“I’ll speak cautiously. Take comfort in this. The prophecy is safe.”
“Good,” Korin said, grateful that no one save himself and Hozia knew about Rinli’s royal status and the possibility that she was Mantar’s Child.
“But regarding the other, word of the destruction of our own with magic by the Garlan has spread everywhere, through all the mesas.”
“And?”
“Elder Larus and I—”
“Larus? What does she have to do with this? She hates the Garlans,” Korin protested, and Rinli shifted on the teat.
“Quiet. Let me finish. Larus and I are leaving tomorrow night. We will travel between the mesas, talk to the Elders, try to calm them if we can.”
“But you said yourself that the Elders can advise, but there’s no guarantee The People will listen.”
“If we can delay them, it will give your friend time to prepare.”
“You’d do that?”
Hozia patted him on the knee. “Yes, Korin.” She stood up. “I will see you on my return.”
“Safe journey,” he said, and she waved before stepping from the chamber into the tunnel.
“She was there when the baby came out,” Madlen stated, clearly proud she’d remembered Hozia.
“Yes, she was.”
“I like her.”
“So do I.” Korin put his free arm around Madlen’s shoulder, and they remained in that position until Rinli finished nursing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
homecoming
Lisen awakened to the sun rising in her window. At first, her memory denied her the ability to place herself, but the clean sheets on her overstuffed mattress and the soft nightshift that smelled of something like lavender reminded her she was home. In Avaret. With a Council to face. Sitting up, she heard Bala’s musical voice ring through the silence.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.”
“I suppose.”
Bala, already dressed for the day, stepped over and sat on the bed. “You called out the captain’s name in your sleep.”
“Did I?” Lisen adored Bala, but right now she was a little too light and airy for Lisen’s dark mood.
“So, Nalin was hoping you’d join him for breakfast.”
“And you?”
“No, just the two of you.”
Well, that sounds like fun, Lisen thought. A talk from my hobbled Will to start the day off. Oh, goodie.
Bala got up, took an Ilazer-green tunic from the wardrobe and passed it on to Lisen. “Just in case.”
“Just in case I feel ready to face the Council, right?”
“Nobody’s going to force you.”
With a sour outlook and likely a sour expression to go with it, Lisen slid out of bed, slipped off her nightshift and pulled the tunic on over her head. “Leggings?” she asked, expecting Bala to threaten to peel her like a banana, which, of course, Bala could never say since she didn’t know about bananas and certainly had never heard Daisy Holt threaten to do that when Lisen pouted. But the thought did give Lisen a reason to smile. For a second or two.
Bala handed her a pair of dark brown leather leggings which Lisen pulled on and tied the drawstring as tight as she could.
“I’ve lost weight,” Lisen commented.
“No wonder. Look at what you’ve been through. Now, boots?”
Lisen sighed. With Nalin next door, she didn’t really need shoes, but she’d accepted the inevitable necessity of facing the Council today. “Let me get them. I know which ones are comfortable.” Bala smiled at that, and Lisen shrugged, then stepped to her shoe closet to grab the brown suede boots she loved—the old scuffed-up things she’d had since the beginning.
“Are you sure?” Bala asked. “Are you sure you’re ready to face them?”
“It’s either that or hiding out here and dodging servants and guards until I do face them. Might as well do it now and get it over with.”
“Nalin told me what happened. What the sergeant told him, that is.”
Sitting on a chair and pulling on one boot with a grunt, Lisen shrugged. “Yeah.” She turned her attention to the other boot for the other foot and stared for a minute. Nalin would never need another boot again. “Look, I’m a pain. I’m sorry I’m a pain. Dead bodies. Maimed bodies. I just can’t brush it off all that quick.”
Bala sat down on the bed beside the chair where Lisen struggled with her boot. “I know.”
“Bala, how is he? How is he really?”
“All right. Truth. Not that I lied to you before; I just didn’t tell you everything. You weren’t ready, and you needed some rest first. He was in a great deal of pain for a long time. He took so much cilla nectar that at one point we had trouble finding more to get him through. He doesn’t know that, and I don’t want him to, all right? And, he struggled with the fever for days, avoiding the inevitable. I wasn’t sure he’d make it. I don’t think your hermit friend Titus was sure either.”
Bala sighed, then brightened. “But there is good news. Don’t tell him I told you this, but we’re betrothed.”
“Bala. That’s…that’s great. So when…?”
“Ssh. Nobody knows yet, not even his mother.” Bala smiled, and Lisen watched a tear make its way down her cheek. “Everything’s been such a mess, what with his leg and your abduction and Lorain’s part in it. And he was expecting the next order of business in Council to be declaring you dead.”
“Lovely.”
“But now, he doesn’t have to do that, so maybe we can make the announcement soon.”
Lisen rose from the chair, smoothed the tunic down and turned around. “So. Am I presentable?”
“Go. Nalin’s waiting. If he doesn’t find fault, you’ll be fine.”
Lisen nodded, and, after poking her head out the door to make sure no one was watching, she took the few steps from her room to Nalin’s. She knocked softly and heard him invite her in. Her nerves jangling, she took a deep breath, opened his door and slipped inside. She found him sitting at a table with two plates of food, one in front of him and the other in front of a chair to his left. Her heart crunched with grief when she glanced at his disfigured leg—legging tied at the end where his foot should be, propped up on the chair to his right. She looked away.
“You did the eye thing,” he said. “Come. Sit. Everybody does it.”
Lisen forced herself to look at his leg again as she stepped to the table. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“What did I tell you about apologies?”
“Creators, Nalin. Are you going to start harping on that again?”
“Sit. Your breakfast is getting cold.”
She took her seat and fiddled for a moment with the eggs, then picked up a biscuit. “Do you know how long it’s been since I ate anything fresh? Other than fruit, I mean.”
“Nearly two months?”
“About that.”
“I see you’re dressed,” he commented as she played with a sausage. “Does this mean you’re willing to face the Council today?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But perhaps not a full day, I think.” He looked at her and smiled. She did like his smile. She’d wondered for a long time if he could smile, but she’d learned he could shortly before…not now. She couldn’t start traveling down roads where she wasn’t yet prepared to go.
“I have something to tell you,” she blurted out. “It’s important.”
“Your sergeant told me what happened,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” She’d finished most of the sausage and the eggs, and she wiped her mouth with her napkin.
“There’s nothing that can’t be put off right now.”
“No. Before I enter that Council chamber, you have to know something I know.”
He sat back in his chair. “All right, then. Tell me.”
“Kopol—the sergeant?—she did tell you about how I…how I…how I killed all those people, right?”
“Yes.”
She appreciated how he allowed her to say it her own way, how he never tried to finish her sentences when it was important.
“Well, Korin explained something to me. I killed seven Thristans.”
“And the people of Thristas won’t be happy with that.”
“Yes. But that’s not the end of it. The Thristans with him knew I couldn’t have done it without magic. I was blind, and there were seven of them, and I slaughtered them without even a scratch on myself.”
“Bala said something about a drug called gryl. Is that what they gave you?”
She shook her head. “Yes. But that’s not the point. The point is that Korin’s companions will tell every Thristan they know who will then tell every Thristan they know that the Empir killed seven of their own by using the push.”
“Oh.”
“There’s going to be a war because of me.”
“A war? That seems like a bit of an overreaction.”
“Here’s what most Garlans don’t understand.” She tapped a finger on the table. “The Thristans aren’t just a bunch of Garlans living in the desert because they can’t live here. They’re a people, Nalin, a people with customs and rituals and a spiritual life you can’t even imagine. And they’ve grown tired of Garla looking down on them. They’re tired of the Garlan Empir being their Protector. I don’t protect them; my job is to make sure Garla is protected from them.”
“Is this something your kidnappers told you? Maybe Korin?” Nalin asked.
“No. I figured this all out on my own.”
“So, these seven you killed—your abductors—were not the only rebels?”
Lisen slammed her hand down on the table. “No. You’re not listening. They were the most militant, but they weren’t alone. The entire desert is ready to erupt, and I just removed any reasons they had left not to.”
“All right, all right. I hear you. I’ve called a brief meeting of the privy council this morning, and if you’re up to it, you should attend.”
“If you want.”
“Tell them what you just told me. We’ll schedule another meeting following the end of this session, give them some time to think about it.”
“All right.”
“It’s not going to be easy,” Nalin observed, “getting back up on that throne.”
Lisen shrugged. “I can try.”
A knock at the door interrupted their discussion.
“Yes,” Nalin responded. “Enter. Ah, Bala. And my escort.”
He said “escort” like it was a dirty word.
“It’s time, Nalin,” Bala said. “Let’s get you set up in the Council chamber.”
“Is this how it works?” Lisen asked. “Do you always have guards carrying you around everywhere?”
“For now, it’s the only solution,” Nalin replied.
Lisen rose as Nalin stood and placed one arm over the shoulder of each of the guards. Then she watched as they half-carried him out of the room. It occurred to her that there were solutions to his problems and that her memories from Earth might prove helpful. For another time.
“Come,” Bala said to Lisen when they were alone. “Let’s go down and wait in your office. Nalin wants the privilege of surprising the Council.”
They took the hidden staircase from Ariel’s old room, the one she couldn’t bring herself to inhabit. When they stepped into her office, she noted that Nalin hadn’t changed a thing. Everything was as she’d left it, except for the multiple stacks of paper on the conference table.
“He’s been busy, I see,” she commented as she circled the table, tracing its edge with a finger.
“It’s been a hard road,” Bala replied. “Now, you stay here until the guard summons you from the chamber. I have to let Nalin know when everyone’s arrived. Will you be all right?”
“It’s an office, Bala.”
Bala turned and started to leave.
“Bala?”
“Yes?”
“Am I supposed to say something? Or do I just go out and smile?”
“Oh, you know. The usual. Tell them how glad you are to be home. How grateful you are for their support. How grateful you are for Nalin’s hard work. Whatever comes to mind. Make it brief. Unless there are rumors we haven’t heard about, you’re going to shock them, and they won’t hear a word anyway. Understood?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
This time Bala left, and Lisen looked around. Home again. In a place she hardly knew.
When she heard the light tap on the door to the chamber, she stepped over, took a deep breath and opened it. The guard nodded, smiled, then grew serious again.
And Lisen of Solsta, Empir Ariannas Ilazer, managed to take two steps into her Council chamber before the applause clapped into thunder and the people in the room rose as one. She looked to Nalin who remained seated, and he smiled like a man who’d found water in the desert for the first time in too many days without it. She was home, and for a few moments she forgot the coming war and allowed herself to bask in the sweetness of her homecoming.
The night shrouded Korin in the dark of a new moon as he tended to the malla plants. How long had it been? How long had he avoided the paste that heightened his awareness and gave him a hint of the sight Lisen must possess? Since the transfer at the Khared, he thought. Having abstained so long, he decided that perhaps—just perhaps—he could walk away from it now. He’d stepped into the drug’s realm before he’d left Terses to join the Guard, and he’d hidden his addiction from everyone. Except for Lisen. She’d read the signs, if not the specifics. He’d seen it in her eyes the day he’d gone to Rossla to fetch her. She’d known though she hadn’t understood what she knew.
He cleared small rocks and debris along with a meager couple of weeds from the small field where the short succulent plants grew. They were hardy things and doubtless didn’t need all the attention, but Latlor had reassigned him to this task, and he resolved to do it well. Besides, he didn’t have all night to get it done. Soon his teat would begin to itch, signaling time to feed Rinli. In the meantime, Madlen, who protectively thought of Rinli as her own, watched over her.
“Korin.”
Still in a crouch, he looked around.
“Who’s there?”
“Sssilenccce. The child isss all.”
“The child is mine.”
“I do not desssire her, but she will ssserve my purpossse.”
Korin stood up, pivoted slowly around, squinting his eye in the hope of seeing better in the dark. “I made an oath to protect her from Mantar the Destroyer. Which one are you? Maker or Destroyer?”
“I am the reminder. You will leave again. You will come back again. You will play the partsss intended. And alwaysss, I will remind. Forgetting isss impossssible.”
“Do you think I’ll forget the promise?” He knew that anyone watching would only see and hear him talking to himself, but at least half the Tribe believed his mind had left him when he joined the Guard anyway.
“You don’t ressspect the promissse.”
“I respect the child.”
“You ressspect nothing, sssave the mother.”
Korin had prepared a terse reply to what he’d expected the disembodied voice to say, but his retort failed in his throat. Instead, he said, “She possesses great power.”
“Not the power. The ssspirit.”
And into Korin’s mind came the terrible and amazing memory of that moment he’d first looked into the mouth of the Khared. Lisen, blinded by the gryl, surrounded by bodies and blood, poised to kill the last of her prey. Power had gotten her there, but spirit had inspired her. A formidable foe, a potent presence, an extraordinary woman worthy of a partner in possession of a spirit of equal intensity.
“Go,” the voice ordered. “Do not think. Go to your child. She hungersss.”
Korin’s ears popped, as though the pressure of the Maker had lifted. He gathered his tools into the cloth sack and left the malla behind on the top of the mesa, crawling down inside through the trapdoor. H
e set the tool sack in its place at the edge of the tunnel and headed down into the depths of the mesa. His child hungered; that’s what the voice had said, and at the moment, that’s all that mattered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
in defense of her will
Lisen didn’t know how they’d reached the closing dinner for this Council session. She didn’t even know how she felt about it ending. From her arrival in Avaret and the shock of Lorain’s execution, through her surprise reintroduction to the Council the following day and the subsequent attempts at settling people down from their chaotic response to those events, she’d fought to maintain her own equilibrium. It hadn’t been easy, and she hadn’t yet entirely succeeded.
At the moment, she sat at the conference table in her office waiting for the cue to make her formal entrance. The entrance was everything. All the showy stuff was everything, but she’d lost what little stomach she’d once possessed for it. Nothing was right. Ever since her abduction and her return, life felt like one bitter bite after another.
She looked up when Jazel entered the room. “Is it time?”
“No, my Liege. Not quite.” Jazel paused for a breath, then continued. “My Liege, may I speak?”
“You never have to ask.” Better Jazel talking than her brain thinking on its own, she figured.
“I hear people talking. I may just be a clerk, but I’m not deaf.”
“Of course, you’re not.”
“They say Holder Corday acted too hastily regarding the traitor. That he didn’t consult properly with others to get their opinions. Some are even saying you should replace him.”
Lisen slammed her fist down on the table so hard that it shook. “God damn it!” she cursed in English, then returned to Garlan. “Tell me their names.”
“My Liege?”
Lisen shook her head. What was she thinking? “No. Never mind.”
At a knock on the door, Lisen rose and straightened her brand-new, Ilazer-green tunic with the braid made of real gold around the slit revealing her pouch. Always about the showy stuff. And the stuff to seduce suitors. She wanted to run, but instead she smiled stiffly at Jazel and left the room for the great hall.
Blooded (Lisen of Solsta Book 3) Page 27