He brought his hands around to her ankles again, this time with deliberate intent. Her reaction hitched his own breath hard in his chest.
“Not human,” she said, almost a gasp, and stared down at him.
“No.”
“You look—” She made a gesture with one hand, her expression wretched. “You look human.”
He flattened his hands, closed his eyes, and let himself slide into other-vision, then opened his eyes again. Alyea leaned back against his knees, an entirely different shiver working through her body. He watched the energy-patterns flaring around her, read her emotions and the flickers of her topical thoughts: argent and emerald, crimson and azure and crystalline yellows weaving and meshing and dissolving more rapidly than even his eye could trace.
He read fear, horror—along with astonishment, awe, even a hint of arousal. The usual reaction from humans, and the usual reflected image, slightly less accurate than a mirror once filtered through human perceptions: eyes black on black, no white left at all, with an odd golden stippling that came and went erratically. His skin darkened to match, the former bronze hue washing out to a darker grey laced with a thready silver pattern; lips and ears lost the ruddy human hue, acquiring a darker copper shade.
If he let the change go on for long, other areas of his body would start reshaping themselves; he hadn’t allowed that in hundreds of years, and felt no desire to do so now. It would be far too difficult and time consuming—even painful—to return to this exact form.
He shut his eyes, forced them back to human-normal, and looked up at her again. Her face had gone an off-grey shade, and her teeth had sunk into her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. He looked at the drops smearing her lip and chin, knowing it was a small pain she probably didn’t even feel at the moment.
“Not human,” he said, and closed his hands around her ankles again, lightly enough to allow her to pull away. “And not one human in a hundred years sees what I just showed you and lives another breath.”
She didn’t move. “Has Eredion seen that?”
“I—” He stopped, frowning as he thought back over the times he’d lost control around Eredion. “Probably,” he admitted, his mouth quirking into a wry smile. “I’d forgotten about him. So there’s another exception. Thanks very much for poking a hole in a dramatic statement.”
Her answering smile was shaky and tentative, but it was a start.
He slid his hands lightly up her calves, and under cover of her shivering reaction, feathered the lightest possible draw on her energies, testing the miracle again. Her shiver hitched into a faint, puzzled wince; his hands tightened, gripping hard enough to prompt a second, more aggrieved wince.
“What are you—”
He shut his eyes and breathed hard, fighting to stay still: mineminemine whispering through the back of his mind.
“Shh,” he husked. “Quiet. Don’t say—anything.” She stirred restlessly, as though readying to pull away. He bared his teeth without opening his eyes and said, “Stay still.”
She drew in a sharp breath and went silent, sliding into the glassy calm of an aqeyva trance without hesitation. He inhaled a low gasp, internal agitation easing as abruptly. Releasing her ankles, he splayed his hands out across the stone by his hips and focused on his breathing: not an aqeyva trance, but a calming distraction from the predatory, aggressive hunger that had flared through him moments before.
And there’s the reflex I’ve been expecting, he thought ruefully. Still there, after all. Just harder to provoke, for some reason. And easier to control....
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She was watching him, her eyes half-shut, her breathing even and her emotions perfectly still. He brought his hands back to her ankles, smoothing his fingers across the bruised skin in silent apology, then traced a line up her shins to rest his hands on her knees.
“Alyea,” he said, very quietly.
She blinked twice, her breath hitching a little as she emerged from the centered calm of trance, and looked at him. “What just happened?”
He let out a long breath and said, “Get up.”
She stood without hesitation, stepping clear of him by several paces. He rolled to his feet and stood facing her.
“Before,” he said slowly, hating what he had to say, “was apparently an aberration, after all. I’m going to hurt you from now on, Alyea.” He crossed his arms, resisting the urge to scowl, and waited to see what she would say.
She stared at him, eyebrows rising then dipping into a frown, and said, “You were feeding? Is that what that was? It felt like a pinch—I thought you were trying to—I don’t even know what I thought.”
He watched her without saying anything. The black pain of a false hope thickened his breathing for just a moment, then drifted away into a harder, more practical attitude. In the end, whatever answer she chose, the result would be the same. Desert lords are here to serve us. The alternative was to put one of his host’s kathain through a worse agony, and that would put Deiq in Evkit’s debt: far too risky, and foolish besides.
Alyea would serve, willing or not; but he would do what he could to ease the pain, at least.
After what seemed a long time, she stepped forward, defiance in the line of her shoulders and hips, and said, “Go ahead, then.”
He drew her close, tilting her chin up, and slid his thumbs lightly over her cheekbones, then bent slightly to brush his lips against one of her ears. Her pulse kicked up instantly, her eyes dilating; he caught her earlobe lightly between his teeth, tracing contours with his tongue.
“Is this another lesson?” she murmured, tilting her head sideways to give him better access to her neck.
“Yes,” he said, not even remotely amused by the attempted humor. Calculation brought his hand trailing up along hip, stomach, and ribs to cup a breast; as she moaned and arched her back, he feathered the draw once more, this time with a cold expectation of the coming flinch.
Alyea gasped, but the sound held no pain. Heat flared through her, intense as any new desert lord’s passion could get.
Good gods, he thought, dimly shocked at the lack of resistance. He increased the draw little by little, and she arched in his grip as the early supplicants had, a thousand years ago, every nerve in her body lighting up with delight at the sensations.
He moaned aloud, his own astonishment pushing aside rational thoughts, and brought her to the couch in a few staggering, lurching steps. Unwilling to let go too quickly, he slid hands and mouth across her body, bringing her just to an edge and neatly edging away her attempts to do the same to him; eased her desire down to a lower burn, then raked it high again.
When her breath began to rasp in her throat, he let himself slide into her; let her buck against him until she cried out, then, in one swelling moment of heat, pulled satisfaction for one side of his heritage as he filled the urges of the other.
There was no pain in her reaction; none.
Time blurred into a mingling of braided passions, and Deiq howled with the strength of not only the physical release, but the satisfaction of having the stability of a miracle proven.
Chapter Thirty-four
Eredion couldn’t find Wian, despite asking around with more than a little urgency. After four hours of combing the palace, he couldn’t even find any nobles who admitted to having her clean their apartments, or who had ever spoken to her more than in passing.
This is bad, he thought, pausing to stare out through archways at the outer gardens, trying to decide his next move. This is very, very bad.
“Lord Sessin?” someone said from behind him. He turned to find a pudgy woman with sun-pox scars all over her face standing some distance away. She was dressed in the blue and green of messenger-staff, with the gold braid of king-service. A moment later, as he nodded confirmation of his identity, she confirmed hers by saying, “The king would like to see you. He sends to say it’s immediate, and I’m to escort you directly to his casual room.”
Eredion drew in a deep
breath, the tension in his stomach breaking into a taut queasiness.
“Lead on,” he said with a wholly fake smile.
The messenger waited until Eredion was at her shoulder to start moving towards the inner palace. That told Eredion just how strong the Escort him directly order had been: no leading the way, not this time. She’d been told not to let him out of her sight, once found.
From bad to worse. He tried to think of what could have happened. The only thing he could see as a possibility was an unannounced arrival by Lord Fimre. He could easily have made some stupid slip that landed him in front of the king before Eredion even heard of the matter. That seemed the most likely situation, and easily handled, which relaxed Eredion a bit.
But stepping through the grey door showed no desert lord of any Family in attendance. The king sat alone in his chair, royal robes put aside as usual.
“Lord Oruen,” Eredion said easily as the door closed behind him. Then, looking at what the king had before him, a chill worked along the base of his skull as his throat went desert-dry.
The low table in front of the king was overflowing with thick letter packets. Familiar letter packets; Eredion could easily make out the Scratha seal on several.
Oruen stood, his stare blacker and colder than Eredion had ever seen it. “Lord Eredion,” he said. He dropped the letter in his hand on top of the stack, causing a slight avalanche; pages slid and skittered to the floor. Oruen didn’t even look down, his glare fixed solely on Eredion’s face. “I’m advised you’ve been holding these for me.”
Eredion opened his mouth, then shut it again, helplessly. How the hells had anyone gotten past the Aerthraim lock to that drawer? He shook his head slowly, not sure what to say. His gaze fell on a seal colored and shaped differently from the rest, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
A Sessin seal, and one he’d been looking at a matter of hours ago.
He crossed to the table and snatched that letter up, anger flooding him. A quick scan of the pages confirmed it was the letter from Lord Antouin that he’d seen just that morning.
Someone had been in his room while he was out looking for Wian—as though they’d known he would be out. The timing was too good to be coincidence.
Stalling for time to think it through, Eredion held up the Sessin letter.
“This is privileged,” he said, his tone as cold as Oruen’s. “Who brought you this? And when?”
“You worry over one letter out of all these?” Oruen swept out a hand, indicating the pile on the table. “This is your larger concern just at the moment, I would think.”
“No,” Eredion said, folding the Sessin Family letter and deliberately tapping it against the palm of one hand. “Have you read this letter, Lord Oruen? Glanced at it, even? Permitted anyone else to see a word of it?”
Oruen stared, clearly bewildered. “No. I’ve been looking at these.” He lifted one of the Scratha letters and waved it at Eredion. “Letters directly to me, from Lord Scratha, that you’ve apparently been—”
Eredion let out a long breath. If the king was being honest, the situation wasn’t completely beyond salvaging. “I want the one responsible for bringing you these letters, Lord Oruen. These were stolen from a private drawer in my private suite, and this letter—” he held up the one in his hand. “This letter is marked with the formal Sessin seal. This letter your own Hidden would not have touched, Lord Oruen; this letter’s theft is a matter that puts all else in shade at the moment. Who brought this to you?”
Oruen’s eyes narrowed. After a moment, he said, “No, Lord Eredion. That won’t work. Not in the face of this.” He waved the letter in his hand again, then dropped it onto the table. “Your privileges in this city are rescinded. You will gather your belongings and leave the city by the end of this month. Sessin may send another envoy if they like, but they will not be given the freedom and trust you enjoyed to this point. You yourself will be escorted wherever you go from this point on, to the extent of a guard being posted without your suite at all times—”
“Lord Oruen,” Eredion interrupted, “that’s not—”
“Don’t tell me what I may or should do,” Oruen snapped, coming forward a step. “You are under my law now, Lord Sessin, and your immunity is revoked. And with that loss of your status goes the loss of your contracts in this city.”
Eredion’s hand clenched, crumpling the Sessin letter in his hand. “So that’s what this is about,” he said, and laughed, no real humor in the sound. “It’s not quite so simple as that, Lord Oruen. My immunity isn’t something you can revoke. My Family has to revoke that.”
He watched Oruen’s eyes for a hint that the man had read the letter after all. The king stared back without a twitch, meaning he was either innocent or a better liar than Eredion had thought.
“However,” he went on before Oruen could say anything, “I do have information I’ve been intending to present to you regarding Peysimun Family at our next audience, if you still care to hear anything I have to say. I do think you probably ought to hear this.”
He waited, watching Oruen sort it out. At last the king said, “I have little trust in anything a desert Family member has to say at the moment, after discovering what you’ve all been keeping from me.”
“Rightly so,” Eredion said. “I’ve never told you to trust us.”
That won a sour smile.
“Sessin works for Sessin, Darden for Darden, Scratha for Scratha,” Eredion said. “Not for you, and not to help each other. Which is the same thing Scratha said in the letters you were given, along with a number of other matters you aren’t ready to understand yet. Cafad Scratha isn’t on your side in this, Lord Oruen, nor your ally. What he’s doing is handing you a teyanain throwing knife without a blunt edge to be found along any bit of it, and the resulting mess won’t fall on him, be sure of that.”
“Don’t tell me what I’m ready to understand,” the king said, his glare returning. “I’m not a child, Lord Eredion.”
Eredion drew a breath through his nose, fighting down a mixture of annoyance and relief. He could handle this; he’d been nudging Oruen along this conversational path for months now, getting him ready to understand. It annoyed him to have the timing taken out of his hands, but it would have come soon enough, anyway.
“No, you’re not a child,” Eredion agreed, voice steady. “Neither am I, Lord Oruen. But would you expect a southern Family noble to attend a dinner in the Marq of Stecatr’s home without setting off a major incident within the hour? I wouldn’t take that risk without a damn good guide at my hand the whole time, and I know more about the northlands than most southern nobles of any Family have ever bothered to learn. The desert lands are a complicated place, Lord Oruen, and they don’t trust you any more than you trust us. Changing that takes time, not a flurry of information.”
He gestured at the letter-strewn table. “Some of the information Scratha sent you, if taken out of proper context—which he didn’t always provide—could set off an incident between our lands that would make the Purge look tame.” He paused, watching Oruen’s face, still hard and mistrustful. “If I wanted you to never receive the letters,” he added slowly, measuring his words for impact, “I would have burned them, not hidden them. You would have seen them soon enough.”
“Forgive me if I have little trust in that,” Oruen said, but the lines on his face showed he was thinking it over.
“I’m Sessin liaison to the northern court,” Eredion pointed out. “And I’m the only official liaison, as far as I know, sent to you by any desert Family to date. Am I wrong?”
Oruen shook his head slowly, his gaze hooded now.
“There will be others soon enough,” Eredion said, and made himself say the unpleasant reality, hoping it would have the desired effect. “I’m the only one here at the moment because I’m disposable, Lord Oruen.”
The king startled, his dark eyes narrowing sharply. “Disposable?”
“If you prove to hold the same taint as Mezarak and Ninnic
,” Eredion said, “and decide to kill any desert lords within reach—Sessin Family expected me to die a long time ago, Lord Oruen. I think they’re even faintly disappointed I survived through it all.”
Oruen’s face lost color. He stared at Eredion with something close to horror.
“I haven’t been considering only Sessin Family interests,” Eredion said with care, well aware of the listening Hidden—and how many of them still had dual allegiances. Not all were to Sessin, either. “I see the Northern Kingdom as a critical part of the world, Lord Oruen, and I think you’re a sane and intelligent enough king to make a good start on repairing the damage Mezarak and Ninnic did to our respective peoples. But if you fall by your own ignorance or recklessness, we’ll be faced with an entirely new king, and by the genealogy tables I’ve studied, not nearly as good a one. Very few southern Family nobles would see that quite so clearly, or have a care past their own borders. I can’t do anything about that, but I can keep you from stepping in over your head before you’re ready to handle the consequences, at least. That’s all this was.”
He motioned to the letters on the table again.
“So if you want to ban me from the city, Lord Oruen—I’ll go, and gladly; I’m damn tired lately, and a rest would be nice. But you don’t really want that. You’re posturing to get something, and I understand what and why: so instead of puffing up at each other like a couple of prime toads, let’s talk about Peysimun Family.”
He drew a deep breath, relaxing his throat from the strain of pacing and pitching that long speech; from the strain of constant, minute adjustments to match each tiny twitch of reaction. He wasn’t at all surprised by the king’s stillness throughout, or the betraying jerk of surprise at the end.
“I’m that easy to read, am I?” Oruen muttered, scowling.
“For a desert lord, yes,” Eredion answered, not bothering to mention that very few desert lords could have pulled off what he’d just done: played a king like a northern fiddle. Wian hadn’t been the only one to learn a few things from Rosin and Kippin.
Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) Page 26