Twilight Fall

“I did not wish to interrupt while you are training your new man, my lady”—he neatly caught the edge of the door before she could slam it in his face—”but there is a problem that requires your attention.”

“Indeed.” She gave him a pointed look. “Will someone die or the Realm burn to the ground if I do not attend to it for another hour or two?”

“Three hours.” Aedan called out. “If you wish her coherent, make it four.”

Rain looked innocently at the ceiling. “It is Locksley, my lady. He says it is an emergency involving Suzerain Jaus.”

Robin often made jests, but not about other Kyn. She wished Byrne would let her keep a telephone in their chambers, but he had been adamant about keeping the human technology he hated out of their bedroom. “Have the call forwarded to the office. We will be there in a minute.”

Rain nodded and then looked down. “Jayr.” His brow furrowed. “When did you grow breasts?”

Jayr closed the door in his face before she walked over to the armoire to retrieve some clothes. Byrne reached it before her and leaned back against it.

His garnet red hair framed a strong face covered with dark blue tattoos and a smug smile. “It is my duty as your seneschal to dress you.”

“You can never seem to finish the task.” She nudged him aside and reached for a shirt and trousers, pausing and taking one of her new dresses. Tall and lean, Jayr had made the change from human to Kyn in the fourteenth century, before her body had finished making its natural mortal transition from girl to woman. Now, thanks to Alexandra Keller and the treatments she had administered, Jayr had small but mature breasts, curved hips, and a more feminine appearance. “Rob would not call if it were not important.”

“Aye, he would.” Byrne bent down to press a hard kiss on her mouth. “Rob wanted you and the Realm for himself. He is a poor loser.”

“He is our closest Kyn ally,” she reminded him, “and your best friend.” She pulled the frock over her head, tugged it down, and straightened the skirt. She gave her smiling lover a pointed look. “Do you need my assistance to dress?”

“No, but when we come back,” he warned as he grabbed his own garments, “I am barricading that door.”

A few minutes later Jayr and a scowling Byrne walked from their chamber in the private wing to the business offices. Knight's Realm, which the humans of central Florida knew as a medieval-themed tourist attraction, was run and inhabited by Darkyn men and women who had actually lived during the Middle Ages.

Jayr was proud of how well the men of her jardin had adjusted to the recent changes in rule. Byrne, who had been suzerain of the Realm since building the Kyn stronghold, had stepped down. Michael Cyprien, the Kyn seigneur, had named Jayr, Byrne's seneschal, to serve as the very first female to rule over a jardin.

Some of the more conservative jardin outside the Realm still didn't approve of the notorious switch, nor of the appointment of a female to such a position of power. That Jayr and Byrne had also become lovers had been viewed as utterly scandalous by the traditionalists among their kind.

But Jayr had proven her honor and her worth at the past winter tournament to the satisfaction of everyone who had attended, and they were loud with their praise of her. As for those who still grumbled, none dared to publicly speak out against the suzeraina, not after what Byrne had done to the men who had tried to kill both him and Jayr during the annual gathering.

Harlech, Jayr's second, was waiting for them outside the business office.

“I regret that we had to disturb you, my lady.” Harlech, her most loyal supporter, emphasized her title with a certain amount of relish. “But Lord Locksley was most insistent on speaking with you.”

Jayr nodded, then went in and put the call on the telephone speaker. “Good evening, Lord Locksley. How may we be of service?”

“Jayr. Byrne. I apologize for the lateness of my call.” Locksley, usually cheerful and charming, sounded grim. “Suzerain Jaus was flying down to visit my jardin tonight when his plane was hijacked by a Brethren operative.”

“Have you contacted Chicago, lad?” Byrne asked.

“They informed me after Jaus contacted them by mobile phone,” Locksley said. “It seems the hijacker murdered Jaus's regular pilot, took his place, and killed the copilot. When Jaus confronted him, he killed himself. Jaus called and asked to speak with a pilot who could give him instructions on how to land the plane.”

“Dear God.” Jayr couldn't imagine such a nightmarish scenario. “Where is the plane now? Has he attempted the landing yet?”

“We don't know. Hold for a moment; Scarlet has just handed me a fax from Chicago.” The line went silent for several moments. “The last time the plane appeared on flight-control radar, it was in the vicinity of the Georgia-Florida border. It disappeared shortly thereafter, along with the signal from the mobile phone Jaus was using to talk to the instructor pilot.” There was the sound of paper crumpling. “They do not know if he was able to land the aircraft.”

“What can we do now. Rob?”

“Assemble your trackers and send out search teams,” Locksley said. “Monitor local news reports. Humans may find the plane before we do, so be prepared to move quickly to retrieve the suzerain. I will send twenty of my best trackers down to you to aid in the search.”

“Have Jaus's men inquire as to how much fuel the plane carried.” Byrne suggested, “and how far it could have flown before running out. That may narrow our search area.”

“I will, thank you, Aedan.” Locksley said. “Jaus's tresora told me one more thing. There is a human female on board with him. She may or may not be part of this attempted hijacking. Contact me as soon as you have any new information, and I will do the same. Good luck, my friends.” Locksley ended the call.

“You sure you know how to handle a boat by yourself, boy?” the owner of the charter boat service asked, squinting at Kyan again. “Rivers 'round here get a mite tricky, 'specially if you've never fished 'em.”

“I know river.” Kyan didn't have enough English to tell the middle-aged white man how many boats he owned in China; nor did he care to explain himself. He breathed in, the man's sweat filling his nose.

Fragments of thought and images flooded Kyan's head. Damn economy… doing the best I can. The man in the back office, a stack of invoices in front of him, worried as he talked on the phone. Heart attack… HMO… Democrats… Billy. A cluttered, dismal trailer. Portrait of a dead wife. A son in an army uniform. More invoices.

From those disjointed thoughts and images Kyan knew the man was not greedy, only struggling to keep from losing his business to his creditors. Kyan peeled off another dozen bills from his roll of the unfamiliar currency, adding it to the stack before saying the two words the man wanted to hear. “Security deposit.”

“All right, then. Long as you're sure.” The man scooped up the money and tucked it into his till before handing over the keys and a business card. “You call me if you can't make it back by Friday. I got this boat rented out for some weekend warriors think they know where all the bass are, dumb-ass fools.” He chuckled. “If you're late, even ten minutes, it'll be an extra five hundred. I can't afford to lose the business.”

Kyan nodded and walked out to the dock, where seven boats in various sizes and conditions were moored. He'd chartered the largest mainly because it had the most powerful outboard motor, as well as a tiny cabin with a bunk. Once he was on the water, he planned to dock only to refuel, get supplies, and kill the girl.

He spotted a pay phone and debated over whether or not to report in. This was his business, not theirs. At the same time, he had an old obligation to fulfill.

He dialed the number.

“Where are you?” his teacher demanded at once.

“In Florida, on river.” He hated speaking English, but his teacher could not understand Chinese. “I track her water.”

“Give me your exact location.”

“Trace call.” Kyan felt impatient that his teacher would use such tactics to stall him. “You no interfere. She mine.”

“The plane went down,” his teacher said harshly. “How do you know that she's still alive?”

“Always know.” He hung up the phone.

Kyan released the mooring lines before he stepped onto the deck and checked the motor and fuel before taking the boat out the narrow channel to the St. Johns River.

Even in spring Florida was warm and humid, and the river water was muddy with runoff and pollution. Kyan didn't mind. It was the water, not the condition of it, that mattered to him. He never felt at ease on land, and the hours he had wasted tracking her from Chicago to Atlanta to this place had left him tense and irritable.

Kyan stopped in the afternoon for fuel at a small pier. He tied the boat to the dock and waited, but no attendant came out to the pumps. Kyan knew he could find the girl, but he had already tired of making himself understood to Americans. He didn't have the time or patience to read every person he met.

“It's self-serve, buddy,” a fair-haired girl called from the window of a shack at the end of the pier.

Kyan didn't understand the words, so he secured the boat and jumped up onto the pier. The shack, little more than an aluminum shed with hand-lettered pricing signs, sold worms and bait for fishermen. The young girl inside was reading a textbook and writing in a spiral-bound notebook.

He took out the small book of English phrases that he had bought at the airport in Chicago.

“Dude, you are so going to get your butt kicked if you use a phrase book on this river,” the girl said without looking up, and then translated her own words by repeating them in his native language.

Kyan frowned. “You speak Chinese.”

“Uh-huh.” She kept reading.

She was young, tanned, and hardly more than a teenager. It didn't make sense that she would speak his tongue. Did she have a phrase book? “You know Chinese how?”

She lifted her face, revealing Caucasian features and Asian-shaped blue eyes. “My grandmother taught me.” Her lips bowed as she subjected him to a slow, thorough inspection of her own. “Wah-how-how.”