The Lone Warrior (27 page)

So he continued to sit, cursing himself for a fool, trying like hell to ground and listening to the crackle and pop of the fire.

He was dozing when she turned her head, blinking up at him. A tired smile curved her lips. “You need to know,” she whispered. “You’re my only chance. I can’t give you up, not yet.” She patted his knee.

“What?” he said, stupid as a plowboy.

“I picked the wrong moment.” She covered a yawn with her hand. “You were right.” Another yawn. “Risky. Mmm.” She snuggled closer.

Walker clenched his jaw so hard, his molars hurt. The fire hissed, as if with scorn. “S-soft,” it crackled in his head. “Soft.”

And then, oddly enough, his name, over and over. “Walker.” Hiss, pop. “Walker.” A pause. “Sscenda. It’ss Cenda.”

Walker blinked. Streamers of flame danced, long and curling, like a woman’s fiery tresses. A face formed, flickering in and out of existence, a straight nose, the turn of a long graceful neck.

’Cestors’ bones.

Mehcredi raised her head. “Is that—?” Her voice cracked with disbelief.

Walker shoved a small branch into the heart of the fire. It caught and flared up. “Cenda?”

“Yess. Lissten. Message . . . Deiter.” The cadence and power of the voice rose and fell with the flames.

“What Magick is this?” he said sharply.

Fiery lips curved with satisfaction, the image firming enough to be completely recognizable. “Sscrying by fire. Be better . . . practiss.”

The dog gave a single sharp bark and fell silent.

“Sweet Sister in the sky.” Beside him, Mehcredi made the sign of the Sibling Moons.

“Takess power. Can’t hold—Lissten . . . great evil in the south . . . the desert. Deiter wants . . . find it.”

“That would be Nerajyb Nyzarl.” A growl rumbled in his chest. “He’s as good as dead.”

“No. Forget . . . him.” Sparks shot out of the fire as Cenda shook her head. “Monstrous . . . not human. Huge, killing . . . hundreds.” The fire witch began to dwindle, the flames sinking. “Deiter . . . needs . . .
lissten . . .”

Walker leaned forward. “Cenda? Cenda, come back!”

Mehcredi fed the greedy flames a handful of bark and the fire shot up on a draft of air as if someone had taken a bellows to it.

Cenda reappeared, floating in the flames. “Thankss,” she said to an unseen presence behind her. Erik and his air Magick, he’d bet his House of Swords on it.

“Deiter has a bargain.” She cocked her head, her gaze shifting off to one side, though she looked straight through Mehcredi as if she wasn’t there. Then she nodded in response to some unseen comment or instruction. “Locate . . . evil, find out what . . . is and he will give you . . . the last . . . Sshar.”

Everything inside Walker contracted to a single point of old pain and fury, hard-edged as a black diamond. “Nonsense. I am the last of the Shar.”

Cenda shook her fiery head, her hair whipping around her. With a soft roar, the fire flared, illuminating Mehcredi’s expression of open-mouthed fascination, then died down so the shadows swooped back like spread-winged birds.

“Not sso. There’s a woman.”

Walker curled his lip. “The old man’s senile. They’re all dead. Fuck, I should know.”

Gods, the endless searching, watching the veiled figures of respectable women in the souk, the naked faces of the whores, all the time hoping, hoping . . . Forcing himself to attend slave auctions and smile as if he enjoyed it, every dark-haired female on the block making his heart pound and his gorge rise. In the long years before the bitter certainty of Amae’s death grew in his heart like a canker, he could never decide whether he longed to see her up there, on sale to the highest bidder, or whether he dreaded it.

Cenda glanced at the same spot to her right. A beat later, she said, “He only just found her.”

“No.” Pain and rage sucked all the breath out of his lungs, leaving nothing but a venomous whisper behind. “A name, give me a fucking name!”

Even in the flames, Cenda’s discomfort was clear to see. Another sidelong glance, presumably at Deiter. “Walker, I’m . . . ssorry. He says . . .” She glared at the old man, her lips twisting. “Tell him how . . . desstroy . . . the evil. Then . . . you get . . . name.”

“
No!
” Lashing out with his foot, Walker kicked the fire, scattering coals and embers in all directions. After that, everything went black for a few seconds, but the greatest darkness was the yawning empty pit that had been his soul.

He came back to himself on his hands and knees, breathing like a blown horse, every muscle in his body clenched and rigid. His jaw hurt.

“Walker?” A hand touched his hair, fleetingly. “Who are the Shar? Your family?”

He sat back on his heels. “My people,” he said dully. “The Shar’d’iloned’t’Hywil.”

“Oh.” A second’s pause. “Sorry, I’ve never heard of them.”

Giant hands were squeezing his chest, compressing it unbearably. “Their name has not been spoken in fifteen years.” He pulled in a difficult shallow breath. “Neither has mine.”

“Walker is not your name?”

He forced himself to glance at her puzzled face. “I am Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian.”

She regarded him more doubtfully still. “That’s, um, quite a mouthful.”

“Shar names are long.”
Name the child, shape the life,
went the Ancestors’ proverb. “There are”—he caught himself—“
were
layers of meaning.”

Everything inside was leached and dry, his body a shell, like the hollowed-out trunk of some great dead cedderwood. A strong wind, the slightest touch, and he’d topple, shatter to dust. It couldn’t be true, it
couldn’t
.

“You’re shaking.” Kneeling before him, Mehcredi pulled the edges of his robe together over his chest, fussing over him as if he were a little boy.

With a wordless growl, he knocked her hands away.

Undeterred, she shuffled even closer, reaching out to rub her palms up and down his biceps, her brow knitted with concern. “What happened to them?” Her voice was hushed and quavery. “It was something awful, wasn’t it?”

He gave a mirthless bark of laughter. “Ghuis Gremani Giral happened, with his army. There’d been rain, the wadis were full of wildflowers.” He’d forgotten that, the vivid carpet of fragile blooms. So much
ch’qui
, and his blood running hot, with spring and the festival and the girls with their pert breasts and sidelong glances.

When he paused, a thread of sound whispered out of the darkness. “Go on.”

“We came together to sing the Songs of Spring, all the family bands. A time to give thanks, for first pairings and life bondings. He knew we’d be there, the bastard, Giral knew.”

Her breath puffed warm and rapid against his throat. “But
why
? You weren’t hurting him.”

“Ah, but we had. The Grand Pasha deeded Giral an estate, but he neglected to mention the southern part was Shar land, the gift of the Ancestors.
Ours
.” He bared his teeth. “The Shar are warriors. What do you think we did, assassin?”

“Merciful Sister, you fought, didn’t you?”

“We stampeded Giral’s vanbeasts, stole his horses, burned his fences, and we laughed as we did it. We thought he was slow and foolish, a foreigner. I was a shaman then and the
ch’qui
was strong within me. When his miners raped the earth, I collapsed their tunnels. I was the stupid one, so proud.”

Mehcredi’s fingers tightened on his arms. She made a small encouraging noise.

“We made the Great Pasha look small. Hell, we didn’t even kill anyone, though we made it clear we could have. So he . . . he—” His tongue stuck to the roof his mouth. “He came with a company of pikemen. And diablomen.”

“Fifteen,” breathed Mehcredi. “You said fifteen.”

“Twenty-three. We killed eight. Do you know what demons look like, Mehcredi? Do you have any idea?”

“Tell me.”

When she winced, he realized he had both her hands crushed in his. He dropped them and rose, turning his back on her. “No.” He wouldn’t sully her mind with the images. The furrows on his hip ached, a gut-wrenching reminder. “They’re not meant to be here,” he said at last. “They pervert the
ch’qui
. Not just evil—
wrong
.”

“The what?” She touched his back, her palm rubbing hesitantly up and down his spine.

“Shit, never mind.”

But when he jerked away, she only stepped closer, insisting, a wave of warmth against him in the chill desert night. “Walker, I don’t understand.”

Here it came. He could almost hear the clicks as the pieces fell into place in that quick clever mind.

“Weren’t you there? If this Giral man had everyone killed, why aren’t you dead too?”

He closed his eyes in agony, his head swimming, remembering the hideous sodden weight of the corpses piled on top of him in the wadi, the reek of old blood, the fecal stink and the bitemes buzzing. “I don’t know.” Sour bile burned in the back of his throat. “Bad luck? Leave it, Mehcredi.” His eyes had been crusted shut with something unspeakable. He’d been forced to claw them open. And when he had—

Vaguely, he wondered if he was going to heave his guts up, all over her boots.

A rustle, and she was right in front of him, both fists buried in his robes. She rose on her toes, which was enough to put them eye to eye. “Don’t say that!” She tried to shake him. “There was a reason.” Another ineffectual shake. “Look at who you are, what you’ve done.”

“You think?” He went to pry her off, but gods, her fingers were like ice. He wrapped his own around them. “I’ve avenged my people, but apart from that—” He shrugged.

“No, no!” In her urgency, she pressed closer, her strong supple body molded to his, close as a lover. “Walker, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. And I can’t be the only one.”

He curled his lip. “I’m efficient,” he said. “I’ll give you that. Especially with the body count.” Unable to help himself, he tightened his grip on hers. “I’ll do my best not to add you to it, I swear.”

Even in the dappled moonslight, he saw her brow wrinkle. “There’s only one left, isn’t there?” she said slowly. “This Nyz man. And you’ll kill him soon, the same way you killed the others.”

“Your confidence in me is touching.”

“So what will you do when it’s finished?”

“Finished?”

“Your vengeance. Over. Complete. You’ll have your life back then.”

The ground shifting beneath his feet, the stars winking out, one by one. Over, it would all be over, the defining purpose of his life.’Cestors’ bones,
what fucking life
? The blood roared in his ears, like a sandstorm striding across the desert, blowing everything flat, scouring all the landmarks, obliterating the familiar trails and tracks.

“I hadn’t—” he croaked. “Hadn’t . . . thought. Fuck.” Every moment, waking or sleeping, his vengeance woven in his blood and bone. His reason for living, the justification for his survival when all those he’d loved had—

Gone, all of it, gone
. His vision grayed out.

Dimly, he was aware he swayed. Automatically, he reached for the reassuring force of the
ch’qui
, but even as he did so, the assassin slipped both arms around his waist and shoved her shoulder under his arm, propping him up with her remarkable strength.

“It’s all right,” she muttered into his neck. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m here.” The sort of nonsense a mother might murmur over a child with a skinned knee. So stupid, so inappropriate, so completely Mehcredi.

How long had it been since someone held him, offered to kiss his hurts and make them better? His mind couldn’t encompass it, but his body knew what to do. He opened his mouth to say, “Get off,” but the words died stillborn. Instead, he gave himself to the embrace, burying his face in her hair, his nose full of the scent of warm clean scalp and blengo juice.

Just one second, a single instant out of his entire fucking empty life. “Shut up,” he muttered thickly.

With a shaky laugh, Mehcredi raised her head and rubbed her cheek against his. Walker took her face in both hands and sank into her mouth like a man dying of thirst. She tasted sweet, yet earthy, deeply refreshing, like the Spring of Shiloh, sacred to his people.

Gods, so good.

The roaring in his ears rushed back, filling his head. He had the strangest sensation of falling, as if the world had taken a smart step sideways, the
ch’qui
morphing into something entirely different, unfamiliar yet darkly thrilling.

Skin, he had to have skin, pale and warm and perfect. Almost before the thought was complete, his hands were under her shirt, a satin weight nuzzling into his palm. She arched under him, whimpering. Luxuriating, Walker skimmed his fingers up over the knots of her spine, then back down to her waist and under the trews, learning the shape of that superb ass, the first curves, the intriguing dip of the dimples either side of her tailbone.