The Charmer (31 page)

The medic didn’t even blink. “As you wish. At
the moment there is no sign of rejection. The symbiont is taking
care of that. There are no guarantees the child won’t have problems
after its birth, however. Once contact between its mother and her
symbiont is severed
, anything can
happen.
”

Keilor nodded sharply. He understood too
well.

There had been a few rare children conceived
between Haunt and human in the days when they still shared a world,
but none had ever survived the forth month. The genetic differences
were just too great, the mother’s body too alien to support the
mysterious changes the infant underwent at that time. It was a fear
he hadn’t shared with Jasmine, believing that the other

very valid

reasons he’d given
her would suffice. Her life was too precious to him to needlessly
put in jeopardy.

Now matters had been taken out of his hands.
But he could spare his wife from grief that might only hasten the
inevitable.

With a forced smile, Keilor entered the
examining room with the medic and put an arm around his wife while
the medic told her that all was well. It was true.

For now.

“Great!” Jasmine hopped off the table. “Then
let’s go shopping!”

Chapter 26

Jasmine couldn’t believe she’d spent so much
time at the citadel and was only now getting to see the
marketplace. Some of the shops were indoors, but many were set up
in booths outside. The wide streets were was busy, but not crowded,
and the shoppers courteous.

Delicious smells teased her nose, and
splashes of red braided chilies caught her eye. Making her way
across the flagstones to the first booth, she admired the long,
beautiful braids of orange, yellow, green, black and scarlet dried
peppers, garlic and onions, and savored the scent of wreaths and
bundles of sage, lavender and bay leaf, as well as herbs she didn’t
recognize.

Smiling with delight, she picked up a bottle
of vinegar packed with artfully arranged slices of clove pierced
lemons, and another of herbs, garlic and chilies, admiring the
pretty tones of the liquid. Then a two foot high bottle of kumquat
vinegar caught her eye, and she knew she had to have it. “It would
make the most beautiful living room decoration,” she told her
husband with excitement. “Can we get it?”

Keilor eyed the jar askance and shook his
head, smiling at the hopeful merchant. “Whatever she wants,” he
said.

They left with half the booth on its way to
their room.

A wide smile on her face, Jasmine explored
the vegetable and fruit stands, exclaiming over the many different
kinds of produce for sale, and purchasing quite a few. The jewelers
received a quick glance, but it was the display of sparkling
crystals at the next stall that captured her attention. She chose a
snowflake prism from that collection.

By the time they’d watched a weaver working
on a tapestry, seen a glassblower create a rose and green swirled
goblet, and witnessed a potter at her wheel, Keilor was looking
rather peaked, though he never said a word. Taking pity on him,
Jasmine suggested, “Why don’t we take a break? I’m starving.”

Visibly relieved, Keilor took her hand and
led her through the crowd. He chose a restaurant with wide windows
and a pleasant odor of sweetness and steaming seafood. Mouth
watering, she surveyed the buffet. Mounds of snowy shellfish,
swimming with vegetables, orange crustaceans arranged on leaves of
kale, and seafood salads in bright red and white radicchio bowls
tempted her as breakfast hadn’t. Avoiding the tentacled dish and
what looked suspiciously like jellyfish, Jasmine loaded a plate
with moist baked fish smothered in lemon sauce, enough stir fry and
crustacean to sink a fishing boat and retired to a table to await
Keilor.

“Hungry, are you?” Keilor asked with
amusement when Jasmine began wolfing down her second large plate of
food.

She stopped in mid-bite to glare at him.
“Watch it, buster. I’m just making up for breakfast.”

In the interests of continued domestic bliss,
he changed the subject. “Would you like to choose new rooms after
this? We’ll need somewhere to put all these acquisitions.”

Eyes wide with worry, she stopped eating. “Am
I getting too much? I know we didn’t really need that rug,
but—”

“I like the rug,” he assured her, “And I
wouldn’t mind if you bought a hundred of them, but…” He smiled
ruefully, “I’m afraid I lack your stamina for shopping.” The smile
turned mischievous. “I’m sure Isfael and Raziel will love it,
though.”

Jasmine snorted. “Somehow, I doubt it, but
never mind. I can always come back with Rihlia.” She frowned. “I
presume we’re on speaking terms again.”

“I wouldn’t worry over it. After all,
pregnant women do odd things,” Keilor answered, looking at her over
his mug of steaming sage tea.

Chagrined, Jasmine finished her meal in
silence.

They were almost to Jayems’ and Rihlia’s
suite when Keilor abruptly froze, dragging Jasmine to a halt with
him. He motioned for silence and hit a red button on the small
black box all the guards carried. He moved in front of her, drew
his gun and fired an arc of blue light all in one seamless motion.
The Haunt at Jayems’ door crumpled before they knew what hit
them.

“Draw your gun, Jasmine,” he ordered her, and
she did as he said, her heart thumping. “Stay behind me in the
doorway if there’s firing, wait until the others get here, and
don’t get in my way.” He spared one grim glance at the fallen
soldiers, and then he shifted.

A icy finger of fear slid down her spine at
Keilor’s seamless transition from husband to warrior beast. Even
witnessing Isfael, Raziel and Mathin transform had not prepared her
for this final proof of what he was and of the kind of child she
carried.

There was no time to dwell on it. Keilor
positioned her a little to the side and burst through the heavy
doors as if they were balsa wood, firing rapidly.

Taken completely by surprise, the Haunt
assassin dropped Rihlia before delivering the death strike he’d
been poised to deliver, the remnants of his head splattering
Rihlia’s face with gore. His partner went down with a hole the size
of a man’s fist where his heart used to be.

Rihlia herself was badly hurt. She lay where
she had fallen, curled into a fetal ball as a bright red stain
spread on her skirt.

“No!” Jasmine moaned, running to her,
trailing Haunt guardsmen in her wake. While Keilor and the others
searched for more assassins, Jasmine dropped to her knees beside
her friend, wiping gore from her eyes with a shaky hand. Her
symbiont stirred, touched Rihlia’s face, but didn’t leave
Jasmine.

Wild hope sprung up in Jasmine even as the
blood spread on Rihlia’s skirt. “Heal her,” she told the symbiont.
“Fix her like you did me.” Sluggish movement and a vague sense of
apathy were the only responses. The symbiont was sated, and more
than content right were it was. It had no interest in a Haunt,
anyway.

“Heal her!” Jasmine hissed, frightened by
Rihlia’s growing pallor and lack of response. The symbiont stirred
again, responding to her desperation. Almost with repugnance, it
extended, gingerly touched Rihlia and retreated with a symbiont
shudder. “It’s not going to kill you. Just do it!” Jasmine snarled
at it. Something like a put upon sigh brushed through her emotions,
a primal communication of squeamishness. The symbiont extended,
leaving a loop of liquid metal securely wrapped around its host’s
wrist as it touched the dreaded Haunt.

Through the sudden echo of nausea in her gut,
Jasmine felt the symbiont slowly and with great difficulty stop the
hemorrhaging in Rihlia’s womb, saving the tiny child clinging to
life within. The entire process took only seconds.

Satisfied it had complied with the spirit of
its host’s directive, it withdrew, retracting slowly back around
Jasmine’s wrist. There it slumped, turning a sickly shade of
green.

Jasmine hadn’t reckoned on the slow dump of
noxious, almost indigestible Haunt material that oozed into her
bloodstream from the nearly helpless symbiont. Vertigo assailed
her, and her eyes glazed over as she slumped over Rihlia’s legs,
shivering as her temperature dropped. Cold sweat broke out on her
clammy skin, and the blood slowly drained out of her head.

That was how Keilor and the medics found
them. Jasmine breathing shallowly, and Rihlia an unmoving ball of
quiet misery.

At first Keilor didn’t understand what had
happened to his wife. He thought she’d fainted, or was suffering
from some kind of shock. It was Mathin who figured it out.

Mathin had come running along with the rest
of the Haunt on duty when the alarm had sounded, and he hissed at
his first glimpse of Jasmine, limp in her husband’s arms. “Look at
the symbiont,” he said, pointing to the sagging strands of greenish
metal. “She tried to heal Rihlia. She poisoned them both.”

“How do you know?” Keilor demanded, even
though he believed Mathin. Thundering rains, all he had to do was
look at the symbiont for proof, now that he knew.

Mathin avoided his eyes. “I’ve spent a great
deal of time in the swamps, picked up some useful information.” He
focused on Jasmine’s chalky face, looking worried. “What she needs
is another symbiont to help bleed off the poison.”

“Do I look as if I have one?” Keilor snarled,
taking his rage and distress out on the nearest target. He cradled
his wife to his chest and strode out of the room, heading for the
infirmary. “The People Who Came Before won’t be here for nearly two
weeks, and unless you can fly—” He shut up. Mathin didn’t deserve
this.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t take his temper
out on his shivering wife. Not only was it worse than useless to
yell at a semi-conscious woman, she hadn’t known the consequences
of her reckless gamble. Not that it would have mattered, he
acknowledged with a stab of dread. She’d do anything for a
friend.

Today, she might die for one.

Keilor sat in the chair next to his wife’s
bed with his hands steepled against his chin, his eyes closed. They
burned from staring at the slow rise and fall of Jasmine’s
chest.

There wasn’t anything the Haunt medics could
do. The symbiont flowed like water through the fingers and
instruments that tried to remove it from Jasmine’s arms, and
Jasmine thrashed in delirious panic whenever it had been attempted.
Finally Keilor had ordered them to stop trying.

Rihlia was not much better. Although Jasmine
had managed to save her baby, possibly at the risk of her own, she
had been badly beaten, and even the natural resilience and speedy
healing of her Haunt body could only do so much against loosened
teeth, cracked bones and bleeding organs. Jayems stood grim vigil
over her this night, no doubt wracked with a guilt and
self-loathing that Keilor knew too well.

Tonight he was not feeling guilty, though.
Only sad, and a little proud of his Dragonfly’s selflessness. He
did not have to ask her to know she wouldn’t have counted the cost
too high had she known what her attempt at healing would
demand.

Swallowing hard, he dropped his head onto his
clasped hands and shut his eyes, trying not to think of what
tomorrow might bring.

The Symbiont delegation arrived in style.

The morning after the assassination attempt,
just after dawn, a silver ship with fifteen passengers glided into
Haunt waters and docked. As soon as its passengers had disembarked,
the ship broke apart, coalescing into fifteen silver hover cycles.
Before the astonished eyes of the Haunt escort, the cycles sent
silver tendrils around their rider’s legs to the knee, anchoring
them in place.

Jayems, who had been alerted only a bare hour
before of the change in plans, grabbed Keilor. He informed him what
was up as they hurried to the field between the arms of the
citadel. They were waiting there as the Symbiont riders
arrived.

There was only one woman in the group, and
the men were without exception of warrior stock. All the males wore
their hair cropped short, and even the woman’s blond hair was only
long enough to touch her shoulders. They wore black pants of heavy
cloth, boots and jackets of suede suitable for traveling at high
velocities. Each rider wore a sheathed knife and a black gun and
watched the Haunt with a wary expectancy. The leader, a man of only
slightly above average height but tremendous presence, inclined his
head to Jayems and Keilor.

“My name is Jackson.” He slid a glance at
Mathin, who remained mounted on his snorting stag. “We were
informed that you have a medical emergency we might be able to
assist with?”

Jayems glanced aside at Keilor, leaving the
decision up to him. The center of attention, Keilor eyed the new
arrivals, their leader in particular, his nostrils flared to take
in their scent. He snorted silently in self-disgust. As if that
would help him any. He could read nothing in Jackson but
fearlessness.

“She rests in the clinic,” he told Jackson
with reluctance. “My wife tried to heal our cousin with the
symbiont, but it poisoned her.”

Jackson dismounted in one easy motion. “We
can help her, but we’ll have to use one of the big symbionts. It
might be easier if she were brought outside, if that’s
possible.”

“We will move to a courtyard closer to the
citadel while Keilor goes to get her,” Jayems offered while his
cousin strode away.

Keilor did not like this, but what was he to
do? Let Jasmine or the baby die because he couldn’t bring himself
to trust a stranger? So far it had been their allies who had
betrayed them.

“Jasmine,” he said, touching her cool
forehead and smoothing back her hair. “I’ve found someone who can
help you.”