Eve of Destruction (16 page)

“She,” Aram corrected. “And no. Rumor has it there’s a coven up in Tormar, but that’s probably just hearsay. I’ve had some of our people look around the building here, but if she wants to stay hidden there isn’t much we can do.”

Zach glanced back down the hallway. Everything appeared quiet, which made sense; he doubted this place got any business until after nightfall on most days unless it doubled as a pastry shop.

“So I have a question for you,” he said. “What would you have done if the Vakari wasn’t there?”

“Protect you.”

“Even though you would have been outnumbered what, three to one?”

“Local muscle doesn’t concern me,” Aram replied contemptuously. “The woman who was leading them, though, might have been a
yohisha
.”

Zach frowned. “A Talami spy? Why would one of them be involved in this?”

Aram’s eyebrow twitched fractionally. Perhaps he was impressed that Zach recognized the term.  “I assume she’s freelance. Mr. Danev believes she is the same woman who has reportedly been hanging around Chaval. If that’s true, it’s likely you were right to suspect him all along.”

Zach nodded. He didn’t know much about Talam, unfortunately, other than the fact it was a destitute island nation on the other side of the world. Few of their people immigrated here, though if he remembered correctly, one of Chaval’s campaign points was to open trade relations as quickly as possible. The Talami people had overthrown their royal dynasty a few years back, and the military government that had taken over had banned the Edehan faith and all use of the Fane. Zach imagined that meant Talam would be a huge market for Arkadian technology—specifically, Steamworks technology.

Yohisha
he had heard more about, though he guessed much of it was just scuttlebutt soldiers had cobbled together from local hearsay. Ostensibly they were Talami spies long employed by clan lords as weapons against rivals. They were trained as assassins, courtesans, and anything else a situation might warrant. Given how this woman had apparently broken into the
Pampered Goddess
and then followed them to the
Calio
, it seemed as likely an explanation as any.  

“So you said last night that this woman managed to impersonate one of your attendants.”

Aram shook his head. “Not exactly. She bought time as a client and took the opportunity to lurk around.”

“This doesn’t happen often, I take it?”

“It’s never happened before, as far as I know,” the man replied, unfettered.

Zach grunted. “Well, what are you going to do if this Vakari comes looking for us here?”

“Given that she seemed determined to protect you but still remain hidden, I find that unlikely.”

“Let’s call it a hypothetical then. Do you have any tricks to take her down?”

Aram actually smiled thinly. “If you’re worried I’m going to try and steal your girl, you can relax. I’m not paid to fraternize.”

Zach blinked. That was about the last response he’d expected. “Uh…what?”

“You want to challenge me, I understand,” Aram told him calmly. “But I’m not the person you should be worried about. I swore an oath to defend magi with my life, and Mr. Danev has asked me to extend that protection to the two of you.”

Zach frowned. The comment had taken him by surprise, but he realized that was probably intentional and forced himself to think past it. He eyed the bodyguard again, and suddenly something clicked in the back of his mind. Esharian accent, oath to defend magi…

“You’re an Eclipsean, aren’t you?” he asked.

Again the man’s eyebrow twitched, if only slightly. “I was. Not anymore.”

Zach repressed an involuntary shiver. The Crimson Eclipse had a fearsome reputation, even among the Arkadian army. They were said to be the best…and it did explain the man’s icy demeanor, at least a little. 

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Aram assured him. “You’re safe here.”

“Right,” Zach muttered, tossing a furtive glance down the hall. “You know, I think I’ll go and get that pastry after all.” He made it all the way to the staircase before stopping and looking back over his shoulder. “You didn’t actually answer my question. What if the Vakari comes here to harm us?”

Aram’s gray eyes flickered. “Then we die.”

***

Eve had been reading disparaging things about western Arkadia as long as she could remember. It was a land of poor, backwards, uneducated torbos who drank too much and had far too many children. Nothing on the trip so far had convinced her otherwise—that is, until she took her first bite of Danev’s pastry.

“These are amazing,” she exclaimed, trying to strike a careful balance between dignity and face-stuffing. Zach had brought a plate up to her, and he was thumbing through a few books he must have grabbed from the shelves.

“Freshly baked,” he said. “You should have had them three hours ago when they were still warm.”

Eve gobbled down a second one almost as quickly. As good as sleep had felt, she hadn’t really eaten much in the past week, either. Now she had gotten a full night’s rest and eaten a delicious meal—if someone hadn’t just tried to kill them, she might have mistaken this for a vacation.

“I’m sorry about how I acted last night,” she murmured once her mouth was mostly empty. “I’m not really sure what came over me.”

He set down the book. “You mean shoving me out of the way and charging into the hallway?”

She nodded. “Yeah, that. I guess I should have just sat there or something.”

“Well, sometimes people do things you’d never expect under pressure. Tell me if I’m wrong, but unless you really changed when you went to Rorendal, you’ve never been in a fight in your life.”

“There was Emma Brown when we were twelve.”

“Pulling hair doesn’t count,” he replied with a smirk.

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, then I used to beat
you
up pretty badly.”

He snorted. “I wasn’t allowed to fight back, so that’s not really fair.”

Eve rolled her eyes and drank part of her juice. “Even first-year students are taught how to weave a kinetic barrier. It’s the overt manipulation of energy, gravity, and whatnot they won’t even whisper at you until you take the Oath Rituals.”

“Reasonable enough, I guess,” he said. “Assuming you can only use the technique to defend yourself.”

“That’s the idea. But my point was no, I really didn’t get into any fights at school.”

 “Well like I said, people react to stress in different ways. One of my drill instructors used to talk about controlling those primal responses. Most people react with fear and either run or just freeze. A few turn almost feral and lash out with rage.”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Eve said, probably a little too defensively. “I was scared at first, but then I just got really mad at you, of all people. It helped me focus, I guess.” She took another sip of juice and cocked an eyebrow at him. “What about your first time? What did you do?”

Zach tilted his head down and twiddled the book in his fingers. “The first time we used live ammunition in a drill I froze. A lot of people did—more than half, including many of the biggest guys.” 

Eve looked into his eyes and wondered how hard that was for him to admit. Zach had never been the super-macho type of guy before he shipped out, but he
was
still a guy—his ego was certainly as fragile as the next man’s. But the fact he was able to tell her at all spoke volumes, both about him as a man and their relationship.

“I’m sure that didn’t last long,” she said.

He shrugged. “Eventually you learn to deal with it. Everyone has their own way to concentrate and stay focused.”

“You seemed totally in control to me last night,” she told him, smiling wryly. “That’s actually what got me irritated in the first place.”

He grinned back but shook his head. “I wondered if age and school might eventually dull that chip on your shoulder.”

“Nope,” she said, raising her head proudly. “I’m just as bitchy as ever.”

They shared a laugh, and she broke off half of the last pastry and started on it. She was two bites in before the smile vanished.

 “Do you think we’re safe here?” she asked softly after a moment.

“I don’t think we’ll be safe until we head back home,” he said gravely, “and maybe not even then. Chaval is definitely behind this. Aram mentioned that the attempted assassin was a Talami woman—a
yohisha
, at that.”

 Eve shook her head. “What does that mean?”

“A spy, more or less. The thing is, apparently Chaval has one working for him, and Aram is pretty sure it’s the same person.”

She set down the pastry as a cold shiver passed through her. She’d suspected Chaval right from the beginning, but somehow it hadn’t felt
real
until this moment. One of the most powerful men in the country had murdered her mother, and now he was trying to kill Eve.

No, they definitely weren’t safe here. They weren’t going to be safe anywhere.

“The confusing part is why a Vakari was trying to help us,” Zach went on. “Aram is pretty certain she was protecting us.”

Eve wiped the powdered sugar from her lips and searched her memory. “I didn’t even think they existed anymore. Mother said the last of them were wiped out during the Polerian War.”

“Evidently not,” he murmured. “Anyway, when I got up this morning I poked around Danev’s library and tried to see if he had anything on the Vakari.”

“Any luck?”

“That depends,” he said, turning one of the books toward her. On the cover was a rather risqué illustration with two beautiful people, a lot of silken sheets, and not much clothing. “How accurate do you think this is?”

“Blessed Kirshal,” Eve breathed. “It’s like my mom’s stash of terrible romance novels.”

He grunted. “I don’t understand how the same myth can be used to frighten children and excite adults all at the same time.”

“The power of imagination, I guess,” she said, leaning back on the bed. “All I know is that supposedly the Vakari were created from Defiling magic. I remember dad describing a war between Vakar and another country a few centuries ago. He said they were all wiped out, and that the soil itself was completely dead. Nothing has lived there since.”

“Hard to believe,” he replied softly. “Or it was, until I saw Kalavan.”

She pressed her lips together. “You never really had time to tell me about it. I couldn’t believe it when you wrote me and said you were being sent there.”

He nodded solemnly. “I can’t even explain what it was like. Everything was just…drained. The plants and trees were all black, and I don’t mean they were burned or rotting—they were just
dead
. The corpses of people weren’t much more than clothed skeletons, like the flesh and blood had been torn right off of them.”

“But it didn’t create more Vakari,” she said. “I wonder what was different.”

“I have no idea,” he breathed. “All I know is that we have one of them protecting us now for some reason, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”

Eve nodded distantly. “Mom only ever spoke of them as killers. I had some friends at school whose parents used to tell them fearful bedtime stories about Vakari coming to punish any mage who misused their power.”

“Like some kind of vindictive ghost,” Zach said. “Well, regardless I don’t think we’re going to find any answers here unless Danev comes up with something. And to be honest, I’m not sure how long we want to wait.”