“Sensible?”
“It is a warm day,” he pointed out. “You seem also warm.”
She was sweating, but not so much because of the heat. It was him. Lounging around on the ground, casually nude, as if she was used to this sort of thing, as if she could control the urge to reach out and do some patting of her own. Which was ridiculous. Ridiculous! She had several dozen other problems to worry about; her new lack of self-control seemed the least of them.
“If I have to stay here for a while,” she couldn’t help asking, “can I stay in the castle?”
“Of course.”
“That doesn’t imply I’m giving up, you know.”
“Of course.”
“And I’d like my own room.” She added, “Please.”
“Of course.”
“And don’t read anything into this, either,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him on the chin as she had the night before. Except he was too quick for her, seizing her firmly but gently, and she wasn’t kissing his chin, but his mouth. He’d pulled her into his lap and something was digging into her bottom and she just knew what that was, and his mouth was on hers, and oh, he was warm and smelled like the sand all around them, clean and hot.
She put her hands on his chest and felt his nipple harden under her fingertips, and resisted the urge to rub it and see if she could make him as oddly out of control as she now felt, make him feel like nothing mattered at this moment except more touching, more kissing, more teeth and lips and tongue and—
She jerked herself out of his grip and he let her go, thank goodness (or was it, rats?). “That’s enough of that,” she wheezed, running her fingers through her hair in an attempt to look less mussed. Less kissed. Less curious about what else he would have done.
“As you wish,” he said mildly enough, but his eyes were gleaming in a way that she wasn’t sure she liked. The pupils were an odd shape, not quite long like a cat’s, not quite round like hers. Egg-shaped? she wondered. Egg-shaped pupils? And when did I go crazy? Do they have nut hatches here?
“I think things are complicated enough without that,” she said.
He said nothing.
“Well, they are,” she continued. She realized she was still panting, damn the man, and fought to control her breathing. “For one thing—what’s the matter?”
He was on his feet so suddenly she hadn’t seen him move. He was looking out to the horizon and his lips were pressed so tightly together, they looked like a scar.
“Them,” he said, almost spat.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“There.” He pointed. “The dark travelers. My father will not be pleased.”
She looked, but all she could see was sand, sand, and more sand, stretching far into the horizon, stretching into the endless purple sky. She squinted until her eyes streamed, with no luck. But the effect on Maltese was shocking…he was like a different person, tense and stiff and glarey.
“What’s a dark traveler?”
“Warmakers.” He glanced over at her, seeming to remember she was there. “Come, Loo. We must get you back to the palace.”
“But—”
“Now.”
He was suddenly the big cat again, and without another word she climbed on top of him. One thing she’d learned in basic training, if nothing else, was to obey an order. And Maltese, she realized anew, was a prince. He hadn’t thrown his weight around once since she’d arrived…which made his tone all the more impressive.
No, annoying.
No, impressive.
Dammit.
Chapter 11
“We should have been more vigilant.”
The castle, at first far off in the distance, was now rearing up in front of them; every thud of Maltese’s paws brought it closer. She had been hanging on for dear life and wondering what a dark traveler was
(warmaker)
and if it was as bad
(warmaker)
as it sounded. Surely nothing could have been as bad as the Japanese, all those killer drones doing whatever their Emperor told them, why, it was indecent and…and un-American!
“I don’t know,” she shouted in his furry ear. “You spotted them right away. Before anybody. I couldn’t even see them. I still can’t see them.”
“They crept up on us like scum,” he continued, still sounding mightily mad.
“Scum?”
He put a picture in her head: a black sewer rat, its long, scabrous pink tail curled around it, its nose twitching, beady eyes gleaming.
“Oh, scum. Right. Maltese, you’re being too hard on yourself.” And you’re running faster than I’m comfortable with, but never mind. “The princess was telling me just last night that you guys don’t have wars here or anything. If you’re not used to it, you can’t watch for it.”
“We were easy,” he persisted. “We have made it easy for them.”
“We don’t even know what they want. They have this thing where I’m from, the Welcome Wagon? Maybe they’re bringing coupons and things. We don’t know.”
“No one knows what they want. They don’t speak; they grunt like animals.” His loathing was rolling through her head, making her shudder. “They are animals, they come down from the mountains to make fights, they fight until the last scum-loving one is defeated, then they scuttle away.”
“Okay, okay, I understand what you’re saying, calm down, you’re going to buck me off and trample me, and then how will I get home?” She tried to joke, to lighten his mood. “I see your plan now. It won’t work.”
“When we return, you must go with the princess and the Lady Gladys and the children, and you must stay with them until—”
“Wrong again, Maltese. Besides, do you really think that princess is going to cower in hiding with the babies?”
Silence, except for the thud-thud-thud of his paws hitting hard-packed sand.
“Right. And maybe I can help. I had a little bit of training before I ended up here. Maybe I can help you talk—”
“You do not go near them. You do not look at them, you do not touch them. You do not allow them to touch you. If one does touch you, I will eat his spine.”
“It’s good,” she commented, “that we’re establishing rules. For instance, being a newcomer here, I might not understand the whole ‘don’t touch or be devoured’ guideline. And I’ve said this before—you’re being too hard on yourself.”
Silence.
“We have this place where I’m from,” she continued doggedly. Her mouth was getting dry and she wanted a drink in the worst way. She blinked sun and sand out of her eyes and continued. “Pearl Harbor. It was the posting everybody wanted—the weather was kind of like here, breezy and warm but not too hot. And the ocean—that’s like a big body of water—”
“We have seas.”
“You understand, then. It was like paradise. You got to fight for your country and be stationed in Eden, what could be better? Anyway, my friend—my best friend from home—she was stationed there, and right before I signed up, I visited her at the base. It was like being in heaven. The palm trees and the—it was just really, really nice. And so I saw her, and she told me how great it all was, and it looked great, and I went away and signed up, and then the Japanese came and blew her up, and all her friends, too. And we never saw it coming.”
“I am sorry for your friend.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. Her eyes were still watering, but she didn’t think it was the sand. “Me, too. But my point is, I know what it’s like to be asleep at the switch. You spend a lot of time blaming yourself. You feel so stupid, as if you were the one who failed. When the ones who deserve all the blame are the bad guys.”
“So you especially want to go back,” he said, slowing down as the castle gates came into view. “To avenge your friend.”
“Well…yes.”
“I see.”
“It’s just that I would feel better—”
“I understand, truly. I did not, before. I will not stand
in your way again. When this…business…is taken care of, we will try again. And this time I will mean it when I wish for you to go away.”
Stupid sand. She couldn’t stop her eyes from tearing up no matter how hard she rubbed.
Chapter 12
“How long?” the king asked.
“Another sunround at most.”
“How many?”
“Ten score.”
“Excuse me,” Princess Lois said, and thank goodness, because Anne had about a thousand questions herself. “I’m having some trouble with the whole ‘sunround’ thing. I mean, not that I should be focusing on that particular issue right this second, but honest to God, it’s really been bugging me. At first I thought it was about a year, but sometimes it sounds like it’s only a day. I know ‘moonround’ is a month, but—”
“It is easy to be confused,” Prince Damon said, smiling at his wife. Anne privately thought that Maltese was just a tiny bit handsomer, but she was certain the crown prince could have crossed over to her world, gone to Hollywood, and made more money than Clark Gable. “A sunround is many, many sunrounds, as many sunrounds as it takes to get through Time of Sowing, Time of Growth, Time of Reaping, Time of Sleeping. But for the sun to climb into the sky and then fall down, that is just a sunround.”
Anne looked at Lois, who was looking back at her. She almost smiled at the totally confused look on the princess’s face. “What?” she asked.
Lois cleared her throat. “So what you’re saying, sir, is that a sunround is a year, but a sunround is a day?”
“Yes,” the king, the crown prince, and Maltese all said in unison.
“You got that?” Lois exclaimed.
“Please, we must keep our attention on the dark travelers,” the king said, an almost absent reprimand. “If they are coming, it cannot bode well.”
“It hasn’t before?” Lois asked. “I thought you guys didn’t have wars.”
“There are occasional…skirmishes? Small fights?”
“Great.”
“What do they want?” Anne asked. “Where I’m from, the fight is for more territory—”
“I read somewhere that all fights are actually land wars,” Lois commented. “That no matter what the politicians said it was about, it was actually land spats. Revolutionary, Civil, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf…”
“Oh my God,” Anne said, revolted. “There are more wars after Pearl Harbor?”
“Well…”
“It does not matter what they want,” the king said, again guiding them back to the subject at hand. “They must be stopped, and driven off.”
“Okay, uh, that’s not too open-minded,” Lois said. “Will it hurt to hear them out?”
“They don’t speak. They’re animals,” Damon explained. “They come and try to make war, we defeat them, they leave. A few sunrounds later, they try again.”
“I assume you mean years and not days,” she muttered.
“And that’s an interesting perspective, calling the dark travelers animals,” Anne commented, a little startled at the sudden, surprising burst of prejudice in what had seemed to be a friendly and welcoming people. Certainly they had made Gladys and Lois welcome, as well as Anne herself. “You know, since you all…um…”
“I don’t think you should go there,” Lois suggested.
Anne wasn’t sure what that meant, but she persisted. “Since you can all turn into animals. It seems, uh, odd, that you would call strangers animals and fight them off. And then tell visitors you don’t have wars.”
“You are new here,” the king said, courteously but firmly. “You do not understand our ways.”
“We have learned in the past they do not understand us. They do not speak as we do; they care only to take what is not theirs.”
“Is that not what war is like at your home?” Maltese asked her.
“No, no. See, the Nazis invaded and then the Japanese joined up and they’re…you know, they’re hurting people and they hurt a whole bunch of us because they don’t want to lose the—well, it’s a totally different thing.”
“Nazis suck,” Lois agreed. “Don’t sweat it, Anne. History backs you up.”
But she was troubled. The Japanese were wrong; the Germans were wrong. And Maltese’s reaction to the dark travelers was also wrong, very very wrong. But, er, how, exactly? And what could she do about it?
“So what’s the plan?” Lois asked, and again, Anne gave silent thanks. The outspoken princess was, as usual, collecting information she herself was after.
“You and Gladys and Loo and the little ones will—”
“—get our guns and help you guys go kick some ass,” Lois finished.
Anne laughed aloud at the look on Damon’s face, then clapped a hand over her mouth as everyone looked at her.
“Except my mom doesn’t have a gun,” the princess continued thoughtfully. “Not to mention the kids, obviously. I can lend Mom one from my footlocker, but she won’t use it.”
“Why not send a party out to meet them?” Anne suggested. “Perhaps we can find out what they want.”
The men shook their heads, and Lois rolled her eyes at Anne.
“At the least, they’ll know you’re ready for them,” she persisted. “You might be able to run them off without anybody getting hurt or bombed. I mean killed.”
“It is not the way we deal with them,” the king said.
“Well, I’m not hiding while you go out and fight, pal, so just forget about it,” Lois informed the prince.
“What does it cost to try?” Anne persisted. “Lois could stay here and supervise while you send a small party out to talk to them. If things go badly, you’ve got time to get back here and prepare.”
“Who says the dark travelers can’t beat them back? I wouldn’t want to be in a footrace with any of them. I mean, no offense, fellas, but it sounds like these guys just wander around the desert all the time. They must be incredibly tough.”
“They’re only half men,” the king sniffed.
“Animals,” Damon added.
“You mean…they can’t change into the big cats like you boys do?” Anne asked, suddenly understanding.
“That’s your problem with them? But we can’t change, either,” Lois said.
“Yes, but you cannot help it. You were born on another star. You have overcome your difficulties admirably. You don’t skulk and sneak and steal land.”
“Oh, is that the difference?” Lois replied, but it was clear from her expression she didn’t understand at all.
Chapter 13
“That was very sneaky,” Anne told Maltese as they neared the dark travelers.
“I cannot help it if I think you are wise, Loo.”
She grinned, and since she was on his back again, he couldn’t see her. To her secret amazement, she and the princes and the king were riding back out to where Maltese had seen the travelers. Lois was marshaling the troops, the women, and the children back at the palace. Anne had never considered that for a moment, but instead persuaded Maltese to let her meet with the travelers. Well…bargained.
“Just so we understand, I’m only staying until Time of Reaping,” she reminded him. “Less than half a sunround.”
“Yes, I understand.”
And in return, the king allowed the unthinkable—for a stranger, a protected female, to meet the scum. Er, dark travelers.
It wasn’t that they didn’t think women could fight, Anne realized, wishing once again she had a drink. It was beyond foolish; she was running around in the desert (well, she wasn’t, exactly) without a canteen. And no one had suggested one, which told her they simply weren’t as susceptible to the heat and the sand as she was.
No, they thought women could fight just fine…in itself a novel experience. In fact, these people valued women who could fight—women like Lois. But the princes had to weigh that value against protecting future queens and princesses. And, she thought with a secret smile, Damon was so ridiculously protective of
Lois, it was adorable and sort of funny at the same time, because Lois just would not stand for it, not for a moment.
Maltese, however, was a much more practical fellow. And they had quickly struck a bargain. She couldn’t let such an opportunity go by, and if it meant lingering in the SandLands a bit longer than planned, well, she’d face the consequences of that later.
“I do not like this, my good son,” the king said in her head. Yech! Both for talking in her brain, and the sentiment.
“My good king, are you not tired of it always being the same with the dark travelers?” Maltese replied. “It costs nothing to give Loo her chance.”
“I dislike change,” the king replied, “but perhaps the perspective of a newcomer will be helpful. And I would wish to put an end to the difficulties between you and your visitor.”
In other words, Anne thought, the old guy wants his son to settle down. And I guess I’m in line for the job. Because I fell into the pool when Maltese wished for me! Ridiculous.
Still, it was nice to be included. She was riding Maltese, as usual, while Damon and the king ran along either side of them, sans riders. The other prince, whose name she’d unfortunately forgotten, had gone hunting a few days ago and would not return in time.
If it was me, I’d be mad, she thought, momentarily sorry for the absent prince.
But it’s not me, she thought, and was for a moment joyously, deliriously happy. She felt like she was starting an adventure, like the first day of Basic, like the day she’d left home. As for the possible danger, she knew to her bones Maltese wouldn’t let anything happen to her. That feeling was very strange, but also comforting.
She slid off Maltese’s back and watched the dark travelers approach. They didn’t look terribly frightening. In fact, they looked dusty and hot and tired, like regular people at the end of a particularly long day in the fields, not the lowlife boogeymen the royal family had made them out to be.
Their robes were long and black (in the desert? she thought incredulously) and flapped in the wind. Their large hoods were off and hung down almost to their waists. And they were all brunettes, their hair varying lengths and shades of brown.