Breath of Winter, A (9 page)

I was still speechless when he knelt and put my good foot on a brace set inches above the floor. With tender hands, he settled my busted foot on the brace sticking out into the room. With that done, he plucked the comforter off the bed, tossed it over me and tucked it under me though it was stifling.

Or maybe I was the only one who broke into a sweat while he played nurse for me.

“There.” He stood back to appraise his work. “Are you comfortable?”

I nodded dumbly. Where was his grunt or groan? His struggle to carry me or sharp exhale when he realized he couldn’t? When was the moment when he laughed at my gangly legs or at my weight?

Silk.
Araneidae silk appeared as much the same as any other. Its hidden strength distinguished it, making it impressive, distinct. It would appear those same traits applied to those who spun it as well.

Finally, I found the brains to ask something sensible. “How is our ward?”

“As well as can be expected.” He knelt beside me and adjusted a set of knobs, raising my leg. “She has learned the limits of her cage.” He straightened and grasped the chair’s handles. “So far she has shown no signs of self-destructive behavior. Once she realized I wouldn’t open the cage even if she beat herself senseless on the bars, she accepted her situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon. She’s calmed considerably since she first arrived. She has even attempted conversation with me.”

I tilted my head back. “She spoke to you of her own free will about something besides food?”

“Yes.” He studied me. “Is that so important?”

“The only time she communicated with Hishima that I saw was to bargain for food. She had the knowledge he wanted, but he paid for it in flesh. If she’s talking to you, she’s after something.” I had a good idea what it was too. “What are you feeding her now? Fresh meat, I’m sure. But what kind?”

“Varanus for the most part.” His fingers tapped the handles. “The animals were butchered a few weeks ago and the meat frozen. Are you saying she wants fresh meat? Or a chance to hunt her own?”

The hunt was only half of it. “She has a taste for Araneaean flesh.”

He scoffed. “You think she’s bribing me in the hopes I’ll indulge her addiction?”

“She has her own agenda.” Gods only knew what it was. “She won’t help anyone for free.”

“Is she so far gone?” He sounded doubtful. “Is there no hope she might be rehabilitated?”

“None.”

He shook his head. “We owe it to her to try.”

Since pity seemed to be getting the better of him, I reiterated what I had told him earlier.

“From all accounts, she doted on Hishima. He was her only child, her heir. Yet she murdered him with her bare hands. What sort of mother could do that and live with herself afterward?” None I knew. “Whatever is in that cage isn’t Lailah. It’s a twisted shell driven mad by hunger it can’t sate.”

“I don’t doubt you believe what you’ve told me,” Henri said at last, “but I must see for myself that she’s beyond saving. If she had been captured sooner, when the infection was fresh, perhaps…”

“Perhaps nothing.” To think Ghedi called me stubborn. Henri’s flat-footed refusal to hear reason flustered me. “You’re kind for wanting to help, just don’t let her help herself to you in the process.”

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“It’s my job to care,” seemed like the safest response. I’m not entirely sure he believed me if his soft chuckles were any indication. “If you die while under our protection, then our careers are over.”

“Ah.” His voice lowered. “I wouldn’t want to tarnish your reputations.”

I winced. “That was self-serving of me.”

“You are a mercenary,” he reminded me, a habit that had begun to grate on my nerves.

I was a mercenary by necessity, not choice.

Strange I hadn’t noticed my aversion to the title until it fell from Henri’s lips.

Before I formulated a retort, Henri hesitated at a large door with an inset handle that appeared to double as the lock. He hid the mechanism while he opened it, which made me wish I could peer over his shoulder. I had to settle for sitting back and allowing his secrets until he had cleared me to walk.

He stepped back. “Be careful once we’re inside.”

“I won’t touch anything.” I linked my fingers in my lap to keep them from wandering.

“I don’t mind touching, as long as you use common sense.”

I shot him a cocky grin. “Good to know.”

Cheeks flushed, he set his shoulder against the door and shoved.

Hinges groaned as he revealed his laboratory to me. The room was massive. Half the size of the stable, and it had been enormous. More of those odd lights twinkled across the ceiling, giving the illusion of full sunlight. Warmth pushed at my face when we entered. It was several degrees hotter in here than in my room. The length of one wall was dedicated to stout-looking storage cabinets, and the center of the room was a maze of tables and countertops, all scattered with peculiar implements.

Each nook and cranny revealed the unexpected, the impressive or the remarkable. At the far end, I spied a glass house filled with lush plants. I recognized the cattail plant my brothers and I had used for sword fights when we were children. Then there were vivid, exotic blossoms the likes of which I had never seen in my travels. “Where did all those flowers come from?” The variety was staggering.

“Friends who travel more than I do are kind enough to bring me back cuttings and seeds.”

“And you coaxed them to bloom here?” Amazing.

“I’m sure you noticed the excessive lighting. Each section of greenhouse mimics a plant’s native environment. It’s warm here in the main room, even with ventilation, but it gets blistering hot inside the portions representative of the southland. If you’d like, we can tour those sections later this week. You can decide if my samples are symbolic of your home. Perhaps suggest new additions.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good.” He sounded pleased. “I’ll warn you, I’m not the best housekeeper. I will be careful not to run you into anything. I meant to have those pallets unloaded by now, but I haven’t had time.”

At first glance, I had been too awestruck to notice how the crates were stacked dangerously high in the corners or how piles of canvas had been left to gather dust beside stations they once sheltered.

All around us, pots bubbled over delicate burners and chimes pinged. The air was thick with the scent of flowers, fresh sunlight and burnt grass. It was a heady fragrance that reminded me of home.

“You should hire an assistant. Someone ought to care for the place if you won’t.”

“I had one once.” He circled the chair and cleared me a path. “I set her to work one day, though it seemed to me the next day she quit. To hear Armand tell it, I had ignored the poor girl for weeks.”

Sympathy made me shake my head. Henri could be too cool, too calm.

He was just the sort of male who needed his feathers ruffled by a female who knew how.

Lucky for him, ruffling feathers was my specialty.

“She hoped taking the position would capture your attention.” I couldn’t say I blamed her.

“So my brother said. I don’t know if that’s the truth, and it doesn’t matter if it was. I hired her to perform specific tasks. Had I been interested in her romantically, I would never have expected her to swelter through our courtship inside the laboratory.” He appeared to struggle to find the right words. “My work often portrays me as boorish and studious. Perhaps I do that to myself. Either way, it’s not the best light to have shined on oneself while trying to impress a female one is interested in wooing.”

“Wooing.” I chuckled. “Yes, one must have the perfect lighting for such activities.”

He remained serious. “Perception is everything.”

“You’ve given this wooing business some thought since then.” It was clear to me he had.

He resumed his position behind me. “If we learn from our mistakes, we won’t repeat them.”

“Hmm. I suppose there is that.” As he pushed me down a narrow aisle, I traced the countertops’ edges with a finger. Rubbing two together, I tested the accumulation of grime. “Are you resolved not to hire a new assistant? Or is it that you’re hesitant to train another helper of the female persuasion?”

His steps slowed. “I did say I wanted to ask your opinion on a specific matter.”

“You did.” Though I hadn’t cared what he wanted as long as it got me out of my room.

“Would you consider assuming the role of my temporary assistant?”

“Ah.” I reined in my disappointment. “I appreciate you clarifying the point for me.”

He circled around until we faced one another. “Which is?”

“You don’t believe in mixing business with pleasure.” Ghedi would be thrilled. “Your attention has flattered me so that I neglected to consider I am most appealing when there are no competitors.”

“Hundreds of females live in this nest.” He covered my hand with his. “None are your equal.”

Equal in height…in weight…in temper…
Without a qualifier, I was uncertain of his meaning.

“You are quite the charmer.” There. Let him make what he would of my response.

Unsure if he had been insulted, and that made two of us, Henri withdrew.

He tried a different tact. “Your knowledge of harbingers and risers is invaluable to me.”

“I…can’t.” Though it pained me to decline, what he meant to do… It was wrong.

His lips quirked as though this was a familiar ploy. “I would pay you for your trouble.”

Though the payoff tempted me, I held firm. “In this matter, my cooperation can’t be bought.”

“That’s a pity.” He smoothed a hand down the front of his shirt.

My hands tightened on my armrests. “Will you return me to my room now?”

“Not unless you’re asking me to.” He rounded my chair and grasped its handles. “Are you?”

“No,” I answered slowly.

“Good.” He angled me toward a door set into the easternmost corner, the one mirroring the one we entered the laboratory through. “I am not so petty that I would refuse you the tour I promised.”

Once we reached it, the performance of his unlocking was more intricate, and I wondered at the extra security until I noticed two things were missing from his laboratory—our ward and my brothers.

When he swung the hatch open, my eyes went wide. After all this, there was still one last chamber to explore, and this one teemed with familiar faces. Ghedi leaned his hip against the wall as his hands flew in the complicated gestures of the
mkono
. Kaleb replied with sharp signs of his own.

Whatever the topic, neither seemed happy.

But what drew my eye loomed beyond them. An enormous cage filled the back half of one wall. It was four times my height and four times that length and width. A tall door held a large locking mechanism that resembled the outer doors. That must be the reason Henri wanted to be present. I surmised he was the only one who had a key for any of those doors. For that I was relieved.

I was also impressed he had constructed this containment area in such a brief period of time. I hoped he would forgive the thought as it occurred to me, but enough gold really could buy anything.

With their backs braced against the wall of the cavernous room, Tau and Malik kept watch.

Tau’s eyes crinkled when he spotted me. He shoved Malik, whose quick smile was blinding. For a long moment, no one moved, then it was a rush to see which of my brothers reached me first. Their embraces were hard and jostled my chair, but I didn’t mind. I clutched them and let the tightness of their grips say what their words could not. They had been worried. They had missed me. They were relieved I was well and that I had come to see them. What else of importance was there to say?

“What are you two squabbling about?” Kaleb was slow to anger, but Ghedi had him fuming.

Kaleb cast Ghedi an expectant look over my head.

“Braden asked for help with the ursus before you arrived.” Ghedi glared at him. “I volunteered.”

“You hate ursus.” He hated anything bigger and meaner than he was. “What’s in it for you?”

Kaleb kept on staring until Ghedi confessed, “The help he needs is aboveground.”

“Jealous, Kaleb?” I taunted him. In answer, he transferred his scowl onto me.

Rattling behind the solid wall made of my brothers forced me to crane my neck to see over their shoulders.

“What is that?” I asked.

Kaleb broke the huddle first. He strode toward the cage, pausing to snatch a club from the floor. Our ward loosed a high-pitched squeal, baring her teeth and hissing at him. When he kept coming, she did the only thing she could. She retreated out of his reach before he could rap her knuckles.

It was the way she did it that stole my breath.

Caught in that moment of fight or flight, she literally soared. Iridescent wings burst from her back. She leapt into the air, and they carried her up and away from danger. She hovered high and near the bars, well out of Kaleb’s range, taunting him with her superiority. Her speed was such, I marveled that we had ever captured her, and I prayed it never fell to us to perform that feat again.