“I see,” Rhiain purred. She butted her giant head against his chest, and he affectionately rubbed the top of her head. “You werrre verrry brrrave. I couldn’t have stayed so still.”
“We’ll feast tonight to celebrate,” Fitch said, his arm slung across his brother’s shoulders. “Tomorrow we’ll start your training with the sword. You’ll have some ground to make up, of course, but as I remember you showed talent. It’s in your blood. The next battle we’ll fight together, side by side.”
Edvard blinked, looking overwhelmed, but replied with caution. “I’d like to fight by your side, brother, but not with a sword.” He glanced at Rhiain, then ducked his head shyly. “Now that I’m not crippled anymore, I want to become a shandy. Like you.”
In the resounding silence that followed, Lance resisted the urge to smack his palm to his forehead. He should have seen this coming. Everyone spoke at once:
“Wait,” Lance started to say.
“A cat shandy?” Rhiain asked hopefully.
Fitch’s response drowned them both out. “You want to what? No! I forbid it!”
Edvard stubbornly shook his head. “It’s my decision.”
Fitch slapped him across the face. “You have the blood of kings. I won’t let you waste yourself by becoming a beast.”
Lance tensed, ready to intervene if Rhiain lost her temper, but instead she flattened her ears and hunched her shoulders as if Fitch had slapped her.
Edvard wiped blood from his lip. “You can’t tell me what to do.” He took a deep breath. “Loma—”
Lance pushed between the two brothers. “Wait.”
“You stay out of this,” Fitch snarled.
“Enough!” Lance yelled. He addressed Edvard. “I just healed you. You owe me the courtesy of listening.”
Edvard pressed his lips together, then nodded. “I’ll listen, but I won’t change my mind.”
Lance bit his tongue on a rude retort and tried to reason with Edvard. “I think you’d make a fine shandy, but it’s too soon to be making such a serious decision.”
“Because I’m too young?” Edvard thrust out his chin.
“No, because you’ve only just been healed. Turning shandy is for a lifetime. Waiting a few days won’t make much difference. You owe it to yourself to think it through.” He lowered his voice. “You owe it to Rhiain. It will devastate her if you change into a shandy and then change your mind. Again.”
Edvard looked stricken at the reminder. “I wouldn’t—”
“You’d never intentionally hurt her. I know. Now,” Lance took a deep breath, “I want your promise that you won’t sacrifice your humanity until you’ve spent a month as you are— healed. Spar with your brother. Think about whether you want to give up your hands forever.”
He thought he’d have to remind Edvard of the debt he owed, but after a moment the young man’s shoulders slumped. “You have my word. I’ll postpone the sacrifice—but I won’t change my mind.”
Lance had to be satisfied with that.
* * *
“Rhiain, hold a moment, I need to speak to you.” Fitch walked toward her with confident strides.
“Arrre you surrre you wish to speak to a beast?” Rhiain asked bitterly, but she waited among the shady tree trunks on the outskirts of camp until he caught up with her.
Fitch’s face remained blank. “What?”
He didn’t even remember insulting her.
“Rhiain, I need to ask you a favour.” His hand dropped onto her neck, rubbing the fur underneath her mane.
She knew she should move away, but she didn’t. Neither did she lean into the touch as she normally would have. She waited for him to continue.
“It’s about Edvard. I want you to discourage him from being a shandy. He’s my brother, my nearest kin. When I become Gotia’s king, I will need someone that I can trust to act as my second in command. And, well, men won’t follow a beast—a shandy—no matter how much of an asset they are in battle.”
Fitch grasped her head and earnestly looked her in the eye. Most men feared getting so close to her jaws. “I do appreciate you, Rhiain. In fact, I wish I had a dozen shandies like you on my side—but not my brother. Please, promise me you won’t encourage him.”
Confusion made her stomach flutter. Shouldn’t it be Edvard’s choice to make? But she couldn’t refuse Fitch when he was this close, close enough to smell the masculine musk of his skin. “I prrromise.”
“I knew I could count on you.” Fitch grinned at her.
Rhiain watched him go, sadness in her heart. Whatever Edvard chose, one thing seemed certain: if Fitch couldn’t tolerate the thought of Edvard turning shandy, he would never consider it for himself.
Chapter Twenty
“Why won’t he stand still and fight like a man?” Raving, Nir picked up a bowl and hurled it at the ground.
Sara watched it smash, shards of crockery exploding outwards. A sliver of ceramic embedded itself in her shin, drawing blood.
“If he’d stand still, I’d destroy him!” In demonstration Nir smashed a carafe, too. Red wine soaked the ground. “His pitiful rebels can’t stand against my Legions.”
Which was probably why Fitch hadn’t tried to stand toe-to-toe with Nir’s army. In the weeks since the assassination of Governor Drencis Marconus, Fitch had used his forces only to skirmish, attacking any weaknesses that presented themselves: a column too strung out marching through the forest, a scouting party that never returned.
Sara wondered when Nir would figure out his own legionnaires were betraying themselves, bragging to the acolytes in the Temple of Desire.
Nir drew his dagger and eyed Sara.
Something strange happened in the moment before he threw it: Sara felt the urge to cower. To duck her head and cover her belly with her hands.
The urge was so strange that she stilled instead. Nir threw the dagger; it tumbled once and the haft bruised her shoulder. Even if it had struck deep, pain was nothing to her, so why had she wanted to avoid it? To protect the baby? She still felt no affection for the unborn child, but he moved frequently now, constantly reminding her of his existence. And the babe made her think of Lance.
Nir continued to rant. “Mother-loving coward. Yellow-bellied snake in the grass.” At each insult he hurled whatever came to hand. “You can’t tell me the bastard doesn’t have help. Those toe-lickers in Tolium are hiding him, I know it!”
Sara endured the hail of objects and was injured only once more when Nir’s camp stool hit her toes.
“I am Nir,” he growled. “I am not supposed to lose!”
It was true. He was Nir, high priest of the God of War, so why was the Gotian chief beating him? Why was Jazor, the priestess of the traditional consort of the God of War, betraying him?
The answer that came to her was so shocking, Sara blurted it out. “You’ve lost the God of War’s favour.”
One instant Nir stood five feet away. In the next he’d grabbed her throat. “What. Did. You. Say?”
Sara had no proof, but she knew her reasoning was sound. She tried to speak. “He...must...have—” Her voice choked off. She couldn’t breathe—
Nir released her, but continued to glare at her while she struggled to fill her lungs. “You’re wrong. I still have the God of War’s favour.”
Sara tilted her head, considering. Was her conclusion wrong?
Nir tugged at his short iron-gray hair. “Why would the God of War turn to another? I am his faithful servant.” His jaw jutted out. “You disagree?”
Logic made her pitiless. “Your treatment of me has served Vez, the God of Malice, not your own God.” She wondered if that was why her father had been able to force Nir to eat the racha meat at that long ago banquet when Nir had intended to denounce her father. “You’re cruel.”
&nb
sp; Nir scoffed. “War is cruel. War is killing and maiming and hot blood, followed by either ignominious defeat or sweet victory...You cannot deny a warrior his plunder and the rape of his enemies’ women after battle.”
“My father was your enemy, but you didn’t win me,” Sara pointed out. “You paid Blorius money for me.”
Nir’s lips parted, unable to deny it.
Sara’s small surge of satisfaction was short-lived. She should’ve remembered he couldn’t bear to lose at anything, even an argument. Rage flashed over his face. He threw her down on the bed and forced her thighs apart.
She could ignore the tearing pain that followed, but the unwanted intimacy of having her body invaded—his heavy weight on her swollen belly, his rank breath in her face—filled her with distaste. She’d felt a similar way when a drunken legionnaire vomited on her bare feet.
In a flash of clarity, she realized she didn’t like being his slave.
She wanted him to get off her.
While he thrust between her legs, Sara imagined closing her hand over the hilt of her belt-knife, stealthily drawing it from its sheathe—and stabbing upward into Nir’s gaunt abdomen, disemboweling him.
The fantasy pleased her. Almost she averted her eyes, afraid Nir would read her violent thoughts, yet closing her eyes seemed just as dangerous.
Deliberately, consciously, Sara relaxed her hand and body, made her gaze opaque.
Because Nir wanted her to hate him. If he knew her connection to the baby’s soul was growing stronger, he would increase his efforts to hurt her.
She kept her face blank and let no hint of relief show when Nir roared his release and collapsed on top of her.
After a last grunt, Nir fell still, his stinky, sweaty body touching hers, his flaccid penis still half-inside her. He lay fully atop the hard mound of her pregnancy, pressing down.
Sara stared at the tent ceiling. She couldn’t push him off, couldn’t jump up and wash his seed, his scent off of her. Desperately, she began to count her heartbeats the way she had at her most soulless, but it didn’t help. She didn’t know how to lessen her connection to the baby’s soul, and she couldn’t think properly while under Nir.
He was drunk. He might very well sleep until morning. Could she ease out from underneath him? Would doing so give her away?
Though she’d done so in the past, she didn’t want to stay under him until morning.
Nir shifted in his sleep, making her tense and then grimace as he put pressure on her strained bladder.
But that gave her the excuse she needed. Sara pushed Nir’s shoulder. “Move. I need to urinate.”
It worked. He shifted to the side, and she slid out from under him.
After visiting the latrines, she found her own pallet, but she thought hard that night about her dilemma.
To have any chance of saving the babe, she had to remain Nir’s slave for as long as possible. But the longer she served him, the higher the risk her distaste would grow into hatred. She must guard herself against feeling emotion or the fragile cord between the soul and the baby would snap. The baby would die. And all this would have been for nothing.
* * *
Lance’s eyes sprang open in the dark. From the murmur of voices and the flicker of flames, he could tell it was early evening.
Head aching, he braced himself on one elbow, trying to ascertain what had awakened him. Nobody seemed to be calling his name or crying. He could hear Rhiain breathing off to the side, but she wasn’t purring loud enough to wake the dead as she sometimes was wont to. All seemed normal.
Misery weighted his limbs. He lay back down, but before he could shut his eyes Loma whispered in his mind: Her danger grows. If you want to be with her at the end, go now.
His chest seized with dread.
“At the end of what?” Lance said aloud, but the Goddess’s presence had already faded. Swearing, he rolled to his feet, then almost toppled over.
Two days of cold chills and missed meals due to heavy nausea had left his limbs as weak as water. Sara needed him. How could he reach her like this?
How could the Goddess warn him, but leave him so weak? Did she want him to fail?
He was so sick of being ill, of paying Her price over and over...For a second he teetered on the brink of an irreversible decision.
Goddess. What was he thinking? Lance wiped cold sweat from his brow. He was just tired, that’s all, his brain fevered. Of course, he didn’t want to take back his sacrifice. Of course, he still wanted to be a healer.
He’d never let his illnesses stop him before, and he didn’t intend to start now. Sara needed him. He would go to her even if he had to crawl.
* * *
Rhiain padded to a halt, damp earth and pine needles sticking to her paws.
After waking an hour before dawn to find Lance gone, she’d tracked him into the forest. He’d taken a meandering path among the fragrant cedars and now she knew why: fever consumed him.
She studied his glazed eyes and high colour with concern. “Lance? What arrre you doing out herrre? Let me help you back to camp.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not going back. Ever.”
Ever? Rhiain flattened her ears in distress. “You’ve been wanderrring in cirrrcles. Wherrre do you think you’rrre going?”
“To find Sara. Crawl if I have to.”
“You’rrre feverrrish. You agrrreed to let Sarrra stay with the Legion and spy forrr us.”
Lance made a pushing away gesture—and nearly fell over, he was so unsteady on his feet. “Not anymore. Goddess says it’s time. She and the babe need me.” Lance’s brown eyes turned bleak.
Oh. If the Goddess of Mercy had told him to go, that made a difference—at least to Rhiain. However, she squirmed at the thought of trying to explain it to Fitch.
“I’ll go with you,” she decided. “We’ll brrring herrr back and explain it to Fitch somehow.”
“Don’t care about Fitch,” Lance said bluntly. “He’s not my chief. And I’m not coming back. I’m done here. I’ve taught the slaves and the Gotians about sacrifice magic and the Rule of Paradox. Wenda can’t ask any more of me. The rest is up to them.”
Dismay tightened Rhiain’s throat. “But the Legions will attack any day now. We can’t leave them. They need us both.” She might not like the way Fitch treated his brother, but he was still a great warrior and the rebellion was worth fighting for.
Lance grimaced, but shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not the Kandrith. Don’t ask me to choose them over Sara. She needs me,” he said fiercely.
Rhiain keened in the back of her throat, torn.
Lance’s expression softened, and he clumsily patted her head. “You don’t have to come.”
Rhiain clawed the earth. It wasn’t safe for One who Wore the Brown to travel alone in the Republic. Wenda had asked the shandies to provide an escort. Rhiain had usurped Dyl’s place. How could she fail in her duty?
But Kandrith also needed the Gotian rebellion to succeed. How could she abandon Fitch and Edvard and Willem? They were badly outnumbered. They needed her, too.
They needed her more.
Rhiain made the only choice she could. “I will carrry you to the brrridge at Tolium, but then I must rrreturn to the rrrebels.” She braced herself for an argument.
But Lance only nodded and awkwardly climbed on her back.
She started forward, but guilt continued to prey on her. “I’m sorry. I know Dyl would stay with you.”
It took Lance a moment to respond. “Dyl’s not here. He chose not to come. You came so it’s your choice.” He swayed from side to side on her back.
“Dyl didn’t choose not to come,” Rhiain blurted out. “I didn’t ask him. I lied.” She writhed in shame.
Another long silence, long enough to m
ake her wonder if in the grip of his fever he hadn’t understood her, then his hand brushed her mane. “Why?” he asked simply.
And so she told him about how the newest shandies had both chosen wolf form and how she hadn’t wanted the Gotian rebels to make the same choice.
“You want a family,” Lance said calmly. “A mate. Companionship. Understandable—everyone wants those things.”
Her ears pricked.
“You shouldn’t have lied to me or Dyl. If you’d asked, I would’ve let you come, too.”
She mewled wretchedly. Why hadn’t she thought of such a simple solution? “I’m sorry. I wish Dyl were here.”
He patted her head again. “I wish Dyl were here, too. But Rhiain? You’ve done well on this journey. Better than I expected.”
Ouch. The fever was making Lance very frank.
“You’re brave and loyal, a good companion and a good friend. I’m glad you came, and I hope you find what you seek. Even if I think you’ve chosen the wrong brother,” he mumbled.
Rhiain pretended not to hear his last comment.
* * *
“Up.”
Before Sara fully woke up, Wettar threw her up on the back of a roan gelding. He pressed a small loaf of bread encrusted with nuts and honey on her, then addressed the two mounted legionnaires. “You have your orders?”
“Yes.” The older of the two men nodded respectfully. “We’ll escort her safely to Tolium.”
Wettar slapped the gelding’s rump, but Sara reined the horse in after two steps. “Why am I being sent to Tolium? Is Nir there?”
Wettar’s face remained as blank as his bald head. “Nir has ordered it. That’s all you need to know.”
That was true, but this sudden change of routine puzzled Sara.
The two men in her escort were polite and didn’t try to grope her. The older one whistled in a pleasant manner, while the younger moved his head constantly, alert for threats, but both kept silent about their destination.
Her unease increased when they reined up by the small gate in the city wall leading to the Temple of Desire. Sara dismounted reluctantly. The legionnaires escorted her through the gate and across the gardens to the temple.
Soul of Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) Page 36