her instruments 03 - laisrathera

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Sure.”

  “What I expected of my life.”

  “Yeah?”

  Sitting a short ways down the wall from Val, Belinor looked up.

  “That I would grow old in the priesthood. I would guess. To eventually take the high priest’s mantle? Maybe. That was treated as an inevitability, so I never questioned it.”

  “But did you want to be a high priest?” Irine asked, curious.

  He flashed her a smile. “I don’t know. I’ve never been one, so how could I decide?”

  “If you run your life based on that philosophy, you’ll never do anything,” Irine said. “Except, I guess, the things that your parents made you do before you had any choice, so you’ve already experienced them. Don’t you have experiences you want to have had before you die?”

  Val considered this, eyes still focused on the corridor where it dwindled into the dark. “Yes, actually. I believe I do.”

  “And?”

  Val grinned at her suddenly. “I’ve never kissed a woman.”

  Irine canted her head. “Have you kissed a man?”

  Belinor exclaimed, “God and Lady!”

  “Guess that’s not okay here,” Irine said.

  Val was laughing. “No, not very.”

  Irine nodded, ears pricked. “Do girls with fur count as women?”

  “Goddess and Lord!”

  “Good job,” Reese murmured to Irine. “I haven’t heard that one yet.”

  Belinor was flushing, the Eldritch skin so fair it was easily read even in the low light. “One does not kiss priests.”

  “Why not?” Reese asked, curious.

  “Priests and priestesses don’t marry,” Val offered. “It’s considered a distraction from their work. This is, in fact, the same reasoning that allowed Queen Jerisa to beg off from marrying, and the Queens after her, since technically all queens are the titular heads of the Church.”

  “A kiss isn’t marrying,” Irine pointed out.

  “A kiss is a carnal distraction,” Belinor said firmly.

  “I could use a carnal distraction.” Val grinned at Irine. “If a furless mind-mage counts as a man to you, Lady Tigress, then I am willing to have the new experience. Particularly since there’s no guarantee I will have the chance again.”

  “To kiss a woman?” Belinor muttered.

  “To kiss anyone.”

  “Good a reason as any,” Irine said, and crawled across the corridor. She stopped on her hands and knees in front of Val and paused, waiting; when he didn’t flinch, she leaned into the glow of his sticklight and touched her fingers to his jaw. It was a sweet, chaste brush of lips, but it was beautiful. Reese hugged her knees and thought that romance novels hadn’t prepared her for anything, and that surprised her because now she had the sense that she wanted to be prepared. That she wanted to try.

  Val opened his eyes and met Irine’s and smiled. “How about that,” he said, low. “I like fur.”

  Irine giggled and backed away, curling back up against Reese’s side. Reese could sense her happiness.

  “And now, ten minutes,” Val said, sounding vastly pleased with himself.

  Belinor eyed him.

  Reese didn’t want the time to pass. She didn’t like sitting in the corridor, in the cold, with her backside getting colder and damper and her nose getting more numb and all the possibility of failure (and worse) in front of her. But she didn’t want to move through the next few hours either. She kept her cheek on Irine’s hair, when the tigraine put her head back on Reese’s shoulder, and thought about how heavy a head could be, when a body could also be so fragile. She shivered and pressed her nose behind Irine’s ear.

  “What are you thinking?” Irine whispered.

  “That you smell like wet cat.”

  “That’s because I am a wet cat.”

  Reese paused and the Harat-Shar began to giggle. Amused and a little exasperated, Reese said, “What?”

  “I actually made you wonder if that was some sort of dirty joke.” Irine grinned. “And here I thought I’d never get you to think that way.”

  Reese huffed. “Hush or I’ll bite you.”

  “And I’ll—”

  “Like it, yes, I know.”

  Belinor was staring at them now, and Val smiling but still staring down the corridor with an innocuous expression. Well, let them hear. Reese hugged Irine and waited out the last few minutes, and then it was time.

  “Come on,” Val said, and they started, and this was the beginning of what Reese hoped to be the ending. The right ending.

  Their passage through the hidden catacombs beneath Ontine felt like nightmare for Reese, the mundane kind filled with halls she could never escape from and a pervasive dread that spurred her heart and made her body shake. She hated that kind of nightmares, wished suddenly and powerfully for Allacazam’s chiming reassurances. Where was he, she wondered? Would she ever see him again? Was Kis’eh’t feeding him enough? Too much?

  “Stop,” Val hissed.

  The entire column froze. Reese waited for soldiers or priests or enemies… something. When none were forthcoming, she whispered, “What is it?”

  Val backed away, rejoined them in the dark behind one of the turns. “The pirates are in a different part of the palace.”

  “From what we expected?”

  “From Baniel. The pirates are in the catacombs here. Baniel’s upstairs, in the palace.”

  Reese frowned. “We need the pirates gone.”

  “And Baniel, right?” Irine whispered over her shoulder. “He’s the traitor. The one who made the deal with the dragons.”

  “We need them both,” Val said. “So we will have to separate.”

  A breathpause. Then Reese said, “Oh no. No, the moment we do that we’re going to die. How does it make sense to split up? Half the people sent to fight the same number of enemies? We need to stick together!”

  “And for the most part, we will,” Val said. “You and the others will go after the pirates. I will go after Baniel.”

  “You. Alone. Against the guy who got you thrown out?” Reese said, skeptical.

  “Me, alone,” Val agreed, meeting her eyes in the dark. “Because if I bring more and he can turn their minds, then I will be fighting not only him but my own allies.”

  Her heart gave a sickening double-thump to make up for the beat it missed. Reese pressed her fist to her chest to steady herself and swallowed bile. “Okay. I can see that being… um… not the greatest scenario. But you can’t go without any backup at all.” She thought of snow and roses and the anger that had allowed her to move an arm despite Val’s pressing attention. “I’ll go with you. I have some luck resisting compulsions.”

  “Some.” He studied her, frowning. “But I don’t like the idea of being responsible for your safety, Lady.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you going alone, either!” Irine said.

  “You won’t take any guards?” Reese asked.

  He glanced at them, saw their silent regard. To her, he said, “Have you martial training?”

  “Um, no.”

  He nodded, short hair twitching around his neck. Maybe hair that short could look normal on an Eldritch, if Val had it. Maybe she wouldn’t be so shocked by it next time she saw Hirianthial. Which she would. Damn it. But Val was talking. “Then you I will take. I’ll have no chance against trained soldiers if Baniel can command their minds against me. But a small woman.…”

  Irine sniffed. “She probably weighs more than most of them!”

  Reese eyed her. “Not that much more.”

  “And she’s armed! You can’t ask her to leave her weapon…!”

  “Now that I’d rather not,” Reese muttered.

  Val glanced at her. “I think this is ill-advised.”

  “I think you going off alone is ill-advised,” Reese said. “But you’re in charge of this expedition, and if you say Baniel might be capable of… of mind-controlling us so that we turn on you, I can respect that—”

&nb
sp; Belinor folded his arms and said, “Is this your death-wish, then, Corel Reborn?”

  Complete silence. Val looked slowly over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes, and in profile Reese could see the gleam in them, dark and angry. Astonished, she said, “Blood, he’s right?”

  “No.” That from between gritted teeth. “But I would prefer to go into danger this severe in a way that does not endanger innocents.”

  “Especially innocent women?”

  “I’m not an innocent woman!” Reese said, irritated.

  “Yes, you are,” Irine whispered.

  “Irine!”

  The tigraine put a finger to her own mouth, quieting her, because the men were still… arguing? If something as fiercely controlled as their exchanges could be called arguing.

  “I am not suicidal.”

  “I think this sounds like a very noble form of suicide,” Belinor said. “The hero, slipping through the corridors alone to meet his fatal nemesis, and probably dying while killing him. The least you can do is take Lady Eddings so she can drag your body back.”

  “Ugh, this is ridiculous! We’re wasting time!” Reese said. She pointed at Belinor. “You, Irine and everyone else go take care of the pirates. Val, you lead me to Baniel. You keep him busy—I shoot him. Everyone got that?”

  A tense stillness followed in which Reese was far too aware of how round Irine’s golden eyes were, and the fear that made her ears tremble flat against her skull. She gripped the tigraine’s shoulder and said firmly, “I’ll see you on the other side of this.”

  “Right.” As Val began giving the second group directions, Irine bit her lip, then said, “Hey, one thing, okay?”

  “Sure?”

  Irine opened her jacket and pushed back the flap at an angle, drawing out a long, thin needle from a compartment so tiny Reese could barely see it. “I have spares. So take this one.”

  “You want me to have a….” Reese trailed off, then remembered their conversation while trapped in the closet on the Earthrise. “A door hook?”

  Irine laughed. “It doesn’t have a hook at the end and you’ll never bend it. It’s too strong.” She took Reese’s hand and set the pick on it, folding the human’s dark fingers over it. “Last time I put a pick in Hirianthial’s gift, he needed it. You might need one too. You never know.”

  “Where do I put it?” Reese asked, bewildered.

  “Did you replace the knife you lost?”

  Reese grimaced. “No.”

  Irine slid the pick out of Reese’s fingers and bent, tucking it into her boot. “There. No one will ever know it’s there.”

  “I hope not,” Reese said and hugged her tightly. “Soon, all right?”

  “Promise,” Irine answered, and then joined the group as they formed up. The last Reese saw of them was Irine’s too tight shoulders… and Belinor giving the renegade a significant look before departing.

  “What was that about?”

  “I should never have said that bit about Corel,” Val muttered. Sighing, he continued, “Come, Lady.”

  “Reese. Just Reese.” But she followed him as he resumed their interrupted journey.

  Had Olthemiel and the other Swords gotten all the hostages out by now? How far were the pirates, and when would she see any enemies—

  Reese started as they turned the corner and found a full hallway, tall and hung with lanterns, and right before them, a man in red robes, walking. Val reached back and took her wrist and strode past him, and he didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even move out of their way…! As if he hadn’t even….

  “No,” Val murmured once they had turned down a different hall. “I told him we weren’t there, and he believed me.” A flicker of a smile. “Much easier to do with only two of us. Explaining away a troop would have been somewhat less successful.”

  “Somewhat!” she whispered.

  “It’s fine,” was the distracted reply. “And it will only get easier as we go from the priests, who are after all trained to some level of competence. Once we are upstairs, it will go quickly.”

  “Your pet has done what?” the Chatcaavan asked. His tone was more mild curiosity than affront, which was perhaps for the best, given the news. Not that Baniel cared either way what became of the Eldritch, but he suspected his alien ally would have preferred to cage them and send them to whatever God-forgotten planets the dragons used for their harems.

  “Slain the House.” Baniel set the telegem aside and stretched before going to the sideboard for a glass of cordial. “Rather with prejudice.”

  “Like a male should, then. I didn’t think any of these freaks were capable of showing any horn at all.”

  Baniel snorted. “I thought you’d be more disappointed. This reduces the number of potential slaves available.”

  “More slaves can be bred,” the Chatcaavan said, uninterested. He held out a hand, expecting a glass of his own. “Yes? That is how you beget your young?”

  “I assume the begetting is not dissimilar, since I have seen what remains of the women I’ve sent you.” Baniel poured him some of the cordial, because courtesy seemed associated with weakness in the aliens. He did not mind the creature underestimating him; it was what had allowed him so many hooks into the Chatcaavan already.

  “Oh, the act.” The alien shrugged his liquescent shrug. “Of course. Similar enough, anyway. I meant you need to lie with one another to get your heirs.”

  “You don’t?” Baniel asked, amused.

  “No.”

  He paused between sips.

  “We Change,” the alien said, and something about the word made him feel its weight, even in Universal. “We can get young on other species. Our seed fools their bodies into nurturing it until it develops, but it is born Chatcaavan.”

  “And do your women also transform the leavings of alien males?”

  The alien snorted. “What do I care for what females do or do not? But we are not like you, freak. We do not sell our own to our lessers. Even if they are no better than possessions to us, still they are better than that.”

  To that, Baniel could only reply, “How pleased I am not to be a woman, then.”

  The Chatcaavan smirked. “Were you a woman, alien ally, we would not be having this conversation at all.”

  Yes, he had seen that. Once, and that was enough; he left the work of clearing the refuse afterwards to acolytes. He cared very little for what became of his enemies, but blood made a dreadful stain and he found the stench of violent death distracting.

  “So this male you’ve found with horns,” the Chatcaavan continued. “Now that he has destroyed his enemies, what does he plan?”

  “Now?” Baniel snorted, amused. “He plans to make the long trip back to Ontine with his victorious army, a journey that will take weeks—longer, if the weather worsens. It was brilliant work to use the Pad to transport his army there, but he perhaps did not think through the consequences of having to return the long way.” He grinned. “He may even have failed to adequately plan for that journey. We may be rid of some number of his people, completely by accident.”

  The alien sipped his drink, amused. “You are enjoying yourself.”

  “It gives me a certain pleasure to watch the demise of people I hate. I imagine you understand.”

  “I do. What I don’t is how you can hate all of your own people. Is there no creature you value?”

  Baniel considered, then smiled. “Myself.”

  The Chatcaavan guffawed, a very inelegant sound for the shape he had wrapped around himself. Lifting his glass, he said, “To the best and first investment.”

  “Indee—”

  He stopped. That aura… oh yes, the woman. Had she really returned? And at her side, a clot of studied nothingness that could only be….

  Baniel started laughing. “Ah, my ally. Come, we have guests. Let us prepare to receive them.”

  “Stop,” Val said.

  Reese froze, heart racing. She could taste her pulse in her mouth, under her tongue—how did that
work? She was ready to be done with this kind of 3deo action hero stuff. She’d had enough of it the first time she’d had to sneak through Ontine. Doing it a second time, even if the halls were practically deserted with all the winter court activities canceled, had only made her more nervy.

  When Val didn’t move, she whispered, “Is there something wrong?”

  “There’s someone in the room with him. I want to see if he leaves or not.” He glanced at her. “Might as well sit down. We can afford to wait. Give the Swords time to get the people out.”

  “Sit? What if someone finds us?”

  “No one’s going to find us.” He put his back to the wall and slid down. “No one’s going to bother Baniel in his own den without permission.”

  “Then who’s in there with him?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t read him.”

  Reese glanced at him sharply.

  “It happens,” Val said, unconcerned. “Some people are harder to read than others, especially if you don’t know them well. Just relax, Lady. Catch your breath. If he hasn’t left in a handful of minutes, we’ll go in.”

  “And you’ll freeze them and I’ll shoot them.”

  “Yes.”

  Reese rubbed her arms, looking nervously at the tapestry across from them: some kind of horrendous battle scene, of course, involving unicorns and banners and corpses. She hadn’t seen anything like it on the lower floors; maybe that’s why it was up here? Maybe Liolesa thought it was ugly. It was. “Baniel… do you know if he’s as strong as Hirianthial?”

  “His brother?” Val looked over at her, curious. “I didn’t think Baniel’s brother had talent.”

  Of course… he wouldn’t know, with the talent having developed while Hirianthial was off-world. “He’s a real mind-mage. Like ‘kill people from a distance’ real.”

  “Ah? This is new. If we’d known the high priest’s own brother had had such talents….”

  “You all would have killed him.” She glanced at Val. “Killed Hirianthial.”

  Val said, “Yes.” Considering her, he finished, “That upsets you.”

  “Of course it does,” she replied, testy. “Murdering people for having an ability that’s only potentially lethal is wrong.”