Khari'na Made (Muse Book 1)

by Jean Winter

  The lazy brook that cut across this end of the property was not as cold as Lyra expected. Today's sun had done its work here, and Lyra waded in up to her knees, stepping carefully on the slippery, algae smothered pebbles of the stream bed. She pulled her stinking tunic over her head and knelt in the slow current to scrub at it. When that was done, she moved on to the leggings, scrubbing and wringing, wringing and scrubbing, letting her mind wander about the mystery of where these clothes had come from. They were obviously too small for J'Kor.

  “Give me your wet things—”

  Lyra yelped at his sudden presence.

  “—and I will finish them in the machine.” At the bank, J'Kor lay a set of fresh clothes on a large stone and picked up her tunic, waiting. Grateful her back was mostly to him, Lyra quickly wrung out the leggings and tossed them up where they were caught deftly in large, able hands. But J'Kor didn't leave.

  “Does my lord need something else?”

  “Well, your underwear is wet, too,” he grinned, stating the obvious. “I brought you some more.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” she said stupidly, glancing around as if something might magically emerge to cover her. A long sigh issued from J'Kor and he dropped her wet clothes back on the grass.

  “Just bring me everything in a few minutes … when you are ready.”

  The self-berating was already in full swing before he was even out of sight. You did it again, you coward! She should have just stripped immediately when asked, let him make of it what he would, and keep him happy. Now he was in a mood again!

  Lyra hurriedly dried off with the small towel he'd also thoughtfully brought and dressed in another of the more casual dresses from the closet. When she returned to J'Kor, he told her she had earned the syringe job for the rest of the day, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. The work of an entire day building up the camaraderie was gone. Wasted.

  The rest of the afternoon Lyra redoubled her efforts. She tried to get him talking again and she smiled a lot. She made some headway with the subject of his growing years on the homestead, his eyes softening a little, a reminiscent grin appearing once or twice. Then the constable returned and J'Kor's attention was diverted until the man left. Lyra shuddered once more at the thought of what J'Kor may have done to that boy before he died, but she willfully shoved it from her mind. She couldn't be afraid anymore. She had to relax.

  The red orb had turned a shimmering, deep purple by the time it touched the horizon and the last sheep was trotting briskly away, an affronted bleat at its mouth and a bit of soreness on its rump. A stiff breeze was shaking the temperature down several degrees. J'Kor brought Lyra's attention to the dark clouds surging up from the south. A storm was on its way.

  At the house they were greeted by a merry, though stiffly moving, Ahskr, tail whipping and cracking as its nub passed the speed of sound. Both J'Kor and Lyra were careful to encourage him to remain calm, but to Lyra's great satisfaction and surprise, the dog was recovering remarkably fast.

  She was headed to start meal duty until J'Kor told her the leftovers from last night would work just fine. So, while he went off to shower, Lyra just warmed food and tried to set a prettier table with a few candles and some fresh wildflowers. When they dined, it was to the sounds of blustering winds and pattering sleet rattling at the windows, and it was almost pleasant.

  Afterward, J'Kor surprised her by volunteering to clean up so she could shower. “Your hair is still a stinking mess,” he reminded with just the tiniest, tiniest hint of humor.

  Lyra quite happily complied. Her skin had begun to itch, and she supposed that the brook might have been a carrier of some irritating sediment. Consequently, her scrub-down under the showerhead's hot stream was particularly thorough as she let a favorite melody of Jon's intertwine softly with the wafting steam.

  At the beginning of the third verse, her fingers brushed over a small protrusion in the middle of her back. What is that? The melody wavered.

  The bump felt smooth, slimy even. Lyra couldn't quite get a grip on it. Then it moved.

  Sacred scripture and holy hymnals!

  Grabbing a towel, Lyra shut off the water and leaped from the tub. Unfortunately, the mirror over the sink did not let her see anything below her shoulder. Gutlins! It was probably some kind of leech from the stream. Her skin crawled as she touched the slimy, squirming thing again.

  Lyra swiftly wrapped the towel about herself and went to find J'Kor in the great room, reading again. “My lord,” she called, padding over.

  His expression of pleasant surprise at the sight of his khari'na hurrying toward him, dripping wet, and in nothing but a towel was unmistakable. But Lyra had to disappoint. “My lord, will you please take a look at this?” Turning from him, she lowered the towel across her back.

  She felt a light touch at her spine. “Well, it looks like you have acquired a pet loshkee leech,” he said, nudging the glistening, mucus-coated creature with a finger. “I am surprised to see one out and about this early in the year. They usually wait for warmer water to emerge from hibernation.” It moved again at J'Kor's prodding.

  Ew! Ew! “You can get it off, right?”

  “Aye. Relax.” He placed his book off to the side. “We can coax it off with a little heat.” J'Kor brought her an old, velvet hassock upon which to sit.

  “Heat?” Lyra echoed as she nervously took it. “You need to burn it off?”

  His murmur was in the affirmative as he fetched the same medical kit Lyra had found so handy less than twenty-two hours ago. “You have no experience with loshkees?” he said as he came back.

  “No. We don't have leeches in the mountain range and, honestly I'm a little creeped out by slimy things.” Lyra suppressed another shudder as she offered a self-effacing grin. “They are one of the things I never cared to study up on.”

  “Well, the trick here,” he said as he struck up a flame with a match, “is coercing it to release all o' its teeth without killing it first.” Leaning her back a little, he positioned the flame under the oval-shaped, freeloading little blood sucker.

  “Will the teeth remain embedded, otherwise?” Lyra guessed. Yuck! This was getting worse.

  “Mm-hmm,” J'Kor confirmed. He bent in concentration to avoid burning her. “The teeth are too tiny to remove with tweezers and they will cause infection if left in the skin.”

  Convincing the loshkee that she wasn't a very desirable host took longer than hoped. It was difficult not to flinch every time the thing jerked and squirmed over the uncomfortable heat. On the fourth match, however, J'Kor uttered a small vocalization of triumph and raised aloft a purple-spotted creature lodged between tweezers as if it were a trophy. He laughed at her expression.

  “So, the daring 'Na Lyra is afraid o' something after all.”

  “I am afraid of a lot of things, my lord,” Lyra said, shaking off her phobia, “and anyone who tries to believe otherwise is a fool courting an early demise.”

  J'Kor quieted, amused by her philosophic answer. “Well said,” he finally agreed, and plopped the leech into some alcohol in a bowl. All was quiet for a minute as he disinfected the site with a liquid that fizzed and foamed when it made contact with the leech's contaminants, but then J'Kor nearly sent her into shock when he said, “Would it be very painful for you to tell me about your husband?”

  Lyra would've thought that anything having to do with her beloved Jon would be the last thing J'Kor would care to openly discuss! “Well, I-I suppose—“

  “You can say whatever you like. I just thought you might like to talk about it … with someone.” J'Kor paused in his work. “And I will admit I am curious to know what kind o' man caught your eye.”

  What was his end game? If she didn't know better, she would think he was being sensitive. Curse him! The howling wind swept across rolling pasture outside, a mirror of the conflict Lyra was battling inside. Well, she hadn't broken down at the mere mention of Jon's name. That was a good sign. But how does one describe the other half of one's heart and soul
?

  J'Kor pressed a cloth against her skin to dry it and Lyra scrambled for the words to begin. “His name is—was—Jon, and he was … ” she heaved great sigh, “wonderful. He was kind and loving, faithful, very funny. So good with people, too. He loved playing sports—and he could also play the six-string, though not quite as well as you.” Suddenly the memories were tumbling out of her mouth as fast as she could speak them. “He would sing off-key just to make me laugh and drop everything to be with me when I was sad. He always complimented me on my cooking—just so he would have the excuse to burp loudly.” Lyra laughed at this. There were so many good memories.

  “Oh, also, the man could put away a trunk full of food on any given day. But I think it was finally beginning to catch up with him the last few years.” She remembered the occasional bouts of heartburn he had begun to have. “Every year on my birthday I would wake up to breakfast in bed while he sang me some silly new birthday song he made up and then … then he would haul and boil water for hours in the evening so I could end my day with my very own hot bath.”

  Her voice had begun to quiver, but not from sadness. Lyra could hardly believe how good it felt to finally talk about Jon like this to someone. Even him. J'Kor finished his bandage job and Lyra waited. Surely he'd heard enough by now, but a glance showed him still waiting, listening, letting her get it all out.

  “And—and Jon always had this strange affinity for chewing on milk-vein stalks. They would stain his teeth pink, but he never seemed to care. … And he called me his twitterbug.” Lyra pressed fingers to a tear running down her cheek. “My lord, are you sure you really want to hear all this?”

  “Aye.” She felt him touch her low at her spine a few inches below where the leech had been. “But when did they start tattooing khari'na?” he queried more to himself than her.

  “What?” Twisting, Lyra lifted an arm, straining to see where J'Kor traced a finger over her skin just above her tailbone. She made out some small, dark marks.

  “Four numbers,” he said, helping her out. “Four. Seven. Seven. Three. You did know you had this.”

  Curse the fallen Son! They must have done that during her implant surgery!

  “I guess I forgot!” Lyra half-truthed, huffing in exasperation. “A lot of that first week is pretty fuzzy.”

  With her fingers she could feel the slightly raised marks. Four. Seven. Seven. Three. Asset of the State four, seven, seven, three! Those were Captain Rookenik's words—his reference to her as a khari'na! Were the others likewise marked and catalogued? Lyra couldn't say. She had been so wrapped up in her own little, private agony during her caravan time.

  Lyra's rage at the Republic deepened. It was bad enough to be forever scarred and tagged with a torture device, now she was branded like cattle!

  “Hm,” J'Kor said like it was no big deal. He stood and began to clean up.

  Lyra went the bedroom, donning the same chemise and robe as last night, and as she towel dried her hair, she told herself not to worry about the stupid tattoo. It was done. There were more pressing matters, anyway.

  Back in the great room, Lyra found J'Kor reclined once again with book in hand, but he had moved to the small sofa against the wall. His smile upon her return—his first since she screwed things up at the brook, as well as his new location on furniture that seated two, was an invitation without words.

  Relax, relax. Let's try this again. Lyra smoothed her robe and went to him, taking the open seat.

  A book was promptly offered—R of the new encyclopedia set! “How about some light reading before bed?” he said with a grin. “I hear you have no' memorized this one yet.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Lyra replied, trying not to appear too eager as she admired the cover's perfectly unmarred surface. She gave him a crooked smile. “I will start on it right away and begin preparing you an exclusive, private recitation.”

  Before diving into page one, however, Lyra took a quick glance at J'Kor's choice of literature. It was volume A. With a nod, he replaced his reading glasses and turned another page, causing Lyra's heart to thump a bit louder with the endearing, brainy kind of handsomeness he posed. Embarrassed, she ducked her head into her reference book.

  A short period of companionable silence followed until Lyra came to the section on rabbits and dared to make a vague remark about the cute, furry lagomorphs. She hoped he might shed some light on his strange behavior yesterday in the shed, but unfortunately, J'Kor wasn't very interested in responding. Broaching a couple other subjects was met with the same result. He seemed distracted. Lyra just hoped it was absorption in his own reading and she finally went back to her own pages.

  Her itchiness that hadn't really dissipated with the shower metamorphosed into a headache. No surprise there, really—not with all the stress she had been under, but, oh well. Lyra managed to demote it below the pleasurable enlightenment of scholarship.

  After about an hour, J'Kor laid his volume to rest and mumbled something about getting a fire going. The wind continued to bluster outside with intermittent rain and sleet spattering the windows, and the house had cooled considerably since the afternoon. He crouched before the stone hearth and started arranging kindling log cabin-style under the flue.

  “So how long were you together?” he ventured. “You and … Jon.” Apparently, he'd decided he wanted to talk again—and he wanted to continue this subject.

  “Fifteen years,” Lyra promptly answered. Then she nearly gasped.

  “Fifteen?” J'Kor repeated in surprise as he turned to look back at her. It wasn't hard to recognize the mental math wheels turning in his head.

  Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! Stupid fake bio!

  A wave of panic surged through her. Just tell him and have one less thing to worry about hiding! “My lord, I am not twenty-eight,” she blurted, closing her book. “I guess the Keeper thought it best to … you know ….”

  Lyra held her breath while J'Kor squatted there on the cold, hard floor, staring at her.

  “What is your real age then?” To her immense relief he sounded more curious than angry.

  “Thirty-six,” she admitted in barely above a whisper. “And my birthday is next month.”

  After what seemed like forever, he turned back to lighting the fire. “That makes more sense,” he said, and blew lightly into the newly smoldering tinder.

  Lyra blushed. “It's pretty obvious, isn't it?”

  “No' at a glance, but I suppose I will no' be calling you 'young lady' anymore.”

  Was that a tease? Was he teasing her?

  A flame was expertly coaxed into life before he turned to her again … wearing a smirk. Phew!

  “My lord, I'm sorry.” Lyra wanted to apologize anyway. “Everything that day happened so fast. I had no idea what information the emcee had in front of him.”

  J'Kor sighed. “Lyra, I suppose canno' blame you for the botched way the caravan chose to handle you. It was no' your fault.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She started to trace some of the gold lettering on the book's cover. “No doubt you intended to buy something more youthful, however, and for that I am sorry.”

  “I intended to bring someone home with whom I could connect on more than just a physical level, 'Na Lyra,” he rebutted. He added a few larger pieces to the burning kindling then walked over to her. “Now I know I should have phrased my wish more carefully.”

  Looking up into the warmth of his gaze and that little conceding grin, Lyra felt her face grow hot. When he gently brushed some fingers along her cheek, it got worse.

  He sat next to her again and as he gazed into the flickering hearth, his eyes reflected the firelight to a remarkable degree. “It sounds like he was a good man,” he said. “You must miss him greatly.”

  “Yes, my lord,” she answered honestly. “I do, but since his death, no one but you has been thoughtful enough to ask about him.” It was true. Not Maehan. Not even Grally. “It felt surprisingly good to talk about him. Thank you.” Tentatively, Lyra placed a ha
nd over one of his. There you go. See? You can do this. The next move was his.

  J'Kor sat a long moment, contemplating her touch. Finally—

  “Lyra, what if I gave you some more time?”

  Lyra blinked. “What do you mean, my lord?”

  He shrugged. “It is obvious that the thought o' taking pleasure in another man is still difficult for you. You stiffen every time I come near. I hear it in your voice when you speak about your husband. You are still crushed by the memory o' him.” He looked into her eyes and seemed to see the truth confirmed there. “Besides, I think I might feel guilty about making love to a grief stricken widow. So … I could wait,” his hand turned up to gently enfold hers, “until you are ready to let someone new fill your needs.”

  Oh, this was not good. Not good! Curse you, J'Kor! He was not supposed to be a better man than she expected. Lyra's insides roiled at the vibes he was sending, vibes trying to win her over with patience, with consideration for her circumstances. This was so awkward! Sure, she could probably get by for a few weeks playing up the grieving widow excuse, but what if she couldn't find a way to escape by then? What if she ended up stuck in this predicament longer? How incensed would J'Kor be when he finally realized she had no intention of ever inviting him on her? Ever. The headache throbbed hotter.

  “My lord,” Lyra murmured despondently, “please don't do this. Don't hope for feelings from me I will never be able to give. I will only disappoint you.”

  He was surprised. “Lyra, I am no' asking you to fall in love with me. That was no' what I meant.” He stood and dragged the hassock over so he could plant himself on it facing her. “Look, all in all we had a good day today, did we no'?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Lyra admitted in a whisper. Once they'd started talking and just working, it had actually become pleasant. Very pleasant.