She wanted him safe.
“Be careful,” she said. Her exhale of breath brushed soft against his cheek. “And if you come back before sunup, you’d better be singing.” She spoke lightly, as if in jest.
“You think I can’t sing?” he asked.
Her face lit with the brightness of her smile. “I think I’d need proof.”
“Singing it is, then.” Blade adjusted his collar against the cold. He did not want to leave her any more than she wanted to be left behind, but it could not be helped.
He felt her eyes track each of his steps as he trudged through the drifts and away from their camp.
Chapter Twelve
Blade was careful to step where the wind had scrubbed the ground almost bare so as to leave fewer footprints behind. Some snow-packed passages, however, protected by surrounding cliffs, could not be avoided.
Shortly after dusk, he breached the white-capped rise above the temple’s valley. To the casual observer, the settlement below gave the impression of quiet serenity, like any number of other Godseeker temples of worship but on a larger scale. Blade, however, knew better.
The last time he’d stood here he had been a young man intent on making his own way in the world and under his own rules. He had been overconfident and very arrogant. His time in the desert—and a demon attack—had cured him of that. He suspected most novices, once they received a few months of intensive training, still developed that same attitude. He was counting on that to help him break into the facility undetected. Whoever was on patrol would not be expecting such a bold move.
Blade scoured the landscape until he saw what he needed—a set of footprints. He charted their path with his eyes and saw they approached a rocky outcrop that would conceal his own tracks from above.
He circled around and stashed his pack beneath the outcropping, then leaped lightly onto the trail. He dragged his feet to make it look as if the guard had altered his course to where Blade had stood, then he carefully backtracked, placing his feet in the footprints and following them around the circumference of the valley. He hoped it was dark enough now and the guards complacent because of the recent storm, for his ruse to pass undetected until morning.
He intended to be long gone before then.
Night had fallen by the time he reached the inner courtyard. Several people moved about and while he entertained a few curious looks, he walked with purpose and no one questioned him. It was not unusual for people to come and go at strange hours in the temple, and as quietly as possible.
Entering the recruits’ living quarters, however, posed a greater complication. Anyone who saw his face in the light would know at once that he did not belong there and challenge his presence. He reconsidered his plan. It was as important to be patient as it was to be bold.
Next to the living quarters was the dining hall, as he remembered. It would be empty until the dark hours before dawn when the servants began to prepare the morning meal. Blade slipped inside.
The room brightened at once. Eternal lighting flowed from the ceiling, as it did throughout the entire goddess-sanctified temple. Blade searched his memory for the ritual words to dim it, and seconds later, the room settled into semi-darkness. He watched from behind the partly closed door as people moved about in the corridor, preparing for the night. Blade settled in to wait them out.
Several hours later, a man with a small scar on his face approached the living quarters. He wore denim trousers and was naked from the waist up, with a drying cloth slung over a broad shoulder as if he’d just come from a bath. He had a shaven head, not the close-cropped curls Raven spoke of, and a tattoo of a flaming phoenix that rose from the waist of his trousers to spread across his broad shoulders. He had Blade’s height, but Raven had downplayed that he was more massive in frame.
Tattoos could be added, hair shaved, and muscle built. But there was something familiar about the way he moved that made Blade look closer. The man’s unusual blue eyes were so like Raven’s in both shape and color that it could not be coincidence. She had not mentioned that either and he wondered why not, because to him, those eyes explained a lot. He had speculated about the closeness of their relationship but not considered this possibility.
“Creed?” He spoke the name softly, keeping one hand on the hilt of a weapon in case he had chosen the wrong man. “Raven says the knife you gave her served a good purpose.”
The man stiffened but gave no other outward indication that he had heard Blade. He did not approach the dining hall. Instead he stopped where he was and checked over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from, giving anyone watching the impression he was waiting for someone to catch up with him.
When he finally answered Blade, he, too, kept his voice low. “Who are you?”
Blade pushed the door open a crack more, conscious of the faint lighting in the dining hall behind him where there should be none. It exposed him more than he wished. “I’m her friend. She needs your help.”
Creed cast another look over his shoulder. “Wait for me here.”
He vanished into the living quarters. Another hour passed before he reappeared. When he did he was fully dressed and, Blade suspected, armed.
As he came through the door of the dining hall, he slammed Blade up against the wall and pressed a forearm to his throat. Blade remained relaxed and unthreatening, with his hands open and held away from his weapons. Years of being dismissed as a cripple had long ago cured him of taking offense at another man’s aggression toward him. He had nothing to prove.
“How do you know Raven?” Creed demanded. He eased the pressure on Blade’s throat enough for him to answer.
“I saved her life,” Blade said. That was true enough.
“Tell me how. And where she is.”
“Her stepfather had planned to burn her at the stake as a demon, and I helped her escape. I left her at a camp, a half-day’s walk from here.”
The coldness in the other man’s eyes did not necessarily alarm Blade, but it did cause the pressure exerted on his neck to increase to a point well beyond discomfort. He cleared his throat against the abuse it was receiving.
“She would have come to me herself. She would never stay behind,” Creed said.
Raven’s talk of Creed had not fully prepared Blade for him. She had spoken as if he was of an age with her, but in fact he was several years older, which meant he had gone into training very late. And Blade, too, had already been an accomplished killer, with a survivor’s mentality, when he joined the temple.
Speaking past the forearm crushing his windpipe was almost impossible now. His response came out distorted. “She would if she trusted me enough to believe me that this isn’t a place she should be.”
Long seconds passed. Blade worried he might black out and wondered if he should do something about it. Then the forearm was withdrawn, and he dragged in a few deep breaths.
Creed stepped back but kept his hands close to his weapons. “What’s your name, and why would she trust you to speak for her rather than come straight to me?”
“Can you protect her?” Blade asked.
“Your name,” Creed demanded again.
“Blade. I was an assassin once, too.”
“I already guessed that much. No one else would dare intrude here. Other than Raven.” His lips jerked, although in exasperation or humor, Blade could not be certain. Creed’s gaze raked over him. “Why should she trust an assassin?”
“Are you speaking of me or you?” Blade asked. “I delivered her message. If you know her at all, you know she gave it to me willingly.”
“Is she safe?” Creed asked. “Unharmed?”