Steel Dominance (22 page)

“Here.” Dankyo squatted, and his warm hand took one of hers and placed a glass of wine into it. “Won’t be much longer.”

She opened her mouth to speak.

A bang in the sky across the river made him turn his head. “Ah. Here it is.” The moon hadn’t yet risen, and the sky had been dark except for the tiny twinkling dots of stars.

The bang quickly echoed into a chorus of thumps. Like a grandiose fireworks display, lights trailing white sparks launched upward from the Ottoman side of the river. When everyone stood and crowded to the riverside edge of the ramparts, Dankyo drew her to her feet.

The timber squeaked on the stone as he pulled a chair closer to the backs of the small crowd. He hoisted her onto it. Now she could see over their heads. His arm around her waist steadied her. “Can you see?”

“Yes,” she whispered, afraid to speak loudly in case someone protested over a slave being given such a good observation spot.

In the water, silver dribbles ran across the river toward them as the rockets above arched closer. Some spun down directly above and popped into a cascade of smaller lights. Some continued soaring overhead.

“They’ll get to midcity before they burst, Sofia. Beautiful in a way, I suppose. Such a waste of energy, though.”

She looked down at Dankyo. His blunt fingers moved in circles at her waist, caressing her hip. For a military man, he appreciated beauty and the arts far more than she’d first imagined. It made him who he was, and to her eyes, so much more a person than a man who simply delighted in war. But she wasn’t for him, or so it seemed.

“Can we go now?” she asked quietly, too quietly for anyone to overhear.

Something of her mood must have communicated to Dankyo for he watched her, still circling his fingers. “Very well.”

Zigzag followed them, hobbling. Once out of the light, Dankyo took her hand in his.

She stopped. “The stupid captain back there broke off some part on Zigzag.”

“I’ll speak to him. He may not have known what he did.”

Her tone was cutting. “Sure he didn’t.” Scuttling noises arose. In the night, she imagined everything from zombies to bats. “What’s that?”

With a loud crackling fizz and a brightening of his purple eyes, Zigzag pounced and bit. Blue sparks of voltaic electricity sizzled. Tail erect and proud, he came toward her carrying a wriggling clockie in his mouth. And dropped it at her feet.

“Uck.” Sofia screwed up her mouth.

“The first of them. Good dog! One less to scribble on the walls.”

“He’s not a dog,” she said drily. With his nose, Zigzag nudged the crunched-up clockie closer, all mashed golden legs and flopping springs. He looked at her and whined.

She looked at him.
What does he want? This is meaningful behavior. A puzzle
. Something clicked.

“Ahh.” She crouched and rummaged, and finally found a tendril on the broken clockie that looked perfect. “Turn over.” She tipped Zigzag onto his side with a
clonk
and raised his leg to peer at the broken bit. Moonlight made it hard to see. With a bit of squinting and fiddling, the new piece screwed in.

The clock dog wriggled to his feet, then bounced a few times. His cold tongue licked her wrist—a silver flicker in the strengthening moon.

“Grand.” She grinned at him. “You’re fixed. Amazing, though, he’s almost self-repairing.”

“God. As bad as Henry, you are. An egghead, definitely.”

Though on the surface it appeared a compliment, irrational anger surged. The muggy grayness blanketing her; his denial by omission of any future; everything crowded in. She shot to her feet and fairly spit at Dankyo.

“What would you know? Damn stupid soldier. I worked years to get where I am. Damn you!” She choked back a sob. “Damn you.” She sprinted off.

By the time he caught up with her, she’d reached the corner where the ramparts of the compound turned west away from the river. Mad squeaks and whirrs told of Zigzag following behind.

When she dodged the touch of his hand, he pulled her to him by a handful of cloth, then shoved her up against the wall next to the door lintel that led down off the rampart. Air whooshed from her. She coughed, then glared up at him.

“What? What is it? Tell me.”

She tried to kick his shins. He crowded her.

“Sofia!”

Glaring some more didn’t do much. Neither did wriggling, since he held her arms at her sides. Anger gave her wings, or at the least freed her tongue so she could say all the bad things she needed to.

“If you don’t like me, just say so. Okay? Say it to me!”

“What?” He stared. His mouth opened a smidgeon, and then he paused. “I know you’re not insane, so I assume you don’t like being called an egghead. That was not an insult. But that’s not all of it, is it?”

She froze.
Now’s the time. If I don’t say it, then it might be forever unsaid. God forbid
. But…she’d messed up. “Now you really think I’m awful.” She shook her head frantically, blinking back tears. As if crying would help.

He released her, stepped away, then watched her swipe her forearm across her eyes. “Sofia. Please, let’s sit and talk.”

So they sat in the corridor. He pulled her between his legs and held her about the waist. More touching, damn him again. Her breathing slowed until at last she let her head flop back into his body.

No one else was coming near. From the
oohs
and
aahs
a second wave of clockies was coming in.

“Are we good now?” he asked, chin on her head. The low reverberations of his speech calmed her.

“I guess. Sort of.” She rocked the back of her head against him. “We need to figure things out.”
Do it
. Inhale. “Are you leaving me after we’re finished here?” Breathing seemed optional while she waited.

“Hell.” He clicked his teeth together, then let out a long sigh. “Do you want me to?”

She stiffened. That was not promising. “No. Of course I don’t.” Now, say
good
. Say it. But…he didn’t. There was only the regular in and out of his chest, and silence. Maybe if I prompt him? “And you?”

Nothing.

We agreed at the start this was only temporary. I wanted it that way. Blame yourself, stupid
. She hung her head. The throb in the middle of her forehead heralded tears.
I will not cry.

He heaved out another breath and shifted position. With his touch as gentle as a parent’s to a child, he stroked her hair.

FUCK
. DANKYO USED the word about once a year and only in his head. But if ever there was a right time, it was now.
Fuck. I set this up. I made this come about. I made her submit to me…or at least I saw the opportunity and let her see her own nature. Now I reap what I sowed.

The tight, shallow way Sofia breathed, and the
skritch skritch
sound of her nails on his coat signaled her nerves. She waited for him, poor thing.
I’m hurting her
. His heart seemed to swell with some thick emotion—sadness, even love maybe?
God, surely I can do this?

He searched inside again. Knowing himself was a priority, wasn’t it? In any dangerous situation, knowing how far he could take his body and mind was essential. Battle dragged you to the edge and sometimes even gave you a swift boot up the rear end to send you over. Today love had trumped battle. He just could not figure himself out.
Truth, then. At least give her that.

“I don’t know.”
I don’t know, because whenever I try to think of you and me at House Kevonis, I can’t. You don’t seem to fit.

That was the truth too. But he wasn’t saying that out loud. After all he’d said and done these last few days, he couldn’t imagine the two of them together back there, where he belonged. And he didn’t know why.

The little sound she made tore a hole in his chest. “You don’t know? Okay. Then, when will you know? How long do you think? I mean, I guess I sound silly and immature or something, and I don’t want to rush this, but I thought we…the two of us…” She choked.

“Oh, love—” What could he say?

“Don’t.” Sofia sniffed. “Don’t call me that. Please. Not if you don’t know.” She sat up and turned to face him. After a last-ditch grab at her shoulders, he let her. His hands trailed down her arms. “Can you at least tell me something? Why? I mean…” She swallowed, looked downward, and shook her head in little jerks. “I feel like the world has turned inside out. God, I’ve been stupid.” Then she met his gaze again.

The fierce determination in her eyes made him absurdly proud. Sofia was no pushover. A kitten with claws.

“Don’t you even want to try?”

Of course.

He opened his mouth to answer, but she babbled onward. “To see if we can be together somehow? Not even try? I suppose I’m nothing much to boast about, though, am I? Penniless. Is that it?” She poked his chest, and he bit back a growl, but she poked him some more as she spoke. “Are you damn well waiting to see if I come good with the Clockwork Warrior?”

She was angry. But poking him was going too far. “Stop.” He gripped her palm. “Of course I care. You’re overwrought. I didn’t say anything like that. Stop and think.”

“Think? That’s it? That’s all you’re saying? Let me go!” She wrenched on her hand and he released her, then watched her struggle to her feet. “I’ll be a pretend slave. I’ll stay in the room with you, but don’t you dare touch me without my permission. All that stuff you told me”—she waved her hand—“we have to be careful or the Heraklos will pounce on us. All that never happened. I know there’s danger here, but nothing that wouldn’t have happened anyway—slave or not. Did you make it up just to get me in your bed? Did you?”

This time he did growl. “Sofia, you know that’s false.” Damn. He was never asking her for more time now. Anger seethed through him, though it didn’t affect him enough to make him illogical. This was small stuff compared to what he handled on a daily basis.
Is it? So why can’t I answer her in a way that makes sense?

Maybe because in his last few nightmares, the face of the woman buried in the snow had been hers. Was that why he shied away from keeping her with him?

Sofia backed away until she hit the opposite wall.

“You can’t leave without me.” Slowly, he climbed to his feet. Someone had to keep their head. “Follow.”

Even in the dappled light from the overhead explosions, he knew she was bristling at the command, from the quick intake of breath, and the stiffening of her stance. He nearly smiled. Didn’t, but nearly. He knew her so well.

As he negotiated the turns and angles of the stairs leading down, the thought hit him.
I know her, and she knows me. We do fit. Here. Why not there? At home? Fuck
. He didn’t understand himself. And how he was going to exist in the same room as Sofia without wanting to get her on her knees obeying him?—impossible.

I dug the grave, now live in it. A macabre saying, but I deserve it. Already, this is killing me.

Half the night, he sat on the sofa with his head in his hands, trying to figure himself out.

The morning dawned, and the pieces still wouldn’t fit. Here he had the world’s foremost puzzle solver within reach, and he couldn’t fix what had broken inside him. The idea of living with her, permanently, made his gut churn so badly it recalled to him the first few times he’d gone into battle.

Fear? Perhaps. But how could being with Sofia scare him? Maybe because the last woman he’d truly cared for had ended up dead beneath an avalanche?

Maybe.

An image flowed into his mind of him putting out his hand to take Sofia’s. Then his view shifted, and she wasn’t walking beside him at all. She was below. Her arm angled downward. The flesh on the back of her hand was shredded, down to white bone. Blood dripped, bright red blood that curled onto her wrist and soaked into the snow. The outline of her body beneath whiteness…a wisp of wet hair curled on the surface, and underneath the snow, she breathed…

Fuck.

He jerked awake, caught himself just before he fell forward. Dankyo blinked away dryness and grit. Just a daydream. Day nightmare?

Maybe he just wasn’t meant to be with a woman? He’d been single for so long the world shook off its axis whenever he contemplated being with Sofia. Yet despite her disdain, her curled lip, and smoldering glare, he stood and watched as she dressed to leave for the palace. Then she’d bent over quite deliberately, displayed her mostly bared ass and wiggled it. His cock was so hard it hurt.

When he sorted his head out, first priority was bending her over for that tease.

He recalled the bloody daydream. If she was his, surely that would never happen? He swallowed past the tightness in his throat and stared at his hands.

Chapter Twenty

Learning how to narrow her focus while studying had been a hard-won ability. But she could do it. Sofia blocked
him
out, tucked her misery away in a corner, and did the last few examinations of the Clockwork Warrior.

She’d sketched him, and paced and measured every dimension. Her goal was in reach. The moment enthralled her, buzzed through her veins, and taunted her.
Finally. Now to analyze it all
. The rest of the calculations could be done sitting at a desk.

She gnawed her lip and stared up at him and the cherry-red spikes on his head.
When I come back, I’m solving you. I am.

“What is it, Sofia?” asked Tansu. She looked up, as if she too saw something wonderful in the warrior. “Do you see a new thing?”

“Just my future.” She patted Tansu’s hand. “This may be the last day of your lessons.”

“Ah.” The rapt expression on her face made it clear Tansu had figured out what this meant. “You’ve been a good pupil. You could serve that nasty janissary that made us do this training, and he’d think you a wonderful slave. Though I know this is all so unnecessary to you.”

“Mmm.” She eyed Tansu, then glanced past her through the glass at the approaching Xiang.

Again the guard had been practicing. Even Dankyo never exercised his martial skills as hard as this woman. She’d come to wonder who would win in a contest between them. Fast was an inadequate word when describing Xiang with her whirling sword. Lightning was more apt. The rats had died on many days.