Diplomacy of Wolves: Book 1 of the Secret Texts Read online

  What it came down to was that he was severely limited in what he could do without taking a chance at giving away the one secret that he had to keep in spite of everything. Back home in the islands, he could have moved the earth searching for the girl without fear of reprisals. But in Halles, in an embassy that hired most of its household staff from among the locals, and that had surely acquired at least one spy, and probably several, he didn’t dare. It wasn’t even that he didn’t want to end up with his drawn-and-quartered body hung on display in the city square, though of course he didn’t. If his secret got out, though, he would risk exposing the Falcons, and he would jeopardize the Texts, and he would fail his obligations as a Warden.

  If only he’d taken the time earlier to divine the location of a safe room, or, if none existed, to create one.

  While he hauled Tippa toward the physick’s quarters, he raged inside at how helpless he was. He would do everything he could—and everything he could wouldn’t be enough to do the girl a single bit of good if she was in real trouble. From the way his skin crawled, and from the inescapable pounding of foreign Wolf magic in the air, he could only fear the worst.

  Chapter 5

  Kait recognized the street on which she walked. Two blocks, maybe three, and she would be at the embassy. Almost home, almost safe, almost where she could tell the Family about the Dokteeraks and the Sabirs. Perhaps within her room she would be able to leave behind the pounding threat of evil that hammered at her skull. Perhaps she’d be able to shake the feeling that she was being followed, that downwind of her something moved to intersect her. She’d stopped several times, tasting the air, and each time it brought her only the overripe scents of sewage and the unwashed bodies of drunks and whores still ahead of her; each time the wind, so often her friend, blew from the direction of home, and not the direction of whoever . . . or whatever . . . she sensed following her. She never heard anything suspicious. She never saw anything out of the ordinary.

  But the feeling remained. Eyes watched her through the fog. Eyes saw her that were keener than her own.

  Someone ran toward her. Focused on her—she knew this in her gut. Only in her gut. The rest of her senses were blind. But her gut told her enough. The running wasn’t random, the feel of the runner’s intent was, to her, the feel of a bolt launched from a crossbow, aimed at her heart.

  Danger. Betrayal. Death.

  She tucked the front hem of her dress into the bodice ties, where it brushed against the hilt of her hidden dagger, and ran down the nearest side street . . . silent, hard, as fast as any man, all of her senses trained behind her to the one who pursued. Her only goal became the eluding of capture; her attention narrowed to the world of her pumping legs and arms, the placement of her feet in the precarious uneven streets, the evasion of obstacles that could slow her flight. Fear sent her blood singing through her veins again; Shift pursued her as swiftly as the runner who followed her every twist and turn, and who somehow, impossibly, kept up with her. Was he a hired assassin? A Galweigh-hater who had recognized her leaving the party, who was seizing an opportunity?

  She ran left, right, left, choosing streets at random in the alien city. She toppled a drunk into the gutter in her haste; he cried out and fell, clinging for the merest instant to her skirt before she broke away. He cost her a step—perhaps a step and a half—in a race she was already losing. Her fear rose higher. She ran harder, fought Shift and the betrayal of her body that would mean, in such public places, her death. The fog that had been an ally became an obstacle, making each footstep precarious. She wanted to hide, to disguise herself as a part of Halles and not a thing apart from it; in the back of her mind, something whispered people and, frightened and pushed to the limits of her human body’s capacity, thinking only of what was behind her and not of what might lie ahead, she made a mistake.

  She smelled people above the fading scent of perfume on her upper lip. Many of them. Men and women, the back of her mind said, that way. She followed the scent to her right, down a twisting street that narrowed instead of widening.

  She prayed that the walls of the buildings on either side of her would move away from each other again. That she would smell the movement of air that indicated an opening at the other end of this passage. She didn’t. The air lay dead, the passage narrowed still further, until, if she had stretched her arms out straight to either side of her, she could have touched the walls. She heard the people ahead of her now. Laughing. Voices kept low, an edge to them, a feeling of caution. Man voices, but she smelled woman-scent, too. Touches of sex-musk on the air, the iron-metal tang of fresh blood. She lost the moon’s light in the shadows of buildings, and only her Karnee eyes let her see well enough to keep running. Her pursuer never slowed. She heard him turn in behind her. How did he pursue her so closely? How did he follow her so well? She had no time to think of how.

  Suddenly the walls to either side of her fell away, and she burst into the midst of the people she’d sought out. She was in a cul-de-sac; she crashed into two men; they caught her arms as they staggered to keep their balance; she rasped, “Hide me.”

  Behind her the sound of running stopped.

  She saw then what she had run into. A woman crouched on knees and elbows on the paving stones, her wrists bound, a rag stuffed in her mouth, a man at her head with a knife at her throat, two others behind her. One kneeling; one standing. Her tattered, slashed bodice exposed her breasts, her skirt bunched around her waist. She bled freely from a cut down the cheek. A dead man dressed in the height of Halles fashion sprawled against the alley wall to the far side of her, his throat a raw patch of darkness against the bloodless whiteness of his skin. One man who wasn’t taking turns raping the woman robbed the corpse. Kait heard the sounds of the contents of a purse being emptied onto stones; the unmistakable dull clink of gold, the rattle of jewelry. Six of them in all. Six murderers, thieves, rapists . . . and the woman. Another man moved out of the shadows and stepped in front of her, grinning. A young man, handsome, well-dressed, well-born. Round face, pale hair, pale eyes—he had the look of a Dokteerak heir, and she thought, So this Family entertains itself at the expense of its subjects, too.

  The hands that held her arms tightened. “Look what the gods sent to us,” the man to her left said softly, and the one to her right laughed.

  Her blood fizzed, her bones tingled, she tasted metal in her mouth and heard the singing of her heart in her ears. Fear died, strangled by Karnee rage. Her voice grew husky as vocal cords slipped toward another configuration; her other self strained for release. With the last of her control, she said, “If you want to live, let her go and let me go. You don’t know what I am.”

  Giggles from the men who held her. Raw braying from the men who were taking their turns at the woman.

  The Dokteerak shook his head. “Oh, help, she’s going to hurt us—”

  “—a pretty rich girl who ran down the wrong alley—”

  “—Give us your money and maybe we’ll let you go—”

  “—maybe we’ll let you live.”

  “Not me. I’ll bugger ’er when she’s dead.”

  Raw, hating laughter. More giggles.

  The highborn bastard slashed her silk bodice open, ripped downward to her waist—for just an instant the blade nicked skin, and she smelled her own blood. He moved behind her, wrapped a hand in the coils of her hair, yanking her head downward and throwing her to her knees. Grabbed her dagger, pulled her dress off, slashed at the ties of her underclothes—lace breast binder, silk tie-string panties. Cut her again removing them . . . little cuts, the pain like bee stings, like a goad to the madness that enveloped her. Red hazed her eyes.

  The other Kait sang in exultation at the lightning bolt of pure fury that tore into brain and gut. She twisted like a python in the hands of her captors, tasting in her mind the gush of blood, feeling the delicious crunch of bone and cartilage between teeth before she even had a man in reach. The hunt. The hunt. The kill. And that other Kait grinned, and a growl s
tarted low in her throat. Rage drove through all the barriers between Kait-the-woman and Kait-the-wild-thing. The growl in her throat grew louder. Naked in the embrace of the night, rational Kait lost herself to the exultant, joyous, buoyant, shivering other who wanted only to fight, to destroy, to tear and taste and slaughter in the heady, scent-rich darkness. She broke free, and spun around, and grabbed the nearest man with a hand that Shifted and re-formed before her eyes—a hand already covered by the silky, glossy, close black coat of Karnee, her fingers grown shorter and thicker, her tendons standing out, retractable claws stretched forward.

  She laughed, and in that laughter nothing human remained. She growled, “You’re mine,” and leaped on top of him, two hands and two feet Shifted completely into four widespread paws in midair, spine stretching and flexing to give her a heavy, flexible tail. Her muscles bunched and burned and flowed under her skin, and the claw-tipped paws ripped through the rough cloth of the would-be rapist’s shirt and she dug through the flesh of his chest as if it were butter, and darted her face down close to his, smelling on him the delicious stink of fear, hearing in his throat the start of a scream. Her grin grew wider as her muzzle stretched forward. Her teeth were daggers in her mouth. She bit down, crushing his scream before it was born, tasting the iron and salt of his gushing jugular against the middle of her tongue and feeling the steady spurts of his pulse against the roof of her mouth for only two bird-fast beats of his heart before she launched herself backward and upward in a twisting arc that brought her nose-to-face with the shocked young lordling.

  She tore out his throat in passing, already on the way to her next meat before her paws hit the ground. She charged the third man who had held her. Tore into him. Brought him down.

  She’d had the benefit of first surprise, and had taken the three, but the other four had regained feet and weapons, and now the odds were against her.

  All four men moved through the fog to circle her, to surround her. Their swords pointed in, and she knew she was in trouble. Outnumbered, overmatched. In the fight between a beast and a man without a weapon, or with only a dagger, the odds lay in favor of the beast. Against four men with long blades, with murder in their eyes—well, there, the odds went to the men. And even as she thought it, one darted in at her and slashed with his sword, and she took a deep cut through her right shoulder and along her ribs.

  She snarled and leaped in low, beneath the upswung blade, and lashed out at him with one paw. She connected across her attacker’s knee and shin, but not deep enough, for though he shouted, he stayed standing. And she took another cut, hard into her left flank, because she had left her flanks unguarded and one of the men behind her had seized the advantage.

  She twisted, snarled, and snapped but came up with only empty air as the second attacker stepped back and brought his sword to a defensive posture. He grinned; she could see his teeth flashing in the darkness. He knew they had her. She knew it, too. And she was afraid. She didn’t want to die.

  One of the blades wavered and she charged the man who held it, broke through his guard and dug into the softness of his belly with her claws, and he went down. But not without cost to her. She exposed her back to the other three, and they charged in at her, and the nightmare bite of sharp metal scored the back of her neck and her other flank, and sought her vitals, though she twisted away before the blade found its target.

  I’m going to die.

  Here. Now.

  And then the miracle happened. Something dark and big and terrible burst from the alley. The man who had his back to it screamed once, then went down and didn’t rise. A looming shadow, fast and solid, ripped his throat when he fell, then slashed the next closest man. Kait didn’t have time to watch the outcome of that second battle; she turned to face her only remaining attacker. One man, but that one remained armed, unhurt, wary. She feinted right, then left, faked a leap high in the air and when her enemy brought his weapon up, anticipating a gutting stroke, she lunged in low again. He wasn’t as fast as she was, and she bit through his thigh, and leaped away before his blade could come down across her spine. He took her across the back of the skull, though, and had the blow carried more force, he might have taken her right there. She was lucky that he struck while off balance. As it was, she staggered and a million white lights sparkled behind her eyes and pain half blinded her.

  Breathing hard, hurting and bleeding, she braced herself for the man’s attack. But the stranger—

  . . . he’s Karnee, he’s the one I smelled in Dokteerak House, he’s the one who was following me . . .

  —the stranger charged the last of the criminals from behind, biting into the back of one leg. The man screamed and fell. It was over very quickly then.

  Kait felt the heat of her Karnee metabolism burning her wounds closed. The shallow ones wouldn’t even leave scars by morning; the deep ones probably would, but even those would be gone in a day or two. The blessing of her curse, such as it was. She was a monster, but a monster who was damned hard to kill.

  “We should leave,” the strange Karnee said. “Guards will have heard the screams.” His voice shivered through her bones straight to her gut. Hypnotic. Growling, sensuous, full of passion and mystery—she turned away. He could not do to her what he was doing; he wasn’t doing anything but standing there, bleeding, covered in blood, warning her of danger, and yet his voice was as powerful as a drug to her, as overwhelming as caberra incense or as his scent had been earlier in the night, in Dokteerak House. He was impossible, and so she turned away, and looked at the woman who huddled against the far wall of the cul-de-sac.

  Terrified, clutching the tattered remains of her gown over her breasts, she stared at Kait and the stranger as if this night of hells had just spawned the greatest hell of all. And that was the worst of it. Kait had saved the woman’s life, but because she was Karnee, she could expect only fear and hatred—perhaps even betrayal. Kait wanted to offer comfort, to help the woman to a place of safety, but she dared not.

  So she glared down into the huddled woman’s eyes and curled her lips back in a snarl that exposed every knife-edged fang. She growled, “I know you. I know where you live, who you pray with, which streets you walk on. I’ve saved your life tonight, but I know you don’t appreciate that boon from someone like me. So I’ll warn you only this once—if you dare speak a word to anyone of what you saw here tonight, I’ll find you in the darkness and you’ll never greet another dawn.”

  The woman had pulled the rag from her mouth with still-bound hands. She shivered, nodded, croaked, “What shall I tell them, then?”

  “That you saw nothing. That you struggled to escape, that those bastards hit you on the head, and that when you woke, you found them the way they are now. A word other than that will be your death—my promise.”

  “I saw nothing,” the woman whispered. Tears gleamed on her face. “I saw nothing . . . saw nothing . . . they hit me . . . I fell . . .” She whispered to herself, not to Kait.

  Kait had other things to do. She dug among the corpses and found the remains of her dress and her underclothes. She located the slippers she’d worn, and the dagger she’d carried. Any of those things would betray her far more immediately than the woman could—the silks were woven by Galweigh weavers in the Galweigh pattern, the lace was Galweigh Rose-and-Thorn, the shoe buttons bore the Galweigh ring in gold, the dagger had both rubies and onyx in the hilt and the Galweigh crest on the pommel, and her name worked into the vines that decorated the crosspiece. Everything she owned would be mute betrayal, would bring soldiers and priests and blood-hungry mobs to her and to everyone she loved.

  She bundled her belongings together as tightly as paws and claws were able, lifted the bundle in her mouth, and loped toward the alley. Obstacles remained—people in the streets, finding the embassy, getting past her own Family’s people and inside. She had to clear her mind, to put everything that had just happened out of her thoughts, or she would not survive.

  But the stranger moved beside her, s
ilent and beautiful and bewitching. He picked up his own bundle halfway down the alley and loped at her side, until they reached a place where the moonlight lay across him like a kiss. Then he moved in front of her, turned, and stopped. “I’ve spent my life waiting to find you,” he said.

  He was huge, easily twice her weight, massively boned, sculpted by the hands of an artist who had loved him. His eyes, pale blue ringed around the outside of the irises with black, would be recognizable even after Shift—neither their exotic color nor their striking pattern would change. His glossy coat, copper striped with black, emphasized powerful muscles that bunched across his broad chest and steeply sloped shoulders and rippled in his haunches. His powerful jaws spread in a grin; his strong, arching neck tapered upward to a head as broad-skulled and sleek as any wolf’s or jaguar’s. Small gold hoops pierced both of his ears and the silver of a shield-shaped medallion gleamed from the point where his neck curved into his chest, suspended by a heavy silver chain. She could make out the crest on the medallion clearly: twin trees with curved branches intertwined, delicate leaves interspersed with the full curves of ripe fruit. The Sabir Family crest—a lovely design unless one considered that the Sabirs claimed one tree bore good fruit for the Sabirs and their friends, and the other bore poisoned fruit for their enemies.

  And Kait was Galweigh, and thus was an enemy with five hundred years of Family hatred behind her. She was what she was because of the curse some Sabir wizard had put on her Galweigh ancestor; he was what he was because that curse, after it poisoned the Galweigh bloodlines, had rebounded on the man who cast it. Five hundred years of bad blood, and he said he’d been waiting his whole life to find her.

  The worst of it was, the attraction she felt for him was so overwhelming and so total that she found herself wanting to believe him, and wanting to tell him what she was thinking—that she wanted him. Which of course was ridiculous; she couldn’t desire him in any real way. She didn’t know him, and if she did, she would hate him because he was Sabir. Never mind that he’d saved her life. He didn’t know who she was, or he would have been, at that moment, at her throat.