Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3)

by Leona Wisoker

  Frustration shivered through her muscles. To be so close....

  Who would do this to me? Who knows I’m alive? Who knows I escaped? Who knows me well enough to use my imprint in a ward—

  In a burst of seeming irrelevance, the gravekeeper’s cottage came to mind: It’s just been a meeting day... Lord Eredion is the sponsor of the group.

  Sledgehammer in darkness. An agonized scream—

  Connections snapped into place. She knew Eredion. He’d been the one to set her free. And his presence was the one woven all through these wards. More connections formed in a rapid cascade: she’d felt him skulking by, easing into prison cells day after day, year after year, to heal the wounds of those with a chance left of survival. Rosin had known, of course. Rosin had laughed about it, and promptly brought the refreshed victims to Ellemoa.

  Most of them never left. Some few, on Rosin’s orders, had been carried out, whining like scalded kittens.

  Eredion had to have known something like that would happen. After the first few times, he’d definitely known. Yet he’d continued to interfere, dooming the prisoners to a much worse fate than dying in their cells.

  She remembered now. If he hadn’t hated himself for sending so many to become piles of stripped bones, Ellemoa wouldn’t be walking above ground. She’d allowed him to live because of that alone. She remembered, and that memory dragged her sideways into another: the walls of her prison wavering around her, dank and oppressive.

  Darkness spread across her vision. Clouds filled the sky overhead, and thick droplets of water splattered around her.

  I should have killed him. I will kill him. He’s keeping me from my son. I will kill Eredion. Where is he? She sniffed the air, focusing all her attention on the question: Not inside the Gates, came the answer. Eredion had passed into the city proper. He was within her territory, within her grasp.

  She slid between the coalescing raindrops and began to hunt.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The Obein market seemed to have twice as many women as men, both as vendors and as customers. Most were dressed in ordinary working clothes: long split-skirts, peasant blouses, modest caps, and sturdy boots. Some few had proper dresses on, mostly with low-cut bodices; Rat, back in full rough-mannered mercenary behavior, whistled softly at those women as they passed, chuckling when they shot him icy glares.

  “Prancing around on wet muddy grass in little slippered feet,” he observed at one point. “Damn stupid, you ask me. One of ‘em will be ass over sometime this morning, you watch. The ones with the boots got some sense, at least.” He studied a gaggle of approaching bodices, then whistled more loudly than usual. He laughed outright at their collective glares. “These ones are more fun to watch, though. ‘Specially when they fall down.”

  Tank didn’t say anything. Rat glanced sideways at him and laughed again.

  “You ought to see your face,” he said. “Told you about that attitude, remember? Shake it loose. Half of these ain’t so fine once they settle down out of public eyes. More’n half, I’d guess.”

  Tank lifted a shoulder in a sullen shrug and kept his attention on Dasin, who was currently cutting up lengths of cloth and packaging them for the steady trickle of customers around Venepe’s booth. Guarding Dasin rankled far more than anything Rat might be doing or saying at the moment; but it did make sense, from Venepe’s misinformed point of view.

  If—or, more probably, when Venepe found out about the misunderstanding, the arrangement was likely to go sour very quickly. Tank had a growing, uneasy suspicion that he really should have listened to Captain Ash and steered clear of this contract.

  Too late now. He’d have to make the best of it as he went along.

  A slender, pale-haired young lady in an exceedingly low-cut gown bent over the corner of the table, examining a length of fine Stone Islands silk-weave. Dasin’s eyes followed a predictable path, his hands stilling on the bundle he was currently wrapping. Tank himself couldn’t help studying the curves presented from the opposite angle.

  “Oh, hells,” Rat breathed, then headed for Venepe’s booth at a rapid trot. Dasin, catching the sudden movement, looked up, eyebrows rising. The young woman glanced up at Dasin’s face, then looked over her shoulder. Seeing the fast-approaching mercenary, she blanched and gathered up her skirts to flee.

  Three fast steps away from the booth, her feet skidded on wet, muddy grass; she went down in a squalling heap of flounced cloth. Rat was on her a moment later, hauling her upright with one big hand wrapped around each of her upper arms. The front of her dress had pulled sideways, clearly displaying one bare breast.

  Rat grinned, glancing down, and said something Tank didn’t catch. The woman, face even whiter than before, shrieked and kicked uselessly at Rat’s shins. Activity ceased as heads turned throughout the market.

  Tank found himself pushing between, breaking Rat’s grip on the woman, before he even knew he’d started moving.

  “What the hells are you doing?” he demanded.

  The woman retreated a few steps, glaring. Mud was splattered over her face and splotched across her dress in great, grassy smears. “I’ll have you up on charges of attempted rape,” she snapped, yanking her dress back into place. “Assault and rape!”

  Rat laughed, baring small, discolored teeth. He said, “I told you before, stay away from Venepe’s booth. You think that changed?”

  The woman sneered at him and retreated further, then turned and hurried away—with considerably more care this time.

  Rat turned slowly and leveled a bleak stare at Tank, all amusement gone from his expression.

  “You ever get in my way again,” he said, “I’ll have you hurting, boy. You understand me? She’s a thief. Hits the booth most every time we come through here. That low cut dress ain’t but a game, and you and the other wet ta-neka fell right into it. I’d’ve had her this time, if you two hadn’t messed it all up.”

  Tank could feel his face heating. “I thought....”

  “Thought I was after her ass? Thought I’d take her right there in public, in front of my employer and half of Obein?” Rat shook his head and spat to one side. “You got some bad thinking to unlearn, boy. There’s play-time and work-time, an’ this is work. I may not be Hall-hot like you, but I earn my pay.”

  Tank glanced over at the booth; Venepe seemed to be delivering a similar harangue, more quietly, to a red-faced Dasin.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Rat, with a final ferocious glare, returned to stand across from Venepe’s table. After a few moments, Tank slunk back into place beside him, ears still burning.

  It took a long time for his embarrassment to fade enough to risk a question. “What did you mean, you’re not Hall like me?”

  Rat slanted a brief sideways glare, plainly still irritated. “I’m unsworn, you dense little fuck,” he said curtly. “We all are but you. Di’n’t your pretty boy tell you that yet?”

  Tank’s jaw dropped open; answer enough. Rat rolled his eyes and went back to watching Venepe’s booth with a steady glower.

  “You’re gettin’ paid more,” Rat said after a while, unexpectedly. “You ain’t got a pebble of the experience and you ain’t old enough to shave and you ain’t got the godsdamned sense of a dead goose, but you’re gettin’ paid more and respected more, ‘cause of a stupid godsdamned wooden coin. So do us all a favor—shut down the attitude before you get a noseful of dirt.”

  Tank bit his lip, feeling his face flaring again.

  “Sorry,” he muttered again. “I didn’t—I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do,” Rat said, not looking at him.

  Dasin, looking both sullen and cowed, was back to cutting cloth. Tank noticed that when women approached the booth, Dasin’s gaze stayed carefully above the neck, whatever the provocation. He grinned ruefully; then he remembered that once again, Dasin hadn’t given over a critically important piece of information. Without meaning to speak aloud, he muttered, “Damnit, Dasin.”

  R
at snorted. “Poor pick as a lover,” he commented. “You’d’ve been safer with the thief.”

  “We’re not,” Tank said through his teeth, his irritation with Dasin suddenly sidetracking to focus on Rat.

  “Tuh,” Rat said. “If you say so.”

  Tank’s breath strangled in his throat for a moment. “I say so.”

  “Mind the attitude,” Rat said. “Mind the attitude, boy.”

  Tank inhaled through his nose and held it, counting, until his fury subsided to something like sense again. He let out the held breath noisily.

  “Better,” Rat said, glancing at him appraisingly, then nodded at an approaching trio of middle-aged women in sensible clothing, baskets already laden with flowers and produce. “Look. Watch. These’ll bicker and bother for a good while before settling on a length of the ugliest, cheapest godsdamned thing Venepe carries. Then they’ll try to get your pretty boy’s attention, and if they manage, he’ll be asked to personally carry it to their home tonight.” He tilted his head back and laughed up at the cloudy sky, a rough bark of amusement. “Figure they’ll wear him out fair solid. We call ‘em the Horny Vultures.”

  Tank, surveying the three women, couldn’t help snorting laughter himself. “You’re joking.”

  “Not a bit of it. Like I said—place like this ain’t as pretty on the underside as it looks. They’ve been after Venepe a while now, but he ain’t stupid enough to smile at them—look. There your boy goes, grinning. They’ve got him.”

  “Oh, gods,” Tank said, his amusement fading. “I ought to warn him—”

  “Ehh, let him unwind,” Rat said. “Do him good. Get the stick out of his ass. You too, since you’re on nursemaid duty. Walk him over tonight, have some fun. Better you than me, mind you, all the way around.” He laughed.

  “No thanks,” Tank muttered. He remembered very clearly how Dasin liked to play; he’d never liked seeing women handled that way, willing or not, and he certainly wasn’t inclined to join in. Rat wouldn’t understand that, though, so he settled for: “That’s not my idea of fun.”

  “So? Maybe it’s his. Kick your heels on the step or in a bed, the one’s more comfortable than the other,” Rat said, and winked, grinning.

  “I’ll take the step,” Tank said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It proved to be a mistake to sit down to dinner together. Deiq seemed as tired and out of sorts as Idisio felt.

  “You don’t see the half of what’s happening around you, whatever you might think,” Deiq said, “and you misunderstand what you do see more often than not. I’m beginning to lose patience with you, Idisio.”

  “And you don’t tell me the half of what’s going on,” Idisio retorted, “so how am I supposed to understand it? Aren’t you supposed to be explaining all this to me?”

  “Try asking instead of insulting and challenging me,” Deiq said severely. “Try listening instead of judging. Maybe you’ll hear some of what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  They sat quietly for a while. Finally Idisio said aloud what he couldn’t get out of his thoughts. “Fine. I’ll ask, then. That servant, in the hallway.” He stirred his soup, not looking up at Deiq. “Would you have?”

  “Would I have what?” Deiq’s tone was edged with dark frustration and exhaustion.

  “You know.” He couldn’t help remembering Riss’s accusation: Word has it he’ll fuck anything that moves. It was hard to see Deiq as all that different from the gate guards, at the moment.

  “Taken him to bed? Not in the middle of the hallway, no. And certainly not against his will, whatever ideas you might have formed.”

  Idisio prodded his soup, took a few bites, then stirred it some more. “I thought you liked women.”

  Deiq said nothing for a long moment, then: “I have no preference. That’s one of the human biases I don’t happen to share. Do you?”

  Idisio felt his face color. “I don’t care for that side of the road.”

  “Well, you were raised human,” Deiq said, tone tinged with condescension. “Perhaps you’ll grow out of that in time.”

  “I doubt it,” Idisio said, his voice thin and tight. “I really doubt it.”

  Deiq looked up quickly, his dark eyes narrowing. His jaw set, and his whole face went taut for a moment. “Those guards—”

  “Leave it alone.”

  Deiq’s stare felt like burning coals burrowing under his skin, seeking out the tender bits. “Very well,” he said at last, and returned his attention to the soup.

  They didn’t speak again until Alyea came in. Idisio left soon after she arrived, intending to go turn in and get some sleep. His headache had only worsened; the thundering rain overhead felt like millions of tiny hammers against his skull. His eyes felt as though they were ready to burst into flame, and his jaw ached as though he’d been gritting his teeth for hours.

  A few steps past the kitchen doorway, the hall went from ordinary to bizarre. Rich tapestries, perfectly fitted, clean stone floors, vases of tall red-sage and gods-glory flowers: this wasn’t his world. This wasn’t where he belonged.

  What the hells am I doing here?

  He looked down at his feet, astounded to realize he was wearing boots. Clothes without holes. A belt, for the love of the gods, and a belt knife. Only a light rime of dirt showed under his nails, and he’d recently eaten—the warm, taut feeling in his stomach was unmistakable.

  What the hells—?

  As quickly, the disorientation passed. He stood blinking like a newborn idiot in the middle of an ordinary servant’s hallway. Ordinary. He looked down at himself again and almost laughed. A year ago he wouldn’t have believed such an outfit even worth wearing. Far more useful to sell it; the coin for the shirt alone would have meant food for a week.

  But this was his world now. This was his life. He’d succeeded. He’d left the sewers behind forever. He never had to go back to that scrabbling, dangerous lifestyle. He grinned and took a step, his confidence returning.

  A man turned the corner ahead and came toward him: almost as tall as Deiq, broad and loose-limbed, with sloppy dark hair and a mean smirk on his face. Idisio sucked in a breath as though gut-punched—he remembered that smirk, that hair—rather shorter, years ago, and the boy had put on a few pounds since then, but—

  Silver coin flipping through the air, the sound of Church bells drifting on a humid breeze, and laughter—

  He’d never heard names, didn’t know what to call this arrogant young man striding toward him; and the youth stared at Idisio without recognition or any attempt at courtesy.

  “You one of the southerners come back with my cousin?” he demanded, his dark glare raking Idisio from head to foot.

  Idisio couldn’t help returning the glare. You think all I wanted was a whore? There’s better than you for that—

  “You staring at something, southerner?” The dark-haired youth swaggered forward another step.

  “Nothing important,” Idisio said acerbically, and delivered a contemptuous survey of his own. “Nothing important.”

  A heavy flush rose to the young man’s face. “You watch yourself,” he growled. “Little thing like you, I’ll take you apart pretty fast.” He pushed forward another step.

  A sudden, black anger rose in Idisio. “Give me a half chance, I’ll be glad to settle with you,” he said without meaning to voice it aloud. He heard the old street-thief accent coarsening his words; that, as much as the unexpected aggression, seemed to give the young man pause.

  “‘Settle’?” the youth said, and squinted. “We met before?”

  Idisio drew a deep breath, a little frightened, a little intoxicated by the depth of his rage; but starting a fight here would reveal his background to Alyea—and Alyea’s mother. Welcome would be thin and short after that, no matter his current status.

  He could almost feel the silver coin between his fingers, though.

  “No,” he said, careful with his accent this time. “Alyea’s
in the kitchen, if you’re looking for her. Now get out of my way.”

  The youth stared, taken aback. Idisio waited a moment, then started forward. The youth gave ground, moving up against the wall, and stayed plastered flat until Idisio had passed. Then he muttered, “Southerner ta-neka.”

  Idisio turned, fast enough to startle the youth sideways another crabbing step, and said, “You want that fight after all?”

  The youth glared, bewildered and sullen, then swung away from the wall and headed for the kitchen without looking back, his shoulders stiff with outrage.

  Idisio swallowed hard and headed for his room, praying the boy wouldn’t change his mind and come after him. Once round the corner, he managed to slow his pace. He found himself panting, his heart hammering in erratic bursts.

  What the hells am I so afraid of? he thought, bewildered. I’m not a street thief any longer. He can’t hurt me!

  He hesitated. Fear urged him to flee to his room; rage demanded he pursue that fight.

  Whoring, while distasteful, was one thing. Even what the guards had done was insignificant, compared to what that boy had done a few years back, to prove himself to his leering companions.

  Idisio had been grateful, if a little puzzled, that the scars had disappeared in a matter of weeks.

  Trapped and shrieking, bleeding, torn—soaked in urine, covered in raucous laughter and contempt—Now you’re a man, someone said, patting the black-haired youth on the shoulder. Now you’ve proven yourself... No, no need to kill this one, this was enough for today....

  The clatter of a single silver coin landing on the ground beside his head, and their voices slowly receding... He’d never been able to make himself spend that coin. Touching it made him feel filthy all over again. He’d brought it out to look at any time he thought about going back to that way of making money, as a reminder of why he’d started thieving instead.