“Zebulon?”
“What?”
“I still do not speak Zantish.”
“Oh. Right. What color was the, the…thing?”
“I do not know. I could see nothing of it against the darkness, but I heard the great wings as it flew to the south.”
Zeb managed to turn most of that into Zantish. Nesha-tari growled and stomped a bare foot.
“An evil place, surely,” Heggenauer muttered.
Something approaching sanity was returning to Tilda’s eyes, though she was still panting and holding her two daggers level in front of her, ready to attack with either. She turned toward Zeb and met his eyes, blinked, and her open mouth turned up at the side. She laughed, almost giggled.
“What?” Zeb looked around, and noticed that the helmet on his head had long cheek guards extending down from the steel dome, with a thick leather face mask hanging unbuckled at one side. Zeb was wearing Shikashe’s ornate helmet, along with only a long shirt and drawers of Doonish linen. He still had his crossbow raised over his head. The samurai stared at him, then joined Tilda in a hearty laugh.
“You think that’s bad,” Deskata said. “The Exlander’s dingus is hanging out.”
Zeb glanced across the room and Tilda spun around rather quickly, but Heggenauer had moved his shield modestly over his groin. He blushed, and Zeb had to chuckle as well.
“I thought Jobe’s priests did not carry swords, Brother,” Deskata added.
The quivering fear caused by the dragon’s earsplitting flyover had begun to recede, and the laughter banished the last of it. It was replaced by the general anxiety of being in Vod’Adia. No one returned to the roof and the door outside was wedged shut. Deskata and Shikashe moved to the adjoining corner room to watch over the streets.
Nesha-tari alone returned to her bedding and curled up within it. Zeb and Heggenauer dressed and remained awake with Tilda and Amatesu, sitting in a circle in the middle of the gallery, facing out in the darkness and not talking, with their weapons at their sides. With the worst of the fear gone the exhaustion of the last two days returned, and at some point people started nodding off, either hunched over or half-stretched out backward on the floor.
Zeb slept that way, sprawled on his back but with his legs still crossed and his axe lying beside him. A few hours later when the gray light of dawn began to pierce the room from the tall arrow slits on the outer wall, the first thing Zeb became aware of on waking was the painful stiffness in his knees. The second was Matilda Lanai.
The Miilarkian had been sitting on Zeb’s right, and at some point after he had leaned back and dozed-off she had succumbed to her own fatigue and slid down against him. She was still asleep with her head pillowed on Zeb’s belly, with the coil of her braided hair lying on his chest like a small snake. Her face was turned up, mouth slightly open, and soft breath passed steadily between her lips. Her tan skin was smudged with the gray dust that was everywhere in Vod’Adia, but it did not detract at all from her appearance.
The door down to the courtyard was open and Zeb heard quiet voices from below, but he was in no particular hurry this morning. In all likelihood he would be killed today, and he saw no point in hurrying to meet that fate. He slowly pushed himself up to his elbows, but otherwise remained still. Tilda murmured but settled, and Zeb watched her sleep for another few minutes, noting the smoothness of her skin and the thickness of her eyelashes, and the curve of her slightly pursed lips.
The light from the arrow slits across the room was interrupted as John Deskata walked in, brawny in the Legion armor of steel and chain breastplate, with heavy greaves on his shins flaring up to cover his knees.
From what Zeb had understood of the conversation between Tilda and Deskata in the inn across from the ruins of the Dead Possum, their relationship was, to say the least, complicated. Something about John traveling incognito until that very moment, a dead Captain named Block, Miilarkian Houses, lies and exiles and assassinations. Zeb felt like he had witnessed the end of Tilda and Deskata’s friendship that morning, but he was unclear just how close that friendship had been. He knew for sure that no woman whom he had not slept with at some point had ever ended up glaring at Zeb with the same fierce rage that Tilda had leveled on John.
Deskata looked across the room and stopped as he saw Zeb’s open eyes and Tilda curled up beside him. Though from that same conversation Zeb had the sense that Deskata was a born Miilarkian as well, the man looked nothing like it with his lighter complexion and a dark beard, short but thick. Zeb did know however that a lot of Miilarkians did not look much like typical Islanders. Something about Varanchian lineage, and “Ship People.”
Zeb shrugged his shoulders at Deskata and Matilda’s head rocked gently on his belly. She gave a small irritated moan and put a hand on his chest. Deskata rolled his eyes and shook his head, which was something of a relief to Zeb. The ex-legionnaire walked on to where his pack and bedroll still lay, but swerved over to give Tilda’s foot a passing poke with the toe of his marching sandal.
Tilda’s warm, nut-brown eyes fluttered before they settled on Zeb’s. He watched the surprise and confusion wash over her expressive face, and smiled at her broadly.
“Good morning, Miss Matilda,” he said. Tilda lifted her head, drawing her long braid rather pleasantly over Zeb’s belly, and blinked around the room. John was gathering his things and Nesha-tari was just sitting upright and stretching her arms with a toothy yawn. Through the open door to the room on the corner, Heggenauer was visible kneeling on the floor as though in prayer. Tilda turned back to Zeb.
“Good morning, Mr. Zebulon,” she said, not seeming to be troubled by their proximity. Zeb chose to take that as a good sign.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked. “After the dragon flew by, I mean.”
Tilda had noticed her braid lying across Zeb’s stomach and she gave her head a little toss to pull it off of him. He was sorry to feel it go.
“Sure, after that,” she said, and noticed Zeb’s crossed legs. “Did you sleep like that?”
“I did. I’m fairly sure I am crippled now.”
Tilda sat up and Zeb unfolded his legs, wincing as pins and needles played up and down both.
“Mind the axe,” Zeb said, for one of Tilda’s hands was on the floor near the double-headed blade.
“Whoops,” Tilda said. “Good thing we didn’t roll around last night.”
“Actually, I was thinking that had been something of a shame.”
Tilda arched a dark eyebrow, which had a bit of a downward turn to begin with that gave her face a contemplative look. She smiled and her teeth were very white in the gray light.
“Zebulon,” she said, her Island accent stressing the middle syllable. “We are in a lost city, full of demons and dragons and the gods-know-what-all. Are you hitting on me right now?”
Nesha-tari had put her cloak around her shoulders and was changing her clothes beneath it with her back to the room. Zeb avoided breaking eye contact with Tilda to look in that direction, but it took a little effort.
“That depends,” he said. “Might I ask you a personal question?”
“Okay,” Tilda said, still with a smile but a suspicious tone.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any strange, mystical powers, would you? Something that makes men doe-eyed and foolish?”
“I wish.”
“I guess it is not a spell, then.”
Tilda rolled her eyes and stood up, but not so fast that Zeb failed to see the side of her mouth turn up in a smirk.
“You are a strange, strange fellow, Zebulon Baj Nif,” she said, extending a hand down to him. Zeb took it and felt a wiry strength as Tilda leaned back and pulled him to his feet. Despite the bulk of Tilda’s heavy trousers, sweater, vest, and half-cloak, there was cause to suspect the existence of a wicked little body within all that fabric.
With bedrolls and packs secured, the full party assembled down in the courtyard, where Amatesu had kindled a small fire to heat a tea of oddly-shaped leaves that had been included in the Shugak provisions. It was extremely bitter, but adequate to soften the hard biscuits with which the party broke their fast. The group passed around a single ladle as no one had a cup, and the talk was all small. Nothing about where they were, or what they had heard in the night.