Free The Scarlet Empress by Susan Grant

already during her endless, ongoing recovery. Her ankle twisted, sending a spear of pain up her calf, but she rolled her weight to the side, landing on her back in a cold puddle of mud, but saving her leg from another injury. The question wasn’t what hurt, but what didn’t hurt; her body had turned into a war zone with the enemy winning. Blindly she threw a fist, bringing up a knee. It impacted something solid, and she heard a muffled, “Oomph.”
    “Ow! Cam! Be still!”
    Cam stopped fighting. “Zhurihe?” She tried to throw off the blanket, but the girl kept it in place over her head. “God almighty,” Cam mumbled, tasting sour wool. “Will you tell me what’s going on? I’m fixing to suffocate in here!”
    The blanket moved back slightly. Zhurihe sat on top of her, straddling her hips. “This,” Cam told her in a tight voice, “does not feel good.”
    But the girl was not listening to her. Her head was tipped and she was peering at the sky. Cam listened, too, but she no longer heard the distant, droning noise of the aircraft. It took everything she had not to let disappointment overwhelm her. “Did you hear it, Zhurihe? It was an aircraft. An aircraft!”
    Zhurihe’s dark eyes were wild with alarm. “You ran outside to see it.”
    “Of course I did.” Cam hesitated at the girl’s obvious alarm. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Because you do not know about anything!” Zhurihe’s small fists grabbed the blanket draped around Cam’s shoulder and tugged, half raising Cam’s head off the dirt. For such a petite person, Zhurihe had amazing strength. “If you see it, it may have seen you. Never let them see you. Never! It’s why I have told you always to wear a veil when outside.” She took Cam by the shoulders and shook her.
    Teeth chattering, Cam grabbed her hands and stopped her. “I thought it was local custom, the veil.”
    “It was for your protection! To keep you safe here.” Her expression grew even more intense. Her apprehension was contagious. Although Cam didn’t understand the threat, the very real fear Zhurihe felt launched straight into her gut and turned it cold. “Zhurihe, how did you find me? Did you by chance steal me from someone?”
    For the first time, the girl broke eye contact. “I told you.”
    “Tell me again.”
    “It was far to the north, a remote place few know.”
    “You were picking mushrooms and tripped over my pod.” The story was becoming harder and harder to believe, especially now with the bolt from the blue of seeing the airplane. And if the story of her discovery was a lie, what else was, too? The nuclear war? The lack of technology? Bree’s whereabouts? “You asked your family for help, and they brought me here on an oxcart.”
    “Yes.” Zhurihe’s wild eyes swung back to Cam. “Promise me that you will never go with them if they come for you. Promise me!”
    The girl, it seemed, had but one thing on her mind. “If
who
comes for me?”
    “Anyone!”
    “Can we be a little more specific?”
    “The emperor’s Rim Riders.”
    Ah, so that was it. The vicious barbarian warlord whose stronghold was thousands of miles away. The monster who, according to Zhurihe, ate peasants alive and made overcoats from their dried flesh. He sounded a little like Genghis Khan crossed with Count Dracula, but since neither he nor his minions had ever been seen in this remote place, she hadn’t much worried about it. “He has jet aircraft, Zhurihe. Do you know what that means? He has computers. And if he has computers . . .” The possibilities were mind-boggling. Suddenly Cam was extremely interested in the emperor, despite his rather gross-sounding wardrobe and eating habits.
    But Zhurihe didn’t share her enthusiasm at all. “Promise me. Please.”
    “Okay, okay. I won’t go with him.”
    “The Rim Riders!”
    “I promise I won’t go with them. What are Rim Riders, anyway?”
    “They’re the emperor’s bounty hunters. You’ll know them when you see them. They