Chapter 21
Twenty One
Kira
Graydon nudged Flame with his blade. “Are you waiting for an invitation? Get off her.”
Abruptly, Kira realized how awkward their position was.
She shoved him off her. He went easily, moving carefully as he kept his hands in view at all times.
Kira scrambled to her feet.
Once standing, she flipped her hood back over her head to hide her hair. It was probably pointless now that everyone in the bar had gotten a good look, but she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel quite yet. Maybe they’d been so busy with the fight that no one had noticed.
She looked up just as Amila and Solal disappeared into the bar.
Jarek bent to peer under Kira’s hood. “That’s going to bruise.”
He nodded at the spot she was probing.
“No shit.”
Her cheekbone and the skin around her eye weren’t her only bruises. There were sore spots all over her body. Many from blows she didn’t remember taking.
Flame was quick. She’d give him that. She was lucky he hadn’t drawn a blade.
“I’m surprised you let him get the advantage,” Jarek mused as Flame rolled cautiously onto his knees.
Kira dropped her hand from her cheek. “Who said he had the advantage?”
She would have won that fight even without Graydon’s interference. He’d just sped things along.
“Easy buddy.” Flame raised his hands to show he was unarmed. “I meant no harm.”
“My face says otherwise,” Kira said.
“You got in a few good blows of your own.”
Kira’s lips twitched at the signs of battle decorating his features. A cut on his cheekbone courtesy of Kira’s fist. The swelling around one eye which would produce a nice shiner to match her own. His lip was split and still bleeding. His clothes torn.
She nodded in satisfaction. “I do good work.”
“I’ll consider it an honor to have traded blows with the Phoenix and come out the other side alive.” Her barely perceptible flinch made his smile widen. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”
Like she believed that.
“I was on the CSS Gambit during the Falling. I know what I owe you. Also, I’ve heard what you do to your enemies. I have no wish to be on your bad side.”
That last part sounded more like the truth.
For someone with a blade still pointed at his throat, Flame showed an astonishing amount of balls. Even going so far as turning his back on Graydon to address Kira.
“What an impertinent human. Coli, are you sure you don’t want him dead? I’d be happy to take care of him.”
Despite his words, Graydon was already lowering his en-blade.
“You don’t want the problems shedding his blood would bring,” Kira told him.
“True,” Flame agreed. “My boss is sensitive about things like that.”
Jarek stared at Flame in bemusement. “Are humans always so cavalier regarding their safety?”
“Not usually,” Kira answered.
Humanity’s instinct for survival was one of the things she liked most about them. They refused to submit, clinging to life with broken fingernails when necessary.
Flame’s behavior was an outlier. Unusual enough that she would have been tempted to investigate if the circumstances had been different.
He was either someone very dangerous. Or he knew something they didn’t.
Dylan hopped out the window Kira and Flame had fallen through, carrying Jin under one arm.
“You’re just now escaping? What took so long?” Kira asked.
He should have snatched Jin up and been long gone by now.
“He was difficult to catch,” Dylan stated with a regal calm that Kira couldn’t help but admire. Particularly given the way Jin was flailing.
“Let me go, you big oaf. I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own.”
Raider climbed out of the window after them. “But will you walk in the direction we want you to? That’s the more relevant question.”
“What did he do?” Kira asked, feeling like she was missing something.
Her question was forgotten as Jin landed a punch on Dylan’s chin.
Raider choked, looking like he was about to die from laughter.
Dylan looked down his nose at Jin. “Are you done?”
Jin’s expression was rebellious even as he went limp in the oshota’s grip.
Finn exited the bar and walked over to Raider, Amila and Solal behind him. “Was there something wrong with the door?”
“Everyone else was using the window,” Raider said with a shrug. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”
“And did you?”
“Not really.”
Kira glanced through the broken window to find Gator groaning on the floor next to the overturned table. His goons were strewn around the bar. One was seated with his back against the wall, unconscious. Another with his ass showing as he hung face down over another table.
Most of the bar’s patrons had the foresight to clear out as soon as the fight started. The unlucky few who didn’t stood along the periphery of the room.
“Apologize,” Dylan ordered Jin.
“I will not.”
Dylan looked at him.
Jin slumped. “Sorry.”
“If I put you down, are you going to endanger yourself again?”
“I don’t know.”
Finn frowned at Kira, likely remembering all the times she’d answered a similar question in the same way.
She shrugged at him. Jin and her might not share DNA, but in all the ways that counted they were siblings. And like siblings, they had certain things in common.
Dylan must have decided to trust Jin because he set him down.
Privately, Kira thought the oshota was making a mistake. Jin was almost certainly going to find trouble again. Likely before they made it off this level.
Jin straightened his clothes, glaring. “I would like to reiterate that it was entirely unnecessary to cart me around like baggage.”
“I disagree.”
Sariah strode toward them, her long white coat flapping behind her. “Have you arrested her yet?”
Kira was momentarily distracted by the very large, very prominent inquisitor’s broach sitting in a place of honor on her chest.
Poor Graydon. He had to be frustrated dealing with this level of incompetency.
Everyone else in his group had donned cloaks to partially obscure their synth armor. Even Jarek.
Not Sariah though.
She loudly proclaimed who she was for the entire station to see and plot against. Not only wearing a broach bound to draw the wrong kind of attention but also tying her long hair into a complicated series of knots that left the pointed tips of her ears on full display.
It was like Sariah wanted everyone to know Tuann walked among them.
Stupid, arrogant woman.
She might have just gotten the children and Caius killed.
From the way Jin stiffened and eyed the inquisitor unhappily, he’d just had the same thought.
Sariah spotted Kira’s unencumbered wrists. “Why is she not restrained?”
Graydon forced patience as he turned to address the inquisitor. “Lady Sariah, you are here as a guest. I suggest you start acting like one and stop ordering me around.”
In other words, shut up and let Graydon handle things.
“The emperor’s orders were very clear. She and Roake weren’t to meddle.”
“It’s a good thing I’m not here regarding the attack then,” Kira said.
Sariah sneered. “Lies won’t help your situation.”
“Lady, I haven’t even begun to address the issue of you implanting an etav in me. I suggest you don’t make me any angrier than I already am,” Kira warned.
Graydon looked over with sudden interest. “What’s this?”
“Didn’t your buddy tell you?” Kira smirked as caution finally entered Sariah’s expression. “While I was in their custody, they left me a little gift. Thankfully, Quillon discovered it before it could do any damage. He and Harlow plan to lodge a formal complaint.”
From the way Graydon eyed the inquisitor, Kira could tell he was imagining what it would be like to feel her neck under his hands.
And not in a romantic way.
“I didn’t know anything about this,” Jarek was quick to say.
“Sure, you didn’t, Jare,” Kira drawled.
That’s why she’d woken up to find him in her cell, watching over her. Because he had nothing to do with it.
Kira hoped when Graydon or the emperor finally got around to holding the inquisitors accountable that they went for the throat. What they’d done was a violation. Of her bodily autonomy. Her House’s privacy. All of it.
She’d have already wiped their order off the map if Roake’s position wasn’t so precarious. As the pirate clans could attest, she made for an awful enemy.
But she’d play nice.
For now.
“Torvald was remiss in offering Roake a temporary pardon.” Sariah lifted her chin in challenge.
“I was simply acting in the empire’s best interest. Something you have shown again and again to be incapable of.
As such, I am exercising my authority and removing you from control of this mission.
” Sariah glanced at Baran. “Arrest her.”
Jin looked up at Dylan. “Can she do that?”
Kira glanced at the oshota, a little interested in that answer herself.
“There is precedent,” Dylan admitted. “The Face’s oshota would have to find some legitimacy to her accusations. They’d also have to be willing to bear the stigma that comes from having betrayed their sword.”
The second would be the more difficult obstacle. Dylan didn’t have to say that a betrayal of that magnitude guaranteed no one else would take them into service. Their life as an oshota would end. To say nothing of the social death that would follow.
Only a stupidly honorable person would even consider it.
“It’s only happened once in the entirety of our history,” Dylan added.
Jin frowned at Sariah. “Is this woman stupid?”
That was the question, wasn’t it?
“What’s it to be?” Kira asked Baran. “Is it finally time for that rematch?”
She didn’t really think Baran would go against Graydon—she’d seen how loyal he was—but if by some chance he lost the entirety of his mind and decided to betray his sword, there was no way she was letting Sariah take her into custody. Not after the shit the inquisitor pulled with the etav.
“A rematch does sound tempting,” Baran admitted, for a moment sounding like he was actually considering it. “But no, I don’t answer to idiots.” Baran sent a cryptic look at Sariah. “No matter how important or self-righteous they pretend to be.”