The Lady of Toryn Anthology (Lady of Toryn trilogy) (6 page)

The ninja, of course, wasted no time with intimidation
games, and promptly kneed Vargo in a rather sensitive part of his anatomy. The
baton clattered to the floor and the Spartan doubled over, gasping.

As tempting as it was to point and laugh, Ashlyn
couldn't afford to. She tackled the ninja from behind, slamming him sideways
into one of the control panels, and hooked her legs around his shins, jerking
him off his feet and onto the floor. They rolled around for several moments,
each grappling with the other and trying to gain the upper hand, until one of
his punches connected with the side of Ashlyn's face, and she slid across the
floor.

The sleeve that she had been clutching in one fist
ripped completely off, exposing his entire left arm, which was tattooed in a
snaking pattern along his veins from his forearm down. Ashlyn jumped up and
struck her usual fighting stance, shifting her weight from the balls of her
feet to her toes and back again as she waited for him to attack.

He did, in the traditional ninja way, with no forewarning
and no particular elegance about his style. It was simply jab, kick, spin,
duck, as Ashlyn went through the movements of fighting without actually knowing
what was coming next. It had been years since she'd battled with another ninja,
and she was losing ground quickly.

She abandoned the blocking and fought him furiously,
spinning on one foot in a kick that only half-missed its mark before flipping
forward in another offensive attack. The back of her sneaker connected soundly
with the ninja's shoulder.

He grunted in pain, but managed to catch her foot
anyway. He danced away from her flailing fists, and Ashlyn hopped once before
losing her balance and falling backwards. She used the heels of her hands to
break her fall, but it hurt just as much as falling on her head probably would
have. The ninja stomped once on her stomach, hard, before leaping over her and
throwing open the door to the deck.

Ashlyn couldn't breathe, but she knew she had to stop
him- you didn't go to the deck without a purpose. Clambering to her feet, she
staggered out the door after him. Her lungs were bursting with the lack of
oxygen. She struggled to focus.

He was at the end of the deck, throwing back a tarp
which the wind quickly dragged over the edge, hefting the straps of a backpack
over his shoulders.
The emergency
parachutes!

Ashlyn gritted her teeth and skittered towards him,
barely able to keep her feet on the deck in the fierce wind. He climbed up onto
the railing and prepared to leap, but she grabbed the backpack, cackling in
delight and then suddenly screaming in fear as he took her with him over the
edge.

Something latched onto her foot and Ashlyn jerked to a
stop, screeching her head off in absolute terror but still maintaining her
grasp on the ninja's backpack. She peered over her shoulder, blanching when she
saw Vargo struggling to hold onto her. His fingers dug into the super-thick
socks that she wore bunched up around her ankles, trying to find a better grip
but unable to steady her.

"I've got him!" she yelled, clinging
determinedly to the writhing ninja. "Pull me up!"

"I can't!" he returned. "You're too
heavy!"

"Too heavy?" Ashlyn screeched, insulted.
"Suck it up and pull us up, you wuss!"

"Let him go, Ash! I can't save you both!"

"What the hell kind of Spartan are you?" she
demanded, the wind ripping the words from her lips.

Suddenly one of the straps broke on the ninja's
parachute, and he let out a startled yelp as his other arm slid out of its
strap and he plummeted downward, disappearing into the clouds beneath them.

There was a shocked silence as Ashlyn stared down at
the backpack in her hands, struggling frantically to determine what just
happened.

Vargo hauled her up, grasping her around the waist and
pulling her over the railing before collapsing next to her. His hair was
whipping violently in the wind, but he grinned at Ashlyn, oblivious to her
wrath. "Guess the decision wasn't yours to make," he said, pulling
the wobbling cigarette from behind his ear and clamping it between his teeth.
"Poor guy."

Chapter 4

Choosing Sides

"Ouch," Ashlyn said loudly, glaring at Vargo
as he swabbed her scraped hand with peroxide.

"Don't act like such a baby," he replied.
"Geez, you'd think I was amputating a limb or something."

Ashlyn clamped her mouth shut, trying to ignore the
pain that flared in her palms as the liquid fizzled against her wounds. She
wasn't about to let Vargo, of all people, lecture her about being a wimp.

Her wounds had been nowhere near as bad as she'd
expected - the pain when she'd fallen on her hands had led her to believe that
she'd scraped off more than a few inches of skin, but her injuries were
minimal. It was just the healing that was getting to be a pain in the butt.

Three years ago- or even three
days
ago, she would have just used a
heal
stane and been done with it. But Jackson had the Conservation
Act in effect now. The idea of the Act was to preserve as much of Kresmir’s
natural energy as possible, so stanes were only supposed to be used in life or
death situations.

Truthfully, if she’d been on her own she would have
healed her hand, Conservation Act or no, but with the rest of FLD hanging over
her shoulder, Ashlyn didn’t have much choice in the situation.

She'd torn a scab off of one hand just trying to hand
Drake his revolver. Naturally, Vargo was the first who had jumped to her aid,
but now she was beginning to regret accepting his offer to help. She blinked
hard and focused on his hairline to distract her, gritting her teeth and
ignoring his hands as they caressed her wrist lightly.

Funny that she'd never noticed how...symmetrical the
Spartan's features were. The trim lines of his sideburns continued up above his
brows, meeting at the center in a perfect widow's peak. His head was bent over
her hand, his thick, spiky hair mussed, his green eyes narrowed slightly.

As she was studying him, Vargo suddenly looked up and
smiled knowingly at her. "Something on your mind?"

Horrified, Ashlyn yanked her hand from his grasp.
"Of course not!" she blurted out before she could stop herself,
sliding off the table and tripping over her own feet in her haste. "You
know, as much as I'm sure you enjoy pawing me, I'd really rather just do this
myself."

"Suit yourself," he said, leaning back
against the table and folding his arms across his chest.

Skye walked into the room then, Restlyn trailing
behind him. Both of them looked exhausted.

"Hey," Vargo said lightly. He tossed the peroxide-soaked
gauze into a wastebasket and looked keenly at the tired pair. "I'm
guessing no luck with Restlyn's prisoner?"

Restlyn had done some significant damage to the ninja
she had fought the day before. The poor ninja had been conked out all night,
and had regained consciousness less than an hour before.

"We had less than no luck," Restlyn said
miserably. "He doesn't know a thing."

"Or if he does, he won't tell us," Skye
added. He pulled out a chair and sat down, propping his feet up on the table
and lacing his fingers across his stomach.

Ashlyn curled her shuriken into her palm and
maneuvered it back and forth, measuring her tolerance for the pain. "Did
you push him or did you just ask politely?"

"We asked...a little less than politely."
Skye frowned at her. "This isn't like the battle with Lord Angelo, Ash.
These are actual people- your people, as a matter of fact- and we have to
maintain some civility or we'll lose sight of what we're fighting for."

She wasn't anxious to see a fellow Toryn interrogated,
but Ashlyn knew how stubborn her people could be. "You're being
silly," she told Skye. "I trained to be Lady of Toryn practically
since birth, and the first thing I learned is that wars must be won at any
cost, whether you have to lie, torture, cheat or steal to do it. That's the way
ninjas are- it's the way they always have been. Nobility and graciousness
totally can't do you any good if you're too dead to- "

"You seem awfully eager for bloodshed," Skye
cut her off, his tone edgy. "He's a Toryn, just like you. For all you know
he could be fighting the good fight and
we
could be the bad guys. And
you're trying to convince me to torture him on the off-chance that he might
know something useful?"

Ashlyn's eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to
protest and say she didn’t mean
torture,
exactly-
but something stopped her.

He was right.

She had blindly accepted her friends’ explanation for
the war without even pausing to consider that the Toryn army might actually be
fighting for the right thing. Even three years ago she hadn't agreed with Skye
and Restlyn blowing up all of Lord Angelo‘s power plants - it put people on the
streets, made them both homeless and jobless overnight.

But the bigger picture had been Lord Angelo, and that
was something she had been willing to fight for.

But Devlyn…?

If her father had chosen Devlyn as the next leader,
then why wouldn't he be an appropriate Lord of Toryn? Lord Li was nothing if
not a decent judge of character- heck, he'd seen right through Skye when the DEMON
soldier had first stepped foot in Toryn, had warned Ashlyn about the blond man
with the dark glasses.
He’s not what he
seems,
Lord Li had said to Ashlyn.
He
wants something from you.

That
something
had
turned out to be Ashlyn joining FLD, and she’d done it, only because Restlyn
had sent Skye to ask. Ashlyn would do almost anything for her adoptive sister.

She realized that Vargo, Restlyn and Skye were all
still staring at her, waiting for her response. Her throat tightened
uncomfortably. "I have to go," she murmured, brushing past Skye and
hurrying out the door.

She hadn't made it ten steps towards the holding cells
before Vargo was next to her. "Hey, wait up a sec," he said, grabbing
her elbow. "Skye's just being...Skye. Don't worry about it."

"Leave me alone, Vargo," she muttered, and
kept walking. "I’m not going to give you anything to report to Skye.”

"I don't report to anyone," Vargo retorted.
"And if I was going to, it definitely wouldn't be to Skye. Relax,
sweetheart. He's just pissed 'cause the ninja didn't tell him anything."

Ashlyn swiped the back of her hand across her eyes,
trying to alleviate the sting of tears. "Of course the ninja didn't tell
him anything. Ninjas, real live ninjas, not like the ones you read about in the
storybooks, aren't gonna break down and spill the beans if you ask real nicely.
You have to do something serious, like chop off their fingers or break their
kneecaps."

"Nice visual." Vargo glanced down at her,
eyebrow arched. "Is that what you're going to do now? Hack off a finger
for every refusal?"

"No, but that's a good idea." Ashlyn
sniffled and swapped the shuriken to her other hand. "I'm just going to
see if I know him. Maybe he'll tell me something if he thinks he can trust
me."

Vargo stepped in front of her and braced his hand
against the doorjamb, blocking her way. "Would you just stop and...and talk
to me for a minute?" he exclaimed, frustrated. "How are you going to
convince a ninja that he can trust you when you're flying on the enemy's
airship? Not to mention you already fought him once and kind of let his buddy
fall off the deck without a parachute. I'd say it's a pretty fair chance that
he's going to know you're not on his side."

They both swayed on their feet as the airship began
its descent for landing.

"And who says I'm not on his side?" Ashlyn
said evenly, without missing a beat. "I think Skye said it best- for all I
know, the Toryn people might be fighting the good fight and
you
might be
the bad guys. I need to find out for myself."

Vargo stared down at her, searching her eyes for
sincerity. "I can't believe you," he said. "You don't even know
who you're fighting for. I should tell Skye what you just said."

"You should," she conceded, her voice soft.

There was a long pause, their breaths mingling in the
silence. Finally Vargo dropped his arm, shaking his head as he stepped back.
"Don't stay in there long. Skye might get suspicious."

She nodded, her heart in her throat at the trusting
gesture, and walked through the doorway.

"Ash."

She glanced back; he stood in the doorway, hands
shoved in his pockets, his expression troubled. "When I was with Lord Angelo,"
he said slowly, his eyes bright in the dim light, "I shut my mouth and did
my job. I knew it wasn't right, but I couldn't call it wrong - it was just a
job, something I was good at and pretty much all I knew."

It wasn't really clear where he was going with this.
She found her voice and said, "Are you regretting it now?"

Vargo smiled humorlessly. "I guess it doesn't
really matter, does it? It's in the past. But I...I just wanted to say that I
can draw the comparison between then and now,
then
, when I was fighting
for Lord Angelo and
now
, when I'm fighting for Jackson and the Free
Lands. And I believe in what I'm fighting for this time. You know. It just
seems right," he finished lamely.