Poison Tree (21 page)

“Don’t make me hurt you, child.”

Icily, Sahara said, “Will you face us, or will you yield?”

In the blink of an eye, the ancient tiger shifted just enough to turn hands to claws and lashed out at Jason. The vampire jumped back with a hiss of pain as his blood splashed across several bystanders.

Alysia took a step forward, but Jeht grabbed her arm. The elder Mistari boy was determined that the laws of his kind be followed.

Meanwhile, Sahara pounced at Kral, her full tiger form causing his human shape to stumble back several steps before he, too, changed, twisting as he fell, until the two tigers separated, both bleeding, with snarls of rage and pain.

“This is insane,” Alysia whispered.

“But entertaining,” another familiar voice responded.

Sarta. Christian hadn’t seen the leader of all three Bruja guilds much since she had taken over the position—unlike Crystalle, Sarta did not believe in micromanagement—but now she seemed to appear out of nowhere, perfectly on time for an unscheduled leadership challenge. “Kevin called me, on Sahara’s orders,” she explained. “She was right. I do want to see this.”

It was worth watching. For SingleEarth mediators sworn to nonviolence, Sahara and Jason fought with a synchronized savagery that could only be described as awesome.

A
LYSIA WINCED AS
Jason landed a blow on Kral’s lower back. With vampiric strength behind it, the double-fisted hit had probably obliterated his kidney. Kral gave a cry of rage and pain and replied with a swipe that took out most of Jason’s face, sending him sprawling toward Alysia.

As Alysia instinctively moved toward Jason, she once again felt the viselike grip of the older tiger cub. Jeht looked up at her long enough to shake his head; then he turned his gaze back toward the fight. Sarik pounced, snarled, and darted, keeping Kral’s attention on her while Jason wiped blood from his eyes and healed enough to rejoin the fray. The tigers occasionally took their fully feline forms, but most of the time they fought with claws on human hands.

“We’re really going to stand here until they manage to beat each other to death?” Alysia whispered to Christian.

Kral was hundreds of years old; he had founded Onyx. Jason had been initiated to violence by Maya, one of the most vicious of the modern mercenaries. And Sahara had been born and raised in this world. They could all dish out pain like SPAM from a can, but they could also heal it.

There had to be
something
Alysia could do. Some way to distract Kral or … something! Anything. Kral was nearly double Sahara’s size in both human and tiger form. He wasn’t going to back down until they killed him.

Screw this
. “Look, kid,” she said, wondering if the boy would translate her tone even though he couldn’t understand her words, “I know this is about kings and queens to you, but to me it’s about watching people I kind of like get
pummeled
. That’s not the kind of thing I can just let happen.”

She wrenched her arm out of the tiger cub’s grip. He shouted at her and jumped between her and the fight, pulling a knife from a sheath at his waist and holding it up as if to say
I can’t understand your words, and you can’t understand mine, but can you understand this?

“Now, Alysia,” Christian said, with all his good-old-boy charm, “you know I’ll back your play if you make it, but I
really
do not want to beat up a nine-year-old just to give you a chance to get yourself killed for Sahara freaking kuloka Kral.”

“I never knew Sahara,” Alysia retorted, “and I—”

Sarik shouted, “Father!” All eyes returned to the fight in time to see Sarik dodge Kral’s next swipe of claws and then
dance back, choosing not to retaliate. Instead, she demanded breathlessly, “Is this really what you want?”

Jason, ever observant, responded to her change in tactics. He moved back, putting himself out of Kral’s easy reach, and stopped pressing the attack.

Kral paused, using the time they were giving him to recover.

Both tigers were winded and flushed, and all three combatants were striped with injuries. During the brief respite, Alysia saw Jason set his teeth and smooth broken ribs and a collarbone back in place; Kral had literally tried to tear his throat out. Kral meanwhile pressed a hand over a wound low on his stomach that was bleeding profusely and threatening to expose organs beneath. Why was Sahara letting him recover? So they could start this all again?

“I missed
Saw 3D
intentionally,” Alysia remarked to no one in particular, trying to cover for a twisting stomach.

No one answered, because Sarik started talking.

“You killed Cori,” she said, “because she wasn’t the child you wanted.” Despite her shortness of breath, despite wounds that Alysia could see beginning to knit themselves closed and blood staining the floor around them all, Sarik spoke in an even tone that forced those nearby to hush to listen. “You would kill me now because I am the child you tried to make me and I won’t let you rule me. I know that you intend to kill Jeht because you know he will fight you once he is older. Is that all you want with the rest of your life? You are getting older. Someday you will not be strong enough to hold Onyx. Do you really want to leave nothing behind?”

“It is better to leave nothing,” Kral retorted, “than to leave a legacy of weakness and—”

“Listen to yourself,” Sarik interrupted.

She’s going to try to talk him down
, Alysia thought incredulously.
She’s going to mediate this situation
.

Sarik continued, watching her father warily, never releasing his gaze.

“Onyx is … It’s a portrait, one that’s fading and weakening while you pretend that you will last forever. If you destroy us all now, destroy everyone strong enough to stand against you—me, Jason, Alysia, Christian, Jeht, and even little Quean—you won’t be remembered as a powerful tiger who ruled Onyx for centuries. You’ll only be remembered by those who are mortal, those whose memories only go far enough to remember when Onyx was weak and run-down and you were seen as the fool who let it get that way and sat on its puppet throne in the last of its years. Or you can move on now and let your legacy stand as a legend. It is your choice.”

“I can’t do that.”

Kral had run Onyx for two hundred years. Did he even know
how
to do anything else?

“Then …”

Sarik took a deep breath, and Alysia braced herself, prepared to join the fight. Instead, Sarik knelt and bowed her head, lifting her wrists up before her.

Jason followed her, taking the same posture, followed by the two tiger cubs.

“You can kill us all, or you can let us stand,” Sarik said.

He’ll never let them go
, Alysia thought as Kral growled at his
daughter, her mate, and her adopted cubs.
He can’t just forget about a challenge like this
.

“Kill us,” Sarik continued, “and you end your own blood. You end your line and any chance you have at progeny who will determine the course of this world. Or you can do the bravest thing you have ever done in your life: yield, and allow your children to be strong.”

Can I block him before he goes for them?
Alysia thought, desperately considering angles, what weapons she had, and how many people would try to get in her way.

She had a knife in her hand when Kral took a step back, then another, and another, each swifter than the last. Only when he was no more than a shadow against the back wall did he say, “Stand,
jeraha’rahvis
. Stand and take your place.”

Alysia stared, unbelieving.

Was it over?

“You don’t need that,” Christian said, touching the back of her hand that held the firestone knife.

“Thanks,” Sarik said as Jason helped her to her feet. Then she turned and lifted both of the boys up, the action obviously symbolic. To her father, she said, “You will return to the camps and let the queen know of the changes to the Kral clan?”

“Sana’kaen,”
Kral answered, and turned stiffly to leave, refusing to meet the gaze of any other member of Onyx.

After they all watched Kral slink out the door, Sarta cleared her throat, capturing everyone’s attention before she said, “There is still a matter to be addressed here.”

Onyx
. The confrontation had narrowed down to Sarik,
her father, and her tribe, but there was another world around them wanting to know how it would be changed by these events.

“With permission from the leadership,” Sarik said, nodding toward Sarta, “I would recommend an impromptu Challenge in, say, two weeks. I won’t compete. Neither will my father. Onyx needs new leadership.” She looked at Christian and then turned her gaze to Alysia and asked softly, “What about you?”

Sarta also appeared interested in the answer, which wasn’t surprising, since Frost had been her guild for years before Alysia had joined.

“Frost needs new leadership as well. And new direction,” Alysia replied, looking up at Sarta, who nodded her approval. Challenge wasn’t until next summer; she had time to get into shape before then. To Jason and Sarik, she added, “I’ll keep in touch.”

Alysia didn’t intend to police the morals of her members—most of them would go their own way, as they always had—but SingleEarth was the fastest-growing and most powerful organization in the modern world. It would be madness to let those contacts just drift away.

Besides, Alysia wasn’t quite ready to abandon SingleEarth completely. She had learned things there, about life and about herself.

“Then … we’ll see you around,” Jason said warmly, before turning his gaze to Christian to ask, “You and I, we aren’t going to have a problem, are we?”

“Only if you try to give her back,” Christian replied, earning an exhausted glare from Sarik.

Alysia watched the exchange with amusement. Christian had known Kral’s carefully molded daughter, Sahara. Would he ever understand how much she had changed?

“Though, just for the record, you do know she
shot
you, right?” Christian said.

Sarik tensed, but Jason answered, “I figured that out, yes.”

Yet he didn’t take his hand from hers.

“Well, you two crazy kids have fun, then,” Christian said.

The group started to break apart, each going their own way. Once Sarik, Jason, Jeht, and Quean were gone, someone asked, “Who’s going to clean this up?”

Alysia turned toward Kevin, who was looking despondently at the blood-spattered floor as if it were the worst thing to ever happen to him.

“You asked first, so you get the prize,” she replied.

Christian started to ask, “What about—”

He stopped when Alysia’s phone buzzed. The text message read,
welcome back, Boss

A number came up this time, at least, which meant she was able to reply,
Not yet
.

you will be

Ben?

you have a cute obsession with names

It had to be Ben. The Frost operator, always an enigma, could pass as a geeky college frosh.

“Who is it?” Christian asked, impatiently watching her tap buttons on her phone.

“A friend,” she replied, “I hope.”

I’m planning to turn Frost upside down
, she texted. If he wasn’t on her side, she was going to be in trouble.

She wanted to make Frost into a modern guild, to go beyond their reputation as brutal assassins. They could partner with SingleEarth, whose document and electronic departments needed the support, and who desperately needed a strong arm from time to time. It wouldn’t be a partnership popular with all members, but it would be profitable enough to overcome most reluctance, as long as Alysia had the important people on her side.

i’m with you, Boss
, Ben replied.

She shut the phone as Christian approached and wrapped an arm around her waist.

“It’s going to be crazy around here for a while,” he said. “Kral left Onyx a royal mess. Are you going to stick around to help?”

“I’ll be here,” she answered. “To help, or hinder, or make all the little Bruja mercs jump like grease on a hot griddle.”

“Business as usual, then?”

Chaos and crisis, with a side of piss-people-off and rebuild-the-world.

“Nah,” she said, considering, “this will be something completely new.”

W
HAT NEXT
?
L
YNZI
wondered. Jason and Sarik had called to say they were on their way back, but Sarik had followed that comment up with a rapid explanation of how she was planning to create a new position for herself and might need to resign as mediator. She hadn’t included Jason in the statement, but Lynzi knew that where Sarik went, Jason would follow.

That left Lynzi once again in charge of Haven #4, as she had once been many years ago, when she had granted SingleEarth the right to use her territory as a Haven in the first place.

She stared at the computer screen and started to write the advertisement for an open mediator position six times before
she decided instead to email Joseph, the man who had resigned at the start of this whole strange fiasco.