and fat and the same amount of time to scour the stink off her hands with harsh soap. The scraps lasted approximately ten seconds.

“Gods, you’re a scrounger,” she murmured, a smile tugging at her lips. “No manners. Fine food should be savored, you know.”

The tilt of the dog’s head intimated that manners were a luxury he couldn’t afford and was there any more? Strange, she had no difficulty reading his expression, even through the hair.

“No,” she said. “That’s all. And I should go. I have to be up before dawn.”

But when the little animal settled at her feet and laid his head on her ankle, she continued to sit, enjoying the night scents of Walker’s garden. Tilting her head, she stared up at the silver blue serenity of the Sister, the martial red of the Brother in determined persuit. A flitter buzzed past, a mechanical insect silhouetted against the faces of the Sibling Moons. There’d be Technomages on board, bound for the gods knew where. She’d never seen a Technomage.

The sea breeze from the canal danced by, carrying with it a swarm of ripe glowspores. Enchanted, Mehcredi watched them float past, sparkling and winking. The slightest touch and they burst, releasing a cloud of fragrant dust. One of them brushed the dog’s ear. He sneezed, shaking his head, and she laughed, but softly. Why did they do that? How she wished she knew! Somewhere a touchme bush tinkled a cheerful harmony.

“Walker has a gift,” Serafina had told her, her wrinkled face intent. Apparently, even the most unlikely plants grew as if he’d bewitched them, and in his spare time, he designed gardens for aristocratic clients, most of whom wanted him to give up his House of Swords and work for them, but he wouldn’t. “He’s a man of honor,” said Serafina, with a dark look. “Loyal. Did you scrub the second-floor privy?”

Ow! Dislodging the dog, Mehcredi bent to scratch her ankle. When she lifted her hand, blood smeared her fingertip, dark in the moonslight. “You little shit.” She glared at him. “Keep your damn bitemes to yourself.”

Grumbling, she rose. Completely unabashed, the dog accompanied her down the winding path to the kitchen door. She blocked further progress with her leg. “You can’t come in, scrounger,” she said. “Gods, no. Serafina would kill me.” A shiver ran up her spine as if dark eyes tracked her from the shadows. “Not to mention Walker.”

The dog knew. He didn’t whine when she shut the door in his face.

Safely in her room, she stripped naked and checked, but there were no more of the disgusting little bloodsuckers. Meditatively, she sat on the bed and scratched the bite. What must it be like to be infested with the horrible things? Poor dog.

Walker had intended to stop her before she entered the bathhouse, but then he’d had second thoughts. An unwashed assassin was as much a punishment for him and everyone else in the House of Swords as it would be for Mehcredi. He’d always been fastidious, what of it?

“You’re wasting your time,” he murmured to the dog, sitting hopefully at his feet. Swiftly, he bent, grasping the animal’s jaw with strong fingers. “Dig anywhere in my garden, and I’ll bury you in the hole myself.” He pushed the fall of coarse hair out of the animal’s eyes with his other hand. Held the dark-bright stare. “Understand?”

The dog whined.

“Good.” Walker wiped his palms on his trews. Gods, the creature stank. He should have Pounder take it back to the Melting Pot and let it go. Except it would almost certainly come back and Pounder was too soft to kill it. Lightly, he caressed the hilt of the long dagger at his waist.

’Cestors’ bones, the dog was the assassin’s problem. He let his hand drop, lips curving without humor. Let her deal with it—if she had the balls.

She’d been such a long time in the bath, he’d already completed an entire mediation cycle, not that it had been particularly effective. Why he was waiting for her to finish, he didn’t rightly know. Everything about the godsbedamned woman was a problem.

Dai had a young man’s resilience. He was improving daily. Soon, he wouldn’t need a nursemaid. Every other day, Purist Deiter sent a message demanding to see her, by turns wheedling and threatening.

What the fuck was he to do about Mehcredi the assassin?

Cross-legged, Walker settled with his back to the smooth trunk of a purplemist tree.

As always, the
ch���qui
of the planet flowed deep and true, a balm to Walker’s soul. Keeping a wary eye on the bathhouse door, he dropped quickly into a state of relaxed readiness, opening himself to the springing, green essence of his world, letting it soothe all the empty places inside that ached still and would forever ache.

Because he would always be the last of the Shar. No one left to sing the Songs so integral to the spiritual life of his people, not a single voice to chant his own Song of Birth and Life, to weave the strands of his soul with those of the Ancestors, a never-ending tapestry of intertwined lives that reached back to the dawn of time. His desert tribe was gone, every man, woman and child wiped from the face of the earth, of no more consequence than a nest of bitemes. All due to the greed and overweening ambition of Pasha Ghuis Gremani Giral of the Trinitarian Republic, and his fucking diablomen.

No one to speak his language, to say his name out loud. Only the vengeance that was all he had to give to the Shar’d’iloned’t’Hywil, to those he’d loved and lost. His offering and his atonement.

The night he’d opened the first of the Trinitarian diablomen from neck to groin, he finally slept deep, almost to dawn, without the dreams of spraying blood and shattered bone, the guttural chants of the dark wizards calling their demons. Worse though, much worse, were the creatures’ eldritch howls, the green acrid fog that alternately cloaked and revealed their hideous forms. Pincers and mandibles, skinny shanks and horned toes, segmented limbs and spittle-slick tusks. Even now, the memory of the fundamental
wrongness
of them made his guts lurch.

When it came to the second kill, he allowed the diabloman to see him, to know and fear his fate. The man had stared at the finger bones threaded into Walker’s long braids. “Barbarian,” he sneered. “Move aside or—”

The last words he spoke.

Now, fifteen years later, Pasha Giral, architect of the entire atrocity, was dead, murdered by his pet assassin, if rumor was true. Walker ground his teeth, realized he was doing it and stopped. Nearly over. With Giral’s escape, only one of the bastards remained, the fifteenth diabloman, Nerajyb Nyzarl, a great greasy bull of a man, too indolent to stray from the fleshpots—and the safety—of the High Palace of the Grand Pasha.

He’d worked his way through the demon masters, stalking them one by one, planning with meticulous care—it was no easy thing to destroy a man bound body and soul to a devil—even less so if you wanted to draw out the agony, gaze into their eyes while they pissed themselves with terror.

And if the executioner’s ice had entered his heart and frozen it from the inside out, who was there left to know or care? There were times he wondered if there was anything left of his soul at all, every last particle consumed by the Shar’s vengeance, and he himself was nothing but an empty husk that walked and talked and went through the motions.