Samael's Fire (17 page)

Cripes, cripes, cripes. She glanced at the common. The cagers had disappeared. One of the women was just ducking through a perimeter wall door. The ghost woman still sat on the ground working her net, oblivious to the danger.

“Please, my lady. The favor of a blessing. My wife and I are expecting. Could I be so bold as to touch your hair?”

“Be quiet, citizen.”

Shibad.
The world had gone from believing in nothing to believing in everything. One touch of “Asherah’s hair” could cure a fever, prevent an Empani from reading your mind, and ensure a healthy bagger. Char had heard of countless other fancies.

The first scream echoed over the common, and the driver forgot about the hair. Eagles. Not the worst—that would be peregrines. At least with eagles, you knew they were coming. The sky was still clear, but Char’s heart about pounded out of her chest with fear.

Every part of her wanted to stay with the driver flat against the wall, but she couldn’t let the ghost woman be taken. She’d seen a raptor feed its young the warm intestines of its still-living prey.

“Do you have a bow?”

The driver was lost to her. His eyes were jammed shut, and he was moving his lips—the kind of prayer Asherah especially despised. At least he tried to save his horse.

Char forced her legs to move. Another scream sent adrenaline coursing through her body and gave her some speed. There was more than one bird, and they were close.

“Char, catch!”
Thank Asherah
! Jake was in the common. He tossed a crossbow that hit the ground ahead of her, and she scooped it up on the run. It was loaded. Another scream, an angry one. Jake had hit a bird.

Char raised the crossbow and fired. The quarrel would be poisoned. If she could paralyze a leg, it wouldn’t be able to grab.

Years of training with chalices at Corcovado kicked in. She bent down, slipped her arm around the ghost woman’s waist, lifted her off the ground, and kept running for the closest door in the perimeter wall. Now that she was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to die, it was all a bit thrilling.

The tower bells erupted in a furious
clang, clang, clang
. Char put the woman down and said
stay.
Jake was halfway up the stairs. She followed him up into the cages bolted to the top of the wall and loaded another quarrel.

An eagle hit by a shot from the cage guard let out an enraged cry and let go of its prey, which landed on slate tiles in the common with a thud and crack of snapping bones.

Aiming through the cage’s net roof, Char sent the quarrel flying. It struck the bird’s throat, and the quick-acting poison did its work on the raptor’s nervous system. Wings spanning some forty feet twisted and jerked in unnatural spasms. The raptor hit the ground outside the perimeter wall.

Jake lifted his weapon over Char’s head, his arms and shoulders hovering over her as he took aim at the other eagle. It was hardly appropriate, but she couldn’t help thinking how sexy he was in his lord-of-the-manor apocapunk brown-black leathers. It took everything she had to keep from reaching up and pressing her palm to his chest.

But then she was always weak for Jake right after they escaped death together.

“
Shib
.” He checked his aim and lowered the crossbow. The bird had moved out of range, and quarrels weren’t exactly plentiful.

From this vantage the land outside the perimeter wall was in full view. There were the beginnings of a forest to the east and foothills beyond that. Flat wasteland lay to the south. The escaping raptor flew north, past a peninsula that curved westward to shelter the bay. Farther west was the Pacific Ocean.

The guard moved to call the all-clear but stopped when he saw Jake.

“You’re in charge, Gordon,” Jake said. “Be in charge.”

The man squared his shoulders and yelled, “All clear!” His unit repeated
all clear
along the wall. Two clangs signaled from the bell tower.

“We lost no one,” Gordon said, “and Lady Char took out a raptor.”

“It took both our hits to bring that monster down.”

Gordon nodded, acknowledging the compliment. “The birds are learning to stay away, my lord. Attacks are down by half since the cages were installed.”

“That’s the plan,” Jake said. “Soon I want to walk to the hospital and hydroponics without need for a weapon.”

The cagers dashed through the gate to retrieve the dead eagle. There was no nice word for how raptors tasted, but protein was protein. The kitchen would marinade and spice the meat and dry it into semi-bearable jerky. Char had some of the execrable stuff packed in her bag for today’s outing.

She always brought goodies from Corcovado, and she always meant to eat them. But it was just too tacky to hide treats from people who survived on textured protein and raptor carcasses with the occasional carrot. The strawberries and chocolates and coffee and real beef jerky usually became gifts for the servants within an hour of her arrival.

“Lord Ardri!” In the center of the common the wagon driver stood over the real treasure, the gorgeous black-tailed doe the raptor had dropped. “Will you have this deer cut into steaks for tomorrow’s feast?”

If looks were poison quarrels, the driver would be a dead man. A mason slammed his hammer against a stone, but the driver seemed unaware of the distress he had caused. There was a ban on hunting endangered deer, but this doe was a gift from the gods.

Jake got that twinkle in his eye. “That’s fine of you to care, Hamish.” He walked out of the cage onto the open perimeter wall. “You’ll be attending that feast, I believe?”

“That I will, my lord.” Hamish beamed with pleasure at being recognized and ignored the grumbles all around.

“And as chief of hydroponics, you know all these hard-working people have so graciously given up their share of this week’s crop in order to impress the poobahs coming in for that feast.”

The pleasure left Hamish’s face.

“Haul that animal down to the kitchen,” Jake said. “I want a good venison stew made for all the workers in the common, masons and cagers alike.”

“To Lord Ardri!” One of the cagers cried.

“Rah!” The masons and cagers responded in unison. They broke into laughter at the driver’s tragic expression.

“And Hamish.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“You will personally see that the ghost woman who makes the cage nets eats a cup of the stew. I don’t care if it takes her a day.”

Char wrapped her arms around Jake’s waist and leaned her head against his chest. “No wonder your people love you.”

“It’s my secret to successful lording. People like to eat.” He kissed her forehead and tweaked her cap. “Jordana’s work gets more interesting all the time.” His gaze traveled from her cap to her lips, and then his mouth was on hers, and for a moment the world went away. There was only Jake’s kiss, his arms, his aching murmur of desire, and her body’s responding heat.

“To Lady Char!” The approval of the kiss was answered by a group
Rah!

Jake grinned and gave the cagers and masons a thumbs-up. “It’s good to be alive, Meadowlark.”

The sane part of Char’s brain knew that Jake loved her. But a perversity in her couldn’t let go of one small problem. He was having children with someone else. It was kind of driving her crazy, even though it was her own fault.

Char had helped Durga and Magda convince him to do it. Jake could be lord sheriff of the settlement without heirs; but city status required a king, and a king must have two natural born children. It was all about establishing dynastic rule and stability. This was Asherah’s law.

The chalice Faina had already delivered a girl, and she was five months pregnant with a boy. Everything was going according to plan. Char just hadn’t expected to feel so jealous and insecure about it. Jake swore he didn’t compare Char to Faina, but how could he not? Char
compared herself
to Faina, and always came out wanting.

Beautiful, sweet, fertile Faina. Truly nice Faina, always a pleasure to be with.

“There they are.” Jake nodded toward the gate where a handler held the reins of two horses, saddled and packed for a daytrip. “Let’s get out of here.”

Char and Jake galloped north in silence. Halfway to the peninsula, Char fell back a length to enjoy the view. She liked Jake’s hair longer, the way he wore it now. The brown as yet had no grays.

Cripes. She had done it again. It was probably because of the coronation, it being such a life-changing event, but she’d been thinking about age a lot lately.

She and Jake were both natural born, and they could expect to live to eighty or ninety. Unlike the poor baggers who rarely lived past fifty. Nor was it the hundred and fifty years of youthful good health promised to a chalice, but Char wouldn’t want to live sixty years in a world without Jake.

Still. She was thirty-two, and Jake was thirty-six. She should have married him right after the cataclysm, the first time he asked. Before things got so complicated.

Shibadeh
, he looked good. His muscles had always been natural, no enhancements. Good thing too. So many people had lived through the war and the cataclysm and then died from enhancement withdrawal.

Jake was in better shape than ever. Years of physical labor at the settlement had put even more muscles on the man. He was funny and smart, an excellent lord sheriff who worked to better his settlement. He would—he had—risked his life for the people he loved.

It was a bonus that he was gorgeous.

At the top of the rise of land that overlooked the bay, she looked back at the citadel. A grey blimp had tied down in the dirigidock. At the sight of a dark blob in the distant sky she nearly panicked—then realized it must be another airship coming in.

“I want my shades back.” Durga had confiscated the telescoping sunglasses long ago, promising to return them after she had the design copied for reproduction. Char wasn’t holding her breath anymore.

“That’s ZhMngguó in the dirigidock,” Jake said. “I see Ithaca came by sail.” A square-rigged clipper ship had just entered the bay from the south. His face went all misty. “Now, isn’t that pretty.” Maybe he was remembering his time as pilot of the
Space Junque
. “We should have built a harbor. What will my fellow poobahs think of me?”

“They’ll be impressed, believe me.”

Char should know. She’d been to plenty of
shibdung
settlements and so-called cities to consult on hydroponics systems. Most lord sheriffs were closer to the Sheriff of Nottingham than to Jake. They drove their people to exhaustion with constant labor and fed them nothing but textured protein and oatmeal. In most of the world, public works like hydroponics and hospitals and even waste disposal came as an afterthought.

In Jake’s settlement hydroponics had come first, and then the hospital, even before the citadel proper. The perimeter wall surrounded it all, enclosing land enough for future streets and parks and housing and schools and shops—every good thing a proper city would want.

Technically, everything within the settlement wall comprised the citadel. But when people said
citadel
, they really meant the huge administrative structure that was beginning to look like a castle from an old fairy tale. The residential tower even had a turret with a window facing the bay.

“Rapunzel should live in the turret,” Char said. “Or Sleeping Beauty.”

“Durga will like it, don’t you think? She can pretend she’s in a fairy tale fighting off dragons.”

“You forget she’s grown up now.”

“True, she is quite the young woman. And attractive, though I don’t think she knows it.” Jake’s attention was still on the bay. A jollyboat pulled away from the clipper ship and headed for shore. “I’m putting her in the tower for security.”

“No one would dare.”

“I mean for privacy. Most of these people are coming only for the chance to see The Chosen One.” It was cute how his cheeks turned a little red. “I’d like to see some man touch her without permission. She could kill a guy with a blow to the trachea.”

“Or Asherah would smite him.”

“There’s always that.” Jake squinted at the airship still in the sky. “I’m guessing that’s Hibernia.”

The second airship had come in as close as the clipper ship and turned to line up for the dirigidock. It was as large as Corcovado’s Monster, but the resemblance stopped there. This one was faster and much better looking, emerald green with polished brass trim and a huge gold harp logo on the side. Char said, “When Durga sees that, she’ll demand a new airship.”

“I’m sure Hibernia has that in mind, since they have the charter on airships. Next to this rig, the Monster is
shibdung
ugly.”

Char chuckled, remembering the first time Durga saw Sanguibahd’s airship. She called it a big red monster—and not in a good way. Among her friends, the name caught on.