CHAPTER EIGHT - FLIGHT OF THE DARICIAN QUEEN

Only when the airship was in flight, sailing south away from the ruins of the Winter Palace, did DeSilva yield to his injuries. As soon as his work at the burner was done, his posture sagged, and he staggered to lean against the ship's rail.

Charn and Sorcha were at his side together, although with quite different attitudes. While Sorcha pressed herself against him and upheld him as best she could, Charn grabbed DeSilva by the hair to lift his head and study his face. He was pale and sweating, his eyes unfocussed. Charn swore softly, then brusquely tested DeSilva's ribs with her hand until her winced.

“Right enough, he's wounded,” she told Sorcha. “Busted rib, maybe more than one. He'll live, but we need to get him below.”

Charn allowed DeSilva to lean on her shoulder on the way to the cabin. Sorcha went with them, holding doors open along the way until they were able to lower DeSilva down to a bunk. He grit his teeth on a groan, but even that small sound earned a snort of scorn from Charn. “Ach, rest up an hour, you'll be fine.”

The grim Diva paused in the doorway, her stance and eyes questioning if Sorcha would follow, leaving DeSilva to rest alone.

“I'll stay with him a while,” Sorcha said, and Charn snorted again, then left the cabin without another word, closing the door behind her.

DeSilva groaned and stretched full length on the bunk, visibly exhausted. He lifted his head in mild surprise when Sorcha knelt at the foot of the bed to begin tugging off his boots.

“You're hurt,” she reminded him. “You need to be properly looked at.”

She stood up and moved around the bed to unbutton his shirt and help him out of the sleeves. His whole right side was already mottled yellow with bruises, his chest and shoulder visibly swollen. Sorcha said nothing but moved again to unbuckle his belt and slide off his trousers. The bruises continued down his right leg, a dark knot of green and purple already swelling his outer thigh.

Sorcha checked the cabin door, bolted it, then turned to the bed again and stripped off the short Silvan outer cape that she wore over her shirt. She sat on the bed to remove her boots, then disposed of her breeches too and sat on the bed beside DeSilva, gently tracing and testing his bruises with her fingertips. He winced slightly but made no sound.

Sorcha smiled and swung her leg over to sit astride his hips. DeSilva exhaled tightly as her weight settled on him. As she peeled off her tunic and threw it away, DeSilva's hands rose to cup her breasts. Sorcha leant forward, letting the weight of her breasts settle into his touch. A shiver went through him, from his hands to his entire body. Always before, she had made him take control; this was the first time he had simply responded to her, and the reaction was powerful. Sorcha reached down between them to guide him into her. He swore softly, a gasp shaped into words.

Sorcha's smile quirked and she twitched her hips to elicit another shiver of response. “Shh,” she said. “Swear when you take me, not when I'm giving myself.”

With her hands supporting her on either side of his head, she began to roll her hips languorously, slowly pooling the pre-emptive pleasure in their loins. She kissed him once, brushing her lips to his, touching the implanted fangs in his upper jaw, then leant forward further, offering her breasts to his kiss.

His hands moved to her sides, drawing her to him, assisting him to lift his head against his injuries. Sensing the tension in his bruised muscles, Sorcha drew back, put her hands behind her and arched her spine, hanging her head back until her weight was braced on her thighs and her hands. Then she began to undulate her body, ripples of pleasure travelling through her and into DeSilva.

His hands played on her body, hesitant, his touch seeking her breasts but the view of her body and the need to see her so displayed overwhelming even the pleasure of caressing her. She rolled her shoulders and pushed down with her hips, grinding him deeper into her. He thrust back strongly, his hands settling at last firmly on her thighs.

Sorcha cried out, her own movements driving her to the brink of self-control. DeSilva sat up abruptly, his injuries forgotten as he clasped her to him and pressed a fierce kiss to her lips. She surrendered control, allowing him to roll her beneath him to approach their mutual climax, biting her lip every time her gasps threatened to become a full-blown scream.

DeSilva kissed her again fiercely, his whole body becoming suddenly taut before he relaxed with an ecstatic shudder and his kiss became gentle. He laughed softly, studying her face from only a few inches away.

“You're supposed to be helping me rest, not wearing me out.”

“We'll both sleep better now,” Sorcha breathed in reply.

“Have we actually spent any time asleep in bed?”

He reached for his pipe and rolled on his back. Sorcha snuggled close against him in the narrow bunk while he smoked.

“Are you complaining?” she asked, and DeSilva laughed again, then stroked her hair.

“Never. Just wondering what set that off, is all.”

Sorcha looked up at him. “Do I need a reason?”

“I'm sure there is one.”

“The cabin.” She glanced around the little room, half of it occupied by the small single bunk in which they both lay. “It reminded me of the ship, of the harem.”

“And that made you horny?”

She nodded. “I don't understand it either. The only time I can think clearly is like this.” She reached up with her lips to kiss him again, her hands exploring his body and her legs twining with his. “I'd say it was something the Naril did to me, but at the time I mostly thought about everything my family had done. You know, my childhood.”

“Shh. Don't over-examine it; you're more fun when you're confused.”

“I need to work it out.” A hint of irritation entered her voice. “I need to be coherent to explain it to my family, I can't go home as a blithering harem-girl.”

“You're very good at it.”

“Yes.” Sorcha laid her head on his chest. “But if my family ever learn that, they'll send me to a nunnery.”

DeSilva's hand caressed and cupped her breast. “That would be a grave loss to the world.”

He meant it playfully, but the remark sent a quixotic shiver through Sorcha. DeSilva noticed; the motion of his hands paused. She shifted, moving to hang her head a few inches from his face, her red hair falling in a curtain around them both.

His hands moved to her buttocks, their loins pressed together, her breasts close against his chest. He bit his lip, half smiling, his fangs protruding to lend playful ferocity to his face. Sorcha studied his eyes, grey normally, but dark as midnight now in the half-light of the cabin.

“I don't want to go to a nunnery,” Sorcha whispered, her lips barely an inch from his. “I have to go home, I have to tell my family what happened, but if they send me to a convent, Monte...”

“I'll rescue you.”

From other men, it would have been an idle promise. But Sorcha knew that he came of a line of heroes; his father and uncles were mighty men. DeKellia had promised Vashta once that if she called on him, he would come; though seventeen years had passed, when she called, he had answered and born her away from the razing of Narillion.

DeSilva meant his promise now, even if they both knew that fate might conspire otherwise. On a rush of emotion, Sorcha braced her hands on his shoulders and slid her body down, kissing a path down his chest until her lips and tongue discovered his cock. DeSilva shivered in an ecstasy of surprise; raised in Silveneir, he had only heard of the pleasures that Silvan women simply did not give. His hand fluttered by her face as if to wave her away, but she lunged and took him deep into her mouth. At the full caress of her lips, his hand settled on her head, holding her lightly while she worked, sliding her lips the full length of him while her tongue flicked and pirouetted. He swelled in her mouth, becoming engorged in pre-emption of release.

She withdrew and rolled on her side; he followed instinctively, his cock pursuing her lips and his touch on her scalp guiding her to resume her intimate kiss. She parted her lips and let him in again, his hips beginning to thrust minutely even as she put her hand between her legs, bringing herself quickly towards climax even as she pleasured him.

He came, the swell and pulsation in her mouth rippling down her spine to be echoed in the play her fingers between her legs. She swallowed, then licked the fluids from his cock before she lifted her head. Looking into his eyes, she saw there a grey storm of amazement and ecstasy roiling together. Then the cabin door opened and Charn stuck her head in. Her eyes took in the scene.

“Don't you ever knock?” DeSilva asked.

“Don't you ever lock the door?” the Diva shot back. “Anyway, you're needed on deck.”

She shut the door again, leaving Sorcha and DeSilva to hurriedly get dressed.

DeSilva was ready first despite his bruising and limped out of the cabin to see what was occurring. Sorcha followed him, only to find Charn still lurking outside the door. As Sorcha stepped out into the short passage leading up to the deck, Charn dealt her a slap around the ear.

“You disgusting little tart.”

The blow staggered Sorcha; Charn sent her stumbling out on deck with a kick to her backside. Sorcha was still nursing her ear and cursing when she caught up with DeSilva.

“That bitch! She's getting off on it, she doesn't disapprove, she's just jealous! Frigid, voyeuristic, judgemental dyke...”

DeSilva patted her on the shoulder absently, standing beside his uncles Kam and Kalidor at the ship's rail, studying the view.

“There.” Kalidor pointed to a distant patch of snow indistinguishable from the rest of the white wasteland spread out below.

DeSilva adjusted the burner, and the airship began to descend, bobbing and braking erratically under his inept control. Looking over the ship's rail herself, Sorcha watched the blank snow resolve into ridges and furrows like a frozen sea. Faint ripples of grey and blue appeared, then the darker shadows of folds and furrows in the snow. Finally, an impact site, a hole in the snow, resolved to view, and emerging from it, the tiny black speck of a man. Only then did Sorcha grasp quite how high up they had been, and still were; not for several minutes more did the airship touch down, landing with a bump and creaking complaint of timbers.

The black speck they had seen from afar was DeKellia, standing beside a man-sized hole in the snow. A trail of blood led from the lip of the hole to where DeKellia stood, pipe smoking in his hand and a wolfish grin on his lips.

Kam Daishen threw a rope ladder down, and DeKellia climbed aboard. Only as he gained the ship's rail did Sorcha see that he climbed one-handed. His right arm was rigid at his side, and there was a patch of darker wetness against the faded black of his clothes. His manner was unchanged, cheerfully dangerous, but he was deathly pale and sweating despite the cold. There was blood on his face and matted in his hair.

As soon as he was aboard, he sank down to sit on the deck with his back to the rail and relit his pipe.

“Haroum,” Kam's deep voice swore, “he's been shot."

"Beaten about the head with a sabre too," Kalidor dryly observed. "About time someone thrashed him at swordplay."

"What are you dribbling about?" DeKellia groaned. "You should see the state of Guillemot DeJiar."

"He can't look worse than you," Charn said, kneeling down so DeKellia could see his own face in the mirror of her mask; the fight aboard Guillemot's flagship had left DeKellia cut about the head, face and shoulders.

“What kind of a sword does that?” Charn asked, with blunt curiosity and very little real concern.

“A Schlager,” DeKellia informed her, grinning at his reflection. “A kind of duelling sword with three edges rather than two. Good for stabbing and scarring.”

Sorcha turned away from the discussion of fencing that ensued, surprised by the realisation that she had no interest at all in the minutiae of swordplay. She was far more concerned with helping DeKellia not to bleed to death. She saw Vashta heading below decks and hurried to catch up with her.

“He needs help,” Sorcha said. “We should heat some water, clean the wounds...”

“What do you think I am on my way for?” Vashta replied.

Sorcha followed the older woman to the galley, where they set water to boil and tore up a sheet to make bandages. Soon they were back up on deck, Sorcha gently peeling off DeKellia's blood-soaked shirt while Vashta searched the ship for medical supplies. While Charn talked, keeping DeKellia lucid with discussions of swordplay, Sorcha began washing the blood away.

She ignored the head cuts, knowing that such wounds bled profusely and usually looked far worse than they actually were, and concentrated instead on cleaning the gunshot-wound in DeKellia's chest. She had done far grislier first-aid on the warriors of the Naril harem after their battles, but her Darian captors had possessed extraordinary powers of regeneration. DeKellia had no such advantage, and despite his implacable good humour he was visibly bleeding to death.

For the first time Sorcha had seen, Hnasi displayed recognisable emotions, prowling around DeKellia, nuzzling at him, and sometimes yowling in distressed concern.

Vashta returned with a doctor's bag that she had found below decks, and now took charge of the situation. “Hold him,” she said, “I'm going to remove the bullet now."

DeSilva knelt down to support his father's head and shoulders. Sorcha took his uninjured hand in both her own. DeKellia caught her eye, winked, and squeezed her hands once as if it were she who needed reassurance. In that moment, Vashta began probing for the bullet inside the wound with a pair of long, thin tongs. DeKellia went rigid, his grip suddenly like a vice on Sorcha's hands. It should have hurt, but she was too taken up with his pain to feel anything herself. Did made no sound. His jaw clenched until tension shuddered through his entire body; he forced a breath from his lungs, breathed in again long and slow, inhaling and exhaling the pain.

His grip on Sorcha's hand was phenomenal. By his physical build, DeKellia was an uncommonly fit middle-aged man. But in his grip was a power that surpassed even the strength of the muscle-bound Darians that Sorcha had known in the harem.

Vashta had found the bullet and got the tongs around it. She braced one foot on the ship's rail beside DeKellia's head, bracing herself in readiness.

“It will hurt less if you scream,” she advised DeKellia.

He forced one eye open and cracked his lips into a smile. “What will hurt less?”

Noth Kalidor approached now and crouched down beside DeKellia, adding his gentle touch to the fierce grip on Sorcha's hands. The Dacoit Master spoke softly in Kellion, but Sorcha did not at first understand; she was distracted by a new sensation in her hands. Coolness seemed to flow from the Dacoit Master, passing from him into Sorcha and DeKellia both. Gradually the words he spoke developed meaning and comprehension dawned in Sorcha's mind.

"There is no pain," Kalidor said, "there is only purpose."

Vashta braced herself and pulled hard on the slender tongs, drawing out the bullet in one agonising bloody effort. DeKellia gasped as the bullet slipped free; Sorcha felt the tension ebb from him suddenly, his grip on her hand relaxing as if the fierce pain had never been.

He sighed and laughed weakly. "Where's Hnasi?"

She came to him, nuzzling his face and chest until he began to cough blood.

"It's not over yet," Vashta said, wiping the blood from her hands. "We still have to cauterise."

"I can do that," DeKellia said. "I'm fine now. You go clean up; you've got blood in your hair."

"I don't care."

DeKellia smiled and traced her lips with his bloody fingers. "And I can manage. Give a man space to breathe, eh?"

Shrugging away any further assistance, DeKellia sat up and propped his back against the ship's rail. Sorcha watched mutely as he dragged the medical bag closer and fished inside. Among the implements was a six-inch metal tube with a v-shaped groove running end to end. Sorcha had to restrain a sympathetic shudder as DeKellia inserted two inches of the tube into his wound and poured a measure of gunpowder into the groove. Striking a match, he lit his pipe and inhaled deeply before putting fire to the black powder. Quick as a snake, DeKellia whipped the slender tube from his wound and let the smoking gunpowder sear inside. He snarled at the pain, kicked his heels hard on the deck and knocked his head back against the rail; his breath came in ragged gasps when the spasm eased.

"I'd forgotten quite how much that hurt," he said when he could speak again. "Where's Drake? And Kam, did they both survive the battle?"

"Of course," said Kam Daishen, appearing now in DeKellia's line of sight.

"Drake's below," DeSilva said. "Seasickness, he says."

"Airsickness," DeKellia replied. "And no wonder, you looked set to crash as you were coming in. Who was flying this thing?"

"I was," DeSilva said, defensively. "There's more to it than turning the wheel; Guillemot made it look easy and he still kept crashing."

"It's a ship," DeKellia said, beginning to pick himself up off the deck. "Shouldn't one of our Silvans be flying it, Charn or Sorcha?"

Sorcha backed away, shaking her head. DeSilva could not hide a smile, but added, “Charn did help, but she doesn't understand the burner.”

“Oh, and you do?” DeKellia quirked an eyebrow.

“Yes. It's an amazing invention; there's a lever on it that controls the accelerant, and you have to feed it coal and adjust the opening at the top and..." He became aware of his father's stare and frowned. "What?"

"You got on well with Guillemot?" DeKellia asked, archly. "Was he mad or inspired?"

"Well, there's no denying he was a genius," DeSilva said. "Look at this machine; it actually works. Did he ever mention which Kellion house he came from? DeJiar is obviously a pseudonym."

"Probably a twist on 'birdman'; you're the linguist, you tell me. I only speak four languages, after all. More to the point is whether you can get this thing off the ground again.”

“I've been thinking about that,” DeSilva said. “There's a limit to the fuel supply, and I have no idea how far we might safely fly this thing. I also have no idea how anything except the burner actually works; I'm not a sailor, this is not a normal ship, it has rigging but I doubt that any normal sailor would have much more idea of how it works at first glance than I do. We can fly it up and down. I can point it vaguely where we want and hope the wind is blowing that way.”

DeKellia listened to this speech soberly. Then he said, “Excuses, son; just make it work.”

DeSilva sighed and relit his pipe. “I don't think you're quite understanding...”

“Monte,” Sorcha interrupted, suddenly, “when you lit your pipe, your ring...”

DeSilva frowned in irritation for a moment. “What? It's a magic ring, I...” He paused and glanced first at Sorcha, then at his father, then at the ruby ring on his finger from which he habitually lit his pipe.

“It's a magic ring,” DeSilva repeated, then locked eyes with his father again. “We may have just solved the fuel problem and probably the steering. If not, then we'll all die in a massive fireball.”

DeKellia took the ring when DeSilva offered it. After studying for a moment the dancing fire sprite imprisoned in the ruby, DeKellia lit his pipe off her fire and hand the ring back to his son.

“Make it work, son,” he said. “What I really want to know is how you captured this bloody airship in the first place; blowing the damn things up is hard enough, without trying to take one intact."

Sorcha was desperately curious about this detail herself, but had not asked; in the bedroom, she had far more pressing personal questions, while in public she lacked the clarity of mind to grasp the details of battle.

"Khyle Tarn did it all," DeSilva explained. "We'd never have taken the ship without him. After Guillemot flew off, the rest of his fleet went for the Palace. We brought a couple down from the walls, but they were too many. Then one went out of control and we saw fighting on the deck; Khyle had climbed up the netting and boarded her. He took the wheel and rammed another ship. They fired back and all the ships turned on each other; without Guillemot they were a band of cutthroats. The whole fleet went down fighting and Khyle crashed the Darician Queen on the Palace lawns. Khyle was badly injured. He won't accept any help; said he was waiting for you."

Sorcha had known virtually none of this; even Khyle Tarn's condition had largely escaped her attention.

“He's hurt?” She asked, vaguely aware that she had seen the Hrin warrior stagger below decks before she went with DeSilva to their cabin. Guilt shivered through her that she had indulged her needs while one of their comrades lay wounded.

“Khyle's dying,” DeSilva said, bluntly. “Like I said, he wouldn't accept any help.”

DeKellia heaved himself up off the deck, waving off any assistance, and leant against the rail.

“He wants to speak to me? Where is he?”

“He went below...” DeSilva started to say, but even as the three of them looked as one towards the hatch leading below decks, Khyle Tarn himself appeared, leaning on Noth Kalidor's arm. He straightened when he saw DeKellia, and walked with slow dignity to meet him, limping slightly and visibly in pain, but betraying no weakness in his face. Now that she looked, Sorcha saw the blood matting the Hrin warrior's fur and clothes.

“Get us underway, son,” DeKellia said, and DeSilva drew Sorcha away by the elbow, leaving his father to speak with Khyle Tarn alone.

“Come on,” DeSilva said, leading Sorcha back below decks despite her protests.

“Wait, what about Khyle, you said he was dying...”

“Let my father deal with it.” From his tone and the look on his face, Sorcha knew she would not see the Hrin warrior again. Though she feared and had hardly spoken to him, grief cut her to know that he had not long to live. Worse was the fear that his acceptance of death caused her; to escape, she allowed DeSilva to steer her back to their shared cabin without resistance.