“This isn’t bad,” she commented quietly to Korin once she’d swallowed for the first time.
“It’s good you like it because you’ll get nothing else first thing in the evening no matter how long you stay.” He laughed, said something in Thristan to the others, and they all smiled and nodded. Then he turned back to her. “Finish so we can get down to the weapon room before it fills up with the others.”
She nodded, having stuffed more of the meal into her mouth, and then drank from the mug. “What is this stuff?” she asked, her mouth full, a habit which the Holt household had never looked on as the sin that some other families considered it.
“It’s called chardhoosh. It’s seed from a plant that’s part of the brush here. It grows best out of the sun, so they plant it to the north of the mesa where it’s usually in shadow. Now hurry up.”
In response to his impatience, she nodded, her mouth full, and felt the braid trailing down her back slide up and down on her neck. Their first evening, while she remained confined, she’d watched him carefully braid different colored ribbons, some baubles and a few bells into his long dark queue before he left to get her food. She’d asked him about it, and he’d explained that each ribbon meant something, that the orange one was his house ribbon, the color of the family of his pouching, of his father, Hakor. The other ribbons he did not explain, but there were several, perhaps not as many as some in this room wore, but he’d woven blue and white and gold in and out of his braid. He also wore three bells, each strung along a ribbon of its own, as well as two gems, a red one—ruby or garnet or something unknown to her—and a purple one.
After he’d awakened her earlier and told her tonight she would be allowed to move freely amongst the Tribe, he’d insisted on rebraiding her hair for her. He’d woven an orange ribbon into her braid, explaining that since no house in the Tribe could lay claim to her, she must accept his as her own, at least in the eyes of everyone else. He also promised to help her earn a few ribbons and perhaps even a bell before the fertility ritual so that her braid wouldn’t make her appear to be quite so new to the Tribe.
She had listened to him talk, nodding all the while, trying to take it all in, but her mind kept drifting to the various sci-fi and fantasy novels she’d read on Earth and how she now found herself in the middle of an anthropological wonder. Her heart crunched in her chest as she realized how envious her father—no, Simon Holt—would have been if he’d known.
Tears threatened to spill over onto her cheeks, and she leaned more deeply into her bowl to disguise a quick swipe at her eyes to remove them before any could see. As she did so, the room grew suddenly quite noisy, everyone turning to the small cavern’s opening and talking at once. Lisen looked up and saw two women stepping into the room. One was heavy with a pouched child, and Lisen was reminded that she was still on her period, six days of it, longer than her usual four or five. She was even still cramping. Would it never end?
The other woman had to lower her head to clear the top of the opening, and when she stepped in, Lisen nearly gasped. A blond? she asked herself. Korin had said she would stand out with her light red hair. She’d assumed all Thristans had dark hair, but perhaps it had been the red hue, not its lightness he’d meant. Yet every other person in the room had dark hair. The pouched woman stepped to the other end of the table and sat down, but the blond marched directly to Korin, leaned over and spoke to him. Lisen couldn’t understand a word of their conversation, but finally Korin nodded and turned to her.
“Lisen, this is a friend, from my youth,” he said. “Ondra, this is Lisen of Garla.”
“Ah, Lisen of Garla. You take possession of my loved one’s heart, eh?” Ondra spoke in Garlan with a heavy overlay of a Thristan accent.
“I didn’t realize he was already spoken for,” Lisen replied, confused and trying very hard to tell Korin so with her eyes. He just laughed it off, a reaction Lisen could never have imagined coming from him. Perhaps this woman was someone Korin wanted to defuse.
“Ondra is joined, Lisen. She has no claim on anyone save her spouse.” He looked up at Ondra who stood beside him as she continued to assess Lisen. “Where is Rika, Ondra?”
“On duty in the stable,” she replied, and Lisen decided it was rather gracious of her to keep speaking in Garlan.
“Well,” Korin said as he stood, “we were just leaving. You can take our place.” He offered his hand to Lisen, and she allowed him to help her up. She’d barely touched her breakfast, but her cramps made it difficult to eat. She hoped that the workout she would get while he trained her would end all this hormonal crap she was experiencing.
Korin said a few words in Thristan to the group, and then he left the room, Lisen hurrying to keep up with him. They moved through the tunnel towards his little hole in the rock, and there he stopped.
“I’ll be right out,” he said. “I just have to get something.”
Lisen waited, listening to the sound of him moving clothes and such around. She wondered absently what she’d do if some Thristan happened by, but Korin emerged before her dilemma became a reality. He carried something wrapped in a blanket, and Lisen felt fairly sure that she knew what it was.
“My sword?” she whispered to him. He only nodded and then turned to head down the tunnel, and Lisen once again had to trot to catch up with him. “Why?” she asked as she reached him.
“They have practice swords below, but you don’t have time to play. You still need the heft of a real weapon,” he replied without stopping. They descended down what Lisen believed was the same tunnel they’d followed when they’d arrived.
“But what if I—”
“What if you what? Hurt me?” Korin laughed.
“Well, maybe not with skill but with stupidity,” she tried.
“Like I told you before, I won’t let you.” He halted abruptly, and she nearly ran into him. She looked around the dimly lit tunnel and realized that he’d stopped in front of a round opening maybe a foot and a half off the ground and about three feet in diameter. “And here we are.”
Korin raised one leg over the rock face at the bottom of what Lisen assumed was an entry of some kind. Then he hunched over to fit through the hole. Once inside, he reached out his free hand to help her over and into the chamber where she stood up straight and marveled. Two torches dispatched the dark, and the size of the room behind the round hole startled her.
“It’s big,” she commented softly. It was also empty although from what Korin had said, they would not be alone for long.
“Let’s begin.” He handed her the blanket-shrouded sword and grabbed one of the weapons lying on another stone table against the wall for himself.
Lisen carefully freed the sword in its sheath from the blanket then stared at the golden scabbard. She hadn’t seen it since Halorin, and she marveled anew at the scabbard’s sheen, the way the gold caught the light and reflected it.
“Wrap the sheath in the blanket,” Korin ordered. “The sword is a fine piece of work, but it’s the scabbard that will draw all the attention.”
“And then?”
“Into the corner. It won’t look so suspicious there.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said as she hastened to follow his instructions, drawing the sword out. The ringing of the weapon as it cleared the scabbard reminded her of a great bell heralding the arrival of something grand, something magical. The sword had spoken to her on the night her mother had died. It had regaled her with tales of battles and wars, duels and skirmishes. Apparently it no longer possessed the power to show her its past, but Lisen’s memories left her a bit breathless. She then hid the valuable sheath within the blanket.
“Stand,” Korin ordered, and once she had, he barked, “Salute.”
Lisen brought the sword up so that its length stretched perpendicular to the floor. She smiled. It felt molded to her hands, like an extension of her right arm.
“Salute!” Korin barked.
Lisen brought the flat side of the sword to within
less than an inch of her nose and then allowed the tip to drop in a controlled motion, stopping it at an angle just above parallel to the floor. At the same time, Korin mirrored her movements, but then, he broke from their usual routine and stepped around to stand beside her. Lisen watched him, her sword dipping almost to the ground before she realized it.
“Prima!” Korin ordered, and Lisen put her right foot out in the direction of her now-imaginary opponent, leaving her left foot ten inches back and pointing out. She unlocked her knees and settled down into the position Korin had taught her before he’d taught her anything else. “Feel it, make it as normal as sitting down, lying down, sleeping, only with steel in your hand.” He manipulated her right hand, reminding her muscles what they had begun learning a lifetime ago. “Remember. The movement resides in the wrist, but the strength must come from the arm.”
And so it went. He ordered her from one position to the next, correct a shoulder, a hip, a foot, a wrist or perhaps all four. When he brought her back to a position already corrected, he forced her into place more firmly, less gently. He demanded, and she delivered as best she could. Usually it wasn’t enough. He’d never been so rough on her, so insistent on precision. And all the while, her stupid cramps tortured her back and her pelvis in ways she couldn’t remember ever having felt before. Her body had changed, and she decided that this was a part of that change—a longer, more intense period. Oh, goodie, she thought.
Thristans came and went; Korin ignored them. Lisen, having no way to talk to them, ignored them, too. At the time of the midnight meal, he made her sit down on the blanket that covered the scabbard and told her to hide the sword behind her. He then left, promising to return, and he did. He brought some dried strips of some kind of meat—she didn’t dare ask what—a plump leaf of something that slightly resembled aloe vera and a large jug of water. All of it was palatable, if not tasty, and once they’d eaten, they resumed working. Within an hour of eating, though, she had reached her limit and told him so.
“All right,” he said. “It’s been awhile, but you have to promise me that tomorrow you’ll give me all night.”
“I will,” she replied, out of breath and ready to curl up for a nap. “I promise.”
After returning to Korin’s little cave, Lisen excused herself to go to the wet room, which was what they called something that barely resembled a bathroom. It was a small cave through which a narrow stream of water might have run freely, but a dam at the higher end of the cave with a gate that opened and shut kept the water from flowing incessantly. A deep opening had been dug in the rock in another corner of the cave, and a stool with a round hole carved out of its middle stood over the void. Lisen had no idea where the urine and feces ended up, and she had decided that she didn’t really want to know.
She removed the diaper she’d worn to catch her blood, replaced it with a clean, dry one, and then, filling the bowl she’d brought with her with water from the stream, she proceeded to rinse the used diaper. It worked, mostly.
“Damn mess,” she mumbled to herself. “What I’d give for tampons or even disposable pads.” She appreciated the fact that someone had thought to pack the diapers in her pack when she’d left Rossla. It never would have occurred to her to include such a thing.
Having done the best she could with the tools available, she wrung the excess water out of the used strip of cloth into the bowl, dumped its contents down the hole under the potty chair—only one of her many names for it—and then rolled the rag up. She’d managed to keep her “condition” hidden from Korin thus far. It wasn’t the sort of thing she felt comfortable sharing with anyone, least of all a man, especially this particular man.
She sighed. She really missed Jozan. She could have shared all this with her and asked all the questions she hadn’t thought to ask Eloise that first night back at Solsta. Jozan would have explained how things worked with Garlans. Because clearly things worked differently here. She had a pouch, for God’s sake. But how differently? Lisen didn’t know and had no one to ask now that Jozan was gone. Her first ten years at Solsta had shown her only the mating habits of four-foots. Her so-called sex education had come while she’d had breasts and no pouch, taught by humans, and it just hadn’t occurred to her until now that she lacked large chunks of important information. Oh, well, she thought. At least this should be over by Evenday and the ritual.
She returned to Korin’s chamber, went over to her neat stack of belongings in the corner, crouched down and carefully draped the wet cloth on a couple of shorter stacks she’d placed against the wall hidden behind the taller stacks set in front of them. She’d used this method since their arrival, and she believed Korin still didn’t know. He didn’t strike her as the type to pry into his Empir’s privacy.
Korin had nodded from where he stood when she entered his cave, and now he spoke with hushed firmness. “I don’t think you realize how closely you’re being watched.”
“What?” she asked as she stood up again and faced him.
“A Guard recruit wouldn’t quit in the middle of practice. You can’t do that again.”
“Excuse me?” She felt another one of her damn headaches coming on. Fearing that it might be the intrusive presence again, she raised a wall in her mind, separating what she believed to be her brother’s watcher from awareness of this moment. This made its own demands on her energy.
He stepped over to her and grabbed her arm. “Listen to me. Your survival depends on it.” She nodded, and he continued. “You must play the committed recruit.”
“But I’m not committed. I left the Guard, remember?”
“Ah, but not because you lacked commitment. You left because your new Empir is an impossible tyrant.”
She pulled her arm from his grasp and backed up a step. “Fine. I’ll work harder tomorrow.” She reached up to her braid, drew the orange ribbon from it and reached out to hand it to him. “Orange is not my color. If there’s a color that symbolizes an orphan with no family, I’ll wear that. Otherwise, I’ll go unadorned.”
Korin snapped the ribbon from her hand and stormed from the room. Lisen stood there, feeling limp and useless.
“That could have gone better,” she whispered. She suspected she’d insulted his family by refusing to wear their color, but she’d grown tired of him ordering her around like some servant. Who was in charge here, anyway?
“Oh,” she mouthed silently and plopped down onto the pallet. She knew who was in charge, for now at least, and it wasn’t her. When he returned, she’d apologize. He’d have to accept because no matter how many rules he made now, in the end, she would always be his Empir.
And then she remembered. Our third morning here. It’s my birthday. I’m finally eighteen. There’d be no cake, no candles, no presents, but it was definitely her birthday. Outcoming day, she corrected herself. But whatever they called it, the fact she was now officially eighteen years out cheered her up just a bit.
CHAPTER SIX
IN PURSUIT OF A SOOTH
Opseth surfaced from her trance and kicked the blanket from her lap in frustration. She had risen before the sun, slipped out of bed onto the cold floor and made her way as quietly as possible to her study where she’d sat down on her favorite chair. She’d settled in, pulled up the blanket she kept there against the chill and reached out to the necropath. Her plan was to catch the girl while she was sleeping and vulnerable. Opseth sought the physical, a definition of the girl’s surroundings in order to locate her for the Empir. Where had the girl gotten to? Far away was all Opseth knew for sure.
The Empir thought the key to the necropath’s location was the sooth, but he was wrong. The sooth knew more than she would admit, but she did not know for certain where the girl was now, and Opseth didn’t need to read her mind to know that. Too much time had elapsed since the sooth and the girl had last seen one another. Ignorance gave the sooth the advantage, made it easier for her to withhold what she did know, because the one thing she did know was she couldn’t give the girl’
s whereabouts up to anyone because she didn’t know that. A dilemma to be sure, but Opseth had set out in the pre-dawn to circumvent the sooth’s ignorance. Let her be ignorant, Opseth had thought at the time. I will know what she doesn’t.
And then she’d failed. She’d found the girl’s soul. That she could find blind, so to speak. If she were standing in a room filled with people all talking at once, she could find the necropath’s essence with less than a breath separating desire and discovery. Yet, for a reason Opseth believed would make sense once she’d deciphered it, the girl’s mind had repelled her from any further intrusion. In sleep, even in one fully trained, that was nearly impossible. Some picture would slip out, a smell or a sound would protrude to be caught by the seeker, but not this time. Why? How?
Opseth stood up and went to her desk. She opened the curtains behind her chair to allow the rising sun’s light to fill the room. Then she sat down, pulled out paper and inked her stylus. She would send the Empir a request to be allowed to see the sooth.
“No.”
The sound of her own voice surprised her. She set the stylus down on the paper and stared at the blank page. Putting her intentions in writing placed her in too vulnerable a position, and the Empir would not appreciate it either. Perhaps if she sent the boy a soft push and then waited a day or two for him to respond. If he didn’t, what then? “I’ll figure it out.”
She got up and headed out to the kitchen. Reaching out to minds far away always intensified appetites, for food as well as for other things. The cook would certainly be up by now, and together they’d come up with something appealing and filling for breakfast. Everything in its own time.
Elsba and Bala Tuane had ridden as though the Destroyer Itself pursued them, and as they pulled into the marble-paved square which served as the hub of Garla’s government and up to the old palace to the west side of the square, Elsba dared to take his first deep breath in some time. As expected, it brought on the spasms of coughing he’d managed to avoid for hours. Avaret, at last, he thought.
Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2) Page 6