The Barbarians: Stolen Bride Read online

  Charly felt a jolt run through her at the intelligence. She struggled with her own fear of alien disease for a few moments. “There were two others?”

  Neal jumped in with his report before Hallie could continue since he doubted she knew much about the rest of it. “It sounds like the first one to come down with it was a kitchen maid. I’m not really up on their calendar—you know they organize by weeks, not months—but I think that was maybe a month ago. Maybe a month and a half. The king’s closest advisor came down with it next and within just a few days. He died before she did and that’s really the source of the panic, I think. The fact that two people had it and died so quickly. But that was weeks ago, from what I understand and everyone had just begun to relax and dismiss it when the king came down with it.”

  Charly frowned, thinking, but it didn’t sound like any disease progression she could think of. Living as tightly as they did with community dining and sleeping, for the most part, there should have been more people who came down with it if it was in fact a disease. “This doesn’t sound right to me. I know this would be something unfamiliar to us, too, but it just doesn’t seem to follow the infection progression. If it started with somebody that worked in the kitchen, one would think it would be all over the castle in this length of time—unless either the king or his advisor or both were screwing the kitchen maid?”

  “Because it’s more likely its poison,” Hallie said.

  Charly sucked in a gasp. “Ginko Nldick is here?”

  Hallie’s partner, Lee, responded that time. “Yeah. He replaced the ‘advisor’ that died,” he said dryly.

  “Which is why I couldn’t convince them to allow us to see what we could do for the king,” Hallie added.

  Annoyance flickered through Charly. The announcement that they’d found their quarry should have been the first thing out of their mouths. “Positive identification?”

  “Yeah,” Lee responded. “Via genetic heat signature. He’s in disguise—had something done to alter his appearance and his voice. But it’s definitely him. And up to his old tricks—which helped me pinpoint him.

  “The governor was just the first assassination we caught him at. Fortunately for us, he isn’t as good at covering his tracks as he likes to think.

  “Unfortunately, that isn’t because he’s sloppy and left evidence. It’s because he had the ‘uncanny bad luck’ of being in the proximity of nearly a half dozen victims who appeared to die of natural causes or from an accident and then were later determined to have been murdered.”

  That was news to Charly and it thoroughly pissed her off. There seemed little point in venting over being kept in the dark, though. “Well, as long as we’re sharing information …. Is there anything else that’s really, really important that wasn’t included in our report?” she asked tightly.

  Lee looked uncomfortable, but Hallie sent Charly a gloating smile that made her long to punch the bitch in the mouth.

  Neal stepped in to distract and de-escalate. “Rumors are circulating that either of the young princes could be behind the king’s sudden illness. One of them with inherit the throne so they both have a lot to gain if he dies.” He frowned. “But I suppose it could be another player entirely, someone who believes they can seize the throne from the ruling family.

  “There’s a stipulation that, to inherit, the prince would have to be wed and neither of them are.”

  Hallie frowned, clearly struggling to access her knowledge of Bacsheer. “The eldest son wouldn’t inherit automatically?”

  “No. Nothing automatic about it. The king determines his heir. And he was much fonder of his second wife, and their son, than the first. His stipulation that it would be whichever son had wed was his way of making the decision fair—even though most people appear certain that he favors his younger son,” Neal said. He shrugged. “But then again that might not be the case at all. It could be because the younger son is more popular with the people and they want to believe he’ll inherit the throne.”

  Charly dismissed it. “Hopefully, that won’t matter to us. We need to figure out some way to grab Nldick and get out of here before the shit hits the fan.”

  Hallie stared at her. “I’d heard you were a loose cannon, but that takes the cake! Grab him and run? You can’t be serious!”

  Charly tamped her anger with an effort. “Sooo…. You think you can talk the Oloote into handing over a man they’ve appointed as their father’s advisor? Who are you going to talk to about it? The king? We can’t get near him and, if he’s dying, the chances are he’s too weak to deal with it.”

  “The princes?” Hallie pointed out, her voice tight with her own anger.

  “You mean possibly one of the conspirators in the assassination? And, I might add, the advisors actually have more power at this point since the king is still alive. So maybe you think we could convince the other advisors to hand him over?”

  She shook her head. “Any suggestions? Anybody?”

  “I’m in charge!” Hallie said tightly. “I don’t need to ask for suggestions.”

  “So you are planning on meeting with the other advisors? I know you can’t be stupid enough to approach either one of the princes when they could be prime suspects!”

  Hallie stared at her stone faced for several moments and then just turned and stomped out with Lee on her heels.

  “You’d better go, too,” Charly said tiredly. “They separated us for a reason other than our comfort. Things might get ugly if we’re found together.”

  Neal looked like he wanted to argue, but after a long moment, he shrugged and let himself out.

  Absently rubbing at the headache she could feel forming, Charly settled on a stuffed chair to think, to see if she could figure out some way around their dilemma.

  It really sucked to be stuck in the middle of a barbarian world without access to her computer or any way to communicate with headquarters. Because, regardless of what that ego maniac thought about the situation, this was not going to be easy to solve and it was her experience that anything this fucked up should be passed up the chain of command so somebody else could get axed when it went sideways.

  Because it would.

  She could feel it in her bones.

  “And I’d just like to know who the fuck called me a loose cannon!”

  Chapter Three

  Galen didn’t have as long to wait as he’d feared he might.

  He’d thought the stupid bastard would be more cautious and that might make it impossible to catch him, but he was clearly too arrogant or in too much of a hurry to be cautious.

  The sky gods—whom he had learned had come to search for an assassin—had scarcely been escorted away when he dismissed the physicians attending the king. As soon as they had departed, he had locked the door and crossed the room to unearth a small box of glass vials filled with various potions. From the box, he had taken a strange looking dagger. It looked like a needle attached to a narrow vial.

  He had plunged that into one of the vials of potion and withdrawn a colored liquid.

  Galen tensed, but he had to be certain before he acted.

  He waited until the bastard had crossed the room and lifted his father’s arm.

  He managed to cross from his place of concealment by the window in time to intercept—barely—but, thankfully, the assassin was not able to pierce the skin before he grabbed his wrist and stopped him.

  The man he’d come to know as Blazig sent him a terrified look that told its own tale. “What are you doing?”

  “I was about to ask you that question.”

  Blazig blinked at him. “I was about to give your father a treatment for the malady that has brought him down.”

  “A treatment? You are also a physician?”

  Blazig licked his lips uneasily. “Nay. But I have potions that are for various illnesses that I got from the sky gods. I am convinced this will make him better.”

  “Are you?” Galen asked coldly, squeezing the wrist he held until Blazig rele
ased his hold.

  “Yes! Yes! It will make him better!”

  Before he could say anything else, Galen plunged the dagger into Blazig’s neck and pushed the plunger.

  Blazig gasped in horror as he felt the potion injected into his neck.

  Then he opened his mouth in a silent scream and … bucked, involuntarily.

  Repulsed, Galen let him go, watched dispassionately as he sank to the floor and began jerking all over. Foam flecked his lips and began to ooze from his mouth in a stream.

  Struggling with a mixture of rage and revulsion, Galen watched until he stopped jerking.

  “Bastard! Assassin! That would have made him better?”

  “My son! What have you done?” the king asked weakly.

  Galen whipped a look at his father. “The bastard meant to kill you!” he said angrily.

  The king stared at him for a long moment. “He has already slain me,” he murmured. “That was not the first injection. It was meant to be the last.”

  “By the gods! You allowed it?” Galen demanded.

  “I was ill. I knew there was nothing any of my physicians could do to help me.” He shook his head. “I trusted when I should not have.”

  He seemed to lapse into unconsciousness, but he spoke again when Galen turned to go. “You must dispose of the body. They will accuse you of conspiring with him. You can use the secret passage to remove him without being seen.”

  Galen felt the blood leave his face. “Father! You do not believe that?”

  The king struggled to grasp his younger son’s hand. “I do not. But your brother may use it against you.” He paused a few moments to catch his breath. “I was wrong to leave the succession as I did. It will tear the realm apart. Damek will never accept half the kingdom. You must seize the throne and hold fast. You must do whatever it takes to hold the kingdom together. Promise me!”

  “You are strong. You will get better, Father ….”

  “I am strong. I took too long to die and that forced his hand. But I will die,” the king gasped angrily. “I am dying. And I do not have the strength to make Damek back down now that I have allowed sentiment to overwhelm good sense. You are the better man and the most fit to rule. You will have to fight him for the throne. I expect it of you. It is your destiny and your duty.”

  * * * *

  Dinner might actually have been good under other circumstances. The dishes were simple but rich and flavorful and only a little on the exotic side. As guests of honor, apparently, they were seated at the high table with the nobles—which included the two young princes.

  So now she knew the one who’d stared at her so rudely was the younger of the pair.

  Actually, by far the better looking of the two, also.

  Not that that mattered.

  She hadn’t really thought he was interested in her to start with, she told herself, so it was no great shock to discover he was actually one of the heirs to the throne. She’d thought all along it was merely curiosity.

  He was careful not to look at her, she noticed, after she, and her entire group, was formally introduced to the princes.

  She was referred to as the Sky Goddess Charlotte.

  To save her life, she couldn’t keep from turning red every time she was addressed like that.

  She wasn’t singled out by any means and shouldn’t have felt so ridiculous about it. Any time any of them was addressed it was as God or Goddess. But there was no getting around the fact that it made her really uncomfortable and she was fair so embarrassment translated to furious, red blushes.

  She knew that the Oloote had decided they were sky gods since they’d first made contact with the people of Bacsheer. It was the main reason they’d restricted interaction with the people of Bacsheer—that and the possibility of ‘tainting’ their natural evolution by accidently introducing technology they weren’t ready for.

  Reasoning did little to make her feel more comfortable, though, because she strongly suspected that the more intelligent, better educated among the Oloote, didn’t believe any such thing. They were merely propagating the concept for motives of their own, possibly to placate the lower classes and soothe their fears, or maybe to keep them in line, to increase their own importance by association with deities.

  Or they did it to stroke ‘alien’ egos.

  It was a tough pill to swallow to consider that the Oloote were intelligent enough to try to manipulate them, but … they were primitive, not stupid. They weren’t necessarily less intelligent than humans, just less informed and knowledgeable.

  Apparently, entertainment had been planned for their guests, the ‘sky gods’—a dance to follow the dinner—which she had no clue of until the musicians formed up and began to tune their instruments.

  Charly wasn’t happy about it because she’d spent most of her meal trying to puzzle through their problem and keep up with the conversation going on around her and all she really wanted was peace and quiet to formulate a workable plan.

  Unfortunately, she discovered she’d imbibed a lit-tle too freely of the fermented berry brew that had been served with the meal, though it didn’t hit her immediately.

  It made itself felt at the worst possible time.

  Neal had warned her. And she thought she’d been very careful, but apparently she’d been just a tad too distracted to be as careful as she needed to be.

  * * * *

  Galen was in danger and he knew it. His father was dying and he was surrounded by men whose first loyalty was to the king and whose second was to his brother, Damek. He had men loyal to him, as well, but, under the circumstances, he could not count on that covering his ass.

  He had followed the sky gods because he had heard enough of their conversation to know that they were looking for an assassin—and there was only one stranger among them. He had no idea why his father had accepted the creature, but he had not trusted the bastard from the start. And now he knew his instincts had been right, it was too late to change anything—at least as far as he could see at the moment.

  Then again, he was in no state after what had transpired in his father’s room to think clearly. He was well aware, though, that his distraction would be noticed and create speculation he could not afford.

  It was impulse that carried him to the vicinity of the sky goddess, Charlotte—the need for a diversion, both for himself and for those who may have noticed his distraction. Showing interest in the woman would be explanation enough for most of those present.

  Unfortunately, that was no pretense. He was interested in the woman, had felt an instant, powerful attraction that was distracting in and of itself.

  It got worse.

  Apparently, she didn’t handle her drink well—or it had a more profound effect on her system because she was not Oloote. Either way, it loosened her tongue in a way he had not expected and had a good bit of difficulty dealing with since he had, per force, to continue his charade of having no understanding of the tongue of the sky gods.

  Chapter Four

  Prince Galen foiled Charly’s half formed plot to slip out while everyone else was occupied by rising from his seat as soon as the musicians began to tune their instruments and offering his hand for the first dance. “Goddess Charlotte, will you do me the honor of a dance?”

  ‘Goddess’ Charlotte stared at his hand in dismay and then looked up at his face and pasted a smile on her lips, struggling to think if there was any way she could turn him down without pissing him off.

  Not that she’d understood the request, per se, but the demand of the hand and the music in concert were pretty good prompts even if the language eluded her.

  And she was a little tipsy from the brew.

  And stoned on attraction pheromones.

  She thought she might have managed well enough if she’d had a different partner, one she wasn’t already feeling the effects of from across the room. But such was not the case. Prince Galen across the room upset her equilibrium. Prince Galen up close and touchy sent her senses into o
verdrive and was way more debilitating than a few swigs of their potent punch.

  She tried to erect barriers, but he was way too good at dismantling them. One smoldering look from those electric purple eyes and she felt like she was having a meltdown.

  Unfortunately, no acceptable excuse for declining came to her. “You may regret it when I stomp all over your feet with my boots,” she murmured, rising. “I’m not the least familiar with any of your dances.”

  His smile had stiffened when the first part of her speech was translated by Neal, but he recovered quickly when Neal pointed out that she wasn’t familiar with their dances. “It will be my pleasure, then, to teach.”

  Charlotte thought it doubtful he was going to find it the least bit pleasurable and she felt pretty graceless in her military boots and armor, but she saw no alternative to accepting and doing her best not to make a complete fool out of herself.

  She knew that bitch, Hal, was probably strangling on the urge to laugh.

  Well, she hoped she choked, damn her!

  She’d faced battles that didn’t unnerve her as much as standing in the middle of the floor with a prince of Bacsheer!

  She damned near tripped with her first step, but, fortunately, the prince was big and strong and didn’t want to look like a fool. He gripped her more tightly and guided her through a series of simple dance steps.

  And left it at that.

  As demoralized as Charly was by the situation, she managed to retain that much, and, as she relaxed, she was able to refrain from stepping all over him or tripping over her own feet.

  If only she’d been able to master control of her tongue!

  “Clever girl!” the prince said encouragingly.

  Unfortunately, she had no idea what he’d said. The tone and the smile that went with it seemed to imply that he was satisfied with her performance, though, and that plus the realization that her ordeal was almost over was enough to encourage her to relax and move more fluidly.

  She relaxed way more than she should have, unfortunately. The moment she discovered she didn’t have to focus on where she was putting her feet, the nervous energy transferred to her tongue.