Read Online In the Skin of a Nunqua by R. J. Pouritt - Free Book Online

tavern, reserved exclusively for the commanders. Coda put a shot of liquor in front of her. “You’ve earned it.”
    A compliment? She lifted the cup. “You didn’t make it easy.” The fiery drink filled her mouth and drained down her throat.
    “It’s not my job to make it easy.” Coda lifted his own glass in a toast. “To the meanest woman I’ve ever met, who can give as well as take, and who’s a hell of a lot of fun on an obstacle course. Congratulations, Commander.” Coda gulped down his drink, then refilled his cup from a bottle on the table.
    “I’m not mean,” she said. The men at the table laughed. Even quiet, stone-faced Hajari cracked a smile.
    “Do you know where you’re going after this?” Coda asked.
    “The castle,” Shanti said. “I’ve been assigned as the princess’s personal guard.”
    “I don’t envy you.”
    “It’s only for a short time. When spring comes, I’ll accompany Commander Gy to a new camp.”
    Coda turned to Commander Hajari. “Who’s in charge of the royal guards at the castle?”
    Hajari answered in a voice that reminded Shanti of a snake, if snakes could speak. “I believe it’s High Commander Kyros.”
    “Not good for you,” Coda said to Shanti.
    “Why not?”
    Hajari spoke in his usual aloof hiss. “Kyros is not fond of women.”
    “Oh, he’s fond of women, all right.” Coda stopped a passing waitress and ordered another bottle. “As long as he can get under their skirts. You wear the uniform of a soldier, a female commander. He’ll not like you. Unless . . .”
    “Unless what?” she challenged.
    Coda’s hearty laugh drowned out the noise of the tavern. He smacked Shanti good-naturedly on the back, propelling her head and shoulders forward. Commander Coda didn’t know his own strength sometimes. Or maybe he did.
    It seemed strange to be talking with the same men who had treated her so terribly, told her she was a waste of skin. But she knew that their cruel games were just that: games to test her competence under pressure. Other soldiers quit rather than suffer through the ordeal. Shanti had learned to play the game long before she became a member of the Willovian military, and she was good at it.
    “Don’t let Kyros push you around,” Commander Gy said.
    “But he outranks me.”
    “And I outrank him. ” Gy took a pipe out of his pocket and stuffed the chamber with tobacco. “Remember, you work for me.”
    Coda drank another shot of liquor in one gulp and set the cup on the table without so much as a waver. “Where’s home for you, Shanti? Are you going to visit your parents before starting work at the castle?”
    “Both my parents are dead.”
    “Sorry. Brothers or sisters?”
    “Only child.”
    “Family?” Coda said.
    “I have an uncle. He lives far from—”
    “You can stay with my family for a while,” Gy said. “It’s on the way to the castle.”
    Stay with the high commander and his family? As uncomfortable as that would be, it was an offer she must accept. “Thank you, sir.”
    “I’ll expect you in a few days. It will take at least that long to get reacquainted with my wife.” He puffed on the pipe with an air of self-satisfaction. “Give her what she’s been missing.”
    “A few days,” Coda said, “or a few seconds?”
    Everyone except sword master Hajari laughed at the joke. He scrutinized Shanti with slanted eyes sunk deep in a weathered and serious face, like a serpent eyeing its prey. Hajari nodded once—a small gesture of approval that meant more to her than all the free drinks and backslaps of the other rowdy soldiers put together.
    *
    Shanti stayed three days with Commander Gy, his wife, Tova, and their two children at the family’s farmhouse. She slept in a small room by the kitchen and helped Tova cook and gather food from the garden. Plenty of time was available to take her horse for long rides through the countryside and visit the town. The night before she was to leave for the castle, she sat