“ Find something useful?” Bocrest asked.
Since shadow covered the ledge already, Tikaya received little warning when the ice condor approached for the second time. Movement teased the corner of her eye, and Rias yelled, “Get down!” just as she was turning to check.
The condor swooped toward her head, talons outstretched. She flung her arms out.
Rias smashed into her, taking her to the ground. Her shoulder flared with pain, but the talons meant for her eyes grazed her forearm. They cut through her parka and stung flesh.
Bocrest and the tracker fired, but the condor banked before the balls hit. It swooped out of sight over the cliff above the tent.
“ Are you injured?” Rias asked, eyes locked on her as he shifted to let her up.
Tikaya pushed up her parka sleeve. “Just a couple scratches.”
Rias removed a glove and brushed his finger across one of the wounds, which had started to well blood. A green pasty substance mingled with the crimson drops.
“ What is it?” Dread hollowed her stomach.
“ Poison.” Rias jumped to his feet. “We have to get to the sawbones.”
Tikaya stared at her arm. She knew nothing about poison. “Is this a lethal dose? How much time do I have?”
He started to respond, but the condor swooped toward them again.
“ Someone shoot that slagging bird!” Bocrest shouted to the men below. He and the tracker were still reloading.
Rias had dropped his rifle to shield Tikaya. The bird landed on the launch pad as he grabbed the weapon. Unconcerned, the condor cocked its head, black eye studying Tikaya.
“ Yes, you got me.” Bitterness choked her words.
“ Sh.” Rias aimed the rifle, but hesitated. A calculating flash crossed his face, and he raised his voice. “Don’t worry, Tikaya. You’re not going to die. We’ve got the antidote in camp, and you’ve got plenty of time.”
Bocrest, the first to finish reloading, lifted his rifle. The bird flapped away. Several shots fired, but it weaved and banked with preternatural speed, and disappeared unscathed.
Rias lowered his weapon. He had not fired.
“ I’d like to be reassured by your words,” Tikaya murmured, “but I suspect that was for the benefit of the bird.”
“ Will whoever is controlling it understand our speech through its ears?” Rias asked.
“ I’m not sure. Maybe.” She might have stopped to consider what he hoped to accomplish with his words, but other thoughts stampeded to the front of her mind. “How much time do I really have?”
“ Plenty,” Rias said.
She had come to know him too well; she could tell he was lying.
CHAPTER 14
Tikaya woke to the sound of pained wheezing. Her own. Air. She couldn’t get enough air.
She opened her eyes to a green canvas tent ceiling supported by slender steel bars. Confusion muddled her mind. The last thing she remembered was Rias and another marine carrying her down the mountain on a litter. Now she lay on a cot, blankets pulled to her chin. Somewhere behind her head, a lantern provided illumination that failed to reach the shadowy corners.
They must have reached the base camp, but if the sawbones had applied some antidote, she could not feel it. Her breath rattled in her ears, and she could not pull in enough air to satisfy her lungs. She tried to wriggle her toes. If they moved she could not tell.
Still alive, she thought, but still poisoned. And alone. Rows of empty cots stretched into the darkness. Where was Rias? Why hadn’t he stayed with her? And what about the sawbones?
“ Akahe, please don’t let me die alone,” she mouthed.
She blinked away tears, but it was hard to keep the wheezing breaths from turning into sobs. With no one to witness her torment, why bother being stoic? And why hadn’t she written a letter to her parents? Rias might be slated for a return to exile, but Agarik would have found a way to post it. But now her family would forever wonder what happened.
The tent flap swayed, and icy air gusted inside.
She could not lift her head to peer into the shadows at the entrance. “Is someone there?” she tried to ask. It came out weak and garbled.
She saw no one, but soft footfalls trod across floor mats. A man coalesced before her-a familiar man. The Nurian practitioner from the ship. She tried to move, to roll away, but her body did not respond. When she had begged the Divine One to keep her from dying alone, this was not the company she had meant.
“ The Turgonian lied,” he murmured in his native tongue, his gaze flicking over her supine form. “I see no evidence that an antidote has been applied. They probably don’t even know Irkla Root when they see it.” He withdrew a knife and met her eyes for the first time. “I’m sorry, Ms. Komitopis.”
She groped for something to say that would save her, but only a wheezy gurgle came out when she tried to speak.
“ I regret the need for this task,” the Nurian continued. “After the help the Kyattese-you-gave my people during the war, it’s unfair to kill you, but I can not let the Turgonian military get their hands on that kind of weaponry. Nor am I going to let those archaeologists sell it to the highest bidder. I can’t let your talents be used against my people, but I’ll show mercy and end your suffering now.”
He leaned forward and lifted the blade. Tikaya tried to thrash, to fight him off, but her limbs were already dead.
A shadow moved behind the Nurian, and a dagger appeared at his throat. His weapon was wrenched from his hand.
“ You move, you die,” Rias growled in his accented Nurian.
The assassin’s eyes widened. He reached for his throat, but Rias’s blade bit into flesh, drawing blood.
“ Most of your people who work with poisons carry the antidote in case they infect themselves,” Rias said. “You’ve five seconds to produce it, or you’ll suffer the same fate as your bodyguard.”
Rias’s head was right next to the Nurian’s, and rage burned in his eyes. Tikaya wanted to yell, to warn him that a practitioner did not need a weapon to kill. Only a strangled wheeze came out.
Surprisingly amenable, the Nurian reached into his parka and withdrew a handful of fingernail-sized clay vials. “The gray one.”
“ Sample it,” Rias said.
The Nurian blanched.
Rias shoved him to his knees and smashed his face into the mats. The two men dropped below Tikaya’s line of sight.
“ You’re justifying killing the one person who saved your asses in the war over paranoia,” Rias snarled.
“ You saw your fort. Your people would destroy the world with weapons like that. I can’t-”
“ Quiet.” Rias slammed the man into the ground again. “ Which vial is the correct antidote?”
“ The clear one,” the Nurian rasped, his airway restricted.
Did Rias have a hand around his throat? She struggled to turn her head, but could only move it an inch.
Rias sat back, kneeling on the man’s chest, and pulled the cork out with his teeth. He forced a drop down the Nurian’s throat. The man made no attempt to elude it, and Rias seemed satisfied.
As he started to reach for Tikaya, the hairs on her neck stood.
“ Spell,” she blurted, praying the word would come out intelligible.
Rias growled and drove his dagger into the Nurian’s chest with a crunch of bone. The pained grunt sounded final.
He leaned close to Tikaya and rested a hand on her forehead. The rage was gone, and an uncertain desperation haunted his eyes. He held up the vial.
“ I don’t know for sure, but I have to try it, all right?”
She tried to nod vigorously, though she was not sure her head moved. He propped her up to slide the liquid down her throat. It burned like cheap rum, and tasted like resin, but she was not about to reject it.
Rias never shifted his gaze from her face. He stroked her hair gently. When his hand brushed her cheek, it felt cool against her fevered skin. The lantern light reflected in the moisture pooling in his eyes. Tears blurred her own vision again, though this time they came from knowing someone was there with her, someone who cared.