Chapter Eleven
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
It was very nearly suppertime. Jileana had packed her second dress with Jaykun’s belongings. She had grown to like it very much and she didn’t have the heart to leave it behind. Besides, she might need it again some day … provided it lasted long enough for her to use it again.
Once that was packed, she wandered around the castle for one last look at everything.
She had much to tell everyone once she got home and she didn’t want to forget a single detail.
From the crotchety old cook who baked the bread she loved so much to the way the wind felt as she stood on the battlements of the castle.
She was up there now, walking slowly around so she could see everything in all directions, including the stormy clouds that hid Serenity from sight.
She heard a sound behind her and, startled, swung about.
The body that lunged at her was built as she was built, about the same height and weight.
But because she was taken off guard, when he plowed into her, he sent her sprawling backward.
He followed her every inch of the way down, then clambered up onto her body, straddling her.
His hand swung upward through the air. Dazed from striking her head, she barely registered the knife in his hand. He stabbed down.
But just before the weapon would have pierced the flesh of her breast, the man drew it back. That was when she registered that he was shaking like a leaf and … crying.
“Please don’t—” she began hesitantly.
“Shut up!” he yelled into her face. “I have to kill you! It’s my only choice!”
“No. It isn’t,” she said calmly, soothingly.
She could tell this man—this boy, really—was no killer.
He was perhaps desperate enough to kill—it was written on every ounce of his body—but he was no stone-cold killer.
This boy would be torn by tremendous guilt for the rest of his life if he succeeded in killing her tonight.
Not that he could anymore. He had lost his advantage of surprise and she could easily overpower him and take the knife.
“What do you know about it, prava?” he spat. “You don’t even belong here!”
“Perhaps not. But you don’t belong here with a knife in your hand.”
“You don’t understand!” he shouted into her face.
“I am a trega half-breed in a city of people who take one look at me and spit in my face. I make my living shoveling dung or digging ditches or scrubbing the sewage pipes. I am dirty all the time, starving all the time, lacking for a bed all the time! I need this gold piece! I need it to get out of here!”
“There are easier ways of getting gold,” she said gently. Gingerly.
“Not in this city! Not for me! Not for trega!”
“But don’t you see? The city isn’t going to be run by Krizans any longer.
The trega have come and will rule this city for many years to come.
Trega will infiltrate every part of it, live here, and build businesses here.
Businesses that will need strong, hard workers.
You will no longer be an outsider. You will be a part of the new order and the old will be brought down. ”
“But …” He hesitated and looked around himself nervously. Then he gripped the knife tighter and drew it higher. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Just shut up!”
“Can I at least know the name of the man who is going to kill me?” she asked in a calm and strong tone.
“What for?” he asked.
“Where I come from, knowing the name of our killer allows us to forgive him so we might enter the heavens with a light heart and no malice.
If we hold those feelings into our death, we risk becoming a shade, doomed to walk the world, haunting it for eternity.
Though I feel no malice toward you at the moment, I want to be certain my heart and soul are cleared.
“I …” He swallowed. “Dremu. My name is Dremu.”
“Dremu, you don’t have to do this. There are better ways. Dremu, I promise you. I can find an alternate solution for you.”
“Sure.” He scoffed. “You say that only because I’m going to kill you!”
“You aren’t going to kill me. If you were, you would have done so already.”
“I am too! You just … Stop talking to me!”
Jileana suddenly moved, one hand snatching the wrist of the hand holding the knife, the rest of her strong body bucking him off her, over her head, and hard onto his back.
She leapt after him, his wrist twisting until he cried out and dropped the knife.
The knife was in her hand an instant later and then it was she straddling his body and holding the knifepoint to the top of his throat.
He swallowed hard beneath the blade, his eyes wide and wild, panic in every inch of his body.
“Now you listen very carefully,” Jileana said. “Are you listening?”
He gave a ginger little nod, aware of the knife tip that was just shy of breaking his skin.
“There are better ways to earn gold and I am going to prove it to you. In fact, you don’t need gold at all to make your way in the world, live comfortably, and eat and have a bath whenever it pleases you. Besides, you are no killer, Dremu. You know it as well as I do.”
“B-but if I fail, the finia will beat me or order my death. I cannot stay here! She will find a way to punish me for failing to do as she demands!”
“Ah. So it is the finia who is behind this. Thank you. I was wondering who it might be. It was so clearly not your own idea. Tell me, Dremu, what do you know of my people?”
“Only that you are to be feared, that you are deadly and dangerous and that I should run in the other direction if I ever lay eyes on one of you.”
“Hmm. Then you know we are powerful and we are able to do things no one else can, yes?”
“I … guess so.”
“Then will you believe me when I say I have the power to make your life better?”
He swallowed again, nervous and confused.
Dremu couldn’t understand why she had not killed him the moment she got the advantage of him.
He couldn’t understand how she was talking about giving him what was, for all intents and purposes, a reward.
For that is what it would be. A life as described by her was all he had ever wanted, so it would be the ultimate reward from his perspective.
Why? Why would she give that to him after what he had just tried to do to her?
“I do not believe you, but I am willing to put myself in your hands and to see what comes of it. After all, it’s clear you have the upper hand and can do what you wish with me. You would be within your rights to have me killed to answer for my crimes against you.”
“No one is going to die tonight. Not you and not me. But you will learn to live … and to trust. Now come.” She pushed off him and gained her feet. She held out her hand to him and helped him up.
“What is this?”
Jileana whirled about at the sound of Jaykun’s demanding voice, quickly hiding the knife behind her back and standing between Dremu and Jaykun. “Jaykun! What are you doing up here?” she asked with a bright smile.
“Looking for you,” he said with a frown. “And here I find you with this boy?”
“Oh! You mean Dremu?” She laughed, hoping she didn’t sound nervous.
Clearly Jaykun had seen her sitting astride Dremu.
Now he was angry and distrusting. He was …
jealous. Yes, that was it! The temper in his tone and the aggressive tension in his body …
He was jealous! “Dremu and I have just met. He was telling me something very interesting about the finia. He claims it is she who has been behind the attempts made on your lives.”
“And how does he know this?” Jaykun asked.
“He … he overheard someone talking in the halls,” Jileana lied with an inward wince. She was not a very good liar, but she did not want Jaykun to punish Dremu.
“The fortunary,” Dremu piped up meekly.
Jaykun absorbed this with stony silence for a moment. “Very well. We’ll handle the finia.”
“Dremu will be coming with us tonight,” Jileana added hastily. “I am in need of a good servant and he was wanting a change of scenery.”
“Oh. I see,” Jaykun said slowly.
“Are you ready? We should be leaving as soon as possible for Serenity,” she said.
She heard Dremu inhale sharply and then another of those nervous gulps.
“Are we not going to eat first?”
“There isn’t time to eat, travel, and get you somewhere where you can … before dusk,” she said, moving past Jaykun briskly, hiding the knife in the folds of her skirt as she did.
Jaykun appreciated her discretion, that she wasn’t going to tell everyone she met about his curse.
He narrowed his eyes on Dremu and felt doubt swirling around inside him.
He could have sworn she had been astride him, a position that was not easily achieved if they had just bumped into each other.
It had seemed more blatantly sexual to him. Why else would she…?
He caught himself in the thought and the emotion accompanying it. What did it matter to him what she may or may not have been doing sexually? They had no commitment to each other, no ties. If she wanted to fuck his entire army, it should make no difference to him.
But damn, it did make a difference to him, he thought as he followed her back into the castle and down the stairs. At the very least she could wait until such time as they were done with each other.
But she was such a free spirit, going wherever she wanted to go from one moment to the next.
It was one of the parts of her personality that drew him so inexorably toward her.
But he found he was not of a mind to share her with anyone.
The whole point of him going on this trip so precipitously was so he could spend more time with her.