hunt for you.” He patted the butt of his rifle. “And we do love to hunt.”
“That part makes sense—in some bizarre way, although I can’t help remembering all the Zetithians you guys killed. You can see why that would make me less than trusting of you.”
“Yeah, I get that, but there was only a bounty on Zetithian males—and Grekkor wanted them dead. Since both males and females wear their hair long, it was hard to tell the difference sometimes, especially from a distance. Some guys killed anything that looked Zetithian and sorted the males out later.” Leaning closer, he added, “That was all before my time, though. Never killed a Zetithian in my life.”
His confiding air was undoubtedly intended to make him seem trustworthy, but Klara wasn’t buying it. She reached for the door handle. “I think I’ll go back inside. Something tells me talking to you isn’t going to do me any good.”
She’d learned a little more about what motivated the Nedwut hunters, but in her present situation, she might give him some trinket to let her go only to have him run her down before she reached an exit. Then he’d haul her back to her room and the cycle would start all over again. She doubted he would get many honor credits for that. Then again, he might not care.
“Suit yourself.” He leaned back against the wall. “I’m not going anywhere. Not for a while, anyway.”
She thought for a moment. “Since I’ve already been caught, I could bribe you with something to let me go, couldn’t I?”
He appeared to give this option careful consideration before shaking his head. “Nope. It’d be different if I’d caught you myself. I’d have a tough time explaining how you got away from me.”
Personally, Klara didn’t give a damn what happened to him in the wake of any escape attempts. The only thing stopping her was the safety of her friends.
It always comes back to that.
That and a Nedwut guard bent on covering his ass.
“Do you like working here?”
“Not particularly. Most of the time it’s boring as hell. Wouldn’t mind a little action now and then.”
“Are you saying I should make a run for it?”
“Not unless you enjoy getting stunned. Don’t especially care for it, myself.”
She’d never encountered a Nedwut this chatty before. “You’re more talkative than most Nedwuts. Why is that?”
“No idea. Unless it’s the being bored thing. Guard duty is pretty easy, but you practically have to kill yourself trying to stay awake.”
“I can understand that.” She thought for a moment. “What if you were to say I’d escaped while you were asleep?”
He shook his head again, but with more vigor than before. “You don’t want to know.”
Klara was about to deny being squeamish when she recalled a few of the atrocities she’d witnessed, and some of the victims had been Nedwuts. “Okay. I won’t try to escape. But if you could get me something to eat, I’d really appreciate it. After all, I’m eating for—” She nearly bit her tongue in two to keep from finishing that sentence.
“For what?”
“The, um, first time today.”
He slanted a glance at her through narrowed lids—including one that swept toward her lower abdomen. “That isn’t what you were going to say, is it?”
“No. But that’s something you don’t want to know.” Unless he was into blackmail, which, given the usual Nedwut proclivity for illegal dealings, he probably was.
“Then you need to get back in your room before I tell Pelarus about my, um, suspicions.”
Great. She’d unwittingly given him more power over her than he already had. “Okay, but don’t forget you were the one who left the door unlocked. And you were asleep.”
“Guess that makes us even, doesn’t it?”
“I guess it does.”
She could only hope that Nedwuts, particularly this one, were as honorable as he’d claimed. Otherwise, her babies were as good as dead.
With no one to talk to and nothing else to do, Moe fell victim to a hearty round of shoulda, woulda, coulda. Why had he ever come here to begin with? He could have dealt with his anger somewhere else. Luxaria would’ve been a great place to pick a fight without getting kidnapped. He’d been there plenty of times. Why the devil hadn’t he done it then?
Because Klara wasn’t there. Oh, yeah. That old bugaboo fate had taken a hand. After all, she’d needed a Zetithian male in order to reproduce. The gods apparently didn’t want the Zetithian species to become entirely extinct.
If that was the case, why hadn’t they intervened