Blood Warrior

Golden silk.

His heart jumped with a kick of adrenaline. The dam holding back his gift was weakening.

Kavya was not alone. A large Indranan woman stood at her side. She wore what appeared to be ceremonial brigandine armor, similar to that worn by the Black Guard. Called “the coat of a thousand nails,” its wool and leather padding was backed with rivets. Penetrating that dense overlapping iron with a blade was almost impossible. Pristine and unscathed, the armor was decorated with pale Northern turquoise. Only the woman’s posture suggested her clothing and the curved talwar saber she held were more than for show.

A burst of pain shot down Tallis’s backbone, from his temple to the base of his spine.

What the hell?

He dropped to one knee and looked up. The female stranger glared down. More pain sizzled his every nerve. Another man might’ve been crippled by that stinging, blinding blow, but Tallis had nearly lost the Sun. His prize. He wasn’t going to lose her again.

“You’re coming with me,” he said, working past the agony that centered at the base of his skull. He caught the Sun’s gaze. “No matter what you and that butcher of a brother have done.”

“You blame me for this?” Wide, almost innocent eyes narrowed with concentrated anger. At least the chaos had stripped the last of her ability to draw false impressions from the crowd.

“You’ve led your people to slaughter,” he said. “We won’t be victims, too.”

Lunging forward, seax at the ready, he attempted to grab her waist with his free arm.

The Sun shot backward. “Chandrani!”

The bigger woman met Tallis’s attack with a quick parry and flick of her saber. The curving blade meant his arrow-straight seax was deflected by a swooping arc. It was like trying to stab the center of a blender’s blades. Only his speed, which was gathering as his fury increased, dented the skilled woman’s defenses. She moved with surprising grace, considering she was nearly his height, made of muscle, and covered in riveted leather armor. A bodyguard. That would explain the pain she continued to shoot through his skull. Some Indranan were better suited to thought manipulation, others to combat. This woman Chandrani was obviously one of the latter.

Tallis spun behind her. He kicked the back of her knee with his heavy combat boots. She stumbled—the opening he needed. The power he harnessed was unpredictable, but he’d been wielding it since its manifestation in his early teens. He let a portion of the rage fuel his movements. Stronger. Faster. His mind slipped behind a haze of red. He managed to restrain his violence only after slamming the hilt of his seax against the woman’s temple. She staggered, clutching where blood oozed from between her fingers.

“What have you done?” The Sun rushed forward and held the woman’s head against her chest. “She was the only hope I had of getting out of here.”

“No, you have me.” Tallis hitched the strap of his pack. “I don’t believe you backed yourself into a valley without a way out. Show me how you planned to escape and I won’t continue to fight this woman.”

“Chandrani comes with us.”

He smiled grimly. “If she can walk.”

—

She hated him. Kavya had thought herself immune to hatred beyond her loathing for Pashkah. That loathing came from the knowledge that her life was not her own so long as he lived. She couldn’t behead him and risk taking two minds into her own. Anyone she hired to kill him could accept double the payment to lead Pashkah right back to her. And she wouldn’t risk Chandrani, her only reliable calm in a world of chaos. The woman had offered to kill him several times, as repayment for a bleak night in Mumbai ten years ago when Kavya had beheaded Chandrani’s murderous twin sister. Afterward they’d held each other and cried in both relief and grief.

That was an Indranan’s deepest burden, to genuinely love and hate one’s mortal foe. Kavya lived with the constant dread that the brother she’d adored as a child—together with Baile, the three of them inseparable—was eager to steal her from this world, when she still had so much to do.

But Tallis of Pendray . . .

The Dragon-damned Heretic. She hated him without reservation.

She helped Chandrani stand, although the woman outweighed her by a good forty pounds of muscle. “I’m sorry,” the woman said, her voice rife with pain. “I heard your shout, but your mind flickered in and out. I couldn’t focus to find you. Then . . . then there was chaos.”

“The fault was mine. I was dazed. Couldn’t concentrate after I called for you.”

Chandrani offered a watery smile. She only smiled for Kavya, which represented their unshakable bond. “I wouldn’t be able to concentrate in the company of that lonayip bastard either.”

“I still need you,” Kavya whispered, her face flushed. “Please. For me. We need to escape.”

Chandrani steadied herself with gratifying efficiency. No one in Asia was a better, more sacrificing warrior. Her honor and dedication had kept Kavya alive far longer than she’d expected as a scared, homeless twelve-year- old girl.

Kavya glared once more at Tallis before turning toward the altar.

Tallis followed. She’d expected his presence, but he seemed unusually willing to follow. Not grab and demand. He was connected to her in ways that he resented. What was it about his past that had produced such a strange combination of bitterness and . . . protectiveness? Even affection? An untenable sense of his innate aura was the closest she could get to reading his mind.

Despite the physical bullying, she’d never gotten the impression that he aimed to do her harm. When he called her “goddess,” his tone was sarcastic and acidic, but she’d heard something near to reverence. Years of hearing it from her followers meant she recognized unconscious awe. He didn’t realize how much he gave away by insulting her with that particular word.

She struggled through the crowd, dodging frantic hands that beseeched her for help—or held her back—but she wore a tight smile. Here she’d thought herself incapable, or more arrogantly, above using her physical senses. Tallis was right that she’d become complacent.

What had she expected to happen? That Pashkah would simply let her go? The properties of a psychic Mask—many Masks, in her case—only extended so far. She could’ve hidden forever had she lived an unassuming life, especially had she emigrated. But because Dragon Kings could no longer bear children, she would’ve lived day to day without purpose. A useless hermit.

Anger swelled in her chest, fighting for a place where her aching breath huffed. Pashkah would not take this from her, and neither would Tallis of Pendray. Whatever she needed to do to escape, she would do. She was the only person able to reveal Pashkah’s treachery and reunite her people.

Raghupati was dead. Omanand was dead. She mourned the loss of two men willing to make a difference, standing beside her and perhaps helping to bear a few of her decades-old burdens.

Thankfully, the Black Guard had scattered into the crowd, leaving the altar a solitary heap of rock.

Tallis grabbed her arm. “Let me go first.”

“By all means.”

The deepening shadows of evening meant his features were harder to discern. The color was gone. She’d liked his hair, tipped with a silvery sheen, and she’d liked his deep blue eyes. Too bad. She was stuck with a deranged Pendray whose looks were a hindrance to her ability to concentrate.

A distracted Indranan courted death by a ready sibling. And so the cycle of death and madness continued.

Creeping through the archway, Tallis kept his back to the altar and circled to the rear. His stealth was impressive. He was in tune with himself and the vagaries of the physical world—typical of the Pendray, as was his stubborn lack of sense. That came standard with their kind.

“What am I looking for?” he whispered over his shoulder.

She caught Chandrani’s arm as the larger woman swayed, still clutching her head. “A span of rock with flecks of copper,” Kavya said. “It’s not sandstone or granite. It conceals a tunnel for escape.”

“I knew you weren’t that naive.”

“Perhaps I was.” She glanced back to where the Guardsmen were rounding up women. More and more men had been pushed to the eastern side of the valley, contained by guards holding Dragon-forged swords. That gold- touched gleam on otherwise ordinary steel was unmistakable. They wouldn’t be able to fight back, or even flee. Only the Dragon knew their fate. “I had been hoping for unity, not planning for worst-case scenarios.”