Mastered By Love (43 page)

“
Halt! Who’s there?”
shouted a strident female voice.

“
Shit,” Tariza
said.

Dario turned to see a guard making for
them, a grim set to her jaw. She carried a sword on her left hip
and a Galactic weapon of some kind on her right. He could see the
butt peeking out from a discreet leather holster.

“
We’re just having a look,”
Tariza called.

The guard’s hand strayed to
her gun. Tariza edged around him. If she wasn’t careful, she was
going to be shot. Dario put out an arm to block her.

The guard lifted her
weapon. “Stay where you are,” she snapped.

“
It’s me. Tariza
Concordia.”

The guard frowned, looking
baffled. “Your Highness? Is it really you?”

“
Yes.”

“
What are you doing here?”
The woman took a couple more steps toward them, frowning
suspiciously. “Why aren’t you in the hall with everyone
else?”

“
I was bored. I wanted to
see the float car.” Tariza tried again to outflank
Dario.

“
Stay back,” he said.
“She’s armed.”

“
Get out of my way,
Dario.”

“
Are you in danger, Your
Highness?” the guard said.

Tariza laughed, the sound
false. “No. Of course not.”

Intrigue was clearly not her greatest
strength.

The guard glowered at him.
“Step away from the princess, slave.”

He didn’t trust the
twitchiness of her finger on the gun. She looked like she was
waiting for an excuse to fire it, and if he gave her a clear shot
at Tariza... . “No.”

“
She’s not going to hurt
me,” Tariza said calmly. “I’m her princess. It’s all right,
Dario.”

“
If she doesn’t mean to
hurt you,” he said, “she can put away her weapon.”

“
This is the Saturnios
creature,” the guard said. “Isn’t it?”

“
Yes,” Tariza
said.

“
He’s out of control, Your
Highness.”

“
No, he isn’t. He’s just
protective of me.”

“
Some of us think you
should never have taken him out of that dungeon.” The guard’s
weapon trembled in her hand.

Tariza lifted her hands in
a peace-maker’s gesture. “Put your gun away.”

“
I can’t do that. He’s not
secured. You – you don’t even have shackles on him. No leash.
What’s going on here?” The guard’s voice rose, agitated.

“
I told you. I was bored so
I brought him out here.”

The woman’s gaze flickered
from Tariza to Dario and back again. “Does he have some kind of
hold on you?”

“
No, no. Nothing like
that.” Tariza darted around him.

No! The guard’s pistol hand
jerked. Dario lunged for Tariza, throwing himself in front of her.
Savage pain exploded in his torso. He crashed to the stable floor
and the world turned black.

***

Tariza stifled
a scream of horror as crimson blossomed in Dario’s
chest, soaking his winter jacket.

“
Oh, Goddess, no.” She fell
to her knees beside him, hands shaking. “No. Dario, no,
no.”

“
Your Highness, are you
unharmed?” the guard said.

She stared wildly up at
her. “What is that weapon? What have you done to him?”

The woman took a couple of
hesitant steps toward her and Dario. “It’s a needler.”

“
What does that mean?”
She’d never heard of it before.

“
It fires small needle-like
projectiles that enter the body and fire off charges once inside.
They’re lethal at close range.”

Her mother had authorized
such a weapon? What had she been thinking? “You shot my slave with
that thing.”

“
He’s done for, Your
Highness. He’ll bleed out in minutes.”

She glared over her
shoulder at the woman. “Damn you, no, he won’t. I won’t have it. We
have to get him a doctor.”

“
There’s nothing Doctor
Holla could do. The needles have torn up his internal
organs.”

Tariza ripped at Dario’s
jacket until the buttons popped off, revealing his shirt and vest,
soaked and sticky with his blood. She kept tearing until she
reached bare skin. The holes were so small. There were only two of
them. They oozed a continual flow of blood, though, and Goddess
only knew what was going on inside him.

The guard was right. Holla would be of
no help at all. No doctor on Argelia would be able to handle a
wound like this. She needed a Galactic, but that would involve
going off-world and how was she to manage that? She had no access
to spaceships.

Shadow. Hadn’t Dario
mentioned that Shadow wanted to help them? This was his chance.
Maybe he had a doctor with him at the embassy, or perhaps he could
get them to some kind of medical facility. She didn’t know what
these Galactics were capable of, and probably they’d be too late.
But she had to try.

“
I’m sorry, Your Highness,”
the guard said, looking vaguely regretful. “I thought you were in
danger.”

“
I should have the skin
whipped off your back. Help me get him in the float
car.”

“
What?” The guard
blinked.

“
Get him in the car. Now.
I’ll take him somewhere with a Galactic doctor.”

“
You’re taking him out of
Concordia?”

Tariza rounded on her with
an animal snarl. “Help me now or this will be the last night you
ever breathe.”

The guard paled as she
holstered her weapon. “All right. Yes. What should I
do?”

“
Get his feet. I’ll take
his shoulders.”

The guard obeyed, her hands
visibly shaking almost as badly as Tariza’s. Tariza grabbed Dario
under his armpits and together the two women hefted him the short
distance to the float car. They laid him on the floor in front of
the back passenger seats.

He looked so pale, as if he
were dead already. Tariza brushed a lock of hair from his
forehead.
Please live. Please don’t leave
me.

“
Your Highness, what
now?”

She fixed the guard with a
lethal glare. “Give me your gun.”

The guard’s mouth opened
and closed twice. She pulled out the weapon and handed it
butt-first to Tariza.

“
Turn around.”

The guard turned. Tariza
slammed the butt of the weapon over the woman’s skull and she
collapsed to the ground. She hoped she hadn’t killed the hotheaded
idiot, but if she had, well, it was more than deserved. At any
rate, now the guard couldn’t sound the alarm and have the queen’s
soldiers after them in the other float car.

Tariza closed the door of
the car and slipped into the pilot’s seat. Thank the Goddess she’d
taken Lenora’s advice and gotten some flying lessons in. She
started the engines. They made an unholy roar in the warm silence
of the stable. Horses began to snort and stamp. These damned
contraptions would be a lot more useful if they weren’t so noisy,
but it couldn’t be helped.

Easing the thing out of the box stall
and into the aisle, she headed for the back doors of the stable.
They were still standing open. She got the car through and out into
the yard, the running lights still dimmed to avoid attracting
attention.

A shout came from behind her. So much
for avoiding attention. Tariza accelerated wildly, lifting the
float car above the stable yard and the trees surrounding it. They
were out. Free.

Margelia, with its
Bellerenic embassy, was to the east of Concordia. But if she went
that way immediately, they’d have some idea where she was going.
Instead, she pointed the car to the south, toward Saturnios, and
zoomed away from her mother’s palace.

There were no sounds of pursuit. It
would probably take them a few minutes at least to find someone who
could fly the other float car. In that time, she planned to be as
far away as possible.

Five minutes later, she was
well out of visual range of the palace. She changed direction,
heading east to Margelia. Then she set up a course in the car’s
auto-navigation system and switched over to autopilot, cuing the
system to alert her of pursuit.

Tariza jumped out of her chair to
kneel by Dario. He was unconscious, and even paler than before.
Goddess, what if he died? What if he left her?

Don’t think of
that.

She picked up his cold,
limp hand and squeezed. “Don’t you dare die on me. Do you hear,
Dario? As your mistress, I command you to live. You have to stay
with me.”

He gave no sign of
awareness.

“
I love you. I don’t want
to live without you.”

He was barely breathing, the rise and
fall of his chest terrifyingly shallow.

“
I’m getting you help. You
just have to stay with me a little longer and we’ll have a Galactic
doctor to fix you. Do you hear me, Dario? I’m getting you to a
Galactic medical center.”

She hoped.

The car’s computer pinged.
Shit. They were already on her tail? How had that
happened?

Your locator
chip.

Oh, Goddess. She’d
forgotten the locator chip.

She had to get the thing out of her
body and out of the car. Tariza pulled the knife from her belt
sheath and yanked her collar open. The chip was embedded in the
skin on the back of her neck. She felt for it with her
fingertips.

There it was – a tiny lump
under the skin. She stuck the point of her knife at the edge of the
lump and pushed it. The stabbing pain made her grind her teeth
together. Her hand began to shake again.

She felt for the chip. Blood made her
skin slippery, made the implant too slick to grab. Tariza stuck the
knife in again, yelling at the pain. She flicked the point upward,
trying to dislodge the blasted chip. With her free hand, she
reached for the chip.

A sharp point projected
from the bloody mess she’d made of her neck. That must be it. She
dug a little deeper with the knife. In her peripheral vision she
saw something dark and wet fly from her skin and disappear on the
float car floor.

Tariza bent down to examine the minute
bloody blob. She picked it up between thumb and forefinger, rubbed
it to get off the blood. It looked like a tiny silver disc. Had to
be the chip.

The alarm in the cockpit began to beep with
greater frequency. Their pursuers must be catching up to them.
Goddess. She had to get the chip out of the car.

In the
float car’s pilot seat, Tariza activated the window. The thing
wouldn’t open. She banged on it in frustration until she remembered
the windows were locked when the car was in flight. How had she
forgotten that important detail?

Swearing, she guided the
car down toward the ground. It was so dark she couldn’t see where
she was going. She turned on the headlights, illuminating a stretch
of winter woods and a glimmering streak of water.

She headed for the water. The alarm
beeped continuously. They must be within a hundred yards of her or
less.

The river had some long sandbars
jutting out into the water. Tariza set the float car on one of
them. She opened the window and tossed the little silver chip as
far from the car as she could make it go.

The sound of engines came from above
and just behind her. She closed the window and put the car in the
air again. The float car behind her turned on its lights, flooding
her car with bluish light and blinding her.

She turned the car hard to
the right, still gaining altitude. Turned off her lights. Glanced
over her shoulder to see Dario had rolled up against the seat
supports, but was still unconscious. All this turbulent flying
couldn’t be good for his wounds.

“
Hang on a little longer,”
she said to his unresponsive form.

The other car followed her. Tariza
banked again, coming around the back end of the pursuers. She now
headed north, back toward Concordia.

There were hills all around them, and
farther out, high mountain peaks. This was not a good time or place
to be playing games in the air. Someone could get hurt.

Tariza gained more
altitude. She’d pushed the car as high as it could go without
endangering the passengers due to lack of oxygen. Below her, she
could see the lights of the pursuing float car. They were slightly
ahead of her and Dario, so perhaps she’d lost them.

She turned west, just to confound
them. At this altitude, she was still in danger of running into a
mountainside. Yet she hesitated to turn on her lights in case the
others should see them.

Autopilot. The sensors
should be able to detect any land mass ahead.

It would have to do. She returned the
car to its previous course and to autopilot.

Half an hour later, when
the car’s system alerted her they’d arrived at Margelia’s
outskirts, she called up the internal map system. Margelia was a
large city-state, the largest on the planet, and she’d never been
there except for the negotiations where she’d met Dario. The map
showed the Bellerenic embassy near the center of the city, close by
the royal palace. But how was she to see it from the
air?