A Sinister Game (21 page)

“So who or what is it, then?” He
asked, turning
to face her fully
.

Victoria squeezed the crystal pendant
.
He wanted t
o know who she was running from?
What should she tell him? What business was it of his, anyway?

“I’m sorry,” she said, squaring her shoulders and
dropping her hand
. “I need to find a place to stay for the night.
Do you happen to know if there’s….”?
She searched her thoughts for the right word. This town looked nothing like any city in the Field, so it most likely wouldn’t have a Gamer’s Auberge, where team members could pay by night to gather with their friends and throw parties
,
or get together with romantic interests away from the sometimes invasive aspects of a team tower.

Suddenly,
she recalled that Room 73 in the TGB
was known as a “tavern.” It
was supposed to have rooms on its second floor. She didn’t know what they were for. Perhaps they were to purchase for the night?

It was w
orth a try.

“Do you know if there’s a tavern nearby?”

At this, the man blinked.
His smile was back
. “You’re standing in front of a tavern, little one.”
H
e gestured toward the double front doors of the building
behind Victoria.

Now that she
thought about it, she recognized that the sounds coming from inside
actually
sounded familiar to her.

She’d heard them in Room 73.

“Would you like me to escort you in?
” He looked at her clothing again, his expression thoughtful. “I’m betting you have no coin.
I’ll buy you dinner and an ale. Any friend of Brom’s is a friend of mine,” he offered, his smile putting her at ease, despite herself.

Victoria considered his offer
for a moment.
It was a very short moment.

“All right,” she nodd
ed, speaking softly. “Thank you. I would like that.
”

“It’s n
ot a problem,” he nodded
back, raising his hand to gesture for her to go inside ahead of him
.

* * * *

In the darkness beyond the reach of the village lights, a man in black watched the golden-haired woman disappear into the tavern’s warm environment. His gaze narrowed, his eyes glittering with dark deliberation as the tall, fair-haired stranger followed closely behind her.

The watcher’s
blue
eyes began to glow in the shadows, jealousy rearing its head and rushing liquid fury through his tall form. He stood from where he’d been crouching beneath the sheltering black leaves of a low-lying tree
and
waited there silent and still for several minutes
.
He weighed his options carefully.

And then he stepped out onto the village road and made his way toward the tavern.

Victoria sat down i
n the wooden chair the large man pulled
out for her, and then jumped only slightly when he pushed the chair
back in with her in it
. He took the seat across from her, his massive form as
sturdy looking
as the
rough-hewn
furniture that supplied the
tavern.

He
looked around and
raised
his arm. Victoria
assumed he w
as going to wave a server
to th
eir table, as she’d seen people
do in Room 73 at the TGB.

“Wench! Over here!” h
e barked
.

Victoria’s eyes widened.

A
woman with short black hair
and breasts shoved up so high were nearly part of her chin
spun around to f
ace him. Her young face
was ashen.
“I’m on me way!”
s
he responded
, hurrying around several tables to head toward them
.

Victoria’s gaze narrowed.
“You could have said please,” she told the man across from her.
“You scared her half to death.” It didn’t matter that Victoria didn’t know the man – or, apparently, that he was three times her size. He was being rude to an innocent young girl, and Victoria could always fry him in his boots.

Brown eyes cut to her
, and Victoria suddenly stilled in her chair. She felt inexplicably
pinned beneath
the weight of his gaze
. He smiled, but for some reason it didn’t so much put her at ease as change the nature of her anxiety. Still, she noticed that his eyes glittered with something like amusement.

“Is that what they say where you’re from?”
h
e asked.
“Please?”

Victoria took a moment to clear her throat; it had closed up a bit. “Yes,” she finally re
plied. Then, with more force, “I
t is.”

“I see.” He nodded his understanding and she wasn’t sure whether he was teasing her or not. “Very well.”

The woman approached the table and the man turned to her
:
“
Please
bring my companion a dinner and an ale, wench. And make it quick. I swear I can see her losing weight even as we sit here.”

Again, Victoria’s eyes widened. She blushed furiously this time, a hard retort rising to her tongue even as the serving woman nodded her consent and spun away.

“Excuse me!” she hissed
, trying to keep her voice down
despite her sharp disapproval. “My
weight
?”
s
he asked incredulously. “What in the world is wrong with my weight?”

He chuckled. “Not a thing, little one, except that you need more
of it. You’re a pretty girl, don’t get me wrong, b
ut you look as if you’d break in a bit of rough and tumble.”

Victoria stared at him.
She was
at once
torn between being complimented, albeit embarrassed, by his calling her a
pretty girl
– and being insulted by his
blatant
reference to sex. After several seconds,
a firm retort had landed on her tongue, and she opened her mouth to let it loose.

But her mother had always taught her that if she couldn’t say something nice, she shouldn’t say anything at all. She thought of this now, reconsidered, and closed her mouth again, sitting back in her chair.
Besides, he was buying her a meal.

Victoria
froze.

My
…
mother?
She frowned, feeling discombobulated in the worst way. The world receded a little.

She
had
no mother.

That’s what Game Control had told her. She
’d been told she
was an orphan taken from one of the sectors when she was ten years old and brought to play on the Field af
ter one of those tests they gave
to every child
,
orphan or not.

But the memory she suddenly had was
so real
….

The stranger
across from her
was watching her carefully now. His expression was guarded, but his
intelligent
eyes took everything in.

She cleared her throat as a faint dizziness hastily swept through her and was gone.
“What
… what is your name?” she asked.

Beyond him, people dressed much the same way as the stranger came into the bar as others left. She observed them with a team leader’s acuity, despite her current state.

“I’m Anders,” he told her
, his tone friendly
. “Now
,
you
.”

She
considered not telling him, knowing
Victor might later question him
. But it didn’t matter; Victor would just read his mind and come up with her image. The name meant nothing.

“I’m Victoria,” she said, “Victoria Red.” She started to extend her hand in order to shake his, but when she recalled that she was no longer on the Field, she hesitated. Did they shake hands here?

As if to quell her fears, he extended his own hand over the
tabletop
. When she relaxed and brought hers out again, he grasped it firmly at the wrist.

Victoria’s po
wer leapt to life,
and her palm grew warm.

But just as she was beginning to wonder if she would have to set Anders on fire, he chuckled and gestured to the hand he held. “You’re supposed to
take
my wrist as well, little one. It’s the way people greet in these parts.”

She blinked. “Oh.”
She took his wrist. “
Why do you grasp wrists instead of hands?”

“To check for blades,” he answered, easily. He released her wrist and they settled back into their chairs.

Victoria’s hand tingled where his bare skin had come into contact with hers. Vaguely, she wondered if
it
was her imagination. Maybe she was too hung
ry and
tired.

“Blades,” she repeated, thinking that over.
T
hat was where Max kept his knife
.
“That makes sense,” she conceded.

Anot
her patron came into the tavern,
this time a small-boned blonde man
.
He rubbed his
hands on the
ash-covered
apron he wore and looked around. His
gaze skirted
over Victoria and Anders as he
searched the room.
He
had very blue eyes.
After a second, he made his
way
to the bar and ordered a drink
.

“What’s the name of the place you left?” Anders asked.

Victoria frowned. What w
ould
she tell him? She was from T
he Field? The other side of the wall? She was baffled
by her incredible difference from everyone else in this tavern, and it made her wonder how much she should share – how much they would even understand
.
Again, her doubts resurfaced. Where was all of the technology that could be found on the Field? Where were the cities?

She winced as a sharp pain shot through the right side of her head
.
She was getting a migraine.

“I’m…
.
”
S
he racked her brain
.
“I’m from Red Tower
.” Then, befor
e he could ask what
“
Red Tower
”
was, she countered with a question of her own. “What is this place called?”

Anders
watched her in h
is dark, keen
w
ay for a few seconds before he
si
ghed heavily, as if he were unduly weary. “It’s Ocanus. It’s a
fishing village off of the Mare. There’s nothing
else
anywhere near here fo
r miles.” He leaned forward
, placing his musc
led arms on the table to lace
his fingers together. The leather straps of his bracers swa
yed slightly as he moved; t
he leather smell that wafted toward her reminded her of Victor. “Not for
hundreds
of miles
,
”
Anders
added meaningfully.

He wanted to know where she’d come from. By all rights, she shouldn’t have made it to Ocanus alive – not across hundreds of miles. Not without food or water.

He was suspicious, and she couldn’t blame him. But again, it wasn’t
any of
his business.

She tore her gaze from his, concentrating on the door.

A
nother man walked through the double doors, accompanied by a teenage boy
who was, by the looks of him, his son. The pair made their way to
an empty table
,
and the serving woman was at their side moments later.

“You’re waiting
for him to come in, aren’t you?
”

Victoria blinked and turned back to face Anders. At first she wasn’t sure what he meant. And then she realized that he was talking about the person she was running from. He’d figured out that it was a man
.