Jane Carver of Waar (34 page)

I ran onto the balcony and looked up. The end of the rope ladder was already fifty feet over the pavilion, being reeled up into an Oran warship that hung in the sky and blocked out the little moon.

I howled with rage, as much at myself as at Kedac. If I hadn’t froze up I could have had him. What the fuck was wrong with me?

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

PURSUIT!

M
e, Lhan and Sai walked out of Top-Knot’s palace as easy as we had walked in. Kedac’s raid had been as silent as ours, so nobody raised the alarm. Good thing too. I wasn’t paying attention like I should have. I was still busy watching the instant replay inside my brain—Kedac swinging through those curtains, me just fucking standing there. I cursed myself out something fierce.

Sai wasn’t much better. He dragged along like a whiny kid at the end of a trip to Disneyland. “Lead me not a step further, Lhan. Let me cast my worthless self in this lake and have an end to misery.”

For once I knew just how he felt. I was ready to jump in a lake myself. But that wouldn’t get me my revenge. If Sai decided going after Wen-Jhai wasn’t worth it after all, I’d lose my ride back to Ormolu and Kedac. So, shitty as I felt, it was time to play cheerleader.

“Come on, Sai. You were taken by surprise. We all were. You’ll get him next time. We just gotta get to Ora.”

Lhan nodded approvingly. “Well spoken, mistress. Heed her, Sai. There is always another day.”

Sai bleated like a sheep with a head cold. “But why fight when I no longer desire the prize? By the Seven, to think I might have wed such a depraved harlot.”

Lhan and I exchanged a look. I didn’t know what to say. Lhan didn’t either. He coughed. “Er, we will speak more of this on board. Regardless of all else, our home and our hopes all lie in Ora. We must make that ship.”

That’s what I wanted to hear. We marched Sai back to the main road, then all the way to the Doshaan Airfield.

The ship was still there. It was even smaller than the one Kai-La’s pirates had nabbed us on, and it looked like it would fall apart if you looked at it wrong. Its balloon was patched like a clown’s pants.

The captain, a fat, moon-faced guy who dressed more like a pirate than the pirates had, bowed us on board. Lhan had paid him so much he didn’t give me a second look. In fact he was so happy to see us he wouldn’t leave us alone. He followed us around, grinning like a Tijuana strip-show tout until Lhan gave him one of Sai’s gold bracelets to make him go away.

Our cabin was smaller than an Arkansas jail cell. Lhan and I weren’t about to spend more time in that closet with Sai moping and moaning than we had to, so after we took all weapons and sharp objects away from him and locked him in, we went up on deck to wait for him to fall asleep.

Captain Happy was just casting off. We leaned on the rail and watched Doshaan drop away from us in the double moonlight.

It wasn’t like flying over an American city. There was hardly any light, just the occasional soft glow of a torch or a cooking fire in some courtyard. The moons were so bright the fires were practically invisible anyway. The silver of the rooftops against the deep black of the alleys made it all look like some huge, cubist black-velvet painting.

Funny how a little mood lighting made me goofy for a festering snake pit that had treated us like shit and tried to kill us. Kind of like seeing your psycho ex in a bar and thinking, “What a hottie,” before you realize who it is. Happened to me on Waar time and again. For every nightmare situation it threw at me, it would show me something so beautiful that I wished these medieval morons had invented the camera already.

Lhan’s sigh brought me out of dreamland. “They must be wed. Apart they are a danger to themselves and others.”

“No kidding.”

We stared into space some more. I had a question, but I was nervous about asking it. I did anyway. “But wouldn’t you rather have Sai stay single, and... available?”

Lhan froze. “I... I know not what you mean.”

“Come on, Lhan. You gonna tell me ‘beloved’ has more than one meaning in your lingo?”

Lhan gripped the rail. He looked straight ahead. “Will you betray me?”

“Betray you? Why?”

“Things must be different in your land.”

“Not as different as you’d think.”

He shook his head. “’Tis an impossibility here. Even if Sai shared my... sickness, we would have to hide our love or be killed. And I’d not hide it. I’d shout it to the world.” He chuckled. “No, they must wed, you see? Once he is safely removed within the walls of matrimony, honor will not allow me to make an adulterer of him. I will no longer be in such danger of indiscretion.”

He grinned at me. “Know you how close I came to kissing him when you rescued him in the arena?”

I nodded. “But they hate each other. What if they don’t get together? You gonna be able to resist temptation forever? Aren’t there other guys you could...?”

He waved a hand. “Men, women, it makes no difference. I take my pleasure with both equally. That is not the problem. The problem is that there is only one Sai, and until he and Wen-Jhai are joined forever, I will be as a blossom, unable to turn my gaze from the sun.”

My heart lurched in my chest. Lhan was a switch-hitter too? Suddenly I was all for Sai and Wen-Jhai tying the knot. That is if Lhan would even look at me after I betrayed Sai and killed Kedac. My guts went sour as I forced a smile. “Well, then pardner, you and me got some work to do.”

***

We started in on Sai the next day, tag-teaming the poor guy so hard we made his pretty little head spin. Lhan sat him on his bunk and looked him in the eye. “She doesn’t love him, Sai. In your heart you know this.”

“Then why did she run to his arms?”

“To spite you, of course. To fan the flames of your jealousy. She wants you to come after her. To save her from her fate like a true Dhan of Ora should. Twice now you have failed to rescue her. Yet all will be made right again when you...”

“Rescue her? From what, pray tell? She enjoyed it! By the One, she was wallowing in it, like a filthy, depraved animal. Aldhanshai or no, no man can marry a woman who has... so spectacularly thrown away her virtue before marriage.”

My turn. “Just like you wallowed with Captain Hot Pants.”

“That... that was different!”

“How?”

“I but tried to win our release. I used the only weapon at my command to try and soften the captain’s heart.”

I pushed the image of that weapon out of my head. He was right. That
was
different. That was almost honorable. “Well, yeah, but... but maybe that’s what Wen-Jhai was doing.”

That caught him. He looked a little unsure of himself for a second, then he came back strong. “But she enjoyed it!”

I laughed. “You didn’t enjoy it?”

“Certainly I enjoyed it. Am I not a man?”

Here we went again. “And Wen-Jhai is a woman. What’s the problem?”

“’Tis different for men. We must slake our animal natures or... go mad. Women are innocent creatures who...”

“Captain Hot Pants was an innocent creature?”

“She’s not a woman. Not a lady. Ladies do not...”

“Oh yeah? Ain’t Wen-Jhai a lady?”

“She... that decadent corrupted her. He turned her into a lustful animal.”

I nudged him, buddy buddy. “Isn’t that how you want her to be with you?”

“I... but within the bounds of matrimony all is permissible.”

I turned on him like a trial lawyer. “Ah-ha! So you’re not mad at her for becoming a lustful animal, you’re mad at her because she didn’t wait for you to be the one who did it to her. So really you’re just pissed at her for being unfaithful, and you ain’t got a leg to stand on there, bucko.”

Sai was practically in tears. “Mistress Jae-En, you make me dizzy. I know not what I think anymore.”

Lhan’s turn. He patted Sai’s shoulder like the good cop. “All she means, Sai, is that we have all sinned. Are any of us above reproach? Forgiveness is the greatest virtue of an Oran gentleman. And the hardest won. Can you not do this noble thing?”

“Gentleman? Can you call me that after all my failures? Perhaps
I
am not worthy of
her
. Twice have I let courage fail when brought to the test. No Lhan, I am no gentleman. I am the lowliest insect. Kedac-Zir is a true man. What a hero he looked, swinging to her rescue.”

Man, Sai squirmed more than a centipede on a hot plate. I was ready to give up on the little piss-ant, but I thought about losing my chance at Kedac and dove back in. “Who’s more of a hero? The guy who brings the whole navy with him, or the guy who tries the impossible, with just a sword and his pals to back him up?”

“The hero is he who succeeds.”

Well, he had me there, but I kept at it. “Okay, he’s a hero, but he’s a hero with tap water for blood. Did he call her beloved? True heart? My love? Did he even call her by
name
for fuck’s sake? No, he called her ‘betrothed.’ Did he kiss her? Nope. Did he hug her? Only to carry her up the ladder. I still say he doesn’t love her.”

Even now he wasn’t buying it. “Mistress Jae-En!”

“Sorry, Sai, he comes half way around the world to rescue her and then doesn’t even swap spit with her? It just don’t add up.”

Lhan raised an eyebrow at that, but Sai put his hands over his ears. “Please do not slander an Oran gentleman. He must love her. He would not marry her else.”

“Yeah? Well, if that’s a sample of his love I’d hate to see his blank stare.”

“And yet she went with him.”

“Because you didn’t do the job.”

His shoulders slumped, but I could hear the gears grinding. Lhan and I exchanged a glance. Would he or wouldn’t he? Finally...

“Well,
if
we meet again, and
if
she will speak to me... then I will speak to her.”

The only reason Lhan and I didn’t high-five behind Sai’s back was because Lhan didn’t know how.

Now we just had to make it to the church on time.

***

We switched ships in a little patch of desert that had apparently been an Oran naval outpost back in the day. The only thing left was the plant that made the “levitating air” and the shipfield, which made it a perfect place for smugglers from the north and south to gas-up and trade.

Our layover lasted six endless days. Sai and I chewed our knuckles to the bone. If Kedac and Wen-Jhai got married while we were stuck in the ass-end of nowhere it was over for both of us.

But finally, after I’d given up for good a hundred times, a scruffy ship came over the horizon and touched down to drop cargo before heading back to Ora.

Lhan closed the deal with the smuggler while me and Sai hid in the local bar. Lhan wanted Sai out of the way so he wouldn’t say something stupid and blow the deal. Me? Well, you could never tell what people were going to think of me. The guy was happy to take three passengers, particularly when Lhan didn’t bat an eye at his asking price.

But later, when he had us standing on his deck he changed his tune. The problem was that he knew who we were.

He was a meek-looking old geezer with a mousy beard. It made me wonder how he had the cajones to be a smuggler. I decided to call him Captain Mopey.

He shot me a nervous glance, then bowed to Lhan. “My apologies, noble Dhanan. I knew not who you were until I spied... er, until this moment. Know you that there be a price on your heads in Ora?”

Lhan stared. “A price? For what?”

The captain looked embarrassed. “Forgive me. You are charged with aiding the Pirate Kai-La in the kidnapping and enslavement of the Aldhanshai Wen-Jhai. In addition to the Aldhanan’s bounty, Kir-Dhanan Kedac-Zir personally offers a fortune to know your whereabouts. ’Tis not worth my life to carry you.”

Lhan gave him the hairy eyeball. “How much of a fortune?”

The captain named a price. Lhan gave him half of Sai’s jewels and let him see the other half. “Here is double that. And likely six times what your life is worth. Now what say you?”

Mopey practically licked Lhan’s boots. “Noble Dhanans, we will slip into Ormolu like ghosts. None will know of your presence.”

Lhan scraped him off with a couple “thank yous” and smiled at me. “A man is so obliging when he knows you have more left in your pocket.”

I was more worried about the price on our heads. “What’s this bounty shit? Who’s been telling lies about us kidnapping Wen-Jhai? Who even knows we got attacked by pirates? Did anybody get away?”

“One person. Kedac’s cousin.”

“Who? Oh yeah, the She-Wolf, but why would she make shit up?”

Lhan looked lost in thought. “I am beginning to wonder, Mistress Jae-En, if there is not some substance to your suspicions about Kedac’s wooing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

BETRAYED!

W
e came down over Ormolu at sunset eight days later. It was amazing—a huge honey-gold city in the middle of an endless patchwork of fields, all red, purple and aqua. The Ormoluans—Ormolunians? Ormolites?—had built the city at the junction of a river and three of the Seven’s super-highways. It was walled, but the walls couldn’t hold it all anymore. Whole neighborhoods of chunky, colorful houses spread out beyond the massive fortifications like hexagonal Legos spilling out of a toy box.

There were crumbling shacks, tenements, ritzy townhouses. There were swarming open air markets where you couldn’t see the cobblestones because the tents and stalls and shoppers were packed so tight. There were arenas like the one back in Doshaan, race tracks, parks, gardens. There were wide streets, twisty little alleyways, and the super-highways which, once inside the walls, became high-rent, tree-lined boulevards lined with swanky shops.

But the thing that made my jaw hit the deck was the tower at the meeting point of the three roads. It was huge! Bigger than that Eiffel Tower thing in Vegas, but shaped like a six-sided, art-deco rocket ship—lots of fins and flanges, all stepping back as it got higher, until it came to a point, which was topped by a steel needle half again as high as the whole thing. It had no windows and it was as shiny and white as a showroom mini-van. The super-highways formed a mile-wide traffic circle around it, and inside that circle was a large park dotted with the biggest, richest palaces in town. They looked like mice surrounding a great Dane. There was no
way
these bow-and-arrow bone-heads had built that tower.