Chapter 12 #2
“No?” Kira’s smile widened to show teeth as the silence lingered “Then perhaps we can quit this dick measuring contest and get this shit show on the road before someone finds out what we’re up to. As you’re aware, we’re in a time crunch.”
“Pye,” Bez called to his companion, not taking his gaze off Kira. “We’re leaving. Get ready.”
A wiry man with curly black hair sat up from where he’d been laying down near the packs. He called an acknowledgment before ambling toward the gate.
“If you do anything to endanger my people, I won’t care whose heir you are,” Bez threatened.
“Looking forward to it,” Kira snarked back.
A flash of anger mottled Bez’s face. His fists clenched as the muscles in his arms bulged.
“Bez!” Silas hissed in warning.
Interesting.
Kira’s presence was often polarizing—through no fault of her own—but the effects weren’t usually this big or immediate.
Something else was going on, she realized.
The scent of burnt ozone had Kira falling back a couple of steps as her hand went to the replacement blade at her waist.
Finn snapped to attention. Raider doing the same on her other side.
No one got the chance to act on their urges as something large crashed to the ground at the base of the cliff.
Bez snarled, summoning a shield with one hand and drawing his blade with the other.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Maksym asked, straightening from his crouch with a feral grin.
“Maksym—what are you doing here?” Bez’s voice was a lot more cordial than when he’d been addressing Kira.
“I take it you haven’t heard.” The ginger menace nodded at Kira. “Wren’s her seon’yer. He tasked me to look over her while he’s otherwise occupied.”
Bez’s eyes bulged. “She’s his yer’se?”
Kira was a little insulted by his level of surprise.
“One of two.” Maksym scanned the platform and grinned when he spotted Raider not far away. “Ah, there’s the other one. Hello, troublemaker.”
Raider got a spooked expression at Maksym’s wave, mumbling something that sounded like “I’ve got to get out of here” before drifting to the far side of the platform. As far as he could get from Maksym.
“You were supposed to inform me when you were leaving,” Maksym told Kira, not seeming to notice Raider’s avoidance.
“Ah. Right. Forgot about that, but time was of the essence.”
“You had all night,” Maksym drawled.
Just then, the flushed face of a very angry boy appeared over Maksym’s shoulder.
Jin pinched the tip of Maksym’s ear and twisted. “What the hell is wrong with you? Who jumps off a cliff like that? No wonder Nixxy didn’t want your crazy ass joining her.”
Maksym winced but showed no other signs of discomfort as he lowered Jin to the ground. “You said you wanted to take the short cut.”
Jin fussed with his clothes, righting them before smoothing out the tussled locks on his head. “I never said jump off a cliff!”
“How is this my fault?” Maksym asked plaintively.
“It just is!” Jin stalked across the platform toward Kira and Raider. “I can’t believe you two idiots do things like this on a regular basis. How do you not throw up every time? I’m barely keeping my last meal down!”
Dylan and Roderick’s quiet arrival might have gone unnoticed if not for Bez’s loud scoff.
“Who invited Luatha?” Bez swiveled toward Finn. “Was it you? Should have known. Once an oath breaker, always an oath breaker.”
“Roddy’s here at my invitation,” Kira said.
“And the child? Did you invite him too?”
By child, Kira supposed he meant Jin.
“Nope. He showed up on his own.”
“He’s not coming with us,” Bez threatened.
“He is, actually.” Jin slapped Kira’s side with the back of his hand. “This one goes nowhere without me.”
Kira wasn’t sure how much she appreciated being referred to as “this one” but okay.
“You heard him,” she confirmed.
“Ridiculous!” Bez burst out. “This is who you’re sending? Why not just sign our death warrants and be done with it?”
He glanced back at Kira and shook his head again before stalking away.
“Don’t judge him too harshly, little heir,” Silas advised, not unkindly. “This entire affair has been hard on him and the rest of his pod. They’re not themselves right now. Caius means a lot to them.”
“It’s alright, Silas,” Kira said as her gaze lingered on Raider. “People in pain tend to lash out. I can understand that.”
She had plenty of experience, didn’t she?
As Silas moved away to operate the gate, Kira glanced down at Jin. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Pretty sure you’re not either. Remember—I was there when the emperor ordered your House to stand down.”
“We’re obeying his orders to the letter.”
“Right.” Jin snorted. “The letter. Not the intent.”
There was a difference. He knew that just as well as she did.
Kira glanced at Dylan.
“Don’t worry about him,” Jin said, reading her concern. “The emperor and I have come to an agreement. Dylan won’t inform on my movements or anything he learns in my company as long as I don’t try to shake him.”
Kira looked at Jin in surprise and no small amount of amazement. “I didn’t think a man like Torvald was capable of compromise.”
“I can be very convincing when I want to be.”
“I’m aware,” Kira said dryly.
Half the trouble they got into was a direct result of Jin’s instigation.
“Where are we heading anyway?” Jin asked, following her to the gate.
Kira was too lazy to explain. “Guess.”
“Sure thing.” Jin considered Bez and the rest. “Just as long as you’re okay with me doing my thing.”
“What thing is that exactly?”
“You know—the one where I irritate the living daylights out of everyone until they tell me what I want to know.”
Kira’s surprised laugh turned into an awkward cough as Bez and his companions glanced over at them.
Jin’s smile was sly as he watched her out of the corner of his eye.
Kira cleared her throat and tried to hide her smile. “Let’s hold off on that plan for now.”
Jin shrugged. “This is your op. I’ll do as you instruct.”
“That’ll be a first,” Raider remarked, coming up behind them.
“Done hiding?” Kira asked.
“You jest, but if you’d survived his attention over the past few weeks, you’d hide too,” Raider grumbled.
Maksym popped up beside them. “What did I do?”
Raider jumped. “Don’t do that.”
“So sensitive. Do we need to revisit our immersion training?”
Raider gave the other man an unhappy frown. “Why did it have to be you that Wren sent?”
“Because I’m the only one he trusted to make sure neither you nor the heir die on this trip. I’m a papa bird guiding his chicks through their first flight.”
“I’m not a chick. And this isn’t our first dangerous mission.”
Maksym tousled his hair. “You kind of look like a chick though.”
Raider shoved Maksym’s hand away, smoothing down the locks that had grown slightly shaggy over the last few weeks. “I do not.”
“I always pictured a tijit, personally,” Finn commented.
Maksym frowned thoughtfully. “I take your point. He does resemble one.”
Seeing Bez and his friend’s increasingly hostile stares, Kira thought now was as good a time as any to interrupt. “Children—let’s not give our companions any more reason to dislike us more than they already do.”
“They’ve already made their assumptions. You know how hard those are to change,” Raider dismissed with a shrug.
Jin nodded in agreement. “They’ll come around when she proves them wrong by doing something that is both breathtakingly heroic and horrifically stupid.”
“How long do you think that’ll take?” Raider asked.
“Depends on what’s on the other side. My guess—less than a day.”
Raider pursed his lips. “I say three.”
“A week,” Maksym interjected. “These Tuann are stubborn.”
“An hour.” Finn side-eyed Kira. “She has history.”
“You’re all ridiculous,” Kira muttered under her breath as Silas knelt in front of the gate.
Maksym poked Roderick’s arm. “What about you? What’s your guess?”
“I’m with her oshota. An hour sounds about right.”
Kira was no longer listening as Silas clasped his hands in front of his chest, closing his eyes like he was about to pray. The air around him warped. The pressure grew heavier and heavier until the hair on Kira’s arms stood up.
Silas’s clasped hands started to shake.
With a cry, he ripped them apart, coming to his feet in one smooth move as he forced his soul’s breath up and into the pillars.
He traced his hands in an oddly graceful obscure pattern.
A moment later, the tidal wave of ki he’d created crashed into the circuits of the gate. Only to recede like the waves of the ocean below.
It repeated that cycle. Again. And again. Each wave a little faster. Cresting a little higher. Until finally, they came so fast that Kira could no longer distinguish between waves.
“I really hate this part,” Raider grumbled through clenched teeth.
There was a spark at the gate’s center. Then a flare.
The air wobbled before steadying to reveal a slice of a strange world. Every leaf, rock and tree captured in exquisite detail.
The gate on the other side looked like it was located at the bottom of a rocky ravine. The piles of rubble pointed to ruins of some kind. As did the stairs carved into the bedrock of the hill, leading upwards.
“Did it do that last time?” Jin asked.
Kira shook her head. “No.”
On their trip from Ta Da’an to Ta Sa’Riel, they’d stepped through blind.
The only thing Kira could think to explain the difference was that the gate on the other side was an unsanctioned one.
“It’s ready,” Silas announced, looking a lot more exhausted than he had the last time Kira watched him do this.
“About damn time,” Bez snapped before his voice lowered to an angry mutter. “Still can’t believe I’m expected to play nursemaid in a situation like this. What is our House coming to?”
He ordered his companions through the gate with a jerk of the chin. They stalked through, the gate swallowing them one at a time.
“Quite the charming fellow,” Raider murmured, sliding past Kira on his way toward the gate.
Finn blocked him before he could go through. “Me first.”
“By all means. If you want to be first to get your guts scrambled and your brain fried from who knows what, I won’t stop you.”
Chuckling softly to himself, Finn drew his en-blade and stepped through the gate.
Raider took a deep breath and held it for a second. “The things I do for this family.”
Without giving himself time to reconsider, the human charged forward with all the grace of a bull.
“You ready for this?” Kira asked Jin.
He looked nervous.
“Of course,” Jin scoffed. “I do this all the time.”
He’d done this exactly once. Same as her.
“You sure?”
Jin smiled. Or tried to anyway. “Yeah. Totally fine.”
“Okay, after you then.”
Just like she knew he would, Jin responded to the challenge in her voice. He squared his shoulders and bellied up to the gate like he was preparing to jump off a cliff.
“Here I go,” Jin called to Kira.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she assured him.
With one last look up at the gate, Jin held his breath and plunged through.
Dylan went right after him.
Kira caught Roderick’s bicep on his way past. “Liara wouldn’t tell me what you’re after, but I know it’s something.”
Roderick removed his arm from Kira’s grip. “Relax—I’m not here to get in your way.”
“That would be easier to believe if I knew your true purpose.”
“Roake has its secrets. Luatha has its own.”
He had no intention of divulging those secrets, Kira saw. She hadn’t really expected him to. He was as loyal to her cousin as Raider was to her.
“I like you, Roddy. Don’t make me change my mind about that.”
It was the only warning she was going to give him.
“To my everlasting surprise, I feel the same about you.” Roderick smirked at whatever he saw on Kira’s face. “You’re good for your cousin. You’ve brought out a ruthlessness in her that will serve our House well.”
Kira didn’t know what to say to that. Or whether she should be insulted or flattered.
Roderick took advantage of her distraction to walk through the gate, leaving her as the last standing on Ta Sa’Riel’s side.
“My uncle has given me quite the cast of characters to wrangle,” Kira remarked.
“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Silas murmured.
“He always does.” Kira glanced at Silas. “Look after him for me, would you?”
“It would be my greatest honor, little heir.”
Kira grunted and stalked forward, stepping through the gate without a backwards glance.