Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  After dinner, he sent Lorain up to bed, promising to join her shortly. He meandered through the great hall, the upstairs torches its only illumination. His mind went again to his upcoming throning, and it sent a flutter through his pouch that had nothing to do with Lorain. He shook his head, clearing it for the confrontation to come, headed straight to the stairs and descended into the dark bowels of the Keep—his least favorite place to be sure, but the place where he might acquire the knowledge he desired to hold on to what belonged to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THERE WAS NO OTHER

  Eloise rose from her stone bench when he entered her cell. After all, it was the appropriate response when an Empir stepped into a room although she did wonder why she kept up the pretense for a nasty little boy who lacked both ethics and morals. The fact that little more than a month remained before Lisen would knock him off his throne with her truth—this fact left Eloise with little comfort and made Ariel no more likable. She wished he would just set the rogue on her and be done with it. It seemed the worst of the torture came from the waiting for it to begin.

  A guard followed Ariel in, hastily set a small stool down behind him, placed a torch in the sconce at the door and then rushed out as quickly as she’d come in. Ariel sat, then motioned for Eloise to sit with a fluttering of his fingers. Her joints protested as she resumed her seat on the bench.

  “You hermits think you know everything,” he said, and Eloise decided he must have arrived mid-thought.

  “My Liege?”

  “Oh, don’t deny it, Eloise. You’re one of the worst.”

  “Hermits are seekers of knowledge,” she said evenly. “We don’t claim to know anything.”

  “Then how is it you could stand on the steps of my Keep and pronounce me a tyrant if you didn’t know something I don’t?”

  “Your—shall we say…bad nature?—is common knowledge, my Liege.”

  “You accused me of assassinating my own mother,” he protested.

  “You did get a full report.”

  “You think my guards fools?” He shook his head. “Their Writ of Arrest contained a full list of your treasonous statements.”

  They sat quietly for a moment. Eloise could come up with no response to what he’d said.

  “Where’s the necropath?” he demanded.

  An abrupt shift. Eloise’s head began to throb at the egocentricity of his thinking. “Your rogue asked about the necropath, too. I’m afraid I know nothing about her. She left Solsta when I did, with my niece, but as your rogue likely informed you, the proximity of family can blur everything.”

  “Well, she’s nowhere near your family now. One niece is dead, and the other is here in Avaret with her father. So where is she?”

  Eloise had sensed her brother and Bala nearby, but the Empir’s confirmation of that fact left her satisfied. “I couldn’t say where she is,” she responded to his question.

  “‘Refuse’ to say, I’d say, more likely. You do know that if you insist on silence, I will have to send ‘my rogue,’ as you call her, back down to talk to you again.”

  Eloise smiled. It was why she’d invited herself into this dungeon. “I would expect nothing less.”

  Ariel leaned in towards her though they were sitting too far apart in the cell for it to mean much in the way of intimacy. “Then tell me what you know.”

  “There’s nothing for me to tell. I know nothing.”

  “You know more than you’re telling.”

  “My Liege, please,” Eloise replied, playing innocent, knowing he’d never believe her but doing so anyway. “I’ve spent the last eighteen years in seclusion at Solsta. I know nothing.”

  He contemplated the nails on one of his well-manicured hands. “You quoted the prophets out there on the steps. Luckily one of the guards who heard you is familiar with the text. You spoke of a deliverer who will bring down the tyrant.”

  “After which I was promptly arrested.”

  “You can understand why, can’t you?”

  “I only quoted scripture,” Eloise said innocently. The fact that a guard or guards had paid such close attention to everything she’d said cheered her up a bit in this cheerless place.

  “You called me a tyrant,” he replied, and Eloise could hear the anger rising in his voice. “I’m still not throned, and at the time you spoke on the steps, my mother had been dead less than two weeks. How dare you imply tyranny when my reign hasn’t even truly begun. You listed a multitude of threats—to the hermits, to the Council and finally to the people of Garla. How can you possibly know what’s in my mind?” He stood up and glared down at her on the bench. “It’s treason, Hermit, and once I am throned, I’ll see to it you’re tried and convicted of it.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  Ariel paused for a deep breath. “In the meantime…in the meantime, I will allow my loyal servant to question you.” He turned abruptly and started for the door.

  “My Liege?”

  He paused but did not look back. “Yes?”

  “You said my brother is here. May I see him?”

  The new Empir said nothing at first, but he did not move either. Eloise hovered on the edge of hope, all her gifts leaving her blind to his answer.

  “I will think about it.” And with a quick grab for the torch, he marched out of the cell, leaving Eloise in the dark.

  Not quite in the dark, she thought to herself. He confirmed Elsba’s here.

  And with that, Eloise leaned back against the hard wall and smiled. Bring on your watcher, Tyrant. I’m ready.

  Lisen knew the sun had risen and beat down relentlessly upon the desert floor. Yet here, within the practice chamber and the protection of the mesa’s impenetrable rock, all flowed in cool, well-regulated comfort as it had since their first session about a week ago—as it had, no doubt, for centuries.

  She had hoped that Korin might insist on taking this last night off, what with the ritual tonight and all, but it hadn’t surprised her when he’d made no mention of it last night when they’d awakened to a new Thristan “day,” treating this night like any other. While members of the Tribe came and went, passing through this chamber night in and night out, she and he remained, constants in an inconstant world. Well, he had promised to concentrate on jalil, the Thristan combat discipline, and thus far he hadn’t failed her.

  They stood now, face to face, her task to mirror his movements. It was a discipline in concentration, teaching attendance to the minutiae of an opponent’s actions. They’d used it earlier to warm up for the far more difficult work with the priis, the Thristan blade, and they used it now to cool down. The priis was a bit longer than the knife she’d previously worked with but much shorter than a sword. Apparently Thristans thrived on the intimacy of closer contact in a fight but preferred not to intrude too deeply into an enemy’s space until the time came to strike the killing blow. And, because Korin considered concentration in the midst of chaos crucial to her mastery of jalil, he had welcomed the presence of those who trickled in and out throughout the night and the distraction of their movement so nearby on the practice floor.

  Right before dawn, as they approached the end of their workout, Ondra and her pouched friend had joined them. No introductions were made; the business of one-on-one combat apparently superseded the courtesy of giving Lisen a name for Ondra’s companion. The two women tackled one another with enthusiasm, playing at parry-and-feint, back and forth for some time before finally calling a halt. They gathered their gear and started to leave, Ondra in the rear. Just as Lisen expected her to lean down to crawl through the entry, Ondra paused and called out to Korin, then spoke to him in Thristan. Her tone came off to Lisen as abrupt and maybe even demanding. Korin raised a hand up to Lisen, signaling a pause in their training, and turned to Ondra. He responded in Thristan, and the two of them exchanged a half dozen or so verbal spars until Ondra said her last and then flounced out.

  Once alone, just the two of them, Lisen spoke. “What was that about?”<
br />
  Korin shrugged. “Tonight. Ondra was just being Ondra. She advised me to keep us out of her and Rika’s way because she’s determined to be chosen.”

  “That’s fine by me,” Lisen replied. “She can have it.”

  “And, in essence, that’s what I told her.”

  “She’s on edge.”

  “She’s always on edge,” Korin said, then stepped to where their belongings lay. “Get your things. It’s time for dinner.” He leaned over to get his own stuff.

  “Wait,” Lisen said, and he straightened up. “You never finished explaining it to me.”

  “What?”

  “About tonight. You promised we’d discuss what we’d do….”

  “Yes,” he replied, his back rigid, his shoulders set firmly. “Sit.” He gestured to the small bench, carved from a wall like so many others in this labyrinth of a mesa. They sat down together, and he supported himself with his elbows on his legs while he fiddled with a piece of leather he’d found somewhere. “You are young—“

  “I’m eighteen,” she protested.

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but you have little exposure to the world and even less to Thristas.”

  She was so tempted to tell him she knew more of “the world” than he could possibly imagine. Multiple worlds, in fact. He’d come clean with her about his origins, admitting to his Thristan heritage. Had the time come to tell him her story? How vital were her facts to his assessment of her safety and security? No, not yet, she decided. “So tell me.”

  “Anyplace exposed is not safe. Even at night. Perhaps especially at night.”

  “I understand.”

  He sat up, attentive, and looked at her. “I don’t think you can understand until you’ve seen for yourself, but that will come soon enough. Let us begin with the snake bite. It is dangerous, potentially very dangerous. The snake’s venom can kill. It rarely does, but it can. Don’t run from it. Do not hesitate in any manner. Fourteen pairs of eyes will be watching you closely, fifteen if you count mine, and they’ll be forming opinions about you. And they will speak of what they’ve seen when they return to the mesa, with or without us.”

  Lisen nodded. This hadn’t occurred to her. “And if they return without us?”

  “If one of us is chosen, the other one must back away, refuse to participate. There will be no one there left to judge, so it will no longer be necessary to pretend we are what we aren’t.”

  “Of course,” Lisen replied, hiding her disappointment. It was an odd thing. Amidst all the fear she’d experienced about this ritual—this Farii—she had never recognized the tingling excitement boiling in her soul that the possibility of “hooking up,” if only once, with Captain Cutie evoked. “But are you sure they won’t know? What if they have a way of spying on us? What if, in spite of all the Thristan prohibitions about magic, one of the Elders can ‘see’? I need their good will for a month more at least.”

  “I don’t think they have any way of knowing what happens up on top once everyone has returned.”

  “You don’t think? Are you sure?”

  “You’re…you were…a hermit.” He whispered the last two words.

  Lisen held back the laugh that his naïveté induced. “Creators, Korin, is that what you’re worried about? I was never a hermit. I wasn’t even a novice, not yet anyway.”

  “And then there’s my commission in the Guard and your…situation relative to that.”

  She sobered. “At this point, isn’t my primary purpose to survive? That’s what you said that last day in Halorin. That’s why I did what I did that night. And I survived, thanks to—“

  “You killed a man,” he said as though he were unsure of that fact.

  “Yeah, well, that too.” Lisen realized too late that she’d flipped that out without thinking. And by golly, he didn’t miss it. Korin Rosarel never missed anything.

  “What did you do?”

  “I killed a man who was going to kill me.” Not unlike one of their practice sessions, she parried, but he had a response before the words had left her mouth.

  “And what else? You said, ‘well, that too.’”

  “So?”

  “Implying that you did something else to survive.”

  “I survived.” Lisen stood up, picked up the scabbard and sheathed her sword. Korin stood up behind her.

  “What did you do?” he asked, his mouth at her ear.

  “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

  They stood in a silence weighed down by words not yet said. The truth burdened Lisen, and she finally released the load. “I had a choice, seemed clear to me. Either kill or be killed. That spy, that Arspas or whatever his name was, he was so much better than me and I knew it. The only way to survive, which is what you’d told me to do, was to use my mind to disarm him somehow.”

  Korin let out a small gasp—nothing spectacular or filled with fear—just a small gasp of realization. “You pushed.”

  She whirled around and looked at him. “Yes. I pushed. And if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be standing here now talking about it. I’d be dead, you’d still be half blind, and Garla would be stuck with my brother. They may end up stuck with my brother when this is all over in any case, but be grateful for my gifts. They may be all that stand between Garla and tyranny, if Hermit Eloise is to be believed.”

  He returned to gathering their belongings. “As soon as we’re done with the Farii, we must work harder at getting you trained.” And without another word, he bent over to slip through the entry and left. With her sword in her hand, she followed him out, her mind gnawing on the idea of gifts and their usefulness against tyranny. Something whispered at the edge of perception, but she couldn’t catch it. She would have to await its unveiling.

  Nalin arrived in Avaret filthy from weeks on the road, numb and uncaring. He hadn’t slept properly for at least a full month, he’d spent most of that month on a horse, and he had nothing tangible to show for it. He’d sent the Heir of Garla off with Rosarel—again. And to the most dangerous place Nalin could think of—the desert. He rubbed his forehead as he walked his horse up the hill to the plaza, the hope of a soft bed and clean linens propelling him. Have to send for Benir, he thought. He doubted the servant would have returned on his own.

  Two days ago, he’d stopped in Seffa where he’d learned that Elsba and Bala had left for Avaret days earlier, but no one knew why. This had driven him to ride faster and harder than ever, allowing him to reach Avaret on Evenday morning. Had he been a man of spiritual sensibilities, he might have found this auspicious. As it was, it was only another day for him, another day of persistent fatigue and more responsibilities than he’d ever thought himself capable of sustaining. This last walk up the hill had allowed him a few moments to catch his breath before facing the next grueling step of this unhappy journey.

  He reached the old palace, dismounted, pulled his satchel from the horse’s back and then handed the beast off to the guard there. He knew he should attend to his personal hygiene before seeing Elsba, but he’d suffered through two days of unrelenting curiosity about the whys and the wherefores of Elsba’s journey to Avaret and wanted satisfaction before anything else. So, he stepped inside the palace, and, instead of climbing the stairs to his own second floor suite, he headed down the hall to the left, all the way to the end, and knocked lightly on the door. He heard scuffling around inside, and then the door opened to reveal Bala.

  “Nalin!” she exclaimed, her smile lifting his mood. “Father, it’s Nalin.” She gestured him in and then looked behind him. “So where’s Lisen?” she whispered. “Is she all right?” She furrowed her brow in what Nalin could only interpret as disappointment as she realized he was alone.

  “She was all right the last time I saw her,” he replied as Bala closed the door behind him. “It’s a long story though, and I promise to fill you in, but…ah, Elsba.”

  “Happy Evenday, Nalin,” the holder said, stepping in from the bedchamber, coming to Nalin and embracing him as they met, but Nali
n pulled away.

  “Don’t touch me. I’m disgusting,” he protested. “Weeks on the road will do that to you. But I couldn’t wait to find out why you’re here. I stopped in Seffa, but no one there knew why you’d left. What’s happened?”

  “Sit, Nalin,” Elsba said, gesturing to the couch. Nalin’s stomach turned. If he sat down, he might never get up again, but Elsba had invited him to sit, so he did. He waited while Bala settled in beside him on the couch and her father took the lone chair in the room. “The Empir has arrested Eloise.”

  Nalin shook his head. He had no energy for more. “Why?”

  Bala responded. “Because she stood out on the front steps of the Keep and pronounced him a tyrant. Not a smart move, if you ask me.”

  Nalin considered this for a moment. He’d brought Eloise here to Avaret at her insistence. He’d sent her on her way once they’d arrived. “She planned this,” he deduced softly.

  “She what?” Elsba asked.

  Nalin turned to look at him. “She asked to come back to Avaret with us on the barge. She went off on her own once we got here. She sees the future for Creators’ sake. She planned this.”

  “Creator,” Elsba and Bala said in unison.

  “Though I have no idea why,” Nalin added.

  “Oh, who knows with her,” Elsba commented impatiently. “She always reveled in making trouble. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Jozan was hers.”

  Silence dropped over them like a pall at the mention of Jozan’s name. Her death had affected no one more than the three people in this room.

  With a sigh, Nalin rose and broke the quiet. “So why would she place herself at Ariel’s mercy?” Nalin paced across the short space to the wall and back again.

  “When she knows it’s a quality Ariel lacks,” Elsba added.

  “Precisely,” Nalin replied, raising a finger as he paused and turned to look at his two friends, the elder in the chair, the younger on the couch. “It makes no sense. And she’s doubly vulnerable, you know.”