Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  “As long as you promise to give me the rest of the story one day,” Alyea said. “Soon.”

  Eredion shrugged assent. “In any case,” he went on hurriedly, “this one’s acting more like a ha’ra’ha trying to hang onto what’s left of its sanity. It’s not hurting anyone, it’s not feeding—anymore. . . .”

  Alyea’s eyes narrowed. “Feeding?”

  Eredion glanced at her, then at Deiq’s fierce glower, looking first startled and then uneasy. “Ah, I thought you. . . .”

  Deiq’s sour expression intensified even further. Alyea opened her mouth to ask what, exactly, Eredion had meant by feeding; that sounded too important to wait for a later explanation. A moment later, she felt a vague, velvet pressure build and dissipate behind her eyes, so quickly she scarcely noticed it; she rubbed her eyes with one hand and blinked hard. Without being sure why, she found herself staring at Deiq; he wore a suspiciously bland expression.

  Eredion said hastily, “Well, never mind—Right now, the woman is searching for something. She seems attracted to graveyards at night, and children during the day. She rushes up to them, examines them, and then just screams this unearthly wail and rushes away again. Doesn’t hurt them, but gods, there’s an ocean of piss on the cobblestones in this city these days.”

  Deiq didn’t laugh. Neither did anyone else.

  Alyea struggled briefly with the feeling that she had forgotten something critically important; looked around her for clues and found a faintly puzzled expression on almost every face. Eredion avoided her gaze, and Deiq was frowning, apparently over what the Sessin lord had said.

  “During the day?” Deiq asked. “Has anyone gotten a good look?”

  “It’s been taking the form of a woman in white,” Lord Filin said, cutting a sideways glance at Eredion and pointedly not looking at Deiq. “She moves too fast, and people are too busy running away, for anything else. She hasn’t appeared often in the daylight, but half the city’s terrified to set foot out of doors. Oruen’s being pressured to call the northern priests back to help.”

  “They couldn’t do anything but make it worse,” Deiq said.

  “That’s what we figured.”

  Deiq turned his stare on Idisio again, his expression deeply speculative.

  “Idisio,” he said slowly, “why were you out in the middle of the night? In the middle of a rainstorm, at that?”

  “I just . . . I had to get some air. I felt so hot, and restless, and I wanted to walk the streets alone, the way I used to.” Idisio frowned, as if hearing the absurdity of his own words. “I don’t know,” he said after another moment’s consideration. “I felt . . . called. Drawn. Like something wanted me to come out of the house.”

  “You shouldn’t have felt our bait-call,” Eredion said. “Not that far away. What did it feel like?”

  “Like someone was riffling through my mind. My memories. I couldn’t seem to stop it.”

  “That definitely wasn’t us,” Eredion said, looking alarmed.

  “No,” Deiq said, almost under his breath. “That was the ha’ra’ha woman you’re after.” He stared at Idisio speculatively. “She seems to have taken an interest in you, Idisio. I wonder why.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Deiq stood to one side of the gathering, letting the desert lords hash out their ideas for handling the situation and argue over it versus she. That particular subtlety of wording didn’t matter to him; he’d managed to ignore Filin’s clear intent to antagonize him. And he knew better than to offer himself up as hunter. They wouldn’t trust him: and in this particular instance, he had to admit they would probably be right.

  A mad ha’ra’ha was even more dangerous for its peers than for humans. And in this city, with the memories he could never quite escape, the encounter wouldn’t go well at all.

  Yellow eyes in the darkness: laughter and a feeling like jagged lace stripping through his veins. A mocking voice ghosted through his mind: Leaving so soon, little cousin? No, that simply won’t do . . . And as the pain hit, he screamed, louder and longer than Meer had, because Meer had been only human, and able to die to escape.

  He blinked, swallowing hard, and gave silent thanks that nobody was looking his way; deliberately turned his back, breathing evenly until emotion eased and the stress-patterns faded from his skin.

  It had probably been a very serious mistake to return to Bright Bay, a worse one to step into the palace. And now he had to deal with a mad ha’ra’ha—again—and that took precedence over everything else.

  “Deiq,” someone said behind him.

  He set a mild expression on his face and returned to the group. “Yes?”

  “This, ahhhh, this tath-shinn—”

  Deiq grinned, amused by the chosen compromise, and Eredion’s face relaxed for just a moment in response, then tautened again.

  “—seems interested in Idisio, right? So how about using him as a draw—”

  “As bait,” Idisio said, voice edged with a shrill tension. “For another damned trap.”

  Deiq pursed his lips, considering. Idisio had already survived an attack by the strange ha’ra’ha once without succumbing to instability. Whether that steadiness came from his heritage or his youthful ignorance, Deiq wasn’t sure.

  He only knew he couldn’t do it. Not here.

  “Not a bad idea,” he said, prompting a betrayed glare from Idisio.

  What about dignity and honor? Idisio shot at him.

  Sometimes honor requires losing some dignity, Deiq answered, and firmly closed down further private communication with the younger ha’ra’ha before it could escalate into an argument.

  It took another hour of discussion before a plan was formed. Idisio, still markedly unhappy, at last agreed that the danger to the city was worth risking a bit of his own skin over, and accepted—dubiously—the assurances that he wouldn’t be alone, and that they wouldn’t allow any harm to come to him.

  “And you said she hasn’t hurt anyone, right?” he said hopefully.

  “No, no, you should be perfectly safe,” Eredion assured him, and if his response seemed a bit too quick and his face a shade too tight, nobody remarked on it.

  “And you won’t have any of that stubby powder.”

  “No. We won’t use any stibik, except on the catch-ropes. We don’t want to risk hurting you.”

  Deiq saw Idisio’s mispronunciation of the word as a fair indicator of just how badly rattled the young ha’ra’ha had become. As the meeting began to wrap up, Deiq murmured in Alyea’s ear, “I think I’d best go have a talk with Idisio, to settle him down. He’s liable to go to pieces before nightfall otherwise.”

  “You trust me out of your sight?” she muttered.

  “You did say this was your city,” he remarked sardonically, hearing more frustration escaping into the words than he’d intended.

  She winced, but before she could say anything by way of apology, Oruen called for their attention again.

  “Alyea,” the king said, tone pleasant but eyes tight at the corners, “would you mind staying behind for a few moments? I’ve a few things I’d like to go over with you alone before I open my court to the public.”

  The word alone held the faintest stress. The king locked eyes with Deiq, and they exchanged a brief, bitter glare.

  “Of course,” Alyea said.

  What does she know? Eredion asked. And is it safe to leave her unsupervised right now?

  Damn little, Deiq admitted. There hasn’t been time or quiet for teaching. And she’s not fully healed from her trials, or fully changed over. She’s still closed to mindspeech, for one.

  He left silent that she was already able to deliver a hefty blow from rage; she liked Oruen well enough still for the risk to be minimal. At worst, she’d embarrass herself and scare the king, neither of which seemed like bad outcomes.

  Eredion didn’t look surprised: that implied he’d tried mindspeech himself, and had no better success. Good to know.

  Do you want some estiqi?
/>
  Deiq shook his head. No. I don’t want to force it. She’ll open when she’s ready.

  Eredion nodded. He murmured polite farewells along with the other desert lords and trainees, and withdrew to prepare for the night ahead. With one last hard stare at Oruen, Deiq followed suit: his hand casually resting on Idisio’s shoulder, his thumb pressing hard to keep Idisio moving at a pace that kept Deiq himself from turning around and going back to stand beside Alyea—or sidetracking to ask Eredion for the estiqi after all.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “Lord Oruen,” Alyea said carefully as the doors clunked shut behind her. She found herself acutely aware of the two King’s Guards standing behind her, on the inside of those doors. During the conference with the desert lords, she’d practically forgotten their presence. But of course the king would never be truly alone, not even in his bedchamber.

  She bit her lip and yanked her mind away from that train of thought.

  Oruen regarded her with an openly bemused expression, his long fingers worrying at a piece of embroidery on his royal robes. Alyea smiled a little; the palace seamstresses were probably throwing fits over his clothes-wrecking nervous habits on a daily basis.

  “What in all the seventeen hells do I do with you now?” he said.

  Abruptly, her muddled thoughts clicked into a sharp, unemotional focus.

  “I don’t see that there’s much you can do at the moment,” she said. “Or ought to do. Lord Oruen.”

  He grimaced. “Alyea, drop that nonsense,” he said impatiently. “You’ve known me—”

  “And bedded you. Yes. But that’s not relevant any more, Lord Oruen.”

  His thin eyebrows rose. He sat back on his throne and studied her with a new intensity. “You’re actually serious about this.”

  “I’ve gone through the trials,” she said. “All three of them. I’ve had to kill a man. Pieas Sessin, as it happened, but it was almost Chacerly. Gods know he deserved it, from what he told me.” She watched the skin around Oruen’s dark eyes tighten. “Chac owes his life to Lord Scratha,” she added, and let him have a moment to appreciate the irony in that situation. “I owe my life to Deiq. I’ve met with desert lords in Conclave, and been formally invested as a full desert lord; I’ve been to the teyanain fortress as an honored guest. I won’t even start on some of the other things that happened. Yes. I’m serious.”

  He listened quietly, his forehead furrowing deeper as she spoke.

  “I see,” he said. “I thought the trials took years. I assumed the title was simply . . . an expedient courtesy.”

  She shook her head and turned, raising the back of her shirt to show him the mark of the first trial burned into the flesh of her lower back. At his grunt, she turned back to face him.

  “Not just courtesy,” she said.

  “I see that.” His face had become grave and drawn. “This is a rather large complication for me, Alyea.”

  “It hasn’t simplified my life a whole lot, either.”

  “Hnnph.” He snorted near-laughter, then sobered again. “What do you plan to do now?”

  “I’m leaving as soon as this hunt is settled. Tomorrow morning, I hope. Deiq, Idisio, and I are headed north.”

  “North?” He leaned forward, staring at her with unabashed bewilderment and deep concern.

  “North,” she said firmly. “Idisio’s taken on the job of King’s Researcher that you initially gave to Scratha, since Lord Scratha is now bound to his fortress and can’t leave the area.”

  Oruen sat back, scowling. “I knew he’d returned, and called a Conclave; but he can’t leave the area? I can see there’s quite a bit of news that hasn’t been sent to me. I thought I had better sources than that.”

  “I hope you didn’t count on Micru and Chac as those sources,” she said. He flinched, and she grinned, feeling supremely smug at knowing more than he did for once. “They’ve both gone back to the desert Families that bought them long ago: Chac to Darden, Micru to Sessin.”

  He sat very still, his jaw muscles taut. “I wondered why I hadn’t heard from them,” he murmured, and rubbed a hand over his face, grimacing. “Damn it. I should have known that.”

  “They’re both very good,” Alyea said, allowing a moment’s pity for a plot gone badly wrong. “I only found out by chance and a lucky guess or two.”

  One of the guards by the door coughed quietly. Oruen glanced past Alyea and held up a finger in a gesture for the man to wait a moment.

  “I have to open the court now,” Oruen said, looking at Alyea again, “but I’ll arrange time this afternoon for you to sit and tell me about this new development with Scratha, and about your journey.” He reached for a thin bell-rope beside the throne. “Maybe even share some tea, how’s that sound?”

  His tone annoyed her; he sounded indulgent, as though speaking to a pet or a child. Deciding it was time to establish their new respective places, she shook her head. “No, Lord Oruen.”

  His hand paused, fingers just touching the cord. He frowned at her. “What now?”

  She took a breath and kept her voice steady. “Would you address Lord Eredion that way? Offer tea like a treat for a child? I’m not under your authority any longer.” She wasn’t, actually, at all sure of that; but it seemed to follow from what Deiq had said about the king now treating her as an equal.

  He dropped his hand from the cord and regarded her with a cold expression she’d never seen directed at her before.

  “What Family do you serve?” he asked in clipped tones.

  “Peysimun.”

  “Peysimun isn’t a desert family; it’s a northern one, and under my authority.”

  “Not any longer,” she said, unwavering. “It’s an unusual situation, I’ll admit. But I am a desert lord, and I’ve chosen to serve Peysimun Family, which makes us independent by default. I won’t swear my family back over to you, Lord Oruen. And if you refuse to accept our independence, I’ll move the Family holdings to the south. You’ll lose us as allies, not to mention the tax revenue.”

  It was complete bluff, and she had no idea if she was right or even how to accomplish any such thing; but Oruen took it seriously. He scowled and said, “I’d have the right to declare against you—”

  “You don’t want to start an internal war right now, Lord Oruen!” she said sharply, her stomach tight with sudden panic. “The city’s too unstable yet.”

  “I also don’t want you to declare your own little kingdom within my borders!”

  She said nothing for a moment, thinking that over, then said, “I’ve been told I’ll be expected to host a number of visitors once things settle out. Regularly. Mainly desert lords, if I understand correctly. It would probably be nice to have one central location for visiting southerners of importance to go, one that knows how to host them with full courtesy and won’t send you complaints about them disrupting business or frightening the locals.”

  He stared at her, his expression one of almost comical astonishment.

  “The south,” she said evenly, “turned out to be very different from what we’re used to here, Lord Oruen. I’m in a perfect position to act as liaison between the worlds; but I have to stand as an independent Family to do it.”

  He nodded slowly. “I’ll consider it.”

  She drew a breath, steadying herself, and said, “There’s no other sane option.”

  “And in a matter of tendays you go from a flitterbug to being leader of a major political entity?” he demanded, suddenly angry again; she realized she should have retreated and left him to think it over, to accept it with a certain amount of grace instead of forcing his hand. “If you’re relying on Deiq’s support to pull this nonsense off, you’d best think twice. He’s more dangerous an ally than a viper, and with fewer morals. With him by your side, you’ll find yourself with more enemies than friends, Alyea; so walk carefully!”

  She drew a deep breath, her temper beginning to rise in response to his; but he wasn’t finished.

  “The only possi
ble reason I can see for you to take leave of your senses and take up with him is that he’s worked his way into your—”

  “Stop,” she said harshly. “Just stop.” Her hands shook. She fisted them tightly at her sides, more aware than ever of the guards behind her—and of Deiq’s absence.

  You have to be so very careful now . . . But why did everyone assume Deiq was keeping her that kind of company? It was beginning to aggravate her past bearing.

  “It’s an obvious assumption,” Oruen pressed, unwilling to let it drop. “Do you even know his reputation? Or has he charmed you into thinking he loves you alone? He’s apparently very good at that—”

  “Oruen, please, stop! I don’t want to hurt you!”

  He blinked and sat forward, staring at her. “You don’t want to—what?”

  “My cousin Kam almost died last night when he made me angry,” she said, forcing the words from a dry mouth. “He accused me of the same thing. And I . . . hit him. Deiq caught my hand just in time . . . but it still. . . .” She shook her head. “Deiq’s interference stopped me from killing him. But Deiq isn’t here right now, and I’m afraid of getting angry without him to hold me back.”

  She drew a deep, shaky breath and strained to slow her heartbeat from its furious hammering.

  He sat back, all the way into the depths of his throne this time, and regarded her silently, his face puckered with worry. To his credit, he didn’t look at his guards once, although she could sense that they’d moved much closer behind her.

  “I’ve been told that a desert lord’s anger can kill,” Oruen murmured at last. “Without even a physical blow involved.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s really not an empty title, then.”

  “No.”

  Close behind her, one of the guards coughed. The small sound seemed disproportionately loud in the taut silence, but Oruen’s gaze never left Alyea’s face, and no hint of a smile crossed his face.