“Here.” Daniel pulled them from his bag. He took a few steps to the side, bringing the soldier with them.
“What is your business here? Where did you come from?”
“We boarded the transport two days ago in Birrden. We’re stopping here to meet my sister’s intended and his family. I have business with a number of shops here. I make boots.”
Carina digested those details, along with the scorpion insignia on the soldier’s lapel. Her stomach cramped.
“This code is more than four standard months old.”
“I booked our transport when the bride price was accepted at the end of last year. It was part of the nuptial contract.” Daniel seemed to have a good grasp on the basics of how things worked in the Imperium, thank goodness.
“You both need to accompany me to the portal security complex.”
“Sir, we’re already late. Can we not handle any problems with our code at another time? There is a security station just a short way from the guesthouse where we are staying. I can handle this before evening, once I get my sister settled.” Daniel kept his eyes down.
“You’ll do what I tell you, when I tell you. Until I can verify your story, you’re both going to wait in lockup.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Daniel stepped forward, and before Carina had even registered what was happening, he had dragged the soldier into the narrow space between the buildings. Carina hurried after them, looking around in what she hoped was a surreptitious manner.
She heard the sickening crunch of the soldier’s neck breaking. The body slumped to the ground.
“Keep watch,” Daniel murmured to her as he dragged the body back behind a trash recycler.
What the seven hells she’d do if anyone actually discovered them, she didn’t know. But she held on to her bag, her fingers touching the edge of the blaster, just in case.
“Let’s go. It won’t be long before they discover him missing.” Daniel took her arm and hustled her away at just shy of a run.
She wanted to panic but concentrated on each step they took. Kept her gaze on the street and walkway, taking in details. She needed to keep herself together and help him get them out of danger. Anything else was unacceptable.
Finally, he relaxed his spine a bit, waving to a group of men standing near a conveyance just across a small square.
“Well met, Neil. I see you have Rina with you, good, good. Come along, there are brigands about. The soldiers are on the hunt, and I wouldn’t want to be one of them once the troops catch up with them.” The large male laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
She hopped up and into the cab, followed by Daniel, and they sped off.
Daniel handed them a packet of papers, and the shorter of the males handed him another. “Updated with better codes.”
Daniel made no comment as he looked through them and she over his shoulder. She was to have a new name and they were married, not siblings, residents of Philos, water runners.
Each time they had to stop at a checkpoint and hand over their papers, she thought for sure they’d stop them and toss the whole lot of them into lockup. To her relief, no one questioned their papers overly much. Soon they were away from the portal and deep into the canyons where the locals worked to make building materials from the mineral-rich mud.
She started to speak once, but he sent her a look that quelled the urge. If he didn’t want her to say anything, he had his reasons. No one spoke either, after the last checkpoint. Until the sun was fully up and they’d reached a wide canyon.
Once the conveyance had gone, there was no sound other than their breath and the soft shuss of sand and dirt shifting.
He perused a sheet of paper and then crumpled it up until it dissolved and there was nothing left. “Come on through here.” Daniel indicated a cleft in the cliff just ahead.
They hiked for long enough that even Daniel felt it in his thighs. But finally, as the pale sun stood straight above them, he led her into a small space, barely large enough to crawl through. He hoped to the gods that she wasn’t claustrophobic as they wended their way through stiflingly small, nearly airless passages, sometimes on their belly or hands and knees. For long minutes, with dirt caked in the sweat on their skin, they crept toward their destination.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
“Of course. I do this sort of thing every day.” She snorted in-delicately. “This is horrible, and I want to harm you severely for putting me in this position,” she panted from her place just behind him. Luckily he heard the humor in her tone, liked her a bit more for it.
“I’m the only one who knows the way. Don’t kill me just yet,” he said back to her as they kept moving.
At long last they were able to slide through what looked to be a natural gap in the wall, but what was revealed just beyond was unexpected.
Living quarters. Not overly large, but lit by glow globes. It had a kitchen, a rough-hewn table and a sleeping area.
“I . . . is this someone’s home?” She turned in a circle once he’d put the pack down and slid a panel forward, and the gap was now gone, replaced by solid rock.
“Hope you’re not claustrophobic.”
She shuddered. “This is far more tolerable than that tiny crawl space we just went through. I’m afraid I have dirt in every part of my body. What is this place?”
“It’s a smuggler’s den.” He shrugged. “They hide here when things get hot. Make yourself comfortable; we have to lie low for a while. We can’t get off ’Verse until the soldiers go away.” He looked at a pocket comm. “My contact says the ’Verse is crawling with Skorpios. Not that we needed that information; the one I killed was one. That will cause some trouble, I imagine. I tried to make it look like a robbery.”
Skorpios were her father’s private militia. They were his secret police. His right hand of death. When something very bad happened, Skorpios were there. She shivered a moment. There was no going back, and they wouldn’t stop until she was captured or dead.
He must have seen her fear, because he touched her cheek and then drew his hand away quickly. “I know. But I’m better than they are, Carina. Do you believe that?”
She didn’t know why she should, but she nodded because she did. “They know I’m with you. Or with the Federation. They won’t stop until I’m dead.”
“Or I kill them first. That’s my preferred outcome. We’re getting out of here, Carina. Not today. But we will get back to Ravena. I promise you, I will get you away safely, or I will die trying. I’m sorry you had to see that back there; I am. But you can’t go back now.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize for. We would have been captured and discovered. You would have been tortured and killed, and I would have been sent back home. I believe you. I trust you.” Still, Carina worried for her mother. Wondered if they knew it had been her who’d helped her escape. “My mother? Any word about who found me out?”
“I don’t have that much detail about anything inside the compound. We managed to get several cycles away before they discovered you gone. And then they sent shock troops. To have them out this far so fast means they must have burned out a good number of private portals to get here. If they’re burned out, he can’t use them again. Slows him down.”
“Burned out?”
Her stomach sank more. “What do you mean?”
He bustled about the room, starting the heating element in the hearth and swinging the kettle over it to get it boiling. Efficiently, he set his little traps, looking into every closet and behind every drawer. Finally, he stopped, poured the water into a teapot and set it between them on the table.
She didn’t quite know what to do, felt like a stupid child, but pride shouldn’t stop her from learning.
Daniel looked up and pointed at a chair he’d pushed out for her. “Sit, please. You don’t know anything about what goes on, do you?”
His voice wasn’t mocking or hard but filled with wonder and sadness. She felt it herself. The world was so much bigger than she’d ever imagined, and it broke part of her to realize her very imagination had been stunted by what her father had done.
She shook her head. “I thought I did. I’m at a loss.”
“It’s okay. I’ll teach you. Others will teach you.” He touched the back of her hand so briefly she wondered if she’d imagined it. “Portals take energy from the ’Verse and the friction from where each ’Verse meets. The portal is a controlled tear in space-time, fired as the vessels travel through, by that energy. Ingress and egress through portals is regulated very strictly for that reason. There are smaller portals, private ones like your father’s, like the ones the mercenaries use. Those are centered on weaker spots, ones that are stable but can only handle a fraction of the traffic with far shorter trips. If those portals are used too much, or if boosters are used to enhance the speed of the transports, they burn the portal in their wake. It reabsorbs into the ’Verse but causes intermittent to severe trouble with the land around where the portal once stood.”
“And my father has done this before?”
“Yes. Drink your tea. The larder here is stocked enough for a few days if we need that. It’s one of our places to lie low if we have to come over here. Don’t worry about the air supply. There are vents to the outside, complete with scrubbers to get rid of the air pollution. Smugglers have comfortable hiding places. We appreciate that. No one will find us here. You can relax for a little while at least. I’ll make us a meal in a moment.”
“I can do it. I’m a decent cook for a spoiled princess.” She stood and put her hand on his shoulder to stay him. Their gazes locked, and a warm flow of desire pooled through her, loosened her muscles. She swallowed. “No, really, I can do it, and I want to. I want to stay busy.”
He hesitated and then relaxed. “All right. Thank you. I’ll be sure the beds have linens. I’m told there’s a cistern here. You can’t take a sit-down bath, but the water should be warm enough to clean off a few layers of dust if you’d like.”
She thanked him, watching his back as he began to rustle again, placing blankets on the bed.
One
bed.
As if he’d sensed her thoughts, he spoke without turning around. “I’ll sleep on the floor, near the entrance.”
“That’s silly. I’m sure it will be cold here in the evenings. We obviously can’t have a fire. We’re adults. You’ll be close enough to protect me should we need it as well.” She sounded very matter-of-fact, but she wasn’t at all. She wanted him in the bed with her. Didn’t want to be alone. Wanted the feel of a man beside her as she slept.
She walked to where he stood and put the bedding back onto the bed. “Here now. You can bathe first, while I make the meal. I won’t peek.” She smiled.
He cocked his head and finally smiled back. “Before I do that, I need to go out, see if I can’t receive a transmission with some further information. The signal near the portal was jammed, but out here with all the smugglers and mercenaries, there should be enough boosters to get through.”
He needed to be away from her for even just a short time. It was her smell, he’d decided, the way her skin and hair carried her scent, even from beneath the sweat and dust. It had woven into his consciousness and was beginning to drive him mad.
The longer he was with her, the more he admired her, found little things about her enchanting and wanted to know more, and that was not a good direction.
Right then she tried not to look scared; he saw that clearly. She’d been so strong that whole day. She hadn’t made a sound as he’d killed a man right within her reach, hadn’t lost her composure once, despite the number of times she’d been in danger since he’d met her. She worked through her panic and stayed sharp, even reminding him earlier about how everyone in the Imperium would have been afraid at the sight of troops.
He touched her cheek, rewarded by the smooth satin of her skin. Her pupils widened and her breath caught. He needed to stop touching her, but he didn’t plan to start right then. “I won’t be far. You’re safe here. Only I or someone with the right instructions and codes can get this far. I’ll be back before you finish with the food.” His voice was husky, even to his own ears, and she smelled so good he had to fight against the urge to lean in and sniff.
Then she said, “I trust you with my life, Daniel.” And he lost his footing entirely, leaning down to kiss her forehead before he’d even really thought about it. The longer he was around her, the more he found himself doing things he hadn’t really thought about, which was stupid and dangerous.
But she hugged him, holding him tight, and he let go of all the supposed to bes and the should haves and instead, hugged her back. “We’re going to be all right, Carina.”
She squeezed him one more time and stepped back, blushing furiously even as her gaze was locked on him. “Go on and hurry back so things won’t get cold. I saw some dried meat and vegetables. I’m sure I can make something for us.”
Her forced cheer only made him want her more. Instead, he turned and headed not toward the door they came through, but another entrance at the side, through a closet.
Needing to get the fuck away from her presence, he quickly took the darkened passage, the glow lamps warming and casting dim but consistent light as he passed. He hoped the break from her would help him get his thoughts together and get his impulses back under control. He needed to rein in whatever it was she brought out in him before he did something stupid. Like kiss those sweet lips.
Gods above and below, he wanted her. His skin crawled with it, with the desire to touch and caress. He ached to know her taste. He was off balance and in unfamiliar territory. Not that he hadn’t felt desire for women before; he had on many occasions. But never on a mission and never for a woman like her. And never with this sort of bottomless need he couldn’t even begin to name.
Daniel had never had a thing for virginal young women, preferring partners who were as experienced as he. Carina Fardelle might have been braver than most people he knew, resourceful and smart, but she sure as the seven hells was
not
sexually experienced. She couldn’t have been, given who she was, and her reactions to him only cemented that fact. She was out of his league and off any possible list for bedmates, and he had to let that go before he did something disastrous. He could only hurt her, and the very idea of bringing her pain seemed untenable.