by Gail Dayton
The rest of them seemed comfortable with each other, despite Aisse’s continued refusal to “do sex.” It was only around Kallista they seemed so constrained. But that was the fault of the magic. Wasn’t it?
The magic bound them together, forcing them into a close connection that Kallista fought with everything in her. No one had ever been able to force her to do anything. Adjusting to military discipline had been beyond difficult. She’d settled into it only because she had finally understood the reasons for it. She could remember countless times in childhood when she’d refused to do something she honestly wanted simply because someone told her she must do it. Was that what she was doing now? Was this constraint her fault?
Of course it was. If she hadn’t reacted so violently to Torchay’s confession, she would still be with him. Probably naked. And he would be thinking their lovemaking meant more than it did. Or was she the one wanting to believe a lie, that it meant less?
“Kallista.” Aisse’s touch on her shoulder startled her. “Are you well?”
She shrugged, swiping at her face with the back of her hand. “Well enough.”
“Did he—” Aisse stroked her hand down Kallista’s hair. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. Never. He would never do such a thing.” And now she understood why. She understood his years of devotion, his patience, his concern. It hadn’t been duty. “I hurt him.”
“But I didn’t see you—” Aisse sat on the log beside Kallista, facing the other way.
“Not physically. I hurt him inside, where you can’t see. Where—” She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t care. Shouldn’t. “Go to him, Aisse. You like him, don’t you? Make it right. Make him—make him feel better.” Kallista couldn’t do it.
“You want me to do sex with him?”
“No, of course n—” Kallista looked at Aisse. She didn’t sound outraged, the way she usually did when someone mentioned sex. “That is, not unless you want to. Do you? It’s perfectly fine either way, just go. I don’t think he should be alone.”
Aisse didn’t move. “You like doing sex, Kallista?”
Oh, good Goddess, now what? “Yes, I do.”
“So why you don’t—why don’t you? You like Torchay?”
“Yes, I like Torchay.” He was her friend and her ilias. But she didn’t love him.
“You like Obed and the Tibran men?”
Kallista couldn’t help the smile twitching her lips. “Yes, I like Obed and I like Stone and Fox, even if they are Tibran.”
“So why? There must be something you don’t like if you don’t do it.”
“I don’t like being told what to do. The magic pushes me and I won’t be pushed.” That wasn’t the whole of it, but it was all she’d tell Aisse.
“You like sex and you like our men, but since the magic likes them too, you won’t do what you like?” Aisse stood, looking back at Kallista. “That’s stupid.”
The blunt statement made as the other woman walked away startled Kallista into laughter. Aisse was right. Belandra was right. Even the damn magic was right. But she couldn’t just give in, because she was right too. Sex complicated things.
That was obvious just from the struggle she had controlling the links…Control. Was that the key? If she used the magic as Stone wanted, she had to be able to control things better than if she indulged in actual physical sex. Once she got the links under control, maybe she’d know what to do about Torchay. She had to do something. The demon waited. If their ilian was still in this disarray, the demon would win.
Torchay was brushing down one of the horses when Aisse appeared by his side. She didn’t say anything, just stood there watching him. He ducked under the tie-rein to work on the other side. Getting away from her silent scrutiny was a bonus.
Aisse stroked a small hand down the horse’s neck. “Tell me how to make you feel better.”
Despite the hollow ache where his heart belonged and the burning humiliation piled atop it, Torchay couldn’t help smiling. Aisse had as much subtlety as a war hammer. “I’m fine. Why don’t you go make sure Obed isn’t burning our dinner.”
He finished the brushing and moved past Fox who was working on one of the pack mules, to begin on the next animal in line, another mule. He took a step to the left to reach the mule’s rump and almost fell over Aisse. “What are you still doing here?”
Aisse looked up at him, her dark eyes full of confusion. “How can she hurt you if she did not strike you? I can’t see any injuries, but…you’re still injured.”
“Goddess, Aisse, did you never care for anyone?” Torchay glanced over his shoulder at Fox. The man was ilias, but still Torchay didn’t want to bare his soul in front of him. He didn’t want to do it with Aisse, but he could tell she wouldn’t leave it alone. Not until he explained something she could understand. She was relentless that way. He drew her away to the end of the picket line.
She lowered her eyes from his face, inspecting him. “Where does it hurt?”
“Here.” Torchay touched a closed fist to his gut, to the center of the aching blaze.
Aisse moved his fist aside and touched him there, probing through the coarse cotton of his tunic. “But why?” She frowned up at him again. “There is no wound? Why does it hurt?”
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes against the pain. “Because I love her and she doesn’t love me.”
“I don’t think I like love, whatever it is.” Her hand flattened against his chest.
Torchay gave a choked-off bark of laughter. “Nor do I, Tiger aila.”
Slowly, her small hand slid across his chest and around his back, until she held him carefully in her arms, her forehead resting against his shoulder. “I don’t like it when you hurt,” she said. “It makes me hurt too. In my throat and in my chest. Tell me how to make you feel better, Torchay. Right now.”
“Oh, Aisse, it’s not so easy as that.” And yet, her awkward comfort had an effect. He put his arms around her as carefully as she held him. “But this helps.”
She pulled back and met his gaze. “I will do sex with you, if you want.”
He somehow managed to keep from choking. She was offering this gift to him? Despite how she felt about it? Dear Goddess, had she fallen in love with him? Or was it pity? Whatever her reasoning, this was not the time.
“No, little ilias.” Torchay brushed her short-cropped hair off her forehead and pressed a kiss to it. He folded her in his arms again, tipping her head against his shoulder. “This is all I want just now.”
He held her a long time, taking comfort and giving it, until Fox finished tending all the animals and returned to the campfire. Until Kallista returned from wherever she’d gone, Stone trailing behind. Until the ache in his chest didn’t feel quite so hollow anymore.
Aisse didn’t love him. Torchay was fairly sure she had no idea what love might be. But they could comfort each other. As the only two unmarked in this ilian, it was natural they would gravitate together. Now, if he could only stop loving Kallista, but he knew that would never happen.
Dawn had broken. Everyone was awake, beginning to break camp. Kallista was returning from the primitive necessary among the trees as she passed Obed on the way out. His awareness brushed against her, flaring into hot desire that rushed through the magic conduit into her mind. It sent her staggering into a tree, so powerful was his passion.
Kallista reached, snaring his magic and pulling it tight, pushing back at him all the things he’d sent to invade her. The magic roared, breaking loose to run rampaging through their bodies. She gasped, only the tree where she leaned keeping her upright. She held tight to the magic, forcing it to build. Could she, could they do it again?
Her body and Obed’s rode the soaring crest, piling delight upon pleasure upon ecstasy, until finally they broke, spasming in climax. Still she held on, wringing every last tortured drop of release from both bodies, until the magic disintegrated in her hands.
She slumped, clinging to the tree, fighting for breath, unable to m
ove of her own volition.
“Everything all right?” Stone spoke from a few paces away. Fox was with him, but silent.
Kallista considered, then shook her head. She didn’t think her voice would work yet.
“You did it again, didn’t you? Sex by magic.”
She nodded and dragged herself up the tree until her knees were more or less straight. Yes, they would hold.
“Dammit, why is it never me? I want a turn.” Stone’s voice was supposed to sound teasing, Kallista was sure, but she could hear a definite plaintive note in it.
“Talk to me again,” she said through her gasping breath, “tomorrow.”
Obed was coming. She could hear his uneven approach through the forest, could sense anger radiating from him. She waved the other two away. “I have to talk to Obed. Alone.”
Stone and Fox backed away perhaps a step, and Obed was there. His eyes blazed black fire, his nostrils flared with every breath. “Do not ever do that to me again.” His words snarled out between clenched teeth. “If you want sex with me let it be true sex, mouth-to-mouth, skin-to-skin, me inside of you.”
“I wasn’t the one who started this,” she retorted, anger flaring along with the desire his words rekindled.
“I did not touch you.”
“You didn’t have to! Goddess, don’t you understand what being linked like this means? I know exactly where you are and what you are doing every minute. I know what your body feels. When you burned your hand last night, I felt it. When you desire me, I can’t help but feel it. I even know what emotions you’re feeling when they’re strong, like your anger now. Then multiply that times three, because everything I receive from you I receive from Fox and Stone as well.”
She threw her hands up in frustration. “What do you expect me to do when you shove your randy state down my throat? I’m going to shove back, Obed. If you don’t like what happens, I suggest you get your—your passions under control.”
“I did not realize.” Obed raised a hand, noticed it was curled in a fist, and struggled to open it. Then he seemed not to know what to do with it.
His anger was fading, and with it, Kallista’s anger subsided. She took his hand, clasping her fingers around his thumb.
“I will try to do as you ask.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “But know this. I will not again commit the sacrilege of spilling my seed on the ground. I am yours. You know this. I will do anything you ask of me, but please—do not ask this. I do not want it.” Holding her gaze with his, Obed lifted their clasped hands and pressed his lips to the back of her hand. Then he released it and returned to the camp.
Kallista let out a heavy sigh. She really should take the time to explore Obed’s beliefs, learn what things might offend him. But they didn’t have the time now. She trudged up the path to join Fox and Stone, looping her hands through their elbows for the short distance back to camp.
“Obed might not want it,” Stone said quietly. “But I do. How about you, Fox?”
“I want whatever Kallista wants.”
“Liar.” Kallista held on tight when Fox would have pulled away. “Didn’t you hear what I told Obed? I feel what you feel. Do you have any moral or religious objections to sex by magic?”
“I have no objections to anything you want from me.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The Tibrans hadn’t had him long after he’d lost his caste, but they’d taught him all too well. “I don’t need just your magic, Fox. I need your mind and your will. You’re ilias now, part of the Varyl ilian. We are your caste now. Do you understand that?”
“I…am beginning to.” Half a moment later, he grinned, his face lighting up the forest. “And I have no objections to anything you want from me. Especially if it has to do with sex.”
They were still laughing when they joined the others.
It took them another full week to work their way through the swamps, past the Tibran lines and into Kishkim’s walled streets. While waiting tucked in a sweltering third-floor room near the docks for Obed and Torchay to finish their negotiations for a ship to take them across the Jeroan Sea, Kallista finally gave in to Stone’s seductive teasing. She caught Fox in the magic too and brought them all three to a mutual roaring climax.
“Khralsh’s bloody hells,” Fox gasped, slumping against the wall where he sat on the larger of the two beds. “If I weren’t already blind, I think that might have done the job.”
“I think it did.” Stone slid down to lie on the rug between the beds. “I know I can’t see.”
“Try opening your eyes.” Kallista tried it as she pushed herself up off the tabletop and sank into the high upholstered back of the chair where she sat. “Worked for me.”
“You sure?” Stone paused, evidently following Kallista’s directive, for he said, “Oh yeah, that works.”
Aisse startled Kallista when she sidled up next to her. She’d forgotten the younger woman was still in the room. “That was truly like sex?” Aisse whispered. “You truly enjoy it?”
Kallista worked harder to control her breathing. “Yes, Aisse. Truly.”
The little blonde chewed on the inside of her lip. “I wish you could show me.”
“Oh, Aisse, I’m not—I don’t—”
“With your magic. Not—I know you like men.” She chewed on her lip again.
“That’s obvious enough, I suppose.” Kallista studied her young ilias, trying to find the best response. “What about you?”
Aisse shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t like to be hurt. Men hurt.”
“Not always. Not all of them. Torchay doesn’t hurt you, I know. None of our men have hurt you.” Speaking quietly, Kallista emphasized the “our.” Aisse had called them that first.
Again she shrugged. “Because I don’t do sex with them.”
“Why do you sleep beside Torchay now? You trust him not to do anything you don’t want, right? He would show you what you want to know, and he wouldn’t hurt you. Ask him.” Kallista didn’t begrudge Aisse Torchay’s tutoring, even in this. And maybe it would make up for some of the hurt she’d stupidly dealt him.
Four days later, on the first of Vendra, the last summer month, Obed found a captain willing to transport their ilian to Haav in Tibre. He had no room for their animals, but one of Torchay’s kinsmen had arrived the night before to take them in hand. The ship, local but not crewed by Adarans, would leave on the evening tide. They had just time enough to repack their belongings and divide the remaining coin from Obed’s supply among themselves.
They were all six crammed into a single, none-too-large cabin. Everyone but Obed became violently ill the instant the ship reached open sea. Torchay recovered first, three days after they sailed, and by the week’s end only Fox still moaned in the cabin’s single ilian-size bunk.
Kallista feared his blindness was making his condition worse and hoped he wouldn’t stay sick for the entire voyage. She could feel his nausea through the link. Eventually, with the help of magic she borrowed from the other two, Fox recovered sufficiently to emerge from the cabin.
The crew had no naitan to control the winds, and though Kallista was tempted to try, she resisted temptation and allowed the captain to use his skill and seamanship. But because of the vagaries of natural wind, the trip seemed endless.
The ilian’s close quarters turned small irritations into major faults, creating daily explosions of temper, nursing of grudges and tendering of apologies. Kallista’s temper was the loudest, but the others knew how to make their annoyance felt, even Fox who seemed to think he had no right to any emotions. Somehow, the daily struggle to keep from throttling each other bound them closer to what anyone might call a true ilian.
They took the weeks of the journey to teach Stone and Fox a bit of the Tibran they’d lost so they could at least understand orders and identify where they belonged if the ilian was separated. Once Fox was over his illness, he joined the others in the combat training Torchay conducted on deck.
Kallista practiced
calling magic, though she didn’t work the dark veil, not in the ship’s close quarters. West magic disturbed too many people. She played with the winds, hunted stray magics—not many on the open sea—and worked at spreading the defensive shield beyond the members of her ilian. She did not practice sex by magic, much to Stone’s noisy disappointment and Obed’s silent relief.
Nor did Aisse seem to have asked Torchay for any instruction. They slept crowded together on the single bunk, Aisse always on the outside, always next to Torchay, but at least she joined them now. The ilian was coming together, becoming the whole it needed to be if they were to succeed in their task.
On the thirty-third day of Vendra, two days before the advent of the first fall month, the ship made dock at Haav, the major port of the Tibran empire. Haav’s docks bristled with masts, golden-skinned laborers with shaved heads swarming everywhere as they loaded and unloaded the ships. A fortress built of rust-red stone loomed over the harbor with three ranks of cannon protruding from its walls.
As they had planned during the long evenings of their trip, Obed and Torchay waited on deck for the assigned Bureaucrat. The Tibran king had apparently learned that treating foreign merchants as if they were members of his own Merchant caste was not conducive to trade. Merchants in Tibre ranked only above Bureaucrats, Laborers and, of course, Women, and suffered occasional abuse from the higher castes. Foreign merchants didn’t care to suffer at all. Therefore, a member of the Port Bureaucracy came to each ship and issued various certifications that would—with luck—protect the visiting traders.
“How much longer do you reckon the fellow will have us wait?” Torchay asked, standing at a comfortable parade rest on the ship’s deck. He was used to waiting, usually in worse weather than the day’s pleasant breeze.
Obed shrugged. “Before nightfall, I am sure. The man is trying to impress us with his importance, which is very small.”