“Good,” someone said. “There’s drinking to do.”
Cas would settle for a meal and a bunk with lots of warm blankets, though she did want to know what had become of Tolemek. She considered the colonel out of the corner of her eye. Sardelle hadn’t seemed alarmed by the pirate, but she also hadn’t seemed to know who he was. Zirkander would be a different matter. Even if Tolemek was hiding somewhere, Sardelle might have to do nothing more than describe him to the colonel for the recognition to kindle.
The tram cabin came into view over the edge of the cliff. The pilots, noticing Zirkander, stepped aside, offering to let him go first. Thus, since Cas was standing next to him, she had a clear view of the cabin interior when the operator opened the gate.
Tolemek sat on the floor, his arms draped over his knees, his cloak having fallen back to reveal his skin, his hair, and far too much of his face. A rather dazed face, as if he had been struck on the side of the head and was still trying to recover. A sword in a scabbard lay on the floor in front of his feet.
In the first second, Cas hoped nobody would recognize him. By the time the second second was upon them, no less than six people had their pistols out, including Zirkander.
“Wait,” Cas blurted, stepping forward. “That’s...” A retired pirate who isn’t a threat? A man not holding a weapon in his hands? Someone who looks like he needs a stiff shot of vodka? “That’s my prisoner,” she said.
“What?” Zirkander asked. He wasn’t the only one. But he was the only one who mattered, at least for the moment.
“Your prisoner is armed,” Crash said, waving to the sword.
Zirkander’s gaze followed that wave, locking onto the weapon. His face grew hard and unreadable as he looked back and forth from it to Tolemek. That wasn’t Sardelle’s soulblade or whatever it was called, was it? Surely he wouldn’t have stolen it, would he have?
Tolemek found her in the crowd, meeting her eyes. He didn’t say anything with so many people looking on, but he gave her a small smile and a shrug that seemed to say, “It’s a long story.”
“Yes,” Cas said, answering Crash’s objection, “because he gave me his parole. He turned on his own people to help me escape from the pirates. I didn’t make him any promises, in light of his past crimes, but I’d appreciate it if no one shot him full of holes until we figure out what’s going on.” She looked at the colonel as she said this, but his face hadn’t grown any more amiable. It was as hard and unfriendly as granite. An unusual expression for him. Cas had only seen it once before, when he had been defending her from that pompous, groping Cofah diplomat. Seeing it again now could not be a good thing.
Zirkander stalked into the cabin, his pistol still pointed at Tolemek, though Tolemek’s hands were clearly empty of weapons, and picked up the sword scabbard. “Get in, Ahn. I have to report to General Ort anyway. You can explain your story—and why you feel this murdering criminal shouldn’t be shot immediately—to him.”
In the minute it took the cabin to reach the base of the cliff? And here she had thought she had faced all of the tough challenges of the day already. She joined the two men inside, relieved when Zirkander didn’t invite anyone else in.
The gate clanged shut, and the cabin started descending. Cas opened her mouth, but she didn’t yet know what she intended to say. She wanted to ask what Tolemek was doing here, but at the same time, she wanted to try to explain everything to the colonel. If they took Tolemek to Ort, it would be all over. He would be in front of a firing squad by dawn, if not before. The colonel... he would be more reasonable. She hoped.
Before she got any words out, Zirkander grabbed Tolemek by his vest, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him against the metal wall. The cabin swayed and groaned.
“Sir,” Cas said, raising a hand, though she could barely see the men in the dark. The only lit lanterns were back on the butte and in the compound at the base of the cliff.
“If you’ve done anything to Sardelle,” Zirkander growled, “I’ll shove you out that gate right now.”
At a loss for anything intelligent to say, Cas went for the inane. “Colonel Zirkander, meet Tolemek, retired pirate. Tolemek, this is Colonel Zirkander.”
“Yeah,” Tolemek choked out, his airway restricted, “we’ve met in the air. He’s almost killed me a couple of times.”
A clang sounded—Tolemek being shoved against the wall again? “Sardelle,” Zirkander repeated. “Where—”
“At the bottom of the tram, waiting for you. Or so the sword told me.”
Cas stared at him. The what told him?
For a long moment, nothing sounded except the moaning of the wind and the creaking as the cabin swayed, descending slowly toward the bottom. Then Zirkander stepped back. They were the same height, Cas realized—a stupid thing to notice then, but as the gas lamps of the base approached from below, she could make out their silhouettes as they faced each other.
“We’ll see what she has to say then,” the colonel said, his voice softer now, though the warning hadn’t disappeared from it. For Tolemek’s sake, Cas hoped Sardelle would appear as soon as the men stepped out of the gate.
The cabin clanked down on the landing pad. An operator rushed over to open the gate.
“Welcome back, sir. Great flying up there. You, too, L.T.”
“Thank you, Borscot,” Zirkander said, though his gaze was roving all along the lighted area in front of the tram.
Cas scooted forward, trying to see around the men. There was no sign of—wait.
Sardelle stepped out of the shack, her cloak wrapped around her. “Ridge.” She smiled, the expression full of genuine warmth. “Did the communication devices work?”
“Infallibly, but we have something to discuss.”
Sardelle’s smile turned dry as she nodded at Tolemek. “Yes, I imagine so.”
“Sir, ma’am?” The soldier frowned at Tolemek, not knowing how to address him. “I need to send the cabin back up for the next group.”
The colonel walked toward Sardelle. When she looked toward Tolemek again, he tossed her the sword scabbard. The tram operator jerked his arm up, looking like he meant to intercept the weapon, but it couldn’t do much damage while sheathed. He seemed to realize that, too, and lowered his arm, though he gave Sardelle an odd look when she attached it to her belt and draped her cloak over it. Civilian archaeologists probably weren’t supposed to have swords on base.
Cas stepped out of the cabin with Tolemek and drew him to the opposite side from Sardelle and Zirkander. She dared not drag him far until there was a modicum of resolution with the colonel, but she didn’t want everyone in the squadron coming over to interrogate him—or her—when they walked off the tram.
“Why do I have the feeling you two have had adventures?” she asked, deeming it a more tactful question than the what-by-all-the-gods-in-the-universe-are-you-doing-here one that was bubbling up inside of her.
“I hope you never know the details,” Tolemek whispered, then surprised her by drawing her into a hug and burying his face in her neck.
Cas was beginning to think he’d had a worse night than she. “I hope you’ll tell me a few of them at least. Or Zirkander if not me. I’m trying to figure out how to save you from General Ort and a firing squad.”
“You smell like engine oil, guns, and leather,” he said, sounding bemused—and not in the mood to worry about firing squads.
“Not the usual combination you get from women you spend time with?”
“No, but I like it.”
His lips brushed up her neck, to her jaw, and then to her mouth. The kiss he gave her made her earlier one seem chaste and sweet; this one was heated with passion and more... the sort of relief and fire one felt after saving something invaluable that had almost been lost. Cas was breathless by the time he lifted his mouth from hers, and she couldn’t remember where she was, what she was supposed to be doing, and why they weren’t scurrying off to find a bunk to share.
“Lieutenant?” Zirkander asked from a
few feet away.
Cas flushed, her cheeks so hot that she was sure she was melting snow for several meters in every direction. “Sir?”
A group of her fellow officers walked away from the tram cabin, chatting and trading shoves as they headed for the base gate. Fortunately, they didn’t look over to Cas’s shadows. She wasn’t even sure if that was the first group that had departed. She didn’t remember hearing the tram in operation. She touched her lips, blushing all over again. Tolemek stood at her back, his hand on her waist.
“I’m going to go talk to the general,” Zirkander said. “You... find a rack. Get some rest. Or... whatever.” He flicked his hand toward Tolemek. He didn’t sound approving, but he wasn’t threatening to kill her pirate, either. That was an amazing turn around.
“I wonder what Sardelle said,” Cas mused as Zirkander walked away.
“I don’t know,” Tolemek said, his arms wrapping around her waist, and his mouth returning to her throat, “but I vote for whatever.”
Cas shivered and leaned back into him. “My vote... depends on whether you’re taking those awful bracers off.”
He chuckled softly. “I’ll take off anything you like.”
“Enticing.”
“I certainly hope so.”
Epilogue
Tolemek shifted his weight in the saddle, wincing at sore muscles. Pirates didn’t spend a lot of time on horseback, and it didn’t help that Zirkander had picked the biggest, orneriest horse in the stable for him. Tolemek had been thrown three times during the two-hour trip, which had caused the women to look at him with surprise and concern while Zirkander apologized heartily for the beast’s temperament, then smirked into his scarf. Bastard.
At least they had turned off the road and, judging by Sardelle and Zirkander’s enthused chatter, come to their destination. Given the revelation that the cabin was someplace Cas had once dreamed of being invited, Tolemek was expecting a bit more. A quarter mile down the path, the log structure perching next to the frozen lake and blanketed with six inches of snow, scarcely looked big enough for two people much less four people. Four people who barely knew each other and two of them men who might come to blows at any moment.
Five people.
Tolemek flinched, almost falling off the horse again. Jaxi hadn’t spoken into his mind since the night of the attack, and he had assumed, with the emergency past, she was done communicating with him. Are you actually considered a... people?
I’m as much of a people as you are, Deathmaker. You’re fortunate Sardelle has agreed to train you. Assuming you pass her tests this weekend and prove trainable at this point in your life. You’re awfully old.
A centuries-old sword was calling him old? How bizarre. Do you jump into Sardelle’s head unannounced like this? Or am I special?
You’re definitely special, but, yes, Sardelle and I have no secrets. It’s part of the joy of being bonded with a soulblade.
Maybe it was just as well that he had finagled magic lessons for his sister without acquiring an actual soulblade. Tolemek tried to imagine what it must be like having one’s night of amorous passions interrupted by the commentary from a snarky sword. Then he decided he didn’t want to imagine anyone having amorous passions with Zirkander and pushed the thought from his mind.
He’s equally displeased by the idea of you having amorous passions with his lieutenant, Jaxi put in brightly.
“You’re looking thoughtful over there.” Cas, who was riding beside him on a docile mare, gave him a smile.
“Am I?” Tolemek decided not to mention the conversation. When he had alluded to the fact that Jaxi not only had a name but could communicate with people, her face had assumed that expression it did when magic was mentioned, a mixture of disbelief and horror.
“Apex would call it dyspeptic. That’s one of his words. He usually reserves it for General Ort.”
In the week since the pirates had been turned away, Tolemek hadn’t met many of her pilot friends. He hadn’t been allowed to wander the city and meet many people at all, but he couldn’t complain overmuch, nor did he consider himself dyspeptic about anything except having a sarcastic sword sauntering through his thoughts. He had expected the firing squad, but instead, thanks to Zirkander’s influence, he had been invited to stay in the city and had been given the full use of an immaculate laboratory that was technologically superior to anything he had ever seen. Indeed, he had spent far more time playing with the fancy centrifuge than was dignified for someone of his age and expertise. Until Cas had walked in and caught him at it. She hadn’t seemed to believe he was doing “important experiments to further your people’s war efforts,” either. But then he had given her the tour, including the compact living quarters that had come with his lab, and they had grown delightfully distracted. For quite some time. He still grinned at the memory—and the realization that she liked being distracted with him. He hadn’t caught her giving Zirkander so much as a thoughtful gaze in the time they had been together, so Tolemek was beginning to believe that any feelings for her commander that Cas had admitted to under the truth serum had been replaced by feelings for him, or perhaps her confession had been nothing more than a tale of a fleeting infatuation to start with.
He would have left the pirates years ago if he had known he could have such a life here. Granted, his lab assistant was obviously a spy, soldiers followed him whenever he left the building, and the Iskandians hadn’t been subtle in stating that they expected their new scientist to make them useful things. But it was far more than he had expected. They might loathe him for his past, but they wanted his talents for their future. He hadn’t foreseen that. They had even wanted him when he’d said he was out of the weapons, poisons, and biological-agents creation business—both on principle and because he didn’t detest his homeland to the point where he wanted to harm its inhabitants. The general overseeing him had been delighted at the demonstration Tolemek had given him of Healing Salve Number Six. He had promptly ordered five hundred ounces worth, and, yes, Tolemek could have more lab assistants if he needed help fulfilling the order. It was a good beginning.
“I’m actually rather contented with the situation and the good company.” Tolemek smiled at Cas, so she could make no mistake as to whom he meant. “I’ll be even more contented when I figure out a way to get my sister over here. My understanding is that I’m to be treated well, produce lots of militarily significant formulas, and never leave the continent, especially not to go back to Cofahre where I might be tempted to blab Iskandian secrets.”
“That’s your understanding, or that’s exactly what some general said?” Cas asked.
“Actually the general was more blunt than I. And I gathered he was paraphrasing your king. Who was even blunter.”
“Ah. Well, in a few years, when you’ve proven yourself, they might allow you some travel privileges. After all, it’s barely been a week, and you’re already being permitted to see the country.” Cas stretched an open palm toward the small and extremely rustic cabin.
Tolemek kept himself from pointing out that it was only because two trusted officers were escorting him that he had been allowed this excursion out into the world. He also kept himself from suggesting that being in a tiny cabin wasn’t exactly seeing the country, not when its owner was in earshot. Besides, Cas looked tickled to be out here. With him. Tolemek smiled at her again. “This is true.”
“And I’m sure we can find a way to retrieve your sister. Even if you can’t leave, you have friends here now.”
Zirkander had dismounted, and his eyebrows twitched at this statement. Sardelle smiled back at them with more enthusiasm.
“I have some ideas for getting her over here,” she said. “We can discuss them this weekend.”
“We’re here to relax,” Zirkander said. “Not discuss work.” He looked at Tolemek again. “Or schemes.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ridge. This is the one place I feel I can speak openly. On your base, your houses are so close together that I’m sca
red I’ll slip up and alert some nosey neighbor that I’m more than an archaeologist.”
“Are you truly accusing Lieutenant Colonel Ostraker of being nosey? He’s the most proper example of a military officer you’ll ever find. He’s far too busy ironing his uniforms and polishing his boots to wander over and peep through our windows.”
“His grandmother isn’t,” Sardelle said, dismounting near the cabin’s small porch. “Not only is she so old that she was probably alive when I was walking the continent the first time, but she’s always over in your yard, trimming your shrubs and filling your bird feeder.”
Tolemek hadn’t quite gotten the story on where Sardelle had come from, but for whatever reason, she didn’t seem to worry about keeping her secrets around him or Cas. Maybe because they had already suspected her of being a sorceress when they showed up on her doorstep.
“Well, the shrubs shouldn’t need trimming now that the snows have come.” Zirkander rubbed his jaw and took the reins to Sardelle’s horse. “But the birds do enjoy their suet in the winter.”
She dropped her hand to his forearm. She managed to look sweet, earnest, and determined all at the same time. “We must have a discussion. And some planning. That’s what I’d like to do while we’re here. We have to convince your people that magic can be useful, perhaps to finally free this continent from its would-be oppressors. Those communication devices are a start, even if your people don’t know they were made a week ago and not centuries in the past, and they gave me an idea about perhaps making a few more indispensable items for the military and then letting the news slip that they’re magical.”
“I’m willing to discuss those things,” Zirkander said as he led their two horses back to a lean-to against the back of the cabin that was out of the wind. “So long as it’s in a relaxed state.”
“Besides,” Sardelle went on. “It’s more than wishful thinking that has me bringing this up. The pilot I healed, the one who crashed...”
“The one who would have died without your intervention?” Zirkander returned from the back and pulled her into a hug, burying his face against her fur cap for a moment.