The Last Warrior (9 page)

Markam paced, a finger pressed crossways under his chin. “There is access to the spillway from the cell block, a small opening, although I don't believe it leads anywhere but into the moat.”

“If he was desperate enough, sir…”

“That's what I'm thinking.” Markam glanced over at his second-in-command. “Bowers, sound the alert.
All guards are to assemble in the barracks. Then send them out to scour every inch of this palace and the city. We'll find Uhr-Tao. He can't have gone far.”

Across the bailey Markam spied Beck storming in his direction. He turned back to Bowers and said, “One more thing, the palace is off-limits to Kurel workers until further notice—security reasons.”

“Do you suspect a Kurel role in the general's escape, sir?” Bowers asked.

“The Kurel? Turning aggressive, actually plotting and carrying out a dangerous extraction mission to save an Uhr-warrior?” Markam laughed.

Bowers snickered. “I guess you're right, sir.”

“Now, go deal with Beck. I'll be with the king.” Markam set out in the direction of the royal residences to put himself through the particularly unpleasant experience of having to rouse Xim—from Aza's bed.

T
AO WAS UNDERWATER
, swimming to the surface glimmering above him. For all his effort, he could swim no closer to it. He kicked harder but his legs seemed to be caught in mud. He'd drown unless he got free. Running out of air. He swept his arms, powerful strokes, but his left was caught—an eel had tangled itself around it!

He jerked awake, dragging in air, his heart slamming like a broken door in a windstorm. Something was tangled around his left arm like in the dream, stinging, like a bee bite—a clear vine. He tracked it to where it dangled from an upside-down bottle all the way back to the inside of his elbow. The head was buried under the bandages. And in his flesh!

He yanked it out. Liquid and blood sprayed.

“Don't!” Elsabeth was there, a cloud of red hair and wide, angry blue eyes. Hands flat on his shoulders, she pushed him back down to the pillow, her hands warm on his bare flesh, her sweet scent intensified by the
sweep of her hair against his jaw. “You pulled the IV out.”

“IV?”

“Yes. It's short for intravenous. It sends medicine directly into your bloodstream.”

He drew the circle of Uhrth in the center of his chest to ward off bad luck. “Sorcery.”

“What you've been brought up to believe is wrong. We Kurel don't practice sorcery, or magic. We practice medicine.”

“Science—” he started to say with distaste then stopped.
Keep your head.
His response had been automatic, like a reflex. Was it any different than the way the Kurel glared at his army? He and the Kurel might be aligned in their fight with Xim, but sanctuary or not, he was in their custody and at their mercy. Best to give the appearance of behaving and gain their trust.

In case he needed to break it.

Elsabeth snatched his wrist to peer at his arm. “You're bleeding,” she scolded.

“I was having a dream. An eel was wrapped around my arm…” It all sounded silly now.

“Science, not sorcery, is the reason you're alive this morning—with both legs still attached.”

The tassagators.
His legs. Instinctively, he went hunting for them, taking inventory. Two complete limbs. “I'm indeed whole.” He let out a quick amazed
laugh. “They seem utterly insufficient words, but thank you, Elsabeth.”

“Thank Chun. It's his handiwork.” She smiled, though, at his sincere words.

He wondered if she was aware how much her rare smiles transformed her face. Capable of taking a man's breath away, they were. But he held his tongue rather than tell her. Getting to know a Kurel woman required an entirely different protocol than what he was used to. “I am in his debt. And in yours, despite what you say.”

Xim's suspicions were accurate about one thing: the dark arts were thriving unchecked in the ghetto. But whatever had been done to Tao, magic or otherwise, it had left him in remarkable condition. His wounds should be throbbing, swelling and have him wracked with fever by now. Every major injury he'd ever suffered came with the sweats. It was expected.

But not here in K-Town.

He couldn't help thinking of how the plague had roared through the capital like a deadly wildfire, taking so many lives, including those of his parents, but no Kurel. These IVs and potions were the reason. But did the benefits justify the crime?

“I have to treat the wound, Tao.” Holding on to his biceps, the tutor sat down on the mattress, pressing gauze to the crook of his arm. “Hold still.”

He certainly wasn't going to run away. Not half-
dressed with a very pretty woman sharing his bed, sitting so close he could feel the heat radiating off her body. Her sheer proximity—her scent, her curves, her mouth—commanded his attention, to say the least. But her intentions weren't sexual. Not even remotely. Her entire focus was devoted to a break in his skin to which he'd not have otherwise spared a second thought.

Her ivory skin was scrubbed and clean—not like the dancer at the feast with her face paint and heavy lashes, or like the females who frequented the encampments, hard-worn and jaded from having visited too many men's beds. Nor was she like the daughters of the king's men or older officers, his father's contemporaries, who had been introduced to him during his brief returns to the palace over the years. None had conjured in him more than a passing interest. All were now lost in a blur of stilted, boring conversations made while sipping expensive liqueurs and wearing stiff ceremonial uniforms.

In his defense, he'd been at war and focused on war during those visits, devoted to service to his kingdom and fairly certain he'd not be alive to see the end of it. He hadn't been looking at any women as marriage candidates, or perhaps he might have viewed them differently, considering each as the possible woman to whom he'd be faithful for the rest of his life, the woman who would share his bed, her body, their children.

Thoughts of the vineyards filled his mind, the
sprawling white house with a ribbon of smoke rising from the chimney, the lush gardens, sounds of song and laughter cascading through the serenity of the hills where he'd live, surrounded by family.

Never going off to war again.

The idealistic stuff of daydreams, perhaps, but such dreams had kept him going for countless years through hellish experiences no human should have to suffer, offering solace on the darkest of terrifying nights, when there was none.

When there were no women like Elsabeth to offer him comfort—or to pluck him from the jaws of death. No woman he'd known would have risked guards, arrows and tassagators to save his sorry ass, nor possessed the courage to try.

Now she was dabbing ointment inside his elbow. He'd spent less time on a dislocated shoulder. “I am fine,” he assured her as she continued to fuss over him.

“The smallest wound can kill if infection sets in. I can't let you die. I won't. Too much hinges on your life now.”

Her concern would have been flattering in any other situation, but he knew she only desired to use him to seek vengeance against Xim. He took the gauze from her fingers and tossed it to the table in contempt. “I will not be part of an ill-thought-out power grab.”

“It's not ill-thought-out. It's been three years in the making.”

“Whom do you hope to install on the throne in Xim's place?”

“You,” she said with quiet urgency.

“What? No, Elsabeth.”

“Ask Markam. He agrees.”

Tao remembered all too well the strange conversation he'd had with Markam at the homecoming. The man had been feeling him out, gauging his interest. “Perhaps not ill-thought-out, but just as potentially destabilizing, Elsabeth. For all your passion, you're hopelessly innocent about the consequences of what you and the other rebels aspire to do.” He girded himself against an onslaught of memories: the screaming in the night, the corpses in the morning. The lingering, nauseating musk. If humans were the enemy instead of the Gorr, the violence would still be nightmarish. And then the Gorr would come, ready to exploit the human civil war.

He waved away her attempt to wrap a bandage around his elbow. The Kurel and her gratuitous nursing. “I'm fine.”

She pushed up off the bed, taking the bottle of liquid off its hook and placing it on a low table, stopping the incessant dripping from the end of the tube. The IV. “Chun warned me you'd be a terrible patient. You'd want to be up and about before you're ready.”

“In the Hinterlands, if you weren't up and walking quickly, you'd slow down the others.”

“Weren't there camps for healing? Hospitals?”

“If there were, they'd be Gorr bait. The Furs could smell an injured human from miles away. Their ability to smell blood was one of their most lethal traits.”

“What were they like, the Gorr? No one will ever talk about them.” She dragged a footstool next to the bed and sat on it.

“Pray you never have to know. That none of the people here do.”

Her jaw was harder. “The real answer, Tao. You've lived outside the walls, and I…” A lantern on the bedside table illuminated her face, her slender neck. Almost bashfully, she hugged her knees and confessed, “I've only dreamed it. I want to know what it's like out there. And not a made-up version. I can get that from a book.”

Books. Not only did potions abound in the cottage, but also books and more books. They lined the shelves and were piled on tables, more of every size and color tucked into nooks and crannies everywhere he looked. It was insanity. “What do you do with so many books? What does any Kurel?”

“We read them. I'll teach you.”

He dismissed the idea. “I've read a book before.”

“You,” she said. “You read a book?”

“And can't see the point of doing any more of it.
One of my men found one of the things and brought it to my tent.” Tao had sat alone with the old battered book as night fell, rifling through the pages, looking for enlightenment in the indecipherable marks and finding none. Yet, a Kurel like Elsabeth wasn't satisfied with one book; she required hundreds. “Have you read them all?”

“Many of them. What ones I haven't gotten to, I will one day.”

“Elsabeth, you'd be better off getting out and experiencing what the world has to offer than burying your nose in paper.”

“There are whole worlds between those covers. Entire universes.” Her eyes grew so dreamy he could almost believe it—if he hadn't already tried it for himself.

“What more can be gleaned from ink on paper that a man can't learn with his own senses?”

“You tell me. You've been out there. Tell me. What lies beyond the walls?” Her voice dropped as she leaned forward, her hair falling forward over her shoulders. “Tell me about the Gorr.”

He'd never met a female with such interest in venturing outside the walls for no other reason than excitement. The camp followers were with the army, true, but to them it wouldn't matter where they were as long as they could eke out a living by serving the soldiers.

“They resemble us in the body, but that's where any
similarities end. They're covered with fur like a dog's, and they're driven by a lust for blood in a mindless, soulless way we humans can't understand.” He told her of how they preferred to travel in packs and live in caves or in dense brush—their dens—where they hid their young. “Only the alphas in the pack are clever enough to strategize and plan above and beyond basic survival, and they're the only ones who can breed.”

“Why would anyone raise young in a war zone?”

“They saw the Hinterlands as their lands, their home, and we the invaders. To us, a war zone. To them, their home. All a matter of perspective.”

“To bring children into that kind of world is unconscionable.”

Tao held his tongue. How the Gorr felt about their children had been immaterial to him.

Apparently, not to Elsabeth. He could hear the dismay in her voice. She kept talking in the face of his silence. “Since the Gorr don't differentiate between the helpless and the combatants, I take it your army didn't, either.”

“We had to take out the dens. Pups and all.”

She recoiled. “Are there no rules in war? No laws of decency?”

“I have no sympathy for these creatures, Elsabeth, as harsh as that seems. They were monsters. Hell-bent on our extinction. The young were just as dangerous, even the smallest pup.” The disconcerting howls in
the night came back to haunt him, countless pairs of glowing orbs up in the trees, Gorr waiting, ready to pounce and strike. “Maybe ten percent were alpha, no more, although there seemed to be more of them at the end, after we'd killed off so many of the lesser Gorr. They'd taken up a last-ditch defense of their kind, but it was already too late. If it weren't for their eyes, we'd have defeated the damned Furs long ago.”

“Why the eyes?” she asked, hugging her knees.

“The eyes… They charm you. Be-spell you. If you let them hold your stare, you'll lose your mind. Many of my men who were killed dropped their weapons willingly and all but asked to die.”

Her disturbed gaze lingered on his for a moment longer. “Mercy,” she whispered, her expression part horror but more fascination, as if he'd just shared a particularly scary bedtime tale.

It's not real to her.
Despite Elsabeth's insistence that she wanted a real answer, to her and to everyone at home it was the same: the Gorr were the stuff of nightmares and old soldiers' yarns.

She rose, wiping her hands on her skirt. “I imagine you're hungry. I made stew.”

The abrupt change in subject sent awareness of his empty belly careening into him like a fully loaded weapons cart. Why hadn't he noticed that the cottage was filled with a savory aroma, heavy with spices that all at once smelled foreign and made his stomach growl
with hunger? Whatever the Kurel had pumped into his body had done nothing to quell his body's need for food.

Elsabeth left his side for a kettle bubbling on an iron stove. Stirring the contents, she lifted a spoon to her lips to taste. “Just right.”

Long, curling strands of hair hung down her back as she prepared to serve the meal. He fancied he could wrap each lock around a finger and it'd hold its corkscrew shape. Then he pictured that fiery hair tangled and damp from their lovemaking, spread out on a pillow—and her, warm and lush and spread out under him. His loins tightened at the thought.

A wasted thought. No matter what her ulterior motives were for wanting him healthy, he was certain her hospitality wouldn't extend that far.

He pushed up to a sitting position, his head still swimming, and instinctively noted several escape routes—a front and rear door as well as windows—four in this room alone, two pairs of them. A ladder went up one wall. To the roof? The scrape of the spoon against the sides of the kettle mixed with the distant, muffled sound of doves or pigeons. The soft, mournful sound magnified the silence. It was nearing morning, but the ghetto was still asleep.