Heart Readers

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Radekir opened her other eye and pushed herself upright against the wall. She took another grape and spent so long chewing it that Stashie thought she hadn’t spoken loud enough. Finally, Radekir sighed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because the only other heart readers I’ve ever met were the couple who trained us. They had been together for forty years. I never met someone who had split with her partner.”

  “I’m sure you have. Most of the people in the bazaars have tried heart reading at least once.”

  “I know that.” Stashie slid her feet into the shade, and immediately felt cooler. “But most of them didn’t have the skills. You had the skills. What happened?”

  Radekir pulled a grape from the stem. She rolled the grape in her fingertips, then threw it and caught it repeatedly. “I was young,” she said. “I thought all the magicks were real. So I went off on my own.”

  “You—?” Stashie leaned forward. “But I thought your partner left you.”

  “No.” Radekir’s voice was flat. “I left her, thinking I could do so much better on my own, without her constant nagging and pushing. I didn’t know then just how good things were.”

  Stashie sucked on a grape. The fruit was cool against her tongue. “And now?”

  Radekir smiled, but kept her gaze away from Stashie’s. “Now I wish I had a partner, just to share this life with, to make it less stressful on me.”

  Stashie froze. If she wanted to get away from Dasis, here was her opportunity. She could leave her partner and get a new one. “Do you think you could read with a new partner?”

  “I don’t know.” Radekir spoke softly. “I’ve never met anyone who has tried switching partners. But nothing in my training said it was impossible. Did anything in yours?”

  Stashie thought for a moment, then shook her head. “No one even mentioned it.”

  Radekir took the last grape and stood up. “Charting new territory is always risky,” she said, and walked away.

  Stashie watched her return to the dice-reading table. Radekir was a beautiful woman in an exotic kind of way. Her lean body had almost a masculine attractiveness. She had a wisdom that Dasis had never had, and a willingness to understand Stashie. Stashie felt more comfortable than she had in years. And yet . . .

  She glanced over at the rug. Dasis sat cross-legged, watching the bazaar’s patrons pass. Stashie’s heart still leapt when she saw Dasis, still felt that moment of warmth that she had never felt with any other person. In the training, she had been taught that the heart readers’ bond was a sexual one, but Dasis had always insisted that there was more. If Stashie decided to go off on her own and leave Dasis behind, she might lead a life like Radekir’s. If Stashie went with Radekir, she might never read again.

  Stashie closed her eyes again. A small breeze rippled against her skin. No matter how much she loved Dasis, Dasis continually hurt her. This reading for the King made Stashie’s stomach turn. She could barely hold the hand of a boy almost young enough to be her son because he wore the King’s uniform. She couldn’t imagine being in the same room with the man who had created the policies that killed her family. She would murder him herself.

  Her fingers dug into the dirt. She used to dream of murdering Tarne, of catching him while he slept and running his own sword through his heart. Then she would rip off his head and stake it in the center of the village for all the world to see. Even that would have been too good for him.

  A hand touched her leg. She jumped. Dasis bent over her. “No time to sleep, Stashie. We have readings to do.”

  Stashie glanced at the rug. No clients waited. She took a deep breath to still her heart. “I’ll be over in a minute.”

  Dasis nodded and walked back to the rug. The crowd had grown thicker. The smell of bodies in the heat mixed with the smell of horses. Voices rose along with the dust. Stashie stood up and adjusted her skirts. The food and rest had left her drowsy. She started across the road when she bumped into someone. She tried to move around, but her arms were held fast.

  “Mistress?” A man’s voice. She looked up. Not a man, but a boy. The boy soldier who had asked them to read. She shook herself free, stifling the urge to brush the sweat of his fingers from her arms.

  “What?” she snapped.

  The boy took a step backward. “I wanted to thank you for the reading. It has made a difference.”

  Stashie swallowed. Very few patrons came back with thanks. Most left angry and never returned. The boy did have the strengths that Dasis had seen in his heart drawing. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “If there’s anything I can do ...” His heat-flushed face had a look of sincerity.

  Stashie paused and it seemed as if everything around her did too. The dust motes froze in the air; conversation stilled; even Dasis appeared motionless on the rug. “Yes,” Stashie said. “Do you know of a soldier named Tarne?”

  “I’ve never met him, but I know of him. He’s the King’s chief adviser.”

  The information seeped into her like water in the parched ground. “So he’s always with the King.”

  The boy nodded. “He used to campaign, but those days are done. He’s heading the military now and staying beside the King.”

  The dust motes rose and fell in the sunlight. Laughter braying from the far side of the bazaar carried across the air. Dasis leaned forward and opened the pouch. “Thank you,” Stashie said, amazed that she could sound so calm. “I knew him when I was a young girl, and I wondered what had happened to him.”

  The boy stood awkwardly in front of her and it took Stashie a minute to realize that he was waiting for her to excuse him. Amazing the power that her readings sometimes gave her. She reached out to touch his hand, then pulled back. “I’ll tell my partner that you came back,” she said. “She’ll appreciate it as much as I have.”

  The boy smiled. Stashie ducked into the crowd, allowing it to be a momentary buffer between herself and Dasis. Tarne was with the King. And the King needed heart readers.

  CHAPTER 12

  Tarne took his customary seat in the audience chamber. He had always hated the room. The main palace had two levels: one above ground and one below. The door to the audience chamber opened on the upper level, but the parquet floor sloped until the main, wide portion of the chamber was deep underground. Behind the chamber itself were tunnels, catacombs, and the dungeons, providing a dozen different ways for the King to escape in case of attack. But Tarne never felt safe here. He always felt as if the walls were closing in on him, as if the ground above would fall in.

  The room itself had a damp chill in the late afternoon. The other advisers felt it too. Tarne watched them enter, wrapping their robes tighter around their bodies. They took their seats without looking at him. The advisers rarely met in the large room. They had their own chamber with its familiar privacy. This type of gathering was usually reserved for heads of state. Tarne’s intelligence network should have informed him of such an arrival, but since it had not, he assumed that something else was happening.

  A young boy servant, hands trembling, circled the room, lighting candles. He left a small trail of smoke behind him. Tarne watched, the closed-in feeling growing stronger. The boy disappeared through one of the side doors. Half a dozen guards entered from the main door and positioned themselves around the room. Tarne frowned. He hadn’t given the order for those guards to appear.

  The huge wooden doors swung closed behind the guards. The bang echoed in the overlarge chamber.

  One of the elderly advisers jumped, then glanced about the room to see if anyone had noticed. Tarne met the old man’s gaze. The old man blushed and looked away.

  Fifteen men, most of whom Tarne had little time for. Fifteen men who owned the most land or who had helped the King with some major project in the past. Tarne sighed. All of them looked as confused as he did. The King usually confided in at least one of his advisers.

  Another young servant entered through one of the side doors and lit the candles behind the dais
. He then added extra cushions and disappeared again. After a moment, the royal physicians entered from behind the dais. They stood behind it, backs against the wall, hands clenched at their sides. The chief physician, Wydhe, was flushed as if in anger. Tarne’s frown grew.

  Finally the King’s door opened, and Tarne felt a moment of relaxation before he saw who emerged. The twins. They wore full-dress uniforms, spit-polished boots, and the crest of their official rank as heirs. Vasenu wore red robes over his uniform, Ele, black. Their expressions were as solemn as the physicians’ had been.

  With a flare of trumpets from one of the back rooms, the King entered. He looked thinner than usual, his face paler. His robes were red and black—the official uniform for greeting heads of state. The advisers rose as a group and bowed. The King waved them back to their feet. He sat cross-legged on his cushion, followed by his sons. The advisers sat too. Only the physicians remained standing.

  “I have called you,” the King said, “to determine the most important question facing our land. I am dying. We need to establish succession.”

  As if to prove his point, he leaned forward and coughed. His entire body shuddered. Ele placed a hand on his father’s arm, but the King shook it off.

  “The physicians,” he continued when he could get his breath, “have lied to me and to us, fearing that my mortality would cost them their jobs. Now that they are convinced that they will remain employed even though I have gotten ill, they are willing to comment on my health. “Wydhe?”

  The chief physician’s flush looked darker. Tarne suppressed a smile. He wished he could have been present for Wydhe’s tongue-lashing. The man had always been too arrogant. Tarne would have liked to have seen his downfall.

  “His Highness suffers from chronic cough, fever, and fatigue,” Wydhe said. His voice squeaked in the upper register. “He has lost weight and appetite, and has difficulty sleeping. The symptoms are not serious in and of themselves, and we thought them signs of overwork. But when his Highness began coughing blood, we knew that his time here was limited. His father died of a similar disease. We know not what causes it nor have we any cure.”

  “There are women in the city that do healing,” Delanu, one of the older advisers, said. He sat just behind Tarne, and Tarne resisted the urge to turn and face him. “Perhaps they are familiar with this disease.”

  “We tried such a thing with my father,” the King said, “but it did nothing.”

  “As this disease progresses,” Wydhe said, “the body rots and the mind goes. This process varies from individual to individual. The King could be with us for another week or several more years.”

  His words rang in the silence. None of the advisers moved. Finally, Wydhe returned to his place against the wall. He looked as if he had swallowed a foul-tasting drug. Tarne knew that Wydhe had spoken the truth about the disease; Tarne had seen it eat his own men from time to time. He wondered, however, what type of persuasion it took to get Wydhe to admit there was a disease that he could not cure.

  “When my sons were born, I thought it wise to wait until they were of age before deciding who would succeed me.” The King took both of his sons’ hands. ‘I figured that one of the boys would show an aptitude for leadership and the other would not. I trained them equally, gave them he same advantages and advice. Ele and Vasenu are truly twins, however. Their skills are equal in all areas of leadership and both have expressed a desire to rule. Therefore, I must choose and choose wisely.”

  A younger adviser, Janu, stood for permission to speak. The King nodded at him. “We have discussed allowing both boys to share the rule. Why are we no longer considering that?”

  Ele and Vasenu both sat straighter. Tarne held his breath. He wouldn’t be able to run things as he had hoped if both sons ruled.

  “After the heart readings, the fortune-tellings and the womb castings, my father found himself unable to choose between me and my twin brother. He set us up to rule together. We were fighting before his body grew cold. Our fight nearly caused the country to rupture. So he challenged me to a duel–and I killed him.”

  The words reverberated in the large room. Ele looked as if he had been slapped. Tarne clasped his hands together tightly. He remembered the tensions from that period. He had been just a young boy, but his father spoke repeatedly about the evils of civil war. His father had been a mere peasant and saw things from a peasant’s perspective. Tarne understood the potential behind divisiveness.

  The King coughed again. The sound wrenched through him, causing him to double over in agony. Neither son reached for him, nor did the physicians. The advisers sat on the floor below and stared, as if they could not believe his ill health. The cough hadn’t been this serious before. The disease was progressing faster than Tarne had first thought.

  The King took a deep lungful of air and sat up. No one else moved. He scanned the room, his gaze dispassionate, as if he had suddenly realized that his worth to this group of people had diminished. “I have called you here,” he said, his voice stronger, more commanding, “not to make a decision, but to abide by one. Heart readers will determine which of my sons has the pure heart. The impure son will renounce his claim to the throne. If he does not do so, he will be put to death. There will be no campaigning and no favorites.”

  With this last statement, the King looked at Tarne. Tarne did not blink or flinch. Let the old man think what he wanted. Tarne would do as he pleased.

  The King did not drop his gaze, either. “By the magicks that exist and the powers that surround us,” he said, “I curse any man who interferes with this simple changeover in leadership.”

  Tarne struggled to keep his expression level. He did not believe in magicks or curses. He had been cursed hundreds of times before by people with more magical gifts than the King, and he had never felt the results of those curses. The King needed better safeguards than a simple curse to protect the ruling son.

  The King held up his sons’ hands. The princelings looked at him, identical expressions of surprise on their faces. “I need your public agreement to this,” he said.

  Vasenu took a deep breath and faced the advisers. “I will abide by the heart readers’ decision.” His voice was clear and firm.

  Ele glanced at his imprisoned hand, then at his father. “I will abide by the decision also.”

  The King nodded, apparently satisfied. Tarne nodded too. Ele was reluctant. The weakness was clear.

  Tarne unclenched his fingers. The King was truly blind. He had only one son who had the strength for leadership. Vasenu. Ele would never be able to rule on his own. He would need assistance, guidance. Ele would need Tarne. Vasenu would dismiss Tarne and strip his powers.

  The heart readers had to declare Vasenu impure. And then Vasenu had to die.

  CHAPTER 13

  Dasis’s hands were shaking. She reached out for Stashie who leaned against the door to the inn. “You’re not angry with me?” Dasis asked again.

  Stashie shook her head. The street was nearly empty. A few shopkeepers had come outside to prop open their doors and a handful of soldiers had walked by. The bazaar hadn’t opened yet and most people were still asleep. The sun was a pink nub on the horizon and most of the torches had burned low.

  “I don’t understand.” Dasis clasped her hands together, trying to keep them warm. The morning air smelled of baking bread and horse manure. “Two days ago you didn’t want to do this.”

  “I hadn’t thought it through,” Stashie said. “With the money we get from the King, we can leave this place and find something better. Maybe even make a home.”

  Her words sounded convincing, but her expression remained flat. Dasis knew that Stashie wasn’t telling her something, but she would wait until Stashie felt safe enough to talk to her. “Come with me then?” Dasis asked.

  A light flared in Stashie’s eyes and then died. “I’ll do the readings. Don’t ask me to do anything more.”

  Dasis nodded. She had pushed too far. She took Stashie’s hand and pulle
d her into a hug. She was warm, but her body was unyielding. “I’ll be back by evening. You’ll be okay?” Dasis asked.

  Stashie eased out of the hug, and smiled. “I can’t remember when I last had a day free. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Dasis believed that. She released Stashie and began the slow walk to the edge of town where the King had set up a place to screen heart readers.

  Dasis didn’t know how many would try. In her entire life, she had only known a few heart readers. She wondered how long the King had been searching and how far the others had to travel.

  Soldiers passed her, always walking in formations of four. Innkeepers, removing the spent torches, never gave the soldiers a glance. Even in the wealthy sections, where mud-brick houses stood instead of tents, soldiers paced the streets. Dasis had never realized how many soldiers there were in the city.

  By the time she reached the edge of town, the sun had moved halfway up the sky and had burned off the morning chill. A small building surrounded by soldiers stood by itself. That fit the description of the place she had to go to. She was a bit surprised that no line waited outside, no one else was trying. Or perhaps there were so few, they were already gone, and she was too late.

  She walked up to the soldier near the door—a boy not much older than the boy she and Stashie read—and stopped. He wore a half-cut uniform that left his legs, arms and most of his shoulders bare, but sweat still poured down his face. That and his light skin told Dasis that he had been raised in the northern lands and was not yet used to this climate.

  “I’m a heart reader,” she said.

  “Where’s your partner?”

  Dasis had been waiting for that question. “I handle the business side of our partnership. She will be here for any readings. I understood there would be none today.”

  The young soldier said nothing, but instead pounded on the door with his right fist. It swung open a hair’s-breadth. He leaned inside and said, “One more.” The door closed.