“You don't have to push,” Idisio muttered under his breath. He received no answer.
He nudged the door just enough to slip through, and shut it behind him without making a noise. He didn't know if that silence came from his own skill, the light weight of the door, or the ha'rethe.
Riss lay curled up on the low bed, hugging a large red pillow; her thin body shook with muffled sobs. Idisio watched her for a moment, uncertain whether to retreat or advance, and finally moved forward. He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, half-expecting her to lash out.
Instead, he wound up, as he had once before, with her arms around his neck and her head on his shoulder. At least she wasn't entirely on top of him this time. He shifted awkwardly, trying to get her elbow out of his ribs, and somehow the movement ended with his back against the headboard and Riss firmly in his lap again.
He grimaced ruefully, eased her into a comfortable position, and stroked her hair lightly as she cried herself out.
“What's the matter?” he said when her sobbing hiccups had slowed.
“Let's see,” she said in a thick voice, not lifting her head from his shoulder. “I'm hundreds of miles from home, disgraced, pregnant, alone, terrified, surrounded by more strangers than I've met in my entire life, and I have no idea what's going to happen to me. There's a weird creature that spent several days talking to me, but it was really only hours, and some of the things it told me scared me about to pissing myself. Nothing's wrong. Why would you think anything's wrong?”
Idisio, at first taken aback, found himself grinning by the time she finished. If Riss could be that sharp, she'd be all right.
“Let's see,” he said into her hair. “You're on a grand adventure, earning respect from everyone you meet and learning lots of new things. And, yes, you're pregnant, with a desert lord ready and willing to support every need you and the child might have. You've met and befriended one of the oldest and most sacred creatures in the world, and it shared some amazing secrets with you. You're right; I don't think anything's wrong.”
She lifted her head and glared at him. “You're impossible.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “My version is as valid as yours.”
She wiped her face with a shaky hand and sat up a little straighter. “I keep thinking Karic's going to show up around some corner unexpectedly and laugh at me, and tell everybody that I'm a whore. . . .”
Idisio abruptly felt a phantom surge of thick, salty water filling his throat, and an almost overwhelming, thrashing panic. It passed in moments, and he coughed hard to clear his throat.
“I don't think . . . you need to worry about that,” he muttered, his stomach churning. “Damn, this is going to take some getting used to.”
“What is?”
He shook his head, unwilling to share his vision of Karic's death. “Nothing. I guess I'm a little rattled by everything too. Look, you're the servant of a desert lord now. If they even show up, Cafad's liable to have them strung up for what they did to you. Don't worry about them any more.”
She sighed. “Thank you. I've been so scared. . . .”
The words trailed off into silence. When her breathing evened into true sleep, Idisio carefully eased her back down onto the bed and slipped out the door with an immense sense of relief.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
The fortress seemed to breathe around Alyea; the air currents moved in strange patterns here. Sometimes it felt as though an invisible eye watched everything that went on within the walls. Alyea couldn't decide whether that comforted or terrified her.
She lay on the wide, low bed, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. Lord Scratha's servant had shown her to a room and withdrawn with hardly a word; there seemed something tremendously strained in the girl's manner. Alyea hadn't felt up to handling someone else's troubles, so she had let Riss go without pressing her to talk. Now she wondered if she had made the right decision.
Blood darkening the sand at her feet. . . .
She shut her eyes and covered them with her hands, wishing that could erase the image. Her stomach rolled heavily. She moaned, more miserable than she could remember ever having been in her life. Even the horror of Ethu's death paled before the bleak fact of having become a murderer herself.
Exhaustion dragged at every muscle and nerve; she'd expected to be asleep as soon as she lay down. But every time she relaxed that moment came back to her, destroying her peace of mind more effectively than a physical attack.
It should have been easy. It should have been simple. He'd said himself that he deserved death. Nobody had moved to stop her, not even Scratha.
But it hadn't been easy, or simple, and the silence from the watching lords had been oppressive, not friendly. Had she made the right choice? What if the opportunity to kill Pieas had really been a test to see if she could refuse to take a life? What if, after all, she had failed? What if she'd missed some vital clue, some way to get out of the situation without killing anyone?
Nobody had spoken afterwards. Scratha gathered the body into his arms and disappeared around the far side of the fortress without a word, and everyone just waited, silent and expressionless. Not looking at each other; not looking at her.
The surrounding darkness seemed like a live thing, writhing to attack her, held back only by the torchlight. Alyea had broken into a cold sweat by the time Scratha returned.
Discussion remained minimal even then: Scratha formally invited Alyea and Deiq into the fortress. The other lords bowed, excused themselves, and returned to the camp. Pieas's death hadn't been referred to again, as if, once over, it had never happened; as if Pieas had never actually existed in the first place.
The room swayed gently around her. Alyea sat up and curled forward, hugging her knees to stop the trembling in her hands. None of this had gone as expected. Not that she'd had any clear idea of what would happen once the last blood trial ended, but she'd never expected this wrenching, dizzying nausea, this unsteady balancing on the edge of a bottomless chasm of guilt.
She felt a faint movement nearby, and then Deiq sat down beside her.
“Alyea,” he said. “Look at me. Please.”
She kept her face pressed into her knees, afraid to face him, sure he meant to tell her she'd made a dreadful mistake. If she looked at him, met those dark eyes, she'd see it, she'd know he'd lost all respect for her and thought of her as nothing more than a vengeful whore.
“No,” he said sharply, and gripped her upper arms hard. “Stop that!”
Of course; as a ha'ra'ha, he could probably read her mind. He'd likely been doing it all along, using Alyea's weakness to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. She'd been a tool, a toy, pushed this way by one and that way by another, and she'd be discarded soon; she'd become only an inconvenience now, but one too strong to be tolerated.
Deiq cursed softly, tangled his hands in her hair, and hauled her head up. The pain of her hair being pulled that hard forced her eyes open. She reached up to bat his hands away just as he released her hair and splayed his hands on either side of her face, thumbs under her chin to keep her still. Unable to move her head, she found herself staring directly into his eyes.
“Alyea , stop it.”
She inhaled sharply, shocked at his tone as much as at the mad glitter in his eyes. The gentle, amused veneer had vanished completely; the visage in front of her, at the moment, would give the strongest desert lord pause.
“Good,” he said, although his tautness didn't relax in the least. “I'd rather have you scared. That's easier to deal with. Take another breath, a good deep one.”
She drew in another breath, and another, her gaze locked helplessly on his unyielding expression; and abruptly burst into tears.
“That's better,” he said, sounding relieved, and his hands softened. She found herself leaning forward against him. He pulled her into his arms, cradling her like a child, and said nothing while she sobbed helplessly.
When her breath started to hitch
painfully, he pressed a large hand gently between her breasts and held it there. A sense of warmth spread through her chest; the sobs eased and her breathing slowly evened again.
“I shouldn't have left you alone,” Deiq said quietly. “I'm sorry.”
She moved her head side to side in faint negation, not understanding the apology.
“You need to rest, Alyea.”
“Can't sleep,” she mumbled. “Blood on the sand. . . .”
He drew in a hard breath, as if he'd seen the image in her mind. “Damn,” he said, “I am an idiot sometimes. Listen to me, Alyea: you shed blood on a ha'rethe's land, and you're not comfortable in your own mind that you did right. Even though the bound lord approved, the protector of the land is going to make you accept what you've done before it lets you rest. Your agonizing is aggravating the ha'rethe. Do you understand? Alyea?”
“Tired. . . .” she whispered, closing her eyes. “So tired.”
“I know,” he said. “Do you think you did right?”
“I don't know,” she said. “Do you?”
“I can't answer that.”
“More stupid rules,” she muttered, and forced her eyes open. “I don't know. Yes. No. I don't know that I had a choice. No, there's always a choice, isn't there?” She sighed, letting the words trail off into a halfcoherent mumble, then made herself go on. “I wish I hadn't. But that won't change anything; it's done. And I'd do the same thing again, if I had the same choice in front of me.”
Her eyelids slid shut.
“I would do't 'gain,” she mumbled. “Di'righ.”
The bloody sand image wavered and faded like smoke on a strong wind.
“I think that's good enough,” Deiq said. “You can rest now.”
“Oh, good,” she said, or thought she did; words faded away into a thick softness.
Emptiness eased into form, and consciousness slid in around the edges of her vision. She lay still, eyes closed, and became nobody for a time. Memory intruded; she allowed it reluctantly and watched, still hazy, as pieces of her life built themselves back into structures of behavior and personality.
Alyea sighed and opened her eyes, grateful that the dizzy, numb feeling had faded into simple exhaustion. She still felt tired, but it wasn't the overwhelming sensation it had been.
A broad band of sunlight lay across the far side of the room; she had no idea whether it signified morning or afternoon. The room held the cool of early morning, but that might be deceptive.
Deiq lay sprawled on the wide bed beside her. She'd never seen him so relaxed before; his breathing held the deep hoarseness of complete exhaustion. Alyea realized for the first time that he'd been pushing himself even harder than he'd pushed her. She admitted to herself that she hadn't wanted to see any weakness in Deiq, but decided he'd also probably concealed his weariness; Deiq's pride would never let him sag and yawn in public.
As she studied Deiq's slack face, Alyea wondered why he had taken such an interest in her. Whatever their relationship, Eredion Sessin couldn't possibly be so concerned about one person's welfare as to ask a ha'ra'ha to follow her around. And Deiq tended to present himself as hard-edged and manipulative, but someone like that wouldn't have agreed to Eredion's request—or fallen so trustingly asleep beside her. More questions; no answers in sight. She'd have to be patient, which had always been her least favorite activity.
Careful not to disturb him, she sat up and edged back to lean against the wall. With nowhere in particular she wanted to go and nobody she cared to speak with at the moment, there seemed little point in getting up. She'd certainly be notified of dinner, or the start of Conclave, or anything else of importance which concerned her.
Alyea rested her shoulders against smooth, cool stone and contented herself with watching a ha'ra'ha sleep.
The band of sunlight shifted as she sat, moving, little by little, away from the far wall and towards the bed. She'd never studied how long it took for that to happen, but she guessed at least an hour, maybe two, had passed by the time the warm golden light lapped at the foot of the bed and Deiq woke up.
Before he even opened his eyes, he put out a hand to the place where she had been, and found only empty space; she'd long since drawn her legs up close to her. With a startled grunt, he rolled to his side, his eyes wide. Seeing her, he relaxed and drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“I'm not going anywhere,” she said.
Deiq propped himself up on one elbow and looked up at her, pushing his long hair out of his face. He didn't speak for a long moment, seemingly content just to study her.
“How do you feel?” he said at last.
“Much better,” she said. “Did you get enough rest?”
“For the moment,” he said. “I'll need to rest some more after the Conclave is over. Lord Scratha has offered us unlimited hospitality—a rare gift.”
She decided, rather coldly, to take advantage of his lingering vulnerability and press for answers. “Your merchanting business won't suffer from the time you're spending away from it?”
He winced a little, his gaze sharpening. “I have good managers. They handle most of the work already; I'm almost a figurehead.”
“How old are you?”
He blinked at her, a frown forming, and didn't answer.
“I'm guessing over a hundred years,” she said.
His mouth quirked. “That's a conservative guess. Leave it at that.”
“And in all that time,” she said, “how many times before this have you fallen in love?”
“Damn it,” he said, and rolled onto his back.
She waited, studying the dust motes whirling through the sunbeams.
“None,” he said finally.
She looked down at his bleak expression. “You weren't supposed to help me this much, were you?”
“No.” He sat up. After running his large hands through his hair for a few moments, he said, “I was only supposed to make sure you got to the fortress safely. To kill Chac if he threatened your safety.”
“Why didn't you?”
He made a vague, helpless gesture, still not meeting her gaze. “I just . . . couldn't.”
“You couldn't kill Chac?”
“I'm not a Callen of the Sun-Lord,” he said. “I don't consider killing a good way to handle most problems. I thought I could do better by rearranging your trials to help you survive what he had planned.” He made another vague gesture and offered her a pained smile. “It's worked out, in the end.”
She drew a deep breath. “No. It hasn't, actually. You've made me a desert lord without a family,” she said, her throat tight. The words came out hoarse and more than a little bitter. “I doubt Lord Scratha will stretch so far as to name me honorary family, and I don't think I'd want that. You've given me power with no way to use it, Deiq. What am I supposed to do now? I can't go home; they'd never take me back. Do you think I'll follow you around the southlands like some baby bird and share your bed? You can't be that stupid.”
As she spoke, his face slowly became a hard, expressionless mask.
“No,” he said. “I wasn't . . . thinking, I suppose. I didn't see it quite that way.”
Alyea hesitated, then said, “I'm not saying I don't like you, Deiq. But you've pushed me around to suit yourself with never a thought for the ending, and now I'm stuck between two worlds with no bridge between. It's not a comfortable spot.”
“This isn't quite the way I wanted events to happen,” he said, staring at his hands.
“I'm sure you had a wonderfully romantic ending in mind,” she said, and found herself laughing.
He glanced up at her, frowning, plainly hurt. She waved her hands in the air and shook her head.
“I'm not making fun of you,” she said when she had her breath back. “This is all so absurd, Deiq—it's like something out of a bard song. And it's just so silly, thinking of you with candles and roses and romance; that's not how you are at all. It certainly wouldn't have impressed me a bit.”
His frow
n slowly lifted and changed to a rueful look.
Sensing an opportunity for an unguarded answer, she asked, “How true are the rumors about you bedding your way to power?”
He hesitated, then said, “I started most of those rumors myself. It was something humans could understand, something that turned their eyes from any other explanation for my influence.”
“But not all,” she said.
“Any good rumor has to have a grain of truth to it.”
“Chac said once,” Alyea said, not at all sure she should bring this up, “that rumor called Pieas your son.”
Deiq shook his head. “No truth to that one. Lady Sessin started that one herself, I think, to see if she could tweak her husband's temper a bit. She's a strange one.”
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