Leave him to me, Bajan. I don’t want the woman hurt.
Just one bite.
No.
As you wish.
Kiernan strode closer to Sully and Cara in a non-aggressive stance with her sword still in her hand but held away from her body toward the ground.
“Are you all right, Cara?”
“Never mind, witch!” Sully snapped. “Now get back from me or I’ll kill her right now.” To prove his resolve, Sully jabbed Cara with the knifepoint, and she cried out as a bead of blood blossomed on her neck under her chin. Cara turned to look at Sully with heat in her eyes. Turning her body to the side, she surprised Kiernan and Sully both when she wrenched her arm back and rammed her elbow hard into his abdomen. He loosened his grip on her just enough that she managed to escape his grasp.
“Run!” Kiernan shouted.
With his buffer suddenly gone, Sully dropped the knife in his hand and unsheathed his sword. Kiernan growled and closed with him. The two exchanged blows, sparks flying when metal collided. Kiernan easily parried Sully’s thrusts and tried to establish a link so she could mindshift him, but the crafty criminal somehow closed his mind to her. How is that possible? No matter how many times she tried to open a pathway, her shifting was turned away.
Tiring of the dance, she slashed out at his neck and a fountain of blood spurted from the gash. Bellowing in rage, Sully made a clumsy lunge at her and, using his own forward momentum, she grabbed his beefy wrist in her hand and spun him to the ground.
“I don’t want to kill you,” she said over the top of him, “but I will if you ever go near your wife again.”
Sully sat up and spat at her, pressing a hand to his neck wound.
Behind her, Kiernan heard a yelp. She twisted around and saw Bajan yanked harshly backwards to the ground by a rope twisted around his neck. Sully’s cohorts had looped a noose over Bajan’s head and were pulling the rope tight in opposite directions. The Draca Cat hissed and clawed in pain as he tried to break free of the tightening deathtrap.
Snarling in fury, Kiernan whipped her dagger free of its sheathe and in one smooth movement, hurled it underhanded in the direction of one of Bajan’s captors. The dagger embedded itself in the man’s chest just as Sully hit her from behind.
She went sprawling in the dirt, and the brute jumped on her with his sweating bulk and punched her in the jaw. “Not so high and mighty now, are ya?” he sneered, sitting astride her to pin her arms to the ground with his knees.
She thrashed under him, but the man was easily more than twice her weight. She could hear Bajan struggling to breathe and she cried out in rage and frustration. Demon’s breath! Even with one of the men dead, Bajan was too weak now to save himself. They were both going to die out here, and there was nothing she could do to help either one of them.
Sully lifted his sword, the point hovering directly over her breastbone. “Like I said before, we don’t take to your kind around here. Enjoy the Netherworld, shifter!” Before he could begin his downward thrust, a primal screech rang out and Cara buried Sully’s own knife in his temple.
Sully started to slump over and Kiernan helped him on his way with a violent push. She scrambled out from under him and turned toward Bajan. The Draca hacked coarsely on the ground, but Sully’s accomplice had already let the rope drop from his fingers.
“What happened?” the man asked, looking around at his surroundings in a befuddled manner.
Kiernan glared at him until the realization became clear. This man had been mindshifted! And, the link had abruptly ended when Sully had been killed. That was how Sully had been able to convince the citizens of Janis to ignore his abuse of Cara. He must have been methodically planting thoughts and lies in enough people that the rest were too scared to stand up to him.
First a bodyshifter in Nysa and now a mindshifter here in Janis? What is going on?
Kiernan bent down to retrieve her sword. “Get out of here,” she commanded the man. After seeing his two friends dead on the ground, he didn’t have to be told twice. He took off at a sprint back toward town, not remembering he had a horse hidden somewhere in the darkness.
She went to Bajan, but he was already sitting up. Are you all right?
He nodded his big head. It is I who must thank you for my life this time.
Trouble follows us, my friend. I don’t think it will be the last fight we will have in the coming days.
No.
I will see you shortly, she told him with a parting hug.
When Bajan left, she removed her dagger from the chest of the man she killed, wiping the blood away on his cloak before sheathing it. This is the second man I’ve killed. First Teag and now this one. I did what was necessary to protect the lives of Cara and Bajan, but the Highworld knows, I don’t have to like it.
She would tell Jase what happened when she returned to town so the bodies could be retrieved and their actions reported to their liege lord or lady.
Cara approached and knelt in front of her. “Thank you, Your Grace, but you shouldn’t have risked your life coming after me! Yours is so much more important than mine.”
Kiernan sighed tiredly. “All life is equally important, Cara. Let’s go.”
She mounted Milan while Cara climbed on Sully’s horse. Together, they rode silently back to Janis in the pre-dawn light.
After parting from Cara in front of the inn, Kiernan stabled Milan before heading to her own room on the second floor, anxious for bed. Just as she put her hand on the handle of the door, Beck came out in the hallway, stretching languidly. “It’s about time, sleepyhead. I knocked earlier, but you weren’t awake yet. Come on, now, you can’t loll around all day. It’s time to leave.”
Chapter 21
Iserport
Late in the afternoon on the third day after leaving Janis behind, Beck looked down from a small hummock at the city of Iserport sprawled up against Lake Traverse.
Wavering in the heat of the sunlight like a mirage, Iserport’s gray mass appeared dingy and unwelcoming, considerably disparate to the city of Nysa, and even to Janis. Noticeably more populated, the inhabitants looked worn and ragged as they moved sluggishly through the streets in the heat among buildings squat and rundown. Surprising to Beck, Iserport was not walled, but spread out haphazardly around the lake.
Each land, Beck knew from studying Gage Gregaros’s maps, had their own transportation port on the lake through which the movement of goods and people would be ideal if such passage was desired. It wasn’t. According to the Scarlet Saber, the port cities were little more than military outposts, restricting the small number of ferries that utilized them.
Beck thought it absurd. Unlike animals, men had the ability to shape their own world and to seek out ways to better their lot in life. The people of Massa, with their old grudges, seemed determined to allow time to slip inexorably by without progress and let the world shape them into pale and colorless replicas of what could be. The lands should be flourishing with trade instead of hunkered down in segregation. He wondered why they didn’t see this. Were the blinders that tight? The resentments that deep?
He glanced at Kiernan. In contrast, she looked so beautiful and full of life with her hair glittering in the sunlight and hanging down to her waist in golden waves. And, Jase the innkeeper had been right about her eyes. They were unique not only in their color, but in the compassion and spirit that dwelled there. Whatever it takes, I have to keep her safe.
More so than he had in Janis, anyway.
Kiernan had told him and the others after they left about Sully and his abduction of Cara. Beck shook his head as he recalled her modest shrug after he scolded her for tearing off alone into the dark after three men. He would have done the same thing, she insisted firmly, seeing absolutely no distinction between the two.
Gage Gregaros pulled him from his thoughts.
“We’ve been fortunate so far, Atlan, but it’s important here, more than anywhere else, that we don’t give anyone a chance to
detain us. It could mean the end of our journey if the soldiers on patrol discover a shifter among them.”
“We have our papers from the King,” Beck pointed out.
“Yes, and they will probably, and I mean probably, help us in getting things sorted out eventually, but it would cost us valuable time. Better to be cautious and avoid discovery if we can.”
Beck nodded and made sure his athame was covered. He instructed the others to do the same and asked Airron and Rogan to remain hooded. Not a pleasant experience in the heat, but necessary.
They wouldn’t see Bajan again until Kiernan called to him to board the ferry to Deeport. The potential to attract unwanted attention was high enough with a Princess, Dwarf and Elf in their party without the addition of an enormous mythical Draca Cat.
“I’ll take the lead,” Gage said. “There’s a small inn near the wharf where few questions are asked. A stable borders the property where we can leave the horses, but I must confess that I’m not optimistic that the animals will still be here if and when we return. We don’t have a choice, though. The horses must stay behind.”
A sharp pang of disappointment cut through Beck. He would be devastated to lose Chasin. The horse was one of his last tangible ties to Pyraan and the memories of his life there. He transferred both reins to one hand and patted the silky black neck with the other. “Don’t worry, old friend,” he crooned. “I’ll be back to find you when I return. I promise.”
The party spurred their horses forward to follow Gage onto a thoroughfare in serious need of repair. Beck wrinkled his nose at the smells in the air as they picked their way through the muck—both refuse and human—that littered the streets.
Wagon drivers rumbled through the melee cursing and shouting at pedestrians in language rough enough to color the cheeks of most men Beck knew. The people didn’t seem to notice or care as they pushed and shoved their way through the throng to reach their destinations.
The buildings, in crumbled neglect, were packed as tightly together as the people on the streets with very little space between establishments. Gage told Beck that the most lucrative occupations in Iserport were those that catered to the transient soldiers. Away from home and with little to do, the young men felt more at liberty to indulge in their more wanton desires, namely drink, gambling and women. Consequently, the taverns and brothels of Iserport did very well while other more legitimate businesses closed their doors. The more upstanding citizens of Iserport left if they were able and wallowed in poverty if they were not, leaving the dregs of society to run amok.
Beck wondered if King Maximus was aware of the destitution here. Did he ever even leave his safe, walled city?
Beck felt a tug on his pant leg.
“Do you have a copper penny, sir? Just a penny for some food?”
Beck looked down at a small, dirty-faced boy of about seven years. He was naked from the waist up, his bottom half clad only in a pair of ill-fitting trousers that he had clearly outgrown long ago. Sad, round eyes wrenched at Beck and he moved to retrieve a coin from his pouch.
Bret Schwan’s hand lashed out and grabbed Beck’s wrist in a steel grip. “Give that boy a coin and we will never make it to the docks,” he whispered out of the side of his mouth.
Beck looked around cautiously and spied several hard-faced men lining a narrow alleyway across the street eyeing the scene with debauched interest.
“Sorry, boy, but we have no coin,” Bret said loudly, shooing the youngster away. “Off you go now.”
The incident disturbed Beck, but he trusted the Saber’s instincts, and they were accosted no further as they continued to wind their way toward the wharf.
After what seemed like hours to Beck, the travel-weary party reached their destination, The Queen’s Lair. To his relief, it looked in slightly better condition than most of the others they had passed.
The two Sabers went next door to coordinate the care of the animals with the stable owner and within a few moments returned with two young boys to retrieve the horses. “Make sure they get rubbed down good and fed well,” Bret ordered sternly. The two boys nodded their heads impassively and went about their work, just one more chore in a day already full of them.
When Bret excused himself to arrange for their board with the innkeeper, Beck watched Kiernan approach the young grooms. She leaned down and whispered to them, and whatever she said caused their dirty faces to light up into the first genuine smiles Beck had seen since arriving in Iserport. When she returned, he asked her what she had said to them.
She shrugged. “I just told them that if the animals were still here when we returned, I would give them a florin.”
“A gold florin!” exclaimed Beck. “That’s more than they would ever see in a lifetime.”
“I know, but I want my horse back!” she justified to him. “I couldn’t bear to see either Milan or Chasin sold off or mistreated.”
Beck was impressed that she thought to bribe the grooms, but was doubtful her plan would succeed. “What if the boys or the stable owner decides to sell them?”
She gave him a smug smile. “They won’t. I told the boys to give me sixty days. If I don’t return for the horses within that time, they are free to do with them as they will. They would never receive anything close to gold by selling them, so they promised to sleep in the stables with daggers across their laps until I return.” Her green eyes were full of confidence. “Those boys will guard those horses with their lives.”
A still hooded Airron sauntered over, head swiveling as he gaped at several heavily made-up young women entering a ramshackle brothel on the other side of the street. “I think I’m going to take a little look around. See the sights.”
“No, Airron,” Beck said.
The Elf laughed and patted his shoulder. “Relax, Beck, I won’t be found out. You have my word.”
“Not a good idea.”
Airron grabbed Rogan’s arm. “I’ll take the big fireball with me.”
Rogan snorted. “No thanks.”
“Fine. I will take the little fireball instead,” he said and walked away dragging a reluctant Rory behind.
Beck sighed as he watched them leave.
“You can’t just let them go,” Kiernan said, her steel-edged words laced with reproach.
Beck raised his eyebrows. “He doesn’t need my approval, Kiernan. He makes his own decisions.”
“And, if he gets noticed for being either an Elf or a shifter? What then? You heard what Gage said. We can ill afford to be waylaid here.”
“Don’t worry, Airron will be careful. He knows what we’re about.”
She stared at him, hands on her hips. “This is not a carefree excursion into the Grayan Forest, Beck. People are depending on us.” She tilted her head. “Perhaps you would rather join Airron in his escapade? Is that it? Forget about all of this and have a little fun?”
He stared at her, astonished and hurt that she would say such a thing. “Why would you suddenly question my commitment? I am well aware of what is at stake and, more importantly, what has already been lost. I was there in Pyraan, Kiernan. Remember?”
“Yes, and that’s why I’m surprised at your recklessness.”
The comment stung. “I don’t deserve that, Kiernan, and you know it. But, I’ll go after Airron as you have so forcefully suggested. Go get some rest inside.”
He walked away then, his already heavy shoulders hunched even further with the added weight of Kiernan’s rebuke.
***
Hours later, Kiernan recalled those curved shoulders as she restlessly paced her room and mulled over her comments to Beck. She still didn’t understand what had caused her to doubt him like that. Especially, after all they had endured. After all he had endured with the loss of his parents. In the end, she could only attribute her behavior to her exhaustion from traveling and her argument with her father. It didn’t matter the reasons. She would find Beck and make it right with him. Surely, he would understand after she explained herself.
/> A knock sounded outside of her door.
Beck!
She stumbled in her haste to the door, righted herself and threw it open.
It wasn’t Beck, it was Rory.
“Rory! What are you doing here? Where’s Beck?”
Rory slid his foot inside the threshold and pressed it up against the door. “Are you going to invite me in, Princess?”
She wasn’t sure why, but she hesitated. “It’s late, Rory. Just tell me if you know where Beck is.”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
Grudgingly, she opened the door for the young shifter. She smelled wine on him as he passed. “And, stop calling me Princess. What is wrong with you?”
He flopped on the bed with a giggle. “Sorry, Princess.”
She gritted her teeth in annoyance. “Well?”
“Our dear Beck has decided that all duty and no fun can be very dull indeed. He is outside the doors to the inn at this very moment if you would care to see for yourself.”
“See what? You’re acting strangely, Rory. Is it the drink?”
He laughed. “No, no. I just thought you deserved to know that Beck has decided that one woman is simply not enough for him.”
This boy is not making any sense. I’ll just have to find out for myself what he’s rambling about. Kiernan grabbed her cloak and sword and rushed out into the corridor and down the stairs. She didn’t look at any of the patrons in the dining area as she stomped out the front door.
The streets were busy even at this late hour. Reluctantly, she pressed into the mass of people who in turn bumped and pushed at her rudely as she walked among them. Where is he? She craned her neck to see over the heads of the crowd, scanning each side of the street. Decided that one woman is not enough? She snorted dismissively and resolved to have Beck speak to Rory about his drinking.
Then, she saw him.
He was leaning against the stone wall of a brothel on the opposite side of The Queen’s Lair with two young ladies pressed against him, trailing kisses down the length of him. He was smiling as he stroked the hair of one of the young women.
Kiernan stood there in stunned shock. It felt like someone had clamped a vise around her lungs and she couldn’t get a breath. When she saw Beck throw his head back and moan in pleasure, she turned and fled. She slipped several times as she ran and her knees began to bleed freely.