Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series)

by Luiken, Nicole

  “You are not to leave without my permission,” she said in a furious undertone. “Try that again and I’ll—”

  “I wasn’t trying to escape,” Julen interrupted. “I was trying to ascertain our direction by looking at the stars, so that I can find my way when it is time to leave.”

  “And you got lost?”

  “Yes,” Julen hissed.

  Sara relaxed a little. He looked so mad she actually believed him. “When the time comes, we’ll have to be careful. They’ll be watching us both now. Any progress?” she asked hopefully. Lance, Dyl and Olwydd had been grimly silent since finding Julen, but Rhiain had seemed oblivious to the undercurrents, rolling on the ground laughing at his night-time adventure.

  Julen shook his head.

  Counting the days in her head, Sara imagined her father making speeches in the Senate to delay outright war with the Qiph while the newly arrived General Pallax accused him of stalling, or worse of murdering his rival, Lord Favonius…

  They couldn’t afford to lose another day.

  * * *

  Sara cut her thumb with her belt knife—deliberately. Red blood welled at once along the shallow gash. “Ow!” She dropped the knife on the sod firebreak torn up by Olwydd’s claws and put her thumb to her mouth.

  She needed a natural way to bring up magic and healing again, and Lance was avoiding her. She’d considered doing something more dramatic, like falling off Dyl’s back on a hill and breaking her arm, but had decided to try something simpler first.

  The blatant appeal to his protective nature worked. Lance immediately left off feeding brush to the fire and crouched down beside her. “Let me see.”

  “It’s nothing,” Sara said truthfully, but she held out her hand. They were alone, except for the refetti asleep on a blanket a few feet away. After a supper of amarasave, pan-bread and roast rabbit, Dyl and Olwydd had gone off into the woods to hunt. At Sara’s low-voiced suggestion, Julen had gone for a walk and Rhiain had happily accompanied him.

  Lance enfolded her fingers in his. His hand was almost twice the size of hers, but he tempered his strength, gently squeezing.

  Only their hands were in contact, but Sara discovered she was greedy for his touch. She struggled to pay attention.

  Face set in concentration, his lips moved in silent prayer. She felt a surge of warmth, saw a brief red glow and her skin healed. Even after what she’d seen him do to Felicia, it seemed wondrous. Sara rubbed her fingers across her thumbtip, but could not find the slightest roughness or seam. “It’s as if the cut never happened.”

  But Lance was already stepping away.

  Julen wouldn’t walk forever. She caught Lance’s sleeve and tried a sincere smile. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t need thanks. Loma’s the one that did the healing. I merely wear the Brown.”

  He truly meant it, Sara realized. The words that fell out of her mouth next were completely unplanned. “Then your leather vest must be bespelled, because the physickers I knew in the Republic desired thanks. No, they wanted adulation and a great deal of money—and half the time they did nothing.” Bitterness caked her throat like dust.

  The best physickers merely collected potions from the scattered temples and resold them for a profit. But the ones who considered themselves artists combined them, often forming dangerous concoctions. She remembered the time a sleep potion mixed with mercia to relieve pain had made her mother stop breathing for a frightening moment. Sara had ordered the dogs set on that physicker to chase him off their estate.

  Lance stopped moving away. “You were ill?” He looked suddenly fierce.

  Sara shook her head. “Not me, my mother. She died.”

  His expression gentled. “When?”

  “Six and a half years ago,” Sara said jerkily. “But she was ill for much longer. My whole childhood I don’t think I saw her out of bed more than a handful of times. She was always languishing from something.”

  “What was she ill with?”

  “Nothing. Or at least I used to think so,” Sara confessed. “She liked to be fussed over and described as delicate.” With painful clarity, Sara could remember her mother holding court in her bedroom, her hair and body exquisitely draped in silk, looking as beautiful and as fragile as porcelain. “I don’t know how many times my father was called home from the capital because she was supposedly at death’s door. Really, she just wanted his attention. He’d rush down for a few days, they’d quarrel, and Mother would be listless for a week after he’d left. Then the physickers would be called, and she’d recover. She liked to be admired by men,” Sara said flatly. “The physickers would claim they’d cured her and go away with gold in their purses—but when she really fell ill, they were useless.” Her hands balled into fists. “Worse. They hurt her.”

  “Come here.”

  When Sara stared, uncomprehending, Lance took hold of her elbow and pulled her closer. He put his arm around her shivering shoulders. “How?” he asked simply.

  “They gave her purges. And bled her. She was weak enough to begin with. She was dying and all they did was make her last days…torture.” Sara choked out the final word.

  Lance pushed her head down against his broad shoulder. “Shhh. She’s not suffering anymore. Shhh.”

  His sympathy sent a rush of tears to Sara’s eyes. When her mother had died, she hadn’t let anyone comfort her. Felicia had tried, but Sara had sent her away. Her father had been absent, and no one else would do.

  And then, when her father did arrive, more than a week after the funeral, she’d been too furious to share her grief.

  It was ridiculous to be weeping like this when her mother had died so long ago, but she couldn’t seem to stop her tears from flowing. Couldn’t seem to lift her head from Lance’s strong shoulder.

  When she finally wound down, his hand was smoothing her hair, as if she were a horse who could be soothed by touch. And maybe she could, because his fingers felt good.

  Lance smiled crookedly down at her. “Better?”

  She couldn’t speak. His eyes were a warm brown. When had she started preferring brown eyes to blue or green? Awareness flooded her senses: Lance’s broad chest rising and falling under her hands, the smell of woodsmoke clinging to his clothes, the heat of a large male body.

  * * *

  Sara was gazing up at him as if she wanted him to kiss her. It was a potent look.

  Two days spent riding and camping out had erased Sara’s glossy perfection. Her hair curled madly down her back, and she had a smudge of dirt on her chin, but Lance only found her more appealing this way. She looked real—and much harder to resist. Her eyes were wet with tears, deepening their blue color—which should have acted as a reminder of whose daughter she was. But somehow her eye color wasn’t important, didn’t compare with his growing hunger to taste her lips again.

  This is a bad idea. The inner warning was faint and died completely when Sara put her hand on his cheek and tipped her head up.

  That was as much temptation as Lance could withstand. He swooped, catching her up in his arms, kissing her with all the passion pounding inside him.

  She kissed him back, her mouth opening under his, her hands in his hair. Lance growled and pulled her body flush against his own. For a moment, he tasted an equal wildness inside her, and then she ripped herself away.

  “I can’t,” she cried. She hugged heself as if cold.

  Unbidden, Lance remembered what she’d said after their first kiss on the Vaga River. “Can’t what? Kiss a former slave?” he asked. She’d been more than willing last night, but perhaps now, in better light…

  Sara hardly seemed to hear him. “I can’t feel this way. I can’t be so out of control.”

  Amusement replaced Lance’s anger. Did she think feelings could be so easily brushed aside? “Why not? What terrible thing will happen if you let yourself go a little?”

  “Don’t mock me!” She rounded on him. “Last time—” She stopped, biting her lip.

  When s
he didn’t continue he goaded her. “Let me guess. You let some lordling kiss you and received a long lecture on how, as a daughter of a major House, you need to preserve your virginity, so it can be bartered for something.” He found the Republican system of selling their daughters into marriage repugnant. At its worst, it was its own kind of slavery.

  A low, bitter laugh escaped her. “If only that were all. No. The last time I gave my passions free rein, I ended up beggaring my family.”

  Lance raised his eyebrows. “All on your own? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Yes, all by myself,” she said sharply. “I was a very stupid girl.” Her lower lip trembled. “After Mother died, my father decided to take me to live with him in Temborium. Any other girl would have been excited by the fancy dinners and new gowns, but I hated it—all the rules, all the things I couldn’t do. I missed my younger brother, and I was always fighting with Father over something. Then one day I got my poor, tender feelings bruised—”

  “By what?” Lance asked.

  “Oh, I saw the man I imagined myself in love with kissing someone else,” Sara said impatiently. “I thought I was heartbroken, that no one in the world had suffered as I was suffering, and I ran away. I broke all the rules my father had laid down for my safety. I left Felicia behind and deliberately evaded my guard and rode off to one of our smaller estates to pout. I stayed there for a week, pouting even more when my father didn’t send anyone to find me—which I thought proved that he didn’t love me either—before I finally rode back to the city.” She closed her eyes. “And then I found out what had happened in my absence.

  “When I went missing, my father sent out searchers. No one could find me, and he became increasingly frantic. Then he received a ransom note, supposedly from my kidnappers, demanding a daily ransom of ten thousand gold coins to keep me alive. By the time I tired of my own company and wandered back to the city—still on my own and completely unprotected—he’d almost bankrupted our House pouring out gold to save me. The third day, when he was late with the payment, they sent him a woman’s thumb and told him if he was late again they’d send him my lips.

  “It was my fault,” she said, her voice thick with self-loathing.

  Lance couldn’t stand the guilt in her eyes. “No,” he said forcefully, gripping her shoulders so that she would look at him. “It was their fault—the men who claimed to kidnap you. Theirs, not yours.”

  Sara stilled, as if the thought had never occurred to her before.

  “Were they ever caught?” Lance asked.

  “Two of them. My father saw them hanged.”

  “Good.”

  “But we never recovered the money. My father didn’t want the precarious state of our finances known—we would have been ruined—so instead of borrowing from the God of Money’s temple, he went to the Temple of Nir. I would much rather have been ruined.” She shuddered.

  Lance was getting a bad feeling about this. “What did Nir demand as payment?”

  “Nothing,” she denied, but she avoided his eyes. “I just had to be…nice to Nir’s high priest, that’s all.”

  Nice. Lance wanted to spit. It had obviously not been very nice at all. “Nice, how?”

  Still she wouldn’t look at him. She shrugged.

  “Sara…” A horrible possibility occurred to Lance. “Did he—”

  “Here’s some more wood for the fire,” Julen’s voice suddenly intruded. “The others are still hunting, but I was starting to run into trees and the mosquitos are eating—” He stopped, obviously sensing the strained atmosphere. “What?”

  “Julen,” Lance said without lifting his gaze from Sara’s, “go away. Far away. Now.”

  “Julen, don’t you dare move a foot!” Sara said shrilly.

  Julen looked from one of them to the other, then shrugged. “I’ll go. My apologies, Lady Sarathena, but I like my nose where it is—in the middle of my face.”

  Sara cursed, but didn’t try to follow.

  Lance waited impatiently until Julen was out of earshot and then asked the question churning acid inside him. “Did Nir rape you?”

  * * *

  The ugly word took Sara by surprise. “No, he didn’t…do that.”

  From the expression on Lance’s face he didn’t believe her. But there was no pity in his eyes, no horror, none of what she felt when talking to Rochelle, only a great compassion. “It’s still rape, if you were coerced into his bed.”

  “No. It didn’t go that far.” She took a deep breath and said firmly, “I am still a virgin.”

  He didn’t waver. “But something happened to you.” His eyes were dark. “Have you ever told anyone what happened? Felicia?”

  Sara shook her head. Of all people, she could never tell Felicia. “My aunt…knew.” The words stuck in her throat. “She thought I was foolish to mind so much.”

  He took her hand, simple reassurance. Looking into his eyes, she knew he wouldn’t belittle her feelings or laugh at her. “Tell me about Nir.”

  And, taking a deep breath, she did.

  * * *

  “Nir took one look at me, at this cursed face of mine,” she waved a hand, “and wanted me. Since Nir’s priests aren’t allowed to marry, he suggested that I become a dedicant in the God of War’s temple. Because of the debt, we had to pretend to seriously consider the idea. I had to sit next to him at dinner, many dinners.”

  Her voice grew so faint Lance had to strain to hear.

  “He used to…describe the things he would do with me once I was in his power.”

  “He liked to hurt women,” Lance guessed. He knew the type well from his slave days.

  “Yes.”

  Lance hoped fervently that was it, that all she’d had to do was listen to Nir’s filth. And live in terror of being, for all intents and purposes, sold to a sadistic monster. That was more than enough. If the bastard had touched her… Well, that would be bad. Because the next time Lance traveled to Temborium he’d have to hunt Nir down and dismember him with his bare hands.

  Have you lost your mind? the sane part of him asked. Killing a high priest would start a war. But the other, more primitive part of him didn’t care. If Nir had touched Sara, he was a dead man.

  Sara took a deep breath. “Then he started to increase the pressure on my father. He asked that I be given to him for one night and promised to return me still a virgin and suitable for marriage.”

  Lance’s stomach clenched, but he remembered this part from Felicia’s story. “Your father refused.”

  “Yes. But my father had to appease Nir, or we were ruined, so he offered Felicia in my place. He did it to save me.” Shame shadowed Sara’s face. “I might have allowed it to happen earlier, before I knew what Nir—did to women. I couldn’t let him hurt Felicia.”

  Her golden complexion turned greenish; her nails dug into her palms. Lance felt a powerful urge to hold her, but was afraid if he tried she’d spook like a cat and claw him.

  “Aunt Evina sent my father out of the room, and then she came up with a way for Felicia to be safe.”

  Lance knew he was going to hate this, and he was right.

  “She had a spyhole made in my…in the bathing chamber.” Her breathing was light and shallow, her eyes unfocused. “I had to go in there and pretend that no one was watching. To undress. Aunt Evina was very clear. I wasn’t allowed to hide under the water. I had to…soap myself and…and…”

  “Touch yourself,” Lance finished roughly. “Nir’s a sick bastard.”

  A spark of anger lit in her eyes. “Yes. Yes, he is. While I performed for him, I could hear him abusing his slave on the other side of the wall, doing terrible, awful things to her in my place. So you see, I wasn’t raped. I was the lucky one.”

  “How old were you?” Lance’s voice grated. He didn’t want to know, but at the same time he had to know.

  “Sixteen.”

  Lance swallowed back bile. He fought to keep his voice neutral. He didn’t want Sara to think he was mad at her. “
How long did it go on?”

  “It took four months until my father could borrow enough from other sources to pay off the loan, two months of the performances. It’s funny,” she said, “I thought I’d learned my lesson, that Nir had killed the part of me that responds to a man, and I was safe from passion taking me over. But now I think I was just numb.” Her eyes were shadowed, her mouth downturned. “Whenever Claude kissed me, it made me want to slap him. Why is it so different with you?”

  There was no possible way to answer that question—with words.

  Lance was reaching for her when a branch cracked, and Julen walked up to the fire. “All the comforts of home. Heat and—well, that’s it, isn’t it?” He took in Lance’s glare and sighed. “Aren’t you finished talking yet? It’s cold, and between the mosquitos and Rhiain, I feel like I’m being eaten alive.”

  The sun had set, full dark was upon them, and Lance hadn’t even noticed. His attention had been wound up in Sara. “No,” he gritted out, “we’re not done.”

  “Yes, we are,” Sara said brightly. “Sit down and warm yourself.”

  Firelight painted one side of her face, and he suddenly realized she looked exhausted. He let her get away with ending their discussion. For tonight.

  * * *

  The next morning began with an exodus. Lance nodded when Dyl announced the shandies’ departure, unsurprised. “It was good of you to come with us this far.”

  Sara had assumed the shandies would accompany them the whole distance to Kandrith’s capital. The thought of going on without them, on foot, daunted her. She cleared her throat. “But will we be safe?”

  Dyl inclined his head politely. “We’ve watched your backtrail and have neither seen nor smelled anyone tracking you. I judge you’ve eluded the assassin. I will keep watch for him when I return to Gatetown.”

  From the significant look he gave Lance, he meant to guard the Gate against her or Julen’s attempted escape as well.

  “My thanks.” Sara laid her head next to Dyl’s great black muzzle. “You are the fastest. It was a privilege to be allowed on your back.”

  Lance offered his thanks to Olwydd, who sneered back.

  Julen turned his charm on Rhiain. “But must all of you go? I will miss you.” He smiled warmly.