Free 02 - The Barbed Rose by Gail Dayton Page A

contempt for those she guarded. Not that he deserved better.
    “No, what?” The captain spoke casually, did not change her lounging posture, but the habit of command rang in her words.
    Sergeant Omvir came to attention, looking decidedly unmilitary with his hair curling loose around his face. “Captain—”
    “No. I will not allow you to remove the chains from my prisoner,” the lieutenant interrupted. “This man is an inmate at Katreinet Prison, despite his current…relocation. As long as he is outside the walls of the prison and not in a properly secured cell, he will be kept in chains.
    “Now, if you are through with your…consultation—” The lieutenant’s expression betrayed her disgust at what she assumed had been their purpose—and truthfully, she was not far wrong, given what had happened. “I will take my prisoner back into my custody and return him to his cell.”
    “No, Lieutenant Tylle, you will not.” Captain Varyl rose to her feet, backing the lieutenant away as she did so. The captain now was powered with the energy she’d seemed drained of only moments ago. “Do you forget who is captain here? This man is now in my care. He is—”
    “Does a quick fuck substitute for transfer orders now?”
    The captain stood motionless, shocked by the lieutenant’s insubordinate obscenity for only a moment. Then she backhanded the shorter woman across the face with a power that rocked her on her heels and sent her stumbling back. Omvir caught the captain around the waist and swung her back before she could follow up on the blow.
    Joh struggled out of the chair to his feet, his chains setting up a furious rattle. What had just happened? Was the captain defending her own honor or—or his?
    Surely not his. He had none. Though he had begun to hope he might be given the chance to regain some small part of it. Still he was not worth a quarrel. “I am ready to go, Lieutenant.”
    Tylle reached out to grab his arm and the captain blocked her. “And just how far do you think you’ll get, Joh?”
    What did she mean by—? Oh . He remembered then, how for weeks the Tibran couldn’t get more than twenty paces from her without collapsing in a fit. Joh sank back down, perching this time on the edge of the chair so he could stand more quickly if need be. He was well and truly bound to her. Trapped by his own will. If he had not offered himself to the One, he would not have been accepted, and now he could go nowhere but at her side until the link between them was fully forged. And she terrified him.
    Captain Varyl had pulled paper from a nearby desk and was scratching out a message with the poorly trimmed quill left on the desktop. A moment later, she thrust the message at Sergeant Omvir. “Take this to the Reinine. It’s a request for transfer orders.” Her eyes flicked toward the lieutenant. “Take it yourself, Torchay. Don’t hand it off to a servant. Obed can stand in as bodyguard. His skills are almost the equal of yours.”
    “Better, in some things,” the sergeant muttered, tucking away the note, then reaching up to gather back his hair. He tied it, rather than braiding it properly, but it helped make him look a bit more military. “Maybe we ought to see about getting Obed a set of blacks.”
    “I have my own blacks,” the dark man spoke, seeming to appear from nowhere, dressed in unrelieved black; a loose, foreign-looking robe over Adaran tunic and trews.
    The captain’s bodyguard looked him up and down. “So you do. But there’s nothing about them to show who you serve, is there?” He spun on his heel and departed, leaving Joh feeling caught in undercurrents he could not map.
    “Please, Lieutenant, sit.” The captain’s military mien faded a bit and she gestured at the chairs, playing hostess. “Obed, ring for refreshments, if you would.”
    “My presence here is for duty, Captain,” Lieutenant Tylle sneered. “Not pleasant diversion.”
    “Sit.” The steel in Captain Varyl’s voice