The Lone Warrior (40 page)

He gave a thin smile. “That’s only a probability. What is certain, however, is that you will die”—a blade glinted in his hand—“here and now, if you don’t tell me what I want to know.” Placing the point under the man’s chin, he leaned forward, the finger bones clattering softly. “Slice by slice, piece by piece.”

The steward moaned and his eyes rolled back in his head.

“He’s gone to find them,” said a husky contralto. “The djinns, I mean.”

Mehcredi perched on the windowsill, one long leg thrust into the room. Scrounge wriggled under her arm, whining.

Could this get any better? Walker stalked toward her, knowing there was murder in his eyes and not caring. “What the hell are you doing here?” He’d heard the quiet movements outside, but put it down to the other servants, waking. Godsdammit, she’d made him soft.

“Following you,” she said placidly, and released the dog. To the steward, she said, “Did all the guards go with him?”

“N-no.” He pulled in a small rattled breath. “Habrik stayed behind, but he’s got a b-bad leg. He got kicked by—”

With a growl, Walker ripped the covers out of the man’s grip, exposing a long body clad in a grubby nightshirt. The steward clamped his bony knees together.

“Just a minute,” said Mehcredi, crossing the room to peer through a doorway on the far side. “That’s your office, isn’t it?”

The steward swallowed, a prominent Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny throat.

She gazed at him thoughtfully. “You’re frightened out of your wits,” she said on a note of discovery. “We’ll tie you up,” she offered. “Knock you out. That would help, wouldn’t it?”

Walker bit the inside of his cheek, his usual mental balance decidedly off-kilter. If he laughed now, he’d never stop. “Turn your head away,” he growled at the trembling steward. “If you piss yourself, I’ll leave you to lie in it, I swear.”

His fist caught the man behind the ear and he slumped to the mattress with a choking grunt. Walker picked him up by the front of his nightshirt and punched him three times in rapid succession, face, kidneys, gut.

“Stop!” Strong slender fingers dug into his forearm. The dog gave a single sharp yip. “Walker, are you out of your mind?”

“No.” Walker rubbed his bruised knuckles. Even under the blengo juice, she was pale. Stepping closer, he jabbed his fingers none too gently into her neck.

“Ow!” She clapped her hand to the spot, scowling.

“I could have done it that way, but he’ll need the bruises to show the others.” He glared, feeling distinctly ill-used. Gripping the sheet, he gave it a vicious jerk. The fabric was so threadbare it ripped easily, the raw tearing sound startling in the early-morning hush.

“Godsdammit, Mehcredi, why didn’t you stay where I left you?” He tossed the first strip to her and tore off another.

She busied herself wrapping the makeshift tie around the steward’s ankles. “You’re joking.”

Walker secured the man’s wrists, then hog-tied them to his feet. “I never joke.”

Mehcredi frowned at him as they dragged the limp body off the bed and dumped it on the floor. “I thought you were supposed to understand women.”

With a certain wicked satisfaction, Walker scooped up a dirty sock from under the bed and jammed it into the steward’s slack mouth. “The man isn’t born who does that.”

Mehcredi’s lips twitched, but she said nothing.

The steward’s office was tidier than his sleeping quarters, but only barely. A few minutes searching through the haphazard piles of paper on the rickety desk revealed a sheaf of to-do lists written in a small crabbed hand. Walker rifled through them. “The steward’s right. Nyzarl took almost the entire household. Bastard likes to travel in comfort.”

Mehcredi lifted a glowing face. “Look.” She brandished a roll of parchment. “I found a map.”

“Don’t need it,” said Walker frowning down at the list in his hand. Gods, the diabloman had even taken his fancy cook, plus his strongbox. “That many people will leave a trail a blind man could follow.”

Her face fell.

“On the other hand . . .” He sighed. “Give it here.”

After a few minutes’ study, he pointed to an area circled in pencil. “This looks like the approximate area where the djinns have been worst. You could be right.”

“What do you think he wants with them?”

“Nothing good,” said Walker grimly. “Let’s go.” Scrounge trotting happily behind, they negotiated the maze of buildings, emerging from the shadows into the blazing sunlight where the rear of the estate butted up against gray rocky hills. The only person about was an elderly man who shuffled toward an outdoor privy, scratching his privates and muttering to himself.

Mehcredi kept up easily enough, though she was noisy on the scree slopes, pebbles clattering from beneath her feet. Even behind the tinted spectacles, she squinted in the light that bounced off the rocks, baking and relentless.

“Where’s your hat?” Walker said irritably.

She rolled her shoulders, blotted her face with her sleeve. “In the cave. It annoys me.”

Pausing in the shade of a narrow wadi, she turned to face him, her hands on her hips. “You didn’t even say good-bye.”

Walker shouldered past her. “Wasn’t much point.”

After a short tingling silence, she scrambled after him. “Why? Were you going to come back?”

“I don’t know.” He whirled around so abruptly, she slammed into his chest. “What do you take me for, Mehcredi?”

Pushing the glasses down, she peered over the top of them. “I don’t know,” she said seriously. “I’ve told you that.”

“You want to know what I was thinking? All right!” Gripping her upper arms, he pulled her up the inch necessary to make up the difference in their heights. He thrust his face into hers. “Every time, the odds are against me and every time they get slimmer. Every diabloman, every demon, every kill. ’Cestors’ bones, it’s a miracle I’ve survived this far.”

The dog whined, butting his head between them. Walker ignored him.

“All that matters is the vengeance of my people. Do you understand?” He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “I don’t fucking care if I live or die as long as I don’t fail. And every demon is stronger than me.”

Mehcredi opened her mouth and closed it again.

“Very wise,” he said. “You think I’m going to take an innocent into that? I’ve got the blood of the Shar on my hands. I won’t add yours.”

His chest heaving, he stepped back, releasing her, his temples throbbing. How the fuck did she provoke him into losing control? This wasn’t who he was. Closing his eyes, he tried to ground himself, reaching for the
ch’qui
, the strength that never failed, but it was like trying to grasp a fog.

“Stop for a minute,” she said. “Here.” A water flask was thrust into his hands.

Walker ground his teeth, but he took a swallow of tepid water.

“I’ve been meaning to ask. How exactly do you kill a demon?” Her grin was shaky, but it was a grin nonetheless. “In case I meet one, you know?”

Suddenly, he felt unutterably weary. “You get the diabloman alone and kill him first,” he said, leading the way up the final slope to the cave. “Before he can call his demon, though his death will bring it at once, out of sheer curiosity, if nothing else.”

He leaned against the wall, watching her strip off the outer layers of clothing. The cave was a couple of degrees cooler than the world outside, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hot. The roots of her hair were showing blond, but he didn’t have any more blengos.

“Then what?” she said.

He shrugged. “It’s you against a demon. They’re all different—mandibles, pincers, mind games, illusions, barbed tails. I find hacking the head off works pretty well.” Pushing away from the wall, he said, “We should eat. Get some rest. We’ll be traveling at night again.”

Retrieving the sandmat, he shook it out of the net and drew his knife.

“Sister, what
is
that?” Mehcredi crouched to peer, the dog at her side. “It looks like a pancake.”

Walker flipped the animal over to expose the small circular mouth full of needle teeth. “A desert creature called a sandmat. But this is only a small one. I’ve seen some as big as a tablecloth. Good eating if you’re careful.”

She reached out to touch the muscled underside with a fingertip. “Careful?”

“The venom sacs are full of poison.” Running the point of the knife around the mouth revealed three pulpy purplish glands. “Sandmats kill by dropping over their prey and squeezing to hold them still. Once they bite, it’s all over.” He popped the glands onto a flat stone. Working quickly, he followed up by gutting the creature.

Mehcredi pulled a face. “That’s disgusting!”

“City girl,” he said without rancor. “You want something good to eat, you put up with a bit of mess. Don’t let the dog go.”

“Like sex,” she said thoughtfully. “That’s what you said—good, but messy.” She tilted her head to one side. “Funny, I didn’t mind that part at all.”

Gods, she was right. She hadn’t minded.
Wet and hot, earthy and eager. Slick for him
. Taking the stone, Walker stepped out of the cave and wedged it in the fork of the nearest tree, well out of Scrounge’s reach. By the time he returned, he had command of himself.

“Yes,” he said with perfect calm. “Now you know. I’ll finish skinning this. Go see if you can find some wood for a fire, will you? Take the dog with you, and for ’Cestors’ sake, put your hat on.”

A short time later, the dog lay in a dark corner, crunching bones. The assassin sat cross-legged across the fire, contentedly licking her fingers.

“I’ll get the bedrolls,” Walker said to the rocky ceiling.

When he laid them out at either end of the cave, she hesitated, then said, “Walker, can we—?”

“Sleep,” he said brusquely. “You’ll need it.”

Stretching out across the entrance to the cave, he turned his back on her stoic face. He didn’t know why, but the matter-of-fact resignation—hell, as if rejection was no more than what she expected—hurt him more than the initial flinch she hadn’t been able to suppress.

Resolutely, he closed his eyes. What was done was done. It should not have been done and he was a fool, but it was too late now. How fortunate that first loves, by their very nature, tended to burn out quickly.

For the first time, he found himself wondering what Mam would have thought of Mehcredi of Lonefell. Like all the Shar, she’d respected courage, his mother. By the Ancestors, she’d been a warrior, as strong as these ancient hills, and equally enduring. Walker had been twelve when his father left on a hunting trip and never returned, swept away by a flash flood that roared down a wadi. He remembered his mother at the death rites, singing Da’s Song, her spine as straight as a quarterstaff, not a tear on her cheek.

And yet . . . He’d been lucky, hadn’t he? He’d been well mothered. To say nothing of his noisy, brawling, loving siblings. Mehcredi had had no one, and nothing.

How, in the gods’ names, had she turned out sane, her spirit untarnished, as bright and shiny as a newly minted coin?

A bittersweet smile curved his lips. Mam would have hustled Mehcredi into the family tent, woven beads and feathers into her hair and made her a Song of her own. How would it begin?

Mulling over the first line, he sank into a fitful doze.

Mehcredi couldn’t work out how he did it, but even leading his pony over the rough spots, the swordmaster blended into the landscape, became a part of the desert at night, as soundless as she imagined the djinns to be. While she toiled along behind him in a graceless scramble, the sweat chilling on her skin in the cold dry air.

Even though they could have been alone in the world, he kept to the moonshadow, following the broad swath of broken bushes and churned-up dirt that marked the passage of Nyzarl’s party.

He waited for her to catch up. “We should stop soon, find a place to hole up for the day.”

Poor Scrounge flopped at their feet, panting. Mehcredi bent to pat him, taking comfort from the wiry fur beneath her fingers, the swipe of a hot tongue across her wrist.

They’d been traveling for two nights now, and each day had been the same. Eat and rest. Monosyllabic conversation. But other times, he’d talk, almost as if he were thinking aloud, about the painted dogs and the way the pack cared for the old and the sick more tenderly than most humans. Or about tygres, so rare as to be almost a legend, but real enough with their striped hides and yellow eyes and paws like dinnerplates armed with scimitars.

She wondered if it was the only kindness he thought he could show her. Because he took scrupulous care to avoid touching. If she stepped close, which she did at every opportunity, he’d freeze for a second and then move aside. She still ached, great daft lump that she was—who’d have thought it would hurt so much?—but she loved the sound of his voice, deep and slow, every word measured and considered. It did help—a little.