Poison Tree (13 page)

Christian Denmark was one of the most dangerous people she had ever met, in general and to her in particular. She had been so careful to keep herself in silhouette so he could not get a good look at her at the Onyx Hall and to keep him from ever seeing her face after that.

Why did she now want to run to the hospital to make sure he was okay?

Because it was too late for it to matter.

“The woman who was attacked earlier?” Jeht asked.

“She’s hurt, too,” Sarik said. “And it’s my fault. I …” How to put it into terms that the young Mistari would understand? “I chose to leave my tribe six years ago. I did not tell my father-king or the mate he had chosen for me that I was leaving
or where I was going. I ran away and I hid, because I knew he would look for me. Jason ran from his … his queen … and we came here together. The woman you asked about will tell my father where I am.”

Just saying the words made her mouth dry. Scenes from her childhood—and of that final, horrible day—flashed through her mind.

“You fear he will bring you back,
ra’nasgel
?” Jeht asked.

The term literally meant “obedient child,” and implied being under another’s power—specifically, in this case, the tribe’s leader.

She nodded, which caused Jeht’s confused frown to deepen.

“Can you fight him?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He is very strong, and has many allies.”

Lynzi and Alysia had both said it: SingleEarth could not afford a direct conflict with the Bruja guilds. SingleEarth probably had more political power, and possibly more money, but Kral would not hesitate to kill to get his daughter back. Sarik wouldn’t let herself be responsible for the deaths that would inevitably occur if SingleEarth tried to stand up to Onyx.

If she tried to stay at SingleEarth, he would come for her. He might hesitate to target someone like Diana, but he would certainly kill Jason—because he would want to punish her and because Jason had belonged to Maya. For similar reasons, Sarik couldn’t run. Kral had tracked her this far. Disappearing again would put everyone she had formed a connection with during the last six years in danger.

She didn’t have a choice.

“We’re leaving,” she told the boys.

They didn’t question her; even Quean probably understood.

She had left Onyx of her own free will six years ago, and she had survived her self-imposed exile. If she returned without being forced and declared herself independent, then by Mistari law she had to be respected as a queen. In Kral’s territory, she would still be under his command to an extent, but she could claim sovereignty over Jeht and Quean and could keep Kral from them long enough to get them back to the main tribes. If she needed to go back for now in order to keep SingleEarth safe, she would at least accomplish something by getting the cubs home.

Anger rose, at last, burning bright. It was the same anger that had sustained her growing up in Onyx. It was the fury that had allowed her to face the blood and the violence, and had erased any sign of fear from her face and her conscious mind. She had put that anger away when she had joined SingleEarth, but now she needed it.

The anger threatened to recede only once, when she went to pack a few belongings and to leave a message for Jason.

It wasn’t supposed to work out this way
.

When she’d found the weapons after breaking into Alysia’s room, she had been certain that no Bruja member of such high rank could possibly be in SingleEarth without an ulterior motive. Alysia had to be there for a job, or because she was being hunted by someone even more dangerous than herself. Sarik had panicked, certain that
she
was the one Alysia was hunting. The memo looking for someone who spoke ha’Mistari had
gone up just before Alysia had suddenly expressed an interest in a mediator’s position. Alysia knew, or suspected, and even if she hadn’t known before applying for the mediator job, she could make the connection too easily once she saw Sarik. And a visit from a third-ranked member of any of the Bruja guilds normally ended with someone dead.

Diana was already gone. If Lynzi had known about Sarik’s suspicions, she would have confronted Alysia and tipped her off but then given her a chance to explain herself, because SingleEarth was all about second chances.

So Sarik had grabbed the crossbow and bolts and followed Alysia into the storm, planning to shoot one bolt in the human’s back and then plant the others in her room. After the weapons were discovered, her death would have been blamed on some kind of guild conflict.

But Sarik hadn’t been able to go through with the kill. Head swirling with nightmares and panic, she had pointed the crossbow at Alysia but had been unable to pull the trigger. When the three shapes had emerged from the administration building, it had for a few seconds seemed so clear: no one needed to die. After the attack, Sarik could confide to Lynzi that she had seen a weapon in Alysia’s room, and the human would be forced out of SingleEarth in a heartbeat.

It had only taken a few seconds to do the stupidest thing she had ever done in her life.

Everything had gone wrong, karma coming back to bite her. Jason had walked outside, and Alysia hadn’t done anything Sarik had expected. An undercover Bruja mercenary wouldn’t have run forward and risked herself to take care of
other SingleEarth members. She wouldn’t have bled to help Jason.

Now Alysia was in the hospital, and it was all Sarik’s fault.

They would hate her if they knew.

She deserved it.

T
HERE WAS NO
getting around it—Alysia had to ask.

“Where is
who
?”

Kral just kind of nudged her, and that was enough to send flares of pain to her brain from her leg and her ribs. She gasped, trying not to pass out again … or wait, passing out might be good at the moment … but no, she stayed conscious. And when the pain pushed the drugs aside for a second, she managed to figure out what he was asking.

When Alysia had first joined Onyx, Kral had wanted to know the same thing: the whereabouts of his daughter, Sahara. She had disappeared right before Alysia had first come to Onyx.

“I told you before,” she choked out, “I’ve never met her.”

The fact that he might kill her had occurred to her intellectually but hadn’t really hit her yet. He might kill her. He might let the drugs wear off and just allow her to die from shock or infection. He might torture her to death.

She was pretty sure that would bother her eventually.

“She disappeared within twenty-four hours of your appearance on Onyx’s doorstep,” Kral declared. “Six years later, I hear that you’ve dropped by Onyx, and my daughter calls me within the next twenty-four hours. It is too wild a coincidence for the two to be unrelated.”

“I can see why it seems that way,” Alysia said.

Upon saying it, she realized how incredibly stupid she had been.

No, not stupid—uninformed.

Alysia had never known Sahara. She had seen pictures of the wild, leather-garbed huntress who was princess of the Onyx guild and who, as one novice had described it, had displayed Christian a bit like a fur stole, but she had never seen the tigress in person, never tried to picture what she might look like without the metal and the screw-the-world attitude.

Think it through. Don’t sic Kral on SingleEarth, not on such a crazy theory
. Clear-minded, she probably wouldn’t begin to believe that the sweet little mediator could be the same tigress who had left four neat scars in a row across Christian’s chest.

That argument had been the final straw. He had walked out, taken the job against Maya despite Kral’s forbidding it, and hooked up with Alysia.

Kral slapped her, relatively softly but hard enough to get her attention.

“What did you give me?” Alysia asked. “I can’t think. Can’t answer your questions if I can’t think.”

“It’s an easy question. You know the answer.”

Whether she did or not, she didn’t want to tell him jack until she was able to think through the consequences.

Which was why he had drugged her.

Goddamn.

The impact made her ache enough that it took her a moment to realize she hadn’t been the one hit. Something very large and solid had struck the door from the outside. The door opened and an unconscious guard fell into Kral.

Behind the guard was a slender woman with hair and eyes the color of spilled blood. Even at this distance, Alysia recognized her, though her hair was now shorn very short in a style that did not look entirely intentional. In fact, it was a little singed, as was the skin on her left hand.

Flatly, she informed Kral, “Your merc blew up my new car.”

“Ravyn, can’t you see I’m
busy
?”

Ravyn glanced at Alysia, then back at Kral. “Yeah, real busy. And you owe me a Beamer. Also, Pandora is pissed that you sent her student to the hospital, and I had a chat with your daughter this morning. But you’re
busy
, so I’ll be on my way.”

She turned around and dodged when Kral reached for her. The knife appeared in her hand like magic as she spat, “Put a hand on me and I will put a
hole
in you, tiger. Is that clear? I just came to tell you I expect you to replace that car, and I want you to keep your family feud in your own guild. If I hear you’re soliciting underranked Crimson members again—for
a hit on
SingleEarth
, of all the pathetic things—you and I are going to have words and weapons.”

“Um, help?” Alysia managed to ask when it became clear that Ravyn was about to leave and Kral was going to let her walk out.

“Onyx business is not my deal,” Ravyn replied.

Mercenaries
, Alysia thought.

Kral’s response was a little less resigned. He turned around with a growl and smacked Alysia hard enough that the world turned pink, then gray, then white, and then was gone completely.

Alysia tried to run
.

Andy followed her. She went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. He was more than afoot taller than she was, but she thought that once he realized she had a weapon, he would run away. He probably didn’t want to fight
.

When he reached for her, she ran again, toward the stairs, shouting for her parents, her mother in the bedroom and her father on an air mattress in the study. She cut her hand when Andy grabbed her ankle. She stumbled, and they tussled on the stairs
.

Alysia’s father appeared at the top landing, but not in time to keep them both from falling and rolling down the wooden steps, knife between them. She was vaguely aware of the knife blade sliding into flesh, an instant before they reached the bottom and she came to a sudden stop as the back of her skull slammed into flagstone tile
.

She woke with a doctor and a police officer at her side. She did not need to ask what had happened to Andy, because in that final second, she had felt the knife and the blood and seen the look in his eyes. She
looked at the cop and burst into tears. She was a murderer. They would arrest her
.

Alysia woke with a start and then moaned as her sudden movement pulled on her chains.

The worst part had been that she had known him.

No, the worst part had been waking up in a hospital and being assured that it was perfectly fine that she had killed a classmate. He had broken into their house, probably looking for something to sell for drug money, and apparently that made it all right that she had murdered him. Everything she did after that, she was assured by her mother’s therapist, was “perfectly normal” and all right because of her parents’ pending divorce and the little issue of a murder no one seemed to care about.

Staying out late. Getting in trouble. Stealing a pair of sneakers. Stealing a Lexus. Hacking into the school network. Hacking into the
police
network. Breaking into a swanky house in a suburban neighborhood only to find herself in the middle of a guild of ruthless assassins. The leader of Frost, a terrifying woman named Sarta, had given her an opportunity to join her guild or go to jail for a long time. Alysia would have joined even without the threat. Her mother’s therapist probably would have told her that she used contracts from Frost to fill the void left behind by two parents who meant well but were too focused on their own fears and needs to question their daughter further when she assured them she was fine.

You’re not fine now
, she reminded herself, struggling to focus and pull her thoughts back to the present. Whatever drugs
Kral had given her were obviously still in her system, making her mind wander in all sorts of inconvenient ways, but they were starting to wear off. The evidence of that was the screaming pain running up and down her body like an electric current.

If Kral believed what Ravyn had said about having a “chat” with his daughter, he had probably gone after her for more information. Alysia was alone for the moment, but she didn’t know how long that would last.

Her hands were mostly numb from being above her head for so long. She couldn’t clench her teeth against the pain of trying to lift her head to examine the shackles because her jaw refused to cooperate, so she just breathed shallowly and tried not to wonder how many ribs were broken.

Some people liked metal shackles. They were cruel and cold, and most people feared them. On the plus side, they tended not to be adjustable. Kral no doubt had a variety of sizes—because if you’re prone to chaining people in your greenroom, you would have to, right?—but in the end, the iron rings rarely fit well.

Alysia twisted her right hand, letting the muscles go slack as she forced her thumb out of joint. Someday she wanted to do a survey on how many Bruja members were double-jointed, especially in their hands; it seemed like a great evolutionary advantage to Alysia, who had wriggled out of more restraints than most people in safer professions ever had to worry about.

Everything went gray as she hit the ground and her legs collapsed under her. It took at least a century, maybe an eon,
for the pain to recede. She couldn’t seem to get enough air, and her heart was pounding.