Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4)

by Leona Wisoker

  “Thank you, s’a Rill,” Alyea said. She watched the sturdy form out of sight, then headed for the corridor leading to her former rooms.

  The entrance to the hallway had been covered with a thick, rough cloth hanging. Alyea stood in front of it for some time, trying to work up the courage to push it aside and walk through. In spite of her brave words to Rill, she found an uncomfortable knot of nausea in her stomach at the prospect. She remembered, all too well, the insane chaos Deiq had wreaked on the area.

  And I married him. Gods, if Rill ever realizes he’s the one who left that destruction—if any of the servants realize it—we’ll have a complete desertion within the day.

  Alyea shut her eyes and ducked past the hanging before she could think about it any further. To her relief, the air smelled of strong vinegar, lye, and lemons, not decomposing corpses. She risked opening her eyes.

  The hallway had been swept clean. Debris littered the floor, but it was only the sort of mess that came from workers moving around. The walls were bare of all decoration, and showed signs of intense scrubbing; not repainted yet, as splattered arcs of soaked-in blood could still be made out if one knew where to look. The floor tiles, likewise, held more than a few dark stains. No doubt those areas would be replaced when the rest of the renovations were completed.

  Alyea moved forward slowly. A few steps later, she realized she was holding her breath and grimacing. She let out her air and straightened, feeling stupid. This was her home, her estate; nobody was going to attack her here.

  It occurred to her that every time she’d been absolutely certain of that, she’d promptly been attacked. Maybe it was time to rethink her assumptions.

  Still feeling more than a little foolish, she moved out of the center of the hallway, turning her back to the wall and edging forward much more cautiously. If nothing else, this would serve as good practice; she suspected Deiq would approve.

  Something scuffed in one of the rooms ahead.

  She froze, her heart tripping over to a staccato beat. The workers were supposed to all be gone. Who else could be wandering around in here? Possibly one had come back for a mislaid tool. Possibly one was dedicated and wanting to finish a job before leaving for the day. Possibly a squirrel or a rat had gotten into the house and was rummaging about.

  Alyea eased forward, listening carefully.

  Someone grunted in apparent exasperation. Wood scraped against wood: the sound of a drawer being opened, perhaps. Definitely not a squirrel.

  The doorway of the room the sounds came from lay along the same wall she had her back to, and the door stood open. Alyea put a hand to her belt and almost swore. She’d removed the dagger sheath from the belt before leaving her new suite, confident in her safety at Peysimun Mansion. Something else to remember in the future: Don’t walk through even your own house unarmed.

  Still, she was sufficiently versed in aqeyva combat to overcome most opponents, and she knew—other ways of winning a fight. She remembered a servant trotting to retrieve a blanket, and a room exploding in flames, and shivered at the thought of using those methods. But she would, now; she knew that much.

  You can’t help anyone if you’re dead, she’d said during her blood trials: so long ago that seemed. She’d meant it then, and even more so today. She would fight for her life, even if that meant leveling all of Peysimun Mansion and killing innocents in the process.

  Putting aside those bleak thoughts, she worked her way to just shy of the open door and stood very still, listening and thinking. It occurred to her that when she’d been, briefly, blind, she’d been able to find Deiq without vision. More than that, she’d known Deiq was the one standing nearby. It might actually be possible to see into the room without using her eyes. Before she could think overlong on what an absurd and bizarre concept that was, before doubt could cripple the attempt, she shut her eyes and looked.

  One person. Male. Someone familiar—she couldn’t get anything more specific. Whether that vagueness came from lack of skill or natural boundaries she couldn’t tell, but suspected the former.

  Not hostile: that much came through. Not laying in ambush for anyone. He was moving through the room, unconcerned over being attacked himself; looking for something, possibly.

  Alyea drew a deep breath and sent a brief prayer to whatever gods were listening, then stepped openly into the doorway and said, “Good evening—” She managed to keep her surprise contained to a half-beat of silence before finishing, “Kam.”

  Her cousin straightened from examining the contents of a dresser drawer and turned to face her. His face bore several scratches and cuts; one arm was in a sling, and he visibly favored his left leg. His lazy good looks were further marred by lank hair that hadn’t been washed for some days and a distinct air of sullen complaint.

  “Cousin,” he said, attempting a welcoming inflection; it fell flat. He glanced away, his mouth tightening.

  Alyea took a moment to look around the room. All the surviving furniture from this wing had been moved here, and apparently without being emptied out, if Kam was rummaging through drawers. Four dressers of varying antiquity and value; three large chests, a sturdy blackwood wardrobe, one small bedside table, and several carefully-stacked matching chairs.

  Not much, if it represented the contents of five large rooms. Alyea blinked, her own mouth thinning, and looked back to Kam.

  “I won’t bother asking what you’re doing here,” she said. “It’s fairly obvious you’re looting. Run out of Kippin’s money, have you?”

  “I’m not!” he said, indignant. “I left some items here. I have a right to them.”

  She grinned at him, not pleasantly. “You’re lying, Kam. You always were a bad liar. And you have no right to anything in this household any longer. You don’t even have a right to your life, after what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, a whine edging his voice. “It wasn’t me.”

  She just looked at him. He crumbled under that stare, shoulders drawing in, face crumpling.

  “I made mistakes,” he said. “I never thought you’d get hurt. I never knew that was going to happen. I only wanted what was mine. I was supposed to inherit Peysimun Mansion. Hama promised. I’m the closest relation, since you’re not—” He stopped, his eyes shifting aside and down.

  “I’m a bastard,” Alyea said, cool and precise. “I know. But my claim comes through my father, not her, so it was never less than your own.”

  “She said that couldn’t be proven,” he said, sullen and scowling again. “And you weren’t ever interested anyway. You wouldn’t have cared, except for going south and coming back as some big name.”

  “It’s proven,” she said, remembering the entry in Eredion’s genealogy book. “Believe me, it’s been proven to the people who matter. And I did go south, and now I do care. You threw me into the torturer’s cage and left me there to die, to get what you wanted. All for nothing, Kam, because I’m still here, and your friends dropped you like horse dung as soon as things went wrong, didn’t they?”

  He watched her with the sly wariness of a cornered animal. “I never knew they’d do that to you. You were such a weakling, I thought you’d agree to do what they wanted without any trouble. They were going to tell you to cede your claim to me, if you’d just cooperated. But it never got that far, did it? See, if you hadn’t been such a problem in the first place, they never would have turned you over to Kippin. That was never part of what I expected to happen.”

  “So it’s all my own fault?”

  “I don’t say that,” he muttered, his gaze sliding to the side once more. “I never said that.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek, thinking through the alternatives of what to do with him. “Kam. Where’s Hama?”

  He shrugged, sullen. “They came and chased everyone out of Lady Arnil’s yesterday,” he said. “I saw her going off with some guardsmen.”

  “And they didn’t take you?” She watched the lines shift on his face. “You ran,�
� she guessed. “You left Hama to her own problems and ran.” To herself, she thought: Lady Arnil’s? What the hells?

  “The king has her, I guess,” Kam said, not looking at her. “It’s not as though letting myself be captured would help that any. She made her own stupid mistakes, you know. I wouldn’t have done any of this if not for her.”

  “So nothing’s really your fault,” Alyea said.

  “I made mistakes, yeah. You know, people make mistakes.” His gaze slid around the room as though seeking for something to use to prove his point—or more probably a weapon to attack her with. “You’re not so perfect yourself.”

  Alyea sighed. She couldn’t even find it in her to be angry at her cousin; he was simply too pathetic. But lack of anger didn’t mean forgiveness.

  “Kam,” she said, low in her throat. He jerked a startled gaze up to meet her stare. “Stand still. Don’t move.”

  He began to open his mouth.

  “Don’t speak.”

  He shut his mouth and stood staring at her, wide-eyed. She could feel the wave of panic rushing through him.

  “You made a very large mistake, Kam, coming back here,” she said. “Because Peysimun Family isn’t under northern rules any longer, but southern. And that means I can do anything I want to you and not answer to the king’s law.”

  Kam’s eyes widened, his nostrils flaring.

  “I’m a desert lord now,” she went on, “which means I can witch you in all sorts of horrible ways. I can make you stand still, right where you’re at, for the rest of your life, if I want to. I can make you rip your own throat out. I can tell you to shove a sword up your ass, and you’ll bury it to the hilt. Nobody will stop me, Kam. Nobody cares enough about you to stop me.”

  A spreading dark stain across his crotch and the acrid stink of urine was his only answer to that. His breath turned to a series of whimpering pants. She watched the terror swamping through him, dimly surprised at her own detached indifference.

  “I’m going to be nicer to you than you deserve,” she said. “I’m going to let you decide if you want me to deliver justice, or if you want to go into the king’s prison for the rest of your life. Those are your options, Kam. Speak.”

  “Prison,” he croaked, shivering all over.

  “Coward,” she said, very softly. “I knew you’d pick the easy option.” She grinned at him, a thoroughly feral expression. “What you do now, Kam, is you walk with me to the front gates, without giving any trouble at all, and then go with the guards that will be waiting there by the time we arrive. And you go hide in that prison cell, Kam, and you pray to every god you can think of that nothing ever happens to let you out of that nice safe dark hole; because if you ever step out onto the street again, I’ll take my turn at justice. Do you understand me, Kam?”

  He nodded rapidly, eyes watering. Liquid snot began to dribble thickly from his nose.

  Alyea drew in a breath; then, not entirely sure it would work, focused a careful thought on reaching Eredion.

  Yes, he said a moment later, a solid presence forming in her mind.

  Please send a few guards to Peysimun Mansion gates, she said. I have someone for them to remove from my estate.

  Silence hung. I’m outside the Seventeen Gates at the moment, he said. A guard patrol is coming around the corner, so I’ll send a runner to the palace. It may be an hour before any guards arrive. Do you need help?

  No. Everything’s just fine. I’ll wait.

  All right. —Ah, Deiq asks if you might have a bath readied for him.

  She hesitated a moment, wondering why Deiq hadn’t simply asked directly.

  It’s rude, when you know someone’s talking, to cut in on the conversation, Eredion said mildly. He’s being polite.

  Oh. I see. Please tell him that I’ll do my best to have it ready for his arrival, then.

  She withdrew from contact as politely as she knew how and grinned at her violently trembling cousin.

  “While we wait for the guards to arrive,” she said, “dear cousin—I have some questions for you.”

  And unlike with Kippin, nobody would interrupt this time.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Under Hama Peysimun, the sitting room had smothered under lace-edged items, the walls laden with stern-faced family busts and portraits. Eredion had directed those removed to storage, replacing them with plants, cool-colored draperies, and Amia’s paintings: some of abstract flowers in pastel shades, others just soothing patterns of swirls and circles.

  They were surprisingly good, considering the source; no trace of Amia’s hatred could be found in the serene lines. Eredion had no intention of telling Alyea where the paintings had come from. She wouldn’t admire them nearly as much as she did now, and might even remove them; which he surprised himself by minding the idea of, quite a bit. Fortunately, she didn’t ask.

  Hama’s ridiculously delicate, gilded tables, likewise, had been replaced with sturdier but still graceful versions that a heavily laden tray could rest on without fear of scratching the surface or tipping over at a breath. The wide-bottomed chairs had stayed, but with new coverings. The ugly but comfortable chair Eredion himself had used, while watching over Alyea, now looked slightly less horrendous. Enough so to make looking at it bearable, at least.

  He sighed, recognizing that he was thinking about all that to avoid thinking about the story they’d just told him. Kidnapped by Kippin, then married by the teyanain. Good gods....

  Glancing up, he found Alyea smiling, her attention on the chair he sat in—that same formerly ugly one—as though her own mind had wandered to memories of that time as well. Not that there had been much to smile about at the time. He honestly hadn’t known if she would survive it, or how it would change her.

  “We’re beginning to find out,” Deiq said, leaning forward to pick a thick piece of bread and cheese from the tray. He sat back, already chewing, and studied Eredion thoughtfully. His hair, still damp from the bath, hung in a loose, heavy swathe around his face and shoulders.

  Eredion just nodded, unsurprised that Deiq had picked up the thought. Alyea showed no reaction, so she’d likely picked up on it as well. Eredion wasn’t bothering to shield much at the moment. There seemed little point.

  Married. Lord Antouin Sessin would have a fit. So would all the other Families. Looking at their faces, he could tell they already knew that. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe they’d told him the whole story, either; there had been telling gaps in the account.

  Kippin won’t be a trouble to anyone any longer, Deiq had said at one point, his face expressionless. Eredion hadn’t pressed, fairly sure he didn’t want the details.

  Eredion hadn’t been entirely forthcoming on his own activities and conversations over the past few days. Of Wian, he had merely said, “She left, and I don’t know where she went”; of the Scratha letters, he said nothing; of Lord Fimre, he said as little as possible.

  Deiq’s sharp, amused stare spoke volumes about what he was seeing in the gaps of Eredion’s story, but thankfully he had stayed quiet.

  “I think the question we need to look at, before talking about—anything,” Alyea said, leaning back in her own chair, “is how far we trust one another.”

  Eredion almost choked on his mouthful of bread. He swallowed hastily and took down half of his mug of wine before looking up again.

  “Not actually a stupid question,” Deiq murmured. He met Eredion’s astonished stare, then switched without hesitation to: Who do you serve now, Eredion? Do you still serve Sessin Family?

  Eredion sipped his wine more slowly, thinking about that.

  What are my alternatives? he said at last. Deiq and Alyea grinned, identical cynical expressions. Eredion hid a smile of his own behind another sip of wine.

  Servants came in, quietly, and removed empty plates; replaced them with bowls of bean and noodle soup, then withdrew again. The curling steam wafted garlic and ginger through the air.

  Nobody spoke, aloud or otherwise, until the soup bo
wls had all been emptied down their throats and servants had replaced the bowls with a tray of sliced fruits. Then Deiq said, “Ally doesn’t mean friend. I’m more aware of that than ever. But....” He paused, frowning at an apple slice in his hand. “This entire situation isn’t one I ever expected to be in.”

  “Me neither,” Alyea said dryly, at the same time as Eredion.

  Deiq’s dark face creased in a rueful smile. “Yes. I know.” He glanced at Eredion. Don’t tell her about the collar, he said. Please. She isn’t good enough to hide her thoughts from a close look yet. You are. She’ll get us all killed if she knows.

  Eredion dipped his chin in a scant nod, reluctantly agreeing. Years of agonized experience had taught him about shielding his mind in layers—giving an intruder something that looked like complete access while hiding the bulk of his mind. Even Ninnic’s mad child had never pried all the way to the bottom, once Eredion perfected the trick.

  “You each know things about me,” Deiq said aloud, turning his wine glass slowly in both hands, “that would get you killed if you said them to the wrong person, and get me killed if put into other ears. And I have the same leverage on both of you.”

  “Not to mention the ability to destroy the world,” Alyea said, then very nearly turned scarlet through her bronze skin.

  Eredion felt his own breath nearly stop at the statement and the resulting look on the elder ha’ra’ha’s face. Deiq sat very still, barely breathing, his gaze locked on Alyea’s face.

  “Who,” Deiq said, very quietly, “dropped that particular word in your ear, Alyea? The teyanain, I’m guessing.”

  “I’ve heard it as well,” Eredion said, abandoning caution. “From Teilo.” To his surprise, Deiq flinched at that name, the color washing from his face.

  “Both of whom lie as they breathe,” Deiq said harshly, regaining his composure. “When did you see—”

  “Is it true?” Alyea interrupted. “Look me in the eye and lie to me if you can, Deiq. Husband.”