her instruments 03 - laisrathera (23 page)

“Fur,” was the first word he said. Then, “Smells good.”

“Not what Reese told me a few hours ago,” Irine said, sitting up. She glanced at Ontine, found the dead between them and easy view… good enough. She propped him up and cupped his cold cheeks in her hands, looking at his face, frantic. “Are you hurt? Badly?”

“Nowhere you can… can see,” he managed, hanging against her. He groped for her arm, caught it and leaned. “Goddess… God… Lord and… Lady… damn it all. Damn it!”

She shook him gently. “Talk to me. What happened?”

“Baniel!” Val snarled, panting. “Baniel has a protégé and is sucking power from him. I expected to find him as he was, not augmented!”

Irine’s mouth dried. “You mean you’re out here because….”

“Because he nearly killed me. Thought he had, or he would have finished the job.” Val shuddered. “The cold nearly has.”

“And Reese,” Irine whispered.

“Safe, for now.” Val slumped. “In his care, but untouched. He will use her to bait the trap for his brother. Because they love one another, don’t they.”

“Yes,” Irine said, all her fur standing on end. She swallowed. “Okay, well. We’ve lived through situations this bad before. We can do it again.”

He peered at her. “And I find you here why, Lady Tigress?”

“I’m Reese’s girl,” Irine said. “And Reese is in there. I don’t care about anyone else. I’m going after her.”

“And it’s true, that Lord Hirianthial is on his way? Your captain and our enemy both seemed convinced.”

“Battlehells, yes.”

He nodded slowly. “Then maybe the two of us can put ourselves to use on his behalf. Do some reconnaissance. Ah?”

“You don’t want to send me back?” Irine asked, wary.

He snorted. “What would that accomplish? You will only wait until you think I’m not looking, then creep back. I can shield you from notice. And you—”

“Yes?” she asked. “What can I do?”

He winced as he staggered to his feet and almost fell. Startled, she leaped to her feet and put her shoulder under his before he could topple.

“You can help me walk,” he said. “God, but he nearly tore the soul from my body and it’s not convinced it wants to come back.”

Irine tried petting his arm gently, and when he didn’t object said, “You feel unsteady to me, Val.”

“I am,” he said. “Let us hide under the balcony then, while I catch my wind.”

“Right,” she said, and looked past the mound of bodies at the achingly white expanse between her and the palace. She grimaced. “It’s going to be a long trip.”

“Make it now,” Val said, head against her shoulder. “No one’s watching.”

She glanced at him. “Sure of that?”

“Achingly.”

“Huh.” She resettled his weight against her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll make it out of this alive after all.”

“I can’t recommend the alternative, having nearly experienced it.”

“I bet.” She started off. “Hold on, Boss. We’re all coming.”

The candle had long since burned down and left them in darkness when the door opened again. Even blinded by the sudden light, Reese scrabbled to her feet and launched herself at it, only to be thrown to one side. Shaking herself against the disorientation, she prepared for a second attempt, only to find the door already shutting.

She was alone. They had taken Surela.

No loss there, she told herself, sinking to the ground again and rubbing her aching head. Probably changed their minds about needing her for something. She fisted her fingers in her braids to keep her hand from shaking. How long were they going to leave her here? She’d never been afraid of the dark—she was a merchant trader, for blood’s sake, she spent her life plying a dark far more abyssal than this—but something about the closeness of the room and the pressure of Hirianthial’s impending entrapment and the memory of his body lying on this very floor….

How had he borne being hemmed up like this so many times? Was imprisonment something one got better at with practice? Or was it just a matter of his extended lifespan? Maybe it brought patience. Reese scrubbed her eyes. She could be patient. Damn it all. She could live through this. They hadn’t hurt her. She had all her faculties. She just had to wait for the right moment.

The next time they opened the door, she vaulted for it and got a quarter-power palmer shot to the leg for her trouble. She fell abruptly and was pushing herself up when they shut the door again. They’d left another candle this time… and Surela.

And Surela.

“Blood and all hell!” Reese scrabbled over to the other woman on her hands and one knee, looking over the body. Some blood but not a lot. The dress was a mess though, and there were bruises… Reese had ample experience with how badly Eldritch skin bruised. She hovered over Surela, grimaced, chanced a touch on one of the tattered sleeves. “Surela?”

The woman’s lashes parted, just enough to gather the candle’s gleam. Then she jerked upright so abruptly she smashed her head into Reese’s.

“Blood in the—damn it, that hurt—wait, wait, it’s just me!”

Surela had pushed herself to the corner, her back to the wall and her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “
Don’t—!
”

“I won’t, I won’t touch you,” Reese said. “I just wanted to make sure you were still conscious.”

“You were… trying to help me?” the other woman asked, the last word ending on a squeak of disbelief and, Reese thought with a flinch, hysterical tears.

“I want you to stand trial,” she said finally. “And if Liolesa decides you need to die for what you’ve done, then I want her to kill you cleanly. I don’t hold with torture.”

“Is that what that was,” Surela whispered.

Reese glanced at her, at the way she was holding herself, at the bruises, the torn dress. “Yes. I know. I’ve seen it before.”

That made the other woman look up at her, and her face held something other than hysteria finally. Confusion?

“With Hirianthial,” Reese said.

Surela shuddered. “To a man!”

“Bad things happen to men too.”

“Not the same,” Surela whispered.

“Looked pretty bad to me—”

“A man,” Surela hissed, “can’t be gotten with child against his will.”

Reese leaned back, shocked. “Your own guards…? They attacked you?”

“No!” Surela pressed her face into her hands. She was trembling violently enough for Reese to see from across the room. “No, they would not dare. Even now.”

“I can’t imagine Baniel….”

“No. No, it was the pirates.” Surela glared at her. “As you should have guessed, given what you are to your paramour.”

“My….” Reese stopped, then frowned. “Hirianthial’s not my
paramour
. Who the hell has a paramour these days, anyway?”

“Your lover then—”

“He’s not that, either! And what on the red earth does that have to do with children, anyway?”

“Because, you idiot, humans can get us with child,” Surela snarled.

Reese stopped short, her skin gone cold beneath her long sleeves. In the silence, the other woman began to weep into her knees.

“Oh, hell,” Reese muttered and rubbed her face.

So the next time they opened the door, Reese threw herself not at it, but at Surela, and put herself between the Eldritch and the guards that had come for her. Her act startled them enough that she managed to get one good swipe in… but then one of them pinned her. She fought, stamping on his foot with hers and managing a glancing blow. She used the slight lessening of the pressure on her arms to pull free and knock the other guard to one side, and that’s how she earned herself a half-power palmer stun. To the side, this time. She fell heavily and even then she tried to grab for an ankle. “No!”

They kicked her to one side and dragged an astonished Surela off anyway. Crumpled on the ground, Reese wept, and wasn’t sure if it was frustration or horror or pain. She hated Surela, but she was so tired of the bad guys
winning
. How had Hirianthial managed the patience? Was she failing him by not being up to it?

Next time, she would try harder. At what she wasn’t sure. Something. Everything.

CHAPTER 15

They walked over the Pad and into two pirates, both of whom fell to Narain and Sascha’s palmers before Hirianthial could so much as lift a hand—and that was for the best. Because all around him, the walls felt
alive
. He wanted to touch them, because he knew there would be a heart-beat in the metal and he wanted the tactile proof of it on his fingertips. To rest them against a wall and then to his lips, to smell the blood-quick brightness of it.

Things that are loved live
, a voice whispered, raising the hair on the back of his neck, now so exposed.

“Hey, Hirianthial? You with us?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I was just.…” He paused because both Harat-Shar were watching him, their worry palpable, like shrouds of cold fog. “This part of the ship feels very different to me.”

“Lots of enemies, maybe?” Sascha asked, careful.

“No. No, it feels… there is power here.”

“Lots of that,” Narain agreed as he checked the door, palmer at ready. “Clear here. We can move. You done with the prisoners?”

Sascha said, “Just let me get something to tie them up wi—”

“Done.” Bryer rose, the talons on his feet bloody. The auras deflated with the spill of blood, and Hirianthial wondered at his calm at the sight: no, not calm. His own pleasure.

Sascha hissed, “Now if someone finds them, they’re going to know we’re here!”

Narain glanced over his shoulder and said, “They’d know if they found them tied up too, arii. And I hate to say it, but at least dead they can’t be used against us. It’s a billion to nine, remember?”

“I know, just…” Sascha growled and rose. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

Go they went, and as they did, Hirianthial’s sense of the ship grew with it. Or perhaps not the ship entire, but only this section. He felt the caress of air from the vents like breath on his bare neck and glanced up at it, distracted. “Narain,” he murmured. “Is there aught special about an Engineering section?”

“Special?” The Harat-Shar paused, consulted a data tablet, tucked it away. “Wait. We’ve got five moseying on this way. We can catch them at the cross-corridor if we move.”

They moved, and there was a silence, in which the ship seemed to listen. Then they attacked, and Hirianthial did not spare attention for his comrades because the sword he had only used in practice woke in his hand and beheaded his opponent without any effort on his part at all—only to swing, and then a death. The backswing took his second foe from shoulder down, slicing the collarbone and leaving the man with a mouth to scream, so he suggested as the sword sheared through:
Don’t.

And the man didn’t.

Bryer had slain his as well, with hands gone ruddy halfway to the elbow. The two down with palmer burns were also dying, if less messily.

Hirianthial stared at the sword, which was a revelation. Lighter than steel and more deadly, and more obedient as well, it suggested its own demeanor immediately. His House swords had been proud weapons, demanding discipline and hardship before yielding their power to a bearer. This sword was retiring, the perfect servant, waiting to see if he would be a cruel or gentle master, but resigned to either. It made him feel an overwhelming urge to protect it.

Things that are loved, live
, Urise’s memory insisted. Turning the blade off, Hirianthial said to Narain, “The section? Do people care about it? More than perhaps the rest of the ship?”

“What? Oh. Yes.” Narain chuckled: true humor, for while his aura was subdued there was no horror in it. This was work to Narain, even the killing. “A good part of a ship’s complement does science and research. They’re just there for the ride. The command team… their thing is the people, all the people. But Engineering keeps the ship running. They get a little fanatic about their ships.”

And these pirates had ripped the ship from its devoted crew.

“What was her name?”

The Harat-Shar was once again scouting the corridors, checking his data tablet as Bryer pulled the bodies into a nearby room. “Pardon?”

“The ship’s.”

Startled, Narain met his eyes: bright blue, wide. Paler than Reese’s, and that she might come to mind now… he flexed his hand on the hilt of his demure blade, reminding himself to be present.

“Oh. Of course.” The Harat-Shar nodded. “The UAV
Moonsinger
.”

“Romantic name for a warship,” Sascha said.

“The battlecruisers all have names like that,” Narain said. “They’re not just warships, after all. They do other things. This way. There’s another group, we can ambush them.”

Narain found the trespassers alone or in groups of two if he could help it. When he couldn’t, Hirianthial helped, and the sword answered him easily, almost too easily. He found himself distracted by it as they made their way toward the core of the section. When had he ever had a weapon that had cost so little physical effort to employ? Even his mind asked more of him when he used it to attack. And yet how lacking in pretension! The bare hilt, the unremarkable color, the naked socket awaiting a pommel, as if born longing for a master.

And if the sword was not distraction enough, the sense of the walls around him breathing grew more intense the further in they went. There was distress to go with that life. The ship missed its crew. Had it hunted pirates in its day? For it loathed them, the way one loathed disease. The ship had bones, and he felt its grief in the hollows of them, and they all led back to the Engineering core.

“You’re good with that thing,” Narain said after they’d dispatched another two stragglers. “Maybe you won’t need to use your head at all, ah?”

“Wouldn’t that be simpler,” Sascha muttered, helping Bryer drag their latest bodies into yet another room. “Had no idea Fleet ships had so many conference rooms. What do they do, have meetings all day?”

“You have no idea,” Narain said, long-suffering. “It’s a cultural weakness. We love consensus.”

“How many more of these people do we have to deal with?” Sascha asked, expressing the fatigue Hirianthial thought he should be feeling, rather than the curious serenity.