Traitors Gate

Joss scooted over. 'There's your half.'

Instead of lying down, Peddonon stood. 'The hells,' he muttered, looking into the gloom. He snorted. Joss heard soft footfalls. 'Looks like I'm the only one who's not going to get devoured tonight.'

Joss sat up to see — the hells! — Zubaidit approaching along the berm with a blanket slung over one shoulder.

'There's a woman who plans ahead. I'll just take this.' Peddonon grabbed Joss's blanket and yanked hard, toppling Joss sideways. 'Greetings of the dusk, verea. I'm out of your way.'

'Greetings of the night to you, ver,' she shot back, as sweetly as the auntie to whom you've just brought a basket of fresh-picked duha berries. Peddonon laughed and walked off.

'Reminiscent of the first time we met,' said Joss from the ground, noting how her kilt was rucked up to expose a hells lot of long legs. 'Although certainly I'll be hoping for a different outcome.'

He didn't ask why she had come. He knew. She knew. Bodies knew. There were some things you just had to get out of your system.

He stood, and that fast she had an arm around him and her hips shoved against his groin, offering a kiss that lasted so long and got so intense he only broke it off because he belatedly heard cheering and hooting coming from the reeve encampment a stone's toss away. She didn't ease off on her grip.

She spoke in a lover's whisper as she nuzzled his ear. 'Captain Anji wants you dead.'

He broke away as their audience whooped and laughed. She hitched the blanket higher and walked away along the berm with a twitch of that shapely ass, the motion as much a natural phenomenon like wind or rain as a thing he could actually see in the growing darkness.

'The hells!' he called after her. She kept walking. He pulled a hand over his hair, which was spiky with grime from all that digging. Was it only this morning he had buried Lord Radas's corpse deep in the earth? It seemed like a lifetime ago, an act that had severed him from the life he'd lived before. Aui! She had him hooked now, didn't she?

With a laugh, he caught up as she slipped down the side of the berm to open ground. He got an arm around her and reeled her in, and the sheer excitement almost overcame him, but he kissed her hard to relieve some of the heat and then pressed his lips to her ear.

'That's got me going more than the knife did,' he murmured, his free hand sliding down to cup her buttocks. 'You can't possibly ask me to believe you hope to lure me out and murder me by telling me you're luring me out to murder me.'

'Obviously it's working.' Then, a little louder, 'Umm. Yes. Just like that.' Her voice dropped again. 'Can you swim?'

'Of course I can swim, I grew up on the ocean. What threat do I pose to Anji?'

She nuzzled his neck. 'He wants to kill all the cloaks, and he thinks you don't want to.'

'He agreed we need only kill those who were with the enemy-'

She tripped him, and down they went, the words knocked back into his throat by the impact. She was on top, sitting right across his hips, her hands splayed over his chest. She leaned closer and halted with her face a finger's breadth above his, their noses kissing, her warm breath tickling his lips. 'A man can say anything. He threatened me, Joss. He told me that if I didn't do something about you and your infatuation with a lilu appearing in the guise of your long-dead lover-'

'Mark!'

She insinuated a finger through the fastenings of his vest and stroked his bare skin. 'Is that her name?'

'Yes. Ah.'

'A little louder, please.' She ground her hips into his, her kilt wrinkling around her legs, and he really did groan aloud. How long had it been? Best not to consider that question. He had to listen hard to hear her whispering, as crazy as her words seemed here in the darkness out of sight of the other reeves. 'Maybe he envies you your unfortunate good looks, Or maybe he wants you out of the way because you're commander of the reeve halls.'

'Did he threaten to kill you if you didn't kill me?'

'No. He threatened to kill my brother. Let me tell you something.'

How could she talk this through so coolly while he ached everywhere? He crept a hand up her torso and traced the round curve of a breast beneath her tight vest. Her breath caught; her words faltered as she sucked in a sharp, delirious breath; he grinned.

But she mastered herself, bit his lower lip to break his hold on her, and went on in a murmur. 'I love my brother, but I serve the Merciless One. The gods built the land on law. Maybe folk think there are agents among the hierodules and kalos who engage in unlawful activities, assassinating people for coin, for instance. But in truth every case brought before us is carefully considered and only undertaken if three different hieros from different temples agree that a significant breach of justice has occurred and no recourse seems likely through the assizes.'

'That's still taking matters into your own hands, outside the assizes.'

'I am their weapon, not a judge.' She lay down flat atop him, and stretched out her legs. Her toes rubbed his boots. 'To ask me to kill outside the proper channels, and by using a threat as coin, violates the precepts by which every servant of the Merciless One lives. As well force a hierodule to bed a man she despises. It's like a form of rape.'

'What will happen to your brother if you don't kill me?'

Joss knew women's bodies pretty well; when he was with a woman, he was careful indeed to be with her only and entirely. So he felt her attention focus away from him, how the fire of her arousal banked, how her thoughts flew.

'I love Kesh, but I cannot betray the Merciless One to save him. Yet if the Hieros had personally commanded me to kill you

for the same reason, I'd have done it, Joss. Don't think otherwise. I wonder: what if Captain Anji is right? Maybe the Hundred needed the cloaks a long time ago. But I've felt their power, I've had my heart laid open, and I'll never trust them now, even if they claim to be holy Guardians.'

The stars bloomed like an echo of the campfires and lamps strewn around the encampment. The past was as unreachable as the stars, something we can gaze on but never touch.

'You're wrong about the Guardians,' he said. 'That some became corrupt doesn't mean all must. That some turned against justice doesn't mean all will. We're all susceptible in so many ways, but we don't all succumb. That Anji says so, doesn't make it true. Especially when it serves him to get rid of them.'

'I'm thinking about it,' she murmured. 'I haven't made up my mind. Meanwhile, I have a plan. A strong swimmer can make it across the river. It'll be a steep climb up the western bank, but at dawn you can call your eagle. Fly me to Olossi, so I can give my report to the Hieros and warn Kesh, get him away to where Anji and his soldiers can't ever reach him.'

'I thought you disliked her.'

'She is Hieros. She serves Ushara faithfully. Anyhow, I'm bound to report to her.'

'That current is cursed powerful. It would be crazy enough to try to swim across in daylight. At night, it's a death trap. Better you wait out the night with me here and I'll take you away in the morning on Scar. Anji can scarcely attack my reeves, can he? He's not fool enough to kill me in front of the entire army. I'll whistle Scar in at dawn, and we'll be out before he knows we're gone. Of course I'll fly you to Olossi. Why not? I've always wondered what two people could manage while harnessed up in the air. Wouldn't you like to try?'

She laughed. 'No one can see us here,' she whispered. 'Now.'

She flung wide the blanket and they rolled onto it, kissing and caressing as she worked him out of his leathers and he unfastened her thin vest, untied her kilt, and loosed her hair so it tumbled over her shoulders. Skin to skin, he thought he was likely to be obliterated out of sheer pleasure, the earth their bed, the river their song, the wind and stars their coverlet, desire blazing.