Hell's Gate

Jathmar stiffened, his hands closing into fists. Neshok was speaking too rapidly, and too angrily, for Jathmar to completely follow the conversation, but he'd understood enough. He started to step in front of Shaylar, but before he could move, Gadrial's hand?no longer limned in fire, thank the gods!?closed on his elbow. He looked down at her, then looked back up … just in time to see Jasak step in front of his wife.

Jasak was a good three inches taller than Neshok, and much broader across the shoulders, but it was his expression and his body language, not his size, which made the other hundred abruptly step back a pace.

"I'm getting tired of explaining this to pigheaded, pea-brained, bigmouthed excuses for Andaran officers who frigging well ought to know better," Sir Jasak Olderhan said very, very softly. "But I'll try one more time, and I advise you to listen to me very carefully, because I'm not going to repeat myself again. Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband are my shardonai. Any insult, any injury or threat, offered to them is offered to a member of my family. Perhaps you'd care to reconsider that last sentence of yours."

His hand hovered in the vicinity of the short sword at his hip, and Jathmar's tension clicked up yet another notch as Jugthar Sendahli and Otwal Threbuch quietly stepped out on either side of Jasak, facing Neshok and his detail. The Second Andaran Scouts, Jathmar abruptly remembered from Gadrial's explanations, were the hereditary command of the Dukes of Garth Showma. Apparently, he realized, that relationship extended rather further than he'd assumed it did.

None of them actually touched a weapon. But none of them had to, either.

"Very well," a white-lipped Neshok grated after a moment. "I withdraw the last sentence. But shardonai or not, how can you be so sure they're telling you the truth? For that matter, how can you be sure you didn't decide to make them shardonai in the first place because she somehow influenced your mind?"

"Because she was three-quarters unconscious with a concussion when I made my decision," Jasak said almost contemptuously. "And because after three weeks in their company, I've discovered that unlike certain Arcanans I could mention, these are both people of honor who understand the mutual obligations of a baranal and his shardonai. They may not volunteer information, and they may even refuse to answer questions, but they won't lie to me, Hundred."

Neshok's angry, frightened expression didn't change. He was obviously not convinced, but equally obviously he couldn't think of a way to continue the argument without edging back into potentially dangerous waters. That was when Gadrial spoke up unexpectedly.

"Lady Nargra-Kolmayr is as clear as glass, Hundred Neshok. It's not in her nature to lie! God above, man?all you have to do is look at her to know that!"

Gadrial's outburst had drawn Neshok's angry eyes back to her. Now those eyes softened with an expression of pity.

"Magister Kelbryan, your work with Magister Halathyn vos Dulainah is renowned, even out here on the frontier. I can't imagine the grief and shock you must have experienced after his murder by these?" his glance flicked once more toward Shaylar and Jathmar, hardening again "?barbarians."

White-hot fury exploded suddenly inside Shaylar made even worse by the lingering echoes of the terror she'd felt when the dragons began to hiss, and she jerked free of Jathmar's arm. She took a long, angry stride towards Neshok, stepping around Jasak. The Fort Wyvern officer towered above her, but the mantle of her anger made her a giant.

"Barbarians?" she hissed in his face. "Don't you dare call us barbarians! Don't you dare use the word 'murder' after what your soldiers did to us! We were civilians, damn you?civilians! And if you don't believe that, look what happened when your soldiers finally had to face ours. You kill civilians?use weapons that burn civilians alive!?but you call me a barbarian?

"My country is four thousand years old?four thousand years of civilization, art, science, and literature! Sharonian civilization is over five thousand years old. Five thousand years of recorded history?how many do you have?"

Neshok looked like a man who'd picked up his boot and suddenly discovered a cobra in it.

"We're not the ones who've acted like barbarians, but don't think for a moment that we don't know how to respond to barbarians! My mother is a Shurkhali ambassador! Do you think she, or any of our countries, will ever forgive you for what you've done? They think?she thinks?that I'm dead, curse you!"

She stood there in a puddle of utter silence, glaring up at Neshok, and naked shock had detonated behind his eyes. Even Jasak seemed stu

"Your mother is an ambassador?" he asked hoarsely, and she turned on him with flaming eyes, too shaken by the encounter with the dragons to contain the pain and rage Neshok had roused.

"Yes! What? You thought our people were too primitive, too violent for something that civilized?"

"No, Shaylar," he said, deliberately taking both her hands in his so that she would know. "I never thought that. Any civilization that could produce you is worthy of respect. But your mother's status makes this whole situation even more difficult, more complicated."

Shaylar bit down on a hysterical laugh as it tried to break loose in her throat.

"You don't have the slightest idea how much more," she told him. "You don't have any concept of how the Shurkhali honor code is going to react to what's happened."

"No, but I'm trying to understand, for your sake, as well as because it's my duty. And it's also," he flicked a cold glance at Neshok, "just one more reason to treat Lady Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband with courtesy."

His eyes locked with Neshok's, and a muscle jumped in the other man's jaw.

"The Two Thousand is waiting," he half-snapped after a moment and turned on his heel one more to march toward the fort.

Some people, Shaylar thought, couldn't be forced to see reason, even at gunpoint. But Neshok's reaction to Halathyn's death?not to mention his instant, unthinking attitude towards her and Jathmar?only underscored how dark the future had become.

She could scarcely imagine how Sharona must have reacted to the belief that she was dead. She'd never been a vain person, but she'd been embarrassedly aware for years of the way the Portal Authority had used her face, her image, in its public relations campaigns. She knew how all of Shurkhal, even the men who'd harbored the most reservations about her choice of career, had taken a fierce and possessive pride in her accomplishments. If Darcel had relayed everything she'd transmitted over their link before she was injured, then all of Sharona had probably been swept by a fury it hadn't seen in centuries, if not longer. As for how Shurkal must have reacted?!

Now Neshok's attitude gave her some idea of how Arcana was going to react to news of Magister Halathyn's death. And the fact that he'd been killed by an Arcanan soldier, not by Sharona, wasn't going to matter a bit.

Her shoulders slumped as an abrupt, crushing weariness crashed down across her. She wanted to curl up someplace sheltered and private, someplace she could hide. Someplace where men like Neshok didn't exist, where monstrous weapons didn't threaten Sharonian lives, and where no u

"We'll settle you into your quarters and let you rest," Jasak promised her quietly. "I can see how shaken you are. Jathmar will help you, all right? It shouldn't be too far now."

She just nodded, and he released her hands. Jathmar slid his arm back around her, taking some of her weight, and met Jasak's gaze levelly.

"When we leave this place," he said in a low voice, "would it be too much to ask to have those murderous beasts moved someplace else?"