The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(22)

Jarek stepped into her line of sight, severing her view of the slave. He’d taken off his tunic. His back glistened with sweat and his muscles rippled as he rounded on his property.

“Well, skral?” His words slurred together. “Was it worth it?”

Asha retreated, pressing her back against the wall, heart pounding in her chest.

She might be the Iskari. She might hunt dragons and bring back their heads, but Jarek held her father’s army in his fist. He had the loyalty of every soldat in the city. And for reasons she’d never been able to figure out, he’d never been afraid of her.

She could turn and leave. She didn’t have to do this. It was the slave’s fault, after all. He shouldn’t have touched her.

“Please, Iskari.” The words broke up her thoughts like an axe. Asha opened her eyes to find the elderly slave wringing her wrinkled, liver-spotted hands. Her hair was gray and bound in a thick braid. Her anguished, heart-shaped face beseeched Asha. “Please help him.”

A crash resounded, followed by a low grunt. Asha dared another look around the corner. One of Jarek’s lowlying sofas lay broken, its leg snapped off beside the purple daturas, whose petals opened in the moonlight. Charm him, Dax suggested. Entice him. But Asha didn’t know how to do those things. She was a hunter. She knew all about killing things and nothing about seduction.

Asha thought of the way the slave touched her in the sickroom. The way he caught her in her father’s courtyard, holding her carefully against him. As if he wasn’t afraid.

It shamed her. If he wasn’t afraid—of Asha, of the law, of his own master whipping him up to Death’s gate—how could she be afraid? She was the Iskari.

Jarek spat. His back was still to her. He reined in the shaxa, getting ready for another round of lashes. The longer Asha waited, the more of the slave’s life trickled away.

The shaxa lashed the air, ripping at flesh. The heartwrenching sound echoed around the courtyard and through Asha. She squeezed her eyes shut. With her left arm strapped uselessly to her torso, she drew one of her slayers with her burned but padded hand. It shook with the pain. She gritted her teeth and held on.

The next time Jarek reared the shaxa back, Asha stepped into the courtyard, catching the whip across her blade. When Jarek went to lash again, the shaxa snagged. Asha held on tight, despite the pain.

Jarek stumbled. He spun, squinting through his drunken haze. His face contorted with anger and shone with sweat.

“Who’s there?”

The fountain pool was filling with blood. The sound of the gently cascading water seemed out of place.

“That’s enough,” she said with more courage than she felt. “I’m cutting him down.”

Jarek’s face darkened. “I’m well within my rights.” He tugged on the shaxa, willing it back to him. But it didn’t budge.

“You’re killing him.”

At the tremble in her voice, a tremble Asha couldn’t control, Jarek’s features settled into an icy calm. “Since when do you take an interest in the health of my slaves, Asha?” He looked from her to the skral and back, his mouth twisting. “You think I forget that it runs in your family?”

It took three slow heartbeats for her to realize what he meant.

Rayan. Her uncle. The draksor who fell in love with a skral.

“Should I expect this when we’re married?” He stumbled a little, then steadied himself against the trunk of the lemon tree. “My wife carrying on with my slaves, in my own home?”

She tried to sound calm. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

He looked to the half-slain slave. “It’s disgusting.” He dropped the shaxa, drew a double-edged dagger, and started toward the fountain. “I won’t tolerate it.”

Panic sparked inside her. Asha threw down the slayer wound with the shaxa and drew her other one, making her burned hand sting anew. She clung to it and moved for the fountain. Sobriety and swiftness got her there first.

Asha spun to face Jarek and raised her slayer, keeping herself between him and his slave.

Jarek may have been drunk, but he was much bigger and stronger than she was. And she had only one barely usable arm.

So when he lunged with no weapon but his hands, Asha did the only thing she could think of. As he smashed into her, she rammed the butt of her slayer as hard as she could into his temple.

Asha hit the floor with such force, the breath went out of her. Jarek, knocked out from her blow, pinned her to the ground. He was all muscle and weight. Like a boulder pressing down on her.

Asha lay beneath him, one side of her face pressed to the cold tiles, the other against the hot, sweaty skin of his chest. When the room came back into focus, she tried to breathe but couldn’t.

He’s suffocating me. . . .

She kicked and bucked, trying to shove him off. Her slayer rested only a few steps away, yet entirely out of her reach.

Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred. Gasping for air and getting none, Asha struggled harder, pushing with her legs and hips in one last burst of strength. Before the room darkened around her, hands reached down. Hands spotted and knotted with age. They tried pulling her out, and when that didn’t work, they rolled Jarek off Asha with a startling strength. Air rushed into Asha’s lungs. She gasped, gulping it in like water, letting it fill her up.

The commandant lay on the floor in a bedraggled heap. Blood matted the hair around his temple, but his heart still beat. She could see the pulse of it at the base of his throat. She had no idea how bad the injury was or how long he would be out, so she stood, grabbed her slayers, and sheathed them. Snatching up Jarek’s dagger from the floor, she went quickly to where the slave still slumped in the pool.