Warrior's Touch (Deadly Touch book 2)
An Honest Woman

In a narrow alleyway of long grass and weeds, between the rear of the house and its out houses, and behind a thick but yielding bush, was a pair of rusty iron doors. Small. Each barely big enough to permit Jonas ingress, though both open were a snap. He levered himself down, disappearing into darkness. Ard followed, along with a chorus of grunts and shuffles. Then there was a scratch, a flare of light, a cry of metal, the hiss of gas. Ard turned, his kerosene lamp illuminating only a small quadrant of what Jonas sensed was a large room of sorts. Behind them, directly beneath the entrance, the walls and floor were concrete. Where Jonas stood, farther in, was dry dirt.

“You might get the sense that Llewella’s folks ain’t the only ones we’ve helped out of Turhmos.” Ard swiveled, his dull yellow light falling on cots all made up, waiting to provide much needed rest to someone – or several someones – on the run. At the foot of each cot, a chamber pot. And in the corner of the room, a table and chairs. Almost cozy.

“How many?” Jonas’s cultivated hatred for Aenuks fought against his newfound acceptance that they were innocents that Turhmos used and Quaver killed.

“Who knows? We ain’t taken to countin’. Two or three every year or two? We can’t afford to advertise. We just collect ’em as they stumble by. The well’s a big draw, aye, Llewella?”

“What?” Llew got down on her knees to stick her head down. “I can’t see anything.”

Jonas moved back under the hatchway. Llew flinched when he suddenly materialized below her. Thanks to the shade from the house and out-buildings, Jonas could see everyone looking down from above.

“There’s a whole bunker down here.”

Merrid smiled down at him.

“And you men can sleep down here.” Ard stepped beside him and shut off the gas. “There’s a bed inside for Llew.”

Jonas opted not to comment, pretending he wouldn’t miss sharing Llew’s warmth.

Now that his eyes were accustomed to the low light, Jonas easily located the metal steps embedded in the bunker’s concrete wall. He helped Ard out and closed the hatch, and they all reconvened on the other side of the bush.

“Turhmos have never found it?” Hisham asked.

“They’ve never had a reason to look,” Merrid said.

Jonas looked over his shoulder to where the hedge hid the bunker entrance. “We might be about to put it to the test.”

“If they’re gonna look, they’re gonna look. And if they replace it, Merrid and I are in trouble,” Ard said. “Whether it’s empty or occupied.”

They stood a moment, appreciating the silence. Whatever the flying machine’s fate, it was no longer a concern of theirs. Wild birds fluttered into the air, squawking as they went. Merrid and Ard’s chickens clucked. Llew’s horse whinnied, punctuating the country silence with a disgusted snort. Right now, there was nowhere safer to hole up than here.

They divided to get on with their tasks.

After setting Ard on his way to Hinden, Llew seemed torn between helping the men convert one of the smoke houses into a kiln or assisting Merrid with the breakfast clean up, even at the woman’s brush-off. Her tune changed, however, when Jonas mentioned training.

“Training. Like army training?”

“Very like.”

“With you?”

Jonas was unsure how to respond. Was she questioning the pairing because she thought any scuffle between them would likely devolve into very un-warlike behavior, or was it the fact that in a real scuffle he would easily overpower her? He decided to respond to neither. “Well, who else?”

“Not Braph.” She was quick to respond.

“Obviously. This is serious. I don’t want you to end up face-to-face with Aris, but you might. We gotta build a plan.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but stopped, breath in-drawn. “Sounds like fun,” she relented, though he detected an edge of sarcasm, and tuned for their designated training paddock.

“Well, it could be.” He followed.

Llew spent much of the rest of the morning on her back, or at least it felt that way. She supposed, though, that to land on it so many times, she must have been on her feet in equal measure.

She had asked Jonas to teach her some of the moves he’d taught Karlani. In her mind she’d pictured the times when the pair had looked like dancers, pairing up and measuring out the steps of each move. She remembered them moving together, like lovers. She’d forgotten that such moments had been punctuated with Karlani hitting the ground. Hard.

Llew was certainly hitting the ground a lot. Something about the importance of knowing how to take a fall. She’d rarely had a problem taking a fall before, but Jonas had donned his gloves, so each impact compounded on the last. Figuring she could only bruise so much, she too wore gloves and was holding out on healing till they’d finished, hoping it would mean less damage to the farm.

At least Jonas hadn’t insulted her by apologizing, though he was tempering his strength and, while she wasn’t ungrateful for it, she couldn’t help feeling cheated. If it came to it, Aris wouldn’t go easy.

They ate a light lunch at a quiet table with Ard away. With his long list of tasks, which included sending a telegram of their progress to Anya, he wasn’t expected back for a couple of days. Llew hoped that would be the case and that he wouldn’t be held for questioning or otherwise strike trouble.

Merrid directed them in tasks that needed doing around the farm in Ard’s absence, and every spare moment was spent in play-fighting or whittling the Ajnai wood into useful shapes and sizes.

When they returned to their training a couple of days later, Hisham and Braph came to watch. This time, Jonas taught Llew how to use his momentum against him. He ran at her and she twisted and followed his motion with her whole body, sending him sailing past. It reminded her of the first time she’d seen him fight weaponless, when he’d faced a man three times his size. The difference was, while Jonas had been smaller than his opponent, he’d still had the advantage in strength, not that Llew had known it at the time. Neither had his opponent.

When he went into a roll and shot back up to his feet, of course she demanded he teach her that, too.

“It’ll come,” he said simply.

By the time Ard’s mule-drawn cart pulled into the farm’s stony path, Llew’s whole body ached with fatigue and developing bruises. Hisham and Braph moved immediately to help unload the cart and sort the items Ard had bought. There was new iron for horseshoes, new leather for tack repairs and some other plans Jonas had – which had gone right over Llew’s head when he’d described them, so she was going to wait and see and nod appreciatively when they were done – lead for the Gaard pellets, and, possibly, news of Aris. Llew hoped for none. Then they could focus on recovering her mother and Jonas’s son.

But since when had life delivered on what Llew wanted?

She knelt in the corner of the paddock, pulled off a glove, and sunk her fingers into the grass. A circle of death spread around her, a little beyond her shadow’s perimeter. Damaged blood vessels closed. The blood that had already pooled into bruises wouldn’t go anywhere, but it wouldn’t get added to, either. Her marrow accelerated its processes, replacing what had leaked. Muscles recovered from damage sustained. She would sleep well that night – especially with a real bed to look forward to.

“I could’ve done that for you.” Jonas had pulled off his gloves and held a hand out to help her to her feet.

She stood without accepting his help. Something about the country air and Ard and Merrid’s hardiness inspired her to develop her own.

“Don’t be silly. You’re still recovering from the last time.” And she couldn’t shake the feeling that he could have avoided the arrow he’d taken on the road if he hadn’t been weakened from helping her. Jonas shrugged her concerns away.

The mule was already unhitched and snacking on a bucket of chaff or other some such mule treat when they arrived at the corral. Hisham was unloading the cart’s contents to their correct homes or stacking them inside the stable door, ready to be put to use the following morning.

Ard met Jonas and Llew halfway, two bits of paper in his hand. One was stiff and the size of a standard letter with a bold insignia on it. The other was thinner and larger, clearly a news release. Ard flashed the first piece at Jonas, along with a broad grin before folding it and stuffing it in his pocket. But it was the second that held Llew’s attention. What news?

Ard’s expression turned grim, and he tried to pass the paper to Jonas first, sparing Llew a brief pitying glance that had her hackles raised in an instant. Jonas unfurled the page and Llew snatched a hold of its edge so he couldn’t turn and hide its contents from her. Clearly this was something she needed to see, too, and she wasn’t about to let the men protect her from it. The headline read: Aenuks Slaughtered In Barracks. Llew’s blood ran cold. It had to be Aris. It was what they’d suspected he would do. Sure enough, scanning the article, Llew saw words like ‘whirlwind’, ‘unstoppable’, ‘brutal’. Words that could apply to Aris on their own, but together left no doubt.

She snatched the paper from Jonas and turned her back on him, scouring the article for clues. Would they mention the loss of the Syaenuk? Did the rest of the country even know they had one? The words blurred as tears filled her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of a hand. Her nose was running, too. Let it run. She had to know.

“Llew.” Jonas tried to catch hold of her hand before she gripped the paper again. She batted him away and brought the paper up, but her eyes betrayed her again, the words wobbling, incomprehensible through the tears yet to dampen her cheeks.

They were so close, and yet her ma could already be dead.

She sniffed, swallowed a huge gob of mucus, though she’d already lost control of the liquid running to her lips, and wiped away the threatening tears again. As fast as she wiped, her vision blurred, and she cursed. Her mother probably still lived and Llew was bawling like a baby.

Jonas shadowed her but she kept turning and walking, keeping the paper to herself until she could read it. Finally, she sniffed and wiped her right eye, her left, her right again, and she could read. And there was nothing. No mention of a Syaenuk. Barely a mention of the Aenuks beyond the headline. Just the aftermath of someone incredibly fast and impossibly strong. Jonas was mentioned, and readers reminded that some twelve months earlier he’d done the same, though to a less devastating effect, and at a barracks much closer to the Quaven border, now abandoned. There were questions of Quaver’s involvement, and whether or not Turhmos could, and should, retaliate. Who would ally with them if Quaver had developed a weapon such as this? Was it the only one? The article speculated whether Jonas himself could have become such a force. Some mention of a weapon designed specifically to tackle him, though no details were given. Another that he was rumored to be within Turhmos and to report him if sighted.

But nothing, nothing about the Aenuks killed.

“Where is it?” Braph’s voice shot like a spear down Llew’s spine. He stood by her right shoulder, Jonas to her left. “The barracks. Where is, or was, it?”

Llew scanned the article again.

“Peria.”

“Then she lives.” The same relief Llew felt was evident in his voice. “Orinia is housed in Duffirk, in a barracks attached to the central governmental compound, The Palace. It’s well guarded, but about the easiest to replace.” Braph’s voice quivered as he brought Llew’s own fear to the surface again.

“How far is Peria from Duffirk?” Llew turned, for the first time truly facing Braph as an ally. “How long do we have?”

“Maybe a week of steady riding, or Syakaran, or, rather, Immortal running.”

“We’re about that far from Duffirk, aren’t we?” Llew hadn’t exactly kept track of time when she’d stumbled away from Braph’s home and then her father’s body.

“There abouts,” said Braph. “Although, we don’t know how much hiding he’ll do. That would slow him down.”

“And us. We can’t afford to be seen.” She glanced at Jonas. He might have cut his hair off the last time he was in Turhmos, but he had the darker skin of the Quavens, and that confident bearing.

“When I said the Duffirk barracks was easy to replace, I didn’t mean simple. We do have an advantage in my having been there before.”

“He found the Peria one. He can replace the Duffirk one.” Llew wasn’t going to pin her hopes on Aris’s incompetence. “We have to stop him.”