Warrior's Touch (Deadly Touch book 2)

The halls of the palace were deserted.

Shame the same couldn’t be said for the walls surrounding the grounds. The row of archers was about as thick as the wall itself. There was no way Llew could get through them unnoticed and alive. She backed inside the palace again. Think, Llew, think. These kinds of places always had underground tunnels, didn’t they? In the books they did, anyway. Surely there would be one. And Llew knew where. She closed her eyes, a sense of defeat settling. Stupid. Real dumb. If there was an underground tunnel, it almost certainly led off from the Aenuk dungeon.

Stupid, Llew. But no point dwelling now. The longer she lingered, the more likely someone would come this way. She turned back the way she’d come, certain now she’d made the right choice in not leading dozens of Aenuks up here. She scuttled along hallways, took a couple of wrong turns, finally found the door. Back down the stairs, she slid the key in the lock, readied her glass shard, turned the key.

One guard lay against the wall, a thick, dark stain from his neck down his leather coverings, a pink hand-shaped burn over his face.

The other guard sat opposite. He seemed unhurt, but he stared at Llew as she stepped through the door. Didn’t seem he was interested in stopping her now.

“Is there a way out?”

The guard stared. Llew knelt before him, gripped his collar, and held the glass so it hovered between his throat and her wrist.

“You want the glass itself, or shall I share it with you?” She didn’t want to cut herself, but there was something about the Aenuk touch that seemed to scare others more, and she was prepared to use whatever would get her out of here.

“There’s an exit.” He flicked his eyes along the corridor.

“Anything I need to know?” Llew asked.

The guard shook his head. “It’s a long way, but it’s easy enough to find, and you’ve got the key. It opens on the street.”

“A quiet street?”

“It will be today.”

Llew nodded her thanks, then reached out and brushed the backs of her fingers against his cheek, since his face was the only exposed part of him.

“I can’t go killing the person I’m meant to save,” she said. “And you’ve got some to spare.” She stood. “We’re not bad people. We just share the pain the world throws at us.”

Llew retrieved the keys from the door and started off down the corridor, again ignoring the faces at the tiny windows. Her heart ached to leave these people behind, her people. But she hadn’t forgotten her pa. And if Aenuks had been kept caged since all the Ajnais were destroyed, then these people had been down here since the day they were born. They wouldn’t know how to survive the world out there, and Llew had nowhere to send them. None of them had homes, or family waiting for their return. None of them knew where to find food or money. No. She had to get out. She would come back. She would come back.

She had no idea how long she ran, only that it was a long way, and she should have brought a light. She bumbled through the dark. Her feet hit concrete, and the air felt dry.

Until she hit a door.

She brought forward the keys. Her hands trembled and, as one after another key failed, tears flowed as she grew more desperate.

The dungeon was mostly unguarded, the palace above silent. The showdown Braph had orchestrated between Jonas and Aris was going on now. Or was already over. Jonas could be dead already. Or Braph might have stepped in. Either way, she didn’t know what was going on while she was stuck down here, and she couldn’t keep Jonas alive.

“Come on, come on, come on!”

A key worked and she fell through the door, took the stairs two at a time, only slowing as she neared one last door. Sunlight sliced beneath it. Again, she had to try each key, final key singled out, she opened the door a crack.

White sunlight burned her eyes. She brought her arm up and blinked, slowly bringing the world into color. Nothing to see but a sliver of paved road and building shadows. She opened the door a little more. Movement. But it was just an old man shuffling by. He didn’t even look at her. She slipped through the door, keeping herself pressed against the building, keeping to the shadows. But it looked like she needn’t have bothered. The street was deserted.

A hollow roar filled the air. Llew pressed herself harder against the building, half expecting to see the flying machine pass overhead. But the flying machine had crashed near Merrid and Ard’s farm, and the sound was different. Not a deep, sliced-up thrum. This was the sound of hundreds of voices, she was almost sure.

And where thousands of voices cried out in Turhmos on this day was almost certainly where she would find Jonas.

She ran towards the sound. Other people in the streets either didn’t notice her or had no idea who or what she was. Small mercies.

She had to slow to a walk several times to catch her breath, but a need to get to Jonas in time drove her on, despite aching muscles and growing fatigue.

The roar went up again, helping to direct her journey. She followed her ears and finally turned a corner to face a huge sandy-orange building that swept in a huge curve. No corners. She’d never seen its like.

From where she stood, she faced two guarded, arched doorways. Two guards per door. She still had her glass shard and her touch. They had swords, knives, full uniforms, years of training and, no doubt, back-up she couldn’t see. She also didn’t know if any were Aenuk. Would it matter? She was Syaenuk. So far, her powers had outmatched any mere Aenuks she’d faced.

Llew breathed deep. Was there any way they would just let her in? She had no ticket for the show. She wore prisoner’s clothes, flecked with blood. No. There would be no walking in. She clutched her shard, prepared for pain.

A roar went up from the building again. A single voice shouted. And the guards dashed inside.

Llew didn’t hesitate. She ran after.

The arch was a dark corridor lit only by the sunlight from either end. She ran for the far light. The twin silhouettes of the guards developed through fuzzy gray to sharp black, then flashed to nothing as they emerged into the blinding sunlight.

The concrete floor gave way to sand, steadily growing deeper and continuing into the huge opening in the center of the building.

The guards she had been following fought other guards. All seemed chaos at first, making no sense, until she spotted Braph in the middle of the fray, clutching a child to him. Jonas’s son? No, of course, Jonas’s son couldn’t be that old. A circle of guards protected the pair from others trying to get to them.

But where was Jonas?

Clinging to the outer wall, Llew sidled around the central dispute.

A small crowd crouched or stood over a still body and Llew’s breath caught. But it wasn’t Jonas. Turhmosians poked and prodded Aris’s corpse. Others described what had occurred using expansive gestures to illustrate their tales. They spoke of lightning, reminding Llew of that fateful night. Someone had harvested the power from Aris now. Llew turned to where Braph and the child were heading from the huge building, a growing crowd following, emptying the rows above Llew’s head. Who was the child? Braph’s son?

Braph’s son … with Llew’s ma …

Llew felt sick. She’d known – by the gods she’d known – he’d had a relationship with her mother, but she hadn’t dared think... She clutched her stomach, as though her hand could still the urge to bring up bile. Her other hand went to her mouth.

She’d heard him. She’d heard Braph’s son – her half-brother – when she’d been held captive in Braph’s home. She’d heard crying, clearly from an infant young enough to be Jonas’s son, but she’d also heard laughter that had to have been an older child. Braph’s child. Her brother. She hated to think her pa might have lived with that knowledge every day for all the years he was with Braph.

A realization hit Llew. The child of Braph and her ma could be an Immortal. Suddenly the conversations going on around her made sense. The boy had absorbed Aris’s power.

But where was Jonas? Had Braph even brought him here? Maybe he’d never intended to present him to Aris. Maybe the rumor had been enough, which meant Jonas could still be at Braph’s home and Llew didn’t remember where that was...

Wait.

Between milling bodies, she saw a boot. Not just any boot. Dusty black leather. A rounded point at the toes. A slight heel. People kept moving between her and that boot, but Llew would stake her life on it being Jonas’s. Which was exactly what she was about to do.

Focused almost exclusively on that boot, she moved forward. The toe pointed up. He was on the ground. The crowd around her was too busy recounting events or trying to rouse Aris, trying to figure out how an Immortal could be dead or, if he weren’t Immortal, what the light show had been about. All around was confusion, which Llew hoped would work in her favor. With an almost single-mindedness, she moved forward, curving her body around others, slipping through the crowd.

Stripped to the waist and with hair as long as it had been when she met him, Jonas lay in the center of the great pit, at the base of a thick wooden post. He was as bruised and bloody as the day Aris had killed her tree, with the addition of burns, and seemed to be unconscious.

Llew steadied herself and walked on. One step at a time. No need to draw unwanted attention. She held her glass shard loosely, avoiding self-harm. The last thing she needed was to drain the last moments of life from Jonas when she reached him.

Someone crouched by one of Jonas’s feet, gripped his boot and tugged. It held firm. They wiggled it and it began to loosen. Jonas did nothing to stop them, and Llew feared he was dead.

She nearly shouted but stopped herself before she attracted too much attention. Crouching, she scurried closer.

“Shoo! Shoo!” She swung her glass shard.

The scavenger dropped Jonas’s boot and took a couple of steps back. The look on his face made Llew wonder how deranged she looked, but, again, that was something that could work in her favor, so she twisted her face up even more and gave an evil eye.

Appropriately unsettled, the man backed away, eventually turning his back.

Panic and a sense of hopelessness drove Llew to her knees, but she kept on. She caught a flash of light from under the clumps of hair lying across Jonas’s face and the fear that he’d died, eyes open, was so real a lump lodged in her throat, choking her. But the light flickered. His eye moved. He was watching her.

She crawled as fast as she could without cutting up her hand with the glass, coughing and spluttering as she went. Her eyes darted about, watching for anyone watching her. But it seemed Jonas no longer held anyone’s interest, and Llew blended well enough with her fellow Turhmosians not to draw attention.

“Can you move?” she asked when she got to him.

“My leg—” He grimaced and clamped down on a curse as he tried to move the limb.

One of his legs moved, but only minutely.

Llew looked around at the thinning crowd. Several men were dragging Aris’s body away. Where to, she didn’t know and didn’t much care.

“Okay.” She moved around to Jonas’s head. “You’re dead. I don’t want to have to kill you, so play the role real well. Alright?”

He grunted out a grudging laugh.

Discarding her piece of glass, Llew hooked her hands under Jonas’s armpits, lifted him, and began dragging. He was cold to the touch. How long had he been lying, inactive, half-dressed on this chilly winter’s day? As he screwed up his face at the pain in his leg, Llew took a moment to flick some more hair over his face, hoping that would give him the cover he needed to express his agony unseen and unheard.

She backed towards the tunnel she’d come through, Jonas’s boots leaving two shallow furrows in the sand.

With every eye that glanced their way, Llew expected someone to call a halt, demand she leave Jonas behind, or worse; take her captive again. With every step she took, her back tingled at the thought of backing into someone with enough knowledge or authority to demand to know what she was doing. But she kept her head down, glanced around only to determine a clear path, and did her best not to look shifty.

People milled around talking of the events they’d seen, some asked after the president, or Braph. Some ran past Llew and up the tunnel. Some paused to spit on the seemingly dead Syakaran. Llew fought not to curse them or swipe them away. She was just someone carrying out an errand, removing the body of the enemy nation’s hero.

Somehow, they made it through the tunnel, but Llew had to stop. Her muscles ached all over. She sat Jonas against the outer wall of the circular building and sat beside him, while people continued to stream out of it. Conversations were turning from wonder and awe to confusion and even fear. No one knew what Braph’s son was, or where he’d come from. No one knew what any of what they’d seen meant. They needed answers, but leadership was nowhere to be found. Soldiers had followed Braph, either to kill him, capture him, or as his protective escort. And the president? No one had seen him since Braph had killed the gray-haired man who had seemed utterly unremarkable to the people, but whose body had clearly held great power.

Confusion.

Llew smiled to herself. She and Jonas could use that.

Aris was dead. Braph was otherwise occupied. And, to the Turhmos public, Jonas was once again dead; this time seen by their own eyes.

She turned her smile on Jonas. His teeth chattered, he looked miserable and, despite his darker complexion, he was taking on a distinctive blue tinge.

“Shit.” She scrambled up. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

His head lolled as she looped her hands under his armpits again. Llew’s back ached, but she wouldn’t stop.

No money, no horses, no friends. She dragged the seemingly dead Syakaran down the streets of Duffirk, Turhmos.

“We’re going home,” she murmured.