Sword and Shadow (14 page)

Sword and Shadow

“Whatever.” She eyed him critically and, seeming to come to some sort of conclusion, nodded to herself. “I’ve been trying to figure out which one of you I’d rather bed, and I actually think you’re ahead on points.”

“Gratifying,” he replied, not meaning it in the least.

“Keep that up and you’ll never even get to first base with me, buddy.”

“I’m heartbroken,” he snorted. “Go wake the others, will you?”

She grinned in response and nodded. “You going to try to patch things up with her?”

“Are you always this nosy?”

“Actually, no. But I figure if things are tense between you two, I have a chance with one or the other.”

He favored her with a thin, clearly insincere smile. “Go away.”

Damn, the woman was hard to annoy, he thought, as she turned and walked down the hall. If anything, he found that more irritating than her overall attitude. She was damned aggravating, and he didn’t think it was fair he couldn’t turn the tables on her even a little bit.

He was beginning to think
all
the immortals were slightly off their rockers, aside from maybe Deryk Shea on Earth Prime. And even that was debatable, all things considered.

Face it,
said the little person living in his head
. You’re a little intrigued
by her as well.

Oh, shutup.
He turned and rapped on the door. “C’mon, Val. Let me in. We need to talk.”

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Saje Williams

Chapter Eighteen

“We’re going to tear down the Church,” Raven stated flatly, with an icy look in Val’s direction. “And we’re going to start by distributing weapons to the rebels. Morrigan has found a locker full of high-tech armaments, and we’re going to give them out to the higher echelon members, while the rank and file will be getting these semi-automatic weapons here.” He gestured to the open trunk on the floor.

Val looked like she was going to have a stroke on the spot, but they’d already discussed it and she’d decided that she could live with the decision if it meant blocking the Cen from gaining any more influence on this world than they already had. By all rights she should contact base, but she was afraid of what they might tell her if she did.

She wasn’t going to fight him on this one. He’d already won her promise on that point, and intended to make certain she lived up to it, but she didn’t like it.

He’d put her in a tough spot, he realized. He’d given her a choice between supporting him or her agency. She’d chosen him, but he wasn’t quite certain she had what it took to turn renegade. TAU usually chose law-and-order, straight-shooter types specifically to prevent this sort of thing.

But she was falling in love with him and that always screwed their brainwashing all to hell.

Did he love her? He wasn’t sure. He was sure he liked her. She had guts, and that counted for a lot. But
love?
He’d thought he was in love once, but that had turned out to be a disaster. He didn’t like courting disaster. Not personally, at least. It did, however, seem part and parcel of his professional life.

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He wasn’t worried about pissing off his higher ups at Sash—even if they cared, which he doubted they would, they’d be smart enough to stand down. The only people there who would dare go against him would be the immortal head, who was unlikely to give a damn one way or another. Fenris was pretty much a law and order guy, but he also understood that there were some times when the rules just didn’t cut it.

He wasn’t likely to step on Raven’s toes. Their friendship went back since the Cen War, after all.

“I also want your father to declare amnesty for warlocks in his demesne,” he told Bryon. “You think he’ll go for it?”

Bryon thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I believe he will.

It would work better if he wasn’t the only one to do it, though.”

“What about your boss, Goban? Do you think he’ll be willing?”

The ex-mercenary shrugged. “Hard to say. Especially considering how the commoners are likely to react to it. The people are afraid of magic.

The Church has made sure of that.”

“Are you suggesting they might rise up to support the Church, or that we might have a three way war come out of it?”

“It’s possible,” Goban said. “Keep in mind that Muraz is a very advanced province—it’s the site of the Kobath University, after all. The others aren’t nearly as…tolerant.”

Raven nodded. “Good point. Let’s just leave it to your father, Bryon. If one province goes that far, at least we might have a chance at forging an alliance of warlocks to help us against the Church mages.”

“We’re going to need them, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, we are.” He clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously against one another. “Everyone ready to get the hell out of here?”

“Is she coming with us?” Goban asked with a pointed glance toward Morrigan.

Raven nodded. “At the moment our objectives mesh. If we get to a point where they don’t, we’ll go our separate ways.”

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Saje Williams

Goban obviously didn’t like it. Raven didn’t particularly care if he did or not. The way he saw it, the man was either in or out, and Raven was the one calling the shots.

He’d meant to discuss his feelings about the ex-merc with Val, but had become somewhat…distracted. The worst thing was that he knew better than to let such things interfere with his job. Or, at least, he
should
have known better. The mission first, personal issues second.

That was the rule, though he’d never before had occasion to even consider it.

The others gathered up their packs and gear while Morrigan and Raven stowed the weapons from the ship in dimension pockets formed out of closed off mana tubes. “Let’s go,” he said finally, and they jumped out.

They made it back to the ship without incident, and, under the cover of darkness, watched as Raven set up the cone of heat they’d initially used to cut their way through the ice, and waited while the ship prepared to set sail.

Val wasn’t happy with what she saw as Raven’s withdrawal since their time together on the alien ship. He didn’t ignore her precisely, but a barrier had dropped between them that she couldn’t—wouldn’t—deal with.

Maybe it was the time he’d been born into. She’d heard that men of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries had a tendency to become emotionally unavailable once they’d had sex with the object of their desires. Not that he’d been too obvious in his desire in the first place. He’d made her make the first move, though he’d certainly responded passionately enough once she’d started the ball rolling.

A week later the ship was back in open seas, sailing through the cold clear day ahead of a powerful storm that beat against its sails like a caged animal. Val stood on deck, eyes roaming the horizon as the day 130

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drifted toward dusk. She was angry now. Angry at Raven, but equally angry at herself. She’d compromised everything she believed in for the vampire, and now she had little left but doubts and recriminations.

She just couldn’t understand what had gotten into him. He’d been avoiding her with an amazing dexterity, considering they were stuck on a rather thin sliver of wood in a vast sea of blue. What the hell was
with
him, anyway?

More than once she caught Goban staring at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. She nearly broke down and read him, but stopped herself on the verge. She’d already compromised one set of principles; she wasn’t about to do it again.

Raven had taken to sleeping in the hold again, about as far away from her as he could manage aboard ship. He hadn’t exchanged a dozen words with her since they’d set sail and it was all she could do not to march right up to him and demand he explain himself.

But she suffered in silence instead. Why should she give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he was hurting her?

She watched as the setting sun cast ribbons of silver and gold across the darkening sky and sighed inwardly. She’d doomed herself. Her career was over, her personal life a muddled mess, and nothing she could do now would redeem her in her own eyes.

Raven woke and stared up at the top of his crate and resisted the urge to scream aloud. He’d been swimming in self-loathing for the past week, which he considered a bit like taking a bath in raw sewage. Only a complete idiot would be unable to recognize the pain he’d inflicted on Val, and he regretted it with every fiber of his being.

But he needed this distance between them. They both did, though she would never have understood the reason why, or agreed with it if he tried to explain it. By now she was starting to hate him and the thought was like a vial of hydrochloric acid poured into a sucking chest wound.

He felt things for her he shouldn’t, he realized. Not only because they made him vulnerable, but because they made both of them vulnerable.

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Saje Williams

He didn’t trust everyone aboard the ship. He needed desperately for those he doubted to believe that what had happened between him and Val had been for recreational purposes only—at least as far as his part went.

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. He protected her by causing her pain.

He shoved the top of the crate aside and climbed out into the hold, eyes scanning the darkness. Somewhere above him he could hear murmured conversation and smiled thinly. Morrigan was comforting Val, a scenario he would never have imagined ahead of time. She’d struck him as about as empathetic as a piece of driftwood, but, he realized, there were always hidden sides to people a person might not see.

What amazed him even more was that Morrigan was even defending him, in a way. Surprising, considering it had been she who’d warned Val about getting involved with him, saying that vampires were incapable of love. He only wished that were true.

He emerged onto the deck in a swirl of darkness, noting the position of the passengers and crew in the first few seconds. Morrigan and Val were at the bow, speaking in low tones, and he caught sight of Bryon and Goban in what almost looked to him to be a silent confrontation. The whippet-like son of the governor had his face scant inches from the ex-merc, and their contest of wills was going unnoticed by the few people on deck at the moment.

Frankly, Raven was surprised he hadn’t heard anything of their exchange before he emerged onto the deck.

He strode toward them just as Bryon shoved at the watchman’s broad chest. “Just stay the hell away from me!”

Well, isn’t
this
interesting?
Raven thought. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing,” Goban rumbled, with barely a glance in his direction. “The young master is just overwrought.”

“Overwrought?” Bryon’s voice spiked high and shrill. “You know what this
kau-si-pe
said about—?”

The ex-merc’s fist crashed into his jaw and sent him stumbling for the railing. Raven caught him an instant before he would’ve gone overboard and set him down on the deck. He checked the boy and wasn’t 132

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surprised by the fact that the blow had knocked him out cold. He whirled on Goban. “What the hell was that?”

“Did you hear what he called me?” Goban hissed, the scar on his face flashing crimson as the blood rushed to it.

Raven had, but he’d never heard the word before. He shrugged. “So what?”

“I don’t have to take that kind of crap from him.”

Something struck the vampire as odd about the ex-merc’s anger, and he wondered if it had been the curse or something else entirely that had provoked Goban into striking out at the slight young man. Goban had been acting strangely since they’d been on the alien ship, and Raven was seriously starting to wonder why.

He glanced up as Morrigan approached. The brunette immortal regarded him with calm assurance and took only a cursory glance at Bryon’s unconscious form behind him. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Aren’t we?” he asked, not sure whether to be irritated or amused.

She ignored the attempt at humor and grabbed him by the arm.

“Come with me.”

Goban’s gaze, dark and shrouded in something Raven couldn’t identify, followed them as they made their way past the poop deck to the ship’s stern. The vampire could still feel his stare even after they’d moved from view.

“For the record,” Morrigan told him in a low tone. “I think you’re being an idiot.”

“Nice to know. In what way?”

“Valerie thinks you don’t care about her and that’s the reason you’ve been avoiding her. I know differently.”

“Do you?”

She cocked her head and aimed an icy glare at him. “Don’t fuck with me, vampire. I know that you came to the realization that being involved with you here and now puts her in a lot more danger than her own mission would. I’m not sure who, exactly, you think is going to use that against you, but I think you’re doing more harm than good with the way you’re acting.”

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Saje Williams

“Oh, what—now you’re an expert on human behavior?”

“I killed people for a living, Raven. That means I needed to know what made them tick, how they were vulnerable. Who do you think is going to betray you?”

“What makes you believe I think
anyone
is going to betray me?”

“Don’t act stupid―and don’t pretend you think I am, either.

Something changed your attitude on the crashed starship and I’d like to know what it is.”

“What if I think it’s
you
who will betray me?”

“Hah. That’s bullshit and you know it. You know my reputation. I’ve
never
screwed over an ally. And that’s what we are. Both of us want this Church taken down. If you know anything about me you know I’ve never compromised my principles.”

“Such as they are.”

“Such as they are,” she agreed with a shrug. “My fellow immortals have always been suspicious of me—but not one of them will say I don’t follow my own code of honor.”

He shook his head. He already knew that. When he’d been working for the PAC, he’d been briefed on all the immortals living and operating on Earth Prime, and, while it was acknowledged that Morrigan acted outside the law, it was also noted that she was very particular about which contracts she did and did not accept. Athena, when she’d put out a contract on one rogue agent, had contacted Morrigan and had been turned down flat. There were certain lines Morrigan would not cross, and that, apparently, had been one of them.

“You need to talk with her. If you like I can provide a distraction for the others to give you a few minutes alone. But you owe her that much at least.”

He simply nodded. She was right, as much as he hated to admit it.

He needed to talk to Val.

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