Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert)

by Leona Wisoker

  She ran her fingers idly along the arm of her chair; realized she’d sat down in one of her mother’s “show pieces”: supposedly designed for Initin the Red, or his wife, or some such. Alyea suspected it was a cast-off, too ugly for anyone with sense to bear.

  The chair boasted a strangely curved back, wide seat, and a cushion dyed a weird shade of brown-purple. The studs were set with semi-precious yellow topaz and gods-milk chalcedony. Alyea had never been allowed to sit in it; her mother reserved it for the most honored guests.

  Alyea had to admit that, although incredibly ugly, it was a comfortable chair.

  “Look who braved the rain!” her mother sang out, reentering the room with Lady Arnil.

  Alyea stood hastily, but not before her mother delivered a withering glare as a prompt to get her out of the guest’s chair.

  “Lady Arnil,” Alyea said, thoroughly startled that the delicate woman would have come out in this downpour. “You grace our home.”

  Lady Arnil nodded, peering at Alyea myopically.

  “Alyea,” she said in a thin voice, then glanced at her host. “Is there something hot to be had?” she demanded. “That weather outside is perfectly dreadful!”

  “Of course,” Alyea’s mother said, motioning to a servant. “Will hot brandy do? Or perhaps some wind wine?”

  “Brandy,” the woman said, and shivered. She patted her carefully-arranged golden curls and looked around, squinting appraisingly. She seemed to have actually lost weight and color since last time they’d met.

  She’s ill, Alyea thought, astonished at the sudden perception. Really ill. I think she’s dying. It’s not a good idea for her to be out in this weather at all.

  She tried to keep her expression calm as she said, “It’s a long, wet journey in from your estates, Lady Arnil. Would you like to stay the night, and return in the morning?”

  At her mother’s sharp glance, Alyea realized that offer should have come from the host. She shrugged apologetically.

  “What?” Arnil turned from her examination of the room, her pale face furrowed. “No, no, I’d never be able to sleep in a strange bed. But it’s a kind offer.” She accepted the mug of hot brandy a servant brought her with a brief, regal nod.

  “My daughter’s a kind person,” Alyea’s mother said, visibly relaxing.

  “But not the brightest, eh?” Lady Arnil turned a bright-eyed glare on Alyea. As mother and daughter stood shocked at the discourtesy, she went on, “Championed that little slut of a servant I had, that Wian. Said she was a good girl. Claimed a desert noble tried to attack her. You may not have heard yet, Alyea, dear, but the girl’s been proven a liar and slut since you left. I let her go when the scandal came out.” She stroked the firetail bird feathers woven into her lacy scarf, her lips pursed in a thoroughly smug way.

  “What scandal?” Alyea said, through lips numb with shock.

  “She ran off with the man you said attacked her. Came back when he tired of her; thought she could just step right back into her job as if she’d never run off without notice.” She patted her hair again, smirking.

  Alyea bit her lower lip and admonished herself to stay calm. The woman was so fragile it would hardly take a feather to knock her over right now.

  “I heard somewhat different,” she said steadily. “I heard Pieas kidnapped her. From Pieas himself.”

  Arnil sniffed haughtily. “I’m sure you misunderstood. My dear great-nephew Kippin spoke most highly of Pieas’s character, when I asked him,” she declared. “And Wian herself didn’t deny having run off, when we confronted her.”

  Given Lady Arnil’s willful refusal to hear anything that she didn’t want to hear, Alyea thought she had a fairly good idea of how that conversation had gone.

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. Likely returned to her roots and walking the streets for a living. All I care about is that she’s not disgracing my household again. So—is the king here yet?” She looked around, a bright, expectant smile spreading across her lined face.

  Reminding herself that the woman was a guest, and severely ill, Alyea shut her eyes and breathed through her nose.

  “Is that another guest I hear?” her mother warbled, voice shaky. “Alyea, dear, go see who it is, would you please, dear?”

  Alyea shot her mother a deeply grateful look and fled.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Rain never particularly bothered Deiq, but the amount thundering down onto the rapidly flooding streets was astonishing. He stood under a deep overhang, forced from his initial post by the deluge; four steps up, and the first two were already submerged. The city drains would be busy tonight. . . .

  He squinted through the waterfall cascading from the overhang and the near-waterfalls slamming down from the sky beyond that. The sheets of moving liquid blurred even his vision, and proved difficult to push aside, like curtains, for a clearer view; it almost felt as though the water fought back against his attempts to redirect it.

  Deiq wished, bleakly, that he hadn’t insisted on being involved after all. He could have been sitting next to Alyea in the warm and dry, listening to empty chatter and watching Lady Peysimun glare at him.

  But damn it, this was a ha’ra’ha—it was kin, whatever its crimes; he tested gender pronouns for a moment, decided that using gender-neutral made the situation marginally easier to bear. Human-raised ha’ra’hain took on human-distinct genders, personalities and desires; became individuals. He couldn’t afford the distraction; thinking of this one as gendered forced a human-rigid friend/enemy/ally/opponent decision that threatened his own unique, uneasy balance on the borderline between his two heritages.

  There was a chance, just a chance, that if the madness was new, not inborn, he could draw it off, like skimming fat from a broth; he had to try, whatever it did to him in the process. And if it did attack Idisio, then he could let loose and kill it before the desert lords got hurt trying to stop it . . . He had to try.

  Idisio was just visible, a hunched and miserable figure across the wide stretch of Datha Road, which circled the entire cemetery area. He’d taken shelter under a black basalt statue of an eagle atop a tree. The wings of the eagle, cut absurdly large, were caught in a half-cupped flare, as though the bird were about to land on the tree; that, and the intricate lattice of the stone branches beneath, blocked a large part of the wind and rain.

  Since Idisio still hadn’t mastered regulating his body temperature, his feet were very probably cold and soaked, though. The nearest unblocked drain was two streets over; apparently the repair crews hadn’t made it to this section of town yet.

  Although blocked drains might not be from an entirely mundane cause of accumulated rubble and garbage. Not in this city, and not in this area. Deiq thought back to the maps of the city, and to Eredion’s account of which under-city tunnels he’d cleared so far, trying to match that up to what he knew of the drain system. At last he gave up, deciding the question was something to research in the palace library later. Most probably, judging by the number of Aerthraim lamps appearing throughout the city, the king was already in negotiations with the Aerthraim for repairs.

  A heavy gust whipped past, then shifted abruptly, crashing straight into the shelter of the overhang. Cursing under his breath, Deiq waded down the steps to find a new watch-post.

  The wind slammed into his face ever harder as he slogged through the flooded street; he squinted to protect his eyes and realized he was walking almost blind, all his attention thrown into getting through the weather to another safe spot.

  Which meant that at the moment he wasn’t in a safe spot. . . .

  Instinct whipped him round, slower than he should have been; he caught a bare glimpse of a hooded form dodging away. An image of wide, febrile grey eyes bored into his mind, and echoes of old screams and darkness mingled with his own memories in smoky threads of resurrected agony.

  —Yellow eyes in the darkness, and a voice: That’s right, that’s it, listen to that scream, isn’t it n
ice?—

  Deiq had never heard those words before. They came from her memory, not his; close as they were, her self-identification of female overrode his attempts to keep perception safely gender-neutral.

  In the ringing echo of the scream working through her/his mind, he saw with sick certainty what was coming next. He felt her reaching for that one vulnerable spot, and couldn’t move fast enough to stop her—

  Pain racking through every nerve and pore, Deiq opened his mouth to howl out the agony; but a hard blow connected with the back of his head, and he fell forward into mercifully silent darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “You lost him?” Alyea stared at Lord Eredion and Lord Filin. The latter had the grace to look ashamed of himself, while Eredion just shrugged sourly. On the low bed, Deiq moaned and stirred; outside, the wind howled and rattled the shutters against the thick glass windowpanes.

  She shook her head, gave the two desert lords one last glare, and laid a light hand on Deiq’s arm. He opened dark eyes and for a frightening moment stared at her without recognition.

  “Alyea,” he mumbled at last, his face clearing, and licked his lips. His stare shifted past her to the watching desert lords, and darkened as memory visibly returned. “What happened?”

  “You got knocked out and Idisio’s gone,” Alyea said.

  “Kidnapped or killed?”

  “They don’t know.”

  Lord Filin said, “We all had to move from our original posts. The wind came straight at us, and the rain was too thick to see through. We lost sight of him, and when Eredion went to check, he was gone. For all we knew, he’d wandered off to take a piss. But then . . . we found you.” He shrugged, looking annoyed. “You’re lucky we did. Face down in the damn street; you almost drowned in a handspan of water.”

  Deiq grimaced and closed his eyes as though pained by the ridiculousness of that.

  “Should have warned you,” he muttered. “Didn’t think she would know that trick. My fault.”

  “Ha’ra’hain can affect the weather?” Alyea said, incredulous. The thundering roar of the deluge outside hadn’t eased since nightfall. Getting to the palace had been a nightmare of slogging through flooded streets, and she’d been deeply grateful she had apartments of her own in which to dry off and change clothes.

  The king had allowed Deiq a smaller set of guest rooms for the emergency, and sent in his own healer. The plump man reportedly took one look at the heavily-bleeding gash on the back of Deiq’s skull and turned grey with horror. He’d refused to attempt stitching the wound; had, in fact, given over bandages, healing lotions, and painkiller potions, then fled the room.

  Alyea had arrived just as Eredion was fastening the final bandage in place, his face still thunderously dark and his temper high over the man’s cowardice.

  “Sometimes,” Deiq admitted now, not opening his eyes. “Tricky. What the hells did that ta-neka hit me with?”

  “Looked like a chunk of loose rock,” Lord Eredion said.

  “Feels like it.”

  Alyea looked at the bandages around Deiq’s head, and the blood even now spotting through them, and felt her stomach turn. She reached for the small bottle of painkiller potion on the bedside table and measured three careful drops into a cup of water. “Here. The king’s healer said this would help.”

  “I’m in the palace, then?” He squinted, displeased, and picked at his thin nightshirt irritably.

  “Better than my mother’s guest-room,” Alyea said. Deiq grunted and looked as though he wanted to smile, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

  Eredion and Filin helped lift Deiq up to a half-sit. He moaned, clearly nauseated by the motion, and gulped the water quickly before sliding back down to lie flat again. The thin shirt slid and scrunched; he grunted annoyance and rolled up to one elbow to rip the garment over his head. He tossed it to the floor and slumped back down, breathing hard but looking deeply relieved.

  Alyea averted her eyes reflexively, and heard Eredion cough as though hiding laughter; but when she glared at him, his face was utterly serene.

  “Not much we can do for now,” Eredion said. “In this weather, there’s no point in even looking. And you’re not going anywhere for a day or two. Even with your hard skull, that was a rough blow.”

  “Don’ need to tell me,” Deiq muttered, eyes shut again. His bronze skin had turned an unhealthy shade of grey. “Go ‘way. Lemme sleep. Gods, this hurts.”

  “You shouldn’t sleep,” Eredion said.

  “Bloody well should.”

  Eredion hesitated, flashing Alyea an unreadable glance, then nodded. He and Filin withdrew from the guest suite without further protest.

  “Looks like it’s my turn to sit over you,” Alyea said lightly, and stayed in the chair.

  “Shouldn’t. I’ll be fine.” He blinked hard, as though to clear a haze from his eyes.

  “Oh, this gives me a perfect excuse to get away from that dreadful party. I was about to find a high window to jump out of. Never knew so many fools lived in Bright Bay.”

  Deiq’s mouth twitched in the ghost of a smile.

  “Get some rest,” Alyea said. “I’ll stay and make sure nobody else whacks you over the head in your sleep.”

  “Hnnhn,” he grunted, and closed his eyes again. A few moments later, he whispered, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Alyea said, and watched the rise and fall of his chest settle into the calm breathing of deep sleep.

  Sometime later, Eredion came back, moving ghost-quiet; he moved a chair near hers and studied the sleeping ha’ra’ha with a strangely wary expression. “How is he?”

  “Sleeping,” she said economically, and rose to pour them each a cup of water. Sitting down again, she studied Eredion; his solid, mature presence felt more reassuring than she wanted to admit. He returned her gaze with dry amusement.

  “Quite a few miles since the last time we spoke,” he said, then grinned. “You’re sunburnt as a heathen, you know.”

  “So my mother tells me.”

  “Mm.” He sipped his water, glanced at Deiq, then back to Alyea. “You need to be very careful,” he said. “Ha’ra’hain don’t startle awake very well. You could get hurt. The healer was right not to touch him, much as I hate to admit it.”

  “He hasn’t hurt me yet,” she said. Eredion’s eyes narrowed sharply, and she added, “No, damn it, I haven’t gone to bed with him. Why is that always the first damn—”

  Eredion laughed, sitting back in his chair. “Welcome to the life of a desert lord,” he said, grinning. “I suspect you’ll have some kinds of fun explaining the concept of kathain to your family. Especially your mother.”

  His dark eyes tracked Alyea’s change of expression, and his eyebrows rose.

  “Oh,” he said, instantly understanding. “You haven’t hit that part of the change yet, have you? That’s why you haven’t—” He stopped.

  She looked away, teeth tight.

  “Mmph.” Eredion ran a thumb around the lip of his cup for some time. At last he said, “Never mind, then. We can talk about that later. Right now, just be careful around Deiq. A wounded ha’ra’ha doesn’t always know what he’s doing, and while he hasn’t hurt you yet, that’s no guarantee he won’t lose track of where he is and who you are.”

  “I won’t just leave him here for servants to tend.”

  “No. No, servants would get hurt. But for some reason . . . Deiq seems to really like you. And that makes you the safest person to be around him right now. He’s less likely to have a defensive attack reaction to you. But it’s still not safe, if you understand me. So just be careful, and don’t startle him awake.”

  Eredion handed her his empty cup and stood with a rueful smile.

  “And now, I’m overdue on my sleep. I’ll come back once I’ve had a nap, and give you a break.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He shook his head. “Best to break up the watch. You can’t just sit by Deiq’s bedside playing nurse for the
next few days. Filin and I will swap off with you until he’s back on his feet.”

  “What are you doing about finding Idisio?”

  “There’s nothing we can do tonight,” he said. Outside, the wind rose in a long, mournful wail, then died back under the roar of rain. “In the morning, we’ll start combing the city—in pairs, at the least.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Pain washed Deiq through time and memory with no anchor in the now or even any real idea when, exactly, the now should be:

  “How did they not teach you any of this?” he demanded, furious and appalled, unable to give any comfort to the shattered young man cowering in front of him. “How could you be put through the trials and not understand? You’re a desert lord, damn it, you should have been told about the ha’ra’hain!”

  Time spilled, like wine from an overfull cup, and drenched him into another moment:

  “Why aren’t you explaining to the human supplicants what they’re getting themselves into?” he demanded, fury still heating his entire body.

  Sessin protector said: The lord of this place has taken on the responsibility of educating the supplicants. I merely accept their gifts and give mine in return.

  “It didn’t strike you as a little odd that the last one had no idea what was happening?”

  The lord of this place told me my explanations upset the supplicants too much, and felt it better to handle the last one himself, Sessin protector replied.

  “Well, he’s not handling it!” Deiq said tartly. “Damn it, it’s your job to be sure they understand, cousin!”

  He’d been so angry . . . and so frightened. Supplicants had to be told. It had to be an informed and willing choice. If the humans took that away, it would make their desert lords little more than slaves . . . fodder . . . sacrifices.