“The woman you brought in,” Nathan Singh said. “She’s awake. She wants totalk to you.”
“All right.”
Nathan extended a flask. “Hot tea, mate. It’ll help get the blood going.”
“Any cream and sugar?” Simon asked.
“No,” Nathan quipped, “but I’ve some lovely cabbage rose print china back atmy bunk.”
Simon grinned, took the flask, and drank deeply. The tea was strong and dark, and hot enough to clear his sinuses. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Nathan put the flask back on the hammock above Simon’s.
Simon abandoned hope of any more sleep for a time. Leah would have a lot of questions. And then he’d have to decide what to do with her. Having her at thecamp compromised the camp’s location. He thought he could trust her, but he hadover four thousand lives hanging in the balance if he was wrong.
You can’t be wrong, he told himself. However you handle this, youcan’t be wrong.
He stood and pushed the blankets to the foot of the hammock. He was nude. All Templar slept nude because they couldn’t wear clothing under the armor. It wasmade to fit exactly without any hindrance.
The question was whether to see Leah as a Templar, or as himself. As a general rule, he’d ordered every Templar to keep his or her armor at hand nomatter where he or she was.
“Get dressed,” Nathan said. “Street clothes. I’ll bring your armor along in abit.”
Simon nodded. During the last three years, Nathan had proven himself to be a good friend and dedicated warrior. He was from the Templar House of Darius, and normally they were at odds with the House of Rorke.
Ruefully, Simon admitted that the rebelliousness was probably still in order. High Seat Booth was all in favor of the Grand Marshal’s current edict that the Templar remain in hiding forthe most part. Like many of the others that had abandoned the Underground, Nathan hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of staying safe while so many peoplewere hunted by demons every day.
Nathan was almost six feet in height and bulked up from lifting weights. A black gunslinger mustache he took a lot of kidding about framed a generous mouth. He wore his hair short and had a tattoo of a dragon that covered his left arm from shoulder to elbow. He claimed it was the dragon St. George slew.
Simon kept a small selection of clothing in a chest under his hammock. He pulled on cargo pants, tennis shoes, and a dark blue T-shirt that fit him like a second skin. He belted a Spike Bolter around his hips.
Rule #1 was that no one went unarmed in the redoubt.
When Simon reached the medical bay, he found Leah sitting on the edge of the bed. He entered the room and looked at her.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Alive. That’s pretty surprising.” Although the mask covered Leah’s face,Simon thought he could hear a smile in her voice.
“It surprised me, too,” he admitted. “I didn’t know if you were going to makeit.” He leaned against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. “For awhile there I didn’t know if any of us were going to make it.”
“Did you get the Templar out of there?”
Simon nodded. “We did.”
“How are they?”
“Still unconscious. The medics have worked on them. They don’t know what’swrong. Their physical health seems all right, but there may be some brain damage.”
“Did you lose anyone rescuing them?”
“No. We were lucky.”
Silence hung in the room for a moment.
Simon had a hard time guessing what thoughts were going through Leah’s head.He had a hard time figuring that out anyway even without the mask hiding her features.
There were too many things he didn’t know about her. Why she was down inSouth Africa looking for him. How she even knew to look for him. How she got as competent at fighting as she was. How she was so familiar with weapons.
And where she’d gotten the black one-piece uniform she wore.
“You need to get out of that armor,” Simon said. “The medics haven’t beenable to properly examine you. There could be some internal damage or a broken bone. They couldn’t get the uniform off you or x-ray through it.”
“No, they wouldn’t be able to do that. And it’s a good thing for them theydidn’t try too hard.”
“Who are you with?” Simon asked.
The blank features of the mask regarded him for a moment. Then Leah lifted her hands to her head and ran her palms over the tight-fitting headpiece. The mask separated and rolled down to her neck.
Leah hadn’t changed much during the four years that Simon had… beenaware of her. He couldn’t say he knew her. She had captivating violet eyesand short-cropped dark hair that hung just past the line of her jaw. Her skin was pale, no longer possessing the tan he’d seen her with on that plane out ofCape Town.
“I can’t answer that,” Leah said.
“I maybe endangering the lives of everyone here if I let you go,” Simon said.He tried to keep his voice easy and light, but he knew the threat was there all the same.
“If I decide to leave,” Leah stated quietly, “you won’t stop me withoutsomeone getting hurt.”
“I know. That’s what makes the situation difficult. I shouldn’t have broughtyou here. But if I’d left you, you might have died.”
“You couldn’t do that.”
Simon hesitated. “No.”
Leah showed him a faint smile. “Do you guys have a code against that?”
“Yes,” he answered honestly. “It’s part of the Templar charter. We defend thehelpless and the weak. Originally it was intended for travelers met on the road.”
“I’m not exactly helpless and weak.”
“You’re not,” Simon agreed. “You still needed help.”
“Not all of the Templar believe the way you do, Simon,” she said. “I knowthey don’t, and you know they don’t.”
Simon was quiet for a moment. When he’d first taken her into the TemplarUnderground, he’d thought she was just a young woman in need of protection. Butthe biggest reason that he’d taken her there was because it didn’t matter. TheTemplar Underground, at least in the House of Rorke’s
