Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set Page 13

  “You mean to shock me,” Isis said, turning back to him. “I am shocked at the cruelty you suffered, but I will not be driven away because of these terrible things you were forced to endure.”

  “I have killed,” he said. “I learned how to be a weapon when I left Erebus. I’ve taken Opiri and human lives to defend two colonies.”

  “We have made our own defenses strong so that we will never be put in the position of killing in order to protect ourselves.”

  “It isn’t always that easy,” he said. “I want you to understand. If I have to, in the defense of my colony or the people I care for, I will kill again.”

  “But not because of your hatred?” she asked. “Never out of revenge? Would you kill Hannibal?”

  “Hannibal,” Daniel said heavily. “He knows things about me, Isis...everything that happened in Erebus before and after Ares’s rebellion against the Citadel’s rulers. He knows I’m not from Vikos, and I still don’t have any idea how much information he has about my life afterward.”

  “He could already have told Anu what he knows,” Isis said, folding her arms across her chest. “If they realize that you have lied about your origins, you could be arrested as a spy, after all.”

  “But I haven’t been, so far. And I know Hannibal is not here in good faith, as an Opiri looking for a new way of life. He wants something from Tanis, and he thinks he can get it.”

  “He might be a spy himself, from Vikos, or one of the other Citadels who might see us as a threat.”

  “If he is, Anu clearly doesn’t know it.” Daniel rose to stand with Isis, his hands hovering above her shoulders. “I still need your help to learn the truth about what’s going on here, and I’m betting that you want to know that as much as I do. If there’s a problem with Tanis, you wouldn’t let it continue.”

  “No,” she said, lifting her chin. “I would not. But I think it is time for you to leave the city.”

  “Why?” he said, dropping his hands. “If you’re afraid for me—”

  “Tanis is my city, as you said. Mine to protect. But your secrets are secrets no longer, if they ever were. I do not know why Anu would try to control you, unless Hannibal saw you in the city and has told tales about you. If I were to have to choose between defending you or taking action to save Tanis—”

  “You would never have to make that choice,” Daniel said. “I wouldn’t let you.”

  “It would not be your decision.” She pulled her robes close around her body. “But you will not leave, will you?”

  “I can’t, Isis. Not until I find Ares.”

  She shivered as if invisible hands were shaking her. “What do you want me to do?”

  Daniel released his breath. “If you think you’ll be in danger—”

  “From whom?” She turned around to face him. “The Opiri I have known for millennia? I am not afraid of them, and they would do me no harm.”

  “I don’t think that Anu likes you,” Daniel said, feeling his way. “Who is the second eldest of the Nine, Isis?”

  “I am.”

  “Could you be leader if you chose?”

  “Only if I were to challenge him, and win. And we no longer engage in such barbaric activities, even if I had any desire to take his place.”

  “It’s enough that he knows you have power, too, even if you don’t intend to use it.”

  “I have never defied him,” she said. “I have had no reason to.”

  “Except when you tried to keep me from fighting.”

  She made an inelegant noise. “I am no serf, Daniel.” Her cheeks flushed. “I am sorry. I will help you, if you will help me.”

  Daniel badly wanted to take her in his arms, but he knew better. There was only one way to make this work, to maintain some vestige of objectivity. For both of them. He should have realized that from the moment Isis had given herself to him in his visitor’s quarters the night he’d arrived.

  He’d wanted her too much then, as he did now.

  “What is my status in Tanis?” he asked.

  “You are still considered a visitor, with the option of becoming a citizen of Tanis if you are found acceptable. I can arrange for a provisional citizenship, but you must take a job and help support the city.”

  “That won’t be a problem. I’ll take whatever work is offered.”

  “I believe they need more workers on the construction crews in the expanding human sector,” she said. “I will look into it.” She hesitated. “There is one other duty you will be expected to perform.”

  “I know. I’ll do whatever is necessary.” He gazed at her for a long moment of silence, memorizing the soft lines of her face, her eyes, her lips, as if he were about to lose her forever. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “it would be better if we break off any personal relationship. If you’re to remain my sponsor, we can’t be seen as lovers.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Yes,” Isis said quickly. “I agree.” She tied her robe at the neck and waist, hiding herself from him. “It may be too late to maintain even the pretense of objectivity. But we must try.”

  She seemed, Daniel thought, almost relieved at his suggestion. It was no surprise to him that the things he’d told her had overwhelmed her. In spite of her reassurances, he knew he’d shaken her faith in him...and in herself.

  He almost decided then to tell her the most important secret he had kept from her: that he wasn’t human at all. But she might treat him differently if she knew, even without meaning to, and that secret might stand him in good stead if it caused potential enemies to underestimate him as a “mere human.”

  “We’ll start over from the beginning,” he said, though the words stuck in his throat. “You’re my guide, nothing more. And I don’t want you to do anything that will lead anyone to believe that you have a particular interest in Ares.”

  “How, then, are we to learn anything?” she asked, giving him a wide berth.

  “It’s still possible that the friendlier members of the Nine may have more to say about Ares’s visit here. Athena, Hermes, Bes—”

  “Anu will almost certainly learn of anything you say and do in Tanis. He will know you are looking for Ares.”

  “That won’t be a problem, unless he has something to hide. I’m still only a human.”

  “A human who defeated several Opiri in combat, and treated Anu like a peer instead of a lord of the city.”

  “If he finds me dangerous, that will tell us a great deal. But I may be getting ahead of myself in suspecting Anu at all.”

  She flashed a glance in his direction, and her shoulders relaxed. “You will get another chance to speak to my peers, and we can further investigate the incident in Bes’s ward. And the Games are in three weeks, followed immediately by the Festival. That will be an excellent chance to speak to many different people, for it is a time when humans and Opiri mingle freely, wearing masks to dissolve the barriers between them.”

  Daniel was careful not to say what he thought about “dissolving barriers.”

  “Where can I find a mask?” he asked.

  “That will be no problem. I will show you mine.” Isis moved to a pair of doors that opened to a closet hung with gowns of various colors and patterns. She withdrew a half mask molded in the shape of a stylized lioness with kohl painted around the eyeholes and an ancient Egyptian headdress falling back to cover the wearer’s head and shoulders.

  “Sekhmet, the goddess of war and healing. Wearing this, I can move among the people unrecognized.” She fingered the mask and hung it in the closet again. “Perhaps you can introduce me to those humans you spoke to when the Opiri gang attacked. They will be less suspicious if they do not recognize me.”

  “They’ll know you’re Opir.”

  “Not if I am careful.”

  Careful not to le
t her natural charisma escape her control, Daniel thought. But he couldn’t believe that Hugh or his friends would ever agree to speak frankly with a stranger, even if they attended the Festival.

  Still, he didn’t have the heart to discourage Isis now. He could try approaching Hugh beforehand, but he’d have to be certain not to attract any notice.

  “I will find an appropriate mask for you,” Isis said, “and have it delivered to your quarters the day before the Games.” She turned back to him. “I will also acquire a good seat for you at the Games. They take place by day, so I will be sitting among the Nine under a canopy in the top row of seats.”

  “In other words, the Nine won’t be mingling with the humans of their wards.”

  “It is best that we remain separate during the actual competitions.”

  “And the ordinary Opiri citizens?” he asked. “Will they be in the upper seats, as well?”

  “Relatively few come to observe,” she said, with an uneasy shrug of her shoulders.

  “They might be more enthusiastic if the Games featured actual fighting.”

  Isis began to walk around the room, graceful in spite of her agitation. “I have told you that such competitions are not part of the Games.”

  But he knew that she, like he, was thinking of his own fight in front of Anu’s court, and how eagerly the Opiri had watched.

  Daniel glanced at the door to Isis’s apartment and back to her nearly expressionless face. Less than an hour ago, they had shared blood and bodies with abandon and joy.

  Now it was as if that time were a dream, and Isis was a vision of perfection he could never reach again.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “You’ll let me know when you find me a job?”

  “Yes. And tomorrow I will finish our tour with the library, the arena and the formal gardens.”

  He matched her brisk, professional tone. “Thank you,” he said. “I look forward to it.”

  With those last, formal words between them, Daniel left her apartment. The space beneath his ribs felt hollow, but the more distance he put between himself and Isis the less he noticed it, until finally he felt nothing at all.

  * * *

  Daniel spent the next three weeks settling into the rhythm of life in Tanis. After his tours with Isis, he was given a job with the construction crews building additional human residences on the north side of the city. It was hard physical labor, which suited Daniel very well; it kept his mind off Isis and gave him a chance to speak with the other men and women on the crew.

  Isis was unable to arrange further sit-downs with Hermes or Athena, but during Daniel’s brief meetings with her she assured him that she was spending more time in the towers and keeping her ear to the ground. On the construction site, there was a constant low buzz about the Games and Festival; a large portion of the workers seemed to look forward to both, and there was even a spirit of relatively peaceful rivalry between humans who wore the various emblems of their wards and sponsors.

  There were a few workers who wore no emblems and maintained a stubborn silence about the coming events, but though Daniel tried to learn if they shared the tavern folks’ disdain, the quiet ones remained elusive and seemed to vanish whenever Daniel went looking for them.

  Still, he was left with the sense that there was a group of workers who met in secret, like members of the human Underground had done in Erebus. Once, he heard grumbling about the hardest labor in Tanis going to humans, while Opiri never sullied their white hands.

  As if to confirm the workers’ concerns, Opiri in clean and elegant clothing occasionally stopped by the site, observing from some elevated position as if they were enjoying the antics of animals in a zoo. They consulted with the architects and supervisor in a way that suggested that the Opiri were the ones in charge of the construction. Each time they came, the grumbling grew louder.

  During the second week, Daniel had observed another incident that suggested all wasn’t well in Tanis.

  He became aware of the commotion when the crew’s supervisor rushed to the construction area’s entrance, drawing a dozen men and women with him. Daniel climbed down from his perch on the scaffolding and caught sight of a familiar face moving among the humans: Hephaestus, visiting with the supervisor and the almost fawning human residents of his ward, all of whom wore the Opir lord’s emblem on their shirts. Daniel could feel the Bloodmaster’s influence from across the yard.

  He moved closer to hear what was being said, and saw several other well-dressed Opiri clustered around Hephaestus, acting as his entourage. They seemed grossly out of place on the site and avoided touching the humans.

  Some of the humans noticed. They jostled the Opiri with false smiles and bows of apology. Other humans, wearing competing emblems, stood apart as all work ceased.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. A few minutes later there was another commotion at the gates, and Hera—followed by her own Opir entourage—made a grand entrance, projecting her own power before her. Her human followers flocked around her as she steadfastly ignored Hephaestus, her regal bearing making her fellow “god” seem ordinary.

  Only when both members of the Nine drifted away did silence fall over the site. The supervisor urged everyone to return to work, but the atmosphere had changed. A group of Hephaestus’s men and women blocked the path of Hera’s followers as they tried to return to their work stations. The two factions stared at each in silence for a moment, and then the jeering and taunting began. Real hostility rang in the voices on both sides, claims of the superiority of one ward’s sponsor over the other.

  Even when the shouts turned to scuffling, the supervisor didn’t interfere. Daniel waded in and tried to separate the fighters, who flailed at him with fists and feet. He managed to break up two fights and force the opponents to return to their own sides.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, standing between the two groups. “Are you children fighting over a ball?”

  The leaders of each faction stared at Daniel sullenly. “What’s it to you?” one of them said. “You’re only a newcomer. You don’t support a team.”

  “You have no right to interfere with our customs!” shouted the leader of the other faction.

  “I want no part of these so-called customs,” Daniel retorted. “The Games are another week away. Are you incapable of waiting that long to squabble with each other?”

  Daniel was well accustomed to governing large groups of people, humans and Opiri, and gradually the antagonists began to back down. Belatedly, a pair of Lawkeepers arrived, but by then the two groups had begun to scatter and drift away, though not without a few curses thrown over their shoulders.

  That evening, Daniel met with Isis in her apartment. He pretended not to notice her warm, velvety scent or the way she moved about the room from one random point to another. She wore a heavier gown that should have concealed her figure but only emphasized what it was meant to hide.

  We’re here to do a job, he reminded himself. There’s no room for mistakes.

  “What I saw wasn’t ordinary rivalry,” he said, when both he and Isis had settled in their seats on either side of the living room table. “Their sponsors’ visits primed these people to go at each other to prove their superiority over their opponents. It was almost as if Hera and Hephaestus meant to cause a fight.”

  “That would be extremely foolish,” Isis said, not quite meeting his gaze. “I have never heard of such a thing happening before.”

  “Are you sure, Isis? Or do you prefer not to notice?”

  Daniel regretted his harshness immediately, but there was nothing he could do to assuage Isis’s obvious distress without getting much too close to her.

  “What you describe,” she said in a level voice, “is merely another aberration.”

  “Is it an aberration that hardly any Opiri seem to be involved in hard physical
labor, and that they seem to have better access to resources than the human citizens?”

  Isis started. “Who told you such things?”

  Daniel was silent for a long while, wondering how to explain the other facts he had withheld from her. “That time at the tavern, before the Opiri gang arrived in Bes’s ward,” he said, “I overheard humans talking about the Games. They felt the Games were only a distraction for humans who might otherwise notice that Tanis has not been wholly successful in enacting its ideals of complete equality.”

  Isis blinked. “You said nothing of this before.”

  “I swore that I wouldn’t expose them.”

  “To what?”

  “To anyone who might object to their complaints.”

  Isis squeezed her hands together. “What else did they say?”

  “After the fight with the Opir gang, they claimed that humans would never be anything but peons to the Opiri in Tanis, and that the justice system was rigged against them. They were sure I’d be considered the guilty party. You were afraid of the same thing, Isis.”

  “Was there anything else you neglected to tell me?” she asked coldly.

  “Only that the humans clearly feel there’s something wrong in Tanis, and that the Opiri are the favored class under the Nine and the Council.”

  “But these humans have not seen how our Opiri live!”

  “Whose fault is that, Isis?” He sighed. “I saw more than a few Opiri in the tower, dressed like lords. And acting like them.”

  “They were Anu’s favored—”

  “Courtiers, yes.”

  “You cannot make a judgment of all Opiri citizens based upon what you saw in Anu’s quarters.”

  “No,” he said, “but the only Opiri I’ve seen working at all are a few in your ward and outside in the fields at night.”

  “Just because their jobs are not visible to you does not mean that they do not exist.”