knee, his bare foot planted on the quilt. His head was braced on one fist as he happily
devoured the sixth sandwich she’d made him while impatiently awaiting the seventh.
“You realize this is the entire loaf of bread I brought, don’t you?” she asked him as
she slapped a big wedge of ham and another of sharp cheese between the bread slices.
“I’m a growing boy,” he muttered, popping the last of his sandwich into his mouth
and holding out his hand for the next one.
“You’re going to be an obese man if you keep eating like this,” she warned as he
took a massive bite out of the fresh sandwich, licking away a dollop of mustard that
oozed to the side of his mouth.
“Reaper metabolisms are different,” he said around the glob of food in his mouth.
“We require a lot of energy to maintain.”
“Uh-huh,” Lea agreed. She cut a small piece of chocolate cake for him, careful of
how much sugar she was going to allow him.
He picked up his fork and shoveled several loads of potato salad into his mouth,
gobbling the food as though he were a starved man and someone would snatch away
his nourishment before he could eat it.
“It’s a wonder you don’t get indigestion,” Lea told him.
“Won’t happen,” he said, munching away. He eyed the cake. “Is that all I get?”
“I see celery and carrot sticks, radishes, tomatoes and green onions still on your
plate,” she said. “If you eat all that…”
“Rabbit food,” he called it, “and aye, I will eat it.”
“Then you can have the cake,” she said.
“But that’s such a small piece,” he complained. “There’s not that much sugar…”
She just arched a brow at him.
“Oh all right,” he mumbled, knowing where her mind had gone.
Sheriff Gilchrist came walking over to inform their Reaper that word had come
from Clewiston that the train would be leaving in three days for the Citadel.
“I booked you and Lea passage as you asked, milord,” Buford told him.
“My thanks,” Bevyn said. “You eaten?”
“Had a bite or two,” Buford said, “although I could go for some of that cake.”
Bevyn frowned. He wanted the cake entirely to himself but Lea was already cutting
a piece—and a gods-be-damned big piece at that!—for the sheriff.
“Much obliged, Lea,” the sheriff said, taking a seat on their quilt.
Bevyn glared at the older man as Buford inhaled the creamy chocolate confection
and held his plate out for more at Lea’s offering.
“I don’t mind if I do,” Buford said. “That’s right good cake.”
90
Her Reaper’s Arms
Crunching a stalk of celery, Bevyn deliberately tore his stare from that second
helping of cake and caught a glimmer of movement in the stable loft. Though he stared
long and hard at the opening door, nothing else stirred.
“What do you see, milord?” Buford asked, glancing that way.
“The door’s open on the loft,” Bevyn said. “Must have been the wind swinging it.”
“Want me to go check?”
“Nah,” Bevyn said. “It’s all right.”
Now and again for the rest of the day, he would turn his gaze to the loft, but
nothing else moved up there.
Penthe had scooted back when the Reaper’s gaze shifted to the loft. She knew she’d
been lax in giving herself away and was careful now to keep well out of sight.
Lying down, she decided to take a nap. Heat was shifting through the stable and
wafting up from the hay in the stable below and she was sweating profusely. She’d
consumed all her water and was thirsty for more but didn’t want to risk being seen or
heard climbing back down the ladder since the stableman and his helper had been in
and out several times already.
Instead she thought of her trip on the Ostria, the Long Range Cruiser that had
brought Asteria and her to Terra.
She missed her lover terribly but their relationship had just about run its course.
Asteria had been flirting outrageously with one of the yeomen on the LRC so it was but
a matter of time before she and Penthe had parted company.
Sighing deeply, Penthe’s thoughts went to Captain Antimache and Lieutenant
Myrine who had joined her in searching for Asteria’s attacker. When they had come
across the three rogues who were also hunting Roy English, there had been one helluva
fight—one in which neither the three balgairs nor the three Amazeen had come out the
victors. It had taken them all several days to recuperate from the vicious brawl.
“Join up with us and we’ll help you find the Reaper,” Eton Reece, the leader of the
rogues, had suggested. “Six to one is good odds. He won’t get away.”
At the time, Antimache had thought it a good notion and though she did not
outrank Penthe, she was in charge of the expedition. Her fellow Amazeens were
angered at the gruesome death dealt to Artesia, and seeing the Reaper pay for a rogue’s
brutality seemed like a fair exchange.
It hadn’t been clear why Reece, Bartlett and Dempsey had been looking for English,
but the three rogues definitely had murder in their minds when they found him.
Perhaps it was because English had come down with rabies and was a danger to
everyone and everything around him, or it might have had something to do with the
carnage the balgair had left behind in his rundown shack.
“By the gods!” Reece had exclaimed as he took in the slaughtered nuns dangling
from the walls. “This is bad. This is really bad!”
91
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
But it had been the Reaper who had destroyed the evidence of English’s perfidy
and for that Penthe bore him a begrudging amount of respect. Had she not been
engaged in the third day of mourning for Asteria, she would have come out from the
place she’d been hiding to attack the Reaper, but the dictates of her religion had
prohibited her the use of her weapons during the Pentheo, the triad of mourning days.
Antimache and Myrine had gone on with the three balgairs to Lawler while Penthe
had stayed behind to bury her dead and say the prayers for Artesia’s soul. Her only
regret was that in her grief at losing her lover, she had failed to
