The Lone Warrior (37 page)

Mehcredi allowed herself to sink into sensation, going deeper layer by layer, until she was centered, grounded as if by the
nea-kata
. Gratefully, she surrendered, accepting something about herself she’d never fully articulated. She hadn’t known how before—before Walker.

She didn’t know what love was, what people meant when they said they loved one another. They were words and therefore easy to come by.
I’d die for him,
she’d said to Abad.

Only words?

Instinctively, Mehcredi clung closer, placing her parted lips against his skin, breathing him in.

Not empty words, but truth. Because she would. Not gladly—that was stupid—but if there was no other way. She belonged to the swordmaster, to this reserved difficult man, more surely, more completely, than if he’d purchased her with coin at a slave market. Her life was entwined with his because that was . . . well, the way it was. Frowning at the vague outline of the nightstand, she swallowed hard.

Walker would complete his vengeance, she didn’t doubt it for an instant. Then what? He’d return to Caracole, to his House of Swords, to his garden and the fighting salle. She could probably hire on as a bodyguard for some noblelady, or even try for the Palace Guard. Walker had a friend there, she thought, a man called Rhio. He might help.

If this night was all there was . . .

She’d make the most of it, memorize every sensation, use all her senses. Ask for more. When it was over, it would be over. Once she accepted that, by all the gods, what did she have to lose?

The cool light of dawn was pushing back the shadows. Cautiously, she raised her head, glancing down the length of his body. She’d never be able to think of words adequate to describe him, not if she lived forever. Not an ounce of fat, all those shapely muscles on display, the scars marring the smooth bronze of his skin. He had the most beautiful legs she’d ever seen on a man, long and strong and graceful, roped with muscle.

Mehcredi frowned. The swordmaster ought to take better care of himself—eat more and keep away from demons and bad men bearing sharp-edged weapons.

With the utmost care, she disengaged herself until she could sit up and look her fill. Her gaze skittered away from his genitals, then returned. Fascinated, she stretched out a hand, then snatched it back. No, no, no. Bad idea.

His nipples were as dark as Concordian chocolat, not as broad as hers. Were they as sensitive? Would they feel velvety against her lips?

She wouldn’t, she
wouldn’t
. Unable to resist, Mehcredi hovered a palm an inch away from a brown disk, wanting desperately to touch, but not bold enough. When Walker didn’t stir, she let out a shaky breath. His gorgeous heat burned her flesh. To her astonishment, his nipple crinkled, drawing up as if to nuzzle into her palm. A wave of gooseflesh followed, racing across his chest, pebbling the nipple on the other side.

Shaking all over, she withdrew her hand, flexing her tingling fingers. A coil of tension settled at the base of her spine, a series of flutters making her stomach flip.

Imagination. Must be.

Leaning forward, she ran her hands over his body, keeping a scrupulous inch from contact. Over his ribs, his sternum, the tight cup of his navel, his hip bone. The skin of her palms felt scorched, primeval energy arcing from him to her and back again. It had to be Walker’s Magick, because she had none.

Her heart drumming, she focused on his groin. His cock lay curved, quiescent against a hard thigh, the heart-shaped head now shielded by his foreskin. She bent a little. He smelled muskier there, but she didn’t mind it, not at all.

She’d never been so curious in her life. How could a body part transform itself so completely, as if it had a mind of its own? Were all men like this?

It stirred.
Twitched
. Mehcredi’s mouth dropped open. Shocked, she stared down at her own hand, hovering over Walker’s cock, the heat blazing between their flesh. Her eyes growing rounder and rounder, she watched the shaft move like a sleepy animal, swelling and straightening, until the foreskin slipped back to show the head, smooth and ruddy, with a little slit at the top. She peered, leaning closer still. The skin of his member looked as soft as finest chamois, but it was roped by tracery of blue veins, growing more prominent by the second. And, oh yes, his balls had drawn up against his body, tight and hard. Completely enthralled, she began to shift her hand toward them. Who knew what might happen?

Long brown fingers appeared in her field of vision, cradling Walker’s cock with casual competence. An iron hand clamped over her wrist.

“Mehcredi.”

Her head whipped around to meet a flat obsidian stare. “What the hell are you doing?” asked the swordmaster.

The Necromancer leaned forward over the saddle and surveyed the collection of poor tents clustered round a seep trickling out of a gray rock face. About a dozen contorted figures lay in the stony gravel, some of them still clutching weapons that had clearly proved useless. Corpsebirds circled lazily overhead, riding the hot desert wind. “You’re telling me no one survived?”

The guard captain shifted uneasily. “It appears so, Pasha. But I’ve sent men to check in the hills.”

As he spoke, a soldier appeared from behind a clump of boulders, driving a small group of people before him. The guard captain’s shoulders slumped with relief.

“Ah.” The Necromancer used a fold of his head cloth to blot the sweat on his face. His nose wrinkled with distaste. Nyzarl had liked his food heavily spiced and fatty, and although he’d startled the cook by demanding plain, well-cooked fare, his new body still sweated like a vanbeast. As the spices worked their way out through his skin, he smelled like one too.

“What did you see?” he asked an old man with a toothless face so seamed with lines it looked like a badly cured hide. “Who did this?”

“D-djinns,” quavered the old man. “Hundreds of djinns.”

“Describe them.”

But he couldn’t, not to the Necromancer’s satisfaction. The djinns had apparently ridden into the camp on the wind, invisible and deadly. None of which was any use.

With an irritated grunt, the Necromancer swung down heavily from his horse. “Come here.”

The ceaseless babble dried up when the soldier shoved the old man forward. A skinny middle-aged woman stepped up with him, her arm around his waist for support. The Necromancer flexed his thick fingers. It had been so long. Could he still do it?

“P-Pasha?” said the old man. Tears glittered in his rheumy eyes, made streaks in the dust on his cheeks.

“Think of the djinns.” The Necromancer wrapped his whole big hand around the man’s face. “Oh, and keep breathing.” He closed his eyes, concentrating.

The Sibling Moons had been high. They’d been celebrating something, a marriage perhaps, grouped around the fire, their plaintive music echoing across the stony plain. A young woman played a finger drum, a man blew notes on a simple wooden flute.

Death swept in an acrid cloud down the wadi, the djinns fanning out over the open ground in vortexes of roiling light, barely visible despite the soft brilliance of the Siblings. Rising swiftly from below the threshold of hearing, a whine built to a piercing shriek that penetrated the bones of the skull. Men and women grimaced with pain and slapped their hands over their ears. An elder stumbled to her knees, the eyes rolling back in her head. A vicious, metallic stench rolled over the desert, clawing at throats and making eyes tear.

Like the rest, the young woman fled, the small drum slipping from her grasp to bounce away across the pebbled ground, tassels waving. She was kin to the old man, close, possibly a daughter. A pulsing thickness formed in the air, one of the djinns hovering directly in her path. It swooped. Her shrill cry was cut off by a cracking report, echoing above the unbearable wall of noise.

By the time the old man reached her, every muscle was racked and bowed, her spine arching hard with pain. A swelling the size of a small bird’s egg trembled beneath the skin of her shoulder. When he touched it with a fingertip, the dreadful thing
skittered
, burrowing deeper into the woman’s flesh.

Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, her eyes stretched wide. “Knife,” she gasped, her clotted gurgle an obscene parody of human speech. “Da. Kill. Me.”

She made a supreme effort. “Da, as you love me. Argh!” The last word emerged as a bubbling shriek. “
Please!
”

The old man’s fingers clenched on the hilt of his blade, but before he could move, his daughter’s ribs parted with a sodden crack and her heart exploded outward in a shatter of bone and torn flesh.

Well, that explained the extraordinary pattern of the injuries.

The night sky boiled and stank as the creatures rolled away across the plain, the cruel whine of their passage diminishing as the distance increased.

The old man wiped his daughter’s blood from his eyes and stumbled to his feet. His fingers were icy cold and spots gathered before his eyes. Before the wave of darkness could pull him under, the Necromancer let him go. The old man collapsed, the middle-aged woman trying desperately to support him as his body convulsed with grief and horror.

“I’ve seen enough.” Remounting, the Necromancer commandeered the guard captain’s shoulder as a crutch, enjoying the man’s instinctive flinch.

“My lord?”

“What?”

The guard captain’s throat moved. “Was it djinns? Truly?”

“Oh yes.” The Necromancer gathered up the reins. “But it’s all one.”

“Yes, my lord. Ah, my lord?”

“Now what?”

The man indicated the sorry little group. “What about them?”

“Bring them.”

The woman fell to her knees, making the sign of the Three, over and over. “Oh, thank you, Pasha. Thank you.”

The Necromancer’s smile showed all Nyzarl’s large white teeth. “Don’t thank me yet,” he advised, and trotted away.

Mehcredi’s eyes were so wide, Walker could see the whites all around.

“Doing? Uh. I was . . .” A violent flush stained those glorious tits with rosy color. “I was only looking. I didn’t touch anything, I swear.” Her gaze swiveled back to his groin as if drawn by a magnet.

His hips arched instinctively, his cock hardening under her attention, the stupid godsbedamned thing. For a moment, he couldn’t speak, a battle going on in his throat. He had the strangest desire to laugh, but it was accompanied by a tenderness so piercing it very nearly choked him.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” Mehcredi laid warm fingertips on his thigh, the muscle jumping beneath her touch. “Are you angry?”

“No,” he said. “Not with you.”

There couldn’t be any doubt Mehcredi of Lonefell was the strangest woman on all of Palimpsest, but godsdammit, she was also so brave and so beautiful it was painful to watch her. After a childhood like hers, let alone a career as an assassin, how could she remain so essentially unsullied, so . . . sweet?

“Are you sorry?” he asked, knowing whatever tumbled out of that pretty mouth would be the unvarnished truth. “For what we did?”

Her luminous gaze went wide again. “Are you joking? Of course not.” She twinkled at him. “What about you? Any regrets?” But the smile slipped a little on the final word.

There was a stain on the ceiling shaped roughly like a map of the Isles. “I took a gift that wasn’t meant for me.” He lowered his gaze to her face and kept it there. “If I was a better man, I’d regret it.”

He didn’t expect the lick of temper that had him pulling her back into his arms, her long body supple and warm against his. She landed on his chest with a muffled yelp of surprise. “But I’m not and I don’t.”

Walker speared his fingers into her cropped hair and pulled Mehcredi’s mouth down to his, plundering. Such a silky, desperate little tongue, twining with his, growing bolder with every passing second, such gorgeous incoherent noises, deep in her throat. ’Cestors’ bones, he didn’t find her endearing, he positively didn’t—only delightfully fuckable.