The Beginning
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Chapter Eighteen Part One
Kylara looked as if she might fly out of her skin at any moment. “I swear it,” she said in a low, vibrant voice. “I felt her. I knew her. Durnan, she’s ours!”
“All right,” he said, taking her hands. “All right, Kylara. All right. But how are we going to get to her?”
That stopped her--he could almost see the flame in her eyes die. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we have to. Somehow.” The flame returned. “Six, Durnan! Six!”
He had to smile at her excitement. “One more,” he said. “That’s all we need.”
“You’re confident,” Loret said sourly. “What about Armeth? And we haven’t got that woman yet. We don’t even know her name.”
“Naia,” Elayza said suddenly. “It’s Naia.”
Durnan stared at his sister. “What?”
“How do you know that?” Kylara asked quickly.
“When I was at Bledsmith’s, they were talking about her. They said I was her replacement. She’s been a prostitute since she was eleven years old.”
“Sweet gods,” Durnan breathed. At eleven, a girl should be playing with dolls . . . not being forced to make her living on her back.
Loret said, “Sounds about right, if she looked like that when she was eleven, or close to.”
Durnan turned on him. “Would you--”
“Stop it,” Kylara said. “He’s just stating the truth.” She took a deep breath. “All right. We’re not going to get to her today--you’re right on that, Durnan. We’ll figure out some way to do that later. It’s enough that we know she’s there.”
“Which one is she?” Elayza asked.
“I couldn’t tell. She could be the Scribe or the Sorceress--that’s all that’s left.”
“The Scribe?” Loret hooted. “Sure. Where would she have learned to read? Not much call for that in the Whore Pits.”
“Probably not,” Kylara admitted. “It doesn’t matter right now anyway. We need to look for Armeth. I have a feeling he’s around here somewhere.” She tapped her lower lip. “We’ll split up, us four. If any of you find Armeth, or find where he might have gone, call me. Loret, you hunt around the slums and the docks. That’s your turf. Durnan, go with him.”
“Why do I have to go with him?” Loret protested, before Durnan could say it.
Kylara gave him a look that said she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Because you’re still in trouble, Loret, and Durnan’s your declared guardian. I’d rather not have to break you out of jail, if we can possibly help it.”
Durnan was forced to admit that this made sense.
“Elayza, you check the northern temples,” Kylara continued. “Talk to the priestesses who run the orphanages, and talk to the kids. I’ll do the same in this southern half. If anybody finds him, call out, and we’ll meet back at Mistress Thulla’s. If you’ve had absolutely no luck, just go back there.”
“Be careful,” Durnan warned his sister. Even though it had been several days since they’d so audaciously spirited her out of Bledsmith’s, the other Joy Girls might still be on the lookout.
Kylara grinned at him. “She’s going to be fine,” she said. “Hagra’s temple is in the southern half.”
“You take care too,” he told her. “It’s too far across the docks and the slums for me to sprint.”
She tapped the knife at her belt. “Don’t be such a worrywart.”
In an unaccustomed public gesture of affection, he kissed her lightly. “But it’s my job.”
Loret stood at the entrance to the house of Fate, tapping his foot impatiently. “C’mon,” he called out. “Buy a godsdamned icon and let’s go!”
“The louder you bellow, the longer I’ll take,” Durnan warned, examining a three-sided crystal closely.
Loret made a pfft sound. “Why do you want one, anyway? You worship the Fates, or what?”
“I worship Gzigas,” Durnan said. He picked up a triangular pendent on three chains twisted together. “Nobody worships the Fates. They’re not set up for worship. This is for Kylara.”
“Is that how it works? She’s the champion of the Fates?”
“Exactly.” Durnan laid down the triangle and picked up the crystal again. “This one,” he said to the girl behind the table.
“Does she worship anybody?” Loret asked as Durnan paid and put the crystal in his hip pouch.
“No--and that’s as it should be. No god has dominion over Fate, or over Fate’s champion.”
“You really believe in this stuff, don’t you.”
Durnan’s eyes, when he looked at him, were cool and clear. “I’ve been living with this for half my life. Sometimes it was the only thing that pulled me and Elayza through. It would be like not believing that the sun came up.” When Loret didn’t respond, he nodded and started towards the door of the house of the Fates.
Loret followed him more slowly. What would it be to know something that deeply? he wondered. Durnan’s belief gave him purpose, drive, even passion. What did he, Loret, have? Survival--that’s what he had. A hand-to-mouth existence that he counted as well-spent if he was alive at the end of the day. Was there anything that he knew?
There could be.
“May the Fates overlook you,” the old house-keeper intoned as they passed through the doorway.
Loret said, “Too late for that.”
A few streets later, they passed one of the temples of Kizit, the goddess of hospitality. Loret gave it a thoughtful look, then deftly liberated something from Durnan’s hip pouch and disappeared inside. When Durnan caught up with him, he was talking to a novitiate selling round meat-pies. “Look,” he was saying, “two postools is just stupid. I know what each of those cost you, and it’s nothing close to two postools. Half, tops. You can give me two for the price of one, right? Right?”
The novitiate looked stubborn. “You’ve stolen more of these, Loret--”
“Yeah, but I’m paying today, right? What do you care?” Loret gave him a toothy grin. “C’mon, have I ever double-crossed you? Lately?”
The novitiate grumbled. “Fine. Fine. Just this once.”
Loret’s grin got, if possible, wider. “I knew I could count on you.” He handed over two small silver coins, and got two of the meat pies in return. One he put in his own hip pouch, the other he started eating. “What took you so long?” he asked Durnan around a mouthful.
Durnan looked at the ceiling. “No, thank you, I’m not hungry, but it was nice of you to offer.”
“What are you blabbing about?” The cat let loose a strident meow, and Loret rooted around in his pie and fed her a chunk of something that might have been meat.
“That was my money,” Durnan remarked as they left the temple.
“Only until I got it.”
“You should have eaten before we left.”
“I did. What’s your point?” Loret finished his pie and licked his fingers.
“You’re not going to inhale the other one now?” Durnan asked sardonically.
“That one’s for Armeth.”
Durnan was struck temporarily dumb. “That’s a very nice thought,” he said after a moment.
“Hey, don’t look like that. It’s a bribe. Food’s the best bribe you can offer, especially with a little starveling like Armeth.”
“You didn’t have to, though.”
“So what? It’s not like it was my money.”
“But it was when you got it.”
Loret curled his lip. “What are you trying to do, pretend I’m nice or something?”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Durnan murmured. “And what will you do with that extra pie if we can’t find him?”
“Eat it.”
He should have known.
Chapter Eighteen Part Two
Armeth had found himself a retreat--a spot on top of a warehouse, where it backed up to another, taller building. He sat a few inches back from the edge, resting his chin on his knees, watching the traffic on the street below. He liked watching people, but only if they couldn’t see him. Here, nobody looked at him, and nobody bothered him. It was perfect.
That wasn’t really true--if it had been perfect, it would have been a place inside, with food. That was perfection. But this shady corner was as close to perfect as he was likely to come today.
Do you want to sleep here tonight, Armeth? We’d like to have you.
The cat-eyed girl had sounded as if she were telling the truth--as if, had he gone with her, they would have welcomed him into their circle. He’d spent a good part of the past days thinking about what she’d said.
Demons were bad. He knew that. He’d known that all his short life. And they came to bad people, because they wanted to be with their own.
But--Durnan had a demon. And Durnan’s demon had told him to save Loret’s life. He kept coming back to that. Why would a demon do something nice like that?
Durnan’s demon is there so he can protect us. Maybe your demons are there for the same reason.
No--that was impossible. He wasn’t a tall, strong, confident man like Durnan. He couldn’t protect anyone. He couldn’t help anyone.
All he could do was watch.
Down on the street, a flash of brilliant red hair caught his eye, and he stared. It was the Fox, crouching to talk to a beggar. Behind him was Durnan, his body language on subtle alert.
Armeth drew back into the shade, biting his lip. Why were they here? Were they here for him?
The beggar pointed, and Durnan and the Fox turned to look up at his rooftop spot. Armeth’s shoulders hunched as he tried to make himself invisible.
Durnan said something low-voiced to the Fox, who looked mulish. Then he stepped back, shading his eyes against the brilliant sun. “Armeth?” he called out.
Armeth’s jaw locked together.
Durnan waited a moment. “May I come up on the roof with you?” he asked.
Now his mouth fell open. Durnan was--asking? Why was he asking? He could just come up if he wanted to.
Durnan waited for another few moments. The Fox said something, and Durnan shook his head in response. “Armeth,” he called out again. “If you want me to go away, just say so.”
A choice. He had a choice.
It was a dizzying thought.
Armeth had to try two or three times before he could tell Durnan, “You can come up.” After another moment, he added, “There’s stairs.”
Durnan said, “Thank you. What about Loret?”
Armeth looked at the Fox, who had crossed his arms and was standing hipshot, as if ready and waiting for an insult. “Not him,” he said. He still didn’t like him.
“I have to bring him up on the roof, Armeth--I’m his guardian. But if you want, he’ll stay by the door.”
Armeth wrestled with that. If a criminal was found without their guardian, they would be taken back to prison and punished as they would have been originally. “He has to stay by the door,” he said, liking the idea of telling the Fox what to do.
The Fox said something obscene-sounding, and Durnan shot him a quelling look. “All right,” he called up to Armeth. “We’re coming up.”
Armeth waited with his eyes closed, hugging his knees. His mind was racing. Why had he told him yes? He wanted to be alone today. Would Durnan have gone away if he’d said no? But then he might not have come back.
Armeth wanted to know about Durnan’s demon.
Behind him, there was a scraping thud as the trapdoor was lifted and pushed aside. Loret’s voice carried across the roof. “Couldn’t I just--”
“No. I might not get to you in time.”
“Look, I’m smart enough to avoid those bozos, okay?”
“You weren’t before. Just stay here.” And then, sandals against stone as Durnan crossed the roof.
Armeth put his head down on his knees, listening to his heart thud in his ears. This was worse then meeting them the first time, when he’d thought they could take away his demons. He’d never known anyone else who had demons.
“Armeth?”
Armeth looked up, and for a moment the sun blinded him. He blinked several times, and was finally able to make out the form of Durnan, standing very tall above him.
“May I sit down?”
After a moment, he nodded. Durnan sat down in the shade, settling his back against the cool stone wall of the taller building. “I have something for you,” he said after a moment.
He was holding something out--a meat pie. Armeth’s mouth started to water.
Durnan said, “Loret bought it for you.”
Armeth frowned. He didn’t like the Fox, and he didn’t want anything the Fox had gotten for him. “I don’t want it.”
Durnan’s brows lifted. “All right,” he said, and put it down on the roof, right where Armeth’s eyes would fall on it.
The silence stretched out and out. Armeth was normally comfortable with silence, but with alone silence. When he was around other people, they usually weren’t silent, even if they weren’t talking to him. He could smell the pie, too, as the heat of the sun and the roof warmed it. His stomach clenched.
“You have a demon,” he said.
There was a little pause. “It’s not really a demon,” Durnan said.
“Elayza said it was a voice in your head,” Armeth said. “Those come from demons.”
“It’s my gift,” Durnan said. “My sister told you about the gifts that we Guardians have.” He hesitated. “Armeth--that’s what your visions are. They’re not demons. They’re not bad. They’re your gift.”
Armeth put his head down on his knees again. “I don’t like them. Why do I have them?”
Durnan laughed at that, an ironic little huff of sound. “Who knows? Sabadar had his own reasons for giving you this gift, I suppose.”
Armeth turned his head to look at him. Sabadar? It was demons--it wasn’t a god.
Durnan said gently, “It is a god-gift, Armeth. Demons had nothing to do with it. Sabadar gave you this gift of visions because he needed you--just as Gzigas gave me the gift of that protective instinct because she needed me.”
“For what?”
“To protect the Guardians.”
“And what about me?”
“Maybe you have those visions so we--so we know a little of what’s coming, so we can prepare. Or to tell us how things might turn out.”
“They’re always bad,” Armeth mumbled. His eyes strayed to the pie again.
“Then maybe you have them so we know what to do to prevent them.”
“So you can make them wrong? Like you did when you saved the Fox?”
“Yes. So we can make them wrong.”
Armeth curled his toes into the stone roof and stared at nothing.
For a moment, there was a warm weight on his shoulder--Durnan’s hand. He didn’t like people touching him, and he stiffened. The hand was taken away. “Armeth,” Durnan said.
He didn’t answer.
“We need you,” he said. “And we want you with us. But it has to be your choice. I’m not going to make you.” Like Elayza had, he waited for a moment, and stood. “I’m going to go now.”
Armeth turned his head and watched Durnan walk across the roof to the trapdoor, where the Fox sat scowling. “We’re going home, Loret.”
“Isn’t he coming?” the Fox asked, his voice carrying across the roof.
“Not right now,” Durnan said.
He made a noise of disgust and got to his feet. “You too? You just walk off and leave him? You people are flippin’ crazy . . .” His voice got muffled as he climbed down into the building.
Durnan didn’t answer, but looked over his shoulder. “You know how to find us, Armeth,” he called out. Then he followed the Fox, leaving Armeth alone.
Armeth sat and stared at the meat pie. He could smell it now, worse then ever, and his mouth was watering. After a long moment, he reached out and picked it up, handling it as gently as he would spun glass.
His first bite was huge, and he chewed it slowly, feeling the way the juices puddled on his tongue and ran down his throat. The next few bites were smaller, as he tried to make it last, but soon it was gone.
It didn’t matter. His stomach was full--completely full--for the first time in a long time.
The Fox had bought that for him. Not Durnan. The Fox.
Armeth licked his lips, tasting the last vestiges of the juice, and wondered if maybe the Fox wasn’t just a little bit--maybe a little bit--nice. If he went to stay with Durnan and Elayza and Kylara, he’d have to be with the Fox, too. But maybe that wasn’t quite so bad.
He closed his eyes, imagining a place--where? Someplace nice. A garden. He’d seen a garden once, inside the walls of a rich man’s house. It’d had a little lake, very blue and sparkling in the sun, and trees, and a porch with chairs and a table.
He put the Guardians in that place. Elayza was kneeling in a flower garden, pulling weeds. There was a streak of dirt across her forehead, and she looked very content. Kylara was sitting on the edge of the porch, talking to her. One hand was casually entwined with one of Durnan’s, who was sitting in a chair and playing chess with Loret, who had a cat sitting on the top of his chair.
A woman sat out on a blanket in the grass, her hair falling over her shoulder to hide her face, an umbrella shading her from the sun as she wrote something in a book. A very small girl with long black braids was trying to braid her hair with the ferocious care of someone not very experienced at it. On one side of the girl’s head, almost glowing against the deep raven’s-wing black of the rest of her hair, there was a white lock that sprouted from her temple and was woven into her braid all the way to the bottom.
He stood in the shadows of the porch, watching them all be happy and content. Then Kylara looked over her shoulder. “There you are,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful day. Come out and join us.”
He stood in the shadows of the street, looking at the way the light spilled out from the windows of the house where they were. He could see them moving around inside, and hear the cadence of their voices. Someone laughed out loud--it sounded like Kylara. He could smell food. It had been several hours since the meat pie, and his stomach was starting to be a little empty again.
Creeping from shadow to shadow, he edged closer to the house. Finally, he stood before the door, and raised his hand. His fingers rested against the wood for a moment, curling and uncurling as he tried to quiet the butterflies in his stomach.
He knocked.
The door opened, and Kylara looked down at him. Her eyes were very warm, and there was no surprise in them, as if she’d known he was there. “Come in, Armeth. We’re just about to eat.”
Chapter Eighteen Part Three
Kylara often thought that there was something about Armeth that made you want to speak softly and carefully, as if to a wild animal. You watched him closely--because he spoke so little, you had to depend on body language to gauge his mood. The slightest flicker of an eyelash or hunch of shoulders told you so much. Say or do the wrong thing and there would be no warning--he would simply disappear. He would always creep back, though--eventually.
By some gentle magic known only to her, Elayza talked him into allowing her to wash and comb his hair the second evening of his stay. She eventually had to cut out some of the tangled clumps, and he would visibly tense every time the scissors closed with a zwing by his ear or the nape of his neck.
When all the clumps were cut out, she washed it again, careful to keep the soap out of his eyes. When the rinse water finally ran clean, she squeezed the excess out, scrubbed it gently with a towel, and started combing, wielding the narrow-toothed carved wooden comb with incredible delicacy.
Loret, looking up from the letters he was laboriously copying, said, “Gods, at this rate it’ll be midnight before you’re done--”
Elayza looked over. “So? It’s not as if we have anywhere to go tonight.” She continued combing, one section at a time from the bottom up. The combed sections hung to his shoulders, golden-brown in the firelight and slightly wavy. Armeth was looking at his bare toes, dangling from the chair. Like the rest of his body, they were utterly still.
Elayza’s comb paused, and she touched something at Armeth’s temple. “Armeth?” she said softly.
He lifted his head a little.
“Have you always had this white streak?”
They all looked up then. “Where?” said Kylara.
“Armeth?” Elayza persisted, and Armeth gave a little one-shoulder shrug that didn’t deny it so much as say, Dunno. Doesn’t matter.
“Can I see?” Loret asked, and got up to examine Armeth’s temple closely.
Armeth shied away from him, and Elayza flapped her free hand at him. “Stop that.”
“Yeah, you left the f half-finished,” Kylara said, holding up the paper Loret had abandoned.
Loret grumbled, but returned to the table.
“It’s just a little white streak,” Elayza told the rest of them. “Not much wider then my pinky finger, really. I’m not surprised we didn’t see it before.” She’d started combing again, and now Kylara could see it as the comb pulled the long strands straight and flat--a thin line of pure ice-white that stood out from the dark brown, running straight and true from his scalp to the tips of his hair.
“How could that have happened?” Durnan asked.
It was Mistress Thulla who answered that. “Armeth, that’s the side you were hit with the rock, wasn’t it?”
He shrugged again, and Elayza nodded, tracing the streak up to his scalp. “The roots come out from the scar,” she reported.
Mistress Thulla explained, “Sometimes, with a head wound, the hair surrounding or sprouting from the spot will turn white, if it doesn’t fall out completely. It’s actually rather common.” She gave Armeth a smile. “It’ll look very rakish when you tie your hair back.”
He blinked at her as if he couldn’t imagine why he would want to look rakish. Or for that matter, what exactly rakish was. His shoulders hunched as they all looked at him, and Kylara caught the overwhelming desire for invisibility from his thoughts.
“Loret,” she said, turning away from Armeth, “let’s see what you’ve got.”
After three days of catching him squinting at her books every time she turned around, she’d finally dared him to learn how to read. He’d taken her up on it with a casual air that didn’t fool her a bit.
The writing part had given him some initial troubles (“Can’t I just learn how to read? What’s with this writing crap?”) but she’d told him that if he didn’t think he was smart enough to learn, he could quit right now.
That had stung, so he was presently tracing the letters with ferocious care.“Gimme a moment,” he said, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
“Moment’s up,” Kylara called out, after considerably more then one.
He swore and handed it to her. She laid it flat on the table. “Nice--nice--what’s that? Is that supposed to be an e? Give me a break.”
“Shove it up your ass,” Loret suggested.
“Watch your mouth,” she recommended absently, running her finger down the page. “Pretty good,” she said, scooting it over to him. “Try the e and the g again, though. And copy the rest of the alphabet.”
“Slave driver,” he grumbled at her, stabbing his pen into the inkwell again.
“Easy with that. Ink’s expensive.” She laced her hands behind her head and looked up at the ceiling. “And may I remind you, I never said this was going to be easy.” She looked over her shoulder. “Would you like to learn too, Armeth?”
Elayza had finished combing his hair, and was now trimming it one last time, for evenness. He blinked at Kylara.
“To read,” she said patiently.
He gave one of his little one-shoulder shrugs again, but a few moments later, Kylara discovered him standing at her elbow, scrutinizing the paper Loret was copying from.
Elayza had finished the trimming job, and had tied his hair back at the base of his neck, the way the two other males, as well as Kylara, wore theirs. Mistress Thulla had been right--the thin white streak did show up brightly in that style. It was just another note of incongruity, adding to his air of age in a youthful body. However, it was a massive improvement over the tangled, dirty mop it had been.
She smiled at him. “Well?”
He considered it, tilting his head to one side, and then climbed onto the bench next to Durnan and looked at her expectantly. This, apparently, was a yes.
“Loret, do you need the paper anymore?”
“Take it,” he grunted, carefully shaping an m.
She started at the beginning as she had with Loret, reciting the alphabet while Armeth listened. His eyes followed her finger tracing out the letters with the intensity of a baby hawk. When she was done, she put her finger on a again. “I want you to say these after me, Armeth.”
He looked at her with dismay.
“No, really. Come on. A.”
“A,” he said very softly.
“I can’t hear you,” Loret singsonged. He’d hated this part too.
Armeth stuck out his tongue, and Kylara had to cough to cover a surprised laugh. In only a few days, the boy was gaining spunk. It helped that he didn’t particularly like Loret, and had never taken pains to hide it.
“B,” she prompted.
“B.”
“C.”
“C.”
“D.” She waited. “D?”
His face had gone white.
“Armeth? Are you all right?”
He covered his face with his hands, his breathing audibly harsh. She touched his thoughts-- “Oh gods--he’s having a vision.”
She tried to put her arms around him, and he jerked away from her, almost falling off the bench. Durnan caught him and held him loosely. “Armeth,” he said into the boy’s ear. “I need you to tell us what you see.”
He shook his head so hard that the hair tie loosened and his hair fell about his face again.
Durnan was implacable. “Armeth--tell us what you see. It’s your job. Tell us.”
Armeth’s voice was hoarse. “He’s coming. The time of the thinning is now, and he’s been waiting. He wants what was denied him so long ago.”
Durnan shot Kylara a quick look. She’d been right about the time of the thinning, but she couldn’t feel triumphant--not when it was now, said in that trembling little voice. “What does he want, Armeth?” she said as gently as she could.
His hands slid away from his face as he looked up at her, his eyes glassy beneath the hair that trailed over his face. “Blood.”
Chapter Nineteen Part One
Author's Note: Some background things (this IS a first draft! :) The Cashkan people, or the Cashkani, are a tribe of magic-workers. They live in the mountains and keep very much to themselves, disdaining contact with city people. Trebino is the language of the city.
Elayza lay in her cot, staring at the ceiling. She could usually will herself to sleep as soon as she closed her eyes, but tonight, it wasn’t working.
Blood.
“As if we don’t have enough problems,” Kylara had said, scowling to cover her fear.
“You didn’t say anything about blood,” Loret had grumbled.
“That’s because we didn’t know about it,” Durnan snapped back.
After a lengthy discussion that had seemed to get tenser with every word, Elayza had stepped in, pointing out that it was late and they were tired. Kylara had seen her aim and joined in the gentle bullying, and they’d all eventually gotten to bed.
Now it was very late--so late, in fact, that it had become early. And Elayza still couldn’t sleep.
Blood.
She closed her eyes and thought of sleep.
A moment later, she sat up. Someone was knocking--no, hammering--on the front door.
She usually slept downstairs in the kitchen, so it was the work of a moment to roll out of bed, gathering the blanket around her. She crossed the kitchen by instinct in the dark, and opened the door. “Yes?”
“You’re too young,” said the man on the other side of the door.
She blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”
“This is the home of Mistress Thulla?” He had a strange way of speaking, the words steady, precise, and rather formal with the barest of an accent, and it took her a moment to put it together with his dark hair and skin and guess that he was Cashkani.
“Yes.” He looked healthy enough, but then Elayza saw that he had a young girl strapped in a sling on his back, and she was sleeping the boneless, restless sleep of the very ill. There was no need to ask what the man needed. “Come in,” Elayza said quickly, opening the door wide. “Lay her on the cot--there.” She lit the lamp from the torch outside the door, and brought it to the side of the cot.
The girl stirred and whimpered as she was laid on the cot. “Huso?” she mumbled, half-opening her eyes.
Her father knelt at the side of the bed, stroking her temple. “Hshhh, Jallensha. Druhuso safem.”
“What’s her name?” Elayza asked him.
He gave her a brief look. “Jallen.”
“Can she understand me?”
“Yes. I taught her your city language.”
“What is she ill with?”
“I don’t know.” There was helplessness in his eyes as he looked at his daughter. “She is weak--she sleeps too much--sometimes she cannot breathe.”
Elayza frowned. It didn’t sound like anything she was familiar with. “Was there nobody who would help you?”
His face hardened. “I am Collo Kisetho. Who would help my child?”
She looked up sharply. Collo Kisetho was wanted all over the city and into the country for speaking out against the regent. He looked back at her with hard eyes. They were also un-Cashkani eyes, pale grey and cool. Collo Kisetho was known to be a halfling.
He was expecting some sort of condemnation, she could see. “They should have,” she said quietly, and turned back to his daughter.
No fever, she noted. No swelling at her throat or under her arms. She got the girl to open her mouth and checked the state of her tongue and throat, although she wasn’t expecting anything. There wasn’t.
“Are you my sister, or the apprentice of my mother?”
Elayza lifted her head. “What?”
In the light, his eyes glinted very pale grey--almost the same shade as Mistress Thulla’s. “Are you my sister,” he repeated, “or are you the apprentice of my mother?”
She stared for a moment, then shook herself. “The latter, I suppose,” she said, getting to her feet. “Excuse me a moment.”
In the dark hallway, she had to pause to order her thoughts. She’d always thought Mistress Thulla a spinster, but Collo Kisetho certainly looked young enough to be her son. But his father must have been Cashkani, and they were notoriously xenophobic . . .
Mistress Thulla opened her bedroom door. “Elayza? I heard the knock. Did you get it?”
“Yes, but--” she hesitated. “I can’t make out this girl’s illness,” she said, getting to the more important issue. “No fever, no swelling, nothing. But the father says she’s sleeping too much, she’s too weak when she does wake, and sometimes she can’t breathe. Could you come take a look?”
“Of course.” The older woman bundled her blanket around herself and stepped out into the hall.
“There’s something else you should know,” Elayza added quickly.
“What is it?”
“The father--it’s Collo Kisetho. And--he says he’s your son.”
Mistress Thulla stared at her for a moment, and then closed her eyes. “Are you certain?” Her voice sounded shaky.
“He has your eyes.”
She’d opened her eyes again, looking at nothing. “Yes,” she said, “he did.”
“Are you all right?” Elayza asked after a moment.
“I’ll be fine. The girl--his daughter, you said?”
“Yes. Her name is Jallen.” Mistress Thulla’s granddaughter, Elayza realized. Oh, no.
Mistress Thulla stepped into the kitchen with little visible hesitation. “Dasja, luto,” she said, her words slowly and carefully pronounced.
He rose slowly, his hand still resting on his daughter’s forehead. “Kormatse, zahketh nasaala. I speak Trebino.” His shoulders were stiff, and in the uncertain light his face looked wary.
“Oh.” She didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Your daughter,” she said, moving to the small patient. “Elayza tells me she’s ill.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“A month.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“No. She’s always been very healthy.”
Elayza, listening to the stilted conversation, almost couldn’t believe that this was a mother and son. There was surely more to this story then what was being spoken.
Kylara opened her eyes. She couldn’t say what had woken her, but she was awake.
She could hear low voices downstairs--a patient, come in the middle of the night. It wasn’t unusual, and she thought, Go back to sleep, Kylara. It’s nothing, and you need your sleep.
So she couldn’t say why she put the covers aside and sat up. Behind her, Durnan stirred, and she paused. He showed no further signs of waking, however, and she reached for her shirt on the floor and pulled it over her head. It was long enough to make a good shot at decency.
As she padded through the front room, Loret mumbled a curse and rolled over. Armeth stayed still. She paused to brush his hair out of his eyes, and he still didn’t move. The vision had taken him hard, and he was sleeping very deeply--and, she hoped, dreamlessly.
She almost jumped out of her skin when two brilliantly glowing eyes suddenly appeared in the darkness. After a moment of frozen marrow, however, she worked it out--Loret’s cat had opened her eyes. She was lying draped over Armeth’s feet. That was a surprise--maybe she’d decided to like Armeth, thereby doubling her count of favored people.
Kylara gave her a tentative smile. A neatly matched set of scratches, from some foolishness earlier in the day, still stung. “Nice cat,” she muttered, and backed away.
To her surprise, the cat jumped off the cot onto the floor and accompanied her to the door. Well, all right. As long as Kylara didn’t try and pet her again, they should be fine.
Elayza was standing just inside the kitchen, but she turned around at the sound of Kylara’s feet on the stairs. “Did we wake you?”
“Probably, but that’s all right.” Kylara poked her head into the kitchen. “Who’s that? He looks familiar, somehow.”
“Collo Kisetho.”
Kylara’s head whipped around. “He is? What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s his daughter.” Elayza gestured. “There, on the cot. She’s sick, and I don’t know what’s wrong. Neither does Mistress Thulla.”
“Why’d he come here?”
“He’s Mistress Thulla’s son.”
“What are you talking about? She doesn’t have a son. Especially a Cashkani son.” But then, Kylara remembered her aunt, looking pinch-lipped and disapproving at her landlady on the one occasion she’d visited. Aunt Aba had definite views on women who gave birth out of wedlock. At the time, Kylara had thought it was because Mistress Thulla was allowing Kylara to live in her house, but--
She gave the older woman a thoughtful look. Then her gaze flickered to the small girl.
She was caught breathless for half a moment, as the world rocked, and settled back to where it should have been all along. The last puzzle piece had clicked into place.
Elayza was looking at her quizzically. “Kylara? Are you all right?”
Kylara fished the Amulet out of her shirt and looked at it. The seventh and last stone was glowing feebly, flickering. Damn. “I think--let me check something.”
“What?”
Kylara crossed the room in a few strides. Mistress Thulla had just gotten to her feet, and was saying, “I’m very sorry, Collo, but I simply don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
His face went hard and cold. “I was told you were the finest healer in the city.”
“That’s as it may be, but whatever she has, I’ve never seen it before. I can give you some medicines to keep up her strength for a little while longer, but my guess is that she’ll keep growing weaker and weaker until--” She hesitated.
“Until she dies,” Collo said quietly.
“Yes.” Mistress Thulla looked down at her granddaughter. “Until she dies.”
“There is nothing you could give her.”
“I don’t dare. Some medicines are worse then poison if administered for an illness the patient doesn’t have.”
Kylara ducked between them. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, pulling the Amulet over her head and kneeling by the girl’s side.
Mistress Thulla glanced down. “What are you doing, Kylara?”
“I think she may be the last one,” Kylara told her, turning one limp hand palm upwards and laying the Amulet in it.
The stone blazed hot red for a single instant. Then the little girl’s body stiffened, her back arched, and she let out a piercing scream that went on and on.
Collo dove for the Amulet, wrenched it from his daughter’s hand, and hurled it across the room. Instantly, her body went limp.
Kylara cautiously lowered her hands from her ears. “What--was that?”
“What was that?” he demanded, stepping between her and the cot that held his once-more peaceful daughter. “What kind of demon-magic was that?”
“It’s not demon-magic, it’s--” Kylara got to her feet, giving Jallen a cautious look. She was still out. “It’s never done that before.”
“What happened?”
Kylara turned to see Durnan standing in the doorway. His hair was disorderly but his eyes were sharp and aware. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ve found our seventh Guardian--”
His eyes went to Collo.
“No. It’s this one.” Kylara gestured to the cot. “The little girl.”
Durnan’s brows drew together. “Another child?”
“Guardian?” Collo said at the same time. “She is no such thing.”
“Maybe you don’t understand--”
“I understand perfectly. My people have passed down the tales of the Guardians for generations. Jallen is no seer, or protector, or scribe. She cannot heal, her wiliness could be measured with an egg-cup, and she is not the Seeker.”
“And what about magic?”
His eyes flickered away. “It’s impossible.”
“How do you know?”
“Her mother was k’agthus, and so am I. Jallen will be as well.”
“What is k’agthus?”
“It means I have no magic, and never will--and neither will my children. You see, it’s impossible for her to be a Guardian. You’ve made a mistake.”
“I might have, but the Amulet wouldn’t,” Kylara answered firmly. “Trust me. She’s ours.”
His eyes blazed. “My daughter belongs to nobody.”
Ah, hell. Major mistake. Definitely the wrong thing to say. “I meant--” she said quickly. “I meant she’s one of us. She’s a Guardian.”
“Find yourself another. My daughter deserves her own life, not one laid out for her by the gods.” His eyes filled with pain. “If my--mother is right, she has little enough of that life left to her, and then another Sorcerer will emerge anyway.”
Kylara’s throat closed up at the thought of that little girl--one of hers, dammit--dying. “We don’t have time for that,” she said.
“I don’t care.”
“We can help her,” Kylara said quietly.
Collo paused in the act of gathering his daughter into his arms and looked over his shoulder, suspicion shining clearly in his pale eyes. “How?”
“Elayza has a gift that will help her.”
Elayza said softly, “Kylara--”
Kylara turned to her. “I’ll do it, ‘Layza,” she said in a low voice. “Believe me, I wouldn’t offer for anyone else.”
“You saw what happened the last time.”
“That right there should tell you how much I’m willing to do this.”
Elayza closed her eyes. “You know how I feel about it.”
Kylara took her by the shoulders. “Elayza--tell me honestly--is there any other way that girl will live long enough for you to figure out what’s wrong with her?”
After a moment, Elayza shook her head.
“All right then.”
Chapter Nineteen Part Two
Collo watched the two strange Guardian women converse in low voices. His daughter’s strained breathing sounded in his ears, each counting down another moment until the last.
His mother--
He still stumbled mentally over the word. He was not used to having a mother.
His mother had said that Jallen would die.
He’d come all this way, into the city he had shunned all his life, to see the mother who had abandoned him as soon as he was weaned, for the chance that Jallen would live. And now she had dashed even that desperate hope.
He felt sick.
Both women turned to look at him, and Collo held his daughter tighter.
Kylara said to him, “Elayza can give her enough strength to go on for--” She glanced at Elayza, who shrugged.
“Hard to say, but for a good while longer. She doesn’t need as much.”
“As much what? What are you going to give her?”
“Life.”
“How?”
“I can’t explain,” Elayza said quietly. “Just allow me to do it.”
“It won’t hurt her, will it?”
“No. The worst off she’ll be is if we don’t do this.”
Alive, and a Guardian, lost to him forever--or dead.
Lady, what a choice.
Her head rolled on his shoulder as she whimpered, caught in whatever private hell her body was putting her through. There was no choice.
“I want to hold her.”
Kylara looked at Elayza, who shook her head. “I don’t know what’ll happen if you do. It’s safest if you don’t.”
Panic. “You said it would not hurt her.”
“Not for her--for you.”
What were they going to do?
Reluctantly, he laid her on the cot again, wincing as she tried to hold on. “Hush,” he whispered. “I’m here.” He looked up, into Kylara’s eyes. “If this hurts her,” he said coolly, “I will kill you.”
The other man made a quick movement towards him, but Kylara said steadily, “I know. Ready, Elayza?”
Elayza settled her hand flat on Jallen’s heart, over her chest and held out her other hand. “Yes.” Kylara took her hand and closed her eyes. Elayza’s eyes lost their focus, turning inward.
Collo watched them closely, waiting for magic.
Kylara’s throat worked, the tendons briefly standing out in sharp relief. Her face went pale. She breathed out once, harshly audible, and pressed her free hand, doubled up into a fist, into her stomach. Collo watched the knuckles turn white.
He looked quickly at his daughter for signs of stress. By the Lady, if they had lied to him about this harming her--
Blood was returning to her face. Her chest was rising and falling more steadily than it had. The horrible wheeze was gone. He started to reach for her, and Elayza said sharply, “Don’t!”
He snatched his hand back. The last thing he wanted to do now was disrupt it--whatever she was doing.
The other man had moved across the room and was standing just behind Kylara. He didn’t touch her, but he was just--there. Waiting.
A few moments later, Elayza said, “All right.” She lifted her hand from Jallen’s chest, and Kylara’s tense body relaxed. Collo crouched, brushing his fingers across his daughter’s face. It was warm and dry again. He flattened his hand over her heart, preparing himself for the unsteady, irregular beat that had been there for nearly a month. It was strong and sure once again.
He looked up. “How--”
Elayza said, “It’s not permanent. Whatever she’s fighting is still there. But she’s got the strength to fight it better now--for a little while, at least.”
“And we give unto the lady this mortal, who hath served her well--”
He had not been to a cremation since his father’s, over ten years ago. This did not look like a memory-dream of that. Where was he?
“--and we ask thee, lady of the mountains, to reward this servant by a long stay in the betweenlife--”
At his father’s funeral, there had been legions of mourners--his stepmother, his half-brothers and sisters, and all their families. He’d been placed at the back then, and almost hadn’t been able to see the pyre but for his outsider height. There was nobody here. Himself, and the priest, and the burners, who stood around the pyre with their long torches flickering and smoking. The body on the pyre was still wrapped in cloth. It was too small, he thought illogically. It was . . . too small . . .
The priest’s droning recital meandered to a halt. “--until her spirit should be brought again to the land of living.” The priest lowered his arms and nodded to Collo.
His feet carried him forward, and he saw his arm lifting, and his hand reaching out to pull aside the cloth that covered the face of the dead.
It came into view slowly, a small face. Baby-round, child-soft. A slightly snub nose, long eyelashes resting against grey cheeks, a tiny bow mouth that would never stretch into a sparkling grin at her ‘huso again . . .
“Jallensha!”
He sat up with a jolt, his heart pounding in his throat. Jallen was--she was--
She was stirring. In a pool of pale sunlight, in a cot that sat in the corner of a cozy, good-smelling kitchen, his daughter was stirring. She was alive.
Collo slumped, putting his face in his hands as he fought to control his breathing. It was just the old dream again, where she was--
He couldn’t even think it.
He’d been having the dream for nearly a month now, ever since she’d first gotten sick, and it took him like this every time. Jallen was the most precious creature in his existence--not that there was much else to treasure--and to lose her would kill him. He knew that for plain, unvarnished fact.
“’Huso?” The voice was drowsy.
He lifted his head from his hands, staring in wonderment at the cot. She hadn’t woken up more than halfway for several days, but now his daughter was sitting up, rubbing her eyes and screwing her face up against the light.
“’Huso,” she said again, petulantly. Jallen was not a graceful waker. “Where are we? This isn’t home.”
“No,” he said, getting up on his knees and pushing the messy hair off her face. One of her braids had come out and was tangling around her. “I brought you to the house of--” He couldn’t explain her- grandmother to her. He could barely explain it to himself. “To the house of someone I know. She’s a healer.”
“Oh.” She took a deep sniff. “It smells nice here.”
“I know,” he said. “Do you want to sleep some more, lusha?”
“I’m not sleepy, I’m hungry,” she said, and looked down at herself. “And my hair’s messy!”
A capital offense. Jallen was very vain about her hair. Collo wanted to laugh, but settled for plucking her off the cot and hugging her hard. “I’ll comb your hair.”
Jallen returned the affection for a moment, squeezing her arms around his neck. She smelled like little girl, with just a faint edge of illness. He marveled again.
She squirmed to get down. “I’m hungry,” she said again.
He sat her down on the cot again and told her to stay. “I’m going to find a comb,” he said.
There was bread on the table, on a plate. He didn’t know who it was for, but tore off a chunk anyway and gave it to his daughter. Jallen looked at the rest of hungrily. “I want more.”
“There are other people in the house, lusha. Be patient.”
“I’m hungry.”
“We’re guests.”
She pouted but stayed, and Collo ventured forth into the hallway. There was nobody in the bedroom, and nobody in the herb-filled room he found next. He looked at the stairs consideringly, but then heard voices coming from the kitchen.
Jallen had migrated to the table and was speaking rapid-fire if clumsy Trebino to the woman sitting next to her. It was his mother.
His daughter spotted him the moment he came in. “’Huso, guess what!” she called out in Cashkani.
He answered in the same language. “What, lusha?”
“I’m speaking Trebino for this lady, and she says I speak good!”
Objectively, she didn’t speak that well--her accent was very thick, and she still stumbled or used the wrong word. But for a six year-old who had only been speaking Trebino for a year, it was very good. “Yes, you do.”
“You speak Trebino for her,” Jallen ordered. “She doesn’t talk like us.”
His mother looked up at him, with the un-Cashkan eyes he’d seen in the mirror every day of his life. “I understand a little,” she said in halting Cashkani.
“We’ll speak your language,” he said stiffly. “It’ll be good practice for Jallen.”
She didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Fortunately, Jallen jumped in. “Mistress Thulla, do you know my ‘huso?”
“Yes, dear, I do. I’ve known him for a long time.”
Collo tensed, waiting for her to say something about their true relationship. Before she could, however, voices spilled out from the hall. “Give it back.”
“Kylara said she didn’t care if I picked pockets.”
“She didn’t mean ours. And she said she didn’t care as long as you didn’t get caught. Consider yourself caught--now give it back.”
Collo recognized the older of the two who came into the room--the man who’d been in the room last night. The younger was a tall, skinny boy with bright red hair, who was edging away from the other man. In his hand, he clutched a necklace on a thin silver chain.
“Who are you?”
The question came from Jallen, who was regarding the two with bright-eyed curiousity. She loved new people.
“I’m Durnan,” the man said, “and this is Loret. We live here.” He tried for the necklace while Loret was distracted, but the boy was too quick for him.
“Who’re they?” Loret asked. “And what are they doing here?”
The hand holding the necklace was less then an arm’s-length from Collo, and his hand flicked out and caught it. He’d always had fast hands.
“Hey!”
Collo crossed the kitchen and handed to the necklace to Durnan. “Thank you,” the other man said, and they exchanged a wry smile. Durnan crouched and rummaged in a trunk.
“You don’t have to answer me or anything,” Loret grumbled, slouching onto the bench and picking up the entire loaf of bread. He reminded Collo of any number of young, brash, self-absorbed boys from home. He’d been like that for a time, the normal rebelliousness of youth honed to a hard edge by constant rejection. Then Jallen had come along, and it had been forcibly impressed on him that he was suddenly responsible for somebody other than himself.
“I’m Jallen, and that’s my ‘huso,” she said to him. “You have pretty hair.”
The boy looked taken aback. He’d probably never been called “pretty” before. “What’s a ‘huso?” he asked through his mouthful of bread.
Collo’s daughter looked across the kitchen at him. “I don’t remember the word,” she said plaintively.
“Father,” he said, and to Loret, “I’m her father, Collo.”
“Have you eaten?” Durnan asked Collo.
“Not yet,” Collo replied. “Jallen’s had a little bread.”
“Mistress Thulla?” Durnan called out.
“Just a bit, thank you, Durnan. I ate some earlier.”
Durnan took four bowls to the hearth and started ladling a thick, oat-smelling porridge into them. “About half a bowl for your daughter?”
“That’ll be fine.” Collo took the half-bowl and the full bowl Durnan handed him.
“Spoons on the counter.”
“What about me?” Loret asked belligerantly when Durnan brought his two bowls to the table.
“Get your own,” Durnan told him.
Loret, grumbling, did so. As he came back to the table, balancing his almost-overflowing bowl, he looked narrow-eyed at Jallen and Collo. “What are you doing here?” he asked again.
“Jallen is our seventh Guardian,” Durnan said calmly, capping the honey pot and passing it to him.
“No, she’s not,” Collo snapped, feeling betrayed. His earlier feeling of camraderie with the other man had vanished like mist.
“Yeah, how do you know?” Loret challenged him.
“The Amulet reacted to her. Kylara felt her. I felt her.”
“Oh.” Loret looked at Collo. “Sorry, friend.”
“What?”
“’Huso? What are you mad about?”
“We’ll talk about it later, lusha,” he muttered, deeply aware of all the eyes on him.
Jallen’s brows drew together. She wasn’t used to her father evading a direct question, and she probably would have persisted if there had not been at that moment a terrific yowl from outside.
“It’s your cat,” Mistress Thulla and Durnan said at the same time.
“I know that!” Ears turning red, Loret leaned over and opened the door, and the ugliest specimen of the feline race Collo had ever seen sauntered in.
“A kitty!” Jallen squealed in Cashkani, and reached for it.
“Watch out, she--”
The cat butted her head into Jallen’s stroking hand, and there was a distinct purr around whatever dead furry thing she was holding in her mouth.
“--bites,” Durnan finished weakly, staring at the cat.
The animal gave him a brief slit-eyed glance before leaping from floor to bench to table, and depositing her burden in Loret’s porridge.
“Shit! You stupid cat!” Loret poked at the dead thing in his porridge, scowling. “That’s my breakfast!”
Jallen looked at her father. “What does ‘shit’ mean?”
“It’s a bad word, Jallen.” Collo gave Loret a dark look. “Don’t repeat it--he shouldn’t have used it.”
“I can use some more,” Loret offered, glaring back.
“Don’t,” Durnan warned.
Loret, scowling, scooped the cat’s gift out of his food, dropped it on the floor, and scooped some more porridge out for good measure. “Pass the honey.”
“Again?”
“I just had a damn dead rodent in my food. I ain’t eatin’ it without honey. Pass the honey.”
The cat, unmoved by Loret’s rejection of her offering, started eating the porridge off the floor.
Chapter Nineteen Part Three
The next member of the motley crew entered the kitchen, got his food, and found his place at the table so silently that when Durnan said, “Good morning, Armeth,” Collo nearly dropped his spoon.
Armeth looked up in response to Durnan’s greeting. He had pale grey eyes, so light as to be almost clear, and Collo had to supress a superstitious shudder. He was very young, close to Jallen’s age if Collo had to guess.
Jallen leaned over and looked into his face. “I’m Jallen,” she said. “Do you like playing doshkeh?”
He looked taken aback, and the look he aimed at Durnan held no small measure of panic.
“Don’t worry,” Durnan said. “She’s one of us.”
Collo opened his mouth, then closed it again. What was the point in getting into an argument at the moment?
Loret, meanwhile, had polished off his entire bowl and had gone back for seconds. “Leave some for Elayza and Kylara,” Durnan said over his shoulder.
“They’re not here,” Loret said, filling his bowl.
“Yes we are, you little termite,” said a voice from the hallway, and the two women Collo knew from the night before came in the room. Kylara was yawning and running her fingers through her strange short hair, which was sticking out in all directions.
“I thought you were going to sleep more,” Durnan said accusingly.
“I’ve slept,” Kylara said lightly. “And now I want to eat.” She took the ladle away from Loret, who swore at her, and started filling her own bowl.
“Elayza, would you tell her to go back to bed?”
“She’s fine,” Elayza said, taking the ladle that Kylara offered.
“You’re not helping.”
“See?” Kylara slid onto the bench next to Durnan. “I think I’m recovering faster.”
“No, you aren’t,” Elayza corrected, taking her own seat. “Jallen needed less than Mezo.”
“Well, you’re not going to do it again,” Durnan told Kylara. “Not anytime soon.”
“Do I look dumb? You’re going to.” She turned to Collo. “So now you’ve met the whole crew. Except one. What do you think?”
Collo looked around. Loret was surreptitiously feeding the cat a piece of bread, Armeth was dazedly listening to Jallen’s description of her favorite game, Elayza was drizzling honey into her porridge, Durnan was scowling at Kylara, and Kylara was looking at him expectantly.
“You’re--very unusual.”
Kylara laughed. “Thanks. I like us too.”
There are only six days remaining until the solstice.
I know, my lord. My watchers tell me a Cashkani rebel has come to the house of the healer. A troublesome one. I will take pleasure in killing him.
Is it him, or is it the child?
There is a child? But how could a child--?
Idiot. It is one of the two. I can feel it.
Yes, my lord. Shall I send Naia out now?
No. Wait a few days. Allow them to find her. It would not do for them to become suspicious when we are so close.
Yes, my lord.
Elayza heard the stillroom door behind her open, and looked over her shoulder. It was Mistress Thulla, coming in with her medicine bag. She looked preoccupied, and more than that, tired. There were unexpected lines in her face and around her mouth. She glanced up and saw Elayza sitting on the ladder by the shelves. “Oh--hello, Elayza. I thought I’d fill up my bag while I was thinking about it.”
“What do you need, while I’m up here?”
Mistress Thulla set her bag on the counter and started taking out pots and small bags. “I don’t know yet. Were you looking for something?”
“I was checking on your dried redflower, here,” Elayza said. “I wanted to put together something for Jallen. A tea, maybe.”
Mistress Thulla’s hands paused in her bag, and then she continued carefully setting out her medicines. “You might try adding a little dragon-claw to that redflower. It’s the safest combination in my experience, and I’d rather not take a risk with whatever it is that Jallen has.”
“Dragon-claw? Where is it?”
“Dried on a string--there, on the end.”
Elayza reached for the string Mistress Thulla had indicated. “How much?”
“One leaf should do it.”
The leaf was fully dried, and brittle. The smell of it was sharp and bitter. Elayza wrinkled her nose and resolved to add honey. “Mistress Thulla,” she said hesitantly, climbing down the ladder.
“Yes?”
“I realize it’s none of my business--”
“You want to know about Collo.”
“Well--yes.”
Mistress Thulla sighed. “I suppose it’s only natural for you to be curious.” She opened a bag and shook it lightly. “Can you pass me some valerian? A good healthy handful will be fine.”
Elayza poked around in the strings hanging along the wall, and carefully plucked several of the leathery leaves.
“Thank you.” Mistress Thulla started tearing them in half, filling the bag slowly. “Well,” she said. “I met his father when I was rather young. Younger than you are now, actually. Perhaps sixteen or seventeen--I don’t quite remember anymore.”
She caught Elayza’s look and smiled gently. “It has been nearly thirty years,” she said.
“Oh. Yes.”
“Well--I was apprenticed at the time, and Hurtad was brought to the house with a broken leg. It was a bad break and he was laid up for a good three months. He was young--and I was young--and what happened was really only natural. Neither of us expected it to be anything like forever, and it wasn’t. He healed, and left, and when I realized I was pregnant there was no way to find him again. To tell the truth, I really didn’t want to.”
She picked up a little pot and uncorked it, taking a cautious sniff. “Oh--that’s gone bad.” She set it aside and picked up a shallow mixing bowl. “There’s a jug of lemon oil on that high shelf, there,” she told Elayza, gathering other supplies. “Would you bring it down?”
Elayza obeyed. “What happened after that?” she asked.
“Oh--it was an easy pregnancy, and an easy birth, as these things go,” the older woman said, pouring lemon oil into the bowl. “He was about a year old when Hurtad came back to the city for some reason, and stopped in to visit me. The moment he saw Sidro--”
“Sidro?”
“That’s what I named him. Hurtad must have changed it to a Cashkan name. The Cashkani don’t give their children a real name until they’re about three or four, anyway.” She carefully shredded a three-pronged leaf and sprinkled it over the oil. “Anyway the moment Hurtad saw him, he knew that Sidro was his son, and he promptly informed me that he was going to be raised Cashkan. I objected--naturally. But Hurtad was determined, and very persistent. There was no question of marriage--Hurtad had been betrothed since childhood to a cousin, and for the Cashkan, there is no such thing as breaking betrothals.” She sniffed the oil and herb mixture and sprinkled a little more sweetleaf in. “Hurtad kept coming back and back--every day, and sometimes twice a day. He came up with a hundred arguments to sway me. A boy needed a father more than he did a mother. Hurtad’s family was very well off and could provide for Sidro better than I could--I was living quite literally hand to mouth at the time. He could give Sidro family ties--I’ve always been an orphan. He would have a wife soon, and it was doubtful I would ever have a husband.” She sighed and pushed a strand of greying hair off her forehead. “I finally gave in. I had to think of what was best for Sidro, after all. I just asked that Hurtad wait until I had weaned him. I told him Sidro was more likely to get sick if Hurtad took him away while he was still drinking my milk.” She gave Elayza a wan smile. “I must admit I put off the weaning for longer than I would have normally. Finally it came to the point where I couldn’t stall any longer. Sidro was weaned, and Hurtad took him away.” She sighed again, resting her hands on the table top. “I don’t know if you’ve ever had a child, Elayza.”
Elayza shook her head silently. She didn’t know what to say to any of it. Somehow, Mistress Thulla’s calm recital of the facts, with quiet anguish lurking behind her eyes, was worse than if she’d wept and wailed.
“It’s extraordinary--this tiny, helpless creature who loves you . . . for just being you. For being the arms that rock them to sleep at night and being the breast that feeds them, and the face that smiles at them. No matter what you do, no matter what mistakes you make--and I made a lot of them--that love is still there. If you’ve never had that, it’s impossible to explain, and if you have--well, there’s no need. And when that love is taken away, it’s devastating.” She shook her head, brushing at her eyes. “I never expected to see him again, and certainly not like this.”
“Do you think she’ll live?” Elayza asked.
The older woman looked up. Her eyes were clear again. “I pray so.”
Chapter Twenty Part One
Kylara’s hands were full, and she had to kick the door. “Let me in,” she called through the window. “My hands are full.”
Loret, scrubbing the floor where the cat had eaten her meal that morning, sat up and said with a smirk, “You’ll have to ask nicer than that.”
Kylara gave him the best inducement she could come up with. “Open the door or you’ll not get a single piece of any of this food.”
“What demon got in your pants?” he demanded, opening the door.
She staggered through the opening and dumped the contents of her foray on the kitchen table. “You’d be yelling too if you carried all this from the north market.”
“All what from the north market?” Durnan asked, coming in from the stairs. He had Kasole’s book in one hand and a thick Old Kashlan dictionary under the other arm.
“Take a look.”
In addition to a few cheap bowls and spoons, she’d bought more grain, several loaves of bread, two more pots of honey--“And you stop putting so much on your porridge in the morning, would you?” Kylara told Loret--a full basket of potatoes, several carrots, and a good slab of dried meat.
“Why did you get so much?” Durnan asked her. “You could have gone back.”
“Well, we’ve been eating Mistress Thulla out of house and home--have you noticed? And this stuff cost the earth, too,” Kylara said ruefully, hefting her deflated money pouch.
“Why?” Loret asked, poking at the small, wizened potatoes. “It’s all cheap stuff.”
“The drought must be causing famine in the countryside,” Durnan said.
“Exactly. And the becalming means we can’t get food in trade. Take those and the carrots and put them under the stairs.”
Loret came back eating one of the carrots. “So did you talk to the woman you knew? The one whose girl works in the palace?”
“Mhm,” Kylara replied. “Her daughter’s day off is tomorrow, so she’s sending her over this way on her way back. She’s only a kitchen maid, but maybe she can get us in contact with someone closer to Naia.”
Loret made a derisive sound. “That’s going to take forever.”
“What do you suggest? That we knock on the front door and ask the regent to send his mistress out, since we need her help in overthrowing him?”
“N-o . . . but isn’t there a faster way? Midsummer’s Eve is only a week away.”
“Not one that doesn’t sound like some crazy adventure story,” Kylara replied. “Those never work in real life. Trust me--I know. What’ve you got there, Durnan?”
“I was just going over some of the later things in Kasole’s book.” Durnan set it down on the table, between the meat and the new bowls. “Especially things about the Sorceress.”
“Speaking of that--” Kylara looked around. “Collo didn’t take his daughter away from all the crazy people, did he?” Although she spoke lightly, it had been weighing on her mind all through her excursion that morning.
“No. She’s sleeping upstairs.”
“Already? It’s only noon. She looked fine this morning at breakfast--talking Armeth’s ear off.”
“She was for most of the morning, but just lately she started getting tired. I told Collo she could sleep in the outer room upstairs--it’s quieter.”
Kylara nodded. “I was thinking of that too. Did Elayza or Mistress Thulla ever figure out what was wrong with her?”
“You’ll have to ask them about that.”
“Whatever’s the matter with her,” Loret said, spitting out a carrot leaf, “it’s draining her quick. I don’t think your life transfer worked so well.”
Kylara bit her lip. Damn. “Well, we’ll just have to do another one,” she said, trying to sound confident.
Durnan gave her a look. “You’re not doing another one so soon, Kylara. I’ll do it.”
“I know that.”
“Just checking.”
“What does that book say about me?” Loret asked.
“It was written six hundred years ago. Why should it say anything about you?”
“The Wily One, I mean.”
He was thinking of himself as the Wily One. Kylara wanted to jump in the air, but made herself bite back even the smile. “Oh. Should have said that in the first place.”
“I thought I did.”
Durnan flipped pages, hiding his own smile. “Here it is.” He read silently for several moments, then turned a few pages backward and ran his finger down the page. “Kylara, do you remember what hashut means?”
“Oh, damn--” Kylara closed her eyes tightly, trying to think. “Eel, I think,” she offered.
Durnan nodded and continued reading.
“Eel?” Loret was disgusted. “It calls me an eel?”
Kylara snickered. “You’re slippery,” she said. “Wiggle out of everything.”
“An eel’s a stupid fish,” Loret muttered.
“You’re called other things,” Durnan said. “Strategist, snake--”
“Kasole likes to do that--call us by several names,” Kylara told Loret’s mutinous face. “It all means the same in the end.”
Durnan’s brows rose. “Clever fox . . .”
Loret blinked. “Let me see.”
“You wouldn’t be able to read it. Besides, I think I’ve got the gist. ‘The eel’s gift is as difficult to determine as the as the man himself.’”
“Oh, that helps.” Loret slumped on the bench, scowling.
“Hush,” Kylara murmured.
Durnan kept reading. “‘It is easy to mistake the events that surround Neshtaht--’”
“What?”
“The name of the first Wily One, it sounds like. ‘--the events that surround Neshtaht as coincidence, luck, or the natural--’” He glanced at Kylara. “Urlemet?”
“Outcome.” Kylara looked it up. “Yeah. Outcome, effect, or product.”
“‘--the natural outcome of events. However, it is carried far beyond the logical extent of this, as is Neshtaht’s natural charm and persusiveness. Also carried far beyond believability is the snake’s gift for attaining and retaining various useful pieces of information, which are tucked away until such time as they are useful.’”
“I thought that was the Scribe,” Kylara said.
“No--the Scribe just remembers everything.”
“Wait. Wait.” Loret pointed at Kylara. “You--get that mind talking thing. And you--” the finger swung towards Durnan, “get that protective instinct. Elayza can do a life transfer, Armeth has visions, the Sorceress can do magic, the Scribe has a perfect memory, and I get luck and charm?”
Durnan ran his finger down the page. “Yes, that’s what it sounds like.”
“But it’s far beyond the logical extent,” Kylara added mischieviously.
Loret made a high-pitched sound and stomped out of the kitchen, muttering.
Durnan ran his finger up to where he’d been reading before. “‘Self-preservation,’” he read aloud, but quietly, “‘is paramount, and the clever fox can always be counted on to finesse his way out of a tight situation and then turn it to his advantage.’” He looked askance at the page, and then laid it flat on the table and pointed to the next sentence. “Am I reading that right?”
Kylara looked over the passage he indicated. “‘Combined with the Protector, the Wily One is the best defensive force the Guardians have. It is essential that these two learn to work together, although they may often be at odds.’” She put her arm around his waist. “Sorry.”
“You’re not sorry at all,” he told her, hugging her back.
She snickered, burying her face in his shoulder. “Nope.”
Chapter 20 Part 2
By mid-afternoon, Jallen had woken from her nap, but Collo confined her to bed. She didn’t take it terribly well.
“But there’s nothing to do,” she whined. “I hate bed.”
“You’re still sick, lusha,” he told her firmly. “You tired yourself out running around this morning. I want you to stay in bed this afternoon. You don’t want to feel worse tomorrow, do you?”
She shook her head, but she still pouted. Collo sighed. In a way, it was encouraging that Jallen was strong enough to chafe at the restrictions he was putting on her, but she wasn’t doing herself any good by it.
Elayza knocked on the door. “Brought something for you, Jallen,” she said.
Jallen made a face. “Does it taste nasty?”
“Jallensha,” Collo murmured.
Elayza laughed softly. “I’ve put honey in it.”
Jallen took a suspicious sniff of the reddish-amber liquid in the sturdy mug. It meeting her approval, she took a cautious sip. “It’s not too bad,” she allowed. “Will it make me sleepy?”
“It shouldn’t.” Elayza felt her forehead. “Are you feeling better since your nap?”
“Yes, but ’Huso is making me stay in bed.”
“He’s absolutely right.”
“Thank you,” Collo said.
“But I’m booooooooooooooooooored,” she moaned, stretching the word out to several syllables.
“Mistress Thulla is looking for some old toys--would that be all right?”
Jallen brightened. “What kind? Does she have a doshkeh set?”
“I don’t . . . think so, but she has some god-dolls.”
Collo looked at her blankly. “Some what?”
“Your people might not have them--they’re little carved and painted dolls, made in the form of the gods. We use them to teach children about the immortals.”
“The only goddess we worship is the Lady Cashka,” Collo said a little coldly. He didn’t like the idea of these city people trying to teach his daughter their ways. “Maybe it would be better not to.”
“They’re just dolls,” Elayza said quietly.
“’Huso?” a soft little voice asked. “Can I play with the dollies?”
She was looking at him with wide, puzzled, and injured eyes. His daughter didn’t know anything about city versus country, about Cashkani versus Trebino. She just wanted to play with dolls, and she couldn’t figure out why her ‘huso was getting angry about it.
He had to look away, and when he did, he saw his mother standing in the doorway, her hands full of wooden dolls. Her stance was wary, as if she might equally easily come in or walk away.
He looked back at his daughter. “Go ahead, lusha,” he said, turning away.
He stared out the window, listening the wooden clatter of the dolls as they changed hands. “They’re pretty,” Jallen said.
His mother laughed a little. “I’ve had them for a very long time. Your father used to play with them.”
“They have dents.”
“He also used to chew on them. He was very young--half your age.”
“He was?”
Collo tensed, waiting again for the revelation of their relationship. He didn’t want Jallen attaching herself to this woman, or to any of the other people in the house. They were going to leave as soon as she was well--leave this godsdamned city, its corrupt regent, and all the people in it.
But all his mother said was, “Even your ‘huso was a baby once.”
Jallen giggled at that. There was more wooden clattering. “This is the Lady!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Look--she’s got magic fire in her hand!”
“So she does.”
“Are these her brothers and sisters, then?”
“I suppose they could be.”
“They are,” Jallen declared. “Look--this is Gzigas, the mama goddess--you can tell because her belly is big. She’s going to have a baby. And here’s Sabadar--he’s blind, but he can see things anyway.”
Collo turned slowly.
“And Ricate--he’s singing. See, he has a harp. And here’s Usabata, with his plant . . .”
He’d never even heard of the names and attributes his daughter was rattling off so easily. Her tone was not that of pretend and storytelling, which he’d heard often enough. This was a matter-of-fact report. How?
“--and Hephat. His mouth is open because he’s telling a story. And these are the Fate ladies--they’ve got three faces--”
How?
“Jallensha?”
She looked up. “Yes?”
For a moment, he couldn’t quite formulate words, but could only gesture helplessly at the little wooden dolls. They were almost ridiculously simple--little tube bodies with round heads glued on top, painted simply with dot eyes and rough pictures of their particular characteristic. Only somebody well-versed with them would be able to tell who they were. “How--how do you know these things?” he managed finally. “Who told you?”
She giggled at that. “They did!”
His eyes flickered to his mother and Elayza, listening to their conversation with puzzled looks. He suddenly realized that he’d been so rattled that he’d spoken in Cashkani, which he hadn’t meant to do in this house, and Jallen had naturally answered in the same language. “You told my daughter about your city gods already?” he said sharply in Trebino, knowing even as he accused them that it was impossible--he’d been with her all morning.
“Not them, ‘huso,” Jallen corrected with six-year-old exasperation at adult density. She patted the dolls on her lap. “They did.”
“The . . . dolls,” he said flatly. Oh, Lady . . . this was going from strange to downright bizarre.
“No! They’re just dolls! The real ones. The Lady’s brothers and sisters. And the Fate ladies,” she added conscientiously. “They’re not really the Lady’s sisters.”
Collo felt as the world had turned on its head. His daughter was usually so normal . . . of course, she played pretend fairly often, but that wasn’t unusual. And now she was talking to gods . . .
She looked around. “Where’s the last one?”
“Those are all there are, Jallen,” Mistress Thulla said. “There are only seven in the set.”
“Oh. Well--that’s all right, they don’t like him anyway.”
Collo’s eyes landed on Kylara, who had come in sometime during Jallen’s dissertation and was standing by the door, listening. Her eyes were wide and surprised.
“Who is he, Jallen?” she asked. “The one that’s missing.”
“He’s the Lady’s last brother,” Jallen answered. “He’s not nice. He did nasty things.”
“When?”
“A long time ago. He’s locked up now.” She looked up and must have seen the look on Collo’s face. “’Huso? Are you mad?”
“I--I’m just surprised. You never told me any of this, lusha.”
“It was while I was sick. When I would go to sleep--that’s when they started talking to me.” She bit her lip. “They’re nice, ‘huso. They teach me things.”
When she went to sleep? Were they dreams, the made-up stories of a little girl with a large imagination and not many people to share it with? Or did the gods of the city truly visit his daughter when she slept?
But why? What would city gods have to teach a Cashkan child?
“Do you want to see?”
He had to swallow twice before he could say, “Yes, lusha, I think I would.”
She cupped her hands together, as if she was hiding a firefly in their depths, and stared at them ferociously. “Tumat,” she whispered. “Tumat megasta.”
Collo didn’t recognize the words his daughter spoke, but Kylara jolted.
Jallen lifted her hand and smiled at the butterfly that rested, glittering, in her palm. “Isn’t it pretty?” She looked up again. “It’s not real, ‘huso. It’s a--” she bit her lip. “A pretend thing.”
“An illusion?” Kylara asked.
“Is that it, ‘huso?”
“Yes,” Collo answered automatically. It could have been exactly wrong for all he knew. He was too busy staring at that butterfly--that beautiful illusion his daughter had created out of thin air.
Illusion was simple. Illusion was the first thing a Cashkan child learned when they got their magic, because it was so simple, and so fleeting. No illusion had ever gotten out of magical control and decimated a town, as had been known to happen with other things. The whole reason city people thought the mountains were so overpopulated with strange creatures was because Cashkan children were practicing their illusions.
But Jallen is k’agthus, he thought wildly. She is without magic, because I am and Hylath was. Even if she were not, she is six years shy of the onset of magic in normal children. How can this be so?
He sat down, hard, on the chair directly behind him.
“It goes away when you stop concentrating,” Jallen announced, and blew. The butterfly shattered into glittering dust that itself winked out of existence. She looked at him proudly, expecting praise for her accomplishment.
Oh . . . lady . . . why her? Why my child?
“It was beautiful, lusha.” Weak, but all he could manage. “How do you do that?”
Jallen shrugged. “I just concentrate, and tell it to happen. The Lady gave me the words.” She yawned, her eyes drooping. “It makes me tired sometimes though.”
“Maybe you’d better go to sleep,” Elayza suggested gently, taking the mug of tea from her hands and the dolls off her blankets.
Her earlier objections forgotten, Jallen agreeably put her head on the pillow. Automatically, Collo got up and crossed the room to kiss her temple before her eyes closed. “Good sleep, lusha,” he whispered.
“Good sleep, ‘huso,” she answered drowsily.
Kylara found Collo on the bench just outside the front door. He was sitting watching the sun set, his arms crossed over his chest and his face blank.
She thought about sitting down on the bench next to him, but something about his forbidding stance stopped her. She opted to lean against the doorjamb instead.
“So,” she said. “That was . . . a shock.”
Only his lips moved. “Yes.”
She’d always heard that the Cashkani were notoriously stone-faced, and now she believed it. She couldn’t read him at all. She didn’t know what to say.
“It’s not as if this is just going to go away if you want it to, you know,” she said after a moment. “Believe me, I know. Durnan had a hell of a time talking me into doing this.”
He didn’t seem impressed by that.
She bit her lip, remembering some of the hard truths that had been borne upon her several weeks ago. “What I’m saying is, Jallen will be the Sorceress whatever you do. The dark god will come, whatever you do. All this stuff is already in motion, and you can’t stop it. Our best chance of stopping him is with her, and that’s where you come in.”
Collo finally spoke. “Can you honestly promise me that my child will live through this?”
An unequivocal yes hovered at the back of her throat. A lie.
She thought of the still-shifting sixth stone of the Amulet. She thought of the empty hole in the group.
Then she thought of the stories of the dark god, and Armeth’s whispered “Blood”. She thought of Jallen’s childish adoration of her ‘huso, and the way he in turn looked at her--as if she were his entire world, and the sun and the stars besides.
“No,” she admitted in a hoarse whisper.
“Then how can you possibly expect me to just give my daughter to you?”
She couldn’t. That was the damnable part of it. She just couldn’t.
He got up and went back into the house, leaving her alone.
Chapter 20 Part 3
Teas and naps notwithstanding, Jallen grew steadily weaker throughout that night and the next day. When she didn’t wake up from her afternoon nap, Elayza was forced to give her some of Durnan’s life. The amount she had to take left him weak and shaky, more so than the last time had left Kylara. It was getting worse.
“And we still don’t know what it is,” Elayza said. The bewilderment was plain on her face.
Kylara accepted the steaming mug of dragonclaw and redflower tea Mistress Thulla passed to her, and pushed it into Durnan’s unresisting hands. It was severely unsettling her to see Durnan this wobbly--she was so used to leaning on him, as if he were another variety of brick wall. Even when he’d stayed up all night with the protective instinct screaming in his head, he been sturdy and strong. Now his tanned skin was pale, and his eyes looked a little glazed.
“Drink it,” she told him, and he was able to laugh a little as he did so. The laugh comforted her.
Armeth was sitting cross-legged on his cot, watching the drama pensively. Every so often, his eyes would flicker to Jallen.
“We’ve even gone through all your books on medicine, Kylara,” Elayza continued. “There’s just nothing that makes any sense for this.”
Loret was on his back with his feet up against the wall. Between him, Armeth, Jallen, and Collo, Kylara’s outer room was getting crowded. “Maybe it’s got something to do with her,” he suggested.
“Of course it does,” Kylara said.
“I mean with her gift,” Loret said impatiently. “What does that damn book say?”
“I don’t know--we didn’t look.”
“Well, why not?”
“Look, we are a little busy, you know. If you want to know, read it yourself.”
“You know I can’t read that.”
“Then learn.”
He swore at her and stomped out of the room. Five minutes later, he bellowed up the stairs, “There’s someone here for you!”
“Don’t yell,” she hissed at him when she got to the first floor. “Jallen’s still asleep.”
“Gods, you couldn’t wake that kid up with a dragon on top of her. Me yelling up the stairs is nothing.”
At the moment, Kylara was definitely sympathizing with Durnan. “Who is it?”
“Who’s what?”
She was going to kill him. Or at least seriously injure him. “At the door.”
“Oh. She’s outside.”
Definitely death. Kylara opened the door. “Magda! Sorry. Come in.”
Magda Letheta, the daughter of the woman Kylara had talked to the morning before, came in. Kylara remembered her as a plump little airheaded creature, and it didn’t look like the first two of those attributes had changed any. “Hello, Kylara,” she said, looking at her clothing and short hair askance. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Have a seat if you want it. I take it your mum gave you the message?”
“Yes, but I don’t know what I could do for you.” Magda’s eyes flickered to the fire, where Loret was lying playing with the cat. She smoothed her hair and sent him a flirtatious smile. He didn’t notice.
“Magda, we--I need to get in touch with Naia.”
That got her attention. “Naia?” she repeated, her lip curling. “The ‘lady’ Naia? The Regent’s whore?”
That was the second time she’d been referred to as such, and Kylara didn’t like it. All right, Naia had been a prostitute and was presently the Regent’s mistress, but there was no need to be nasty about it. She was a Guardian, dammit. “Yes--that Naia,” she said impatiently.
“What do you need her for?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain. I just need to talk to her. Can you help?”
“But I’m just a maid.”
“But you know what goes on in the palace, don’t you? I mean, you see things, and hear things?”
“I don’t know.”
“You hear nothing?” Kylara found that hard to believe. Magda, in addition to being a flirt and a twit, was an incorrigible gossip. It was half the reason Kylara had gone to Mistress Letheta.
Magda shrugged, twirling her hair around her finger. “A little, I guess.”
“How often does Naia go out?”
“For what?”
“Shopping, walking--I don’t know.”
“Every now and then, I guess.”
“Every few days? Every few hours? Every few weeks?”
“Every few days . . . I think.”
From his corner, Loret snickered. Can’t get any water out of an empty well, Kylara.
Hush, or I’ll --
What? Chunk your sandal at my head?
Worse--I’ll tell her you think she’s sexy.
Shit!
Kylara said to Magda, “Can you get word to me, the next time she goes out?”
“Well . . . I guess . . .”
“Please?”
“Well . . .”
“She says she’ll do it,” Kylara reported to the others a few minutes later. “Although whether she’ll remember, or do it on time, is another story. I’m going to call in a few more markers, just to make sure.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Durnan?”
“I sent him to bed,” Elayza reported. “Kylara, how much time do we have until Midsummer’s Eve?”
“It’s down to days now. Six.”
“And we still have no idea what might work to defeat the dark god.”
“Believe me, I’m working on it.”
Loret had come upstairs after her, and was leaning against the door, idly petting the cat. Now he spoke, his voice unexpectedly quiet and thoughtful. “Is there a way?”
The room suddenly seemed darker and smaller. The lamp flames hunched over in their glass homes, and the shadows then born bounced and danced strangely. Everyone looked to Kylara.
Kylara looked back at them, helplessly. It didn’t help that she’d wondered the same thing herself several times now. “There has to be,” she said, and heard the self-doubt in her own voice. “There has to be.”
The thought preyed on her mind all night. Damn Loret, anyway, she thought crossly, turning over.
That’s his job, another part of her mind thought. He’s the strategist. Trust him to find any possible holes.
It had startled her a little when everyone had automatically looked to her at Loret’s words. As if she would know what to do, or what to say.
You’re their leader, said that annoying, reasonable portion of her mind. Of course they’re going to look to you. The Seeker isn’t only the one who finds them, they’re the one who leads them.
What if the leader doesn’t know what to do?
Then she’d better find out fast, hmm? You’re responsible for them--all of them. You got them into this. It’s your job to make sure they get out alive.
We’re facing a god.
Other Guardians have done it before.
But I’m not them!
Don’t you think they might have been scared and unsure of themselves?
I don’t know.
Durnan’s sleepy voice came out of the dark. “What’s wrong?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Are you feeling all right? You looked terrible this evening . . .”
“Stop trying to change the subject. You’re all tense.” He took her hand in the dark, under the covers, and just held it. “It’s not nothing.”
“What if I can’t do this?” she blurted. “What if the Fates got it wrong?”
“What if the sky should fall?” he retorted.
She shoved him. “I mean it.”
“I know you do.” He put his arms around her and pulled her into the warmth of his body. “The Fates didn’t get it wrong, Kylara. You can do this. I know you can.”
“Yes, but do I know I can?”
“You forget, too, that it’s not you alone. We’re all with you. That’s the point. We’re all in this together.”
She thought about it a moment, and then smiled. “Even Loret,” she teased him.
He made a noise halfway between a grumble and a groan, and she laughed.
“Are you going to sleep now?” he asked, and his voice was warm.
“Only if you are.”
In spite of Durnan’s reassurance, it still preyed on her mind to the point of restlessness and ill-temper. Everyone noticed.
“What bug crawled up your butt and died?” Loret finally asked late the next day.
Kylara couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed at his lack of tact. She was driving herself crazy. “I’m just . . . I don’t know.”
“Going loopy?”
“Shut up.”
Loret looked around the room. Every possible surface, including Jallen’s cot--vacant because she’d insisted on going outside when she’d woken up--was covered with open books. The shelves were bare and forlorn. “Look, you want some help or something with all this?”
It startled Kylara, and she blinked at him. “How?”
“What are you looking for?”
“A charm. A spell. A . . . ward . . . gods, I don’t really know.”
Loret picked up a book. “You’re probably not going to find it in Medicinal Plants of the Karbush Plains.”
He read the title haltingly and carefully, but he read it. “Hey, you read that off the front!”
“I’ve been getting better.”
In three days? On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t so surprising . . . he was the Wily One, with the accompanying brains. “What have you been practicing with?”
“Your books,” Loret said belligerantly. “Got a problem with that?”
“Nope, not a one.”
He deflated. He must have been expecting a scolding.
“I’ve gone through everything,” she continued. “I don’t know what to do, or even what to look for.”
“Let us look,” Durnan said, picking up Arithmancy and its Uses. “Go take a break.”
“Yeah,” Loret put in. “Take a walk, and quit making us crazy.”
Gracelessly as it was given, it was good advice, and Kylara decided to take it. “I’ll stop in on some people,” she told Durnan. “I want to hedge my bets with Magda.”
“Good luck,” he told her. “Be careful."
After dropping in at various homes, which were all surprised to see her, Kylara kept walking. She was still restless and jumpy--not nervous or on edge, but filled with sizzling energy that didn’t know where to go. Her father had had a word to describe that state, when he’d been alive: squiffly. It was a nonsense word, but it fit. Grackin Marzen had always been squiffly before a big job. He’d told her that it gave him that extra edge.
This could be the biggest job of all, Papy, she thought ruefully.
She missed her father, suddenly, and so keenly that tears filmed her eyes. She didn’t remember her mother, but she’d never felt the lack. Papy had raised her literally as best as he could. He’d made her the center of his life, giving her love that had wrapped around her like a thick cloak, so omnipresent that when he’d died, a great hole had been ripped in her life--a hole that hadn’t been healed until just recently.
He would have liked Durnan, she thought, smiling and ducking her head as she walked. As different as Durnan was from her father, he would have liked him. He would have teased the younger man’s seriousness, and done his best to make him laugh, and made him feel like a son. He would have liked the rest of the Guardians too, for their different personalities and talents.
His gang of thieves had been like that--a mosaic of dispositions and skills, no two alike. But he’d managed to both hold them together and make them work more efficiently then they ever could have on their own. Hopefully, he’d passed some of that skill down to Kylara.
She looked up, and realized that she was in front of the house of Fate, in Godstown. Had she wandered that far?
She’d never been in it--at least, not that she could recall. Her father must have brought her here at birth for the traditional ceremony, but other than that, it wasn’t a place she even thought of very often.
Nor did anyone else, she realized, looking at the empty interior. There was a servant of Fate at the doorway, looking bored, but nobody had brought their newborn to be carried three times around the flame today.
She went in.
The triangular flame pit was the only feature of the room. Even the walls were plain. Fate didn’t particularly care about decorations, or about donations.
Kylara paced forward until the heat of the great, roaring Fate-flame was beating in waves on her face, hotter than the heat of the day. Then she stopped.
Somewhere along her walk, the tie had come out of her hair, and it hung loose around her face, drifting and fluttering in the hot breeze from the core of the fire. She made no move to brush it away, but stared into the flames.
Why had she come here? Some part of her mind must have known which way she was coming, but not the conscious part. Maybe the maddeningly calm voice that had answered her back the night before, the one that sounded like Durnan’s.
“Are you there?”
Did the Fates listen to prayers?
“Look, I know you don’t have worshippers or whatever, but I hope you listen to me. I mean, I’m your champion and everything--it would just be common courtesy, right?”
Was she praying? It didn’t feel like it.
“Durnan said you can’t get things wrong. I hope he was right.”
An errant breeze tossed smoke her way. It stung in her eyes and caught at her throat, and she coughed and blinked. “Was that a sign?”
The flame made no answer.
She sighed. “You put together a hell of a group, you know that? Or did the gods do it themselves, and you just chose me?”
Again, no answer.
“I’m not complaining, you know. Loret’s entertainment value more than makes up for his attitude. But I mean, there’s Loret, and then there’s Durnan, you know? And gods, Armeth . . . and Jallen. Actually, Jallen’s fine, it’s just Collo.” She sighed. “An ex-scribe,” she mused, “two freed slaves, a street thief, a mad boy, a dying Cashkani girl, and the Regent’s whore. What a group we are.”
She fell silent, staring into the heart of the flame. It was black, she realized. Strange.
“Are we going to do this?” she asked quietly. “I’m sure you know. Not that you’ll tell me, of course.” She shrugged. “I guess I’ll find out in the end.”
The air outside felt blessedly cool after the heat of the Fate-flame. The servant of Fate sitting at the door was looking at her strangely as she left, and Kylara gave him a wide smile. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”
She was nearly home when Durnan’s voice leapt into her mind. Kylara!
What is it?
Come home quickly.
Kylara broke into a run, dodging around other pedestrians. I’m on my way. Is something wrong?
No--it’s Naia.
Naia? What about her?
She’s here.
Magda actually did what she said she’d do? You caught up with her?
No, Naia came to us!
What? Kylara passed the fountain, crossed the square, and pushed open the door.
She skidded to a stop on the threshold. There, at the plain kitchen table, sat the beautiful woman they’d seen the other day--golden hair, pale skin, red lips, and all. She looked horribly out of place. Even the plain white dress she wore looked more expensive than anything Kylara had ever owned.
Naia looked up, and then stood, smoothing down her dress. “You’re Kylara, aren’t you?”
“Yes. You’re Naia.” She remembered to close the door behind her, but only just. “Magda told you about us?”
“Was that her name? Yes.”
Something occurred to Kylara. “Does the Regent know you’re here?”
Naia’s mouth twisted, and her eyes went as hard as polished sapphires. “I doubt he would care. He threw me out this morning.”
Chapter 21 Part 1
“I thought at first that I’d have to go back to the Whore Pits.” Naia had to suppress a shudder at that thought. She was never going back there. She’d spent too much of her life in the gutter already. “But then the little kitchen maid found me, and told me where to go. It was the luck of the gods.”
“You’re more right then you know, Naia. Have you ever heard of the Guardians?”
“The Guardians? Yes. I’ve read of them.”
“You can read?”
“I learned when I was very young.”
“How?”
“My mother was mistress to a rich man, and one day, I was making too much noise for his taste. So he gave me a book and told me to look at it until he was done.” Naia smiled a little wistfully. Dear old Nershab . . . one of the very few good men she’d ever known.
“So he taught you how to read?”
“Oh, no. I taught myself.”
“Can you write, too?”
“Nershab taught me that when he realized I could read. But what do the Guardians have to do with me? Or you?”
“I’m the Seeker,” Kylara said baldly. “And you, it appears, are the Scribe.”
“A Guardian?” Naia whispered, and sat down hard. “A Guardian.”
In a few minutes, all the Guardians had invaded the kitchen, studying Naia with curious eyes. She was introduced, as food was put on the table.
Confusion reigned, and Naia sat watching, trying to sort out all the Guardians in her head. She knew Durnan as the dark-haired man who had answered the door, and his sister was Elayza, and the red-headed boy was . . . Armeth? No, no, Loret, and the small, shy boy was Armeth. The Cashkani child who kept trying to play with her hair was Jallen, and her father, who kept trying to pull his daughter away and looked at Naia with cool, flat eyes, was Collo.
“Armeth, can you get the bowls out?” Kylara took up the ladle.
“Oh, wait, let me add some sage to that stew,” someone exclaimed. “Loret, the sage is in the stillroom--can you get me some?”
“Why me?” But Loret disappeared for a moment, and reappeared with a branch of dark green dried leaves.
“Watch out, it’s hot,” Durnan warned, holding the bowls.
Someone set a steaming, fragrant bowl in front of her, and Naia looked up. “Thank you--um--Elayza.”
The cat-eyed girl smiled at her. “You’re welcome. Eat while it’s hot.”
“Spoons,” Kylara called out, and slid one down the table to Naia, who just caught it as it skated by. “Who’s got the butter?”
Loret said over his shoulder, “I wouldn’t eat it--Ugly left a mouse in it this morning.”
There was a chorus of Ugh’s, and the bread was passed around without butter. It was heavy and coarse, and a little dry. Naia soaked it in her stew before putting it in her mouth. She was surprised at the flavors that pervaded the simple vegetable-and-water soup. There was a little meat, but not much.
Kylara leaned over. “How do you like it?”
“It’s very good,” Naia said, and heard the surprise in her own voice. “I didn’t know you could get this much flavor without meat.”
“Meat’s awfully pricey nowadays.” Kylara hooked a thumb at Elayza. “Plus, she’s a goddess with herbs. Who needs meat?”
Elayza laughed and blushed a little. “It’s not that hard.”
“I couldn’t do it,” Naia told her.
Jallen was nibbling at her bread. “’Huso, can I have honey?”
The Cashkani man said, “You had enough this morning. Honey’s too expensive, Jallensha.”
Naia had heard times were hard, but in the palace, it had all seemed very distant. She dipped her bread in the stew again.
“So what now, fearless leader?” It was Loret, talking with his mouth full. “Now that the company is all together. What do we do?”
Kylara swallowed and said, “We have five days, right? Not much time, but it’s still good.”
“What’s in five days?” Naia asked.
“Midsummer’s Eve,” Durnan replied.
Kylara elaborated. “It’s the time when magic is the most . . . alive. Anything can happen. We figure that’ll be the night that the dark god makes his move to break out.”
Naia stared. “The . . . who?"
“The dark god . . . Did you ever read about this?”
“I knew there was some god that the Guardians opposed--but isn’t he locked up?”
“That’s the thing--the cage is loosening. If he gets out--who knows?”
A soft, serious little voice said, “Bad things. He’ll do bad things.” It was Armeth, staring down at his half-eaten food. Elayza brushed his hair out of his eyes.
“And you think he’ll try and get out on Midsummer’s Eve,” Naia said.
“I’m almost sure of it,” Kylara said.
“What are you doing about it, then?”
“That’s the tricky part,” Loret put in. “We don’t know.”
Kylara shot him a quelling look. “We’re going to find out, though. Naia, can you read Old Kashlan?”
“No, I never had the chance to learn. I don’t speak anything but Trebino.”
“That’s all right, we’ll find a use for you.”
Collo said abruptly, “Jallensha, it’s time for bed.”
The little girl’s drooping eyes flew open. “But ‘huso, it’s still light out!”
“You’re about to fall asleep. Come on now.”
“No, I’m not--’huso, I want to hear about the dark god--”
“Jallensha, now.”
Naia was no expert on children, or for that matter parents, but Collo’s voice was much harder and more irritated then a moment of childish resistence to going to bed warranted.
Jallen’s shoulders sagged, and she allowed herself to be picked up. “Goo’nite,” she said sadly, to the rest of the table.
As they exited the kitchen, Naia said in a low voice, “Was he angry about something?”
Kylara’s face was dark. “He doesn’t want her to be a part of this.”
“Why not?”
Kylara sighed and rubbed her temple. “I have to come clean with you, Naia--our chances going into this are not good.”
Naia’s brows drew together. “How not good is not good?”
“Really really not good,” Loret said.
Kylara turned to Naia. “All right, here’s the way it is.” She counted on her fingers. “First, we’re up against a god. There’s no way of getting around that. It’s basically the definition of our quest. He has powers and resources that we mere mortals just don’t. Second, Midsummer’s Eve is just a guess. It could be tomorrow. It could be tonight. Thanks to Armeth, we know that the spirit world and our world are converging at the moment.” She looked at the opening to the hallway where Collo had disappeared. “Third,” she said sadly, “the group’s still not complete.”
Loret was chewing the dog-end of the bread. “I say we grab her and make a run for it,” he said with his mouth full.
“To where? Think, Loret. And Jallen might be intrigued with us now, but she’ll throw a tantrum all over the landscape if we try to take her away from her ‘huso.” Kylara thought about that. “Not that I blame her,” she added.
Loret snorted. “We’re doing good,” he said.
Elayza said softly, “Not so badly. One, this god has been imprisoned before.”
“That’s right,” Durnan said. “The First Gathering did it. And the last Guardians did it.”
“At the expense of their lives,” Loret said.
Kylara rolled her eyes. “Loret, you can stop being a little ray of sunshine any time now. I’m sure the god has weaknesses. He must.”
Loret sat up. “Wait a minute. Did you know anything about what the Regent was doing?”
The question was directed at Naia, who was taken aback. “I--I--no . . . he never told me anything.”
“Yeah, I guess he had better things to do than talk. Ow!” He glared at Kylara.
“Two,” Kylara said quickly, “Midsummer’s Eve is an educated guess. It’s the likeliest date.”
“And third?” Naia asked. “You meant Jallen?”
“Yeah. I’m not really sure what to do on that one--he’s dead set against it. I can’t blame him. But we need all of us. The book was very clear on that.”
The door opened, and the middle-aged woman who came through looked at Naia and smiled. “Another one, Kylara?”
Kylara laughed unselfconsciously. “I know. You’re overrun.”
Naia tensed. The woman was the kind of comfortable, plump, middle-class woman who invariably spit at her in the streets or whispered behind their hands, with hard looks shot in her direction. A decent woman. She hadn’t expected a decent woman in this place, where girls dressed as men and Cashkani sat at the same table with normal people. She felt vaguely betrayed, which was ridiculous. She felt it all the same.
“My dears, I’ve been overrun for awhile.” The woman set down her bag and held her hand out to Naia. “I’m Mistress Thulla--the landlady, for lack of a better word. You must be Naia.”
The extended hand startled Naia, who was not used to such courtesy. She looked at it for a moment. “How--how did you know my name?”
“Oh, I heard all about you.”
Naia looked at her hand again, feeling disoriented. She took it, finally, and Mistress Thulla shook with no visible reluctance.
“You’re lucky that you’re the last one, dear,” she said, sitting down in the space Collo had vacated. “I think I’m running low on cots.”
“Yeah, and the upstairs room is getting crowded with all of us in there,” Loret said.
“Live with it. Speaking of which, I’d better go set it up.” Kylara got up and took her bowl to the counter. “Mistress Thulla, do you need any food?”
“Not at the moment. I’ll serve myself after you’re all through.”
“All right.”
As if it were a signal, everyone started getting up and taking their bowls to the counter. Naia sat until Loret, passing by her, said, “Hey, this isn’t the palace, you know. Do your own work.”
“You’re a fine one to talk, Loret,” Elayza called over her shoulder. “When you whine about even wiping out your own bowl.”
“Yeah, but I at least pick it up.”
Naia took the hint and picked up her own bowl to take it to the counter. She had to wait to stack it, since Armeth had knocked the pile of spoons off the counter, and was kneeling to pick them up.
She hadn’t eaten very much--she never did. The bowl, although cheap, was as solid and heavy as a brick, and it suddenly slid through her fingers and plummeted towards Armeth’s vulnerable skull.
She barely had time to gasp before Durnan had caught it with both hands. Some of the stew splashed on the floor, but most stayed in the bowl.
“Oh! I’m so sorry--I don’t know how it happened--”
“That’s all right.” Durnan looked down at Armeth. “Are you all right?”
Armeth, staring wide-eyed, nodded.
“See? No harm done.”
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?” Durnan took the bowl over to a slop bin in the corner and dumped it out, scraping the sides with her spoon.
“You were standing three feet away with your back turned. How--?”
“Durnan has a demon,” said Armeth’s serious little voice. He was on his feet, clutching the spoons, and his face was solemn. “It tells him when we’re in trouble.”
“Armeth,” Durnan said gently. “What did I tell you?”
“’Snot a demon,” the little boy murmured.
“And . . . ?”
“And neither’re mine.”
“That’s right.” Durnan took the spoons from him and set them on the counter.
Naia followed him into the hall a few minutes later. “Do you really know when they’re in trouble?”
“Yes.” He shrugged. “It’s just--an instinct.”
“And you just--know.”
“Any time, any place. I know.” He smiled at her gently. “You’re included in that, you know. You’re a Guardian.”
Naia dropped her eyes. She didn’t feel like a Guardian. She felt like the last piece of the puzzle, the one that wouldn’t quite fit when the puzzle was put together, but nobody knew it yet.
He said, “You’ll get used to it.”
She shrugged a little and looked up through her lashes at him. “So where do you sleep?”
Puzzlement flared in his eyes. “Upstairs.”
She sauntered a step closer and put her hand lightly on his upper arm. “In the same room where I’ll sleep?”
He looked down at her hand as if it were a strange and unnatural thing. “No.” He took her wrist and lifted her hand off his arm. Then he turned and went upstairs.
Naia’s face burned hot, and she started to follow him.
“I wouldn’t,” Loret’s voice said from behind her.
Naia turned, brushing her hair back from her face in a movement meant to cover her humiliation. “Wouldn’t what?”
Loret snorted. “Don’t even try to deny it.”
“All right, I won’t.”
“The thing is, Durnan’s bunking with Kylara. So not only is he not in need of any more, she’ll break your face if she thinks you even want to try.”
“Well. Thanks for the warning.” Naia put her hand on her hip and gave him the once-over, from his fiery head to his narrow feet and back up again. “I don’t suppose you . . .”
He looked at her with flat, cool eyes. “When I want some, I’ll get a woman with blood in her veins instead of ice water.” He brushed past her and went up the stairs after Durnan.
Chapter 21 Part 2
In the morning, Naia was still asleep even after Jallen had grumbled her way out of bed.
“I hope she’s not sick,” Kylara said, staring at her.
“Nah,” Loret said. “She’s just sleeping in.” He leaned over. “Hey, you! Get up!”
With her eyes still closed, she batted ineffectually at the air. “Go away, Hylas,” she mumbled into her own pillow. “I’ll have you whipped if you wake me up before noon.”
Loret smirked. “I’m not Hylas. You can’t have me beaten.”
Naia groaned and pulled the blankets over her head. To Kylara’s surprise, Loret picked up Armeth’s pillow and swatted her with it.
“Dammit, Hylas!” Naia sat up and scooped her hair off her face. “Oh--!”
“No Hylas here,” Kylara said.
“What time is it?”
“About eight or nine.” Kylara had been up for almost three hours.
Naia made a noise of disgust and flopped back down again. Loret, with a little more glee than was strictly called for, swatted her a second time. “You are getting up.”
From under her hair, Naia said, “Listen, you, if the gods had wanted me to get up at this unholy hour, they wouldn’t have made it so early!”
“Who said anything about the gods? We want you to get up!”
After several more minutes of haranguing, and not a few energetic swats from Loret and his pillow, she finally threw the blankets aside and sat up. Her hair was sticking out in every direction, including directly up. “Fine. I’m up. Are you happy?”
“Yeah,” Loret tossed the pillow aside. “Damn--you’re worse then Jallen, and she’s six years old.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and patted her hair. Her mouth fell open at the rat’s nest that met her touch. “Oh my gods! I must look awful!”
“You sure do,” Loret told her.
She ignored him and asked Kylara, “Do you have a mirror?”
A mirror? “No, but I have a comb and some string. You can braid it.”
“Braid it?” The look of horror on her face made Kylara laugh.
“Yeah, it’d be simpler.”
“And plainer. I do have my pride,” Naia said haughtily, taking the comb Kylara handed her.
“A lot of good that did you,” Loret muttered.
Kylara shot him a narrow-eyed look. Be nice or shut up.
Why? he wanted to know. She’s getting on my nerves.
I don’t care. We’ve all got to work with each other, whether we want to or not. Besides, you’re not exactly the most charming person in the world yourself.
What’s that supposed to mean?
You’re the Wily One. You figure it out.
Loret snorted and walked out, and Kylara sat down on the end of Naia’s cot. “Sorry about that.”
Naia was carefully working the comb through her hair, one section at a time from the bottom up. “It’s fine,” she said unconvincingly.
“He’s just like that,” Kylara tried to explain. “If you give as good as you get, he’ll leave you alone eventually.”
“I know about boys that age,” Naia said. “You don’t have to explain to me.”
She probably did, Kylara realized. Prostitutes didn’t get to pick their clients--it was the other way around. Her experience with men of all ages probably outstripped Kylara’s by years. Not probably--definitely. “Naia, how old were you when you--” She stopped.
“Started whoring?” Naia pulled the comb straight through the first section of hair without a snag, and started on the bottom of the next one.
“Yes. Elayza said she heard something to the effect that you were eleven, but--”
“That would be about right.” The comb paused in Naia’s hair, and she squinted into the sunlight. “Yes. Eleven.” She started combing again.
“Why were you so young?”
Naia’s voice was airy. “My mother decided it was time I made my own living.”
Kylara was horrified. “Your mother? Why the hell would she do a thing like that?”
“Why not? My grandmother did.” Naia’s chin lifted. “I come from a long line of whores, Kylara. I was just following the family business.” She switched sections again. “And I’ve beaten them all.”
Kylara looked down at the light summer blanket she sat on. One corner was fraying, and she started toying with the threads. “The--men. That you--”
“Serviced,” Naia said. “What about them?”
Kylara swallowed. “What did you think of them?”
“I didn’t think anything of them.” Naia tugged ferociously at a snag. “They were just men.”
“Just men,” Kylara repeated doubtfully, eying Naia’s battle with the snag.
“They got what they paid for and left. Agh!” The snag came loose with an audible ripping sound. Naia made a face and pulled it out of the teeth of the comb and dropped it on the floor.
Kylara picked it up and tossed it at the fireplace. “What about the Regent?”
Something hot and hard flared to life in Naia’s eyes before she dropped them. “He was just another one.” She swiped the comb through her hair from scalp to tips several times, and set it aside. “Where was that string?”
“On the table.”
Naia looked at her for several minutes. “Well?”
Kylara got annoyed. “Well what? Get it yourself.”
Naia huffed and climbed off the bed. “Honestly,” she muttered, unwinding the string from its ball. “Do you have scissors? Or a knife?”
“Scissors. Also on the table.”
“This is awfully plain,” Naia complained, cutting herself a length of string. “Don’t you have any ribbons?”
“Naia, who’s here to impress? We don’t really care. You don’t have to be so picky about what you look like.”
Naia gave her a withering look over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
Naia’s lips curled a little, scornfully. “Look at you. Honestly.”
Kylara got to her feet, enjoying the way she towered over the other woman. “I like it all right. So does Durnan. That’s all I care about.”
Naia rolled her eyes and started a thumb-width braid at her temple. “You don’t really think he’ll be around forever, do you?”
“Actually, yes.”
“He’ll get tired of you soon. He might say he loves you now, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Believe me, Durnan never says anything he doesn’t mean.”
Naia gave her a deeply pitying look. “All men do. They’re just like that.”
Kylara said quietly, “Durnan is not all men. He’s not perfect, but neither is he the kind of lying bastard you’re obviously used to.”
“How different could he be?” Naia finished the braid and tied it off with string. “They’re all alike.”
“Maybe you should wait before you go around generalizing.”
“And maybe you should take the blindfold off.”
Hot rage boiled up from Kylara’s stomach, but she forced herself to bite it back. It would just make things difficult if she really let loose on Naia, who obviously wasn’t going to change her opinion without a sledgehammer. She took several deep breaths to calm herself, and then said levelly, “When you’re done grooming yourself, put the string and the scissors back in the trunk over there. And it would be a good idea to at least fold up your blankets.”
“That’s maids’ work,” Naia said rudely.
“Unfortunately, it’s the maid’s year off. So you’ll just have to do it yourself.” Kylara turned on her heel and left the room.
Chapter 21 Part 3
Armeth sat in the corner of the outer room, his chin resting on his knees. At his feet, Loret’s cat was systematically destroying a towel, complete with ferocious growling sounds. Armeth couldn’t even bring himself to smile.
He’d seen that girl--the one with the golden hair--somewhere before. He didn’t know where or when, but he’d seen her.
Or had he seen her? In a vision?
He still wasn’t sure if everything he’d seen had been true. It used to be . . . but then Durnan had shown him how they could be changed, and the demons proved wrong. So Armeth wasn’t sure anymore.
A piercing whisper caught his attention. “Hi, kitty!”
It was Jallen, creeping along the wall on her hands and knees. She looked better than she had earlier, before Elayza had given her some of Durnan’s life. The cat, sensing an imminent petting, abandoned the defeated towel and leapt up on the counter.
Jallen’s mouth turned down. “Kitty,” she beseeched. “Come down here, kitty!”
“She doesn’t want to,” Armeth told her. “She’ll scratch you if you make her mad.”
Jallen sighed and sat down next to him, crossing her legs under her dress. “Where’d that lady come from?” she asked him.
Armeth had been listening to Durnan and Kylara’s conversation with her for awhile. “She used to live in the palace, but the Regent made her leave.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“She said it was because she wasn’t pretty enough anymore.”
Jallen subjected Naia to an intense scrutiny. “I think she’s pretty,” she announced.
Armeth nodded. She was really pretty. Adults were just strange.
“Maybe that’s why ‘huso doesn’t like her,” Jallen continued. “He told me not to talk to her.”
“Durnan likes her. He’s talking to her.” That settled it as far as Armeth was concerned. Durnan wouldn’t be wrong.
Jallen started toying with her braid. “’Huso doesn’t like Durnan either,” she said in a subdued voice.
Armeth was appalled. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. He won’t tell me. He doesn’t like any of you. He doesn’t want to be here.” Armeth only had a moment to feel sick to his stomach--was it because of him?--before Jallen continued, “Whenever Kylara says anything about me being a Guardian, like you, he gets mad.”
Oh. It was that. For a moment, Armeth had been prey to the old fears.
Loret crossed in front of them, blocking out their view of the moment for a moment. “Collo is looking for you,” he told Jallen.
“I’m hiding,” Jallen whispered conspiratorially.
“Yeah, I can tell.” He lifted his cat down from the counter. She hissed, and he quickly set her on the floor.
Jallen reached for the cat, but Loret shifted to block her. “Better not. Ugly’s in a bad mood.” Armeth watched the cat leap on Loret’s ankles and decided to follow that advice.
Loret crouched in front of them. “What are you two doing, hiding in the corner?”
Armeth shrugged and looked around him. Naia had noticed the little group and was looking at them curiously. He ducked his head and scooted over so he was half-hidden behind Loret.
Loret turned his head and looked over his shoulder at Naia. “Oh. Her.” His voice was flat.
“You don’t like her,” Jallen said wisely.
“She gets on my nerves.” Loret pried his finger out of his cat’s jaws. “Wonder if I should sic Ugly on her?”
Armeth said softly, “Durnan might get mad.”
“That block of stone never gets mad,” Loret said dismissively, but he gave Durnan a thoughtful look. Ugly solved the problem by sneaking out the door. Loret blinked after her.
Jallen reached out and tugged on his sleeve to get his attention. “Loret,” she said. “Why doesn’t my ‘huso like her either?”
“Probably because she does things that a little girl shouldn’t know about.”
Armeth knew what Loret was talking about, but Jallen probably didn’t. She proved it by saying, “Like what?” After a moment, she added, “I’m not little.”
“You’re the littlest of all of us,” Loret told her. “And I’m not about to tell you. Go ask your father.”
Jallen held up her arms. “Carry me upstairs.”
“You can walk.”
After Jallen flounced out, Loret left Armeth to his corner and went to look over Kylara’s shoulder. “Found anything yet?”
“A few things.” Kylara sat back and rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”
“After four.” Loret eyed Naia, who was concentrating on her book--and not with the expression of puzzlement he would have expected. “Mistress Thulla had to go out. She said dinner’s on the counter.”
“All right. Naia, do you want to break for food?”
Naia glanced up, blinking. “What?”
“Food,” Kylara repeated. “You want some?”
“Maybe a little.”
Later, while Loret was slicing his piece of the meat pie Mistress Thulla had left on the counter, Ugly came in and started twining around his ankles. Apparently all was forgiven--or she just felt like being fed at the moment.
“Oh, you have a cat!” Naia cooed, and tried to pet her. She jumped back when Ugly hissed and lashed out with a claw.
“Careful, Naia,” Durnan said mildly. “The only thing Ugly likes better than scratching is biting.”
“It sounds dangerous,” Naia said, edging away from the cat. “Are you sure you should have that thing around children?”
Loret crouched and started to stroke Ugly’s spine. “She’s all right,” he said, imitating Durnan’s mild tone. “Ugly likes who I like.”
Naia gave him a suspicious look, but he beamed innocently back at her. Finally, she looked away and started to nibble at her food.
She’d taken his advice at least, and was leaving Durnan alone. She hadn’t even tried using her wiles on Collo--probably because doing so wouldn’t gain her any points within the group. Loret was forced to admit that Naia wasn’t dumb . . . she just repelled him because of her attempts to manipulate every male within beguilement distance. She really wasn’t even that different from the women Loret had known growing up--he’d just gotten quickly used to Kylara’s plain speech and Elayza’s no-nonsense manners. Even Jallen, who was spoiled rottener than a year-old banana, was at least straightforward about her demands.
He didn’t know why--well, scratch that. He did know why he didn’t like Naia. But he didn’t know why just seeing her made his teeth itch. It wasn’t attraction--not by a long shot. He’d always had the same reaction upon seeing Four-Fingers Fescu, and that one had tried to knife him in a dark alley three months ago. Now he was known as Three-Fingers Fescu, and he gave Loret a wide berth. But still.
Was she a danger to them?
He gave Durnan a thoughtful look. He didn’t seem overly disturbed by Naia’s presence. But Durnan was one man Loret would never want to play flip-up with.
He wrestled with the question for a few moments more. Assume he was being stupid, and forget about it? Or swallow his pride and ask Durnan if his protective thing was acting up lately, and risk being laughed at?
Loret’s pride always stuck in his throat. Maybe Naia was just a danger to him. Although he couldn’t honestly imagine her hiding in a dark alley--not with a knife.
Kylara shot him a glance. “Loret, are you all right?”
“Course I am, why?”
“You’re not eating.”
Loret shoveled his first chunk of bread into his face. He was probably just being stupid.
Kylara elected to shift the research process downstairs, since Jallen fell asleep just after lunch. It took two trips to carry all the books she thought might be useful, even with several hands helping.
“Could we just be quiet?” Naia complained. She was carrying two books, the lightest ones.
“Jallen really needs her rest,” Kylara said over her shoulder. “She’s ill.”
“She looked perfectly fine to me.”
“She wasn’t when she arrived,” Elayza said.
“What wrong with her?”
“We’ve ruled out everything we know.”
“Maybe it’s a Cashkani disease.”
“If that had been the case, Collo never would have brought her here.”
From the bottom of the stairs, Loret said, “I keep tellin’ you, check that stupid book of yours. Maybe it’s something to do with being the Sorceress.”
He’d said that the other night, Kylara remembered, just after Durnan had given some of his life to Jallen. She’d been too worried about Durnan to pay it much attention at the time, but-- “Who’s got Kasole’s book?”
Elayza tilted her head to scan the eight or nine titles in her arms. “I do.”
She paused on the step and started to dig for it in her pile, and Kylara said quickly, “It can wait until we get to the table.”
When Elayza had set the books on the table, she carefully pulled the little green book out from the middle and passed it to Naia to hand to Kylara. Naia looked at it curiously. “What’s this?”
“It’s a book written by the first Scribe, Yanesh Kasole,” Kylara explained. “It’s in Old Kashlan, so I’ve had to translate it, but it’s been pretty helpful.”
“Oh.” Naia passed it along and opened her own book.
“Anybody got the dictionary?” Kylara murmured, her forefinger holding her word.
Loret found it on the bench by him, and passed it along.
It took a few moments, but Kylara had gotten so much practice at Old Kashlan lately that it presented little challenge beyond vocabulary. She blinked at the page. “Wait--that’s it?” It was very brief, and not too informative. “All right, I think I’ve got it,” she said to the others, who were giving her curious looks. “The Magic-Maker--that’s the best I could come up with--is attached by means of the mind or soul, I couldn’t tell which, to the world of the spirits. Thus is their magic worked, for it is the gift of the gods themselves.”
Loret said, “That’s it?” He looked disgusted. “Even I got more than that.” He tried to lean over and see. “There isn’t a part where it says, ‘especially prone to chest colds’?”
“Nope. That’s it.” Kylara showed him the page, which she knew was no use to him.
Elayza was listening intently. “Read it again,” she said.
Kylara obeyed. Elayza bit her lip. “Are there any words that could mean something else? I’m starting to get a bit of an idea.” Indeed, her eyes were sparkling, and her shoulders were tense and attentive.
Kylara looked over it. “The part I translated as ‘attached’ is a kind of an idiom . . . it means there’s a two-way connection.”
“So what affects one would have an effect on the other?”
“Maybe. You think that’s it?”
Elayza nodded, a smile breaking out. “The world of the spirits is in turmoil,” she said. Then her smile faded. “The dark god is fighting his way out. Things aren’t right. Jallen’s illness could be a reaction to that.”
“But wait,” Kylara objected, holding the book up. “It was the same situation in Kasole’s time. Why didn’t her Sorcerer feel it like Jallen is?”
“How old was he? I’m assuming it was a he?”
“He was grown--that’s all I remember. It didn’t refer to him as a child.”
“Maybe he was better trained in magic. Or maybe his age gave him natural barriers against that kind of turmoil.”
“Wait a minute.” Loret leaned over the table. “Ok, I understand that the spirit world is all churned up because of the dark god. I get that. But why would that make Jallen ill?”
“She’s connected to it,” Elayza explained. “It’s her source of magic. The battle in the spirit world is sapping her strength. That was the main reason we couldn’t figure it out. Her main symptom was that loss of strength, and everything else was related. It’s also why my life-energy transfer worked so effectively.”
“But it hasn’t been lately. It’s lasting less and less time before she gets tired again.”
“I know. And I’ve been giving her more each time, too.”
“But that just confirms what we already know,” Durnan said. “The situation is getting worse.”
“Which means we’d better get to work,” Kylara said. She started flipping through the book, looking, as she had several times before, for something that mentioned how the first Guardians had imprisoned the dark god. Back and forth . . . back and forth . . . back and forth . . . it was almost nervous habit now, as she tried to scan the first lines, or the last, or something in the middle that mentioned the battle.
Naia said, “Do you think the little girl will live until Midsummer’s Eve?”
Kylara didn’t look up, her fingers still turning pages. “She has to. We just can’t--” She broke off, staring at a passage she didn’t remember ever seeing before. It looked like a poem, or a song.
“Can’t what?”
“Never mind that. I think I found something.”
In spite of its brevity, it was horribly involved--one of the most convoluted pieces of Old Kashlan Kylara remembered seeing. Kasole usually wasn’t this dense. She had to resort to the dictionary several times, and finally had to go upstairs for pen and paper to write it down.
She worked through it as carefully as she could, checking the grammar, structure, and vocabulary several times. It still didn’t make much sense when she got to the end.
A circle of equals to bind their equal
with a charm of greatest sacrifice
bitterness and betrayal versus love and loyalty
when men are gods
Choose carefully, you who will come.
Blood will tell.
Durnan looked up. “Finished?”
She squinted at the paper. “I think.” She passed the paper to him, and he read it.
He looked at her, read the page again, and said, “Can I see the book?”
“It’s horrible,” she said, passing it to him. “I’m thinking Kasole was drunk or something. She never writes like this.”
He read the Old Kashlan, his brow furrowed. Then he looked up again. “Gods.”
“I know.”
“What? What is it?”
Kylara watched as the translation was passed around the table, trailed by puzzled looks and frowns. “That’s weird,” Loret said.
“Very strange,” Elayza agreed, passing it to Naia. “It almost reads like a riddle.”
“Wonderful,” Kylara said. “Just what we need.”