Balanced on the Blades Edge #2 Deathmaker by Lindsay Buroker Page A

chuckled.
    “But this isn’t quite what I thought you were searching for.” The captain extended a hand toward Cas.
    “No,” Tolemek said.
    She caught his eyes—or maybe he was studying her at that moment anyway—and silently implored him to keep quiet about who she was. Or even to let her go. Did he have that kind of sway? Or were all decisions in regard to prisoners left to the captain?
    “She someone special?” the captain asked. “Or were you just feeling randy tonight?”
    That drew snorts and more chuckles.
    “She ain’t much to look at,” the man standing in front of Cas said. Yeah? Who was he to talk? How could he even chew his dinner with those teeth? “Not with all them bruises. Her whole face looks like someone used it for a punching bag. There’s some girls in town who—er...” The pirate’s expression grew nervous, almost contrite, when he glanced at Tolemek.
    “Wouldn’t be afraid to sleep with the Deathmaker?” The captain smirked.
    “I don’t know,” Brown Teeth said. “I mean, I haven’t asked. I figure he’s purty enough, but I ain’t a girl, so I don’t know if’n... uhm...” The man clasped his hands behind his back, apparently deciding he had shot enough holes in his flier.
    The captain smacked Tolemek on the chest. “Darts just called you pretty. If the girl doesn’t entertain you tonight, I think you’ve got a backup invitation.”
    “Coming up behind us,” someone called softly from ten meters back down the trail.
    “Shutter those lanterns, boys,” the captain said, pulling a pistol from his belt. “Target practice coming.”
    Cas caught a grimace on Tolemek’s face before the lights disappeared. Her captor—she had yet to see the man’s face, but he had the meaty arms of a smith and the breath of a dead fish—dragged her a couple of steps into the foliage. After the light, it took her eyes a moment to adjust, and she wasn’t the first to see the figures jogging up the path toward them. Three guards. It was too dark to make out their uniforms, but who else would be searching the jungle at night?
    At some unspoken signal, several pistols fired at once.
    Two guards crumpled immediately. The rearmost one cried out in pain and tried to run. More pistols fired, hammering him in the back. He toppled into the brush beside the trail.
    The lanterns came back up.
    “Guess this isn’t the best place for a confabulation.” The captain grinned and dipped into an ammo pouch to reload his pistol. Cas’s gaze snagged on the pouch for a moment. It was probably made from some kind of hide, but that might have been human skin too.
    She told herself that as long as she wasn’t locked in a Cofah cell, her odds of finding a way back home were still better than they had been before, but it was a struggle to find greater optimism than that.
    She wondered what Tolemek thought about the downed guards. After he had worked hard not to kill anyone all night. His face didn’t give away much. His ropes of hair hung around his eyes, shadowing them, helping hide his thoughts. Maybe that was why he preferred the style. Or maybe he simply didn’t care, and his earlier efforts had been nothing more than experimenting with his various toys. Most of the pirates had the bronze skin and dark hair of the Cofah, though one had black skin and a couple others might have been from Iskandia. Wherever they hailed from originally, they didn’t seem to mind killing the Cofah.
    “Let’s get back to the Night Hunter ,” the captain said. “Too much law down here on land.”
    “I have an errand to attend to first,” Tolemek said. “It shouldn’t take long. I’ll meet you at the ship.”
    “And the girl?”
    “She helped me escape. Treat her well.” Tolemek looked around the circle of men, but he also pinned the captain with his gaze. The command pleased Cas, but she wondered what he risked in trying to give an order to his superior officer. Maybe the Deathmaker had enough of a reputation