The Last Warrior (26 page)

“Walk,” he told Elsabeth in a curt, all-business tone. She was now under his escort, and several rungs below a guard on the social ladder.

Nary a glance came their way as they traveled to
ward the queen's apartments. They walked swiftly enough not to waste what little time they had, but not fast enough to attract notice. In the expansive central foyer, a tile mosaic depicting achievements of the kings and queens over the years covered the floor. It wasn't his imagination that Elsabeth's shoe landed dead-on the likeness of Xim wielding a warrior's broadsword, something Tao doubted the man could lift off the floor, let alone raise above his waist. Each portrayal of Xim was similarly desecrated as they walked over it, the one in the very center given an extra turn of her toe, as if to grind in her hatred of the king.

As long as she expressed her loathing symbolically while in the palace, he wasn't worried.
Just don't kill the man if we happen to cross paths.
He'd made a career of leading battle-hungry soldiers; he'd just never predicted his woman would be one of them.

As they turned toward the corridor leading to the private area of the palace, an ear-splitting horn jarred them all out of step. He thrust out an arm, stopping Elsabeth, turning to see what was happening.

“To your stations!” a sergeant of the guard bellowed. “To your stations!”

Guards were running to their posts. Had their presence been discovered? Had someone found the unlocked grate below? Remote, but still possible. He immediately calculated how much time they'd need to get Aza to their alternate exit points, the spillway
entrance through the kitchens or, failing that, through the wine cellars.

Adrenaline poured into Tao's veins. Navi's throat bobbed, but he kept up his guard's stance, thank Uhrth, although he drilled Tao with a look that begged directions. Elsabeth had gone pale, but didn't stick out for doing so; any servant would have been alarmed in such a situation. But, within a moment, Tao and Navi were the only guards left.

They'd soon draw notice for not being where they were supposed to be. His mind calmly sorted through all options. There were many places to hide—alcoves, little-traveled passages.

Tao squared his shoulders. “Keep walking. With purpose. We're not turning back.” Not yet.

They started toward Aza's chambers.

“You!
Halt.”

Tao instantly recognized that familiar raspy yell—damn it to hell.
Uhr-Beck.

B
ECK WORE GENERAL'S STARS
on his shoulders and gripped a loaded crossbow. Two guards accompanied him, men unfamiliar to Tao. Elsabeth was standing very still off to the side, but her hands, wrapped together and pressed to the waist of her dress, were trembling. Tao would do anything in that moment to see her safe, including giving up his life.

“Why aren't you two fools at your posts?” Beck snarled as he approached.

Then he drew up short, shock breaking his stride as Tao marked the moment Beck recognized him. A look of utter hatred drained all hint of humanity out of that one, narrowed, brown eye.

Beck aimed his bow at Tao.

Everything crystallized in that moment, sounds fading away, the scene before Tao in perfect focus, tunneling to the bow and the man behind it. He'd faced near-certain death more than a few times in war, but never did he feel the utter futility, the senselessness,
of what was about to happen: his own countryman sinking an arrow in his heart to settle an old score, with the tacit permission of their king.

The crashing of boots on stone broke the spell. “Why aren't these men at their posts?” Markam strode up to them with his own pair of guards.
Thank the arks.
Tao swung his boot up in Beck's blind spot and kicked the bow out of his hands. The weapon skittered across the stones.

Tao started to reach for his own bow when he heard the sounds of swords being unsheathed, and Markam's voice. “Touch that weapon, Uhr-Tao, and it'll be your last act on this world.”

He straightened to see Markam's eyes dark and cold, his sword drawn and Beck marveling at the man before he turned back to Tao and smiled.

“Helmets off and weapons down,” Markam ordered Tao and Navi. Tao let his crossbow fall to the floor, and then the rest of his arsenal. Navi followed suit, tossing down his blade. Their helmets were taken by one of Markam's guards.

Tao didn't dare make the error of trying to catch Markam's gaze. His friend's survival depended on not appearing to be aligned with Tao. And Elsabeth and Navi's lives were balanced on Tao not revealing how much he cared for them, especially Elsabeth. His true feelings for her were the one weapon he wouldn't be able to wrest back from Beck's control.

“General Uhr-Tao, the people's hero,” Beck sneered. “The legend. The Butcher of the Hinterlands. I knew you'd fight to the end. I knew you'd make another run at the palace. That's why we have the Uhr in our name. We live to fight, and we fight to live. But this is the end. I assure you.” He took a double take at Navi. “What is this? A Kurel! Uhr-Tao, have you fallen so low that you only lead Kurel now?”

Elsabeth stood quietly off to the side in her rough-hewn dress and bonnet, drawing little notice from the men. Tao wished she'd dropped the blade hidden in the waistband of her dress. True, she hadn't been ordered to, but she was flirting with extreme danger, defying Beck. Admiration collided with his white-hot fear for her. She was a warrior, through and through. But by Uhrth, she was also his woman and deserving of his protection.

Beck picked up Tao's bow, testing its weight, aiming it, and then glaring at him with revulsion. “This is a Rider bow. Arming Kurel, and trading with Riders? Your treachery knows no bounds, Uhr-Tao. No wonder you like to use the pipes and not the front door. You can rest assured you won't be going out the same way you got in.”

His raspy laugh at the obvious threat of execution made Tao want to strangle the man. “I didn't come here to harm anyone, Uhr-Beck.”

“Then why are you here, hmm?”

“To say goodbye to my sister. That is all.” Tao had no intention of giving away more and endangering Aza. “She doesn't know. It was my idea alone. I ask you, Uhr to Uhr, allow me to leave, and you'll never have to see me again.”

“Why should I, when you forced me to come back here—and
rot?
You thought you didn't need me. That I was useless—too damaged and weak to serve in your forces.” Beck's voice was emotionally laden, hate-filled. “Now I get to repay you in kind. I'll put you at the mercy of the king, which I assure you won't be plentiful.” He turned to Markam and the guards. “Lock the men in wrist cuffs. Bring the wench, too. March them to the king's private-audience room. He'll be interested to know that this traitor had planned on paying his wife an unplanned visit.”

 

I
N THE KING'S CHAMBERS
, Elsabeth stood as still as possible to avoid notice. All through her childhood, going unnoticed was something she'd done unintentionally. Now she called upon that trait, seeing in it an unexpected value: survival. Victory. Revenge. Finally, after so long, the chance to fulfill her vow of vengeance against Xim may have arrived.

Yet, the feel of the blade tucked in her waistband horrified as much as it emboldened her. Her two ancestries collided, Tassagon and Kurel. She could kill the king and avenge her parents and all the Kurel who
had died because of him. But by doing so she'd also kill the father of innocent children—Aza's children.

Xim killed
my
mother. He killed
my
father.

At what point did the violence end?

As they waited for Markam to arrive with Xim, Tao was watching her intently. Worriedly. He always seemed to know what she was thinking.
Planning.
When they caught each other's gazes for a brief second, he gave her an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
No,
he told her.

No—what? No rescuing him and Navi? Or no attacking Xim if she had the chance?

The door banged open and Xim lurched in with Markam. Beck waved a gloating hand at her, Navi and Tao. “Look what I netted you tonight, My Liege. The traitors. It seems your intuition about that passageway was right.”

“My intuition is always right!”

Xim was drunk. Elsabeth could smell the alcohol on his breath. He'd been in the middle of washing up for bed, apparently. His hair was messy and slightly dampened, and he was clad in soft pants and a plain white shirt unbuttoned halfway down his torso. All adornment had been cast aside. Oddly, it embarrassed her to see the king of Tassagonia this way, as if he were naked without all the usual trappings of his position and power, the furs and jewels and golden crown. Standing in the shadow of Beck's maniacal charisma
worsened the effect: Xim looked even younger, and somehow vulnerable. Like a lost boy.

But his angry pout and shifty eyes reminded her who he really was. An intolerant, insufferable, incompetent king. Murderer of innocents.

“I trusted you, Tao,” Xim seethed. “You were my highest-ranking military officer. My brother-in-law. Yet, you thought nothing of criticizing my laws, speaking ill of me. Then sneaking away before you could be properly punished.”

Tao's jaw hardened, but he gave the impression of calm, taking the full force of Xim's tantrum with his hands cuffed behind his back. Markam, standing close to Tao under the guise of guarding him, observed with perfect military bearing, but inside she knew he must be heartsick. No doubt his sharp, tactical mind was considering countless ways out of this debacle, as was Tao's.

“Now you bring Kurel inside this palace after I issued an expulsion order to rid our city of the damned spellmongers!”

Elsabeth's heart lurched.
My Uhrth, no.
The Kurel—exiled? To where? When? Was this what the evening's speech had been about?

“You've defied me on every level, Tao. Humiliated me.” Xim jammed his hands through his hair and glared ferociously at Navi, who for all his inexperience didn't cower. Then he shifted his focus to Elsabeth and
shoved her bonnet back with such force, she choked for a second on the strings around her neck. “You,” he hissed. “Aza's sorceress.”

Her heartbeat was banging in her ears, a metronome of terror. She tried to work moisture into her mouth, tried to calm her nerves. Would she be able to remove the blade in time? Would Tao try to defend her and get killed in the process?

“I forbade you from coming here ever again, Kurel.” Xim shouted inches from her face, his alcohol-laden breath and spittle striking her with every word. “You disobeyed me. You—”

“I came to see Aza,” Tao broke in. “That is all. Aza is my only blood, the only one of my family left. She and the children. If nothing else, give me the chance to say goodbye.”

“My Liege,” Beck said. The old warrior's eye was aglow, his lips frozen in a smirk as if he'd been hit with sudden inspiration. “I find it curious that the night they chose to say farewell to the queen is the same night you confined her to her quarters.”

Elsabeth watched from only a hand's distance away as the king's countenance changed. Furor froze, then gave way to doubts and dismay. Beck stepped closer to murmur in the king's ear, whispers and insinuations that reached Elsabeth's ears, too.
What if Aza summoned them here? What if they're all plotting against you? To leave with the queen, and leave you with a
curse to make you sicken and die? Don't forget, you caught her reading—more than once…

With a cold surge of horror, Elsabeth realized what Beck was doing.
He thinks this is his big moment of triumph, and he's going to prove to Xim that both Tao and Aza are disloyal.

Xim's lips fluttered as he shook his head, an expression of wrenching emotion too confused to decipher. “Aza,” he whispered, shaking his head.

Beck crossed the room and yanked open the door connecting the royal couple's private apartments. “Your Highness,” he called into the adjacent room. “The king requests the honor of your presence.”

“What has happened, Xim?” Aza stepped into the room anxiously, looking like one of Uhrth's own angels, swaddled in a sparkling pearl-white robe, her hair soft and loose, her hand, as always, resting on her stomach. Taking in the scene before her, she turned so pale with shock that Elsabeth feared she'd go into early labor. She couldn't blame the woman, being greeted by a man she neither liked nor trusted; reuniting with the tutor who for three years had been a trusted friend; then discovering the proof that her brother was alive, only to plunge almost immediately into confusion seeing him handcuffed and gripped by Markam, the man she secretly loved. But of course her gaze went to Xim first, her husband, the king, who held all the power over her, and all the answers.

“The Kurel tutor has put you under a spell,” Xim said.

“Of course not. She could not.”

Elsabeth was jerked toward the table in the center of the room by the wrist by Beck, who then held her hand up for all to see. “There's only one way to tell,” he announced, drawing all eyes to himself.

Cuffs and all, Tao lunged for her, but Markam caught him around the waist, almost throwing them both to the floor.

No, Tao.
Elsabeth willed him to be still. He was thinking of the blade in her dress, fearing she'd use it.

She couldn't guarantee she wouldn't, but she'd be damned if she'd let him get killed over the prospect.
We're going to survive this. We're going to be together.
Elsabeth commanded him not to fight, sending the message with what she hoped was a chilling glare, trying to keep her pleading, her terror, from leaking through.

Beck yanked her hand down to the table, forcing her palm to slap the wood. His hold on her was crushing. Needles prickled her arm. “In the days of old, we'd cut off the hands of accused sorcerers.” He unsheathed his sword and raised it high, focusing his eye with maniacal intensity on her face. “Save yourself, Kurel witch,” he hissed.

Everyone froze in horror, until Tao ripped free from Markam's hold with a warrior cry and lunged
for Beck—but his sister was closer. With a screamed
“no,”
Aza threw herself in the path of the sword just as Beck began his downward slice.

Everything slowed down. In that second, with the queen's arm stretching toward her, Elsabeth saw the flash of awareness on the king's face: where the sword would fall, whose flesh it would slash and destroy, which woman would crumple with a quick, soft scream, selflessly taking the blow…

Xim hurtled forward. The sword impacted his ribs. Blood sprayed. The sound of Beck pulling the weapon free was a sound Elsabeth knew she'd never forget, to be burned into her memory along with the sight of Xim, who, taking that sword, twisted it free of Beck's startled grip and plunged it deep into the old, one-eyed warrior's heart.

 

W
HEN
E
LSABETH OPENED
the eyes she hadn't realized she'd squeezed shut, she was being crushed in Tao's freed arms, trying to absorb the blood-soaked scene before her, like something from a battlefield.

It was a battlefield.

“You're safe,” Tao told her in a harsh whisper, his hand spread on the back of her head, holding her tight to his chest and the thunder of his pounding heartbeat.

Xim sat down hard on the floor, his legs splayed as blood pooled under him. With trembling fingers,
he touched the gaping wound in his upper torso. His expression was one of almost childlike surprise that such a thing had happened to him. Then peace such as she'd never witnessed suffused the perpetually troubled king's face. “You're all right, Aza,” he told the queen.

Sobbing, Aza dropped to her knees beside him and squeezed his bloody hands in hers. “Oh, Xim, My Lord. My husband…”

He took great, hiccupping breaths. “I didn't know it would hurt this much to die.”

Aza pressed his face between her hands. “Soon, dear, the pain will be gone.”

Xim nodded, the strange hiccups wracking his body. “It is…easier.” Then his head lolled forward. His body shuddered, and the king of Tassagonia was dead.