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

by Leona Wisoker

  “Send. Send. Send.” His throat worked as he fought to produce the words, his head bobbing and tilting back with the force of his insistence.

  She worried at her lip for a time, glancing anxiously along the road in each direction. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll allow you to send word, son. Let’s go to Kybeach, then, and find a meal and a scribe.”

  His hands rose, twitching, then dropped to his sides again. She stepped back a pace, alarmed: he repeated the gesture once more, then said, “Send. Send.”

  “You can write?” she said rather breathlessly. “All right, son, all right, I’ll allow you to write the letter. Please, son, come along, come along—Let’s get to Kybeach, not stand here on the road all day.”

  He shambled into motion without further protest, and she let him take the lead: thoroughly unwilling, at this point, to have him anywhere behind her.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The floor was cold, and a constant current of chill air flowed into the room from the space under the door. Tank curled into a ball, head resting on his pack, and shivered his way into a light, restless doze, wandering in and out of odd dreams. In one, Dasin curled up on the floor beside him, offering his own body warmth; in another, Allonin made him get up and run in place to warm up. Lifty pushed him away, snarling: I don’t walk that road, damn you, hands off!

  Tank twitched uneasily, half-rousing. Chill attacked the back of his neck and his arms. He tucked down into a marginally warmer huddle and drifted back into dream. The heat of sunbaked rock radiating up into his body mixed with Allonin’s voice and the scraping shiver of steel as he learned the proper way to sharpen a blade. Good, Tanavin, you’re getting it; good.

  Tanavin.

  A name he’d left behind for good reason: he never should have chosen it in the first place.

  It wasn’t an homage, as he’d thought it would be. It was a cruel joke, dragging the dead into the world of the living. They deserved to be left in peace. Tank didn’t want to remember them any longer. Didn’t want to think about how Tan and Avin had died, while he had lived... didn’t want to think about Allonin’s sideways admission as to why the Aerthraim had rescued him and not them.

  Ice was warmer than that calculation had been.

  He sighed and stretched a little. Warmth pressed close, too solid to be a dream. He opened his eyes, blurred and slow, and said, “Dasin?”

  “Shh,” Wian said. “Don’t wake him.”

  Dasin’s snores rumbled through the room.

  “Not likely,” Tank muttered. “After that much wine, he sleeps like a rock.” He pushed himself up on one elbow, blinking, trying to focus.

  “Please,” Wian said, voice low. “It really is too cold. You’re shivering. Please, take the bed.”

  He grunted, memory slow to fill in the details of why his first instinct was to say No.

  “Trade off,” she said. “I’ve been warm half the night. You take a turn. I’ll take the floor.”

  He rubbed a hand over his eyes and squinted at the barely darker outline of her form kneeling beside him. Exhaustion thickened his thoughts into a slurry of Gods this floor is cold and If she wants to suffer that’s her own business and Gods I want to be warm for a while.

  “Thanks,” he muttered; shoved himself to his knees, lurched forward, and tucked under the covers of the bed in what felt like one swift stumbling movement.

  Darkness descended like a hammer between the eyes. He moaned once and went out.

  He woke an unmeasurable time later to a very close warmth and a hand tracing down his stomach.

  “Damnit, Dasin,” he mumbled, “not now—lemme sleep—”

  The warmth stirred, presenting curves that didn’t belong on Dasin’s skinny body. He grunted and came the rest of the way awake, reaching to capture Wian’s hand.

  “No,” he said. “No. Not you.”

  Her breath hissed out between her teeth. “I’m clean,” she said. “No diseases. And I’m not doing this for coin. I want—”

  “No,” he said again, cutting her off. “Just no.” He tilted his head, listening to Dasin’s snores, and sighed a little in relief.

  She stirred against him, warm and undeniably naked. “You want him, don’t you?” she said, a bare breath of sound in his ear.

  “What? No,” he said, frowning at her outline.

  “You called for him,” she said. “Twice.”

  Tank shook his head, thoughts muddled. At last he said, “Either get back on the floor or I will.”

  She said nothing for a long moment, then: “Let me stay. I promise, I won’t—I won’t touch you. I just—The floor really is cold. And I can’t stand you suffering on my account. Please.”

  Tank sighed, weariness dragging at his eyes again. Dasin would have a fit, but somehow that didn’t matter. And if he refused again, he had no doubt she’d be crawling in beside Dasin next.

  “You promise,” he said, voice blurring again.

  “On my mother’s grave,” she said, her voice hitching a little. “And I don’t break that sort of promise.”

  “Hhhh.” Tank’s eyelids drooped all the way shut, and the blackness returned.

  Screams filtered through the door; torchlight flickered, the smell of smoke and blood and metal mingling in her nose. The wardrobe was large, and dark, and solid, and safe around her: even if her parents hadn’t ordered her to stay there and be quiet as a ghost, she wouldn’t have stirred from hiding.

  Not after the screams began.

  Her father’s enraged bellow had shrunk to a broken whimpering some time ago; her mother’s fury shattered to the occasional sickly moan. She could still hear the men—the ones who’d said they were the King’s Guards—grunting... laughing... joking.

  She couldn’t hear her sister Delli at all. That was good. That meant Delli was still in hiding herself, and they might not be discovered.

  Tears ran down her face unchecked. She breathed shallowly through her mouth, into a blanket clutched close to her face, and forced herself to breathe evenly. No sniffling. No choking. No sobbing. They would hear her.

  At last the grunting and jokes stopped. The men moved around the main room of the cottage for a time; from the comments, she knew they were collecting the valuable books her mother had been so proud of.

  “Heretic trash,” one of the guardsmen said. “We’ll bring them in to the burn pile.”

  Her mother said nothing in protest, not even a whimper.

  Crockery broke; glass shattered; wood splintered.

  “That’s enough,” one of the guardsmen said. “That’s enough. We have other trash to take care of tonight.”

  “We ought to search the place,” someone else said. “There might be more of these books.”

  “No,” the first guardsman said. “If there are, they’ll burn. We just needed a few to show we’d done our job. Toss a torch around the room as we go; that’ll take care of the rest.”

  The front door opened and closed. Moments later, a hissing crackle invaded the air.

  She shoved out of her hiding space, panic swelling through her at last, and stumbled out into the main room of the cottage—

  Tank thrashed his way out of dream and into consciousness. Wian shivered in his arms, her whole body jerking with stifled sobs. Dasin’s snores echoed through the chill air.

  “Godsdamnit,” Tank said, his mind not quite clear, and shook Wian roughly. “Stop that!”

  She gulped air and half sat up, whining a little, then made a sleep-thick inquiring noise.

  “What? What’s going on?” Her breath hitched mid-word; she reached up to brush the tears from her face.

  “You had a nightmare,” Tank said, his own breath still rough in his throat. “Damn near kicked me into a eunuch.”

  “I’m sorry,” she breathed. A heavy shiver worked through her body. “I must have been dreaming—there’s a nightmare I have sometimes; I can’t help it.”

  Tank drew in a breath through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, unwilli
ng to tell her that he’d seen her nightmare in vivid, horrifying detail. Instinct told him to get the hells away from her. Something rooted in his own grim darkness took over and said, “Tell me about the nightmare. Best way to get back to sleep.”

  She went still in his arms, breathing hard. At last she said, “You—really? You want to hear—my nightmare?”

  “Just tell it,” he muttered, one ear on Dasin’s breathing. Was he waking? “Hurry up.”

  She drew in a breath and said, “It’s—about what happened to my parents. When I was—about eight, I think. They were both scholars. Teachers. Educated. Intelligent. And they had books. Collections of folktales. Myths. Legends. Stories from the southlands. C-c-children’s... b-b-books....” She stopped, swallowing hard, then went on. “The king’s guards came to our door and demanded all of the books. Said they were heretic trash that undermined belief in the Four and they were under king’s orders to take them all. My parents said no.”

  Tank gritted his teeth and kept silent.

  “The g-g-guards....” Wian paused again, breathing uneven, then said, “My parents made me and my sister hide before they opened the door. They told the guards that we were visiting our aunt. The guards raped both my parents. Tortured them. B-b-b....”

  “Branded them,” Tank said through his teeth, remembering the end of the nightmare all too clearly. “Go on.”

  “They took some of the books and set the house on fire as they left.” Wian’s voice turned chill and emotionless. “I came out of hiding. I found my—what was left of my—my parents. I found my sister and tied a cloth over her eyes so she wouldn’t see—what had happened. I got her out of the house. There was no time to grab anything else, we were in our nightshirts, the house was burn-ing....”

  She drew in a deep breath, another. Tank stayed silent, suspecting what was coming.

  Wian said, very steadily, “The men were waiting outside. They’d known we were there the whole time. My sister... didn’t live past what they did to her. I did.”

  A heavy silence hung in the room.

  “I’ve never told anyone that story before,” Wian whispered. “I never—felt safe—Nobody cared.”

  Tank sighed, sorting through possible words. Nothing useful came to mind. Finally, deciding it was as good as anything else at the moment, he said, “Feel like you can sleep now?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, tucking her head down into the crook of his shoulder and neck. “Thank you.”

  Her breathing was warm on his neck and chest, and went into deep rhythm surprisingly quickly. Tank lay still, listening to her sleep, listening to the silence. At last he moved his head a little to aim his voice away from Wian’s ear and said, “You heard that, did you?”

  Dasin stirred, the bed creaking protest: answer enough. He didn’t speak.

  “Go back to sleep yourself,” Tank said. “No point in anything else. Go back to sleep.”

  It sounded as though Dasin rolled over. Tank blinked, laid his own head down on the pillow, and let the darkness roll in again.

  Chapter Fifty

  Idisio’s hair tickled as though bug-tossed; he put up a hand reflexively, scrubbing fingers against his scalp. The itch dealt with, he rubbed his eyes and looked around, bewildered and vaguely dizzy.

  The small, sun-washed room around him gave little information. A man’s bedroom, by the look of it: pale walls streaked with the beginnings of mold and furniture that had been handed down through generations of abuse. The most solid piece evident was a writing desk in one corner, inkwell and writing supplies neatly laid out on the surface.

  “Son,” a voice said from behind him.

  Idisio yelped and spun, memory cascading on the instant. The tath-shinn started back a step, her grey eyes widening, then caught herself and folded her hands before her.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said very softly. “You’re my son. I won’t hurt you.”

  He backed up a step, another, then stopped: remembering how fast Deiq could move, how fast he’d already seen her move. He wouldn’t get three steps.

  “I won’t hurt you,” she repeated. “Look—you wanted to send word to your human friends, that you’re safe and they needn’t worry over you. See—I put the supplies out for you. Write your message, son. I won’t hurt you.”

  He blinked, one word catching and spinning in his mind: Son.

  She angled around him, moving with ostentatious care, and began rummaging through a large, battered armoire at the other end of the room.

  “Son?” he said aloud.

  She didn’t turn. “Yes,” she said. “Write your message, son.”

  “I don’t—That’s not—” He shut up and rubbed his hands over his face. “No,” he said after a few moments. “I’m not believing any of this.” He took two steps toward the door.

  “Believe it, don’t believe it,” she said, tone indifferent. “It’s the truth. Are you really going to walk away without knowing the full story?”

  He turned and stared at her back. Pale streaks in her brown hair caught and glittered in the sunlight.

  “You’re not my mother,” he said.

  She lifted a pile of heavy winter sweaters aside and hummed a little; reached forward and pulled a folded parchment from the recesses of the armoire. “Here we go,” she said. “You’ve been wondering about this, I believe.”

  She laid the parchment down on the writing desk and retreated across the room to stand by one of the two small windows. Bathed in sunlight, smiling as serenely as a s’iope in one of their religious paintings, she seemed nothing more than a thin, tired middle-aged woman.

  Idisio looked at the door, looked at the desk, looked at her; took another step toward the door.

  “The letter on the desk,” she said, not moving, “was written by a merchant named Asti Lashnar some days ago, as a confession of his sins. He’d intended to send it to—someone important, it doesn’t matter who—but his courage failed, and he put it in the back of the clothes chest instead.”

  Idisio’s breath caught in his chest. “Lashnar?” he said. “We’re in Kybeach?”

  She motioned to the desk, still smiling.

  “Read the letter, son,” she said, “then write your own, and we’ll be on our way to Arason.”

  “Arason?”

  “That’s where you were headed, isn’t it?” she said mildly.

  “With Deiq and Alyea!”

  “They aren’t able to take you,” she said. Her pale eyes darkened, then washed out again. “I’m your guide now.”

  He gaped at her, unable to believe she’d said that with every appearance of reason. “You—you’re—you—what?”

  “Read the letter, son,” she said yet again. “Then write your letter, and we’ll be on our way.”

  He took another step toward the door, which put him beside it; set his hand on the knob, watching her for reaction. She regarded him without apparent concern.

  “I will explain everything,” she said, “but not if you turn that knob. It will all make sense, when I explain; you’ve been fed a lot of lies, son. A dreadful lot of lies. I’m going to tell you the truth, but only if you stay.”

  “You’re not my mother!” he shouted at her, abrupt rage frothing out into words.

  “Because I’m not pretty?” she asked. “Because I’m not—admirable? Let go of the childish dreams, son. Look at me. Look at me. Do you really doubt?”

  He looked at light brown hair and wide grey eyes, a face so like what he witnessed in mirrors and a build that, while thin and malnourished, mimicked his own well enough.

  “No,” he said, one last desperate protest; then bowed his head and shut his eyes, accepting the truth.

  “You belong with me, son,” she said softly. “You know you do. Those desert lords you were with didn’t understand that. We need to make sure they understand that. We need to write that letter, and let them know that you’re safe, and we’re going to Arason, and they needn’t worry about you any longer. You asked me to
stop here so that you could send word, and here I am. So write the letter, son: write the letter.”

  Her words dragged at him, velvet suasion; he shook his head, certainty fading, and crossed to sit at the writing desk. He’d asked her to stop? That implied that he’d agreed, at some point, to follow her willingly—which didn’t match up at all to his memories. But memory, at the moment, seemed a dim and unreliable thing, and she wasn’t presenting as the least bit dangerous.

  He put the folded bit of parchment in his belt pouch without looking at it, considering that to be a matter for later: writing his letter seemed more important than reading someone else’s. He was only vaguely aware of her standing at his shoulder as he began to write; was only vaguely aware of writing; was only vaguely aware of what was being set down on the page.

  “There you go, son,” she said as he folded and sealed the letter. “There, now, I’ve let you do what you wanted. Let’s get back on the road.”

  “Needs to be given to a News-Rider,” he said, looking toward the window. “To be delivered.”

  “I’ll make sure it gets delivered, son,” she said. “I promise it will be delivered.”

  He hesitated, uncertainty creeping in, and stood up. What had he just written? He couldn’t remember, and that bothered him. He looked down at the folded parchment in his hand, frowning; the writing on the outside seemed oddly blurred, as though his eyes just couldn’t focus on the words.

  “It will get to the right person,” his mother said. “I promise. Leave it be, son, I’ll make sure it gets delivered to the right person.”

  “Let’s just drop it off at the tavern,” he said. “They’ll hand it off to the next News-Rider.”

  She stared at him, seeming both irritated and surprised.

  “Very well,” she said at last.

  His stomach grumbled.

  “And a meal,” he said, flattening his hand against his stomach. “I’m starving.”

  Her eyebrows quirked, her mouth drawing aside.

  “Oh, I doubt that, son,” she said. “But very well. A meal, and this letter, and then we go. Agreed?”