Chapter Eighteen

I let him do whatever he wanted to me, and he told me I was suffering a bit from shock. Maybe I was, because I couldn’t seem to think clearly. He soon stripped off my clothes and helped me lie back down, covering me with a warm blanket, and I turned on my side and curled up, hardly even knowing when he joined me.

Hours later, I woke up, wrapped in his arms. I’d been having some crazy dreams, and he was soothing me and telling me to go back to sleep. I closed my eyes and did as he said.

The next day, the smell of food woke me up as Niko brought a tray of things over to the bed. He gave me hot tea, which went a long way to restoring me, and after a while, I ate some bread and cheese, along with some little cakes. I was shocked to find out it was already evening and I’d slept the day away.

Then, feeling restored, I checked out my clothes, which were mostly unusable. Niko got me a robe from somewhere outside the room—he had the door open and was moving back and forth freely—and brought me some things so I could clean my teeth and brush out my hair, which was all in tangles.

I still didn’t need to shave all that often, though I noticed Niko had done it and he smelled fresh like he’d bathed recently too. Lord Miaas knocked on the wall by the door frame and Niko told him to come in.

“I have everything ready,” he said.

Niko nodded. “Good. I don’t think he’ll be expecting anything so soon.”

“Wait, are we going after him now ?”

“I am, yes. You’ll stay here until I come for you.”

“No, I won’t let you leave me behind. Please, Niko. I can’t stay here and just hope you’ll make it back. I’d go crazy.”

Niko looked at Miaas and he shrugged and smiled. “May as well let him go, Dominiko. He did well against the attackers last night.”

“All right,” he said, bad temperedly. “But don’t you get in my way, and I mean it. You do what I say, when I say it. And if you get yourself in trouble, you’re on our own. Is that understood?”

If he hadn’t spent the hours since we arrived here caring for me so tenderly, I might have been a little offended. But I had heard Davos speak to Blake that way so many times. Not to mention my father to my omak. I knew he was just worried and trying to make me back off. I nodded dutifully and made a big cross with my fingers across my chest,

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said.

“Well, what the hell does that mean?”

“It means I hear you and I promise. On my life.”

He gave me one more frown. “Don’t say that again. I don’t like it.”

“Yes, Niko.”

“Don’t take any stupid risks, all right? I don’t want to have to come after you.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t do that. You said I was on my own.”

“Don’t tell me what I said. This is what I’m saying.”

He gave me one more dark look—I may have overdone the meek attitude a bit, and he was suspicious—and we began to get ready.

“We’ll use the tunnels again,” Niko told me. “They run in several directions from this house as well. All of this was Itaka’s doing over the years.”

“How did she manage all that?”

“She had the help of the old emperor. They used the ones from her house to keep down the gossip and jealousy of the other wives. Most of them go from her home to the emperor’s palace. But she had a few extra ones dug that she never mentioned to her husband. The one we took last night to Miaas’s house, for example, and some branching off from there, back to the main courtyard and the palace. They’ll have found some of them last night, though I blocked most of the main ones with that explosive. Hopefully, they won’t have discovered the others yet.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned this before? You said you didn’t have a plan.”

“Nothing fully formed. I thought using the tunnels was too dangerous. It still is, but our options are more limited now, and we’re running out of time.”

We left about an hour later, moving quietly through the tunnels in the dark. Niko was carrying a pack full of charges, and I had one filled with first aid supplies in case one of us was wounded.

We were in the tunnel a long time, it seemed, though it was still late at night. It was a slow, grinding process finding our way in the dim light, every minute seeming to be twice as long as usual. Finally, we arrived, not at a ladder this time, but at a door, dug out and placed right in the earth. Niko eased open the door and we came out into a short earthen tunnel, ending in another door. It opened onto a silent, dark corridor, but one that was tucked away behind a panel. We peered around it and saw a guard who was nodding by a door some forty feet ahead of us.

Niko motioned for me to wait as he crept quietly up to him as he slept, put a hand over his mouth and slit his throat. Blood spurted in a furious jet from the severed vein. I shouldn’t have been shocked after witnessing so much violence the night before, but I still was. I went over behind Niko, and he whirled around, staring at me wildly. I shook my head, pulling at his arm and held a finger to my lips. It was the smell of the blood that was affecting him, so I pulled at his arm to move him away.

He came back to himself in a moment and pulled a kerchief up over his nose to block out the smell of the blood, I guess. Another man came suddenly loping down the hall, in no particular hurry until he saw what was happening, with the guard slumped over in his chair. He yelled out, but before he could raise a real alarm, Niko was on him, stabbing him with his dagger in the throat and holding him as he fell unconscious, gently lowering him to the floor. He was already dead, his eyes open with bubbles of blood streaming out his nose and mouth.

Niko quickly turned back to the door, and we went in. It was the emperor’s bed chamber, and he was lying on his side in the middle of the bed. Niko stepped forward, his dagger raised, and that’s when someone grabbed me roughly from behind, snarling in my ear.

“One more step, Dominiko, and I’ll break this little neck.”

Since mine was the little neck in question, I held perfectly still. I think I even held my breath.

****

Dominiko

I’d heard people say they felt their heart stop in their chests before, but I had always thought it just a figure of speech. When I saw the dagger Linnius was holding at Jago’s throat, I felt it stutter to a halt, and I stopped breathing entirely.

“Let him go,” I said, taking a quick step toward them.

“First you drop your weapon.”

“If I drop it, you’ll only kill us both.”

He shrugged. “We seem to be at a stalemate then.”

“Not necessarily,” Jago suddenly spoke up, as if he weren’t moments from being killed. “We can probably work this out if we just take a second here to talk this over.”

“Shut up!” Linnius shouted, pushing the tip of his blade into Jago’s throat, and causing a trickle of his blood to drip down his neck.

I saw the exact moment when Linnius caught the smell of Jago’s blood. That intoxicating, sweet and exotic smell I loved so much hit him hard. He got a stunned look on his face as his nostrils flared, and he bent his head to lick at the side of Jago’s throat.

I knew it was a mistake as soon as he did it.

Jago shied away, elbowing him in the gut, and though he held onto the princeling, I had time to bring up my weapon. And—if I do say so myself—I was an excellent shot.

He was so much taller than Jago that it was easy really, though I didn’t know why my hand was shaking so much. Jago made it to my arms in two big steps as Linnius sagged to the floor, and I wrapped him up and whirled to face the bed, in case there was some threat coming from that direction. The person lying there was very still, and I threw back the covers to reveal Melanius. She had been drained of all her blood and her pale corpse looked diminished and small.

Linnius had murdered her, of course, probably tricking her into going to his bed for that purpose. She had gone, perhaps thinking to get back in his good graces.

I pulled Jago to the door, giving Linnius’s dead body a good, hard kick as we passed him. He had a neat, black hole in the center of his forehead, but I shot out both eyes just to make sure. One for my father and one for Melanius. My weapon whined and hummed but was still nearly silent. At that point, I no longer cared.

We left quickly afterward, going back out the door and into the tunnel. It was getting later, but the gods were with us, and we didn’t meet anyone at all as we left.

I led Jago back to Lord Miaas’s house and things moved rapidly from there. We went to the rooftop, where Lord Miaas kept his personal craft. Climbing on board, I put Jago in the back seats and buckled him in. In seconds, we were up in the air and flying toward the main part of the city, just as the sun came over the horizon, so bright as to almost dazzle our eyes.

****

Jago

We made it to our ship—or I should say, my grandparents’ ship—before any alarm could be raised. We had learned on the journey over that Lord Miaas had pulled some strings to have the guards relieved of duty that night, with the council’s full permission and agreement. Miaas said we might be able to weather the storm—Linnius had been so unpopular, and I was well liked by the council. But it was better to let things die down. Niko made the decision to leave and stop to refuel on Mara.

We said our thanks to Lord Miaas and our goodbyes. Niko quickly started take-off procedures and before we knew it, we were soaring over the city and headed back toward Mara.

I wasn’t absolutely sure that was far enough away, in case any of Niko’s numerous half-brothers decided to come after us, but he said we needed to stop and check over the ship, not to mention refueling it before we went back through the wormhole and tried to get home. He assured me that his half-brothers were probably only too glad to be rid of the late emperor, and if Linnius’s body had been found, as it most surely had by now, they’d be in turmoil with all their infighting. Linnius had done a lot of evil to everyone he knew and had named no successor.

We were headed home. My home, anyway—I knew Niko wasn’t totally thrilled at the prospect of a life on Tygeria, and I certainly couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t looking forward to facing the music myself, as Blake would say—though come to think of it, there never was any music I ever heard. Whenever I questioned Blake on things like that, though, he told me I was ridiculously literal, just like my father before me.

Speaking of my parents, I knew I’d be in for it when they caught up with me, but I had devised a plan for that. One that I hoped would ensure Niko’s safety too, if he agreed to go along with it. But first we had to get back to my home galaxy. Not exactly a sure thing, but I’d always known that. If we could make it though, I thought we should find out if Itaka had been released back to her king and had made her way home. If so, we’d set a course for her planet. I recalled Blake telling me it was in a star cluster in our own galaxy. Her husband was King Anton, and the star cluster was called the Colandus 50. I hoped Niko would know the exact planet she lived on in that cluster.

Of course, that wasn’t the only consideration. I still had to tell Niko my plan for us. I decided to wait until after we traveled through the wormhole successfully.

Assuming, of course, that we actually did.