Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Kolt
There was no time to question Skye when she hurried into the room and dumped an armload of curious items onto the bed. There wasn’t even time to ask if she’d been the one to make the noise that had startled me back into alertness before she put a finger to her lips and doused the light.
Despite feeling her kneeling beside me and being comforted by the touch of her hand on my arm, I didn’t know what was going on—until I heard it. Footsteps. Slow and deliberate, the thumps of boot leather against the floor marched ever closer.
I held my breath, aware that Skye hadn’t pulled the door to the hidden space closed. The only things hiding us were the dark and a rack of costumes covering the opening. That wouldn’t be much protection if an Imperial guard was looking for us.
The footsteps hesitated in the dressing room, and Skye gripped my arm.
I wondered if she had the blaster at the ready, but even whispering to ask would give us away.
I imagined I could hear the slow breathing of the person standing near our hiding place, which made me even more determined not to breathe.
Then the lights flashed on outside our hidden room. Despite the rack of clothing covering the entrance, light seeped through the hanging costumes. In the shadows, I could make out Skye crouched beside me, holding the blaster by her side with a fierce expression on her face.
“I told you it wasn’t here.” The shrill voice sounded nothing like a Zagrath guard. It actually sounded a lot like the stage manager we’d encountered earlier.
“I was sure I brought my cape to the theatre,” another voice said, this one softer and higher. “And I thought I saw Athena with someone who was wearing it.”
I glanced at the red cape that Skye had discarded, lying in a tired heap on the floor. She frowned, as if giving herself a mental kick.
“Why would Athena have your cape?” The extravagant costumes hanging on the rack rustled. “If she’d borrowed it, she’d have hung it here. See? No capes.”
“You’re right. It’s not here. Someone else must have taken it, thinking it was theirs.” A heavy sigh. “I’m sure it will turn up.”
“Whatever you do, don’t tell Athena that I let you into her dressing room. She’d have my head.”
A giggle. “Your secret is safe with me. Thanks for letting me back in to look for my cape.”
“It’s fine. I wasn’t far from the place when you caught up to me.” The lights flicked off. “But let’s not make this a habit. You know the Imperial guards are cracking down on activity after hours.”
“We’re a theatre. They can’t expect us to hold all our shows during the day.”
A bitter laugh. “I don’t think the imperial guards care much about theatre or art or anything that involves ideas that go against theirs. We’re lucky they haven’t shut us down for good.”
“Lucky,” the woman repeated a bit sadly as the footsteps receded.
Then the voices grew too quiet to make out as the dressing room door closed, returning the space to darkness and quiet. Neither of us moved for another few beats.
When Skye finally stood, she blew out a breath. “Where in the hell is that string?”
She must have found it because the hidden room suddenly flooded with light. I flopped back onto the floor, relief washing over me even as my hand slipped on my leg.
“Son of a frostbitten prick,” Skye muttered as she looked at me and the blood pooling around my leg.
Then she was at the bed and pawing through the supplies she’d found. When she returned to me, she uttered a few more curious curses under her breath before pouring something powerfully astringent over my gash.
I bolted to a sitting position. “Tvekking hell, woman!”
“Sorry.” She dabbed cloth on my wound, not looking at all sorry. “I had to clean it so it won’t get infected. I thought Vandar were supposed to be badasses who felt no pain.”
“Who said we felt no pain?” I said through gritted teeth.
She shrugged. “I always thought it was implied.” She fluttered her fingers at me. “You have enough scars to tell me you’re no stranger to getting hurt.”
That might have been true, but I had no memory of getting any of my scars. I felt reasonably confident they’d all hurt. “I am sure I did not try to accumulate scars.”
“I don’t know about that. You raiders are pretty proud of being battle-hardened.”
My only reply was a grunt as she patted my leg dry and unspooled a length of silver tape, cutting it with her teeth.
“I know this isn’t typical treatment,” she said, hovering the tape over my leg, “but I’m not a trained medic so I don’t think you want me attempting to sew you closed.”
“I do not.”
She nodded. “Thought as much. I’m going to close the wound with tape and then wrap it. That should do the trick.”
I eyed the tape and the brightly colored fabric. “You are using theatre supplies?”
“They don’t exactly have a med bay here. It’s either stage supplies or nothing.”
I wasn’t sure which option was preferable, but I let her continue. At least the bleeding had slowed. She was correct that my two biggest risks were infection and bleeding out. If she could stop those, the rest could wait until I returned to a Vandar warbird.
Warbird. That was what we called our ships. I smiled at the familiarity of the word and the hazy images it provoked. More than images, sounds. Thinking of a warbird brought to mind the echo of shouts and the thundering of boots on steel.
“You okay?”
I glanced up and saw that Skye was finishing wrapping my leg. She’d wiped away the dried blood that caked my thigh, and she handed me a clean cloth damp with astringent.
“I remembered something,” I told her as I took the cloth. “Vandar ships are called warbirds.”
“Yep. They’re supposed to be massive.”
“You’ve never been on one?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “You guys don’t exactly give tours. The only way a human woman gets to see the inside of one is as a captive, or war bride, as you call it.”
The tone of her voice made my spine prickle, but I bit back a response as I wiped the blood from my hands.
She stood after cleaning her own hands and gathered the supplies. “Feel better?”
“I do.” My voice cracked. “Thank you.”
She brushed aside my thanks with a flick of her hand. “The last thing I need is for you to keel over. You aren’t much use during an escape if you can’t move.”
I looked around the small space. “We did not get very far.”
“Not yet,” she said with a grin. “And we escaped from a guarded prison, which I honestly didn’t think we could do.”
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head. “Nope. There were a million things that could have gone wrong. Some of them did, but we’re still here and we haven’t been found yet.”
“Now we must get through the city without being spotted and find a way off the planet so we can warn the Vandar not to fly into the Zagrath trap.”
“Once you’re in better shape.” She arranged the supplies on the floor next to the wall, pulled the door shut to close us in, and jerked her head toward the bed. “And that means you need to take the bed and sleep.”
“I am fine on the floor.”
She huffed out a breath. “This again? You gave me the bench in the cell. This time, you get the bed. Besides, you’re injured and in no state to argue with me.”
The thought of her sleeping on the hard floor made me scowl. “I am in every state to argue.”
Now she laughed. “You really are night season mad, you know that?” She hooked one arm under mine and heaved. “If you like, we can continue arguing once you’re in bed.”
She was right that I was too weak to put up much of a fight, as loath as I was to admit it. And the bed felt better than the floor. Once she’d gingerly lifted my leg so that it was slightly elevated on the bottom bed post, the throbbing in my thigh became barely noticeable.
I shifted myself as close to the wall as I could, grabbing her arm before she could pull away. “Thank you for risking yourself for me. Truly. You did not have to do what you did to save me.”
She met my eyes, her own softening. “Yes, I did. We’re in this together, and you would have done the same for me.”
That was true. I pulled her closer. “But now that you have returned safely, I am not letting you go again.”