Free Jabone's Sword by Selina Rosen Page A

she'd recognize anywhere. As she grabbed her gear off her saddle and a groom took her horse from her, she looked towards the sound and saw him. Her breath caught in her chest. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His dark black hair went to the middle of his back and was braided in two small braids on either side of his face while the rest was allowed to flow freely around his head. He had three earrings in his left ear and a ring in his left eyebrow. His gambeson was the bright colors the Kartiks seemed to delight in and that she, being from in country, had hardly ever seen. His breaches and boots were dark black. For a minute all time stood still; she swore it did. Then he dropped his weapon to his side and turned to look at her, and his dark eyes just seemed to look right through her. Without realizing it she had walked right up to where he was.
    "Kasiria!" Derek, the Captain of the Guard at the garrison said at her shoulder, and from the smile on his face and the loudness of his voice she knew it wasn't the first time he'd said her name. Derek was an old friend of her father's and one of the few people who was privileged to know her true identity. "Is something wrong?" he asked of the vacant stare on her face.
    "I lost three of my men to bandits, sir," she said, never taking her eyes off the young Kartik man.
    "I'm sorry to hear about your loses, Sergeant."
    "It could have been far worse, there were at least twenty of them," she said in a voice she knew sounded detached, as if she was unaffected by the whole thing, which wasn't what she wanted, but she'd never been very good at pretending at emotion she wasn't really feeling.
    "I will expect a full report of the incident later. If you're up for it, Kasiria, as long as you're here you might as well meet Jabone and his people. They are new recruits from the Kartik. You will be training together in the coming weeks. My hope is that they will teach us something of their ways of fighting and we will teach them something of ours."
    The boy held out his hand to her in a gesture that was obviously foreign to him, and she took it and shook it, holding it longer than she should have just looking into his black eyes and feeling a million things she had never felt before. "Hello," she said.
    "Hello," he replied, and it was obvious that Jethrik wasn't his native tongue.
    She finally let go of his hand.
    "Are you well?" he asked. "Have you been wounded?" All right he had a thick accent but his Jethrik was actually very good.
    "No, I . . . I'm fine just a little rattled. Did you and yours have a good journey?"
    "Aye, it was a fine journey," he said, and the way he looked at her made her feel naked. A tall, dark very beautiful girl came up and took his arm. She had bright dancing brown eyes and had three rings in her right ear and one also in her eye brow she said something to him in Kartik that made him blush some and Kasiria was immediately jealous that the other girl was touching him. "My pack . . . I mean my comrades, Ufalla," he said indicating the woman on his arm, "Jestia and Tarius." He pointed to the other two in turn. Jestia was if possible even more beautiful than Ufalla. Her raven-black hair pulled back from her face in a single braid. Her eyes were such a dark shade of green that Kasiria at first thought they were black like Jabone's. Her features were fine, her nose aristocratic, and her every movement seemed to ooze sensuality. She had at least a dozen rings in her left ear and three in her right.
    "Tarius?" She was taken aback looking at the small, long-haired blond man who also had three rings in his left ear. "You mean like Tarius the Black?"
    "I was named for her," he said proudly.
    Jabone shot him a look and said to Kasiria. "As are many babies in the Kartik. My name as well has become common as their legend grows."
    Kasiria sized them up as a group. Jabone and Ufalla would have made the height and weight requirements for Sword Masters easily, but the