The Champion (9 page)

Jacob nodded and turned away, descending the stairs to the cool sand. He crossed out of the airship’s shadow, searching the perimeter for the young guard holding his horse.

“Jacob,” Gilda called from behind him. He looked back to see her slightly out of breath as she tried to keep pace, her soft ringlets blue with moonlight. “Are you in love with her?”

“Are you in love with Lanchard?”

“Of course, you know I am. I always was.”

“Then go home to him, Gilda.”

“Don’t be like that. Our past association, however brief and badly botched on my part, does allow me to have a care for your safety, for your happiness, does it not? I have to return the Duke to
Avenger
, but if you can get her to the extraction point in Bhu Djazir, I can fly you both out.”

He stopped and considered her for a moment, aware that her nature, abiding its course, had always amazed him. “I am glad for you, for what you’ve found.” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“Jacob—”

“Follow your orders,” he insisted. “If I can get her to Bhu Djazir, I can get her out of the desert without help.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then I will do something different.”

She shook her head, not liking that at all.

The young guard appeared with the horse. “You are headed back into the field then, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need a fresh canteen?”

Jacob tossed the reins over the hard leather pommel and pulled himself into the saddle, his cloak draping over the animal’s forelegs. “A fresh canteen, and two rifles, with as much ammunition as I can carry.”

The guard swallowed, looking uncertain.

“You heard the Colonel,” Gilda chided, her voice betraying uncharacteristic strain, a sliver of desperation she could no longer hide. “Now move, dear boy, unless you would prefer to walk all the way home.”

Nadira held herself against the dove gray dawn, wincing at smoke drifting in the cold breeze beyond the tower’s retractable doors. The sound of the soldiers in the courtyard had subsided some time ago, their appetite for violence and ruin sated after an entire night of destruction. It was possible the council, the scholars, were still alive, though she had heard screams throughout the darkest hours.

The Grand Vizier had selected the men for this journey well, directing them to lie, to make their empty bargains and pillage as they chose. The temples had been looted, the great library…

She closed her eyes.
I will return before morning.

Perhaps he had tried. Perhaps he had returned to see Abu Quardan overrun with soldiers, and had been forced to turn away. But then…perhaps not. Perhaps he had always simply been a dream to light a fool’s horizon, to offer hope, a beautiful image to hold as the world turned to flame.

“Jacob,” she whispered.

The clatter of horses echoed across the stone yard outside. The figure of Grand Vizier appeared from the smoke, riding Nadira’s white stallion and dressed in the bright silks of the Sultan, flanked by dozens of his guards, and followed by lines of armed men in marching formation.

He circled the dancing horse before the Star Tower’s locked entrance, craning his neck back to stare up at the dome. “It is time, Nadira! Time for the truth. Time to confess. You cannot stay in there forever. We have organized enough explosives to destroy that door, if we must, but we wish to give you one opportunity for mercy first. You must know, by now, that the machine cannot help you. It can only explode, killing you and all the scholars we have captured, some of whom I think you know.”

She angled her view, watching as old Isban was dragged to the ground before the white stallion, his cries for mercy ringing in the air.

“Shall we stone him?” the fat man yelled. “I would spare him, if I could. I would spare you too. If you confess, I swear, in front of all these men, that your death will be quick, the kiss of a sharp sword blade, well handled by a good soldier. There will be no rocks for you. Confess, and there shall be mercy.”

Mercy.
She grimaced.

“Or perhaps you wait for the New Europa assassin to save you? We had a report that someone evaded the guards we posted, a man who stole a horse and disappeared. Was it him, the famous Jacob Kessler, escaping back to his masters? You seduced him with the powers of a witch, surely, but his loyalty will never belong to you. He was sent to kill you, and shortly, one way or another, you will be dead.”

I will tell you everything, as soon as I am free to do so.

A soldier. Not a thief. Not Robert Letoures.

She sank to her knees on the scaffolding ledge, a pained noise escaping under her breath. Not the dream at all. Not even a beautiful illusion…but an assassin.

The weight of it was too much to bear, another grave misstep in a bottomless world where lies never stopped, masks never washed away. In the harem, in the court, even in the soft heartbeat of a lover…the lies never stopped. This was the world she was born into, the world she had accepted, perpetuated with her own plan for survival.

And this is where it ended, with no meaning at all, other than what she still might give it. Not with self-serving lies, or painted faces, but with the truth that she had never actually spoken.

“Kill the scholar!” the Grand Vizier yelled from the yard. “Lest he spread more lies, more heresy.”

Lies
.

Grasping for the rail, Nadira climbed down to the catwalk and descended the stairways, one after another, to the bottom of the tower. Ducking under pipes and hissing steam valves, she ran to the vault door and turned the dogging wheels, yelling with the effort it took. The bar locks retracted, the heavy door swinging loose on large, well-oiled hinges.

Grabbing onto one of the wheels, she pulled it back.

The metal gap separated to bright rays of light, the sunrise glaring over the crowns of the gods and goddesses carved into the distant cliff rock.

Nadira walked into its warmth, her hair loose down her back, her white robe billowing in the breeze. The silhouettes before her took solid shape, the Grand Vizier mounted on her horse, his expression triumphant, the soldiers behind him, around him, everywhere.

“No,” Isban objected weakly from the ground. “The Sultan…”

“I am the Sultan,” she said, raising her voice above the wind. “Osman died of poison. I did not kill him, but I was not sorry to see him die. He used me. He used all of us, and understood none of us. How can you understand suffering, if you have never suffered? How can you understand pain, or humiliation, when you have never been made to feel it? How can you rule, when you do not what it means to serve? I watched him die. Then I dragged his body through the passages used by the women of the Harem and I put him in an open crypt, to lie like the ancients. Then I donned his great robes and I changed what I could. This, a place ruled by rich tyrants and ruined by their bloodshed, is not the world I wanted.”

“What
you
wanted,” the Grand Vizier snarled. “A slave who stole power from her master, who deceived a kingdom!”

She stood against his wrath, beyond fear or panic now, her dreams lost to the wind, to the life that had always been beyond her reach.

“Take her head,” the Grand Vizier roared. “And bear witness to the mercy of a true king.”

The soldiers around him broke into shrill cries of celebration, their fists raised, their voices as sharp as stones.

Three men from the Grand Vizier’s guard dismounted their horses, dressed in royal black and red cloaks. One drew a curving scimitar from his saddle and swung it proudly, sunlight flashing along its sharpened edge.

Nadira waited on the tower steps, fighting the slow betrayal of her body, the sudden weakness in her limbs. Images of Jacob flowed from memory, the whisper of his voice against her ear, the touch of his hands on her face. Not a lifetime, but a few moments that burned just as brightly.

She wet her lips, kneeling down on the stone as her executioners climbed the steps. The man with the sword was closest. The second one slowed as he passed the Grand Vizier.

He said something, words drowned out by mob of ringing voices. The fat man stared down at him in horror, then drew back, but it was too late.

“Jacob,” she cried out, seeing past the darkened complexion, the kohl lined eyes. “Jacob!”

He was already moving, leaping up to climb the saddle of the white stallion. A metal wire flashed in the sun, snagging the Grand Vizier around the neck. Jacob launched himself backward, dragging the big man from the horse with a hard snap of bone.

The Vizier’s body crumpled, collapsing to the steps.

Jacob was on his feet, sprinting past the rearing horse, ignoring the screams of outrage. He ducked under the swordsman, kicking the man’s feet out from under him.

“Move!” he yelled at her. “Go!”

She staggered up, hearing the crackle of gunfire, the officers fanning out to launch an attack. Jacob rushed her before she could respond, grabbing onto her arm and pushing her back through the vault door.

Nadira fell to the tower floor, sliding toward the wall. Jacob turned and drove the door shut, wheeling its locks into place. The metal pinged loudly with pistol shot, steel rain echoing up the tower.

He swore under his breath, unclasping his dark cloak and letting it fall. A leather satchel had been slung over his shoulder and he shrugged it off, crouching to the floor as he untied the laces and spread the contents out beneath him. Two metal barrels, two shaped and polished pieces of wood, a collection of parts…

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his eyes never leaving his work, his hands deftly sliding one barrel against the shaped stock, locking pieces of the rifle together with practiced ease. “Are you hurt, Nadira?”

“No.”

“I told you to stay in the tower.”

“You told me you would be back by morning.”

“I was.” He spared her a heated glance. “I was right outside.”

“You killed the Grand Vizier.”

“Yes.”

“So quickly.”

“As quickly as I could, though it was not what I planned.”

She shook her head, searching for the lover he had been, afraid to find out what else he might be. “Did you kill Robert Letoures too?”

“I sent him home,” he replied coolly. “Barely sober, but breathing.”

“You caught him?”

“Did you really think that was impossible?”

“Yes,” she murmured. “I had hoped so.”

He gave a half-shake of his head, completing the first rifle and pulling the trigger to hear it click. Satisfied, he slid the bolt back and reached along his belt, sliding bullets out of a pouch.

“Who are you?” she asked, angry now.

“Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Ryland Kessler, once loyal servant of His Majesty, King Edward the Twenty-Second of New Europa.”

“An assassin, sent to kill me.”

“Yes,” he hissed, meeting her gaze. “But you are still alive. Everything I told you is true, Nadira. I am yours.”

I am yours.
She felt her heart careen from panic to hope with the words, the truth never more beautifully spoken. What further proof did she need? He’d come back through hellfire, just as he promised.

“What can we do?” she asked. “We are surrounded.”

He put down the first loaded rifle and began constructing the second, sliding the barrel against the stock, screwing the pieces together with light, quick touches. “We hold them away from the entrance until nightfall. Then we escape to the wall.”

“You were waiting for night, to come for me.”

“Yes.” He completed the second rifle and tested the trigger, nodding as it clicked.

“And now it is more difficult.”

“It will not be easy but—”

Silence. The sound of bullets died off abruptly.

Jacob froze, listening through the echoing spill of water, catching the hushed sound of movement outside.

“The explosives,” Nadira whispered.

Jacob nodded. “Climb the catwalks to the top. Go.”

He slung the rifles over his shoulder and followed her as she ran for the steps. She ascended at a sprint, taking several stairs at a time, her boots pinging in echoes along the metal. The dark column of the war machine glinted beyond the rails, the sunrise coloring its angled mirrors, prisms flaring from its crown.

Jacob crested the top staircase and crossed in front of her, running the length of the walkway and leaping up the wooden scaffold to the open doors of the dome. He slung both the rifles loose and lay one the ledge, placing his ammunition pouch beside it. Leaning out through the gap, he raised the other weapon and took careful aim.

She watched him calculate and track, his shoulders relaxed, one eye closing as he lined up his sight. He pulled the trigger. The rifle clapped. Men yelled from below, scattering out from beneath the tower. Jacob slid the bolt back, slammed it forward to reload, then shot again, having already chosen his targets.

A hail of pistol fire hit the tower, chipping stone and clanging from the copper dome. Jacob swore, forced to duck lower. “Nadira,” he yelled, his eyes fierce, lined with dark kohl. “I need you to reload while I shoot.”

She nodded, hoping she could do that. Climbing the scaffold, she felt the breeze sting her eyes, wafting with powder smoke. She picked up the rifle, her fingers trembling as she struggled with the bolt. It slid back with effort and she reached for the shells he had placed on the ledge, loading them into the magazine well as he had done.