The Last Warrior. Susan Grant

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СКАЧАТЬ handsome, his nose too long and his chin too sharp, but with his sheer intensity and unfailing self-confidence, he attracted willing women by the droves. He gave them little notice, so devoted was he to his career.

      Elsabeth planted two fists on her hips. “You couldn’t have called off those battle-ax-wielding thugs yourself? General Tao had to do it?”

      “It was the perfect way to introduce you as someone I wouldn’t go out of my way to help. Just another Kurel.”

      Not one shred of apology accompanied his simple explanation, nor was the reasoning behind it something she could argue. No one must guess they were working together, or for what purpose.

      Like a hawk folding its wings, he placed his hands behind his back and strolled the nursery, perusing toys and the other evidence of children with the same neutral observation she’d seen him use when inspecting troops passing in review. But it wasn’t reflective of his true feelings. Whenever she saw his eyes light up at the sight of Aza, she knew that he cared for the queen and the children as much as she did.

      He turned to her, grim. “He’s afraid. Xim is. Thousands of soldiers have entered the city, loyal to their general, and none familiar with their king. I’m going to try my damnedest to reassure him, but this kingdom won’t be big enough for the two of them.”

      “Would it be too optimistic to hope King Xim is the one who moves out?”

      “If only it could be that simple.” The tendons in his lean jaw worked. She searched his face, looking for clues. Any unrest would surely translate to action against her people. “Beck wants to take over as general of the army.”

      She swung to him. “You can’t let him—”

      Markam cracked a smile. “Oh, ye of little faith. Tao has confided his interest in retiring. I’ll leave that to him to tell the king, but I’ve already suggested to Xim that the soldiers not be garrisoned in the capital proper. There’s a region outside the western wall where they can settle, take on wives and farm. Xim likes the idea, but Beck, well, he won’t want anything to do with that sort of life.”

      “His ambition would rust from disuse,” she muttered. Markam seemed to have stabilized matters. Still, Uhr-Beck wanting to jump into Tao’s place was worrisome.

      “Until all this is settled, Tao must tread carefully. I need you to keep your ears and eyes open for any hints his safety is in jeopardy.”

      “Helping the man who never helped us.” She found it hard to show sympathy for the general who ran the army that had murdered her parents. “He was off doing the king’s bidding like a favored hunting dog. You’re the hero, Markam. You stopped the violence in Kurel Town, not General Tao.”

      Markam spread his hands. “Tassagons see Tao differently than you do, Elsabeth. I see him differently.”

      A legend. A hero. Had he not proved it by shooing away her tormentors, a couple of thick-skulled bullies, in the midst of his homecoming parade, and doing it with a single flick of his hand? It had been a generous, unexpected deed.

      You should have thanked him. The acknowledgment of her rudeness to the general came with a pang of guilt. Her parents wouldn’t have approved of her behavior. They’d raised her to be tolerant, their silly liberal views preaching unity and acceptance, but every time she glimpsed a Tassagon Army uniform, she remembered her parents’ brutalized bodies. If she scratched the surface, would Tao be any different from the rest of the thickheaded ax-throwers who populated the Tassagon Army?

      Markam ignored her stubborn expression, his voice firm but patient. “We can use Tao. Turn him to our side.”

      “There’s no guarantee of that.”

      “Perhaps not. But without Tao alive as a counterbalance, Xim will gain even more power. His ambition will know no bounds. He’ll find excuses to send the army to destroy the Riders and Kurel. With Tao dead, the Gorr will no longer be afraid to regroup and attack. We’ll be too weak to defend ourselves because we’ll be warring human against human, blind to the coming danger, as is warned in the Log of Uhrth.”

      “I know what the prophecy says.” She shuddered every time an elder read that passage from the precious volume. “If humans turn on each other, darkness will consume us and we will be lost to Uhrth forever,” she whispered and narrowed her eyes at the spectacle outside.

      Markam wanted her to help keep General Tao safe. Of all the Tassagons, he understood most what this promise would cost her. Inside these walls, the chief of the Palace Guard knew everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. He had to. His life depended on it.

      As now did so many others in the palace.

      A glove belonging to Aza lay on a table. Elsabeth picked it up, savoring its softness between her thumb and index finger. Thick, sumptuous satin, such luxurious fabric was never seen in the ghetto. It held the woman’s perfume, a whiff of fresh flowers. In the palace, the queen’s presence was colorful and unexpected, like a beautiful, fragile flower poking up between the cold, hard slabs of a fortress.

      Elsabeth turned Aza’s glove over and over in her hands, then crushed it to her chest. “Damn it, Markam, if I’m caught doing anything that appears to protect Uhr-Tao, if he suspects anything, Xim will blame Aza. He’ll say she put me up to it, and he’ll—”

      “I know,” Markam cut in bleakly, and with real pain. If he thought his unrequited love for Aza was a secret, he was a fool. He ran a finger along the inside of his collar. Beads of perspiration glittered on his furrowed brow as he regarded her. It was warm in the palace, but not that warm. He was nervous, a condition unprecedented for him that she could recall. “Can I count on you, Elsabeth? Will you put aside personal feelings about the general and stand ready to help if necessary, for all the reasons we’ve pledged ourselves to?”

      To keep the darkness at bay…

      She wiped suddenly cold hands on her skirt. “Yes. You can count on me.”

      A quick nod, a squeeze of her arm, and Markam strode away to complete more secret meetings with other collaborators, all of them treasonous by definition, and all of them at risk of discovery and capture with General Uhr-Tao’s unexpected, utterly complicating return.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “UHR-TAO, UHR-TAO…”

      The cheering was thunderous as the army entered Palace Square. Tao looked up in reverence. He could see this sight every day and never tire of it. The palace was a visual masterpiece, a fantastical creation built in much darker times, perhaps as a testament to the power of hope, or a way to show the Gorr that it wasn’t as easy as they might think to kill the human spirit. Balconies festooned in carved stone ringed the lowest floors, the entire building narrowing to four towers where blue-and-white flags of the kingdom fluttered. Underneath, invisible to all, was an elaborate system of drainage pipes, many wider than a man was tall, to divert the deluge from the yearly monsoon. They emptied into the vast expanse of the moat, home to a pod of voracious, deadly tassagators, reptilian water creatures native to this world. The moat was the palace’s best defense against Furs and humans alike. If a human were to actually survive a tassagator attack, the venom would kill, slowly and excruciatingly. There was no known antidote. No need for one, really. Anyone who fell in the moat was presumed eaten for dinner.

      Before he’d been taken to train as an Uhr-warrior at age twelve, he, Markam and even Aza would explore the pipes on dares as СКАЧАТЬ