The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (10 page)

"Did you know that FLD was in Storim?" he
said, gloved hands clenching the back of the chair tightly.

"No."

"Have you ever met Devlyn?"

"No."

"Then why did you-" Skye stopped, visibly
trying to quell his temper, and took a deep breath. "If you've never met
him," he started over, voice low, "then...why didn't you tell me when
this Toryn contacted you? I've told you how ruthless Devlyn is. I've told you
what he's done, what he wants to do. He’s had his people attacking you for
months. What were you thinking?"

"I don’t know," Ashlyn muttered, suddenly
feeling nauseated. She'd been completely distraught when she'd considered the
possibility that maybe her friends were fighting for the wrong cause- she could
only imagine how Skye felt now, thinking she might have betrayed him.

"Look, Skye," she began, but he cut her off
again.

"I don't want to hear your excuses," he
said, holding up a hand to silence her. "Just choose your battle and be
done with it. If you're intent on going to Toryn, I'm not going to stop you, as
long as you don‘t hurt anyone. If you stay here, then we will continue with the
plan as decided before."

He stood, not bothering to grab the chair before it
fell on its side with a loud thunk, and glanced at her outstretched leg.
"You'd better get someone to look at that," he said, and walked out
of the room before Ashlyn could think to retort, his boots clunking angrily
against the floor.

"Gee, thanks," Ashlyn said belatedly.

Vargo snickered from where he'd been standing, slouched
against the wall with his usual graceless posture. "Be seein' you,"
he told Ashlyn, moving towards the doorway.

She didn't give him the satisfaction of answering,
instead focusing her attention on her ankle. Slowly she unlaced her sneaker,
being careful not to jostle her aching foot, and eased the shoe off. The agony
that shot through her as she bent her ankle slightly was indescribable.

Ashlyn bit down on her lip, hard, the taste of metal
on her tongue, and winced. A single tear squeezed out the corner of her eye,
and for a long moment she seriously deliberated breaking down and sobbing.

Then Aaron stuck his head into the room, and all
thoughts of crying fled from Ashlyn's mind as she unconsciously sat up
straighter, fixing him with what she hoped was an annoyed look. Darned if she'd
cry in front of him.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

Grinning, Aaron stepped into the room and brandished a
bright green
heal
stane. "I'm yer knight in shinin' armor," he
said.

"Skye sent you?"

"Naw, but I told him I was comin'. I saw your
ankle, doesn't take a doctor to figure out something like that. Sprained?"
he asked amicably, pulling up Skye's chair so he could sit beside her
outstretched foot.

"Something like that," Ashlyn repeated his
words with no trace of humor. "What about the Cosmean healers? Couldn’t
they fix me without using stanes?" She was thinking about the Conservation
Act, but as soon as she said it, she realized that Aaron probably disliked the
Conservation Act as much as she did.

Aaron shrugged. "You really wanna wait for one of
'em? Or should I just fix yer leg right now?"

"Fix me now. Please." Ashlyn gave her best
polite smile and leaned her head back against the wall, sighing as Aaron put
one hand on her shin, just above her ankle. The older man's touch was
uncomplicated and platonic, a big relief from all the electricity she'd been
feeling with Vargo and Drake in the last three days. Chewing thoughtfully on
her lower lip, she watched as Aaron slid the stane into his armband, letting it
settle in with a metallic clink before putting both hands back on her ankle.

"Don't turn me into a frog or anything," she
told him as an afterthought.

He muttered a few words under his breath, but Ashlyn
couldn't tell if he was retorting to her comment or working the spell. A few
moments later his hands glowed green against her skin, and she could feel the
hurt inside her leg shifting, changing, the strained muscles and tendons
snapping back into shape.

It was excruciating, but she said nothing, instead
choosing to dig her short nails into the fabric of the couch, bracing herself
against the pain. She'd had to deal with a lot of it in the past three days,
but it was nothing new. Living on your own meant surviving on your own, and
she'd had more than a few close calls in the past few years.

As the discomfort intensified, she let her breathing
grow shallow, calming herself, concentrating hard and at the same time trying
to let her entire body relax. If she could find her center, that semi-sleepy
state somewhere between the pain and complete unconsciousness…almost…

There.

Ashlyn smiled drowsily. Ah. That was better. Her ninja
training came in handy sometimes.

"You know, Aaron," she said, letting her
head loll to the side as she focused on the old pilot's rough features, "you're
forty years old now."

He snorted ungracefully. "Don't remind me,
kid."

"I'll be nineteen," she continued, staring
hard at the wall just beyond his head. "Another month or so. Nineteen with
nothing to show for it. You, at least, have the airship and Sara." She
paused. "You do still have Sara, don't you? You married her at some point
in the past three years?"

Aaron said nothing, and Ashlyn's eyes widened.
"Aaron?" she prompted, her voice hedged with warning.

"I had to marry her, or she would have left,"
he admitted finally. "Said she'd go off to live with her sister in
Rode." He grunted, and said, "Dunno why ya women gotta be so friggin’
disagreeable."

"Rode, huh. She'd rather live in that slag heap
than continue at your beck and call as an unpaid, unappreciated slave? Ugh.
That must have been a blow to your ego," Ashlyn said slowly, laboring over
the words, and winced as a sliver of pain edged into her self-induced stupor.

She took a deep breath and centered again, pushing the
physical away and focusing on something else- anything else, anything to take
her mind off of what he was doing.

"Drake Lockhart and I have the same blood
type." She blurted out the first random fact that came to mind,
sufficiently squashing any link her mind was maintaining with the discomfort in
her ankle.

Aaron raised an eyebrow. "How'd ya figure that
out?"

"Medical logs in the airship," she answered
automatically, over-enunciating the "L" sound for no particular
reason except to amuse herself. "I read them. I don't know why they're
still there after all these years."

"I knew we'd all end up back together at some
point," Aaron said, pulling his hands away from her leg and slapping his
palms against his thighs. "Figured there was no use throwing all those
records away if we were just gonna be needin’ 'em again someday."

"Mm." She closed her eyes, still
half-drowsy.

"Yer all fixed, kid," Aaron growled, and she
could hear the chair legs scrape on the floor as he stood up. "Don't come
cryin' to me again if you mess yerself up anytime soon."

Thrust back into reality in a hurry, Ashlyn blinked, a
bit light-headed. "Okay," she said stupidly. "Thank you,
Aaron."

He grunted again and was out the door without
bothering to give her a response.

Chapter 6

Betraying Trust

It was cold when Ashlyn's eyes flew open later that
night. She had no idea what had awoken her, but as her eyes searched the dark
room uselessly, her fingers clenched at the covers, pulling them up to her
chin.

The darkness was strange. It wasn't the usual,
scarlet-navy moonlit night, but rather an oppressive blackness that sent
shivers up her spine with its still, ominous presence.

"Restlyn?" she whispered. When she'd fallen
asleep the martial artist had not yet returned to their shared room at the inn.
Perhaps her entrance had been what startled Ashlyn. "Are you there?"

There was a rustle next to her bed. Ashlyn froze,
listening.

Suddenly something clapped over her mouth-
a hand?-
and in the same instant something heavy grasped at her belly. Her stomach
lurched at the unexpected contact, and as her assailant fumbled around, she
realized he was searching for her hands, trying to bind her before she could
gather her wits enough to fight back.

Ashlyn brought one arm up and over to slap the hand
off of her face, then yanked away, rolling over and over again until the bed
dropped away from beneath her and she fell to the floor. Her hands and knees
hit the floor hard, jarring her painfully. She scrambled into a crouch,
scanning the room, but it was much too dark to see
anything
.

She heard him grumble in a low voice, securing her
assumption that her attacker was a man, and then he began tearing at the
bedcovers, apparently trying to find her.

Fear tinged the edges of Ashlyn's consciousness.
Restlyn hadn't answered. Did that mean the brunette simply hadn't returned to
their room yet, or had this man already incapacitated Ashlyn’s adoptive sister?
Had he gotten to any of the other members of FLD before coming to Ashlyn's
room? She didn't even want to consider it.

Something hit her in the face, and Ashlyn yelped and
squirmed sideways before realizing that it was her blankets, tangling over her
arms and legs like a net. She wriggled out from under them, biting back the
curses on the tip of her tongue as she once again struggled to see in the
pitch-black room.

Climbing to her feet, she edged sideways, racking her
brain for the room's layout. It had changed since her previous visits, so it
was difficult to recall, but she knew that she had rolled off the bed in the
opposite direction from the door.

Ashlyn breathed shallowly, in through her nose, out
through her mouth, trying to still her rapidly beating heart. Clenching her
fists at her sides, she dropped her chin to her chest, closing her eyes.
Listening. Focusing.

The sound of his feet against the floor was soft,
barely audible. Ashlyn guessed that he was wearing soft-soled boots or sandals.
His motion as he moved out from behind the bed was anything but clumsy; she
could hear the shifting of his clothing as he eased sideways, just a few feet
in front of her.

His breathing was controlled, also, but louder than
hers. He was nervous. Good. She had him at a disadvantage.

Ashlyn drew one hand back, holding it up behind her
head, fingers curled, palm braced. Her other hand she extended in front of her,
folding her ring and pinky fingers down, keeping her thumb, index and middle
fingers outstretched.

She heard him stop in front of her, and then the
unmistakable metallic slide of a sword being drawn from its sheath.

The door creaked open the slightest bit, sending a
tiny sliver of light into the room. In the sudden illumination, she could see
the man turn, tensing, but there was no one there.

She didn't wait for him to finish drawing his weapon.
Ashlyn leapt forward, digging the toes of her left foot into the floor as she
jumped up in a spinning kick. He had one hand up over his head, still drawing
the sword from the sheath on his back, but he managed to clumsily block her
attack with his opposite hand. She countered with an immediate uppercut, going
for her trademark deathblow to the nose, but his sword clattered to the floor
as he used his hand to stop her palm's upward motion.

She tried to spin away to stay out of his grasp, only
to find that he'd caught her wrist and now twisted it viciously. Ashlyn went
with it, not wanting to injure herself by struggling, and ended up bent over at
the waist to avoid strain to her weaker arm. Quickly she brought her elbow up
to his stomach, landing a solid blow despite the awkward position.

He cried out when she connected with his ribs, and
fell to his knees. But his grip remained solid, dragging her down with him.

Her mind raced, her eyes searching for something to
use to free herself, and her gaze came to rest on the sword. When her left hand
snaked out to grab it, her captor twisted again, his booted foot coming down
none too gently on top of her wrist.

They stayed like that for what seemed like forever,
their heavy breathing eventually slowing.

This is ridiculous,
Ashlyn thought as she shifted uncomfortably. They were wrapped around
each other worse than the salted pretzels at the Silverbell Theme Park. There
was no way he could secure her without letting go, and they both knew that if
he released even one of her hands she would find a way to get free.

"Guess you're kind of in a bind now, huh?"
she taunted lightly, enjoying his momentary confusion. "Well, make up your
mind. We can't stay like this forever. One of my friends will come
eventually."

A short silence, and then, "What makes you think
I've not already dealt with them?"

He spoke in Merchant Tongue, with a guttural, clipped
accent that was surprisingly familiar. He was a Toryn, but it was too dark to
get a good look at his face, even with the light from the open door.