by Holly Lisle
“Your mother honors your friends’ families? The woman who would declare you barzanne?”
“If she knows I’m alive, then I’m already barzanne. And my friends’ families . . . are doomed.” He looked at Kait with haunted eyes. “This dream of yours—it had to be just a dream.”
Kait couldn’t manage much of a smile. “Our spirits dance while we sleep, Ry. Is that a dream?”
He didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to. The stricken expression on his face told her more than she wanted to know.
“So what are you going to tell them?”
He winced. Thought a moment. “Nothing. Even if what you dreamed is true, we can’t do anything to protect the people we left behind in Calimekka. But if I tell them, I could cause my friends endless unresolvable fear, and I could chance them throwing their own lives away.”
“How so?”
“We’ll pass close to Calimekka on the run toward Glaswherry Hala. We’ll sail through the Thousand Dancers, turn south just off the point of Goft, and follow the coast down. They might jump ship in Goft to get home; if they reach Calimekka, they’ll be executed for sure.”
Kait considered that. She had once held some hope of seeing her own dead relatives again; now she knew that would never happen. Her beloved family was dead, all of them lost to her as surely as they would have been to anyone else. Their souls had already crossed through the Veil, their bodies fed the earth, and she would never see them again in this life. That was the hard truth.
She said, “I hope for their sakes that whoever pursues you knows nothing of them.”
Ry nodded. He dropped into his own bunk again, and she heard him adjusting his covers. He said nothing for so long that she thought he wouldn’t say anything else, and she let herself drift toward the hazy borders of sleep. So when he did speak, it surprised her.
“I owe them my life several times over,” he said. “I owe them the safety of their families. If I’ve betrayed them, even unknowingly—if I’ve cost them the people I promised I kept safe . . . how then do I pay them what I owe?”
Chapter 16
Long weeks passed, and storms followed fair days, and winter winds filled the sails, but little changed aboard the Wind Treasure. Kait had not yet found the words to say to Ian, and since he avoided her, even refusing to look at her, she let herself accept his distance.
Nor had she made peace with her close proximity to Ry. She had hoped at the beginning of the voyage home that she would become used to his presence, and that familiarity would breed, if not contempt, at least indifference. But her desire for him only grew stronger with every passing day, and the effort she had to put into maintaining magical shields to buffer his effect on her doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled. She’d spent two full Shifts hiding out in the bilge, subsisting on rats; she had made Hasmal lock her in because she knew that, in Ry’s presence and in Karnee form, she would not have the self-control to avoid him. She became thin, then gaunt, and her eyes hollowed and shadowed until the image that looked back at her in the cabin’s brass mirror might have been Jayti’s specter.
Finally Hasmal said, “You can’t live like this any longer.” He was sitting on his bunk, restitching the seams in his boots. “You’re killing yourself fighting against him this hard.”
But she shrugged. “We’re almost to Ibera. We’ll leave the ship with the Mirror before it makes landfall, and I’ll never see him again. Once I’m away from him, I’ll be better.”
His fingers looped the gut cord around themselves skillfully, worked the needle through the holes where the old seams had been, and tugged firmly, and the cord disappeared into the boot like a snake down a rat hole. “I wish I knew that were true. But I don’t think distance will have any effect on this thing between the two of you. It’s magic, Kait. Part of a spell that is bigger than both of you, and as powerful as any spell I’ve ever seen. And it’s growing stronger. I noticed the first edges of the spell even before he . . . ah, before he rescued us. For lack of a better word. Now it binds the two of you together like a rope—visible to magic-sight, and so thick and strong that there are moments when I imagine I can see it with my eyes.”
“Ropes can be cut.”
“So can arteries, but you die when you sever them. This seems to me to be something that will kill you before it lets you go.”
“No one lives forever. I have my Family to remember,” she said quietly. “Ry admitted to having a part in their destruction, though he claims to have only been a messenger. I don’t entirely believe him, and even if I did, how will I explain to their spirits that I have chosen him as my lifemate? How could I so dishonor my dead as to love a Sabir?”
Hasmal shrugged. “Life is for the living,” he said. “The dead made their choices and had their say while they still lived. Once they’re dead, both their tongues and their edicts fall silent.”
She glanced at him and raised her eyebrows. “That isn’t what Iberism teaches.”
“Pah! Iberism is a government religion created by those already in power—men who intended to have the gods keep them in power. Of course it’s going to support the idea that your dead ancestors have a say in your actions. What better way to stifle change and command the future from the grave?”
The breathtaking sweep of his heresy left her speechless for a moment. Then she hid her face in her hands and tried to muffle the laugh that burst from her. “You’re right,” she said when she had herself under control. “Godsall, but you’re right. My Family used Iberism as a tool, and the parnissas as their spokesmen. The Sabirs, the Masschankas, the Dokteeraks, and the Kairns all did the same. No matter how much we hated each other, we all worked through Iberism—and the gods spoke in favor of the Families time and time and time again. Though you could be beaten in Punishment Square for saying such a thing.”
The tight smile he gave her and the fleeting, pained expression that crossed his face—an expression he hid quickly—made her wonder what truth she had inadvertently uncovered, but he didn’t give her the chance to ask him any questions. He said, “Right. So if you know the truth, face it. Apply it to your life. Don’t kill yourself over what the dead will think. I can’t say that I have any great love for Ry, but the two of you were made for each other. Truly.”
Kait rested a hand on his chest and leaned forward to peer into his eyes. “Matchmaking? You? So a heart does beat inside that armored breast after all. I’d thought you immune to the pull of passion.”
He smiled. “Why? Because I didn’t fall for you?”
“Perhaps. Most people do.” She shrugged. “The Karnee Curse pulls them all to me, you know.”
“I do know. I see the effect you have on the men aboard the ship. I saw what you did to the crew of the Peregrine, too. And Ry shares with you the same sort of all-encompassing appeal—his friends will be his friends forever, and women will flock around him like gulls around a fisherman’s catch.” He smiled. “I’ve often wondered what that would be like—to be able to have any woman just for the asking.”
“When you know it isn’t you they desire, the appeal dies quickly enough.”
“I suppose you’re right. Though, if someone offered me the chance to find out, I’m not sure I’d be man enough to refuse. Anyway, your curse doesn’t affect me. My shields make me immune . . . which is why you and I can be such good friends. You don’t compel me”—he paused and grinned impishly—“and you don’t attract me. You aren’t my sort. You’re too young, and too uncertain, and . . . please don’t take this wrong, but . . . too unfinished.”
Kait snorted. “Ouch. Unfinished? You wound me. But now I’m curious. What is your sort? I’ve imagined you losing your heart to some tiny, delicate girl with birdlike bones and a diffident manner.”
“Thank Vodor Imrish you aren’t in charge of picking out a mate for me. No. My taste has always run toward . . . ahhhh . . . interesting women. I met the one I could love forever when I was escaping from Halles . . . trying to get away from you. She . . . well, her p
eople were the ones who bought me from the thieves who robbed me and were going to hang me. The Gyrus were going to sell me as a slave, but she came to see me. Like me, she was a Falcon. Gorgeous. Older than me by a few years. Long red hair. Fantastic legs, a strong, lean back. She . . . ah—” he blushed, and his voice went soft—“liked to bite. Damnall, but I’d give the world to be with her again.”
“She liked to bite?” Kait was intrigued. “Sounds like a difficult sort of thing to explain to your mother.”
“Which is probably why men don’t tell their mothers about their sex lives.” He stared off into space, his eyes wistful. “Alarista knew all about sex.”
Kait snorted. “So does a cat, but that doesn’t make it an ideal partner.”
Hasmal leaned back and put the boot on the bunk beside him. He looked into her eyes and said in an even voice, “When you aren’t killing yourself avoiding the one man in the world you think you can love, feel free to comment on my romantic life. In the meantime, I’ll trust my own judgment on who’s right for me and who isn’t.”
* * *
Ry paced the deck, Trev at his side. Trev said, “I’m worried about our route.”
“Why? It’s the safest one this time of year. Most of the pirates are going to be harbored along the Manarkan coast riding out the last of the storms, and running close in will give us harbors against the squalls that come up.”
“I have to tell you, Yanth and I have been checking omens the way you showed us. We’ve seen things that make this seem a bad time to be near Calimekka. Even the harbor in Goft seems dangerous.”
Ry stared at him, startled. He’d taught them as much simple magic as he dared, but he hadn’t considered the possibility that they might be using it without his supervision. Sailing out from the Thousand Dancers toward deep water would be dangerous, but it would keep them away from Calimekka and Goft. And from any temptation any of his friends might have to send word to their families. Families which might well be dead.
“We were still going to go to Calimekka,” he said.
“I . . . we . . . all of us think you should reconsider trying to take her and her artifact to the city when we land. We think all of us should go with her where she wants to go. Brelst. Or even farther south. The omens seem to point that way.”
Ry was startled. Weren’t you counting on seeing your families? he wondered. But he didn’t say that, of course. The odds were too good that his friends’ families were dead. “I had a reason for wanting to go to Calimekka,” he admitted. He never looked up. He didn’t think he could meet Trev’s eyes and still say what he had to say.
Trev waited. And waited. Finally he said, “You’ve been acting so distant lately, I wondered if you didn’t have some secret you were keeping.”
All sorts of secrets, Ry thought. “I was going take the Mirror to the Potter’s Field outside the South Wall. My brother is buried there—my brother Cadell. You never met him. His ghost came to me the night we left Calimekka. He died when I was a boy.” Ry fingered the medallion he wore, which had been a final, posthumous gift from his much older brother. “He was my hero, and my friend, and he was Karnee like me. The day he died, he had been found in beast form out in the streets of the city. I still believe my cousins Crispin, Anwyn, and Andrew betrayed him. City guards captured him, and dragged him to Punishment Square, and tortured him publicly. He never confessed his family; never said anything. So the parnissa passed immediate sentence and had him drawn and quartered right then. Had he admitted anything about us, I don’t doubt but that my mother and father and my sisters and I would have been sacrificed, too. But no one claimed to know him, and . . . he had no identifying jewelry or insignia on him. . . .” Ry touched the medallion again, and felt the lump rise in his throat. “He left this with my mother, as he did every time he Shifted, telling her that if anything happened to him, she was to give it to me.”
He swallowed hard, and Trev rested a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“I don’t. But if I don’t tell someone, I think I’ll go mad.” Ry took a deep breath, then continued. “Anyway, his ghost came to me in my room the night all of us sailed from Calimekka. He told me Kait’s name, and that she was searching for the Mirror of Souls. Later, he told me that if I could get the Mirror from her, and take it to his grave—it’s unmarked, but I know where it is—I would be able to bring him back. Give him life again.” Ry clenched his fists and blinked back the tears he refused to cry. “I could have my brother back.”
Trev was silent for so long that Ry finally did look up. He was surprised to see his friend, wetness glistening on his cheeks, staring out at the sea.
“Trev . . . ?”
“I’m fine,” Trev said. “I didn’t know about your brother. Didn’t even know you had anyone but your two sisters, and I know you were never close to either of them. I . . . didn’t know what you’d lost.”
Ry said softly, “But that’s just it. If I could take the Mirror and go back, I wouldn’t have lost anything. Time . . . of course I would have lost that. He would be . . .” Ry stood and shook his head, startled. “He would be younger than me now, instead of my older brother. He was . . . twenty when he died.”
“He must have been very brave, to keep from revealing who his family was.”
“He was the bravest and best person I’ve ever known.”
Trev said quietly, “I’m going to tell you something you aren’t going to want to hear, Ry. I’m going to say it because I’m your friend, and you can make of it what you will. There’s an old saying that keeps running through my head as you tell me this, and I can’t silence it, even though I have sisters who are my world, and if I put myself in your place, I can understand why you feel the way you do.”
Ry waited.
“It’s, Let the dead stay buried. I know you want your brother back, but something about this feels wrong to me. I can’t point to the wrongness in what you tell me and say, ‘There, that’s the problem,’ but my gut says something is wrong.” He turned to face Ry, and looked up at him. “I’m your friend. I will help you in every way I can, with anything you need; if you need me to die for you, I will. But please, Ry, for me, consider what I’m saying. I don’t know why this is so important, but I believe it is. Let the dead stay buried.”
Ry watched the waves falling away behind them. Calimekka drew closer every day, every station, every moment, and Cadell drew closer, too. Once the Mirror was in the hands of the Reborn Kait spoke about, his chance to get his brother back would be gone forever. He would have this one opportunity. Cadell’s ghostly voice still sometimes whispered in his mind, begging for rescue from his beggar’s grave.
And the hidden enemy still watched Ry as he slept.
His mind said, Only a coward would leave his brother in the grave.
His gut said, Let the dead stay buried.
He turned to Trev. Would he advise me this way if he knew his sisters were probably dead? he wondered. If we could take the Mirror and bring them back to life as well? Probably not.
Which changed nothing. The omens said he should avoid Calimekka. Kait said danger waited for them there. His gut said he should head south as quickly as he could. What he wanted to do probably wasn’t what he needed to do.
He gripped the brass rail with both hands and gritted his teeth. “I’ll tell the captain to run for deep water,” he said.
* * *
The captain shrugged. “We can avoid the resupply in Goft; I have no problem with that. We can turn out of the Thousand Dancers early if you wish, and run farther from the coast. If you truly wish to take the girl and her friends to Brelst instead of Glaswherry Hala, I can do that, too. We can resupply farther on and we’ll be fine. But we can’t turn south now. You see the horizon?”
Ry looked to the south, where the captain was pointing. A dull greenish haze blurred the line between water and sky to invisibility. “Yes.”
“That’s a storm brewing. The mercury is falling in the glass—we’l
l outrun it easily enough if we keep heading west for now, but I’ll not sail us straight into it.”
Ry let out a slow breath. He might be Family, but the captain was a captain—in his ship he was powerful as a paraglese, subject to the orders of no man, and answerable only to his god, Tonn. If he would not take them through the deep water by choice, Ry could not compel him by force, threat, or cajolery.
And he wasn’t fool enough to try.
“Well enough. Then just keep us as far from Goft and Calimekka as you can, and keep us on the shortest path to Brelst that you can manage.”
The captain tipped his head and stroked one side of his beaded, braided mustache thoughtfully. “Any particular thing you wish to avoid?”
“Only that I don’t want to find out in person why the omens are bad.”
“That’s a good enough reason for me.”
Ry had to leave it at that, and hope it would be enough.
Chapter 17
For two days the storm lashed them, a mad and screaming thing that kept them anchored to the lee side of one of the tiny islands of the Thousand Dancers. When it passed, though, it passed completely, leaving the sky clear as crystal, the breezes cool and clean, and the sailing smooth. Kait stood on the starboard deck of the Wind Treasure, watching islands slipping by.
Ry joined her, and because she couldn’t think of a good excuse to leave, and because there were plenty of other people on the deck, she stayed where she was. He said, “This is the beginning of the Thousand Dancers. The chain runs all the way in to Goft, but the captain says we’ll turn out of it and bear south long before then. You see the tall island with smoke spilling from the top?”