“You found it!” She sounded so happy.
“Get out,” he called.
But she didn’t seem to hear him, and he glimpsed the shine of light off the barrels of enemy guns. Jael sprinted toward her, knowing he would be too slow—
He came awake with a smothered cry. Dred stirred behind him and roused with a sleepy frown. “Problem?”
Jael metered his breathing, eyes shut against the memory. “An old one. Don’t know why it’s bobbing to the surface now.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
His voice came out in a rasp. “The last job I did before retiring as a merc, there was this little girl in middle of the hot zone. I was supposed to clear a path for my unit, and there she was. Both sides unleashed on us, and I ran. Landed on her. I took the hit, hurt like hell.”
“Did you save her?” Dred asked softly.
“That’s the shit of it, love. I didn’t. When I rolled over, I had a big-ass hole in my back and blood all over her. The blast went all the way through. She died anyway. I got into salvage work after that.”
She didn’t say anything. Maybe she could tell he felt like a big exposed nerve, and no words would do. She has that bloody Psi whatever-it-is. First time I’ve ever been glad somebody could rummage in my feelings. Instead, she lay beside him in silence until he felt like he could stand being touched, then he wrapped his arms around her and didn’t let go.
* * *
FIVE days after the failed recon mission, Tam could limp about with relative facility. Things had been fairly quiet since Mungo’s mongrels died outside their border, and the mercs hadn’t made any moves on Queensland. Frankly, the silence worried him. He was the one who gathered intel, so at the moment, they were operating blind. Tam tried to tell himself that Vost’s men were engaged elsewhere, and they’d turn their attentions on Queensland soon enough.
To distract himself from futile foreboding, he circulated, listening to the populace. He overhead scraps of conversation: gossip, bets regarding which zone went out first and how long it would take for the mercs to wipe out Mungo’s mutts, idle chatter and the usual shit talk among men with too much time on their hands. But there was little aggression, much less than when Artan ran the territory. Most convicts had settled down and were no longer whispering about the benefits of Vost’s offer. It seemed as if the majority of Queenslanders knew a baited trap when they saw one, and they were capable of convincing their comrades, with a clenched first if necessary.
He was less sanguine about the recruits they’d acquired from Grigor. While they had desperately needed the numbers—and that was the only reason he hadn’t protested Dred’s clemency with them—he suspected they wouldn’t quietly yield the unchecked violence they’d enjoyed under Grigor’s rule. They didn’t in Queensland, either. So far, the fresh meat had offered complete obedience, and he hadn’t caught any of them with contraband weapons, but he didn’t have the time to police them exhaustively. Sooner or later, that situation would explode, but the mercs made it impossible to turn his gaze inward; instead, all of his skill had to go toward ensuring their survival.
Or all of your plans will go to shit.
They might anyway, of course. For the moment, they were on hiatus, as the balance of power had shifted, not just with Jael’s arrival. The decimation of two territories and the advent of the mercs made prior plots no longer viable. Frustrating, maddening, even, but in a place like this, it was impossible to calculate the odds with complete precision, as things had a way of shifting by the day. As his mother had been fond of telling him, That which cannot be changed must be borne.
His sullied schemes certainly fell into that category, so he went to assess the new training program; this was Jael’s innovation, initiated after a planning session with Dred. “If you want them to fight as a unit, you need to teach them how. You can’t expect a bunch of convicts used to fighting for their own lives suddenly to care about the ass**les next to them.”
Though Martine had come in a few minutes before, he wasn’t actively spying on her. Since he couldn’t collect information on the other zones, he could analyze the internal dynamics, so as to offer Dred the best advice when it came time to plot their next move. Tam stood by the door, watching the men spar. Training occurred without weapons, and Calypso, Mistress of the Ring, was in charge. There hadn’t been any death matches lately—too much real fighting for the men to build up rancor over grievances real or imagined—and she had been chafing over her lapse in personal prestige. So it made sense to give her this responsibility. She officiated the games because she was fierce enough to defeat any man in single combat, so if the fighters cheated or objected to her authority, she ended them. Before the coup, Calypso had served Artan, one of the few women who never shared the man’s bed. Tam recalled her efficient brutality when she performed an execution.
Martine stood near the other woman, talking quietly. She was the last person he could’ve imagined being attracted to. Other men fantasized about the Dread Queen, but he’d never shared Einar’s infatuation, possibly because he’d played such a large role in her creation; it would be too much like onanism, fine as an outlet, but it seemed like a waste of time with a partner. Those factors aside, Dred didn’t share Tam’s interests, rendering her useless as a potential bed partner. Mary, it was difficult enough getting her to play the part in public; she was unlikely to take up the whip for fun.
Before Perdition, he’d preferred a sort of icy elegance that masked a predilection for dominance, and gender was less important than other aspects of sexual compatibility. Martine was bold and brassy, not in the least elegant, but she had . . . something, a puzzle he lacked the time and opportunity to explore. As a man whose inner life was primarily intellectual, he could go turns without being drawn to a potential partner, and he didn’t mind the long gaps. In short, his libido had picked an odd time to come to life.
Using the perimeter, he moved closer, hoping to overhear what had Calypso looking so pensive. Martine was still speaking earnestly, her hands moving with a fluid grace. You could tell a lot by a person’s hands, whether they had passion or restraint, what sort of work they’d done or crimes committed. The lack of scars on Martine’s told an interesting tale.
“. . . don’t think that’s a good idea,” the smaller woman was saying.
“Of course you don’t,” Calypso answered. “You’ve thrown in with the little man and the would-be queen.”