by Kyra Dune
“My mother used to brush my hair, when I was little.” Micayta stared into the flames. “Until she left me.”
“Your mother passed some time ago I take it.”
Micayta pressed a hand to the side of her head. Why was she talking about her mother to this stranger? Why was she talking about her mother at all? She didn’t want to think of all that. She wanted to pretend it never happened. And so she wrapped the old lie around herself like a warm blanket, more comfortable with it than she was with the truth. “Yes. She died when I was eight.”
“That must have been difficult for you.”
Micayta shrugged. “Not really. I had my father and Pytaki. We did fine without her.” And they had, at least in a way. They’d gone on living, yes, with the secrets and the lies festering in their wounds. Unable to really look at each other, talk to each other, until they were more like strangers than father and daughter. But it was fine. It was fine. She was fine.
“I don’t really like to talk about it.”
“I understand.” Alansa continued to brush her hair. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire and the soft swish of the brush.
“There, much better,” Alansa said. “Sit here a moment while I go and find something for you to wear.”
Micayta was glad for the chance to be alone and collect herself. The medicine must be doing its job, for the heat was slowly draining from her body, leaving her mind clearer. Memory filtered back to her. Memory of speaking with Demos, of the attack, what Tech had said about it being her move.
Alansa returned with a dress that was almost the same shade of blue as that little patch of sky Micayta had seen that morning standing in the doorway of the abandoned farmhouse. Micayta eyed it with disdain. Alansa smiled. “I know it’s not what you’re used to and certainly not practical in any sense of the word. But you’ll have to stay here a few days,” she held up her hand to forestall Micayta’s impending protest, “and it will serve well enough for that. I’m sure your brother can find you something more suited to you in one of the shops.”
She dumped the dress into Micayta’s lap. “Speaking of your brother, he’s been pacing around my sitting room for some time now. You best get dressed and come see him before he wears a path in my carpet.”
After Alansa left, Micayta stood and held the dress up in front of herself. The fabric was soft and fine, like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was a simple dress, but beautiful. The kind of dress someone like Alansa should be wearing, not her.
The dress slid over her head with ease, folding itself against her skin. She looked down at herself, feeling awkward and vulnerable in the unfamiliar clothing. Not having her dagger strapped to her side only added to these feelings. Her dagger, she must remember to ask Tech if he’d seen it. If not, she’d have to go back to the street and look for it.
She pushed her hair, hanging loose for the first time in so long, back from her face and took a breath before going down the hall to the sitting room. Alansa and Tech were seated together beside the fireplace; Pytaki paced back and forth in front of them, wringing his hands.
Pytaki stopped his pacing when Micayta stepped into the room. He held perfectly still for a heartbeat before dashing across the room and throwing his arms around her. Micayta froze, discomfited and startled by such a show of emotion. Before she could make up her mind as to whether or not she should hug him in return, he was already stepping back.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t thinking. Did I hurt you?”
“No. I’m all right.” She looked up and caught Tech staring at her in a peculiar way. Feeling the heat start to rise in her throat, she quickly looked away, only to find her brother looking at her with one eyebrow raised. “What?”
“You look like a…well…like a girl.”
Micayta laughed to cover her discomfort. “What did you think I was, a horse?”
“It’s weird,” he said. “You don’t look like you.”
“At least I don’t stink.”
He flushed, dropping his gaze. An uncomfortable silence ensued, broken only by the crackle and pop of the fire.
“Well,” Alansa said, smiling. “It’s getting late and Micayta needs her rest.”
“I feel fine.” She’d had all the mothering tonight she could stand. “I’m not even tired.”
“You’re recuperating remarkably fast, I’ll give you that,” Alansa said. “But you’re still weak and you need to rest, else you’ll undo all my hard work. I have a room that should suit you fine.”
“What about Pytaki? I won’t let him go back to the tavern alone. It’s not safe.”
“Of course your brother can stay as well. But I only have the one spare room so I’m afraid you’ll have to share a bed.” Alansa looked at Tech. “Wait here while I show them to their room, if you would. I want to have a talk with you.”
Tech gazed back at her a moment, lips pinched, then turned to stare into the fire.
Alansa led Micayta and Pytaki down a different hall to a cozy room with a large bed. There was no fireplace, yet heat could be felt coming up out of iron grating in the floor.
“Ducts,” Alansa said in answer to Pytaki’s quizzical look. “I have only two fireplaces in the house, but there are metal tubes running through the walls and floors that carry heat to the other rooms. Tech designed it; he’s very intelligent.”
Micayta didn’t want to talk about Tech at the moment, thinking of the way he’d looked at her. “What do you know about Demos?”
A look of profound sadness entered Alansa’s eyes. “More than I care to, I’m afraid. But nothing I can tell you now. You should ask Tech. Goodnight.” She left the room and pulled the door shut behind her.
Pytaki kicked off his boots and stripped down to his undershorts before crawling beneath the sheets. He sighed as he folded his hands behind his head. “I could get used to this.”
“Don’t.” Micayta continued to stare at the door, wondering what was going on out there between Tech and Alansa. “We won’t be staying long.”
“It’ll be hard to go back to that drafty old tavern after this.” He hesitated. “You know…Tech said…well, he offered to put us up in a house.”
Micayta turned, frowning. “When did he do that? When he brought you here?”
Pytaki nodded. “He said we’d be safer there than at the tavern.”
“Meaning he could keep a better watch on us. I hope you told him no.”
“I said I’d have to talk to you first, but it doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, isn’t this great? It’s wonderful, right?” His face was strangely anxious. “I think we should do it.”
“We can’t,” she said. “Nobody makes an offer like that without strings attached. Nothing in life is free, little brother. In the end you always have to pay.”
Pytaki stared up at the ceiling. “When Tech came to get me, I saw all the blood and the look in his eyes. I thought he was going to tell me you were dead.” He looked at her. “What happened to you tonight? What are we caught up in?”
She only wished she could answer that question with any kind of surety. “Nothing I can’t handle, believe me.” She moved toward the door. “Go to sleep, okay?”
He sat up. “Where are you going?”
“To the kitchen to get a drink. My throat is dry. Relax, I’ll be right back.”
“Okay, but I won’t go to sleep until you come back.” He lay his head down on the pillow.
Micayta left the room, confident he would be sound asleep before she made it halfway down the hall. Moving across the plush carpet on bare feet, Micayta made no sound as she approached the sitting room.
“Why did you give her that dress?” Tech’s voice was so harsh it hardly sounded like his own.
“I had to give her something to wear,” Alansa replied.
Micayta flattened herself against the wall and peeked around the corner into the sitting room. Tech and Alansa stood facing each other in front of the fireplace. Tech’s face was flushed, his muscles
clearly knotted beneath the clean shirt he wore. Alansa was standing more sedately, but there was a decidedly tense set to her shoulders.
“But that?” Tech shook his head. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I want you to stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything. You brought that girl to me. You made that choice. If anything is going on, it was going on long before I became involved.”
“Nothing is going on. This time is no different from the others.”
“Don’t try to put anything over on me,” Alansa said. “I’m neither blind nor stupid. If I can sense this girl is different, then so can you. And so can he.”
Tech let out an angry breath as he turned away from her and snatched his cloak off the back off a chair. “I’m not going to play these games. Not with you.”
Alansa reached out to touch his arm. “This is not the same old game, Tech, and you know it. Tonight proves that, if nothing else. He wants her now, like he wanted us, and he’ll either have her, or he’ll kill her. The only way you can stop that is to help her stop him.”
Tech’s face showed a battle of confused emotion. “I have to go.” He pulled away from Alansa, drawing his cloak over his shoulders.
“It doesn’t have to be like it was before,” she said. “We can end it. Here. Now.”
“No, we can’t.” A bitter tone crept into his voice. “I’ve lost enough because of him. I won’t lose you too.” He looked over his shoulder at Alansa. “Leave it alone. You’ll only make things worse if you don’t.”
He strode toward the hall and Micayta darted back, hoping he wouldn’t be able to see her there in the dark. Either he couldn’t, or he was simply too angry to notice. Either way, he never so much as glanced in her direction as he strode out the front door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next morning found Micayta feeling physically better, if not mentally. Things were getting complicated and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t seem to extricate herself from the situation. She’d never been one to put much faith in a higher power, but it was starting to seem like something beyond her control was pulling her in a direction in which she had no desire to go.
Alansa opened the bedroom door without bothering to knock, a pinched look to her expression. “You have a visitor.”
“Visitor?” Micayta glanced at Pytaki, who was sound asleep, curled up on his side with most of the covers kicked off on the floor.
“Yes. Jaysir Enfargo, to be exact.” Distaste was practically dripping from the words. “I had no idea the two of you were friendly.”
Micayta rose to her feet. “Well, now you know.”
Alansa’s lips pursed, but she said no more, merely turned and walked up the hall. Micayta glanced once more at her brother, then followed her.
Jaysir was standing beside the fireplace; he turned as they entered the sitting room. “Micayta, I’m so glad to see you’re all right.” He gave her an appraising look and flashed that disarming smile. “I daresay you look even more radiant than the day we met.”
Micayta felt the heat start to rise. “A bath will do wonders for a girl.”
Alansa hovered in the doorway. “I suppose I should leave the two of you alone to talk.” There was a slight up tilt to the sentence, suggesting it was more a question than a statement. When no objection was forthcoming, she turned and left.
“I don’t think she likes you much,” Micayta said.
“I can’t imagine why.” His expression grew somber. “I came to see you as soon as I heard that you’d been attacked. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, really. A bump on the head, a few bruises, nothing serious.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Micayta shrugged, wishing he would stop looking at her with such honest concern. It made lying harder. “There isn’t much to tell. It was dark; I was struck from behind. We scuffled a little, but I never got a good look at his face. He knocked me down and took off. That’s the all of it.”
“Do you have any idea what he wanted?”
“Coin, I would imagine. Luckily I’d left all of mine with my brother. He didn’t get anything for his efforts.”
“Whatever were you doing out there so late?”
“I looked around New District for a while after you left, lost track of time I guess.” She laughed. “I’m a little embarrassed really, that I was taken by surprise like that. Usually I’m more vigilant.”
“No reason you should be embarrassed,” he said, “and no reason to worry over it either. I’ve turned out the guard in that district with instructions to haul in anyone the least bit suspicious. I’ll do my best to see that the person who attacked you is punished.”
Micayta was a little taken aback by the statement and the intense look in his eyes. It was almost as if he was taking her attack personally. A silly thought and she quickly doused it. “That’s good. You don’t want desperate criminals roaming the streets.”
He tilted his head slightly to the left, that slow, easy smile spreading across his face. “Did I tell you that you look rather lovely today?”
“As opposed to most days?”
“Not at all. A little road dirt and grime can’t hide a pretty face.”
Micayta was at a loss as to how to respond to that. This was a situation which she had never before been in and not one she was prepared to deal with. In a rundown tavern with her dagger strapped to her side, she could brush away such words with a little jagged humor and a swat of her hand. But in a nice house, dressed as she was, weaponless, a little harmless flirting didn’t seem so harmless.
Jaysir stepped away from the fireplace. “I would like it very much if you would come to the garrison tonight and have dinner with me.”
“Dinner? Tonight?”
“Yes. What do you say?”
What did she want to say, that was the better question. ‘No’ was her first instinct. Surely nothing good could come from encouraging whatever it was he had in mind. And yet she hesitated.
The front door opened and a moment later Tech was standing in the doorway of the sitting room. Micayta took a step back from Jaysir, feeling a sudden rush of unreasonable guilt, which served to spike her anger.
The two men eyed each other for a moment. Then Jaysir surprised Micayta by taking her hand and lifting it to his lips. “I’ll take up no more of your time now.” His soft lips brushed the back of her hand. “Until tonight.” With a sidelong glance at Tech, Jaysir strode from the room.
Tech glowered at Jaysir’s retreating back before turning to Micayta. “What was he doing here?”
“He came to see me,” Micayta said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Really? And how did he know you were here?”
“He’s the Head of Defense; it’s his business to know such things.” She turned toward the fire under the pretense of warming her hands. She mentally kicked herself for letting Jaysir disarm her so completely that she hadn’t even thought to ask the question.
“I thought we’d agreed that you shouldn’t talk to him.”
“We?” Micayta whirled to face him, her eyes brightened by a flash of anger. “Since when do you have any say in who I do and do not speak to?”
“Seeing as how you ignored my warnings about Demos and nearly got yourself killed, I thought you might actually try using some good sense. I guess I was wrong.”
“I guess you were. In fact, I have so little sense that I’m actually going to have dinner with him tonight at the garrison.”
“Wha– why?”
“Because I want to, that’s why.” She folded her arms. “What do you care anyway?”
Tech stared at her wordlessly for a moment. He sighed. “You’re right. Who you choose to consort with is none of my business. I didn’t come to fight, though it seems to be what we do best.”
“If you came to see Alansa, she’s in the kitchen.”
He shook his head. “No, I came to return this.” He reached beneath his cloak and withdre
w her dagger. “I thought you might want it back.”
She took the dagger, looking down at the worn blade rather than at him. What was she thinking, she couldn’t go off to the garrison to have dinner with Jaysir and leave Pytaki here unprotected. But now that she’d told Tech those were her plans, she felt backed into a corner.
“Is there anything else?” she asked.
“I’d like to know your plans.”
She looked up at him. “What plans?”
“About Demos and the sphere and the reason I brought you to Phadra. Plans, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“My move, right?”
Tech nodded. “You may not like it much, but I brought you here and now it…it’s too late to turn back. Demos doesn’t let things go easily.”
Micayta bit the inside of her lip and tried to decide how much she should tell him about what had happened before the baguar attack. “Last night, Demos made me an offer. One that didn’t involve anybody getting killed.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him no, but now I’m starting to think that maybe I should take him up on it after all. What do you think?” She watched his face, trying to gauge his reaction. She had no intention of doing any such thing, but she was hoping that by pretending she was thinking it about, she might force him to slip and tell her whatever it was she knew he was hiding.
Tech crossed to the window. He stood there, hands on his hips, staring at the lacy curtains. “I think any offer made by such a creature shouldn’t be entered into lightly. There could be hidden consequences.” He looked at her. “Wasn’t it you who said that nothing is free in this world? That everything has a price? You might want to think about what you’d have to give up if you go back to him.”
Micayta took a step toward him, searching his eyes for some hint of truth. “What are you hiding from me? Is it something I should know before I make up my mind?”
Tech’s jaw tightened. He swallowed, and looked away, shaking his head. But not before she could see the pain in his eyes. And that was the real problem here. She knew she couldn’t trust him, but neither could she read anything of his intent. Usually she was good at reading people and seeing the truth behind their lies. Or so she thought. But since meeting him she was finding all her preconceptions about herself and the world in general challenged, and she didn’t like that one bit.