by Gail Dayton
“Good. You’ll have to get out of the tub and wait while they change the bath. They’ve only the one tub.”
“I fail to see what’s so funny about…that,” Stone hissed between his teeth. Two men—Stone and one other—hauled Fox to his feet so fast he almost lost balance again.
“Careful.” Fox clutched Stone’s close-fitting tunic until he felt steady. “And no matter how you might brag, Stone, you would not be standing straight if you’d only just spent everything you had saved. Who’s this?” He patted the other man’s chest. “Torchay come back with fresh trousers?”
“I am Obed im-Shakiri, ilias to the Chosen One.” The man’s voice was deep, dark, oddly accented.
“Chosen—” Confusion struck Fox again as he stepped out of the tub. Would he ever understand?
“He means Kallista.” Stone draped a towel over Fox’s shoulders and handed him another to wrap around his waist. “Don’t be too impressed by the ilias thing. We’re all iliasti. You too, now, mostly. What do you mean, ‘spent all you’d saved’? You mean, just now? When you and Kallista—” Stone fell into silence for a few moments, then whispered a worshipful “Khralsh.”
Fox let the men guide him away from the tub, out of the way of laborers working to empty and refill it, and sat in the chair they brought him to. “But—you said when you and Kallista first touched, it was the same as with me.”
“Obviously not,” Stone said. “It felt good, but not that good. It wasn’t like that with Obed either.”
“How do you know? Obed—you have this mark? Is Stone right?”
“I am privileged to bear the mark of the One, and Stone speaks truth. We did not…spend when this first joining happened.”
“We. You mean you and Kallista, or—” Fox collected himself. “Or you and Stone? Or—”
“Wait a minute,” Stone interrupted. “Are you saying that Kallista did—that she—Too? You brought her too?”
“Brought me where?” Kallista said from close by. She moved too quietly. Or maybe Stone made too much noise.
“To paradise,” Fox said without thinking.
“To climax,” Stone interpreted. “Did he? Just now?”
“It was the magic.” Kallista’s voice sounded somehow strangled.
Fox heard her retreat and cursed his too-quick wit and the mouth that let it out. Then Stone laughed and the knot in his belly relaxed.
“Damn, Fox, you have got to teach me how to do that.” Stone paused, apparently watching Kallista, for he said, “Stars, she’s pretty when she blushes.”
“She is beautiful always,” Obed said.
And Fox couldn’t see it, had no inkling how beautiful she was save the softness of her cheek and the gentleness of her hands on his body. At least he had that. “Stone, how do you know what happened when Obed and Kallista first…touched?”
“Because he didn’t touch Kallista. I blocked him, he touched me, and all his magic went through me to get to her. And that’s how I know what didn’t happen.”
Now Fox breathed an awed oath. “So why now? Why with me?”
“Don’t know, brodir. Goddess knows your skill with women can’t be the cause. You haven’t got any.”
“Chosen.” Obed’s word was a mere breath, but Fox heard it, turned his face to her presence.
“Maybe it happened because the magic knew me,” she said, perching on the arm of the chair where Fox sat. “It was different with Fox. I knew him.”
“Do you not know me?” Obed asked.
“I know you now. But then, when we first met—don’t you remember that feeling of something shifting? As if you had to be…adjusted. Made to fit. There was none of that with Fox. I knew him already.”
“What of Stone?” Obed said. “Did you know him?”
Kallista leaned into Fox, stretched her arm along the back of the chair. He scarcely dared to breathe. “I don’t—” she began. “It’s hard to remember. That was the first time. I wasn’t expecting it. But—I don’t remember that shift, that adjustment.”
“What do you think it means?” Torchay’s raspy tenor was back. “Should you ask Belandra?”
“She doesn’t know,” Kallista replied while Stone quietly explained to Fox who Belandra was. “She and her ilian were marked at virtually the same time and place. They already knew each other, some of them already pledged to one another. I asked, after Obed. She knew that sometimes the marked were separated and would be drawn together, but she knew nothing of the—explosion when we first touched.”
“Do you want to know what I think it means?” Stone spoke slowly as if uncertain of his reception.
“Yes.” Kallista’s finger drawing designs on the back of his neck made Fox shiver.
“I think it’s because we were there at the beginning, you and me and Fox. We were all of us together in the city when the God marked us. You were on the wall above the breach, weren’t you.” Stone didn’t ask a question.
“I was.”
“When I came to consciousness, I was in the breach. When I found Fox, he was in the breach. At the foot of the ladder as if he’d started to climb. We were there. Trying to reach you. Already bound.”
Fox shivered again, this time with the weight of Stone’s words.
“The bath is ready.” The other woman, Aisse, spoke from a space away—near the tub, perhaps.
By the time the women deemed him sufficiently clean, Fox had heard all of Stone’s story, all of Obed’s, and most of what had happened since. Stone explained the rules to be followed, and did his best to explain ilian, but Fox still couldn’t grasp the concept. He would follow his own rule—that of the casteless blind: Do whatever you’re told when you’re told, to the best of your ability, and avoid giving offense.
He believed Stone when he promised that no one would beat him without cause, but how could he be allowed to refuse anything? He would do whatever was necessary to stay with this ilian. He had his brodir back, alive again. That was part of his reason. But more—Kallista held him.
She might be woman, but she was also captain and naitan. He was nothing. Less than that. He didn’t understand most of what they’d told him. But he didn’t have to. He was hers.
Clean, dressed in Torchay’s extra summer tunic and a pair of Obed’s loose trousers, his hair drying into red-gold curls, Fox proved almost more handsome than his partner, despite the just-healed scar cutting down one side of his face. The scar only made him look more masculine. Acknowledging the thought as a bit blasphemous, Kallista still had to credit the One with excellent taste in male beauty.
His face was broad in the middle, narrowing a bit at the chin, with a jutting blade of a nose that rivaled Torchay’s. His eyebrows and lashes were thick but fair, their color blending in to the gold of his skin. He was too thin but his frame promised strength once he regained the weight he’d lost. The injury that had lamed him was still raw and red, laid open from hip to knee. It hurt her to see it, but she thought something could still be done to correct the problems caused by lack of treatment.
Had her companions been given her as a test or a gift? What kind of test? What kind of gift? Why couldn’t the One speak in plain language rather than obscure symbols and images?
When Fox finished the light meal Aisse had delivered, Kallista sat at the table opposite him. “How are you feeling?”
He folded his hands together atop the table, gripping tight when his fingers shook. “Fine. Wonderful.”
“Truth?”
“Yes, of course, truth.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I am possibly a bit…overwhelmed as well.”
She nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her. “Ah,” she said. She stretched her hand across the table and laid it over his clasped ones. “Fox, I’d like you to tell me what happened to you after that day in Ukiny. I won’t force you if you can’t bring yourself to talk about it, but I think it’s important.”
“What do you want to know?” He spoke into her pause. “I don’t remember that day. I don’t r
emember anything until I—”
“Wait. Do you mind the others hearing, or would you rather send them away? Or would you rather tell Stone instead of me?”
He jerked, his head beginning to shake no, then seemed to force himself into stillness. “However you wish it, Kallista.”
She separated his hands, taking one into hers and curling his fingers around her palm with her other hand. “I want to know what you wish. Do you want me to go, or stay?” She didn’t need another worshipper. She already had Obed to deal with.
“Stay,” he said. “Please.”
“I will then. What do you remember?”
“Pain. And thirst. One of the women giving me water. I couldn’t understand anything—their words were gibberish. I think maybe one of the surgeons tried to get her to stop, but she gave me water anyway. I was lying with the dead and dying. They expected me to die.”
“Who was it? The woman, do you know?” Aisse had come close while Fox was speaking. His nostrils flared as if he could smell her presence.
“Piheko. She made me understand her name later, in the women’s quarters.”
“She has a kind heart.” Aisse moved away again as Fox turned his surprised face to Kallista.
“Aisse is Tibran,” she said. “She ran away. Now she’s ilias. You were in the women’s quarters?”
“Not at first. Piheko fed me till I could walk again. No one paid me any attention till then—I know because they left me alone—but when I could rise from my pallet and walk, I was noticed. They saw my blindness when I tripped and fell. They spoke and I could not understand what they said. That was the day I lost my caste.” He fell silent, tears welling from his sightless eyes. Kallista squeezed his hand. She didn’t know what else to do.
“After they—Afterward, someone carried me to the women’s quarters and left me there. The women wouldn’t let me in but Piheko still fed me. She gave me a dress to wear and half of an old blanket so I had some cover.” His voice was flat, emotionless, as if he told of what happened to someone else, but the tears still flowed.
“A dress tunic?” Kallista was confused.
“Women’s clothing,” Aisse said. “Only for women. A dress is like a dress tunic, but never with trousers or leggings. So to do sex, is only required to lift the skirt.”
“Ah.” She understood now. In a caste system where women have little value, clothing a man in something only women wore would show contempt for him.
“While I healed again,” Fox said, “I…served. I was beast of burden for the women—blind, deaf, dumb—an idiot. Or I was their pleasure toy. The laborers played games. They liked to trip me, then—”
“Stop it.” Stone’s chair clattered to the floor as he jumped to his feet. “Do you have to know every damn bloody detail, humiliate him again with the telling? Leave him be!” He stood there another moment, breathing hard, making and unmaking fists, then he spun and slammed out of the room.
The telling seemed to hurt Stone more than it bothered Fox who had lived it. But Fox had been stripped of all pride and will. Stone hadn’t. Worried, Kallista weighed her options, horribly few. She could sense Stone’s turmoil and wanted someone nearby. “Aisse, go after him. Watch, but from a distance.”
Aisse scowled a moment, then shrugged, nodded and slipped from the room.
Kallista looked back at Fox who clung to her hand now with both of his. “When did you leave?” she asked. “How?”
“I don’t…exactly know. I remember a need to find something—you, I think—a need so strong it hurt. One day I woke up on the edge of camp. No one cared if I left, so I kept going. I could understand speech, once I left. Folk directed me to the temples, where I was given a shirt, trousers, food. The need pushed me, refused to let me quit, showed me the path when it should have been impossible.”
“Do you still feel it? That need?”
“No.” He lifted his face for all the world as if he could see her. “I found you. What else do I need?”
Oh, she did not need the weight of this responsibility, did not need to be the center of anyone else’s universe. But she had offered, the One had accepted, and she could not lay the burden down again until their task was done.
“Thank you for telling us, Fox.” Kallista patted his hand and gently disengaged. “We needed to know what kind of healing you might require.”
Fox sat up straight, surprise in his expression. Kallista waited for him to ask, to say anything, and when he did not, she sighed. “There may be nothing a healer naitan can do for you, aside from your leg. I know one here in Turysh who can work wonders, even half-healed as it is. Perhaps there is one who can help your sight. We should at least ask what is possible.” And perhaps a healer could help mend his broken soul.
It was afternoon before a knock at the door announced the arrival of the healer. Aisse answered it and the tall, pale, dark-haired naitan smiled a greeting. As she entered, she looked up at the others in the room and her smile faded.
“Hello, Mother.” Kallista tried to smile, but didn’t think she succeeded any better than her birth mother.
“Had you planned to let any of us know you were in town?” Irysta set her box of herbals and medicines on the table. “Does anyone actually need a healer or is this one of your games?”
Obed stiffened at the caustic words, but Kallista stilled him with a gesture. She moved to stand behind Fox, resting her hands on his shoulders. “No game, Mother Irysta. Fox was injured in Ukiny just before I last came through Turysh. The wound has healed badly, possibly been reopened and healed again. I ask that you do what you can for him.”
Irysta glanced at the others in the room, her eyes lingering briefly on Fox. “Your sedili informed me that you had finally joined an ilian. Your other parents were disappointed that you didn’t see fit to have the wedding at home. I told them it was only one more example of your lack of proper family feeling. How was he injured?”
“I don’t remember,” Fox answered for himself.
Kallista was grateful. She would likely have included some bitter sniping about her mother setting aside her prejudice against soldiers. Irysta would never refuse treatment to anyone, regardless of how an injury occurred, but she would make her disapproval apparent.
“I don’t need an audience for this.” Irysta waved the others out of the room. “Where is your injury, Fox?”
“On my thigh.”
Irysta gestured him toward the bed, opening her box while the three who could leave did so.
Kallista helped Fox to his feet and guided him to the bed. “I assume you want him to remove his trousers before he lies down.”
“I can scarcely examine him through them.” Irysta looked up. “Why are you still here?”
“Because if I leave, Fox will go into convulsions, and if Obed leaves, he will.” Kallista put up her hand to forestall her mother’s protests. “I’m sure you don’t want to force us to demonstrate. I’m told it’s rather painful. Just mark it down as another peculiarity of my unfortunate magic, all right?”
Irysta sniffed, disapproving as always, and turned to her patient. Kallista moved to stand near Obed. He touched the back of her arm lightly, and when she didn’t move away, slid his hand down to clasp hers. Always, whenever she came close enough, he would touch her as much and as long as she would allow it. Not long, most times. But at this moment, she welcomed his touch. She found his unquestioning devotion a comfort.
“This wound looks to have been made by something long and sharp. Like a sword,” Irysta said, probing it. “Are you a soldier?”
“I was a warrior once, but no more.” Fox spoke through gritted teeth, as if in pain, and Kallista reached for his magic.
Their link was new, forged afresh just this morning since that first terrible day. She could sense only his presence, and that vaguely. Not like Stone’s heart beating with hers, or the touch of more than Obed’s hand. Kallista gently disengaged from Obed and crossed the room to the foot of the bed. Reaching over the footboard, she wra
pped her hand around Fox’s ankle. She called a thread of magic to soothe his pain, hoping it would do as she asked. Through the connection of their touch, she could feel the easing take hold.
“Karyl told us your ilian was four strong,” Irysta said absently, mind on her own magic as she bent over Fox’s wound. “Not six.”
How to answer that? She had sent a separate message to Mother Dardra asking her to preside over the addition of Fox to their ilian. She ought to invite the whole family, but that would lead to questions and complications and…
“Obed joined us just over a week ago,” Kallista found herself saying. “And I would be honored to have you as witness when Fox joins us this evening.”
That brought Irysta’s head snapping around. She stared at Kallista a long moment, suspicion in her eyes, then turned back to her patient. “For one who resisted family life for so long, you’ve taken to it with sudden enthusiasm.”
“When the One forms the ilian, who are we to deny it?”
“You do understand that your iliasti will expect you to stop indulging yourself with your troops. They’ll expect you to be faithful.”
Kallista sighed. Irysta would believe what she wished and no amount of protest or explanation would change her mind. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
Irysta glanced from Fox to Obed behind her then gave her daughter a sour look. “I don’t suppose it would be. Still, I had hoped I instilled enough discrimination in you that you wouldn’t stoop to snatching beggars off the street.”
Kallista swallowed down her anger, leaving it to churn in her gut. “How is Fox? Can you help him?”
“I will not be able to restore complete mobility without surgery, because healing is so advanced.”
“How long would it take him to recover? When would he be able to travel?”
“By boat? I’d say six—”
“Horseback,” Kallista interrupted.
Irysta frowned. “That’s very strenuous. Hard on the legs. No sooner than ten weeks—ninety days—at minimum. More rest would be better.”
In ninety days, her pregnancy would certainly be showing. She couldn’t afford to wait, unless there was no other choice. “Can you do anything for him now, without the surgery? If he waits, will it make a difference? Can you still help him later?”