Chapter 17 #2
Maksym led them away from the rest of the group until they were standing just inside the tree line.
“What happened?” Kira demanded as soon as they were far enough away to have a modicum of privacy.
“Was any of your party out of sight during your search?” Maksym asked instead.
His question brought Kira up short. “Roderick was.”
“Everyone was at one point or another,” Finn answered.
“True, but Roderick was the only one who spent a significant chunk away from the group,” Kira said.
Hours in which he could have been doing anything.
“Why?” Kira asked.
“Why else? Betrayal.” Maksym met her gaze with a flinty one of his own.
“Someone fiddled with the gate. I don’t know when.
I don’t know how. We’re lucky Wren believes in a well-rounded education.
If I hadn’t spent time under Silas, I might not have realized that the gate’s circuits had been altered.
The moment we tried to return to Ta Sa’Riel it would have self-destructed.
And before you ask, no, I don’t think humans could have done this. They’re not advanced enough.”
“What made it go off then?” Kira asked.
Obviously, they hadn’t tried to return through the world gate. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing here. He’d be dead.
“Remote detonation,” Maksym announced.
“You detonated it?” Finn asked in surprise.
“Had to. We couldn’t get hold of anyone on your side, and I couldn’t risk you trying to return to Ta Sa’Riel. You might have taken Roake’s gate with you. This was the best option, all things considered.”
“You took a risk,” Finn chided. “If we’d been any closer, we might have gotten caught in the explosion.”
Maksym shrugged his massive shoulders. “Had to protect the House. It all worked out anyway.”
That was Maksym. Always looking on the bright side.
“None of this explains why you mentioned betrayal,” Kira said suddenly.
The gate could have easily been tampered with prior to their arrival. Maybe even shortly after the attack. It hardly merited a claim of treachery.
“Ah, that.” Maksym scratched his cheek. “One of Caius’s pod tried to kill me.”
Kira gave him a frustrated look. “You should have led with that.”
Maksym caught her arm when she would have bolted back to check on Jin. “He’s safe enough. Dylan’s not going to let anything happen to him. The oshota’s a mama lu-ong when it comes to his charges.”
Kira struggled out of his grip, the knowledge that she only escaped because he let her doing nothing for her temper. “Why did you ask if any of them were out of our sight over the last few hours?”
“Because that gate wasn’t supposed to go up until I found you,” Maksym confessed. “So, either, I made a mistake when setting up the charges. Or—”
“Someone else detonated the world gate,” Kira finished.
Maksym patted her on the head. “Very good, youngest.”
“Do that again and I promise you’ll lose that hand,” Kira threatened.
“We can’t have that. Auralyn enjoys being the only one-armed warrior in House Roake.”
“Why am I surrounded by ridiculous people?” Kira lamented.
“Because they match your own absurdity,” Finn announced.
Kira looked over at him. “You know—you don’t always have to have the last word.”
“How else am I to be heard?”
Kira narrowed her eyes at his faint smile. One of these days—
As if sensing her thoughts, his smile widened in challenge.
Rather than engage, she focused on their plight. “It’ll probably be weeks or months before Harlow sends someone after us.”
There were no plans for a check-in. If he even had the resources to spend on them with everything else going on.
“We need to find the ship the pirates used to get here,” Kira decided.
Pirates weren’t exactly the trusting sort. She doubted they would have let themselves be stranded. The chances of their bosses deciding they weren’t worth the price of retrieval were too great.
“I might be able to help with that,” Maksym announced.
He let out a low whistle.
A green eyed Tuann woman marched through the trees, shoving a bound human in front of her.
“We may have come across one of those pirates,” Maksym announced with a cheeky grin.
Kira’s gaze went from the subdued pirate to the Tuann beside him. “I thought you said you were attacked by Caius’s pod.”
“Just one of them. And of course, I dealt with him before he could become a true threat.”
“Az and Bez will be pleased to know Arly survived and is not a traitor,” Finn said.
Kira watched Arly’s tight expression. “Are we sure about that?”
The Tuann didn’t seem like she was enjoying her good fortune. If anything, she looked resentful. Then again, she’d just survived an attack by someone she’d probably trusted for decades. A betrayal on that level tended to challenge the bottom line of even the most stable individuals.
“What are the chances Az or Bez are in on this?” she asked.
The woman’s eyes burned as she met Kira’s gaze. In that brief moment before she masked her emotions, she was laid bare. Her fury and helplessness on full display.
“I see,” Kira said.
It seemed Caius had chosen wisely in at least one of his subordinates.
Arly wasn’t upset about her friend’s loss or their suspicions. She was enraged because she thought Tage wasn’t the only traitor among them.
“Arly?” Bez’s surprise morphed to joy as Arly shoved the pirate to his knees.
Arly stiffened as Bez rushed in her direction.
“Thank the Mea’Ave. I thought you were dead.”
Something in Arly loosened. She let Bez hug her, leaning in and closing her eyes for a brief moment before straightening.
Bez didn’t notice Arly’s attempt at distance, staring at the other Tuann with glossy eyes.
If Bez was the traitor, Kira was having a hard time seeing it. His reaction seemed genuine.
There was a gasp from the other side of the ruins.
Kira looked over to find Az standing there. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.
As if unable to help herself, she drifted a step closer. “You’re alive.”
A sob escaped her. Then she was running.
Arly’s startled gaze found Kira’s right before Az crashed into her. Automatically, she curled her arms around Az’s trembling shoulders.
“Quite the heart wrenching reunion, wouldn’t you say?” Jin asked, coming up beside Kira.
“The question is whether it’s too heart wrenching.”
She couldn’t decide.
Jin’s expression was knowing as he looked up at her. “Trouble in paradise then?”
“When isn’t there?”
Jin chuckled as Kira crouched in front of the kneeling pirate. She poked him in the forehead. “Hello! Anyone in there?”
The human moved his head away from her with a nasty glare.
Kira grinned, enjoying his anger. It was always so fun to torment people like him. “Looks like we’ve got a live one, Jin.”
“Oh, goody.”
Maksym cuffed the human on the back of the head. “Watch how you look at her. I’ll dig your eyes out.”
The human demonstrated the lack of sense his species was sometimes known for as he glared over his shoulder.
Maksym’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “Someone’s quite fearless, aren’t they?”
The oshota looked like he was enjoying himself.
“Wren never mentioned your predilection for torture,” Raider commented.
Maksym shot him a close-mouthed smile that didn’t quite touch the rest of his face. “You’ve survived several training sessions under my tutelage and you’re just now realizing how much I get off on making others suffer? Tsk, tsk, little junior. I thought you were smarter than this.”
Jin made a strangled noise at Raider’s expression.
“None of you are making it off this planet,” the pirate snarled.
Arly kicked him in the back, sending him sprawling. He landed face first in the dirt, unable to catch himself since his hands were bound behind his back. “Speak when spoken too.”
The human managed to squirm onto his side. He spat at Arly. “You’ll die a dog’s death. My friends—”
“Yeah, yeah, they’ll kill us. We can guess.” Raider squatted in front of the stranger, taking Kira’s place as she moved away. “These friends—one of them wouldn’t happen to be a sniper, would they? Because if so, I have sad news for you.”
“Do you think he knows we already killed their ambush party?” Kira asked.
Raider snapped his fingers as if he’d forgotten. “Oh, right, the ones who bought themselves a dirt nap.” He smirked at the pirate. “Guess that makes you the last one standing, friend.”
Jin shifted closer to Kira. “I really hate when he does that.”
“What? Smile?” Kira asked.
“Yes.”
She didn’t know why. Kira had her own version of that smile. One that said she was looking forward to taking apart whoever that smile was aimed at. Slowly. Painfully. With great attention to detail.
All the Curs did.
Now that he was a real boy, Jin would have to work on a smile of his own.
“We only really have one question for you,” Raider said conversationally. “I suggest you answer it.”
“You’re just going to kill me anyway.”
“Probably,” Raider mused. “But there’s death—and then there’s torture. I guarantee the former will be a lot less painful.”
“I could help you. I know things.”
“That’s debatable. Either way, relationships are built on trust. And, friend, your credibility is at zero,” Raider said, not unsympathetically.
The man spat in Raider’s face.
Kira made a regretful noise in the back of her throat. “That’s too bad.”
Not smart. Not smart at all.
Raider was motionless, his eyes cold and dead as he stared at the man, letting the spit ooze down his cheek.
Jin gagged. “Wipe it off, for goodness’ sake.”
“What’s the matter? Got a problem with bodily fluids?”
“Not just him,” Bez said, staring at Raider like he’d never seen him before.
Raider’s chuckle made the human’s expression change from defiance to caution. He flinched as Raider slowly reached up to wipe the spit away.
“You’ll have to forgive my companions.” Raider’s smile was back again. It deepened, becoming scarier. “Their stomachs are a touch weak. Too weak for what needs to be done. That’s okay though. I’m here.”
Bez’s stare was growing increasingly strange the longer Raider talked.
“Just so you know, we don’t really need your answer,” Raider informed the human. “This is more of a courtesy than anything. Torture is such ugly business. I like to avoid it when I can.”
Raider had the human right where he wanted him—hanging on his every word.
“You see—we already know most of what we need to know,” Raider explained.
The man finally reacted. “Bullshit.”
“Tell me if we get anything wrong,” Raider invited.
“You and your friends are part of a pirate clan that operates out of Titan. One of your buddies had a tattoo of a skull and a belladonna flower on his forearm. Someone sent you here to attack a bunch of wizards. You took a man hostage. Big guy. Kind of scary.”
By now, the human was barely breathing.
“Do you know why they left you and the rest behind? Because you’re expendable.” Raider watched the other man with a savagery that he usually kept carefully contained. “How did I do? Did I get anything wrong?”
“Look at his face,” Jin taunted. “I’m guessing you got it in one.”
Raider winked at the human. “I told you I already knew everything.”
The man had finally come to the realization that he wasn’t making it off this planet. He was going to die here.
His only choice was slow or fast.
“You never asked me a question,” the human blurted. As with most humans when they became desperate, he turned to bargaining. “Whatever it is, I’ll answer. You don’t even have to take me with you. Just let me go.”
Raider wagged his finger at him. “Ah. Ah. Ah. Trust, remember? You don’t have ours.
The clans are notorious for how tight-lipped they are.
You won’t tell me what clan you’re with.
It’s against the code, isn’t it? Mum’s the word when you’re captured.
Adds to the mystique. Just like I also know you’ll never tell me where your hideout is. ”
“That’s not true,” the human cried.
He was freaking out. If Kira hadn’t seen what he and his friends had done at the enclave, she might have felt sorry for him. As it was, she’d like to drop him out of an air hatch at ten thousand feet.
“You need me,” the human insisted.
Raider shook his head regretfully. “In fact, I don’t. You see Red over there. She has experience with you lot. Actually, you might know her.”
At his signal, Kira rolled up the sleeves of her jacket to expose the tattoo of two intertwined crescent moons facing in opposite directions, one above the other. Spiked lines radiated from them with small dots of varying sizes creating a curved line both above and below the moons.
Though not her only tattoo, it was one of the few that had always been visible.
She’d accumulated others in her time with the Tuann as her experiences changed her.
The majority, however, were usually invisible unless her primus was active.
As if they were drawn in invisible ink beneath her skin and its presence brought them back to the surface.
Harlow had told her those runes and symbols were a language. Proclaiming not just her lineage but the shape of her soul. Very few could read them. From what she knew even fewer had the number she did. It was one more mystery in the legend that was Kira.
Because they’d always been with her, the crescent moons were something of an identifying mark.
The human recognized them instantly. His voice lowered to a hushed tone. “The Reaper.”
Raider paused, sliding Kira a look that said he couldn’t wait to ask her about this later.
“Oh, good. You’re familiar. That saves time,” Raider crooned.
The man searched the air over Kira’s shoulder, his expression growing increasingly terrified.
Jin coughed and stepped forward. “Am I who you’re looking for?”
The lack of comprehension on the human’s face made Jin roll his eyes. “How about now?”
A J1N drone rose out of his backpack. It twisted to focus its “eye” on the kneeling human.
The man keened and would have tried to flee if Arly hadn’t kicked him back to the ground and then planted her boot on his chest.
“Why are they always more afraid of you than they are of me?” Kira complained.
It should have been the other way around. She was way less forgiving than Jin.
“Shh. There now. You’re scary too,” Jin soothed.
Kira sniffed and looked away.
“You still haven’t asked me your question,” the human insisted.
“Ah yes, I’m getting to that.” Raider looked irritated at the interruption. “I haven’t even hurt you yet. I don’t know why you’re so eager.”
“What did you do to make them so afraid of you?” Bez asked.
Kira and Jin looked at each other, their smiles appearing at the same time.
“The better question is what didn’t we do,” Jin drawled.
There was a time they hadn’t suffered pirates lightly. They’d taken any and every opportunity to fuck with them and the syndicates. It made life dangerous, but in that phase of her existence it was what she’d been looking for.
“Now for my question.” Raider leaned forward and waited for the human to look at him. “Where is your ship?”