But this time his movements were not urgent, not marked by the almost desperate hunger that had imbued their other encounters. Now he was as gentle as his gaze, caressing her inside and out, kissing her nipples and her face and her lips. It was an act of love, of gratitude, of desire...and above all, of acceptance of everything she was or had ever been.
“I love you,” she whispered as he brought her to climax. But as he finished and rested against her, his face pressed into the hollow of her shoulder, he did not answer. He would not speak the words. Perhaps, Isis thought with profound grief, he could not. Perhaps those feelings were locked up inside him with the pain of his past, entangled so that he could no longer tell one emotion from another.
“Take my blood,” he said, positioning himself so that she could reach his neck. She knew this was another act of the love he couldn’t accept, and she bit him with great care, piercing the healed flesh, shuddering with fresh ecstasy as his blood rolled over her tongue. Daniel began to shudder, but not with horror or disgust; he stiffened again, and as she drank he thrust into her, carrying her up and up, bringing her to another full completion. She ran her hands over the shifting muscles of his back as she sealed the wound.
And suddenly it was over. Daniel rolled over and rose to fetch another towel. He helped Isis to her feet and wrapped it around her, engulfing her in warmth and safety.
“I have to go back out,” he said, regret breaking his voice. “I still need you, Isis.”
Need her, yes, she thought. To pacify the city without violence. To gather the people to hear his pronouncement of Tanis’s fate, as if only he had the right to determine it.
She shrugged out of the towel and put on her clothes again. Daniel watched her, his eyes following every motion. When she was finished, she took his hand.
“There will be clean garments in the suite,” she said. “Will you wear them, even if they belonged to Anu?”
“As long as they don’t look like a god’s,” he said.
Her loins still aching, Isis led him from the room.
* * *
Word had spread quickly throughout the city.
Daniel stood on the steps of the Hall of Justice, the administrative buildings and multistory apartments rising on either side. Ares, Trinity, Athena, Bes, Hermes and a dozen soldiers stood just behind him. To one side, Ares’s soldiers guarded Hera, Ereshkigal, Hephaestus and as many of Ba’al’s and Anu’s supporters as they had been able to find and overcome; their serfs had been freed and taken into the care of human physicians. The Council, too, were under guard, until such time as their part in the recent events could be established. Certainly, Daniel thought, the human members would be absolved, and possibly the Opiri, as well.
Hundreds of citizens had gathered to hear him—men and women, Opir and human and half-blood were bathed in morning sunlight. But the crowd was divided. Humans had assembled on one half of the plaza, hooded Opiri on the other. Puzzled, half-hostile glances were exchanged. Information about the captive humans and Anu’s ultimate plans for Tanis were still filtering through the ranks, provoking confusion, anger and fear. Ba’al’s part in it was still little more than a rumor, but every human and Opir knew that a half-blood outsider had defeated the leader of the Nine and taken his place.
Scanning the plaza, Daniel searched for Isis. She wasn’t there. He remembered every moment of the previous morning, the way Isis had cared for him when he had nearly lost himself, the joinings both urgent and gentle. She had spoken words to him she had spoken before, and again he had been unable to answer.
He laughed at himself. Here he was, with hundreds of people ready to hang on his every word, and the one thing he wanted was lost to him. Her love wasn’t enough.
Daniel understood. She had given him that last time together. But she had clearly made a decision. She couldn’t support his plans for the citizens of Tanis, and so she had left him.
He was alone. As he must be.
Daniel raised his hand. The crowd went silent.
“My name is Daniel,” he said. “I am the son of a human woman and the Opir Bloodmaster Ares, who commands the Freeblood army that freed the human serfs and took the law-breaking Opiri into custody.”
A murmur rose from the crowd, comments and questions rising like a stiff wind. The soldiers behind Daniel shifted their weapons. Daniel raised his hand again.
“I speak to you now as one who has been a serf and has also led colonies where Opiri and humans live in peace. I come to tell you what has happened to Tanis, and what lies ahead for all of you.”
“What gives you the right to speak?” a voice called from the Opir side of the gathering.
“He defeated the usurper Ba’al in formal challenge, after Ba’al killed the leader of the Nine,” Ares said, stepping forward. “And he has my army behind him.”
Those humans and Opiri who had known little of recent events reacted with sounds of surprise and confusion. Someone from the human side raised his voice above the chatter.
“The army protected us,” he said. “Let him speak!”
His exhortation was echoed by a hundred other humans, and gradually the crowd grew quiet again.
And then Daniel told them. He told them how the chaos in the city had been deliberately but subtly provoked; how humans had been stolen from their wards to become serfs to Anu’s favored Opiri lords; how Anu had planned to return the city to the old ways and how his favorite, Hannibal, once known as the god Ba’al, had killed him in order to rule once more as a true deity, unchallenged and omnipotent in his own world. He spoke of Isis and Athena and the human resistance, and how they had helped to defeat the enemies of Tanis. And, without shame or pride, he explained how Ba’al had died, laying the fact before them plainly and letting them absorb it as they realized that everything had changed.
“The Nine founded Tanis on an ideal,” Daniel said. “Some intended to carry it through. The Lady Isis has always been devoted to all the people in this city.”
There were a few cries of “yes!” and a hum of approval from the audience.
“If it were not for her courage, either Anu or Ba’al would surely have succeeded. She—”
He stopped as Isis approached from the rear of the crowd, walking directly down the center of the plaza between humans and Opiri. She was every inch the goddess, and the watchers seemed to hold their breaths.
She’s come to challenge me, Daniel thought. Not in battle but with words. She would try to persuade the people of Tanis to begin again in this place where so much evil had occurred. She would do it because she believed with all her heart and every one of her long years that the city could still succeed.
He would have no choice but to argue against her.
“In spite of all she has done,” he said, “in spite of the good work of her allies and the humans and Opiri who stood against Anu and Ba’al, Tanis can never become what it was meant to be. Someday, it may be possible for humans and Opiri to live together in a city like this. But that time hasn’t come. There are too many obstacles that face both peoples, decades of tradition and habit to overcome, pain and anger to be set aside.”
“You say we have failed,” Isis said, her voice carrying clearly across the plaza as she gazed up at him, “but for six years we lived in peace.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. He met her gaze, concealing all emotion in his eyes and voice. “But it didn’t last, because a city is too big to nurture the dream of peace. People become anonymous to other citizens; Opiri and humans have room to live apart. There’s no need for them to learn to understand one another.”
“But the will was there,” Isis said. She spoke to the entire gathering, but her gaze was for him, and she spoke of more than the city’s fate. “The desire to live as equals—”
“Was not enough,” Daniel finished for her. “Not when the desire itself was unequal
.”
“Do you blame the Opiri?” she challenged.
“I blame nothing but the system,” he said. His gaze swept over the crowd again. “There is another way. There are places in the west where humans and Opiri and half-bloods truly do live in peace. Settlements where each colonist knows every other, regardless of race. Where misunderstandings are worked out before they cause disputes.”
“Are humans forced to give blood?” a man shouted.
“They choose to do it, because there is no cause for resentment.”
A single sigh seemed to ripple over the divided audience. Relief, uncertainty, anxiety all intermixed along with hope and disbelief.
“I can take you to the west,” he said, raising his voice. “I can show you the colonies where you would be welcome, every human and Opir who still desires true equality.”
“All of us?” another human asked.
“When a colony grows too big, we form daughter colonies,” he said. “All are run the same. Some of you would become members of those daughter colonies, free to establish your own community.”
“And if what happened here happens again?”
“There is always sanctuary for those driven from their homes by violence and unfair laws,” he said. “But you must have the courage to try.”
He looked at Isis, asking her to hear him, to understand. The wide gulf between former serf and goddess might be unbridgeable, but if she was willing to lead her own people to a new life...
She turned her back on him. “Hear me,” she said. “You have been given a grave choice between journeying into the unknown with this man’s promises to guide you, or rebuilding Tanis with your courage and goodwill.”
“Goodwill?” Daniel asked, struggling to harden his heart. “Can any amount of goodwill overcome the taint Anu, Ba’al and their followers have left on this city?”
The silence was painful, cutting Daniel to the heart. If Isis were repudiated by her own people, she would be cut loose from everything she had known during the time she had traveled with the Nine and all the centuries before. Severed from her dream, what would she become? Apart from her peers and her followers, without love...
“I offer a new life to the humans of Tanis,” he said, “and for any Opiri who wish to join us. But Lady Isis is a wise leader. Those who want to remain with her here are welcome to do so.”
Every voice in the plaza faded. It was some time before the next human spoke up.
“What will you do with the lawbreakers?” she asked.
“That is to be your decision,” Daniel said.
“Exile!” the woman shouted.
“Death!” someone called, followed by many other voices demanding the same punishment.
“Your anger is justified,” Daniel said, interrupting them. “But to kill them means that you’ll be no better than they are. Their fates will haunt you when you try to start a new life, here or in the west.”
All over the plaza, humans and Opiri talked among themselves and exchanged wary glances across the aisle that separated them. Isis was still standing in the center, her gaze on Daniel.
“You defeated Ba’al,” an Opir shouted. “You make the law.”
“It was never my intention—” Daniel began.
“You decide!”
“You choose!”
“Tell us!”
Humbled and disturbed by the power all these people had put into his hands, Daniel descended the steps and stopped at the level of the crowd. Isis was no more than a few yards away, but the yards might as well have been miles.
Some of the humans moved forward to gather around him. They waited, their eyes anxious and stubborn.
“Tell us,” Hugh said, working his way forward through the bodies surrounding Daniel. “There’s no Council now to make the decision. You’ve earned the right.”
Meeting Isis’s eyes over the heads of the humans, Daniel nodded slowly. “Very well,” he said. “The lawbreakers and supporters of Anu and Ba’al will be exiled. Soldiers will escort them to the east onto the prairie with day coats and the means of hunting for themselves. What they make of their lives after that will depend on their own resources...without the help of humans or other Opiri. If they make it to another Citadel, they’ll have to fight their way back to a position of rank. And they may not find that so easy to do outside the walls of this city.”
Hugh looked around at the other humans. “It is a fair punishment,” he said.
The humans murmured and nodded and drifted back to their fellows in the crowd, sharing the news. When Hugh announced Daniel’s decision to the Opiri, none objected.
Then there was no one between Daniel and Isis, no sound except the thudding of his pulse and the harshness of his breathing. Isis walked toward him slowly and mounted the stairs behind him, each step dragging as if her robes were hemmed with weights.
When he saw her eyes, he knew that she had surrendered her own convictions in favor of his. In the end, she’d chosen to trust him.
“People of Tanis,” she said, turning to the crowd. “I gladly testify that you may safely trust Daniel with your life. He is a great man. He has lived as a serf, a free human and a half-blood. He knows what it is to serve, and to rule. He has led Opiri in colonies such as those he has offered to you and put his own life at risk many times to save those he has sworn to protect.” She paused, her voice catching. “I have no doubt that he and his allies can deliver what they have promised—a place where the dream we dreamed can be fulfilled. If you go, do so without fear or doubt.”
Daniel listened with his head down and his hands clasped behind his back, confounded by her testimony. He wanted to sing her praises, as she had sung his; stand by her side and declare that Tanis was not a lost cause, after all.
But he believed with all his heart that Tanis’s foundation had rotted under the feet of its people, and it would never be sound again, no matter how much Isis wished it so.
He turned to thank her for the words she had spoken on his behalf, but she had already climbed the rest of the stairs and was striding alongside the hall, headed toward the center of her ward. Athena, who had been standing quietly at the top of the steps, followed her.
A flood of people from the audience demanded Daniel’s attention, and he had no choice but to let Isis go. He spoke to Ares and reassured dozens of humans, and more Opiri approached him with questions and concerns. He became again what he had been in Delos, far in the Northwest: calm, confident and unmoved by distracting emotion. It was almost noon when he answered the last question and assured the crowd that the more practical aspects of the journey would be discussed at length over the coming days.
As the Opiri adjusted the hoods of their day coats and the humans drifted back to their homes, only a few remained. Hugh was among them.
“They’ll follow you to Hell and back,” Hugh said, admiration in his voice. “Anyone would.”
“You give me too much credit,” Daniel said stiffly.
“And you give yourself too little.” He nodded to his people, and they headed toward Bes’s ward, openly and without fear.
“Well done,” Ares said, resting his hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “The army will help make the preparations. We’ll need all the livestock, and wagons to carry the supplies—”
Ares continued to speak, but Daniel barely heard him. “Please excuse me,” he said. “I have something to do.”
Climbing the stairs to join his wife, Ares let him go. Daniel jogged toward Isis’s apartment building, no longer thinking of grand, dangerous journeys but of a single woman who meant more to him than life itself. A woman he worshipped—not as a serf or inferior, but because she was the one he loved.
He found her in her apartment, stepping out of her gown in the darkness. She turned as soon as he entered, making a futile grab for her clothing
as if she were ashamed to let him see her.
“Isis,” he said, closing the door behind him.
“Why have you come?” she asked, her voice small and soft.
“To thank you,” he said, his courage momentarily deserting him. “For supporting me, when you could so easily have done otherwise.”
She smiled. “But you were right, Daniel. I clung to a dream because I did not wish to admit failure. I did not wish to believe that everything the Nine had done was a lie.”
“Your part was never a lie,” he said, moving closer to her. “Without you to temper their ambition, Anu or Ba’al would have acted long ago.”
“Would they?” She stared at the rich carpet under her feet. “How could I have been so blind?”
“I was the one who was blind,” Daniel said, taking another step.
“You saw the futility of my hopes,” she said, looking away. “And you were right.”
“No, Isis.” He moved so close to her that he could see the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, feel her warmth, smell her natural perfume. “What you wanted was right. Was, and still is. If you’ll give the seed a chance to grow in a new field...”
“You have the seed, Daniel,” she said. “It is yours.”
“But it’s nothing without someone to nurture it. That is your skill, not mine.”
“Now you are the one who is blind.” She met his gaze. “You are everything I said you were. I admire you more than I can say.”
Admiration. His blood turned to ice. “That’s not what I want, Isis,” he said.
“What more can I do?” she cried. “You need nothing, no one. They tried to destroy you twice, and both times you emerged stronger than before.”
“And you think I did it alone?” He touched the tears on her cheek. “I could never have survived the first time without Ares. Or this time without you.”
“I cannot give you—”
Harlequin Nocturne May 2016 Box Set Page 27