Jane Carver of Waar (18 page)

This time he picked my big marine. The guy had a bit of a macho problem, and if I’d had any idea how big that problem was I would have left him alone, but you never know. Some big guys are pussy cats. This guy obviously didn’t want some chick lifting him, but the more he said no, the more shit the crowd gave him: his girlfriend was pushing at him, his pals were riding him. Finally he turned to Kedac. “Kir-Dhanan, please. This is beneath my dignity. I am a man of rank.”

Kedac grinned, nasty. “Tonight you are a man of rank. Tomorrow it may be that nothing is beneath your dignity. Go on, Lut-Gar. Unbend for once in your life.”

Lut-Gar hesitated for a second, pissed, then bowed. “As you wish, my Kir-Dhanan.”

He followed Sai through the crowd as stiff as a starched collar, and stopped in front of me, staring me down. I gave him the once over and nodded. “Yes. This is the one.”

I stepped up to him and whispered. “Don’t worry. I can’t lift you like I did him. I’ll make it look tough.”

He growled through his teeth. “You’ll make it impossible, freak, or you’ll not see tomorrow.”

I looked in his eyes. He was dead serious. I could feel my blood start to fizz. I hadn’t planned on making a fool out of this guy. I was going to take it easy on him, but now... I don’t like being threatened. I don’t like macho assholes. The gloves were off.

I smiled as sweet as pie. “You’re right. I probably couldn’t lift you anyway, you’re so big and strong.”

The guy relaxed a little. I put a hand on his shoulder. “But I gotta make a show of it, so I’m going to try to get you on my shoulders. Just stay still.”

He nodded and let me squat down next to him. I set the back of my neck against his waist. “Now lean into me.”

He tipped toward me. I put my left hand in the center of his chest and my right between his legs, high on his thigh, then rocked him up on my shoulders. He was light, but not quite balanced. I wobbled as I stood, but I made it.

Lut-Gar cursed in my ear. “What did I tell you, you damned whore.”

I shifted my left hand from his thigh to his nuts and gave a little squeeze. “Careful, meatneck, or I’ll throw you on the floor, most of you anyway.”

He froze up like a statue, which was perfect. I needed him stiff for the next part of the trick.

With a wink at the crowd, I pressed him over my head. I had to use my legs for drive, but I got him up.

The crowd gasped and cheered like crazy. I turned in a circle, grinning out at them, thinking, you ain’t seen nothing yet. All my stage fright was gone. The reason we were here was gone. All I was thinking about was how I could top this, what my next trick would be. Maybe I’d lift a couch with a girl sitting on it next.

I ended my circle looking up at Kedac on his platform. He was staring at me, eyes wide and shiny, like wet glass. He licked his lips. Lut-Gar started squirming and kicking. I squeezed his nuts again to make him behave, but that only made him kick more. I lost my grip and dropped him a lot harder than I meant to.

He was up like a cat, drawing a dagger. He was so pissed his face was the color of raw meat. “I swore I would kill you.”

He stabbed at me. I caught his wrist and stopped him cold. The crowd was shouting and standing. Shit! I was blowing it! This would ruin everything.

Lut-Gar swung his free hand. I caught that too and bent his wrists down and back. The men in the crowd were roaring and drawing their swords. Sai was beside me, clawing at my arm. “Mistress Jae-En. Mistress Jae-En, you must stop.”

Lut-Gar yelped and dropped his dagger. The men were coming, swords out. I was going to get stuck like a pincushion. I kicked Lut-Gar in the bread basket and reached instinctively for my sword. It wasn’t there. It was under a fucking boat by the river. I balled my fists. The swordsmen were closing fast.

“Hold!”

Everybody stopped. Kedac stood on his platform, arms raised. “Sheath your swords, gentlemen. There will be no blood shed here tonight. That is for... a time to come.”

The men hesitated, still angry.

Kedac raised an eyebrow. “Must I command you?”

The men reluctantly sheathed their swords and forced themselves to relax.

Kedac turned to Lut-Gar, who was picking himself up off the floor. “You disobeyed me, Captain.”

“Kir-Dhanan, she...”

“What she did is not my concern. I gave you an order and you defied me. It seems you need some lessons in obedience. Report to my ship tomorrow... as a deck-hand.”

Lut-Gar went so white I could see his veins under his skin. He trembled for a second, frozen, then went down on one knee. “As my Kir-Dhanan commands.”

He stood and walked back to his couch like all his joints were locked, but not before he shot me a look that would curdle milk at fifty paces. I curled my lip at him.

Kedac turned to me and I gave him a smile. Nice to have somebody stick up for me around here. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Sure he’d kidnapped Wen-Jhai and tried to kill Sai, but that was part of their culture, right? Maybe he was a decent guy at heart.

He smiled back and licked his lips again. It was a little creepy, but what the hell, maybe they were dry. Sai ducked behind me. Thanks, pal.

Kedac chuckled. “You truly are a wonder, Mistress Demon. Wherever you may be from.” He reached out and squeezed my bicep. “So strong.”

I tensed up, then tried to relax. After my little performance I could understand him wanting a feel. Happened every time I’d won an arm-wrestling match in a bar. Guys always want to touch my arms, like to convince themselves they’re real or something.

He smiled again. Actually he hadn’t stopped smiling. “And I’ve no doubt that you are stronger than you have shown us tonight. You lifted poor Lut-Gar with no effort at all.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted him to stop touching me now. Kedac turned to the crowd. “It would take a brave man to bed a woman like this, would it not?”

The crowd laughed a little too loud. They were still on-edge from the fight that had almost happened. I was a little on-edge myself. What was his deal?

Kedac looked back at me, suddenly all sly. His pencil-thin moustache slanted up on one side as he smirked. “If you are a woman.”

I looked down at myself. It seemed pretty obvious to me, but I guess he wasn’t satisfied. He reached out and pulled my bikini straps down over my shoulders so that my boobs popped out. I was so stunned I didn’t move. No
way
did he just do that! Wasn’t I just thinking that this asshole might be an okay guy? I expected the crowd to gasp. This was a party for Kedac’s fiancée after all. Her relatives weren’t going to like this.

They didn’t bat an eye. They chuckled like it was all part of the act.

Kedac grinned as he checked me out. “Convincing. Impressive even.”

I was just getting over my shock enough to start clenching my fists when he stunned me again. He stuck his hands under my boobs and hefted them like they were a couple of fucking cantelopes. He looked over his shoulder, playing to the crowd. “No wonder you’re so strong, carrying all this around.”

They laughed again. I was shaking. I’d killed men for less. Literally. That poor guy outside the Fly-By-Night. I was sorry I’d killed him. He was just an idiot. He hadn’t deserved to die. But this fucker... I’d run him through a fucking tree-shredder with a goddamn song in my heart.

It was only the total insanity of the situation that short-circuited the orders my brain was sending to my hands to tear his motherfucking head off and shove it up his ass. I just couldn’t believe it.

Kedac kept talking over his shoulder to the crowd while absentmindedly honking my boobs. “But I am not yet satisfied. Who knows what the men of ‘Far Oopaloo’ look like? I have heard of men from the jungles of Mir who sport two heads and a tail. So men who carry the comfort of a woman’s bosom on their persons is not beyond the realm of possibility. However, there is one proof of femininity that I will not dispute—that is if one can call an absence a proof.”

I froze again as I figured out what he was saying. He was
not
going to do that. Even after what he’d pulled so far I couldn’t believe he was going to do that.

He did.

He stuck his hand down my loincloth.

The world turned red and black. My blood pounded in my ears like an air compressor. All I could see were the veins on Kedac’s neck, pulsing. He was inches away, leaning into me as he felt around between my legs.

Nobody touched me like that. Nobody. I bared my teeth. I was going to rip his throat out. I was going to pull his heart out with my bare hands and eat it.

Far away, like a radio in another room I heard a voice. I couldn’t hear what it was saying: the blood was too loud in my ears, but it was a voice I knew. I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to kill, but some guardian angel part of me made me wait, made me keep my teeth clamped together. The voice got louder, like somebody had opened a door between me and the room with the radio. “Mistress Jae-En. Do no do it. I beg you. They will kill us.”

I didn’t know what the words meant. I didn’t care. Killing was all that mattered. Tearing chunks out of that defenseless neck, ripping off that arm, gouging out those eyes, that’s what mattered. Then the voice in my head had a name. Sai. Sai would die if I did this. I would die. I’d never get home. Never see the sun again. My sun. The right sun.

The red started to fade. I could see the whole room again, instead of just the individual hairs on Kedac’s neck. The fire running in my veins turned to ice. My bloodlust became a calm, cold-blooded certainty that someday, somewhere, when the odds were a little more even and I wasn’t babysitting some handsome prince, I would kill this motherfucker.

I relaxed. Blinked. Kedac was turned away, joking with the crowd. They were yukking it up like he was Dane Cook. How could he turn his back on me? Didn’t he know? Didn’t he understand how close I’d come to killing him? Wasn’t he afraid I’d choke him to death?

I felt a hand on my arm. “Mistress Jae-En?”

“I’m fine, Sai. I’m fine.”

I shifted my weight and felt something holding my legs together. I looked down. My loincloth was around my knees. Fucking Kedac had... I choked off my mad-on before it could get started again. Later.

Kedac turned back to me as I was pulling myself together. He beamed at me like we were best buddies. “Your performance... intrigued me. Tell Yin-Yir that I wish you to wait for me in my private apartments. I will join you after all this—”

The Sigouney Weaver chick stepped up behind him. She looked disgusted, though I couldn’t tell if it was with me or Kedac.

“Cousin?”

Kedac’s shoulders tightened like a kid who’s been caught reading
Playboy
. “I regret to remind you that there is no time for private entertainments this evening. We have many people to speak with before the night is over. In fact, if we do not withdraw from the banquet now, we will not see all who we must...”

“Yes yes. You need not remind me of my duty.” He gave her a cold look. “If you will allow me the merest of moments.”

She nodded and stepped back politely, but her eyes were like ice bullets.

Kedac turned to me again, a little red in the face. He dug in his belt pouch and pulled out some coins. “It seems matters will keep me this evening, little giantess.” He slipped a coin into my left bra cup. “But come to Ormolu in the next moon...” Another coin in the right cup. “And I shall pay you double this to test the limits of your strength.” He gave me a dirty smile and slipped the last coin deep into my loincloth. I trembled with the effort to keep my thumbs out of his eyes. I think he must have read it as desire, because he grinned and winked at me as he turned back to the platform.

As he climbed the steps to his couch he started clapping. The whole room joined in, cheering and whistling. Coins started flying into the center of the U. One bounced off my head.

Eggplant was waving at us from the curtained doorway. I started toward him, motioning to Sai. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Sai held me back. “Pick up the coins, mistress. They will know something is amiss.”

All I wanted was to get out of that room—I never wanted to see any of those people again—but I saw his point. Street buskers who passed up their tips would look mighty suspicious. I picked up the coins as quick as I could, and almost ran through the curtain. I couldn’t get Kedac’s dirty leer out of my head.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TRAPPED!

“M
istress Jae-En, do you hear me?”

I looked up. I was sitting next to Sai at one of the tables in the mess hall. I didn’t remember getting there. Distracted, I guess. The place was still a madhouse. It was louder than a Fort Lauderdale sports bar during spring break. All the acts were still there, half of them waiting to go on, the other half waiting to get paid, and it smelled like a locker room with a clogged toilet.

I shouted at Sai. “Sorry? Say again?”

“Your plan. You said you had a plan.”

I sighed. “Oh, yeah.” I was going to have a hard time working up any excitement for the rest of the evenings festivities. I hadn’t been big on this whole fuck-fest before, but now? Now all I wanted to do was sit in the dark and dream up new and interesting ways to kill Kedac.

On the other hand, if I copped out now, everything I’d been through tonight would be pointless. I would have kept my hands off Kedac’s neck for nothing.

I scanned the room. What the hell had I been thinking way back fifteen minutes ago before I’d met the hate of my life? Oh yeah, the pom-pom lady, with the bat-pigs. This was going to be cake. Another quarter hour in this cozy little oven hadn’t made anybody love those little bastards any better. It wouldn’t take much.

I stood and looked down at Sai. “Follow me, but not too close.”

Sai joined me. “What do you intend?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just be ready to move.”

“I bow to your experience, Mistress.” Sai stayed about a car length behind me as I wandered through the room pretending I was just stretching my legs. Pretty lame idea if that’s what I’d really wanted to do. It was more like tip-toeing through a crowded departure lounge when a plane’s late. People were sprawled everywhere with their shit all around them.