The Warlord's Daughter (9 page)

“Ex-runner. War over means game over.” Vantos threw a hatch closed after checking the contents within then turned back to the man he’d rebuked. “I’ll run my fist through your face if I hear you saying anything else about those people’s injuries. They’re civilians, for blasted sake.”

He walked over to Aral and Kaz, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “What a hells hole, eh?” He turned to Kaz and winked. “But I have to say the view around here’s improved dramatically in the past few seconds.”

Kaz’s mouth thinned in annoyance. She was a battlelord’s second. No man would dare speak with her in such a brazen manner—if he wished to live to the end of the day. “Pity I can’t say the same.”

Vantos quickly covered his surprise with a laugh. “Most women appreciate a fine view.”

Kaz turned her disdainful gaze back to the crowd she was supposed to be searching. Her dismissal broadcast that, one, she wasn’t “most women” and two, his flirtation was beneath her regard.

“That hurts. I’m going to be sore tomorrow.” The trader’s manner might be deceptively casual as he gnawed on that infernal nanopick, but his probing eyes gave him away. He was curious about Aral, wanting to know more. “Interesting crowd,” he hinted, moving his chin in the direction of the incoming refugees.

“Extremely,” Aral said.

“Looking for someone?”

“I enjoy people watching.”

“Ah.”

More laughter erupted from the group of traders who clearly hadn’t tired of watching the refugees. To the sound of guffaws, one of the crowd-watchers called out to his cohorts, “And look—that one’s wearing eyeglasses!”

Glasses? Aral knew of only one being who wore them. His blood surging, he jerked his gaze around to a petite woman making her way through the crowded streets. She wore her hair loose and shorter than the other women. The wind kept picking up strands and blowing them around her face, teasing him with a peek at a pale slender neck and the curve of her jaw.

She was too small to radiate the kind of magnetism she did. She should be lost in the crowd; instead she was the eye of the storm as chaos spun around her. Maybe it was how she seemed to avoid interaction with everyone else, or the way her brown hair reflected the sunlight that bounced too harshly off everything else, strands that glowed red where the light hit it.

Just as he remembered.

A bolt of recognition, of anticipation, electrified him from head to toe. Awrenkka. At last.

W
REN STOLE
sideways glances at the other refugees and the traders at the docks. Who were enemies? Who were friends? A trio of traders stuck out for not laughing at the refugees. One of them, a handsome, boyish trader-pilot, bantered with a more subdued, tall and striking couple. The male of the pair caught her attention. He was tall, muscled, with slits for eyes and a hard mouth. In profile, he looked carved of stone. A human weapon, there was nothing soft about him. He belonged in uniform. On him trader garb—boots, leather flight jacket, trousers worn slung low around his hips and cinched by a thick leather belt—was a joke.

Wren pushed her windblown hair off her face, unable to pull her eyes away.
Don’t do this. It’s too dangerous.
She couldn’t risk drawing their attention. The other, boyish trader noticed, pulling some sort of thin stick out of his mouth to look at her. Then all three turned to look at her in unison. The tall, dark-haired trader stepped forward, as if to get a better view. As the crowd jostled her, she stared back. She knew that face, those eyes.
Blacker than midwinter’s eve and as haunted.

A punch of recognition, of déjà vu, hit hard. He looked like Aral. Fates, yes. Aral Mawndarr but with
short hair and all grown up. The lost boy who’d touched her heart, only to crush it.

Impossible. The real Aral was a battlelord and most likely dead. Word was that the Triad had killed or sentenced to death all the warlord’s top leadership—really, a type of genocide, of mass murder, too. Or did the definition depend on what side of the border the orders originated? If Aral
had
evaded getting caught, which she doubted, the very last thing he’d do was show up in a refugee camp to loiter in wretched conditions and with those he’d consider far beneath his exalted self, like these dockside traders. She’d never forgotten the callous way he’d dismissed her, as if she were miles beneath his regard. Seeing this look-alike reminded her of a very real danger: real loyalists on the lookout for her.

Ducking away, she let the crowd swallow her up. She wanted to run, but it would draw too much notice. She used her small size to wind past the other refugees and get as far away from the docks as possible. She had to get out of this trap of a camp, and she needed to do it quickly. Time was not on her side.

A
WRENKKA
. H
E’D FOUND HER
! A few thumps of his thundering heart later, she was gone, her violet eyes burning in his mind like an after-image of a too-bright light.

Why was she alone? Why had her chaperones abandoned her? Something inside him twisted at the sight of her small frame swallowed up by old, oversized clothes. She didn’t belong here in this camp. He knew the kind of sheltered life she’d led, yet she didn’t cower or skulk. It made him proud. She deserved a future, happiness.

Was he capable of giving it to her?

He hadn’t an example on which to base anything approaching a normal husband-wife relationship. He certainly wasn’t going to revisit the horrifying circumstances of his childhood. It hit him that he’d never extrapolated his rescue of her beyond the vague details of fleeing with her somewhere quiet and remote to live out their lives in peace, blessed peace. Now that the reality was upon him, he wasn’t sure how he was actually going to accomplish it. The devil was in the details.

He crushed the compulsion to go after her. The overly curious ex-runner was watching him. The man’s lingering perusal was sharper and more inquisitive than before. Aral tried to act as if he wasn’t affected by the sight of Awrenkka. His success in doing so was questionable.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your business here,” the runner said. “I’ve got some of my own.” He nodded in farewell to Aral and gave Kaz another wink. “See you around, sweetheart.”

“Boor,” she muttered, then she turned to Aral.

“It’s her,” Aral said. “Awrenkka.”

“The small woman with the glasses, yes. She fits your description, aside from the short hair.”

“It’s her. I’m sure of it. Ten years has changed her, but not enough.” Ten years had changed him, too, in fates knew how many ways.

“Did she recognize you?”

“It’s hard to say.” She’d given him a double take, however. Well, he’d know soon enough. He turned his gaze back to teeming throngs of refugees where Awrenkka had vanished. He’d lost her, but it was for the very last time.

K
EIR’S MIND RACED
as he strode away from the docks. The man and woman he’d encountered were covert operatives, both of them. He knew the look; the camps were filled with undercover law enforcement types, covert agents, spies, assorted fugitives, opportunists, and trusted former Drakken. His guess was that they were former high-class Drakken. They didn’t act anything like the bottom-feeders filling the refugee camps. Yeah, blue-bloods. The first clue was their precise queen’s tongue, carefully covering up their accents—a little too carefully. And the woman with the flawless skin like white marble and the red luscious lips, she was a cold one, all right. Exactly the kind of woman he avoided. Of course he did. She was Drakken.

He replayed the scene where they’d all stopped to look at the woman wearing the antique eyeglasses. It was clear that little refugee was a person of interest to the pair, and thus a person of interest to him. Fifty million queens rode on his guess why those two agents were in lovely Zorabeta. They were searching for the warlord’s daughter, too.

W
REN FLED THE DOCKS
, intent on eluding her hunters, both visible and not, as memories of Aral Mawndarr haunted her. Seeing the trader who resembled him so closely was disconcerting. The day on her father’s ship came back, and the few heartbeats of a glance she’d shared with Aral. That encounter had launched years of daydreams. There had been a real person before he disappeared behind that frosty sneer. She’d glimpsed him. Yes, a person a lot like her.

We’ll find a way out.
In her fantasies, he’d snatch her
hand and they’d be off. Together they’d leave their nightmares behind. Her belly gave a small, tight twist at the poignancy of that childish wish. It was Sabra’s fault, filling her impressionable young head with fairy-tales that made her so susceptible to the fleeting gaze she and Aral had shared as teenagers.

Enough silliness, Wren. Enough acting like a teenager with an unrequited crush. Aral is dead. The battlelords were hunted down and killed, every last one.

The pleasant scent of incense came as a surprise and a contrast to the bleakness around her, pulling her out of her thoughts. A priestess walked past, incense drifting in her wake like her robes. Smoke gray and pearlescent, they billowed around her body from head to feet. There was strength beneath that silk. Her skin showed the lines of a long life. Her serene, ageless eyes were paler than the heat-bleached sky. “May the goddess be with you,” she told Wren as she passed, bestowing blessings on all within reach.

“And also with you,” others called back to her.

As if connected by a string, Wren followed at a distance. The peace she’d felt in the sister’s presence was too wonderful to surrender so easily. It touched her, luring her.

Eventually the priestess disappeared behind the flap of a large tent. Inside, Wren glimpsed women resting, talking, and, to her delight, reading books. It was a makeshift temple. Ah, to be safe inside in the cool of the tent, immersed in learning the religion of the goddesses. The desire to join them almost made her step inside. To be able to be a priestess and spend the rest of her life in solitary, quiet prayer and study was a powerful draw.

Her presence in the sanctuary would have been an in
sult to these women, reading the
Agran Sakkara,
the bible of the religion that her father and the rest of her ancestors had worked so hard to eradicate.

She backed away from the entrance, trying to forget the sense of peace inside, the sense of belonging there and not here. Not in this life she’d been dealt. This camp.

She lingered, wandering outside the tent like a stray dog. The usual signs of day-to-day life were scattered around the perimeter: large containers of drinking water, assorted boxes, and freshly washed robes fluttering in the breeze on the drying racks.

Disguises for the taking.

Even as she recoiled from the idea, she embraced it. Wearing one of those robes would afford her freedom of movement and instant respect from even the guards. Believers were given credit for the hated warlord’s fall, after all. If Wren were a priestess, she’d have the same advantages.

She turned her eyes to the heavens and whispered in her best attempt at a prayer. “I have to make sure the treasure doesn’t fall into the hands of the wrong people. And—” she swallowed “—that I don’t fall into the hands of the wrong people.”

Sorry, Sabra.
She plucked one of the outfits off the drying line and dropped it over her head. The robe swallowed up her small frame. It took a fistful of fabric for her to raise the hem high enough to keep it from tangling in her boots. She’d barely gotten the garment over her head when footsteps thumped behind her. There was no time to pull on the hood.

“Hello, miss.”

It was another refugee, not a guard. She tried to slow
her bouncing heartbeat. He was thin, almost emaciated like so many people here, with heavy tattooing on one side of his face and a Drakken eagle on his forearm, revealed by his rolled up sleeve. Former Imperial Army, she knew the look. He was one of the lucky ones, or one of the smart ones, to have made it into the camp. His counterparts were either running for their lives, trying to eke out an existence as a pirate, or awaiting execution for war crimes.

“I said hello.”

“Hello,” she mumbled back, and scooted past him. The smell of food alerted her to a mess tent in front of which snaked a long line of refugees waiting for a meal. Keeping her eyes down as piously as possible, she took a spot at the end of the line.

Instantly she was urged to go to the front. “You first, sister.”

“But—”

“Please, sister, go on ahead.”

Dressed as a priestess, she received assistance at every turn. She was given a tray and as she proceeded down the line items were plopped onto a plate until it was full. She took the meal and searched for some shade, one hand grasping the hem of the robe to keep it high.

Boots crunched behind her. The ex-soldier was back. She’d thought she’d lost him.

“We were on the same ship,” he said. “They kept you women away from us space hands—smart move on the captain’s part.” He glanced in one direction then the other and leaned closer. “You came from that all-female school planet, didn’t you? You weren’t wearin’ priestess robes.”

She scurried away. The robe tangled with her boots.
She hoisted the hem higher with one hand and almost dropped the tray.

He kept pace with her. “I took you for a virgin. Even then. See, I’m never wrong about that.”

Her cheeks blazed. She hurried away from him, winding through the crowd with her tray of congealing food. She couldn’t afford to attract attention, and that seemed all she was able to do.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around. “I’m not done talking to you, sister.” The soldier’s eyes were angry, his mouth hard and unhappy. It wasn’t so much rape she feared, but an incident leading to her being discovered. “Not all of us spent our days killing believers. Some of us were good and loyal soldiers. We kept the Coalition from invading your all-girl world. Invading
you.
How about a little respect?” He twisted his fist in the fabric of her robes and jerked her toward him. “C’mon, little sister, give me some because I know you ain’t really no priestess—”

Wren shoved the tray into his face. Sputtering, he wiped cooked vegetables from his eyes. “You freepin’ bitch. I’m gonna take you behind the tents and—”

She drove her knee upward. His strangled cry barely registered before she rammed his chin with the heel of her palm. He hit the ground hard, sitting there stunned.

Dust choked her and coated her glasses. The crowd moved back, forming a human arena for the fight. They were cheering, the noise thunderous. He was going to ruin everything. He was going to get her caught and killed.

He got back up and charged her. She raised the tray above her head, consumed by a primitive, bloodthirsty
urge to finish him off. She hit him across the head. The impact traveled up her arms and made her teeth clap together. He went down again, got up, and then passed out.

Booing shook her back to reality. What had she done? Shame squeezed her lungs in an invisible vise. Once again she’d loosed the beast inside her. She’d lost control of her temper, and it was ugly indeed. At least she stopped before she killed this time, but it was little consolation. The incident drove home how dangerous she was. She couldn’t even get a bite to eat without causing horrifying behavior in someone else. Maybe she ought to turn herself in to the authorities right now and save the galaxy from herself.

She blinked at the crowd churning around her. Male, female, everyone was an enemy in that moment. Army veterans stalked past, glaring and giving her dirty looks, believers tugging on her sleeves, pleading for blessings and reacting with expressions of disbelief when she didn’t know how to respond. A sea of people. Of strangers.
Of hunters.

“Move on! Show’s over!” Guards had arrived to disperse the crowd.

The necessity to remain free overwhelmed every other thought except a gut-deep compulsion to find safety. She dove headlong into the crowd. The trailing fabric of her robe tangled around her ankles. She tripped. It sent her glasses clattering to the ground. Instantly they were crushed by the boots of someone in the throngs of people.

Blindly she ran a few more steps—and slammed into a solid body. “Whoa, whoa,” the man said. Gasping, she tried to twist free. “Don’t be scared. I’m only trying to
help, sister. I’m a trader, not a cop. I saw you earlier near the docks. You weren’t in the order then. Now look at you. A priestess.” He chuckled. “I usually have the opposite effect on women.”