The Last Warrior (25 page)

E
LSABETH SERVED THE MEN
tea as Markam briefed Tao.

“We're going to get her out.” Tao's simple, firm statement set the tone of what was to come. Xim had imprisoned the queen and the children in her chambers. Given Xim's erratic behavior, there was every reason to believe Aza's life was in jeopardy.

“Xim never stopped believing the priest's reading of the bones. Even after we searched high and low for you, Tao, he wouldn't give it up. Beck got him alone, and talked him into sending a Gorr out to find you. There were four of them locked up in the old wing.”

“You had Furs at the palace?” Tao bellowed.

“It was news to me, too.” Markam was seething. “Beck's plan was to release only the alpha as an assassin, and he did. Then Xim had second thoughts about keeping any Gorr around, and wanted all of them gone.”

“The alpha followed my scent here,” Tao said tersely.
“Then the lessers followed his. It all makes sense now. They made a pact with our Tassagon king.” His bitterness and disbelief was evident in every word.

“I had no way of getting here in time to warn you.” His dark, troubled eyes scanned the mess in the living room. “Xim's grown wary of me. Perhaps he suspects my actions even now. He may know I've been protecting you, that I'm plotting Aza's rescue.”

Elsabeth shivered with a sudden chill, picturing Tao captured and killed, the ghetto burned as punishment for the Kurel role in Tao's escape. There was a time she might have called all that a necessary risk in order to rid Tassagonia of its cruel ruler. Her vow of vengeance had been the only thing important to her. But ousting Xim wasn't her sole priority anymore. Preventing Tao's capture had become just as important to her heart.

Perhaps even more so.

Somehow she sensed her parents would have approved.

She moved next to Tao, and he stroked a reassuring hand down her back. Markam's sharp gaze didn't miss the interaction.
He can see how it is with us.
A flicker of warmth in those reserved eyes.
He approves.
He was gradually calming, becoming more the Markam she knew. “Xim has no intention of admitting he released the Gorr on his subjects.”

“To do so would be suicidal,” Tao said. “The Tassagons would turn on him in panic.”

“Luckily, the Gorr deaths will take attention off finding you and put it on protecting the capital and the palace. We need the king to be focused on reassuring his terrified subjects—and not on what we're orchestrating.”

Getting Aza and her two young children out from under Xim's paranoid nose. Butterflies took flight in Elsabeth's stomach. With his identities as a rebel and the king's confidante in danger of colliding, Markam's existence had become truly precarious.

They hunched around the table and their cooling cups of tea, hashing out the details of how Aza's rescue would be accomplished. The best way into the palace was the same as the best way out—through the spill-ways and the dungeon.

“Xim didn't order the loading dock grates sealed?” she asked.

“I took charge of seeing that the repairs were done,” Markam said with faint, dry humor.

With the palace guards essentially neutralized under Markam's command, the one complication was Beck. “We'll need a diversion,” Tao suggested.

“I'll make sure he's distracted,” Markam said.

Tao downed his tea, looking to Elsabeth as if he longed for something stronger. She went to fetch the spirits that the Riders had given them, pouring a finger's width in each of the men's cups and a little less in hers. Markam sniffed at the liquid and broke into
a tired smile. “Have the Kurel been trading with our friends from the Plains?”

“No. But Tao and I crossed paths with some. The night you searched the ghetto, we slept out in the countryside.”

“Pax and two Riders from the Blue Hills band were sizing up our herds.” Tao's hint of a smile hardened. “I warned him about Xim. And none too soon.” He emptied his cup, tapping a finger against the rim. “Markam, before we part and commence our plans, I have to know something. I wasn't particularly fond of Elsabeth's people until I came to live amongst them, and know them. But how did you come to be such a great champion and protector of the Kurel?”

Elsabeth leaned forward in eagerness. “I often wondered the same thing myself.”

Markam's jaw compressed. “I supposed it's time you knew. Both of you.” With a glance around for listening ears, a habit engrained after years living where it often seemed even the walls could hear, he confided, “The crown prince became sick with fever as an infant. Maxim was only a few months old, and he weakened quickly. The palace healers tried but could do nothing for him. Aza could see her babe was dying. She was desperate. Xim said if it was Uhrth's will, his son would live. That wasn't good enough for the queen. Without Xim's knowledge, I accompanied her to see a Kurel healer. He treated Prince Max, and cured him.”
Markam glanced over to Elsabeth, his eyes crinkling with warmth, and something more: gratitude. “That was your father.”

“Mercy,” she whispered.

“It changed everything. After that I was motivated to learn to read. The palace accountant, Navi's predecessor, taught me.”

“Mikhail?” Elsabeth asked with a smile. The jovial accountant was retired now.

“Indeed. Because of that visit to your father, I discovered books, and the whole world opened up. And,” his voice gentled, “Aza and I…” He cleared his throat then sat up straighter. “We fell in love. We've never acknowledged it, never spoken of it—not once. I respect her marriage, and so does she. I am a rebel, yes, but those aims can be—and will be—accomplished without murder. I could not live with myself with Xim's blood on my hands.”

Markam stood then, picking up his helmet and preparing to depart. He locked hands with Tao in a farewell gesture. “Nor could I live with your blood on my hands. Xim believes the rumors that you were spotted slaying Gorr outside the ghetto. He's feeling more and more threatened. His imprisonment of Aza is proof. My friend, the king wants you dead. My influence is tenuous. As today's events have proven, do not expect you can rely on me for an early warning.”

S
UNLIGHT SWIFTLY RETREATED
from the streets of Tassagonia, replaced by shadows and moonlight. On a balcony overlooking Palace Square, with his two highest-ranking officers in attendance, but not his queen, King Xim stepped forward to address the Tassagon populace.

The square hadn't been this crowded since General Uhr-Tao's homecoming.
With one difference,
Markam thought. This evening the citizens of Tassagonia had gathered under the threat of arrest if they did not attend the speech. Beck's men had gone door to door, ordering all those not too sick or too old out into the night.

Not everyone was so easily coerced. As Markam had planned, one wagonload of dissenters had been carried to the palace stockade, which kept attention diverted from the raid now being launched from the palace dungeons, nearly a hundred feet beneath the king's platform.

Xim's voice rang out. “K-Town is infested—with
Gorr and with Gorr sympathizers. The curfew has not kept us safe from such threats. Thus, the curfew will end, and Kurel Town will be sealed off around-the-clock until we have rid our city of the threats facing us. But fear not, my subjects. General Uhr-Beck's Domestic Defense Army will enforce the closure. Rest assured, these courageous guardians will keep you safe.”

Domestic Defense Army?
Pure, undiluted Beck. Xim would never have thought of it.

It took all Markam's self-discipline to hide his disdain as he glanced over at Beck. With stars freshly sewn on his epaulets, the bastard listened to the speech while making a show of flexing his arms over his chest, dishonoring their uniform once again by rolling up his sleeves.

The man could posture and preen all he wanted as long as he remained ignorant of what was transpiring many stories below. Markam willed Tao to hurry.
Get in and get out, with my Aza safe in your hands.
The queen couldn't escape soon enough. This charade had become an almost impossible balancing act, one he would not be able to sustain much longer.

“The foreigners who live amongst us have weakened us from the inside out,” Xim continued. “No more. I will allow a few, specially screened Kurel to apply for extended-stay permits. All others will be
exiled forevermore. Tassagonia will once again be for Tassagons!”

Subdued applause and some scattered cheers met the king's proclamation. The impression that Kurel practiced sorcery persisted, of course, but after witnessing the ghetto dwellers defend the city from the Gorr, after actually seeing the monsters that were the human race's mortal enemy, Tassagons were now more inclined to build a relationship with the Kurel than sever it. But General Uhr-Beck had assigned soldiers to “work the crowd.” Nothing like the sight of a sharp blade to spur a man or woman into pretending enthusiasm.

Or a bottle of wine to dull a man's senses. “After this,” Markam said out the corner of his mouth to Beck, “let us raise glasses in a toast to your promotion.” Many glasses. Until Beck was falling-down drunk, Xim right along with him. So they'd miss what was happening under their noses—or rather, who was disappearing. By Uhrth, the queen and her children would be safe from this madness by morn.

“And so we shall.” Beck's hand landed hard on Markam's shoulder. “A toast, my comrade. To new beginnings.”

 

E
LSABETH NEVER KNEW
excitement and mortal terror could exist so compatibly side by side until she set foot in the foul and cold pipes with Tao and Navi. Was
this how Tao felt each time he marched into battle? Mercy. And he'd repeated the act, an act of courage, over and over. He was a hero. More than that, he was her hero.

With disparate emotions coursing through her, she dove forward into the deep, stinking darkness.

Only the sounds of their breaths and boots splashing through muck accompanied their progress. There was no need for words. Everything had already been briefed and briefed again. Tao was meticulous about the details of the raid, from the disguises that would turn the men into guards and her into a kitchen wench, to the exit point they'd use to slip inside the palace via the dungeon, guarded tonight by Markam's handpicked men.

Still, before they had even lowered the grate at the loading docks to set foot inside the spillway, and before they had left Chun sitting on the driver's bench of the same wagon they'd used the first time they'd sneaked into the palace, Tao had asked her, “Have I missed anything? Is there anything you see that isn't as it should be?”

“No,” she'd assured him, her hand resting briefly on his chest, over his pounding heart. His good and brave heart. “Now let's go get your family out.”

With Chun, they exchanged nods of luck and hope and everything else good that a silent gesture could hold. Then they pulled the grate up behind them, leav
ing behind the physician, who looked convincing as a drowsy merchant waiting for his wagon to be loaded. No one would notice the bow and a quiver of arrows hidden under his coat, or the blade in his belt, but they'd certainly learn of the weapons if they tried to attack. This time around, the good doctor had more than a scalpel with which to defend against attackers.

So did they all.

She and Navi carried blades for self-defense. Tao was armed with the crossbow, a spear, two blades, one long and one short, and Uhrth knew how many other tools to maim and kill. For all her protestations against violence, she'd always had a distinct lack of remorse at the thought of using it against Xim. But tonight, she hoped no confrontations forced them to do so. Aza and her children's safe passage out of the palace was their goal. This was not the night to end Xim's reign.

Ahead was the confluence of pipes where Navi had slipped into the moat, causing Tao to dive in after him. Elsabeth shivered, smelling the dank stench of the water and knowing better than she ever had the deadly nature of the monsters swimming beneath its surface. “Take it slowly,” she warned Navi in a loud whisper, seeing his bobbing lantern up ahead.

“Beth, if I were moving any slower, I'd be sitting,” he reassured her.

“If you fall in, you're swimming to shore on your
own this time,” Tao said, and Elsabeth could hear the humor in his voice.

The truth of it was they were a team. They'd come here together, and they'd leave together. No matter what.

 

“T
HEY LIKED
T
AO MUCH
better,” Xim complained to Beck over goblets of red wine. It was the most expensive vintage in the cellars, worthy of a celebration…like victory over the Gorr, or ridding the kingdom of its Kurel parasites. Unfortunately, Xim couldn't seem to work up enough levity to suit the occasion.

Markam's glass sat partially drained, his chair empty. The man was off again on his incessant rounds. He never seemed to rest.
I'll have to drink enough for the two of us.
It would mute the anger that continued to make his insides burn. “They were falling all over themselves for Tao. When they cheered that bastard, we could hardly hear ourselves think.”

Beck leaned forward, his weight on his elbows, his elbows on the table. “You had to broach serious topics, My Liege. Something like that doesn't invoke a giddy response.”

“True, true.” Tao had been given the easier task. Of course. Still, it didn't make Xim feel much better. His entire life, no matter what he did, Tao had appeared out of nowhere to do it better. Xim was glad he'd confined
Aza, lest Tao find her and influence her against her own husband.

He drank more wine, splashing some on his brocade jacket. Irritably, he dashed the droplets away and gulped down another swallow. “I want him dead, Beck. I've done everything you have advised—promoted you to general, given you an army, for Uhrth's sake! And still, Tao runs free. Taunting me with his very existence. I'm sick of it.” He shook a fist at Beck. “I had him in my hands, and he slipped away.” He opened his fist, spreading his fingers, and then plunged them through his hair. “Out the dungeon of all places, Beck, the part of this fortress that should be unquestioningly secure. It's embarrassing.”

“It was indeed embarrassing, My Liege, but not for you. The breach was the responsibility of your commander of the Palace Guard. As far as we know, the security of this palace may still be unsatisfactory.”

Xim shifted his gaze from Beck to Markam's goblet of unfinished wine. Half done, just as the palace's security inspections had been. Xim didn't want to lose faith in Markam; he truly didn't. Markam was a good man—likable, efficient and, most of all, soothing, which was a quality Xim valued above most others. Markam had long been a salve for his constantly jumpy nerves—rather like Aza. But he'd also learned the consequences of too much trust. It was awful being let down.

“Markam did discover how Tao escaped the palace,”
Xim reasoned, and hoped his sudden dread wouldn't bloom into something bigger and more horrible.

Markam is friends with Tao. What if his loyalty is with him, not me?
Doubt filled his chest with as much chill as winter fog. But, of course Markam knew Tao, but he hadn't known him any longer than he'd known Xim. All of them had grown up together, had known each other for years. More, Markam was the kind of man who had always placed palace affairs first.

Or had he? Xim's stomach did a nervous flip. His nerves jangled. “Won't he have seen to plugging the holes since the escape?” he asked Beck almost plaintively.

“Who was in charge of the repairs?”

“He was.”

“There's your answer, My Liege. We don't know.” Beck pushed to his feet. “It seems the good colonel's nightly rounds don't necessarily include a thorough security inspection. Luckily, you have me to back him up.”

“Yes, yes. Go. Double-check his work. Tell me if you find anything lacking.”

Beck arched the brow over his good eye. “As you wish, My Liege.”

The dining hall was suddenly huge and cavernous without Beck there to help fill the void.
Again, I am alone.
Xim snapped his fingers for a servant to refill his goblet, but he had the feeling drinking was futile.
It would take more than wine to numb his growing anxiety. He did not feel safe in his own palace. No, not at all. He shivered.
Aza, I need you.
Oh, did he ever! Why was he sitting here, alone, when he could be with his wife? The fur cape around his shoulders was a poor substitute for her warm arms. He'd go to her and spend the night in her bed. Yes, and she'd comfort him as she always did.

 

B
ACK TO THE DUNGEON
—but voluntarily this time
, Tao thought, supporting the grate as Navi unscrewed it and together they lowered the heavy iron slowly to minimize noise. Tao slid the lantern into the passage to the dungeon with his foot. After a look and listen convinced him it was clear, he pressed a finger to his lips and motioned Elsabeth forward, then Navi. Tao helped Navi lift the grate back into position as silently as possible, leaving it unscrewed.

Hunched over, they ran along the passage until the basket containing their disguises came into view in the circle of light thrown by the lantern. There were two guard uniforms, a servant's ware for Elsabeth and a bag that contained more servant ware, disguises for Aza and the children.
Good man, Markam.

Now, dressed as a pair of guards and a kitchen wench, they grabbed their standard military bows and
proceeded ahead. Once out of the passage they could run comfortably.

The stink was eye-watering as they passed the empty cells. Ahead, the tall stone staircase led to the palace's higher floors. “There are three doors. Each is guarded and locked. Usually. But not tonight.” He hefted his crossbow and took the stairs to the first door. “Flat against the wall,” he told her and Navi. Once their backs were pressed to the stones, he shouldered open the first door. A hard knot inside him eased a little. No locked door, no unhappily surprised guard.

The process repeated uneventfully and reassuringly for each of the next two doors. All of them unlocked. All of them unguarded. Markam had always been scrupulously well organized, sometimes to the point of obsession. But this was one of those times Tao was grateful for his friend's extreme attention to detail.

Tao turned to his unlikely raiders. “We go directly to the queen's chambers, gather her and the children and escort them out. Elsabeth, on the way in, you're simply a servant seeing to the queen's needs.” She carried the satchel Markam had provided to hide the disguises for Aza and the children. The sack was richly embroidered and fit for royalty, making her ruse all the more convincing. “Navi and I are two guards on escort duty.”

Navi's nod was both nervous and earnest. Tao remembered what it felt like as a boy being called upon
to do brave deeds. He took hold of Navi's shoulder and gave him a firm, steadying squeeze. “You're going to do well, young man.”

Navi smiled. “I won't disappoint you, General Tao.”

Tao turned to Elsabeth. Her achingly lovely gaze looked up at him from under her bonnet. It had never felt this wrenching, poised on the threshold of a raid.

Because your heart was never involved.

He tucked in the few strands of her brilliantly colored hair that weren't hidden as deeply under the bonnet as he'd have liked. Normally this was the time he'd offer his men a few fortifying words of wisdom and hope. But the protectiveness surging inside him for Elsabeth left him at a loss for words.

Her lips eased into a hint of a smile, as if she'd guessed the reason for his silence. Then she shook her head, telling him nothing more needed to be said that hadn't been already.

He touched his palm to her cheek, let it linger there for a heartbeat, then turned away, lest his lover's eyes charmed him and caused him to be frozen in place.

He and Navi donned their helmets before Tao opened the last door and let them into the palace.