“… saw no guard, knew I should’ve waited, but …” His face twisted and even the shadow resemblance to Bannon disappeared. He was an old man, in agony. And as unbelievable as it seemed, he was her brother. “Hurts, Vree.”
“I know.” Knew exactly what the poison was doing to the body he now wore. Knew there wasn’t anything she could do about it but watch him die.
“Have to tell you …”
His fingers were freezing. She fought a futile urge to try and rub warmth back into them. “I’m here, Bannon.”
“He was in the room. Don’t know how he saw me. He smiled. Drank. Motioned me forward. Knew you were behind me, so I … went.” He’d been sucking in air between each short burst of words but had to stop and breathe a moment just to live.
Vree felt as though iron bands had been wrapped tight around her ribs. Obviously, whatever had happened, she hadn’t been close enough behind him. Hadn’t been close enough to save him. She wanted to close her eyes but was afraid he’d die while they were closed—half believed that only her attention kept him alive.
A soldier who died off the battlefield became one of Jiir’s ravens, doomed to feed off the fallen, off the discarded bodies of those who were granted a place in Her host. But surely assassins were allowed a wider battlefield? Vree thought of the great clouds of winged scavengers that settled down to feast on the bloody flesh scattered over the ground when the fighting ended and nearly shuddered. Goddess, please … But Jiir listened to pleas only when they were accompanied by a sword thrust.
She remembered Emo grunting into his wineskin, “You live, you die, you rot,” and found less comfort in that.
“Something about him …” Bannon had gathered enough strength to continue “… drew me.”
The governor had not been a physically attractive man; not judging from the wreck he’d left behind. “What drew you?”
“Don’t know.” He frowned, the expression pure Bannon although the features were not. “Calm,” he answered at last. “Strength. Don’t know!”
“Shhh, it’s …” She couldn’t say that it was all right because it would never be all right again.
“No. Got to … tell you.” A purpling tongue scraped against his lips. “Looked at me. I was him … and he was … me and then he jumped.”
“Jumped where?”
“To me. Then … pushed me into him.” A shudder ran down the length of the old man’s body and his teeth clattered together like dice. “Dying.”
“He pushed you into his old body and he took yours?” Not all the training in the Empire could have kept the shrill note of disbelief out of her voice. She stiffened, head cocked, but no one appeared to have heard. Apparently, the orders the governor had given to keep everyone away still held. With a fingernail grip on her self-control, she turned back to her brother. “That’s impossible!”
The expression on the face of the man lying in front of her said everything necessary. She’d seen that expression a hundred, a thousand times. Obviously, it wasn’t impossible. “He can’t have gone far. I’ll go after him. Bring him here. Make him give you your body.”
Bannon shook his head. “No time. Be dead … when you got back. Vree …”
He wanted something from her. She recognized a tone she’d heard all her life.
“Oh, come on, Vree, just this once …”
But he had only one thing left to want; only thing that she could give him. Nothing should hurt this much and not kill you. Teeth clenched around a howl of pain, she began the movement that would drop a dagger out of a forearm sheath into her hand. When this is over, I’m going to find Aralt and I’m going to make him beg me for death.
“Vree, let me share … your body.”
The dagger snapped back into the sheath. “What?”
“I know what … he did. How he did it. Moment we shared … took it. Let me jump … into your body.”
Vree opened her mouth and closed it again. Bannon was all she had, all she’d ever had besides the army. But to die for him? To allow herself to be pushed into a dying shell?
He read her thoughts off her face and shook his head. “No. Two separate actions. I jump. I don’t push. You stay.”
“We share?”
“Yes.”
“My body?”
“Yes … Till we get … my body … back.”
To have Bannon in her body. And isn’t that what you’ve been wanting? she asked herself, desperately clamping her will around a hysterical desire to snicker. To have Bannon be a part of her. Know everything she was. Everything. No. But weighed against the only alternative, against going on alone…
“Vree?”
No time left to decide. Her heart slammed against her ribs and sweat trickled down her spine. She could smell her terror and his death. “Do it.”
Invasion! A kaleidoscope of images tried to force an entry into her mind.
Vree fought to pull the barricades down. This is Bannon! Let him in or he dies! A crack appeared and then another and then he was in, and she nearly lost herself in a maelstrom of shared memories subtly skewed and alien emotions; of being just for an instant, someone else and knowing what they knew, feeling what they felt. She struggled to hold on, to accept, to not fight it although every instinct demanded she defend herself.
I trust him with my life. He trusts me with his life. I trust him with …
* * * *
*Vree? Vree! Wake up! We haven’t got time for this!*
She could feel the dry, dusty fibers of the carpet pressing into her cheek. Smell the poison mixed with wine spilled out onto the floor. Hear…
*Slaughter it, Vree! Wake up!*
“Bannon?” Eyes opened, all she could see was a pale hand curled up like a great, bloated, dead spider. When she tried to lift her head, her body felt as though it no longer quite fit. “Bannon?”
*I’m here.*
“It worked?”
*Don’t be an idiot, of course it worked. Now get up. Aralt, that carrion eater, is getting away.*
The muscles in her thighs began to spasm. Her legs jerked and kicked and her feet scrabbled for purchase against the floor. “Bannon, stop it!”
*Vree, no!* Bannon’s voice rose to a near incoherent shriek that slammed against the inside of her skull. *Don’t.*
Panting, she forced herself to relax, to not expel the invader. Her brother. Gradually, she gathered all the bits of her body back under her control and, slowly, got her hands under her and pushed herself up onto her knees. “Just let me do the moving. Understand?”
*Yeah.* He sounded subdued, but she knew it wouldn’t last. *I understand.*
Ignoring the corpse sprawled beside her, Vree stood. Every movement was surer than the one before as, with every movement, she reclaimed more of her scattered self. Although constantly aware of Bannon’s presence, as long as he remained a passive passenger, she felt she could ignore him enough to manage. He had, after all, always been a constant presence in her life. Kind of like ignoring a nagging toothache…
*I heard that.*
*Not now, Bannon. We haven’t time for …* Which was when she realized that she wasn’t speaking aloud. *Shit on a stick! Do you know everything I think?*
*No. You have to put it into words, then I hear it the way you hear me.*
Because the alternative would be unbearable, she believed him. *But you can hear me when I speak?*
*I can hear what you can hear. And I see through your eyes. And I feel what you touch.*
*It’s like the opposite of what we always had while we worked—two sets of senses, one directing will.*
*I guess.*
She felt her shoulders rise and fall in a gesture she had no control over. “Bannon!”
*Look, I’m sorry, but it’s hard.*
*I know …*
*No. You don’t.*
Yes, she did, because she felt his bitterness and his pain and his fear of dying. Like a wave she barely managed to keep her footing under, his emotions rolled over her and retreated. Fists clenched, she ground her teeth in anger. Aralt had a great deal to answer for, and she’d enjoy making him pay. “We’ll get your body back,” she murmured as though Bannon still stood beside her. “And we’ll cut Aralt loose to shriek in the darkness.”
Tentatively, for the floor was not always exactly where she thought it should be, she walked to the window, careful to remain out of the line of sight from below. Time had not stopped just because the impossible had occurred and she—they—were still in the heart of an enemy stronghold. Her hand held the heavy swag curtains motionless and she looked out at the sky. The stars had danced most of the night away.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
*Agreed.*
But instead she stood staring at her hand as though she’d never seen it before. It was too slender, a strong hand but a woman’s hand. The nails were too even, they should have been ragged, chewed to the quick. The white line of scar from the second knuckle to the base of the thumb—where had it come from?
“Bannon.”
The sound of his name barely carried past her lips but he heard it.
*Not mine …*
“No. Mine.” And suddenly, it was her familiar hand again. She felt his presence draw in on itself, wrapped around equal parts of torment and terror. She wanted to reach out and touch him…
… with her hand…
… hers…
… but she couldn’t, so she settled for getting them safely out of the stronghold instead.
By the time they were over the wall and back into the city, her body was responding with the fluid grace and economy of movement they had always shared. If Bannon occasionally added his control to hers, Vree couldn’t tell, and she supposed that was all that mattered.
*Head for the South Road.*
She paused, one foot half raised. *What?*
*Aralt is going north, toward the Capital.* If the city had another name, no one remembered it. No one had used it in generations.
*And we’ll go north right after we tell Commander Neegan what’s going on.*
*No.*
Vree slid into the shadow cast by the damp, aboveground wall of a cistern. *What do you mean, no?*
*Commander Neegan won’t believe you.*
Her protest died, unformed. In the commander’s place would she believe that an old man had stolen her brother’s body and pushed his life out into a dying shell? Would she believe such an impossible story without the presence of Bannon’s thoughts beside her own?
*He’ll think I died in there and you’ve gone crazy,* Bannon insisted. *The army thinks assassins are half crazy anyway. You’ll be shackled so you don’t hurt anyone. Probably drugged. We’ll die like that, Vree.*
*The commander has known us all our lives.*
*So what.* His hostility surprised her.
*We could convince him.* But in the face of Bannon’s certainty, she was no longer convincing even herself.
*We’ve got to go north now or we’ll lose all chance of catching Aralt and my body.*
*If we leave the army like this—if we desert—they’ll hunt us down.* Assassins who* deserted were under an immediate death sentence; an Imperial edict designed to reassure the citizens that the army’s more subtle killers remained under control.
*Slaughter it, Vree! Why would they think we deserted? They’ll think the odds finally caught up to us and we died in Ghoti. And if you’d stop arguing, we could have him by dawn and be back in camp before they even miss us.*
*Don’t be an idiot, Bannon …*
*He’s in my body; I should know how far he can get! He’s only a couple of hours ahead of us.*
*And it’s less than a couple of hours till dawn.* Very pointedly, Vree turned to face the east. Whether the frustration she felt was his or hers, she had no idea. *If Aralt was ready for you, he was ready to travel. He might even be on horseback.*
*No, no horse.*
*How do you know?*
*I just know, okay? I just know.*
She ground her teeth and struggled to find order in the emotional maelstrom inside her head; fought to separate her reactions from his. *So we skirt the army for the South Road, and then what?*
*And then we find Aralt and reclaim my body.*
*You really think it’s going to be that easy?*
His anger started her heart racing. *I don’t care a crow’s ass about how easy it is or isn’t going to be! I want my body!*
*We’ll never be able to go back.* The silence in her head was the loudest sound she’d ever heard. *Bannon?*
*It’s me or the army, Vree. Your choice.*
An assassin has no family but the army. But it wasn’t a choice and he knew it.
They crossed the South Road, east to west, on the Ghoti side of the embankment—the sentries patrolling along the top unaware of the enemy slipping through the darkness behind them—and getting out of town was as easy as getting in. Driven by Bannon’s uncompromising need, Vree stayed as close to the road as she dared, stealing from one bit of shadow to the next, using the night as cover. How, she wondered, had Aralt managed? While he had Bannon’s body, he wouldn’t have the skill to manipulate it. At least we didn’t find him pinned to the road by arrow fire from the top of the embankment.
*Shut up, Vree.*
Just for a moment, she’d forgotten what he meant and had, for the same moment, forgotten that her thoughts were no longer her own. *Sorry.*
The terrain began to climb and the road with it.
*There’ll be a squad where the road crests the ridge.*
*I know.* She kept moving toward the dim glow of the banked watchfire.
*What are you doing, Vree?*
*Aralt is going to have to swing wide around; if we cut close, we’ll gain on him.*
*And if you cut in too close, you’ll be seen.* His tone bordered on the edge of accusation.
Vree stopped, crouched in the shadow of a thorn tree. Her teeth were clenched so tightly together that a muscle jumped in her jaw. *And just what’s that supposed to mean?*
*You don’t want to leave …*
*So I’ll allow myself to be seen?* She spat the thought at him. *So I’ll have to go back to camp or be shot as I cross the perimeter? Do you think for an instant that I want you in my head for the rest of my life?*
*Do you think I want to be here?* Bannon snapped back.
Panting slightly, Vree stared at a thorn, four inches long and silver-gray in the starlight. When they were children, armed with thorn daggers, they’d saved the Empire from a thousand rebels, winning honor and glory and the notice of the Emperor himself. Together. Always together. She forced her fingers to uncurl. Who was she going to hit? *We’ll get your body back. I promise.*
Bannon remained silent as she moved closer to the watchfire, but she could feel him holding back, in no way adding his skill to hers, allowing her to prove her commitment. Black shapes stood around the fire that had been lit in the middle of the road; kilts and sandals and tunics, round helms and shields and pikes imposing uniformity on the silhouettes. Vree could hear the quiet murmur of voices, then a loud laugh, then…
“Slaughtering bugs!”
“Not lice again.”
“Bugger you. Something just bit me.”
“Good,” muttered someone else. “Now it’ll die and not bite us.”
She knew those voices. All of them. The Fourth Squad, Second Unit, First Company, First Division, Sixth Army had provided the soldiers who were watching the road. Knowing what to look for, she began to pick out individual shapes. Nub had a way of wearing his helm that made his head look as though it sloped straight from crown to nose. Wora slapped the shaft of her pike constantly from palm to palm. They said she’d be corporal when Emo finally took his wineskin into one battle too many. The slim figure pacing nervously around the perimeter of the light could only be Tic, his youth radiating off him.
Her squad. Their squad. Hers and Bannon’s.
*Vree?*
*No.*
*But I …*
*Just no, okay? Be quiet.*
They’d be easier to pass than strangers because she knew their habits. Harder because she knew them and there was no way to even say good-bye. She had no idea why that should matter, but it did.
As she drew even with the fire, a burly shadow shambled off the road and straight toward her. Corporal Emo. She froze, trusting the night to keep her hidden, eyes narrowed to slits so that the whites would not betray her. He continued to come directly at her. They’d served together five, nearly six years. Did he know something?
Then, less than a body-length away, he stopped. And there was a dagger in Vree’s hand.
*Kill him!*
*I know what I have to do.* But as she hesitated, Emo hiked up his kilt, reached into his sling, and directed a stream of urine practically at her feet. *He doesn’t see me, Bannon.*
*He’s probably too soaked to see anything.* Vree could feel relief under the derision. *What if he’d aimed six inches higher?*
*Then I’d have killed him on principle.* She felt almost giddy. *How can he piss for so long?*
*How can he drink so much?* Bannon asked in turn, a shrug implied.
Emo finally tucked himself away, belched, and turned to go. Then he stopped, frowned, and stared into the shadows. Vree felt his eyes meet hers, saw recognition dawn, and she slowly stood. His gaze dropped to the dagger in her hand, then went back to her face.
He knew her speed, he knew her skill, and he wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t know, at that moment, how close he stood to death.
No one in the squad would be surprised if Emo died in the bushes, too drunk to have seen the enemy. Vree could feel the weight of the dagger she held, feel the familiar grip under her fingers. This close, she couldn’t miss; could close her eyes and with a flick of her wrist still bury it in Emo’s throat.
You don’t see me, she mouthed. I wasn’t here.
*Vree! What are you doing?*
Emo stared at her, startled. She wondered what he saw. Who he saw. Finally, after several lifetimes, he nodded. I don’t see you.
* * * *
*You’ve brought the hunt down on us,* Bannon snarled when the watchfire had faded to a glow in the distance.
Vree remembered a younger man with large callused hands and a ready laugh; Emo before the wineskin became his constant companion. *He won’t say anything.*
*How do you know?*
*He was a friend.*
*He was my friend, too, but I’d have killed him.*
That was not an argument she wanted to get into. Bannon hadn’t been the one with the dagger in his hand and those kinds of choices were easier to criticize than to make. *There was no need to kill him.*
Bannon gave a mental snort. *You think he’ll keep his mouth shut just because you used to fuck him? Think again. They’ll know you didn’t die in the city. They’ll come hunting for you, Vree, and when you die, I die, too.*
All at once she was very, very tired. *So we’ll try to get your body back before that happens.*
* * * *
They hadn’t caught up to Aralt when dawn began to elongate the shadows and brush the cloaking night away. But neither had there been any indication that they themselves were being followed.
*Keep going! He can’t have gone that much farther!*
As Bannon’s thoughts bounced around her head, brittle and beginning to shatter, Vree realized how tightly his sanity had been tied to finding Aralt quickly. What if he lost it? Would he drag her down with him, or would madness dissolve their unnatural union and send him screaming off as a disembodied spirit?
*Vree!* Her name echoed in her skull as she moved farther away from the road. *What are you doing?*
Locking her fear away, she chose her words carefully because her calm appeared to be the only thing holding her brother together. “I’m taking advantage of this water hole,” she murmured, as her approach sent a trio of wild goats bounding away. “I’m going to take a long drink, and then I’m going to make myself a little less obvious for day travel.”
*But we have to catch Aralt!* His protest was shrill enough to be almost painful.
“We will.” Her tone suggested she spoke to a small and frightened child, not a young man only a year her junior. “But it’s going to be hot, and I don’t know when we’ll find more water.”
*Slaughter it, Vree, don’t patronize me! I hate it when you do that. I’ve always hated it!*
Always hated it?
Pursing her lips, she pressed her face against the water and carefully sucked from just below the surface. It was still night-cool but with a faint, flat taste of the heat it had held the day before. Fortunately, the goats hadn’t had the chance to stir up much of the gritty silt. Vree drank past desire, until she sloshed when she moved, then took a dagger to her tunic and breeches.
First the long sleeves, then the high collar, then a double hands span ripped ragged from the bottom of each leg—the fine, closely woven cotton, dyed and redyed to match the darkness, tore easily. She knotted the narrow ends of the sleeves and filled them with the weapons she could no longer hide as well as the supple ankle boots that were a better indication of her profession than any number of concealed daggers. A fistful of damp sand scrubbed the charcoal from hands and face.
After a thorough roll in the pale dirt, Vree bent and forced herself to take one last drink. As she lifted her head, she frowned at a shadowy indentation, newly delineated by the rising sun. *Bannon, look there.*
*I look where you look,* he muttered. Then she felt his mood change as he saw what she saw. On the other side of the watering hole, an earlier visitor had braced his weight, leaned forward to drink and left a clear impression of the heel and thumb of his right hand. *Mine. That’s my handprint. He came this way, Vree! I told you so! We’re almost on him. Get up! Get going!*
She’d trusted her brother’s judgment in a thousand situations where a mistake would mean both their deaths. She trusted it now although she could see nothing familiar in the curves pressed into the damp earth. Securing her narrow pack with the silken length of her garrote, she slung it across her body and hurried north.
It was mid-morning when Vree heard the sound of a horse approaching from behind. She turned, shaded her eyes against the glare from above and the stone dust glare from below, and squinted back down the South Road. “Courier.” The word was flat, inflectionless, but her heart began to pound a little faster. They should have expected this; in this part of the Empire the South Road was the only road the army bothered to keep way stations on. In this part of the Empire, it was the only road that went anywhere. “The marshal’s probably sending news of the governor’s death to the garrison.”
*The governor isn’t dead.*
“He is as far as the Sixth Army is concerned. There’s a body and there’s no one to lead the rebellion. What more do they need?”
*Us?*
“If Emo squealed, we’d have had to kill someone long before now.”
*Yeah, but Emo’s a drunk, Vree. We can’t count on him not to spill his guts the next time he crawls into a wineskin. Or the next time. Or the time after that.*
“You’re right.” She started back the way they’d come. “Let’s go back and kill him.”
*What are you doing? We have to find Aralt!*
*Then you shut up about Emo! Maybe I should’ve killed him, okay? But he’s alive and he knows and there’s not a slaughtering thing we can do about it!*
As the courier rode closer, she dropped her head and continued slogging north, shoulders hunched, bare feet splayed out against the heated stone, nothing in her bearing suggesting she’d ever marched behind the Empire’s banner.
She needn’t have bothered. The courier trotted past, the sunburst pennant on his lance tip snapping, eyes under the crested helm locked ahead on the distance still to be covered. One skinny, filthy traveler meant nothing to him. After all, the Empire had built the roads to be traveled on.
As horse and rider and road disappeared behind an outcrop of faded pink stone, Vree scrubbed at a dribble of sweat between her breasts and shook her head. “Bannon, this is impossible. We need more to go on than Aralt went north. Didn’t you get anything else?”
*I don’t know.*
Very slowly, she set her right foot back down on the road beside her left. “You don’t know?”
*Come on, Vree, there were a lot of memories and stuff thrown at me …*
This emotion, she recognized. In the past, jobs had always been weighted toward her planning and his instincts. He always wanted the overview and hated dealing with the details.
*… and I haven’t exactly had a chance to sort them out.*
“Do it now.” Vree lowered herself into a slice of shade.
*But Aralt …*
“Could be anywhere. I’m not moving until you’ve sorted things out.*
*But …*
“No.”
*Look, he’s in my body!*
“And this is mine, and it’s not moving until you give it a direction.” He believed weariness where he would have argued with anger. She listened to the high-pitched whine of a buzzbug protesting the heat, scratched the top of one foot with the heel of the other, and waited.
*Did we pass something that looks like this?*
An image of a jagged ridge, half the face sheared off and huddled at the base, was shoved in front of her mind’s eye. Vree jerked her head back and slammed it against the rock behind her.
*Ow!*
“You felt that?” She raised a hand and gingerly touched the lump coming up on her skull.
*Of course I did. Well?*
The ridge. Vree frowned, remembering. “It was off on the left side of the road about an hour ago, just past the last milestone.”
*There’s a valley behind it, with a spring. Aralt has a villa there. That’s where he’s gone.*
“But he isn’t …”
*He instructed the servants to follow the orders of anyone showing up with his signet.*
Vree nodded and stood. “Smart.”
*Not smart enough. He didn’t plan on me surviving.*
* * * *
*Nice place.* Vree wiped sticky fingers on her thighs. The oranges had been bitter, but she’d been too hungry to care. At the head of the valley stood a sprawling, single-story house, its thick mud walls bleached a pale cream color by the constant sun. There were stables, and gardens, and the less attractive buildings that housed Aralt’s servants. One slope of the valley held olive groves while the other grew oranges.
*How do you think we should go in?* Bannon asked.
If she didn’t turn, she could believe he was crouched beside her. *We’ll follow the line of trees to those currant bushes, behind them to that building, up onto the roof, a short jump up onto the house, and down into the central courtyard.* There had to be a central courtyard—there were almost no windows in the outside walls.
*They’ll be able to see us from the kitchens.*
Vree squinted down at the open-sided building. *It’s noon,* she said. *And hotter than a garrison whore. Everyone’s asleep.*
*Everyone except us.*
*Mad dogs and officers …* In spite of everything, she grinned at the quote and felt Bannon’s grin as he responded.
*What does that make us?*
The grin faded. *Desperate.*
They listened to the heartbeat they shared for a moment. Finally, when it became obvious that Bannon wasn’t going to break the silence, Vree started toward the villa.
* * * *
*Vree, there’s a dog.*
*I see it.* Half rolled on its back, one paw in the air, the huge animal snoozed in the shade of the stables.
*Are we upwind?*
*I don’t think there is a wind.* The air hung down from the searing heights of a yellow-blue sky like the beaded curtain in the governor’s stronghold—not quite solid but a physical barrier nevertheless. Vree could almost feel the heated beads brush against her skin.
One foot on top of the low stone wall; both hands flat against the tiles; bare toes dug in for purchase; and she was on the first roof. The dog twitched but had no intention of abandoning its dream.
It would take a running leap to reach the roof of the main house, and during that one exposed moment disaster would be a single person glancing upward.
The windows in the servants’ quarters stared like eyes. Vree could feel them watching her as she gathered herself for the jump. They can’t all be asleep…
*They have to be.*
The run.
The jump.
The landing, nearly silent against the earth packed onto thick supporting logs.
A pigeon burst out of its shadowed corner, wings beating noisily at the air. Below, the dog jerked awake.
*Slaughter it! It’ll wake the dead, let alone the servants. We should have killed it.*
*Shut up, Bannon.* Pressed flat, trying to push herself into the roof, Vree tried to hear past the dog’s frenzied barking. It wasn’t easy. Either the animal really hated pigeons or it had seen them. Her.
“Shaddup, ya stupid mutt!”
The dog yelped in pain.
“Hey, shithead! Don’t throw things at my dog!”
“No problem.” Something metal and hollow—a brass pitcher from the sound—clanged off a wall.
“Hey! Ya coulda killed me with that!”
“Not likely, I was aimin’ at yer head.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Feis, leave the dog along and come back to bed.”
“Ya gonna protect her when I rip her apart, Sova?”
“Touch my Feis and I’ll rip you apart, you dickless wonder.”
The three voices began to weave an intricate cacophony of name-calling and it no longer mattered just what the dog had been barking at.
*Time to go.*
Vines hung from the trellises that edged the deserted courtyard and in the center, a shallow pool reflected the sky. Quickly, her weight spread over as much area as possible, Vree moved to one of the carved pillars supporting the trellis and climbed down it. Training and experience turned her toward the rooms unmistakably occupied by the master of the house.
*What if he’s not in there?*
*Then we search the rest of the place.* She kept her mental voice matter-of-fact as she padded across the cool tile to the louvered doors.
*What if he’s left already.*
*He was up all night. He has to sleep.* No point in adding she’d also been up all night because she couldn’t sleep, not yet, so why think about it.
Through the angled slats of faintly scented wood, she could see a northern style desk and chair and the low, cushion-piled rectangle of the bed. On the bed lay a body. Bannon’s body? There wasn’t light enough in the room to be sure. Fighting the tremors that racketed through her in the wake of her brother’s nearly chaotic emotional response, she slid a long, narrow dagger from its sheath on her thigh.
*What are you doing! That’s my body! Mine!*
Her hands began to spasm. *Bannon, stop it! No one tries to run with a knife at his throat. I’ll hold him, you get back in.*
Slowly, he calmed. Vree could almost hear him panting. *My body,* he repeated. *Mine.*
Slowly, more out of concern that Bannon would try to take control again than any fear of discovery, Vree pushed open one side of the louvered doors just far enough to slide through. With the scorching heat of midday unable to penetrate the narrow windows and thick walls, the room had a cavelike feel about it. No longer instantly evaporating, sweat plastered her filthy clothes to her skin as she crossed silently to the bed. Just before her toes hit the edge of the cotton pad, she stopped and stared at the naked man stretched out amidst the cushions.
It was Bannon’s body. Aralt had bathed at some point, for the short brown curls sprang crisply back from his temples and the taut sheath of dark olive skin stretched over lean muscles seemed almost oiled. There the scar where the barbed Ohkan spear tip had been dug out; there where a dying rebel had managed to open a line across his ribs; there the puckered rosette on the crown of his knee where at nine he’d knelt on an ember. Her gaze lingered on the long muscles of his thighs, moved upward, swept past the soft protrusion of his sex—in spite of a sudden urge to linger she knew came from the brother within—and locked on his face. His chin came to less delicate a point than hers and his cheekbones angled higher and sharper. Combined with the arc of his brows, the length of his lashes, and the wide bow of his mouth, they gave him a feral beauty that would look at home in any shrine of the Wild God. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a rack of horns sweeping up off his brow.
Bannon remained quiet, almost withdrawn, while she stared down at his body. Although his curiosity was unmistakable, he was wrapped too tightly for her to separate out any other emotions. She supposed that was for the best as her own emotional fabric had begun to fray. This is my brother. This is not my brother.
*Mine …*
*Hush, Bannon, I know.*
There was something wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She’d seen Bannon asleep a thousand, a hundred thousand times, but…
But Bannon never slept on his back.
Shifting her grip on the dagger, she reached down with her free hand to lightly touch the broad chest that rose and fell to another man’s rhythm.
He opened his eyes.
They were still so dark a brown that they seemed to be all pupil. They looked like they always had and were, at the same time, completely different.
*Now, Vree! Now! The knife!*
Her instant of hesitation was all he needed. Vree suddenly found herself caught up in an iron grip and flung to the floor. She twisted to avoid his knees slamming at her gut, shoved a foot into his armpit, and kicked out hard. She’d sparred with her brother many times in the past, but this time he had all the advantages. He was obviously trying to kill her. She couldn’t hurt him. He was rested. She was exhausted. He had a single life driving him. She had two, for Bannon kept flinging bits of her about.
With the pressure of his chest grinding her against the floor, his hand closed around her wrist; the other reached for her throat. To her surprise, she broke his grip with a desperate move that Bannon should have been able to counter easily.
Not all the advantages.
This wasn’t Bannon. Aralt might have Bannon’s body, but he’d only been in it for hours. He didn’t know it. Didn’t know what it was capable of. Didn’t have the training that made physical responses instinctive.
And a man fighting naked had areas he had to protect—whether he did it consciously or not. She crammed her hip into his groin. When he turned to shield it, she threw her weight against his shoulders and this time, hitting the floor, she rode him.
His skin was cool, smooth. The nest of hair between his legs brushed against her ankle as they struggled. They were so close she could smell the peppers on his breath.
Then the blade kissed his throat and he froze, a pulse throbbing just above the steel.
“Now, Bannon! Do it now!”
She felt him surge forward and for an instant, he was both in her and looking up at her.
Then he was gone. The place he’d been echoed, empty. He stared up at her for another instant, triumphant; then his eyes widened in fear. Then they were a stranger’s eyes again.
*NO!* Somehow, she reached out and clutched at the life being hurled into oblivion. For a heartbeat she was Bannon, she was Vree, then, as terror—hers; not hers—scraped jagged edges of panic against the inside of her skull, she slid into darkness.