Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (3 page)

She clenched then shook her hands, trying to rid them of the numbness caused by a medstick’s ministrations. With quickness and skill Phoenix had landed several cuts on Kayla, mostly on her hands and arms, though one stung across her face. They’d needed healing and Kayla had no time to wait for her body to regenerate naturally. Still, she resented the numbness that could take up to a day to fade as it made her much less effective with her knives, which she couldn’t afford. A sonic shower would help with the numbness as well as flake the stage-paint from her body. The sooner she got home to Corinth, the better.

She had the shower on her mind and a hand on her kris when she entered her dressing room. The lights didn’t come on with her first step in the room, which wasn’t unusual. Lumar was too cheap to replace faulty motion sensors. When they didn’t come on after a second step, the hair on the back of her neck rose. She tapped the pad by the door, bringing the lights up.

A shadow uncurled itself from the corner.

She had her kris out of its sheath before she recognized the man she’d kissed in the stands.

“A word of advice, Shadow. Next time you intend to stand a man up, don’t agree to the meeting so easily. Makes a naturally cautious person like myself suspicious.”

Kayla shrugged a shoulder in a careless gesture but didn’t sheath her knife. “You seemed pleased enough with my answer.”

“The famously reclusive Shadow Panthe, who doesn’t even acknowledge her admirers—let alone speak to them—agrees to meet with me simply because I asked? If I seemed pleased it was only because I’d eliminated one exit from my search for you tonight. I knew you wouldn’t be where you’d said.”

“Where’s your friend?”

“Checking the most likely exits, in case I missed you here.”

She tried to play it light. “You’ve gone to quite a lot of effort for one little Shadow Panthe.” Not that she qualified as “little” at her height, just shy of two meters. Did he have just the one man with him? Were they aware of Corinth, or was this truly about her pit whore persona? Could she make it home without being followed, or would she lead trouble right to her
il’haar
?

He watched her, seeming to evaluate whether or not she intended to use the kris she held on him. Kayla considered it, fingering the hilt of her second dagger as she studied him. Unlike the men of her homeworld in Wyrd Space he was impressively tall, at least two meters, and built to be a threat. He stood with his weight balanced primarily on the balls of his feet and his hands loose at his sides, alert, prepared for anything.

When he did nothing more than watch her, Kayla relaxed a fraction. If he’d meant to attack her he’d lost his best opportunity by not ambushing her when she entered her room. He looked like a man who understood that, so he must have something else in mind. She flipped her kris into its sheath and leaned against the wall beside the door, hands resting on the pommels of her daggers. The room was close quarters for a fight, should it come to that, and such a location favored the more agile fighter. She was safe enough, for the moment.

“What do you want?”

He hooked a booted foot under the single chair in the room and dragged it toward him. He flipped it around and straddled it, facing her. The hand he draped casually over the chair’s back didn’t fool her. She was sure that he could stand and lift the chair like a weapon in an instant, should he need to.

Smart man.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said.

“Not interested.”

“I assure you it is well worth it.”

His boots were scuffed and well-worn, but not cheap. His clothes were a higher-quality synth fabric than typically seen in pit row. He wore a vest that could conceal any manner of weapon and a floor-length duster as black as the vacuum of space. The style favored slavers and illegal merch-runners but he was cleaner than either and more alert.

The owner of a rival pit, come to lure her away? They were rarely ballsy enough to court her at the Blood Pit after hours, and typically came with more pomp.

“Still not interested.” She nodded to the door. “Now go find your friend and save him some trouble. I guarantee he hasn’t located all of the exits.”

“Look,” he said, “I’ll pay you ten times what you make for a headlining match.”

“Why would you pay me that much for a single fight?” Any pit whore should clutch the chance to earn that many credits, no matter the risk, but Kayla had other things to worry about. True, she and Corinth needed the credits badly. It would put them much closer to bribing a runner to risk the unlawful journey to the Wyrd Worlds.

“It’s a tournament. You’d be facing some of the top fighters in the empire.”

If that was all there was to it she might have been interested. A tournament she could win, especially against imperials. The Sakien Empire had nothing on the Wyrd Worlds when it came to training their women to fight. “It’s not here on Altair Tri or I would have heard of it.”

His gaze flicked away. “We’d have to travel.”

When he left it at that Kayla’s unease grew. There was something here, something unusual about this tournament.

“Not interested.”

“Can you afford not to be interested?”

“I’m a pit whore, not a slave. I fight when I want or not at all.” Pride she’d locked down tight leaked past her control. “I don’t
need
your credits.” Damned if she couldn’t use them, though.

“Phoenix gave you something of a challenge tonight.”

Kayla tried not to think about it, about what she’d been forced to do. Phoenix wouldn’t have stopped with anything short of Kayla’s dead body if Kayla hadn’t disabled her. So Phoenix’s prize for the honor of fighting Shadow Panthe had been broken tarsals and metatarsals, a fractured collarbone, broken nose, a puncture wound above her hip—she had tried to keep it shallow—a dozen lacerations and a severed tendon in her wrist. It would be months before Phoenix could fight again, and she’d probably never be as dexterous with a weapon as she’d been, if she could even grip one. That assumed she found top-quality treatment for the injury, which she certainly wouldn’t at the Blood Pit.

She would have done it to me
, Kayla reminded herself. The thought didn’t ease her guilt.

“Someday you’re going to be off or someone’s going to get lucky,” the man said. “Either way the outcome would be the same. It’s only a matter of time.” His words echoed her own fears. None of the pit whores she encountered were her equal in the ring. One off-day, though, one random slip and Corinth would be completely alone without a
ro’haar
to protect him.

“I’ll give you twenty times what you make. Enough to start over, leave all of this behind.” His voice dropped to something more persuasive. “I’m offering you the chance at a new life.”

His words provoked the faintest tug, an unconscious pull that made her want to agree. She pressed back into the wall, raising her chin against the unwanted feeling. “There’s no new life waiting for me, no matter how many credits are in my pocket.” Just the same broken life, somewhere else. Her home was destroyed, her psi powers gone and no amount of credits could ever buy her life back.

They could, however, buy her and Corinth passage to Wyrd Space, where he could get the psionic training he desperately needed among their own kind. They could stop hiding, stop living in fear of being discovered.

“Where is the tournament to be held?” she asked.

“For that many credits, where wouldn’t you go?”

Any other planet in the Sakien Empire. At least Altair Tri sat on the edge of Wyrd Space.

“I could find someone else—” he started.

“Then do it, and stop wasting my time.” Kayla toed the door open, leaving her hands on her daggers. “If you don’t mind, this paint’s starting to itch.”

“Falanar. The tournament’s on Falanar.”

The word fell like a stalled hoverlift. Falanar, the Royal Seat of the Sakien Empire. The Imperial Homeworld itself. All the pieces clicked into place: elite imperial fighters, the outrageous payday… “An Empress Game has been called?”

He nodded.

“You want me to impersonate one of the princesses and win her the crown?” Kayla laughed, a short, harsh sound that echoed in the room. “You’ve got spacesickness if you think anyone would agree to that, no matter what price you’re offering. The IDC would eat you alive.”

That brought a smile to his lips. Anyone who could smile at the mention of the IDC was more trouble than she needed. She kicked the door open fully. “I heard your offer and I’m not interested. Get out.”

The chair scraped across the floor when he rose and pushed it out of the way. “If you change your mind—”

“I won’t.”

He came toward her, his height eating up the available space in the room. Even five years on Altair Tri hadn’t accustomed her to men who towered over her, not at her height. Among her people, the males tended to be the shorter of the gender.

This close, she caught the scent of his skin: old-fashioned imperial soap. A scent sadly lacking on Altair Tri.

He held his hands up—away from his sides, fingers spread—keeping a careful eye on her daggers.

“I mean to make you an offer you can’t refuse, Shadow.”

“And I mean to sheathe my kris in something soft if you don’t back the frutt up and get out of my room. Now.”

“We’ll finish this later.” He slipped out before she could reply.

K
ayla was halfway home when Corinth’s psionic voice sounded in her head.

::Kayla? Where are you?::

He usually waited for her to contact him on fight nights for fear of distracting her.

::Kayla?::

She fished through her bag, searching for the mobile comm she kept with her whenever separated from Corinth. Her fingers brushed several familiar items but the mobile comm was not among them.

“Damnit.” She stopped walking long enough to glance inside the bag. It wasn’t there. How could she have left it behind? She pictured where she’d last seen it, on her table in her dressing room before her last match. Before, but not after. “That frutter!”

::Please, Kayla.::

She growled low in her throat like a wounded cat, aching with the fear she heard in his mental voice. She couldn’t answer him, not without a comm device of some sort. The familiar frustration of losing the psionic powers necessary to communicate with him at a distance rose up to choke her.

She broke into a run, still kilometers from home.

Her path brought her west out of the slums and into the polluted no-man’s-land of Fengar Swamp. When they’d initially escaped to Altair Tri they’d rented rooms in the city, close to the Blood Pit. Kayla hadn’t wanted to be any farther away from Corinth than necessary. With the number of break-ins and murders, though, it would only have been a matter of time before something happened to her
il’haar
if she left him alone in the slums at night. They’d moved to the swamp, constructing a home bit by bit from materials she scavenged, stole, or occasionally purchased. The place had a nauseating stench and more pitfalls than Ilmena’s royal court—perfect for hiding out.

She reached the edge of the copse that sheltered their makeshift house and paused, alert for any anomaly. The shack looked as it always did, depressing and inadequate. The motion sensors she had surrounded it with were silent—potentially a good sign—but Kayla drew a dagger anyway and crept around the exterior.

No strange footprints bruised the muck and the tufts of grass appeared undamaged. She circled to the door. The pressure locks were still sealed. She punched in her access code and the locks released with a hiss of hydraulics.

“Corinth?”

::I’m here.::

“Are you all right?” Their shack consisted of three rooms. She crossed the common area and glanced in his room—nothing. Not that she’d expected to find him there. When scared, spooked or lonely on fight nights, Corinth went to the same place. His head peeked out from beneath her bed when she entered her room. It was so low to the ground that even with his small size, he still barely fit under there.

::I’m all right. You were gone so long.::

She scanned the room, searching for anything out of place. “Lumar kept me.” No need for Corinth to learn about her strange conversation with an even stranger man. “The nightmares again?”

Kayla sheathed her dagger. She stripped off her
ashk
before taking a seat on the floor. “Come on out and tell me about it. I’ll synth us some soup.”

He might eat, but he wouldn’t discuss his nightmares.

Neither would she.

They both knew what haunted the other. Memories of the day the rest of their family had been murdered, the day their twins had died and left them half-whole.

Corinth reached out to her with his mind, a whisper-light brush against her mental shields. He wanted the mind-to-mind connection only Wyrds shared. He wanted to feel her essence close and convince himself he wasn’t alone. She couldn’t handle it tonight.

::
Speak
with me.:: He didn’t mean with her physical voice. Corinth hadn’t spoken aloud since the attack on their homeworld. Nothing seemed to be physically wrong with him, but he just couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She never knew which.

Corinth could still
speak
to her through her mental shields with his psi voice, but Kayla, who had lost the use of her psi powers in the attack on their family, couldn’t reply. With her shields down, though, Corinth—or any well-trained psionic—could actually occupy her mind at close range. He would feel what she felt, see what she saw and hear her active thoughts. If she relinquished enough control he could even animate her body and speak for her. Kayla had never allowed anyone that much access.

Normally she would lower her mental shields and let Corinth partially into her mind so they could
speak
. Tonight she had too many troubles to hide from him and too little energy to try. She pulled her shields tighter together.

“It was a tough night at the pit, Corinth, you don’t need to see that.”

::I hate what you do there.::

“I know you do.”

::You’re so much better than that. You’re a
ro’haar
and an Ordochian princess.::