The Last Warrior (10 page)

Crutches were propped against the wall closest to his bed, but he'd soon be walking without aid. He had to be. Those he'd left behind in the palace needed him
as much as Xim needed some sense knocked
into
him. For the king to think that he—a man he'd known since childhood, his top military officer and his brother-in-law—lusted after the Tassagonian throne, to believe it enough to have him killed, it was madness.

So much for Tao's dreams for a quiet retirement.

Elsabeth carried two bowls to his bed, one for him, which she placed on a tray in his lap, another for herself. She sat on a footstool dragged close to his bed. “The elders will have to be told you're hiding here. It's up to them to decide if you can stay. If I keep your presence a secret, I could be banished.” She paused in the middle of stirring her stew. “I've invited the elders to dinner. Tonight.”

“I'll be ready.”

“You have to make a good impression.”

“Don't worry. I will.” Tao glanced around for a crust of bread, or a hand-plank with which to shovel the stew into his mouth, but a delicate little spoon was all he had at hand, the same kind Elsabeth was using. He picked it up, pinching it between his two fingers. “Silly thing. Almost useless.”

“It's a spoon.” She said it as if she thought him unbelievably backward for questioning it.

“I know. But look at it. How can a man expect to get enough to eat?”

“Our men do just fine eating with utensils.”

“Your men read books and work with numbers—and
treat wounds with potions. They don't expend enough energy to need more food than they can eat with…this.” He scowled at the little spoon. Still, he could not afford to be put outside the ghetto gates, or cause Elsabeth to suffer the same fate.
I must learn to adapt to the ways of my hosts.
He dredged the utensil through his stew, only to find her watching him attempt the feat with a sort of repulsed yet enthralled curiosity.

He'd show her.

A sinfully small amount of the stew fit on the spoon. It was chunky and brimming with meat and vegetables. He sucked some into his mouth, and was halfway to digging up more when he was hit by an explosion of heat. It set his tongue afire and shot up his sinuses. “What in all Uhrth,” he croaked. “Water…”

Elsabeth jumped up, returning not with water but with milk. “Goat's milk,” she said. “Drink it down. It'll quench the heat.”

He chugged all that was in the glass and expelled a gust of air. “There's enough spice in this stew to burn a village. I thought you said it was ‘just right.'”

“It is.” She was trying hard not to laugh at him. “For a Kurel. Our food is considered spicy by some.”

“Some?”
He was wiping his eyes, his mouth still on fire. That won him another smothered laugh. Could he not maintain his dignity around this woman? “I thought you were a peace-loving people. This is a dangerous weapon. You promised Markam to keep me
alive. Where's your sense of responsibility? Where was the warning?”

“I can arrange for you to be fed baby food—bread and milk…”

“Bah!” Like grabbing hold of a sword for battle, he lifted the spoon. “If I am to live like you, that means eating like you.” Pausing to say a prayer, he then wolfed down mouthful after burning mouthful until he'd cleaned the bowl. Eyes and nose tearing, he sat back in bed, sweating—but not from fever. From breakfast!

“More?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” he rasped. “I haven't eaten in days, and by Uhrth, I won't let a little spice stop me.”

After he'd eaten his fill, his eyes and nose watering, Elsabeth cleared the dishes and returned with two cups of tea to her perch on the bedside footstool. He lifted the impossibly little cup to his nose. It smelled like mint and grass.

“It's safe,” she assured him.

He snorted. “‘Just right,' I suppose.” It did taste pleasant, but what he really craved was a glass of chilled ale. Who knew when he'd next have the chance? He was, for all intents and purposes, dead. A general without an army, corralled by people who refused to fight. A Tassagon Uhr-warrior stuck in the heart of K-Town with a woman who'd rather be anywhere else on this world but in his company.

Tao wondered if Markam was at the palace laughing at that fact? Probably. It would be just his friend's sense of mischief to set him up like this.

Except the reality of the matter was sobering. He was a fugitive, his sister, Aza, was at risk if she dared protest the king's actions against him and his army was in danger of being used as a weapon against other humans, his officers executed if they refused. Frustration burned in his gut at being so stymied.

Consigned to K-Town, he'd be able to do little to help the kingdom from such an awkward fallback position—let alone help Aza. But he wouldn't stop trying. He'd survive to see his sister and his kingdom safe.

He had no time to devote further thought to ale and tea; he had a meeting with the elders to prepare for. But Elsabeth's attention had shifted outside, gauging the amount of darkness left. “I'll leave for the palace at suns-up,” she said.

“You will be my conduit of communication with the palace. Between Markam and I. Also Aza. Bring back everything you hear. Everything you see.”

She only lifted a brow at his thinly disguised orders.

“No different from what I've been doing for the past three years. I give information to Markam, and he does the same for me.” She paused to contemplate
him as he emptied his cup, holding it out for her to pour another.

“How long have you worked with him?” he asked.

“Since the day I accepted the position as royal tutor.” The candle on the table sputtered. She straightened the wick with deft fingers, her expression growing sober. “Something he set in motion before I ever knew of him—because he knew of me. After my parents were slaughtered, I tried keeping their clinic open in defiance of the violence, just as I'd vowed at their funeral. So they'd know they didn't die in vain.” The candle flame danced in her darkened eyes. For the first time he could see the full measure of her grief. Like him, she kept the pain of loss hidden. It could be misconstrued, after all, as a weakness.

“But for all their brilliance in medicine,” she said, “they overlooked their financial matters. They'd spent all their coins on the clinic, leaving me with nothing. If not for donations from the neighbors, I wouldn't have been able to eat, let alone run a clinic. How could I restock medicine if I couldn't afford enough tubers to fill a pot? I had no aptitude for medicine, no real skills to speak of—aside from a love of books, a knack for organization and an unfettered imagination.” She cracked a self-deprecatory smile. “If one can consider that a skill and not a liability. I let it be known I needed employment, but the only offers that came my way were of marriage.”

“And you couldn't decide amongst the many men?”

“Actually,” she replied, a hint of pink tinting her cheeks, “when I thought of the depth of love I saw in my parents' relationship, I decided none of the men who came forward had even a trace of that potential. Accepting any of their offers was out of the question.”

“Not even to improve your circumstances?”

“Especially not for that reason. I knew I'd achieve my goal another way.”

“But you would have married, if you'd found your so-called true love?”

“Yes. I would have.”

Sighing, he shook his head. “Love will get you only so far.”

“Don't you ever plan to marry?”

“Of course. But I'll expect whomever I choose to be able to ease my retirement, to work at the vineyards with me, providing womanly comforts, bearing my children. That will take a deliberate effort more than it will love.”

She almost choked on the tea she'd just sipped. “You want to grow old with a woman who sees being with you as a
deliberate effort?”

“I hope she'll enjoy my company, but yes. Much like a successful battle strategy, marriage requires endurance.”

“But not love.”

“Correct.”

She wore the same expression of revulsion as when he'd told her about the Gorr. As if his beliefs on such things as love and marriage were equally horrifying, and distressing. “Is that how it was between your parents, Tao?”

“My father was gone at the front more than he was at home. My mother raised us. They seemed to enjoy each other's company when he was there, they treated each other with respect, but the point of the matter is that she was the right mate for him. My father chose her because she'd be strong and loyal. And independent. A warrior's woman, not a weak-willed female afraid to face life alone. When it comes time, I'll find an equally compatible female using the same logical, carefully considered methods with which I've conducted my military campaigns. Emotion will play no part in it, this flighty idea of ‘true love.'”

Her luminous blue gaze radiated at turns abject pity, intense curiosity and flat-out doubt. She started gathering their cups to put away.

“What?” he said. She'd gone silent, but not for the lack of an opinion. It was suddenly important he know what it was.

She spun to face him. “I hope, for your sake, you find a woman who'll love you so powerfully, so completely, that she'll render every ridiculous belief you just expressed completely and irrevocably wrong.”

He fell back against the pillows. Gooseflesh tingled on his arms, as if a window to his soul had been thrown open to let in a fresh and bracing breeze—which threatened to blow all his carefully arranged viewpoints off the table.

He slammed that window shut. He'd spent the past fifteen years plotting out the remainder of his life, should he ever get to have a remainder of his life. No one's whimsies would disrupt his carefully made plans, especially not a Kurel's—although her skeptical reaction did bring to mind Markam's comment from the homecoming:
good luck
. But then, his friend had always given too much weight to Aza's fantasies of true love.

Elsabeth carried the empty cups to the kitchen. Gruffly, he said, “You were telling me how you came to work with Markam. Finish the story.” He blamed the healer's potions for allowing the tutor to sway him so far off course. The wizardry was as dangerous to his judgment as a Gorr's eyes, fooling him into letting down his guard.

She appeared entertained by his discomposure as she pumped water into a basin. “As the clinic was failing, the palace announced there was an opening for a royal tutor. Just like that, out of the blue, when nothing else was going right. It was the perfect job at the perfect time, and I was the perfect applicant. Coincidence?” She shook her head. “That opening was
meant for me alone. Markam masterminded my hiring to get me in the palace. He convinced Aza of the need for a tutor even though the children were too young for one. Xim, of course, wouldn't have seen the need for a tutor at any age. But I was the poor orphan of the first two casualties of the crackdown. The two people who were probably the best friends you Tassagons had in this ghetto.” She pressed her lips together, her expression darker. “Markam never said so, but he must have known my bitterness would make me eager to work against Xim. He was right.”

She started scrubbing dishes as if she could just as easily wash away the anguish and anger of her past.

“So, I came to work at the palace, and did just as Markam hoped—I became attached to the queen and the little ones. I grew to love my job. I grew to love
them,
Tao. Teaching the prince and princess while working for their sire's overthrow, it tears me in two. But Markam must have banked on this, too, when he hired me. He'd wagered that the loyalty I'd develop for the queen and the children would keep me from endangering them unnecessarily. Markam wants their fates considered separately from Xim's. He wants to see them safe. And so far he has.”

“You don't resent the manipulation?”

“I don't fault him for any of it. He may have lured me here for his own purposes, but he gave me the means to fulfill my vow to my parents.”

“To oust Xim,” he said with a snarl, shifting position to ease the pull of his stitches. “You have no idea what you risk by doing this.”

“I know what we risk in doing nothing,” she said with quiet certainty. From where she stood, a rebel positioned incongruously in a kitchen, she met his hard stare with determination, but he could also see the exhaustion in her face, the residual fear. “Xim wishes to force all human tribes under his rule. In our scriptures, the Log of Uhrth, it's warned that if we humans turn on each other, darkness will consume us and we will be lost to Uhrth forever.”

“No one needs scripture to tell us the mistake in fighting each other,” Tao snapped. “Our weakness emboldens the Gorr. Division amongst us will lure them out of hiding. And back to war we'll be.”

“You can stop a future war, Tao. You can stop Xim.”

He recognized the look in her face and folded his arms over his chest. “No, Elsabeth. No more campaigning for me to be king. The throne isn't mine to take. I'm not in the line of succession. My nephew is the legitimate heir. By the arks, what am I saying? Xim is still the legitimate king!” He paused.
Keep your head.
“If not the ideal king,” he qualified.

“He is more than a less-than-ideal king, Tao. He's treacherous, demonstrating it with his cruel deeds. You could rule until Crown-Prince Maxim comes of age.
Use King Martin as your model. He was the one who invited the Kurel to immigrate here, to the capital.”

“But he forced you to live apart.”

“That was our choice,” Elsabeth said. “Just as we chose to leave the Old Colony.”

She was rewriting history as he sat there, listening to her rubbish. He'd long believed the Kurel were lost in their own little world; this proved it. “The Kurel were exiled to the Barrier Peaks for crimes of sorcery.”