DESPERATE ALLIANCES

by Cory Daniells

  Reothe hugged his wounded hand to his chest. “Why should I be whole in body if my powers are crippled? You must heal my gifts!”

  Seeing him at Jarholfe’s mercy, she had decided to heal his gifts, but the moment he confronted her with it, her instinct was to deny him. In her heart of hearts, his trickery still hurt and she feared she could not trust him.

  “Imoshen?” His face was a pale oval and his features ill-defined, yet she did not need to see him to know his expression. His bitter, desperate tone conveyed it all. Knowing how Jarholfe’s men had abused him, she understood his rage, but she did not make the mistake of offering pity.

  “I cannot return your lost fingers, but I can promise to heal your wounds. To be frank, I am too exhausted to attempt more.”

  He pushed her entreating hand aside and she gasped in pain. “Why haven’t you healed yourself, Imoshen?”

  “Your need is greater.” At best, she could only hasten her own healing. “Show me your hand.”

  “So that you can exhaust yourself healing me? Would you leave me a useless T’En cripple but physically healed to witness your stoning?”

  “What would you have me do? There are so many Ghebites, and I am almost exhausted.” She looked across at the basilica, blinking fiercely to clear her vision. Everything was covered with a layer of snow. Tomorrow the Ghebites would come for them, strip them naked, and lead them into the square. “They will have to send wagons to the quarries outside of town to bring in cartloads of stones. The snow will make that difficult. How many stones does it take to kill? I suppose it depends how well they are aimed.”

  “Stop it!” He pulled her to him. “How could you hold the Orb and deny me before everyone?”

  “But it was you who showed me how I could word it so it would not be a lie.”

  “You always let your head rule your heart.”

  “And you don’t?” She waited, but he said nothing. At last, she kissed his cracked lips. “Let me heal your body.”

  “What good is that if we are to die?” Reothe’s breath dusted her face with his despair.

  “I have sent word to your rebels.”

  Reothe cursed. “I’m afraid you’ll get no help from my people until the Ghebites open the old-city gates.”

  “I sent the guild-master of the silversmiths to Drake. He can organize the townspeople—”

  “To do what? You saw them today. They came expecting justice and they came unarmed. The people of T’Diemn are sheep to the slaughter.”

  Imoshen had to admit the truth of this. “After today they will know better.”

  “Much good that will do us!” The moment stretched between them. “Why did you come back for me, Imoshen? Why didn’t you escape when you had the chance?”

  Wordlessly, she slid her good hand inside his tabard. As her fingers traveled over his back, she willed the lacerated skin to seal, felt the warmth flow from her into him.

  He gasped. “Your touch is sweet, T’Imoshen.”

  “You used your T’En tricks on me from the first, Reothe.” Anger thinned her voice. “You tried to manipulate me into your arms.”

  “A little,” he admitted, resting his forehead on hers. “But my gifts have been crippled these past weeks, and you can’t deny what we share.”

  “You dishonored me by your trickery. I would have come to love you, given time.”

  “We had no time. It has been against us from the first. Remember when I came to you on the day of our betrothal? If I had told you that the Church was our enemy, you would have thought I was mad.”

  She hesitated, remembering how she had not understood her great-aunt’s reluctance to call on the Church for help.

  “You see,” he whispered. “If only you had been older and known something of the world. But you didn’t, so—”

  “So you sought to manipulate me. It was wrong, Reothe!”

  “I was desperate.”

  “Still wrong.”

  “A small wrong for a greater good.”

  She shook her head, surprised to discover that, despite her pain and weariness, her anger was raw and immediate.

  He straightened, but before he could speak, she indicated the arrow. “Now I must break this with my good hand.”

  “Do it quickly.” He leaned against the tower’s stonework, bracing himself. She caught the shaft in her teeth, took the feathered end in her good hand, and snapped the shaft. Even so, she felt him shake with the shock of it. With the arrow broken, she felt behind him for the barbed head that protruded from his flesh and pulled it through, using her gift to knit the flesh behind it. The heat of her anger faded with the effort it took to seal the wound.

  Dropping the arrowhead from numb fingers, she nearly lost consciousness. Reothe caught her before she could collapse. “Heal yourself, Imoshen. We must be gone from here before dawn.”

  “No. Your hand next.”

  “Why did you save the hardest for last?”

  “Because you never know what you can do until you must.”

  A soft laugh escaped him, and he kissed her forehead. “Can you wonder that my love for you made me careless of honor?”

  It was the closest he had ever come to an apology. She stared into his pale face, pierced by the twin pools of his dark eyes. “I thought love made a person strong, not devious.”

  He flinched.

  She took his injured hand to study the wound. His first two fingers had been sheared off at the base; the third was severed at the knuckle. “So cruel.”

  “They threatened worse.”

  Behind the bitter humor in Reothe’s voice, she heard fear. Guilt assailed her. “Not once have you reproached me for leaving you vulnerable.”

  “Heal my hand, Imoshen.”

  She understood he would not reproach her. “Relax and open yourself to me.”

  He tilted his head back, his face turned up to greet the falling flakes. She sensed him growing receptive. Concentrating on his injury, she called on her reserves to knit and seal the stumps of his fingers. It was surprisingly easy to work her healing on Reothe. Suddenly she understood the dual nature of their bond. With the most intimate of the mind-touches, she had grown to need him. But he had also become vulnerable to her. This was why she had been able to injure his gift when she had lashed out. The revelation left her trembling.

  “Ah, to be without pain! Bless you, T’En Healer.” He used the High T’En invocation then, pulling the tabard around his body and sinking down with his back to the wall. “Come close. Your skin is wondrously warm.”

  She was burning up with fever and her maimed hand throbbed with every beat of her heart, but if she expended any of her gift to heal herself, she would have no reserves to maintain their body heat during the long night. “You must not sleep.” Her teeth chattered, breaking up her words. There would come a point when they no longer felt cold and a curious warmth would spread over them. But she would not let it come to that. “To sleep in the snow is fatal.”

  “Sweet death, they say. It would cheat those Ghebites of their stoning.”

  Imoshen flinched. The abuse Reothe had received at the hands of his Ghebite captors was designed to destroy his pride. Imoshen knew it was possible to die of this kind of injury. Her ears buzzed in the absolute silence of the snowbound night. At least there was no wind, only the ever-falling snow seductively luring her to sleep in its deadly embrace. Though her fever raged, she shook with cold.

  “Look down into the square,” Reothe urged. “Are the townspeople gathering? They must come to us soon, for I doubt we will last the night.”

  She could distinguish nothing moving. The old city of T’Diemn slept peacefully under its blanket of fresh, crisp snow.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing. The snow falls too thickly,” she lied.

  “Let us hope it aids our supporters. Come to me, Imoshen.” He took her hand, and again she could not conceal the pain. “You haven’t healed yourself?”

  “I’ll use what’s left of my
gift to keep us warm.”

  “So that we may be stoned in the morning?”

  She smiled. “By then Drake will have organized a revolt.”

  “Now that I can think without pain, I don’t want to remain here. If Drake does lead an uprising, the first thing the Cadre will do is have us killed. We must make our move before then.” Reothe’s voice dropped. “There is something you could try. Sometimes it is possible for one of the T’En to draw on the True-people around them.”

  Imoshen went very still as the horror of the confrontation in Lakeside returned. Was Reothe asking her to drive someone to murder, to renew her flagging gifts?

  “Just as people have distinctive physical features, they give off distinctive emanations,” Reothe whispered. “I can taste it on my tongue, sense it lingering on the air after they leave the room. Some of them are much easier to tap into than others. Engarad can close me out at will. She’s always been able to. That was how I found her.”

  Imoshen heard the smile on his voice. And though she didn’t want to know, she experienced Reothe’s memory—he was an arrogant, lonely youth in a city of alien creatures, discovering a closed creature, one that fascinated him.

  “What is it?” Reothe prodded.

  “I said nothing.”

  “Don’t shut me out, Imoshen, there is so much I could share with you. The first time you crossed my path, I—”

  “What were you going to tell me about the T’En gifts?”

  She did not want to hear how she had first appeared to him, raw and gauche in the court of the Empress. Knowing about the Beatific was painful enough.

  After a heartbeat Reothe continued. “Open your senses. Trawl the minds of those in the building below. Find someone engaged in an intense moment and open yourself to them. Use them to sustain us.”

  Perhaps this skill was mentioned in Imoshen the First’s memoirs. “The T’Elegos—”

  “Will be ours to explore when all this is over, when you stand at my side and Fair Isle is ours.”

  “How can you put a price on knowledge?”

  “Everything has a price, especially knowledge. That much is very clear to me. There is so much I must achieve. This Ghebite general destroyed my plans and forced a terrible choice upon you, and you have been regretting it ever since.”

  “I love Tulkhan.”

  “I know. But this isn’t about him, or you and me. It is about the fate of the T’En.”

  “The Golden Age of the T’En?”

  “Don’t mock me, Shenna.”

  Imoshen ducked her head. No one else used her pet name.

  “Open your senses,” he urged. “I will hold you safe until you find a source.”

  She settled in Reothe’s arms, cradled against his chest. The cold was fierce. Uncontrollable shivers racked them both. But when she tried to open her mind, she could not. “Don’t watch me.”

  “I can see very little!”

  She could hear the smile on his voice. “Turn your face away.”

  “If that is what you want.”

  With the pain in her hand and the milk fever, it was hard to find that peaceful place where she could leave her body. Would she be able to return to it?

  “Trust me,” Reothe whispered.

  She wanted to ask why she should when he had lied and manipulated her from the moment they met, yet somehow she believed she could trust him in this.

  At last she was able to relax and her awareness drifted. Individual True-people called to her like beacons. As Reothe said, each one had a particular flavor. The palace servants radiated enticing fear. She paused as she came in contact with each one to draw off a little, leaving them more peaceful and herself stronger. The Ghebites were easy to identify by their rampant hostility, but strangely enough they, too, radiated fear. It was the motivating force behind their aggression.

  In this state there was no up and down, yet Imoshen found she was able to orientate herself by relating back to her point of origin. Far below Sard’s Tower, she found a Ghebite terrorizing one of the serving girls. The man was drunk but not drunk enough to stop him from raping her. Before he did, he wanted the girl to beg.

  Revulsion filled Imoshen and she knew she had found her source. She disciplined herself to siphon off a little at a time as she milked the man’s anger. Its rich and heady force urged her to drive him further but she restrained the impulse, recognizing it for her own weak craving, which she must keep secret even from Reothe.

  Using this Ghebite as a source, she let one part of her awareness return to her body, consciously increasing her heart rate, lifting her temperature, until her flesh radiated heat. She used this to burn the last of the milk fever from her body.

  “I could warm myself in your fires forever, Imoshen,” Reothe whispered, and she understood that she was his lode-stone.

  Then she concentrated on maintaining body heat with the Ghebite as the source. His fires were fed by the serving girl, who suffered so that Imoshen and Reothe might live.

  Revulsion roiled in Imoshen. She could not condone this. Better to release the girl from her torment. The idea was the deed. Drawing on the Ghebite’s life force, she let him fall into a stupor.

  As Imoshen sensed him collapse, she wondered if she had enough in reserve to last the night. The girl gave off anger, bright as a flame. It seemed a waste not to absorb her fury.

  Imoshen concentrated on opening herself to the girl, only vaguely aware of the servant’s grasp on a knife. Triumph flashed through them both as the knife plunged into the unconscious Ghebite’s heart. His death was rich beyond measure, for with it came the rush of his fleeing life force.

  Mentally reeling with the impact, Imoshen lost all sense of self. In a leap of understanding she thought she saw the relationship between the Parakletos and the souls of the dead, and almost grasped how Imoshen the First bound them under oath. Suddenly she was aware of the Parakletos waiting in death’s shadow, each curious, eager, or vengeful, according to their nature. They had been drawn to her like predators to an injured beast. They would consume her with their need. Terror engulfed Imoshen and she fled, retreating to her physical self.

  “You’re back!” Reothe exclaimed. “I feared your soul lost and your body consumed by fever.”

  Numbly, she shook her head. Pressing her fingers into her closed eyes, she rediscovered her injured hand. At least she could heal it now. “Wake me near dawn and I will try to shield us while we escape.”

  “Imoshen?”

  But she would not answer.

  The sea stopped rising when it reached Tulkhan’s thighs, and the tide turned. It retreated, leaving them shivering on the embankment in ankle-deep water. The surviving men had formed a long snakelike column along the inner ramparts. Tulkhan knew that there were men on the outer ramparts, because he’d heard their cries as they fought the narcts, which even now circled, too wary to approach.

  When the sea began rising again, his men became concerned.

  “It will rise no further than it did before,” Tulkhan assured them. “Be ready for the return of the narcts.”

  “I can’t feel my fingers to hold my knife,” the man next to Tulkhan muttered. “The narcts will have us for breakfast.”

  It was the coldest part of the night, when despair was closest to a man’s heart. If only there was higher ground. Then it struck Tulkhan that the highest ground was the Seawall. Surely it was not all demolished.

  “This way. We’ll outwit those narcts yet!” he called. Tulkhan moved through the ranks to take the lead. Men lost their footing but their companions pulled them up. Meanwhile the narcts waited, ready to snatch the stragglers.

  As Tulkhan slogged through the rising water, he prayed that the Sea-wall remained standing where it joined the ramparts. It was hard to judge distance in this watery world. The clouds had cleared and starlight revealed a flat expanse of sea, with the occasional floating island.

  In the gray light of dawn, Tulkhan spotted the dark band that was the Sea-wall, rising like a
causeway above the water. The incline was steep and muddy.

  Tulkhan struggled up the slope onto the top of the Seawall, then turned to help the next man. Port Sumair rose out of the ocean surrounded by its stout walls, an island fortress. There was no sign of fire or cries of battle coming from the port. He feared for Rawset’s life.

  When he came to the place where the Sea-wall had been eaten away by the in-rushing ocean, he could see the silhouettes of his blockading ships. Tearing off his undershirt, he waved it above his head.

  He had survived and the remnants of his army had regrouped. On this high tide, his ships, armed with their new siege machines, could come right up to the port’s walls and demand its surrender. When the defenders closed the gates on Gharavan’s mercenaries, they must have turned on him. Sumair would surrender his half-brother and he would return to T’Diemn triumphant.

  With great reluctance, Imoshen let Reothe drag her back to awareness of her cold, miserable state. So cold...

  “They will come for us soon, Imoshen. We must move.”

  Fear settled in the pit of her belly, and she discovered she did care if she lived or died. “When it’s done, I will have nothing left.” Her voice was a croak. “I’m going to cloak us.”

  He nodded.

  Imoshen sought the most susceptible of the two minds below. She was familiar with them because of her earlier wanderings. In the guard’s mind she planted the idea that the prisoners had escaped.

  “They’re coming. Join me, Reothe.” She drew him down beside her and gripped his good hand, willing them both as white as snow. She had to hold this for only a few heartbeats. Through a veil, she saw the trapdoor swing up, sending powdered snow flying. Snow dusted the man’s head.

  “I tell you they can’t have escaped,” he was saying. Cursing, he searched the tower top.

  A second head appeared. “I knew it. They flew away.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Where are they, then?”

  “More to the point, what’s the Cadre going to say?”

  The younger man went pale.

  “Come on. We must report their escape.”

  They retreated, leaving the trapdoor open, and Imoshen let the illusion fall away. Already, waves of nausea washed over her.