The Last Warrior (8 page)

U
NDER THE COVER OF THE
predawn darkness, Elsabeth and the men helped Tao sit up in the back of the wagon. Despite his wounds and the sedating drugs, he was able to walk. Again, his sheer force of will kept him going when others would have given up.

Tao became more lucid out in the night air, taking in his surroundings, the congested but squeaky-clean warren of shops and homes populated by people with an age-old, blood-deep distrust of Tassagons. He made no comment until she began unlocking the plain entrance to her parent's house.

“Is this where I'm to hide?” he asked, as she opened the front door and turned on a light, revealing the cozy interior.

Perhaps he'd been expecting a hospital or a cell. “My home, yes. You'll live with me.”

His eyes found hers. No longer drowsy slits, they flickered with surprise and then speculation. She'd seen that look before when men in the palace sized up
potential bedmates. No Tassagon had ever pondered her the way the general was now doing, but he clearly fancied she'd be his lover for the mere fact that they'd be sharing the same living space. Were Uhr-warriors truly that indiscriminate?

“With no chaperone?” he asked, confirming her suspicions. Any valued Tassagon maiden had to be chaperoned, lest a warrior deflower her at the first opportunity. Kurel knew no such barbarity, so no Kurel maiden required a chaperone.

Elsabeth almost laughed at the idea. “If anything, I am
your
chaperone in Kurel Town.”

“Our staying alone together won't cause a scandal?”

Was he actually concerned he'd sully her reputation? Or were his doubts about his ability to control his impulses around her? Rumors about Uhr-warriors and their appetites aside, gut instinct told her the general wasn't a man to take a woman by force. He had more honor than that, and this conversation proved it. “Your very presence in Kurel Town is scandalous. Whose home you occupy makes little difference.”

They made it inside without rousing any of the neighbors. With shuddering relief, Elsabeth leaned back against the closed door, her hands flat against the cool dark wood, and inhaled the sweet scent of her living room.

The detached row house had only one main living
area, one bedroom and a tiny loft where she'd slept since childhood, tucked under the slope of the roof. The bedroom had belonged to her mother and father. No one had slept in it since their deaths. A Tassagon warrior wouldn't be the first. “We'll need an extra bed,” she told the men. “He can sleep here, in the living room.”

She pushed away from the door to help. Some furniture rearranging allowed a bed to be brought from the clinic next door, and soon they had the general settled in a corner of the living room. A screen blocked a direct view from the front door, should anyone drop by unexpectedly.

Chun approached the bed. Several needles and sutures sat in a sterilized pan. “Healer,” Tao mumbled. “Remember, you are not to take the legs.”

“And if the choice is between death and amputation?”

“When isn't that the choice?” The general turned his gaze to the ceiling, and Elsabeth's heart went out to him. “I will make my decision if I am required to. Until then, you will treat my legs as if I'm keeping them.”

“You have my word.” Chun emptied another dose of mondosh and drowse into the man, knocking him out to administer the antivenin.

While the general was stripped of his soiled uniform and washed by the men, Elsabeth climbed up to the
aviary and lit a small lamp.
Cuh-choo, cuh-choo-coo.
Rustling and cooing met her as she cut a small square from a piece of green fabric. “I need a volunteer. Who will carry this to the palace? Where are my best night fliers?”

Prometheus strutted by, tilting his head at her, one black bead of an eye searching hopefully for a few grains of feed. She cupped him in her hands. “Of course it's you.” With the green flag rolled and tucked in a tube fastened to the bird's leg, she released him into the night. A flutter of wings, and he was on the way to the palace aviary.
The general is here and safe.

By the time she'd washed up and returned to the main floor of her house, Tao was cleaned up, sutured and tucked in bed with an IV of antibiotics. The sheets were pulled midway up the general's bare chest. His shoulders and arms were brown from the suns, the smooth skin marred here and there by puckered scars. The souvenirs of battle, she thought and shuddered. She hoped they'd given him pajama pants to wear. A Tassagon warrior in her living room was one thing. A naked Tassagon warrior was entirely another.

But embarrass herself by expressing such a ridiculous concern? Clearly she'd gone soft in the years since Chun had taken over the clinic. After so long assisting her parents with patients, what Tao wore—or didn't—shouldn't concern her.

But it did somehow.

After setting a pot of stew on the stove to simmer for breakfast, Elsabeth stood over her unexpected houseguest's side while he slept. A dark brown strip of leather circled his neck, threaded through a slender, polished silver rectangle. It was an odd item of jewelry, showcasing a piece of metal that hadn't been crudely extracted from a mine and melted by a smithy, but created instead through advanced technology millennia ago on a world countless light-years away. Nothing she'd expect a Tassagon to own. Such pieces were usually remnants of the destroyed arks of old, but it was rare to find any traces larger than a pebble. A war prize, perhaps, removed from a Gorr corpse or found in some distant glade in the Hinterlands, one more item attesting to the fact that this man had roamed farther and wider than she'd ever have the chance to go, except in her imagination and in the stories she read.

The charm rose and fell with his steady, quiet breathing. “He's going to be all right,” she said.

“Yes. I think so.” Chun was at the sink, pumping well water into the basin. He and Navi would need to leave soon for their own homes, so they could begin their days as if nothing had happened during the night. “The problem was the venom, but the antidote is very effective.”

Elsabeth held a lantern closer to Tao. Here was a gravely wounded man, too young to die, his utter
vulnerability rendering him somehow incapable of the terrible things she knew he'd done. Yet, despite his unexpectedly boyish looks, the creases on his suntanned skin had been carved by stronger emotions, she knew. They, along with his many scars, attested to the viciousness of his years in the Hinterlands, a life that had very clearly taken its toll. She set the lantern down and crouched by his side. “You're as much of a victim of Xim as any of us are,” she murmured. “You don't deserve to die.”

She caught a glimpse of green under his heavy lids, and it almost looked as if he'd smiled.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he murmured. His voice was soft, playful, sleep-roughened and completely unnerving. She almost gasped at his audacity, shooting to her feet.

“Sunshine?” Navi asked, trying to hide a smirk.

Tao was already back asleep. “The general is drugged,” she said.
Sunshine. My.
What would it be like hearing
that
every morning from the pillow next to her? She cut off her imagination before it went any further. “He doesn't know what he's saying.”

Navi shrugged. “It seemed like he did.”

Chun listened as he washed his hands. “Agreed. Mondosh has no effect on reason, and the drowse just makes him sleepy.”

She frowned at them, saying under her breath, “If he knows or he doesn't, just pretend it didn't happen
and continue on with proper etiquette.” Clearly, his warrior's thoughts fell into well-traveled grooves, like the mule wagon did on the merchant road. That's why reacting with a nonreaction was best. Simple, neutral serenity. “Eventually, he can be trained to behave like a Kurel, and he'll think he's learned it himself.”

“Rather like a dog.”

They all jumped at the sound of Tao's voice. Elsabeth winced. His eyes might have been closed, but the man behind them was very much awake.

Elsabeth's face burned. She'd underestimated him. Worse, she'd insulted him. Again. “I didn't mean to imply that you were like a dog…” The rest of her sentence was lost when she turned to face him and saw how intensely he was concentrating on her, despite the mondosh in his system. It was as if he'd decided he'd will away the effects of the powerful drug as he had the agony of his injuries, dismissing them as mere fleabites. “Not at all like a dog.”

“But stupid, yes?” Tao's jaw was hard. “A brute.”

“No. I don't think you're stupid.” It was true, she didn't. “Or a brute.”

“So she says, in an effort to salvage her credibility and my trust.”

“My credibility isn't in question. I got you out of a prison tonight. And of course, I want your trust.”

“Want it, or need it?”

“I need your trust. Are you satisfied? All of us do.”

Chun warned her into silence with a frosty look in her direction.
No arguing with the patient.
He was right. She was supposed to offer sanctuary to the general, not bicker with him.

Swallowing her pride, she again dropped to her knees at Tao's bedside.
Remember your vow. This man will help you achieve it.

“Here is your first lesson in the ways of my people,” she said, softer. “Kurel don't say those kinds of endearments to a woman they don't know in front of others. I felt embarrassed. It was easier to pretend you didn't know what you were saying than to accept that you did. But, I didn't need to point out your unawareness with such disrespect.”

A satisfied sound came from deep in his throat. He murmured, barely audible, “It seems we have something in common. I have as much to learn about your ways as you do mine.” He tried to hold his sagging eyelids open, but the effort proved too much. After a moment, his breathing deepened. It seemed this time he was really asleep.

She rose, wiping her hands on her skirt, awkwardly meeting the men's eyes. “He appears to be open to learning, at least.”

“You, too,” Chun said. Before she could retort, he told her, “I'll be back after first light. Two and one?”

“Two and one,” she repeated, confirming their coded knock for the door. “Navi,” she pressed a note into the
accountant's hand, “deliver this to Elder Gwendolyn's mailbox.” His brows lifted. “It says we've rescued a high-ranking Tassagon from the king's clutches, and that he's here, injured and under watch. I'll be in touch with all the elders come morning regarding the request for sanctuary.” Elder Gwendolyn was one of the most junior of the ghetto's ruling council, but as Elsabeth's great-great aunt, she was family and thus was more likely to consider her appeal. “At the very least I hope they let him stay on humanitarian grounds until he's healed.”

The men left. She walked past the niche housing the chunk of charred wood saved from her parents' funeral pyre, pausing to brush her fingers over its polished surface, then she plunged, exhausted, into a chair in sight of the bed. The house was finally silent but did not feel empty. General Tao filled the entire space with his presence: his scent, the sight of his unmoving bulk under the quilts, the unavoidable realization that he was
there
. Not just physically, but something else she could sense but not define. Whether washing the night's grime from her hair or making stew, she'd felt it.

No one had said this would be easy.

A cup of cooling honey-tea sat on the lamp table next to a book she had no intention of opening. For once, real life was providing far more twists and turns
than anything she could possibly encounter on those pages.

I did it.
The enormity of what she and Markam had achieved finally sank in. An Uhr-warrior in Kurel Town. The concept boggled. It could very well be the first occurrence of its kind since the Old Colony, when all the peoples of humanity had lived as one—before the Gorr invasion, before the near annihilation of both species, before they'd been reduced from the possessors of powerful, star-reaching arks and stunning weaponry to a bedraggled group of survivors, defending the last of humanity with little more than sticks and stones.

The self-appointed first Tassagon king had banned advanced technology forevermore. The first Forbiddance had deemed it wicked, blaming technology for all the ills that had befallen the colony. Leaving those “responsible” with no choice but to leave and set up their own colony in the Barrier Peaks.

Now the descendants of those outcasts had Tassagonia's future in their control once again. Like the suns at summer solstice, Xim had reached his peak. From this point in time, from this moment in Colony history, he'd shine less and less until the day he was finally extinguished.

Elsabeth returned her gaze to the sleeping form of Tao. So why did this feel more like a beginning than an end?

 

“A
LL HANDS
! A
LL HANDS
!”

The guard's panicked cry pierced the foggy dawn air, rousing even the drunks scattered and sprawled across the bailey—those not lucky enough to have found a mattress inside and a willing wench.

With a green square stuffed at the bottom of his pants pocket, Markam met the guard. “What happened?”

“He's gone,” the man said, trying to catch his breath. “General Tao. He escaped.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Don't rightly know, sir, but I found this.” In the guard's white-gloved hand was a flimsy shard of metal.

Markam examined it. “The man fashioned one of his buttons into a key. That accounts for the cell door, but the barrier doors, were they not guarded?”

“Guarded and intact, sir.”

“How did he get out, then? Through the walls?”

“Sir, all I know is that he wasn't there when I brought him a pot of gruel and a cup of water.”