The Damsel and the Daggerman: A BLUD Novella Read online

  “Why do you wear no gloves?” he asked. “Do you wish to be eaten?”

  “I’ve been to the far corners of the globe, and it was never the sight of my bare flesh that earned me a brush with the stewpot. It was usually ignorance.”

  “Or perhaps you simply overestimate a creature’s self-control.”

  He stroked the crease down the palm of her trapped hand, and she couldn’t stop herself from shivering.

  “But what of the card?” Her right arm seemed oddly heavy and useless, the card suddenly flimsy in her grasp.

  His fingers grazed her shoulder, indicating worn, curved prongs of wood a scant inch above her jacket. “These notches will keep you in place. Hold the card as close as you wish.”

  As Marco’s hands caught the ankles of her boots, the breath rushed out of her with a whoosh, and she already felt as if she were spinning. What was she supposed to do with the card again? Did she want him to hit it—or did she want him to miss? The terms of the deal had been . . . but no. It was forgotten. No heat passed from his gloves to the thick leather of her boots, sewn thick to ward off the biting creatures of the jungle, but still the warmth crept up her legs as he fastened the leather straps with almost impersonal strength. She’d had men since Liam, sure. But none of them had left her breathless, not before or after the act. And here she was, quivering like a girl under the knife-wielding hands of a supposed murderer.

  What in heaven had she gotten herself into? She was just here to write a book. It should have been safe. But, suddenly, it wasn’t.

  Marco knelt at her feet, and she looked down on gleaming hair the color of oiled teak.

  “What are you doing?”

  He looked up, grinning, showing a handful of steel pins. “To hold down your skirts,” Marco said, his voice barely a murmur. Jacinda felt the flush travel all the way up her body, lingering in places like puddled rainwater. “Keep things decent.”

  At the word “decent,” her head jerked up, and she scanned the area around the tent. She had forgotten that anyone else existed. The lizard boy was draped over his pillows nearby, but otherwise, everyone was engrossed in his or her own work. That was good. She felt silly, strapped spread-eagle to the target, and that was before he stepped back and gave her a better look at the long line of knives snaking down his body as naturally as stripes on a bludzebra.

  Being pinned down was dangerous enough before she remembered the reason for it.

  “Do you ever miss, Marco?”

  Saying his name was like blowing a kiss, the way it made her purse her lips together. Maybe that was why she’d resisted saying it for so long. Now that she was strapped onto the round target, her boots snug against the platforms, he had to look up to meet her eyes, and what she saw there made her breathless. Amused satisfaction, complete confidence, and an indolent, languid slowness that spoke of long patience. He liked her exactly where she was. The way his gaze raked her with open admiration told her plainly that she was but an object, and the way her breath sped up told her plainly that she didn’t mind being objectified.

  “Is that your question? Because you’ll have to wait until I’ve taken my shot if you want an answer.”

  “That’s not my question.” The words tumbled out too fast, and she struggled to maintain her professional calm. She’d stood up to kings and shamans and shambling corpses. Why was this man disarming her so totally?

  Oh, right. The knives. And the leather straps. Not to mention the curling lips. And the eyelashes. She couldn’t forget those.

  He winked as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and moved behind the target. Turning her head, she found only wood. The leather creaked as she unconsciously tested her bonds, feeling vulnerable now that she couldn’t see him.

  “Get ready.”

  So smoothly she barely heard it, the motor started, and the bull’s-eye began to turn, her body with it. Jacinda had been hung upside down by booby traps and even suspended once by vines over a cauldron of boiling water, but she’d never felt this strange, controlled, secure, mechanical movement. It was so very oddly smooth, perfectly balanced. He’d strapped her down so carefully that as she turned fully upside down, the only real change in her person was a cascading of red curls into her eyes and the cold kiss of metal as her pocket watch fell out of her jacket. With a swift intimacy, as soon as she was right-side up again, Marco dropped it down the throat of her blouse and tightly between her chest and her corset—an intimate gesture, but a necessary one, if she wished to keep the metal from smacking her in the face with each revolution. Her breath caught at the intimacy of the touch. Not until he had finished tucking her hair behind her ear did she remember to breathe again, and by then, she was upside down.

  “The card, sweetness.”

  Oh. She had forgotten utterly that one arm was free, clutching the card against her chest in a white-knuckled grip. With a shaking hand, she pinched just the corner of the card, holding it against the painted wood as far from her face as she could allow without looking like a complete coward.

  Marco nodded and walked to the exact place she’d found him standing earlier, marked by a muddy, trampled spot in the grass. The lazy smile had never left him, but it deepened as he regarded her, reaching his eyes with pointed heat. His hand almost caressed the knives down his side, and he didn’t look down as he drew one from its loop and weighed it in his palm, turning it this way and that. Jacinda watched, right-side up and upside down and sideways, unsure whether the spinning was all in her head or in the clockwork revolutions of the bull’s-eye.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Always.”

  “Don’t move, sweetness.”

  She held her breath and willed the card to stop twitching with the beating of her heart. Marco narrowed his eyes, kissed the dagger with solemn reverence, and waited until she was perfectly right-side up. Then his arm flicked forward in a blur of motion.

  She closed her eyes at the heavy thunk. She didn’t feel pain or impact. But perhaps one wouldn’t feel a knife, especially if the strike were fatal? She’d never been stabbed before.

  “You can look now. Cheater.”

  The amusement in his voice told her she was unhurt, because surely even a man as contained and unflappable as Marco Taresque, a man who could walk away from a blood-spattered murder scene, wouldn’t stand in the open air of a public place and watch her scream after using that tone.

  It took great control to unscrew her eyelids and look down.

  The knife was stuck in the painted wood, right where the card had been.

  The card lay on the ground, hearts up.

  As she stared at the queen’s smug smile, the machine stopped, and he stepped out from behind it, suddenly very close. She was turned sideways, suspended only by the leather straps on one wrist and around her waist. Marco knelt and held the card out to show her.

  “I hit the place where the card would have been. Hit it perfectly. But you, my dear, dropped the card.”

  She smiled, coyly, feeling strangely free with her feet off the ground. “Oops.”

  “That’s not good enough, sweetness.”

  “You didn’t hit the card.”

  “You made that impossible.”

  “I never promised to make it easy for you.”

  He twirled the card in front of her face for a moment before placing it against the wood. He let go, and she thought for sure it would flutter against her cheek. Instead, it fell barely an inch before he’d whipped out a blade and plunged it into the wood beside her eye with a heavy thunk, so close that she could count her eyelashes reflected in the shining steel. She gasped.

  And while her mouth was open, he bent and covered it with his.

  .6.

  Jacinda was sideways, and Marco was standing, and their mouths met at opposite angles with exquisite dissymmetry. With no warning, his tongue slid between her l
ips from one corner up to the other, plunging into her depths to taste her with an intimacy as unexpected as it was right. She moaned as he pulled away, taking the sound with him and leaving her with the lingering ache for the unfelt rasp of his jaw against her cheek or perhaps somewhere even more secret.

  “Where did you—”

  His eyebrows rose as he crossed his arms. “One question.”

  “Bugger. Then I take it back.”

  “You can’t. Where did I . . . ?”

  Jacinda tried to make her mind work, but it was as useless as harnessing mad bludmares to a moving wagon. He’d unnerved her, and she’d been on the verge of asking him where he’d learned to kiss like that. At least he’d stopped her in time. What a waste that would have been. And knowing what she did so far of his capricious nature, who knew what she would have to do to win the next answer?

  “Where did you hide the body?”

  He shook his head sadly, disappointed with her. “Oh, sweetness. There was no body.” With a melodramatic sigh, he slipped his hands into his pockets and turned away.

  “Marco?”

  He didn’t stop walking.

  “Marco! Are you going to unbind me?”

  He paused but didn’t look back. “No more questions.”

  She opened her mouth, first to demand and then to beg that he undo the straps and let her down from his blasted bull’s-eye. The knife was uncomfortably close to her skin, and without his presence to distract her, she was beginning to feel the cut of the leather against the softness of her flesh. But she could tell he wouldn’t respond to demands, and she wasn’t willing to lower herself to pleading—yet. And so she closed her mouth and ran her tongue along her top lip, remembering with a shiver the exotic feeling of being kissed in an entirely new way. Damn, but the man was a mystery.

  It took a few moments for her to realize her fingertips were to her lips, and it took a few moments more for her to chuckle at herself and reach to unbuckle the strap around her other wrist. She’d utterly forgotten that one hand was free all along. With both hands on the buckle at her waist, she stopped. She couldn’t reach her ankles until she undid this buckle, but as soon as the tension was gone, she would flop right over. Silly as it was, injury was possible, especially if the creaking sway of the bull’s-eye indicated, as it seemed to, that the thing could spin freely. She’d be upside down and making bets on how quickly her skirts would rip if she continued in her stubborn streak to free herself from Marco’s clever cage.

  But he was long gone, and she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of causing a scene. The lizard boy was the only person she could see, and she hissed at him until her tongue went dry, but he didn’t open an eye. She had just set her hands to the buckle at her waist and prepared for the worst when she noticed someone moving furtively along the outside of the wagon circle. It was one of the girls from the dining car this morning, the one with the odd speech and wistful, faraway manner. Jacinda’s orderly and journalistic mind shifted through mental cue cards as she put on a warm smile.

  “Demi, dear? Do you have a moment?”

  “Mrs. Harville? What are you doing?”

  For a Bludwoman, Demi had a hesitant walk, almost as if she was doing something that would get her in trouble. Her strange costume showcased the casual resplendence of a life lived in the caravan, with vibrant colors and patterns carefully fitted and ruffled by hands more expert than her own. The girl’s hair was in a low ponytail, rippling over her shoulders in careless curls that matched the bangs cutting across her forehead. Something about her struck Jacinda as foreign, but she couldn’t place the girl’s looks or accent in any culture she’d visited.

  Jacinda sighed and rolled her eyes heavenward. “I made a bad bet, I’m afraid. Would you be so kind as to spin this machine around so that I’m right-side up?”

  Demi stared her up and down, taking in the placement of the pins in her skirt and the tightly buckled leather around her waist and ankles. Something dark flashed behind the girl’s brown eyes, and they narrowed.

  “Did Marco do this to you?”

  Jacinda blinked, going a little colder, recognizing instantly the ire of a woman with no right to be jealous. Since Liam’s death, she’d been plagued with such indignation across the globe any time she chose a lover and inadvertently gained rivals for his affection. She always knew she would stake no future claim, but the women of the cities and villages she visited never believed her. It was rare, in today’s world, for a woman to take what she wanted without expecting more down the road.

  But Demi was young and sweet, beyond the raised hackles. And Jacinda knew better than to forget for even a moment that the slender girl was a Bludwoman and that she herself was pinned to the target as surely as a piece of staked meat over a fire. So she smiled warmly and shook her head as if the whole thing were very silly, which it was.

  It was.

  “He said he would answer a question if I let him throw a knife at me, and I was fool enough to take him up on it. And then he left me here like a goose. It’s beginning to hurt a bit. Would you mind?”

  She twirled a finger, and Demi followed it hungrily for a moment before snapping awake and moving the wheel until Jacinda’s head was finally where it belonged. She reeled for a moment with the rush of blood, and Demi thoughtfully reached down to pull out the pins holding her skirts to the wheel and unbuckle the leg straps. Jacinda undid the waist belt, stepped down, and nearly fell, the blood rushing to and from all her body parts in an awkward dance that left her dizzy.

  “Thank you so much. I don’t know how I would have gotten out without you.”

  Demi nodded and turned to go, her head hung a little low. Jacinda remembered well enough what it was like to be young and have crushes on older men; of course, she also remembered seducing her anthropology professor, marrying him, and taking off behind him on a camel for the six best years of her life. But Demi wasn’t her, and Marco wasn’t Liam, and she sensed in her bones that the young Bludwoman’s destiny lay elsewhere.

  “Honey, I’m sure everybody in this caravan has already told you he’s too old for you.”

  Demi opened her mouth to deny any interest whatsoever in the desperately attractive man before wisely swallowing down the act and shuffling her boots a little in the muddy place where he stood to throw his knives. “They have. I mean, I know.”

  A few wooden crates sat just under the edge of the tent, and Jacinda walked to one and tested it with a hand before sitting. When she jerked her chin at Demi and flashed a dimple, the girl shrugged and followed her, sitting on the other corner.

  “Have you ever been out of the caravan, Demi?”

  “When I was younger.”

  “Lately?”

  “Not in five years.”

  Jacinda tsked. “Have you ever been out of Sangland, then?”

  Demi thought for a moment. “Sangland is the only part of Sang I’ve ever seen. But I want to see more.”

  “I know caravans are exciting from the outside, but I’m guessing that when you live in one, they’re just as boring and normal as anything else.”

  Demi chuckled. “Yeah. The glitter rubbed off pretty quickly.”

  “Do you know, I once thought joining a desert caravan would be glamorous. But the moment I wrapped my fingers around a bludcamel’s teats and squeezed out the pink milk while she pissed on the lace edge of my skirt, I knew I was in for it. Thus began three weeks of sand, raw meat, and blud-tinged tea that I still crave.”

  “But it was an adventure, right?”

  Jacinda’s fingers roved unconsciously to the pocket watch Marco had recently tucked back into her corset. An etching of Liam grinned within, opposite the clock face. She hadn’t wound the watch since his death. Her smile was soft, touching her lips as gently as a last kiss. “Oh, yes. It was the adventure of a lifetime. I very much advise determining the boundaries of your comf
ort zone and getting the hell out of it.”

  “That’s not what people usually tell me when I act antsy.”

  “What does Lady Letitia tell you?”

  It was Demi’s turn to smile softly. “Only that when it’s time to leave, I’ll know.”

  “Waiting really is the hardest part, isn’t it? Every day, you walk out your door, always trying to figure out when you’ll decide not to return.”

  They sighed in unison. “Yeah. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Your time will come, Demi. I promise. But until then, please keep in mind that Marco Taresque is at least ten years older than you and wanted for murder.”

  Jacinda gave the girl a companionable nudge with her elbow, and Demi went stiff all over, whether from the nudge, the bluntness, or the sudden realization that flirting with fire was, in this case, cavorting with carving knives.

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “Yeah.”

  “I’m not sure if it’s any consolation, but I heard those two handsome daimon boys whispering about you this morning in the dining car.” Demi perked up, and Jacinda hid her smile of triumph. “I know a little Franchian. The words ‘limber’ and ‘pretty’ came up repeatedly.”

  Demi blushed, and Jacinda remembered that she was gossiping with a girl, not a grown woman.

  “But let’s focus on the ‘pretty’ part. Maybe add ‘smart’ and ‘funny’ to the mix, yes?”

  Demi stood with a regal, liquid languidness in her spine that reminded Jacinda again that the girl was a predator. “I’m twenty-six, not sixteen,” she said stiffly as she placed a handful of pins on the crate. A smile broke through, briefly. “But thanks.”

  As Jacinda watched the girl walk away, she hoped Demi would one day come to trust her and share her story. Everyone she met piqued her interest like books waiting to be read, and she felt that Demi’s past and future held tales worth telling.