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

by Leona Wisoker

  Blood streaming along her hands—slick and hot in her mouth, and the wet crunch of bone—

  A thick shock ran through Idisio’s whole body. He stumbled a few steps aside, went to his knees, and vomited. Only acidic liquid came up.

  His mother said, pragmatic and cool, “Being ill over words doesn’t change the past. Why allow yourself such an exaggerated response?”

  “I’m not cold like you and Deiq!” Idisio snapped, rocking back to his feet, and came forward a step, his shoulders rounding. “I won’t be like that!”

  Her eyes cleared to a steady pale grey. “Cold?” she said. “Because I don’t endlessly punish myself for what’s done and gone by?” She paused.

  “And Deiq is hardly innocent,” she added. “He’s done things that make what I told you look kind.”

  “How do you know that?” Idisio demanded.

  Her eyes narrowed and took on a feral glitter; then it faded into a bewildered expression. “Know what?”

  “How do you know that about Deiq?”

  “Who?” She glanced around, staring at the long shadows creeping across the clearing. “It’s getting dark,” she muttered. “We should go, son. We have to get to Arason.” She sniffed the air like an asp-jacau scenting after a snake. “We have to go.”

  Idisio couldn’t tell if she was faking her sudden confusion or if she genuinely found the shadows so disorienting that she’d lost the thread of the conversation.

  She loves me. Whatever else, I have to remember that’s real. She wants what’s best for me. We may not agree on what that is—but she’s honest in that one thing: she loves me.

  In the face of that, he couldn’t bring himself to call her a raving lunatic.

  He said, “What if I say I don’t want to go to Arason?”

  She raised a clear grey stare to his face. “Are you going to say that, son?”

  Images unrolled behind his eyes: using blisters and bindings to make himself look diseased and bring in coin as a beggar; a silver coin, turning over and over between his fingers... a hard blow that pitched him nearly the width of a small room, the glares of a roomful of men as they assessed which side of the predator/prey line Idisio stood on... the odd look on Riss’s face as she turned and left his room for the last time.

  “Another slut,” his mother said softly. “All she ever wanted was the company of a man powerful enough to protect her and malleable enough to control. Once she saw you for what you are, she couldn’t wait to get away from you. None of the humans will ever really trust you. You’ll be forever watched like a rabid animal—and put down like one, at the first sign that they don’t control you completely, by the very humans you thought of as friends.”

  Deiq’s sharp voice drifted back into memory: Don’t flinch around them.

  In the gathering haze of sunset and shadow, what she was saying made perfect sense.

  “Is that the life you want, son?” she said. “When you could live peacefully with your mother in your ancestral home, learning the things the humans won’t ever allow you to know? You’ll meet your father. You’ll speak with him whenever you like.”

  “My father... .” A surprisingly sharp longing burned in his chest at that.

  Silence drew down around them, punctuated by the shirring trill of awakening nightbugs.

  “Will you come to Arason with me, son?” his mother said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “Will you come and meet your father, and let me teach you the truth of your heritage? Will you come with me, and be loved and honored and respected? Do you really want to stay with the humans, where you’ll always be the despised, distrusted outcast?”

  He looked up, thinking that over. Vivid slashes of orange, red and purple streaked the early evening sky, turning the scattering of clouds into gilded, feathery puffs: each one so distinct and close that he felt as though he could reach out, pluck one from the sky, and cradle it in his hands like a warm puff pastry.

  “Puff pastry... yes. I’m a very good baker,” his mother said, her voice threaded with silvery longing. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve handled flour and water, salt and oil. I want to put a loaf of my own bread in my son’s hands and see him smile as he tears into it. I want to clean up the crumbs and run a comb through his untidy hair and pick up the clothes he tosses on the floor. I want to see him laugh and run through the rain and play with rainbows.”

  “I’m a little old for splashing in puddles,” Idisio said, but the words came out hoarse and thick.

  “You’re never too old for that. I’d run right beside you. Rain is beautiful. Cleansing. Sacred.” She sighed deeply. “Please,” she said. “Please, come home with me.”

  She held out both her hands, not moving from her perch on the tree stump; and after a long moment of staring at her, Idisio took three steps forward and laced his fingers through hers.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Rain rattled over the roof in a short burst that chilled the room further. Tank half-rolled, tugging the blanket up over his shoulder. The bottom corner shifted with the movement, leaving his feet bare. The blanket had gotten turned sideways at some point.

  He muttered a curse and sat up, yanking at the thick fabric to sort it out. Dasin had managed to tuck most of the blanket around himself; in one swift movement, Tank shoved him over onto his back and jerked the revealed fold of cloth free.

  Dasin gave a sleep-thick whimper and flung up a hand to shield his face, curling into a tight ball at the same time. Tank ducked the unintentional blow, draped the blanket back into proper alignment, then tried to settle down; but the bed was narrow to start with, and Dasin’s curled-up form used twice the sideways space he’d been occupying before.

  Precariously perched on the edge of the mattress, chill air attacking his bare torso, Tank swore again, then shook Dasin’s shoulder lightly.

  “Move over, Dasin,” he said. “You’re about to kick me to the floor.”

  Dasin whimpered again, still resolutely tucked into a defensible position. “Don’t,” he breathed. “Please... please. Not again.”

  “Holy gods,” Tank muttered. He shut his eyes for a moment, steadying his breathing, and wondered if he could stand a night on the floor after all. A renewed draft of chill air washed across his torso, answering the question immediately.

  He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, forcing himself the rest of the way awake. Dasin didn’t seem to have a violent reaction to being touched in his sleep, so Tank gripped the blond’s shoulder lightly.

  “Hey,” he said. “Dasin. Dasin. It’s me. It’s Tank. Tanavin. I just want you to move over, that’s all. Wake up a moment, move over, all right?”

  Dasin whimpered; the sound turned into a low moan, nearly a growl, as he uncurled—too fast. Tank went backward through pure reflex, landing hard and gracelessly on the floor with a resounding thud. He rolled to his knees, groaning, and wiped his face clear as he squinted through the darkness.

  Silence hung thick for a moment. Then the covers shifted and Dasin whimpered again: a sound of complete, disoriented terror.

  “Dasin,” Tank said hastily. “You awake, Dasin?”

  Another moment of taut quiet: then Dasin said, shakily, “T-t-t-anavin?”

  “Yeah.” Tank hoisted himself back up to sit on the edge of the bed, brushing dirt from his hands. “You had a nightmare, I’m guessing.”

  “Did I hit you?”

  “No.” He put out a hand, searching; located Dasin’s skinny arm and wrapped his hand around it lightly. “You all right now?”

  “Y—” Dasin stopped. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “It’s really damn dark in here, Tank.”

  “Yeah. I know. But there’s a half moon, or thereabouts, outside, so think about that.” Tank let go of Dasin’s arm and stretched out, tugging the covers up around himself again. “Full dark is a good thing, to my way of thinking, anyway,” he said. “Means everything’s done for the day.”

  Dasin sat still for a few breaths. “Not how it was for me
,” he said at last. “Got any aesa? I was so tired I forgot to bring my saddlebags in. They’re on the floor by the stall door.”

  “No. I don’t use it. That’s your poison, not mine.”

  “Shit. Hope they’re still there....” Dasin hesitated, then moved as though to get out of the bed. Tank put a hand out, wrapping it unerringly around Dasin’s arm again.

  “You’re not going out there right now,” Tank said. “Not alone. Not with that crew lounging about and more’n likely well past a few drinks by now. And I ain’t getting up.”

  “Tank—”

  “Dasin.” Tank didn’t release his grip. “Go back to sleep.”

  He felt a heavy shiver pass through Dasin’s thin body. After another few breaths, Dasin sighed and tucked down under the covers.

  Not long afterwards, he said, “You asleep?”

  Tank stared at the darkness between himself and the ceiling. “No. Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Tell me the nightmare. Or whatever’s on your mind. You won’t sleep until you do.”

  There came a long silence. At last Dasin said, voice oddly stifled, “You said the same thing to Wian.”

  “So?”

  “I’m not like—”

  “Don’t,” Tank said flatly. “Don’t draw that line. I’ll pound it right back down your throat.”

  Dasin snorted, a frustrated sound.

  “Why should I tell you anything?” he said. “You already know what my nightmares are about.”

  “Say it if you need to, anyway. Or whatever’s on your mind.”

  “Fine, then—give me a straight answer: Why didn’t you do it?” Dasin said abruptly. “Wian. When she grabbed you—and I know damn well she did at some point; for all her talk she’s a whore from toe to hairline—why didn’t you answer it?”

  The inflections in Dasin’s voice, the silence, and the darkness all combined to demand a deeper response than Tank had given previously. He lay still, thinking about it, then said, very quietly, “Because no matter how it started, right now she is a whore, from toes to hairline. And I won’t be the one on the other side of that pairing.”

  Dasin sighed softly. “Yeah,” he murmured. “I figured it was something like that.”

  “Why did you?” Tank said, unable to help himself.

  “Because—” Dasin stopped, his breathing suddenly gone ragged. At last he said, in a wavering voice, “Because it stops me thinking. Stops me remembering.”

  Tank squeezed his eyes shut, his jaw taut. In the following silence, Dasin stirred restlessly, then turned over to face away from Tank.

  “Go to sleep,” Dasin said, voice muffled. “No point in anything else.”

  Tank half-rolled and put a hand on Dasin’s skinny shoulder; gripped once, lightly, then shifted to put his back to Dasin and listened to his own breathing until it mapped out a road to sleep.

  He half-woke, at one point, to find a knobbly warm back pressed against his and Dasin’s snoring filling the room. He thought dimly about pushing Dasin away, but drifted back to sleep before he could decide why that even mattered.

  He woke again, more fully, to find a thin hand tracing across his back, and went rigidly still.

  “You have a lot of scars,” Dasin said, the words barely audible. “I never realized. I just—” He took his hand away. “I woke up with my hand on your back and... well. I wondered, when you told Wian you had your own, because I don’t... I don’t have any. Not like that, at least. My village didn’t allow—they couldn’t leave marks on us.” He paused. “You never said anything about being beaten like this,” he added, very quietly. “This why you always kept your shirt on in training sessions?”

  Tank kept his eyes shut and tried to remember when he’d taken his shirt off; he never did, and certainly not around Dasin. He remembered feeling cold air on his torso, earlier, but hadn’t even been aware of what that meant. He must have been more tired than he thought.

  “Say it,” Dasin said. “Your own nightmare. This isn’t like mine, Tank. Not by the hells’ width. I never went through—this. And I know you: there’s memories you wouldn’t have talked over with Allonin, because he—didn’t want to know some things. We both saw that, didn’t we? But you can tell me.”

  “You don’t want to know it either, Dasin.”

  Dasin growled low in his throat by way of answer.

  Habit insisted that it was a mistake to bring the past out; but Tank felt something reckless and angry stir inside him, as though it had been waiting for the invitation.

  “The name I chose when I went to the Aerthraim,” he said, not even trying to keep his voice mild. “Tanavin. There were these two boys in my village. Tan and Avin. One of the more brutal regulars came in and wanted Avin—skinny little thing, too scared to ever fight back, got hurt a lot. We all did what we could to protect him. Me and Tan, mostly; we were the biggest. This time, Tan stepped in and went in Avin’s place, but Tan was older and tougher and the man didn’t like that.”

  Tank paused, listening to Dasin’s breath whistling between his teeth.

  “Tan—died that night,” he said. “We thought the man would be banned for life, but he came back less than a month later. He brought a bag of pretty glass jewelry and a few bottles of good desert lightning. Banna let him in and he took Avin.” He blinked a few times, took a long breath, then went on: “We all liked Tan. A lot. He was the one always stuck up for us. He’s the one taught me I didn’t have to accept whatever was handed out as my due. He made me start palming the dasta, and going without now and again. I went in—real young. He started older. Knew about the outside world a bit.” He paused again. “Avin flat worshiped him. When this man killed Tan, Avin got—real, real quiet. Wouldn’t talk to anyone about anything. Went through the motions. Wasn’t really there. But when the man came back—”

  Dasin let out a faint, distressed sound.

  The rest of the words tumbled out, unstoppable: “Meek little Avin went hot-crazy. Killed the man. Then our keeper—”

  “Tank—gods—”

  “—beat Avin to death. In front of us. The next night was when Allonin came and bought me away from there.”

  He paused, but there was one more thing that needed to be said. One of the things Allonin wouldn’t have been able to bear hearing about—or might have already known. Tank had never asked; hadn’t wanted to know for sure. Still didn’t.

  He said, voice flaying his throat, “The part I didn’t tell Allo—I would have been next. The man had already said he wanted to try me after Avin, and our keeper promised him—free rein. Because I was getting older. Too old for most of the regulars. Like Tan. So she didn’t care—”

  He stopped, unable to voice the rest; shut his eyes and focused on breathing evenly. At last, Dasin flattened a trembling hand against his back, then withdrew and rolled to set his spine against Tank’s again.

  Tank stared through darkness, dry-eyed, and said nothing more. But slowly, slowly, the pressure and warmth of Dasin’s bony back against his served to melt the rigid tension of bringing that memory into the moment. His breathing eased, bit by bit; and bit by bit, the sting of that fierce hatred began to dissolve. Not entirely: it ran far too deep. But it was a beginning.

  “Thanks, Dasin,” he said after a while, low enough to avoid waking him.

  Dasin pressed a shoulder back and murmured, as quietly, “Go to sleep already, loon.”

  Chapter Sixty

  Moonlight brightened and faded around Kolan. A patter of rain swept across and went away again. Once, there came the faint stinging of hail. The sun rose, and sank away again. None of it particularly bothered him. At least it was real. And there weren’t any voices here, just the seagulls and the waves and the wind.

  Whenever it rained, he tilted his head back and let it run into his mouth; that and the pale moonlight felt like enough to sustain him forever. Now and again, he nibbled on the last of the road food in his pack: a largish chunk of hard cheese and a packet of crackers.


  Crabs scuttled across his feet. Sand-flies swarmed around him, then wandered away again. Far out in the water, a plume shot up high: a dolphin, maybe, or a whale. A school of small fish burst from the water in a sparkling, leaping cloud as some unseen predator chased them from below.

  A black tern landed on his shoulder and grockled in his ear briefly before flying away.

  The sound startled him back to himself, and to a realization that he hadn’t eaten in several days. How many? It didn’t matter. He wasn’t hungry, but without the support of teyhataerth he needed solid food. All the crackers and cheese were long gone.

  He waded out into the water, stood utterly still until fish came to frolic around his knees; then bent swiftly and snatched a glittering prize into the air. The other fish fled. The one in Kolan’s hand writhed desperately—

  —begging for life, for freedom, for mercy—

  Kolan stared at the fish, his eyes welling with sudden tears: then leaned over again and gently released the small creature into the water.

  Wiping his hands on his shirt, he came out of the water and up onto the sandy shore. Turning, he stared out over the vast expanse of ocean for a long time, thinking over that momentary connection with the fish.

  A long-ago conversation with Solian went through his mind: They’re just bugs! There are hundreds and hundreds of them, Kolan! They give birth to dozens more every few days. We’ll be overrun if all we do is shoo them gently outside. The gods don’t care about bugs. They care about us. Otherwise the bugs would be running the world, not humans.

  Kolan stared out over the water and said aloud, “But what if the bugs think they are the ones running the world?”

  He staggered a little, abruptly light-headed and weary. Past time to get some solid food. Rainwater wouldn’t do any longer, apparently.

  Time to face humanity again. At least long enough for a meal.

  Dawn had come and gone. Early-afternoon light hazed the air, and a scattering of clouds rode the sky. To either side, the beach ran in a sweep of rumpled white and gold, speckled with shells, seaweed, and storm-cast debris. The sand softened as he went inland, grinding against his bare feet; he stopped and looked down in mild surprise. When had he lost his shoes? After a bit of careful consideration, he recalled taking them off and setting them up near the line of dunes. A cursory search through the grassy hummocks produced nothing but more sand.