To The Princess Bound (27 page)

“What happened?” Dragomir asked, once they were moving again.

“I told them to put me in another room, one with a better view,” Victory said.

“No,” Dragomir said, “to the woman.”  He nodded at her.  Something was wrong with her steel-gray energy—it seemed to be slowing down, pushed aside by an inky blackness.

Victory grimaced.  “They found a needle in my bed,” she said.  “Nano-poison, I would guess.  It sank into Whip as she swept the sheets back.  They don’t think she’s going to make it.”

The tall, lean Praetorian in question was panting, her face becoming a very dull gray.  She was strung between two of her companions, head down, wheezing.  Watching the energy within her stagnate on her
gi
meridians, a black energy overpowering them, Dragomir frowned.  “Tell them to set her down.”

Victory frowned at him.  “I told you they used nanobots.  We need to get her to a doctor.”

“Do you want her to
die
?” Dragomir snapped.

Hesitating, Victory gave the command to lay the woman out on the floor.  As she did, Dragomir saw her eyes start to glaze as she went into shock.  He dropped to his knees beside her and, without taking the time to think about it, put one hand over her core rama and another over her soul rama.  The Praetorian gasped and tried to struggle away, but Dragomir tightened his grip and held her in place.

Immediately, several Praetorian unsheathed their swords and made to use them.

Dragomir ignored them.  A palm on her groin, the other on her crown, he shoved energy through her from both sides, catching the blackness before it had a chance to enter the ramas, then shoving it back out through the roiling black wound in the meat of her hand. 

Beneath him, the Praetorian gasped and arced her back.  Dragomir kept working, hunting down every last shadow, burning it away.

Once he had scoured all the blackness from her central body, he moved his consciousness down her arm, squirting it from her
gi
lines like ink from a pricked water-bag.  When he finally reached the wound itself, the Praetorian was panting underneath him, alert gray eyes fixed to his face, but holding entirely still.  Dragomir sought out the blackness in her palm, isolated it.

“Tell her to hold up her wounded hand,” he said, maintaining his trance, monitoring the flow of energy.

Victory did, and slowly, reluctantly, the Praetorian lifted her hand to Dragomir.

He took his hand off of her core rama and, still pushing energy through her soul rama to keep the roiling black energy in her wound contained, grabbed her wrist.

Then, feeding energy through her wrist from his hand, he released her crown and, still focused on the woman beneath him, held up an open palm to the Praetorian around him.  “I need a knife.”

It was Lion who offered her blade.

Dragomir took it, and, while the Praetorian on the floor watched nervously, brought the knife to the meat of her hand.

“Tell her I’ve got to cut it out,” Dragomir said.

Victory must have relayed his message, because the woman’s eyes went wide.  Instead of flinching or trying to pull back, however, she simply nodded.

Dragomir made it quick.  He sliced into the woman’s palm at an angle, just deep enough to collect the source of the roiling black material, then came at it from the other side.  The woman winced and gritted her teeth, but did not so much as whimper.  He tossed the scrap of skin and flesh aside and looked again to make sure he had gotten all of the voidlike darkness.  After ascertaining that the wound was clean, he grunted and handed Lion back her blade.

“Tell her that the blade should probably be destroyed, in case it carries any infection,” Dragomir said.  He stood up and gestured at the bloody flap of skin on the ground.  “And the piece of her hand, as well.”

For a long moment, everyone in the hall simply stared at him.  Victory didn’t relay his words, and Dragomir frowned at her.  “Tell them.”

“You
healed
her?” Victory said, instead.  She was staring down at the woman, who was cursing and wrapping her hand in her shirt, but whose color had already returned to her face, the sweating stopped, her breathing back to normal, if a bit faster than standard.  Her steel-gray
au
was shimmering, brighter than Dragomir had ever seen it, and it contained traces of his own golden energy in patches here and there.

All of the Praetorian seemed to be glancing from their companion, then back to him, awe forming in their battle-hardened eyes.

Embarrassed, Dragomir looked at the ground.  “Can you ask her how she’s feeling, at least?”

Still staring at him, Victory uttered something in Imperial.  The Praetorian woman hissed something back, and, using the wall as leverage, started getting to her feet.

“She says her…” Victory hesitated, “…
blessed
hand hurts.”  She gave him a small frown.  “But aside from that, she’s never felt better.  You even cured her head-cold, or so she seems to believe.”

“Probably,” Dragomir said.  “I wasn’t being specific.”

Victory frowned up at him.  “You can cure the sick?”

“That’s what I did back in my village,” Dragomir said.  “In between cutting hay, herding goats, digging potatoes, and plowing fields.”

“You never said that,” Victory growled.

“I’m pretty sure I did,” Dragomir replied.  “You just didn’t believe me.”

Victory looked at him for several more breaths, flicking her attention between him and Whip, then silently gestured at her guard to continue.

The Praetorian led them to a new chamber, and for the rest of the day, as they waited for the passengers to load and the ship to get underway, Dragomir caught the black-clad women staring at him.  When they brought out food for their first meal, one of the sleek, armored women handed him her hunk of cheese, saying that she didn’t need it.  Another gave him a half-loaf of bread.  A third offered him an apple she claimed she didn’t want.  Dragomir, blushing, took it all quietly, getting the very distinct idea that he would be pounded flat for the insult of refusing.

As the ship finally powered up its engines and shuddered as it left dock, Dragomir felt the tension in the room increase tenfold.  A disagreement began, and for the first time, he saw Victory and her Praetorian argue.

“What’s going on?” he asked, watching the Praetorian snarl amongst themselves.

“Father will want me to make an appearance at dinner,” Victory said.  “They are insisting that one of them eat before I do, to test my food for me.  I am telling them ‘no.’  I know it’s their jobs, but it’s not right that they sacrifice themselves that way.”

“Then don’t eat at all,” Dragomir said.  “You’re supposed to be feeling very sick, right?  Use it as an excuse to not partake in dinner.  I saw the amount of food your Praetorian brought along.  You have plenty of stores to keep you from starving.”

Victory sighed.  “You don’t understand.  This cruise is in my honor, supposedly celebrating my return from the Academy.  I will be expected to—”

“This cruise is orchestrated to
kill
you,” Dragomir growled.

Several of the Praetorian stiffened at his tone, but didn’t interrupt.

“You do whatever you need to do to stay alive until we can get off this ship,” Dragomir said.  “If that means hiding in your room, pretending you’re sick, then so be it, I’ll hold you here myself.  The less you are out and about, the less opportunity that sly little bastard has to slip you something deadly.”

The princess gave him a look like he had suddenly sprouted antlers.  Scrunching her face disgustedly, she said, “And just what makes you think you have
any
say at all in—”

Dragomir raised an eyebrow.

He could almost
see
the Golden Rule flash across the back of her brain in huge, neon red letters.  Her eyes widened.  “Uh,” the princess said.  “I mean.”  She swallowed, hard.  “Thank you for your input.”  She grated out every word, and it sounded like she was cracking teeth in the process.  Dragomir had to suppress a chuckle.

Keeping a straight face, he said, “So, we are in agreement?  You will claim you are still too ill to move around, but will be out just as soon as you can stop vomiting all over the place.”

The princess gave him a look like she would rather take instructions from a moldy dumpster, but she nodded.

“Good,” Dragomir grunted.  “Then get me some clothes.  I’m tired of running around in my birthday suit.  Too many pretty ladies around here to gawk at me.”  He winked at her.  “I might feel like I’m being taken advantage of.”

The princess wrinkled her face and opened her mouth.  “There’s no way I’m—”  She caught herself, swallowing, the Golden Rule again blazing like a warning beacon in the back of her head.  “Uh,” she said.  “Right away.”

Dragomir was actually surprised that she didn’t add, “Sir,” so cowed was her expression.

This is going to be
so
much fun,
he thought, suppressing an inner giggle.  He stretched out on a couch, watching as Praetorian departed at a run to find him clothes.  They returned with a too-tight servant’s outfit, but he wasn’t going to complain.  He shrugged it over his shoulders and yanked up the pants, so utterly ecstatic to have clothing again that the pinch in the chest and the calf-length legs didn’t bother him.

The Praetorian, for their part, seemed thrilled at his idea to keep the princess abed, and immediately took up positions around the room, the argument settled.  Even Whip, with her bandaged hand, stood at attention beside the door.

“There’s going to be hell to pay for this,” Victory muttered, but she ended her complaints and instead entertained herself with the view out her suite window.

Dragomir, who had never even been on a skimmer before Prince Matthias had abducted him, went to sit beside her.  He found himself awed by the view, by the mountains and rivers passing beneath them.  Then, suddenly, a towering black cliff was passing outside, not fifteen feet from the window, and he jerked back, staring out the glass in awe.

At his gasp, Victory quirked a curious eyebrow at him.  “Have you never been on a cruise before?”  As if it were the most natural—and common—thing in the world to sail around in a massive ship for weeks on end, wasting enough fuel and supplies to keep a thousand villages powered for the next ten millennia.

He had known such diversions existed, but it had been in a distant corner of his brain, his thoughts instead going towards his daily existence, and how he was going to put away enough food for winter.  To be faced with it now, after living in a cottage eating eggs and potatoes his whole life, Dragomir found it very overwhelming.  “I knew it was possible,” Dragomir admitted, “But I never thought I’d actually experience it myself.”

She frowned at him as if she didn’t believe him.  “
Never
?”  As if everyone had the opportunity to sail around the world because they were bored.

At her stare of pitying disbelief, Dragomir felt himself bristle.  “Until two weeks ago, Victory, I had never left my village except to go to the next town over, to trade goats.”

The princess stiffened at his use of her name, but, with a sideways look, she did not mention it.

The Golden Rule,
Dragomir thought, unable to stifle his grin that time.

Victory narrowed his eyes at him, but turned her attention back to the passing scenery.

A courier came a half hour before dinner, telling them that the Adjudicator required the princess’s presence.  The Praetorian took his message, then told him that the princess was ill, and that, while unfortunate, the Adjudicator could more or less get stuffed.  Another arrived ten minutes before dinner, again insisting that the princess’s father demanded her attendance.  He was sent away with just as much fanfare as the first.

The third messenger arrived, mid-meal, with a note scribbled by the Adjudicator’s own hand.  Victory, who had been snoozing, sat up, read it, grunted, and tossed it into the fire.

“He says I am humiliating him,” Victory said, “And that if I am not at his table within five minutes, he is going to send his Praetorian to retrieve me.”  She glanced around the room.  “Considering that I’ve got nineteen of them with me, and he brought only sixteen, ten of which must stay with him at all times, I’m not seeing how he’s going to follow through on that particular threat.”  She yawned and went back to sleep.

Two hours later, there was a commotion in the hall, and Dragomir heard someone shouting Victory’s name in Imperial.

“Sounds like he’s here,” Victory said.  She gestured at her Praetorian to let him inside.