The Lone Warrior (32 page)

Taking her shoulders, Walker turned her to face him. “True enough.” He cradled her cheek in one palm, his thumb brushing to and fro across her cheekbone. “But there’s more. Yes, we are of the earth and like our Ancestors we return to the earth, but, Mehcredi—”

Utterly intent, he gazed deep into her eyes. “You are made of starstuff, right down to the blood and bone and muscle and guts. So am I, so are we all. Just as pure, just as beautiful, just as real.” She thought his smile was tender as well as wry, and rather wistfully, hoped she’d got it right. “The choice is yours. Live your life in the mud or shine like the stars.”

Slowly, giving him time to pull away, she lifted a shaking hand and slid her fingers into the silk of his hair. It whispered over her knuckles, cool as water, while his skull curved warm and hard against her palm. He didn’t move. “What did you choose?” she whispered.

His short laugh stirred the curls on her forehead. “I don’t know. I may never know, not ’til I join my Ancestors.”

“But isn’t vengeance—” She broke off, conscious that every muscle in his body had gone rigid.

After a long tense moment, he relaxed and she let out a cautious breath.

“I cannot allow them to live,” he said, every word clipped.

“Yes,” she said shakily. “Yes, I can see that.”

He set her at arm’s length. “Go on, go back to the fire. You need your sleep.”

Rubbing the small of her back, she said, “I ache all over.”

The ghost of a smile. “I imagine you do.”

“Walker?”

“Yes?”

“Say your name for me again, your real name.”

She heard him take a deep breath. “Welderyn’d’haraleen’t’Lenquisquilirian.”

“It’s awfully long. Pretty though,” she added hastily.

“Welderyn will do,” he said gravely.

“Mmm. Welderyn?”

“Yes?”

“Can we stay like this a little longer? It’s nice, just being held.” She met his eyes. “That’s all, I swear.” Her heart thumped hard. Once, twice.

At last he nodded and held out his arms. With a sob of relief, she went into them and they closed hard around her.

The Necromancer cracked his shin on a footstool. Swearing, he reeled back and immediately tripped over his own big feet. Or, to be more accurate, Nerajyb Nyzarl’s feet. He wiggled the diabloman’s bare toes, regarding their hairiness with fascination.

His head ached as if a troop of Shaitan’s imps danced a victory jig inside it, the wound in the back of his thigh throbbed and he’d discovered that Nyzarl had a bad knee and a back molar that needed attention, but these were truly minor inconveniences.

Directly behind him, Dotty emitted a shrill giggle. Turning carefully, he stretched out an arm that felt impossibly long and grabbed a towel from the massage table. Slinging it around his hips, he glared at her. “Shut your—” he growled, and stopped, startled.

His own voice echoed in his ears, no longer the querulous tones of an old man, but virile and mature. He smiled. “Pack the equipment away,” he went on, enjoying every commanding syllable. “We may need it again. Break anything and I’ll flog you myself.”

“Of course,” she said huffily, her hands deft with the complex assemblage of wires and glass and metal.

On the other side of the room, Xotclic watched with interest, the limp body of a slave slung over each shoulder, the stable boy dangling by his ankle from one clawed hand. The Technomage had been wrong, the energy of two deaths hadn’t been enough. If it hadn’t been for the demon . . .

He’d been helpless, suspended in agony between his own body and that of the diabloman, oblivion beckoning with an icy finger. If he could have screamed, babbled, begged—
anything
—he would have done so. But he was nowhere, nothing, a tiny frantic mote, shrieking its terror into the suffocating never-ending dark. He thought he heard a sly laugh, pitiless and deeply amused, the flap of leathery wings.

Dotty had panicked, damn the useless bitch. As he’d watched in horror, trapped in the reservoir she’d made, the intelligence of the Technomage she’d once been faded from her eyes and her lips went loose, her chin quivering. Wringing her hands, she’d bleated, “Oh no, oh no. Oh, what shall we do? Do, do, do.” Then she’d started to giggle, over and over, like a kettle going on and off the boil.

But the demon had lurched out the door, returning a few minutes later with the struggling form of a husky stable boy. A clawed foot spearing the lad’s chest, it held him down until Dotty snapped out of her hysteria and connected him to the apparatus. In the nick of time too.

The Necromancer released a quiet breath as he watched the Technomage place the equipment in its padded box, her touch as tender as a mother’s.

In the demon’s place, he would have taken the opportunity to end the partnership, there and then, without a second thought. He shot a glance at Xotclic from under thick stubby lashes—delightful to see everything without the need for spectacles. As far as he could ascertain, the demon was entertained. Perhaps he constituted an amusement, or the creature had other plans . . . Well, he would be on his guard. Xotclic was but a tool, after all.

He flicked a glance at the husk of his abandoned body, drooling silently into the rug, and his guts heaved. “I’m going to bathe,” he announced. Nyzarl’s personal hygiene left a great deal to be desired. And he needed to dress the thigh wound before it could fester.

At the door, he forced himself to take a last look at the plump bespectacled body with its mild face and silly fringe of fluffy white hair. There lay everything he’d been, a feeble chrysalis for the primal force he was now. The Queen’s Knowledge, librarian, archivist and scholar—
old man—
was truly dead.

“They’re all yours,” he said to Xotclic, “except her.” He indicated Dotty, still fluttering over her box. “If I wish you to hurt her, I’ll say so, all right?”

“Ss.” Dropping the three corpses in the corner, the demon stalked over to the body of the erstwhile Queen’s Knowledge and sank into an ungainly squat. The Necromancer blinked. Were its legs folding
backward
, and in more than one place? Almost gently, it grasped the slack chin, raising it to peer into the face. Was that what passed for a smile on its lipless mouth?

Despite himself, despite all the logic of his fine intellect, bile rose in the Necromancer’s throat. Gods save him, the thing on the floor might be no more than an envelope, but he couldn’t watch. “If it’s going to be . . . messy,” he said, “I’d prefer you went outside.”

Xotclic reared back and hissed, the forked tongue flickering. Involuntarily, Nyzarl’s body took a smart step backward. Oh, so the man had been a coward into the bargain. Grimly, the Necromancer forced himself to meet the creature’s eyes. “Very well,” he said evenly. “Do as you please. You’ve earned it, after all.”

“Ss.”

“We will speak tomorrow.”

“Ss.”

“Dotty, get back to your quarters.” The Necromancer watched her scuttle off. Without a backward look, he set off down the passage, trailing one hand along the wall for balance.

Determinedly, he promised himself he was going to enjoy exploring every inch of this wondrous new flesh, especially the heavy genitals swinging between his thick thighs. By Shaitan, the man was hung like a bull. He’d think of all the pleasures age had wrested from him—youth and strength, and, oh gods, the welcome spur of lust. Girls, boys, separately, together. Fuck, yes! He licked his lips, feeling the responsive ripple in his groin. Delightful.

And tomorrow, he’d tour the estate, speak with Nyzarl’s—
his
—steward. He wouldn’t mind betting the fellow had been bleeding the place dry, because that’s what he’d do in the steward’s place. He growled, just for the pleasure of hearing the powerful, masculine sound.

A nobleman’s house didn’t run without staff. He’d have to replace the three—no, four—dead slaves. That was a nuisance, but there was a ramshackle village about a quarter of a mile away, no doubt sprung up to service the estate. He’d make do.

He paused at the entrance to the bathhouse and gazed about with pleasure at the intricate geometric patterns of mirrors interspersed among small blue tiles, the deep marble tub with its soaps and lotions laid out ready. The little slave girl had all in readiness for her master’s bath, a hidden furnace keeping the water piping hot.

It wasn’t until after he’d sluiced his wound with healall and submerged himself up to the chin that the image he’d been keeping at bay sprang out of some dark recess of his brain: Xotclic the demon hooking a talon into the Necromancer’s glasses, removing them as gently as a lover. From behind the faded blue eyes, owlish in their nakedness, Nerajyb Nyzarl’s soul screamed without ceasing.

Not long after dawn on the following day, the rutted ribbon of the Spice Trail began to widen. Paving stones appeared and the occasional splash of green by the side of the track. The wind changed and the vanbeasts’ shaggy ears swiveled forward. When they picked up the pace, the whole caravan surged forward as one.

From his driver’s seat, Abad grinned across at Mehcredi, her aching thighs still clamped around the mare’s broad barrel. “They can smell the water.”

“Water?” She gazed around. “Where?”

Abad jerked his chin at a misty smudge on the horizon. “Miles off yet, but it’s the Son right enough.”

“The what?”

“Ye’re the strangest lad I ever met.” The waggoner wiped the sweat from his brow with a fold of his head cloth. “Don’t ye know nothin’?”

She dropped her head. “Didn’t have much schoolin’.”

“Trimegrace sits where the three rivers meet—the Father, the Son and the Bastard. Not but what I’d call the Bastard a river. It’s either a trickle or a flood and always at the wrong season.” He chuckled. “Well named.”

Mehcredi lapsed into silence, gazing at the first poor farms with their skinny livestock and meager crops. Walker had spoken a total of ten words to her today, possibly less. With his straight black brows drawn together, it wasn’t difficult to tell he was preoccupied, and, she suspected, worried. She shot a glance at his straight back, swaying easily to the rhythm of his horse. He was deep in discussion with Dinari. They’d be talking about yesterday—those horrible wounds and the absence of a single bandit corpse. In fact, there was no evidence to show men had been there at all.

Cautiously, she kicked the mare in the ribs, urging the animal forward until she was within earshot.

“You seen anything like it before?” Dinari growled.

“No. You?”

“Fuck, no.” The rings on the van master’s fingers glinted as he rubbed his chin. “I’d better go to the Janizars the moment we’re settled in the city.” His thin face grew hard. “Not that anything will be done. Bandits are beneath the Grand Pasha’s notice.” He grimaced. “Too fuckin’ holy, yes?”

But Walker only grunted, dropping back to ride by Mehcredi’s side. “What is it, boy?”

She stared at her horse’s ears. “It wasn’t bandits, was it?” she said, very low.

“No,” he said, equally quietly.

They slowed to a walk. “The evil that Cenda spoke about . . .” She trailed off uncertainly.

“Go on.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Could you feel um, anything?”

A brow rose. “What makes you think I should?”

At that, she stared. “You’re a shaman!”

Walker frowned at her. “Keep your voice down.” After a beat, he said, “The
ch’qui
was still . . . distorted. Which means it was powerful.”

“Whatever it was.”

“Yes.” He gathered up the reins. “Dinari will pay me off tonight. I’ll get us a decent lodging—with a bathhouse. We’ll talk then.”

He cantered away.