The Nurians stopped shooting at Tikaya and focused their attacks on Rias, obviously finding him the greater threat. She spotted a bow within reach and grabbed it. The wounded man writhed, still trying to pull out the arrow, and she rolled away from him. She pried a quiver off a fallen archer and ducked behind a chest-high wooden contraption bolted to the deck.
Her hands shook, and it took three tries to nock the first arrow. She willed her fingers to still. She could do this. Human beings or not, they were trying to kill her.
Her first arrow went a foot wide of its mark, thunking into the frame by the hold’s only exit. She wiped hands wet with blood and sweat on her dress and sucked in a deep breath.
A man with a raised hatchet drew up behind Rias as he squared off with two cutlass wielders.
Tikaya’s nerves disappeared and she let an arrow fly. It struck the attacker between the shoulder blades, and he pitched forward, crashing to the deck at Rias’s heels. The man lay still. She had found his heart.
She swallowed, mortified by the results of her reflexive act. Rias slashed his cutlass through the throat of the last man standing before him, glanced behind at the dead Nurian, and saluted her with the sword.
The rest of their attackers were down as well. Dead. A tremor coursed through Tikaya’s body. She could not rip her gaze from the one she killed.
Muffled shouts echoed from deeper in the ship. Reinforcements who had heard the skirmish. Her mind processed what it meant, that more would soon burst in, that she would have to fight, but the tremor returned to her hands, and she shied away from the idea of shooting anyone else.
She was not a killer. If her family knew what she had done…
Rias stepped before her, blocking the view of the body and breaking her thoughts. He gripped her shoulder with a bloodstained hand. She swallowed and met his eyes.
“ More work to do before we’re safe,” he said, voice calm and steady, commanding her attention. “You can react later. Right now, I need you to watch my back so we can live through this. Concentrate on that, nothing else, understood?”
Before she could nod, four men burst into the hold, swords leading. A flash of silver streaked toward Rias’s head. He jerked back, and it split the air between them to land with a thunk in the wood wall. A throwing knife.
Rias leaped away from Tikaya and charged the Nurians.
“ Curse me.” She tore an arrow from her quiver. He had almost been killed because he was trying to keep her from falling apart. She nocked the arrow, forced her hands to still. React later. Yes. She could do that.
Rias led the Nurians about the hold, dodging behind crates and apparatuses, slashing to keep the men at bay, and evading their attempts to surround him. With agility surprising in someone so large, he kept them in each other’s way and remained on the outskirts so he only had to face one at a time. More, he kept them from paying attention to her.
Good.
Tikaya lifted the drawn bow and selected the man farthest from Rias. She was not going to be the idiot who shot someone on her own side. The arrow took the Nurian in his chest, and he lurched backward, hands clutching the shaft. Horror and pain wrenched his face. Her own heart twisted in sympathy, but she smashed down the emotion. React later.
Her next arrow felled a second man even as Rias sliced the throat of the third. The fourth skidded to a stop, realizing he fought alone.
He backpedaled for the exit, and Tikaya had him targeted, but she hesitated. Even if he meant to run straight to his captain, how could she shoot someone fleeing?
Rias lunged after him, and the man jumped back. His heel caught on a downed comrade, and he pitched to the deck, cracking his head on a crate.
Rias dropped beside the man, gripping his throat, and Tikaya winced and looked away.
“ Live or die?” Rias asked in accented Nurian.
Surprised, Tikaya looked back.
“ Live?” the Nurian croaked, eyes darting with fear, as if he did not expect to be that lucky.
Rias glanced toward the door, then laid his sword on the ground while he tore pieces from the man’s colorful clothing. With quick efficiency, he gagged the Nurian and started on ankle and wrist bonds.
“ Who would answer with die?” Tikaya asked.
“ Most of my people,” Rias said. “To live when the rest of your team died would be an unacceptable disgrace to many.”
With some vague sense that someone should be standing guard, she stepped over the bodies to watch the exit. Another hold stretched before her, lit by glowing orbs hanging from the beamed ceiling. No one else waited to charge.
Rias finished the bonds, leaving the Nurian wide-eyed on the deck, and snatched arrows from partially spent quivers. When he had a fistful, he joined Tikaya.
“ I want to take control of the ship,” he said.
“ Take control?” She gaped at the audacity. Surely, the best they could manage would be to run for the upper deck and leap over the side. But, no, who would find them in the cold, dark waters? Even if the Turgonians spotted them, and that was unlikely, they had their own troubles.
“ We’ll have another fight when they realize what’s going on.” He held out the arrows, enough to stuff her quiver, and watched her face. “You’ve got my back?”
She guessed at what he was really asking: can you, a philologist from an island full of peace-loving academics, keep from collapsing in a weepy heap when I need your help?
Tikaya grabbed the arrows and jammed them into the quiver, angry with herself for that weak moment that made him question her. “I’ve had it so far, haven’t I?”
“ Yes.” Rias gripped her forearm. “You’ve been magnificent.”
She snorted. Right. He didn’t know how lucky he was her trembling fingers hadn’t loosed an arrow that turned him into a eunuch. “Will you still think that if I insist on taking a side trip?”
“ What?”
“ I want to search the captain’s cabin for orders and find out why these people are trying to kill me.” And maybe she could finally get answers about what this secret Turgonian mission was all about.
“ We may not have time,” Rias said.
Tikaya lifted her chin. “We’ll make time.”
His eyebrows flicked upward, but the surprise lasted only a second. He nodded once and gave her a Turgonian salute, a fist thumped over his heart. “Yes, ma’am.”
“ Jeela, is it done?” a tinny voice asked from the center of the room.
As one they stared at the dead practitioner. The voice emanated from within her black robe.
Rias pointed his cutlass. “Can you answer that?”
“ Uhm.” Tikaya knelt by the dead woman, trying not to look at the bloody stump where the head should have been, and patted the blood-sodden robe. She found a glowing opal pendant, the chain broken, just as the voice spoke again.
“ Is the Kyattese girl dead? Jeela, do you need help?”
Though her education in the mental sciences was not ecumenical, she could sense the soft hum of a practitioner-made device. She held it up to her mouth, then waved at Rias and mouthed, “Make some noise.”
She partially covered the device with her hand, hoping to disguise the fact that her voice would not match the practitioner’s, and spoke in Nurian: “Yes, mission complete. She’s dead.” Then, fearing further conversation would only hurt her chances at pulling off the ruse, she dropped the device on the deck, so it clanked against the wood.
“ I doubt that fooled anyone,” she apologized to Rias as they exited.
The grim cast to his eyes suggested he agreed, but all he said was, “We’d best hurry.”
CHAPTER 6
The Nurian captain’s cabin offered a distinct contrast to Bocrest’s quarters. Behind a desk painted with flowers and vines, lace curtains decorated a bank of windows. Velvet furniture and lush rugs covering the deck might have invited one to lounge, but the cannons booming in the distance suppressed the cozy parlor ambiance.