He stood and removed his boots, not trusting his ability to walk stealthily in the clunky footwear. He padded to the door in his socks. A floorboard creaked like a howling coyote.
“Oh, yes, this will work,” he grumbled.
Books slipped into the hallway. And stopped. Where should he go to snoop? Rambling through the sprawling house, hoping to find some sign of nefarious plots, seemed unlikely to deliver results. Would Vonsha have her notes in her room? He shied away from the idea of sneaking into her bed chamber. He remembered passing a study on the bottom floor. Maybe Lord Spearcrest kept information about the property there. That might be a place to start.
No sooner had he started down the hallway when a door ahead opened.
Books halted, not sure whether he should flee back to his room or concoct some excuse for wandering.
Vonsha stepped out, a lacy nightgown swirling about her calves. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders in brown waves, almost hiding the bandage on her neck. The thoughts spinning through Books’s head ground to a halt, and he could only stare.
“Books?” she asked. “Were you going somewhere?”
“I…wanted to talk to you.” Not exactly, but maybe he could obtain his information from her. He would have to take charge of the question-asking though. No sitting close and smelling her perfume and definitely no gazing at the bare flesh revealed by that sleeveless, low-cut nightgown.
“Talk?” Vonsha asked. “I don’t usually ‘talk’ to men in my bedroom while I’m at my parents’ house, but I guess I’m too old for them to chastise about such things now.”
“I-uhm.” Books swallowed.
She took his hand and led him into the room. The only thing he noticed inside was the bed and how its sheets were already turned down.
Vonsha stepped close, her chest brushing his torso. “Are you always shy and awkward, or do I make you nervous?”
“Oh, I’m always awkward, but yes to the latter.” Of course, some of that nervousness was due to the fact that he was supposed to be investigating. If he didn’t feel obligated to research the place, he would-
She stood on her tiptoes, and the floral scent of her perfume teased his nostrils. Her lips brushed his, warm and inviting.
He slid his arms around her waist and forgot about research, and about being shy as well.
• • • • •
Rain hammered the top of Amaranthe’s head, while wind whipped branches into her eyes. Daylight had vanished from the valley. She stumbled along behind Sicarius, stretching out a hand every few moments to make sure he still walked in front of her. Soaked clothing stuck to her body, chafing and rubbing skin raw. A tree snapped and crashed to the ground behind them.
“Where are we going?” Amaranthe yelled to be heard over the wind.
“The cabin,” Sicarius said.
“We need to get back to the lorry and over to the Spearcrests. The shaman knew about the family, so I think it might have been a mistake sending Books and Maldynado there.”
“Not tonight.”
Lightning flashed. For a moment, trees and branches stood out, stark and cold in the white brilliance. Seconds later, thunder rumbled, a great peal that rang in Amaranthe’s ears. Up here, surrounded by mountains, the storm seemed louder, rawer, and more dangerous than any she remembered from the city.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I may have sent them into a trap. We have to warn them.”
Sicarius spun about even as lightning flashed again, highlighting his wet blond hair and the hard angles of his face. “It’s foolish to stay out in this. Going-”
Thunder drowned out the rest of his words, but she got the gist. Going down that trail in the dark would be treacherous. She knew it in her head; her heart was what objected.
Amaranthe was about to nod and wave Sicarius onward, when the hair on her arms stood on end. Her skin tingled, as if ants crawled all over her.
“Down!” Sicarius dropped, pulling her with him.
She tucked her head under her hands, burying her face in the ground. The sharp earthy scent of mud flooded her nostrils.
Lightning struck, and a boom hammered her ears.
The air stank of charred wood. A tree groaned, then cracked like rifle fire. Branches snapped. She wasn’t sure whether to look up or keep her head buried.
Something-Sicarius’s arm?-snaked around her waist, tearing her from her huddle.
Mud and trees blurred before her eyes as she was yanked several feet. She landed hard on her rump, her back thudding into Sicarius.
The trunk of a massive tree smashed to the ground where she had lain. Eyes wide, chest heaving for breath, she gaped for several long seconds. Sicarius held her, arm wrapped around her waist.
“Are you injured?” he asked.
Amaranthe waved her hand in dismissal, not trusting her voice.
He released her and helped her to her feet. She wiped rain out of her eyes with a shaking hand. Despite the downpour, flames leaped where lightning had struck the tree. Their orange glow helped her find her rifle.
“The cabin, you say?” she asked.
“Yes,” Sicarius said dryly.
She followed him back to the clearing without further suggestions of getting off the mountain that night. The wind continued to rail, flinging branches into their path, and flashes of lightning illuminated the mountains. The rain turned to hail and pounded their heads and shoulders.
The cabin came into view, and Amaranthe broke into a run. Even knowing a dead man waited on the floor inside could not dim her relief at the prospect of sanctuary-though she almost hugged Sicarius when he dragged the body outside by himself. She decided a comment about it being good of him to help with the house cleaning would be in poor taste.
While he tended to that grisly task, Amaranthe laid a fire. Water dripped from her clothing and pooled on the cold hearth stones beneath her knees. The hurried trek across the hillside had kept her from noticing the chilly air that had ridden in with the storm, but it made her shiver now. Though the long wooden matches had heads the size of coins, it took her shaking hands several tries to strike a flame. Fortunately, Hagcrest had kept the cabin well-stocked, and enough wood for the night was stacked in a bin near the hearth.
Sicarius returned as her fire started crackling. He did not say what he had done with the body, and she did not ask. She doubted any scavengers would be out in the downpour to bother it. They could build a funeral pyre in the morning.
“Venison.” He laid strips of dried meat on the table and headed for his rucksack.
She added a final log to the fire. “You purloined food from a dead man’s smokehouse?”
“He doesn’t need it.” Sicarius removed a set of neatly rolled dry clothes and tugged off his shirt, revealing the hard, lean muscles of his back.
Amaranthe caught herself staring. She grabbed the fireplace poker and turned away from him, cheeks heating. Too many hard angles, she told herself. It would be like sleeping with a rock. Who would want that?
Me, some insidious thought whispered.
That worried her. Even if there were not already enough reasons to keep the relationship purely business, the shaman’s revelations alone should have horrified her enough to keep the notion from entering her mind. What would her father think of her, daydreaming about an assassin? A man who had killed, not just soldiers in a combat situation but innocents as well.
The empire had always considered it cowardly and dishonorable to attack someone who could not fight back, so Hollowcrest and Emperor Raumesys had gone against seven hundred years of imperial mores by raising and employing an assassin. Perhaps they had sensed a future when brute force would no longer be enough to keep the conquered subjugated, or they had realized the rest of the world would catch up with the empire’s engineering and metallurgy advancements, and that their edge would eventually slip away. To understand their reasoning and condone it were different matters, and here she sat with the one who had done the dirty work for them.