02 - The Barbed Rose (7 page)

“Far enough,” Torchay’s voice growled out.

Joh halted, his chains rattling to rest. Kallista heaved a little sigh, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Torchay’s overprotective attitude. Joh stood a dozen paces away, too far for her to see any mark. Too far even for comfortable conversation. But she could change that when the time came.

“Sit down.” She gestured at the gilded seating surrounding them.

“There.” Torchay pointed to a high-backed chair upholstered all over in a pale yellow velvet. Kallista remembered it as deep and soft and well nigh impossible to get out of in a hurry. A good choice.

Joh looked at the chair and back at Torchay as if asking whether he was truly meant to sit in such luxury. Kallista nodded, smiled, turning her hand toward the chair in invitation. Slowly, hampered by his chains, hesitantly, Joh shuffled toward the chair and lowered himself into it. When he was seated, Kallista strode forward, ignoring Torchay’s protest, slipping past his outstretched hand, and sat in the chair opposite. She left the two chairs on either side for her ever-vigilant bodyguards.

Neither of them sat. Almost as one, they moved the chairs back out of the way and stood, bright flame and dark, between Kallista and the bound, near-naked, oh-so-dangerous prisoner.

She waited until Joh met her eyes. “Tell me what happened.”

He shuttered the bright blue of his gaze as if against pain and drew in a breath through his fine, straight nose. With that fortification, he looked at her again.

“I did not know the powder would explode.” His voice was deep, intense, laden with emotion. Kallista could almost taste it, reaching with absent magic in a vain attempt to drink it down. His mark pulled at her. This was not what she meant him to tell, but apparently he needed to.

“What did you think, then?” Torchay’s voice held scorn, rage. “That it would carry them off to sweet dreams of paradise?”

Joh didn’t look away, focusing only on Kallista. “I was told it would heal you.”

“Of what?” Torchay spoke again, but Joh ignored him, spoke over the interruption.

“The vapors from the powder’s burning would enable an East healer to free you of the hold West magic had on you.”

Now both her men reacted with derision. Kallista ignored them, just as Joh did.

“I was a fool,” he said, voice gone bitter. “I couldn’t understand then what it meant to be marked by the One. I was a child frightened of the dark with a head full of half-truths and whispered lies, and I let myself believe them. Because I was afraid.”

Kallista watched him, trying to read the flickers behind his steady gaze, and she waited. Often, silence would bring her more than words.

“And I was angry,” Joh said so quietly she had to strain to hear. “I—I liked you. But when you married the Tibran
di pentivas
—”

“At the Reinine’s order.” Kallista spoke as softly as he.

“But back then, I felt betrayed.” His mouth twisted in a tiny smile. “Emotions seldom bow to reason. I admired you for treating me as you would any other officer. I had thought you free of the prejudice that sees a man as nothing but passions and brute strength. And then—”

“I proved you wrong.”

“It seemed so then. But I never wished you harm. We were officers in the same army. Sedili-in-arms. It was easier to believe that West magic had twisted you somehow. I wanted to think the powder’s smoke would—would return you to the captain I admired. I burned some, earlier, to test it, and that was all it did—make sparks and smoke. I never dreamed…”

“Where did you get it? The powder?” Torchay had not softened any. Kallista would not have expected him to.

“From a Barinirab master,” Joh replied without hesitation. “I never saw his face. He disguised his voice. He told me these things, that the smoke would heal and not harm.”

“You are one of these Barbs?” Obed shifted, hand coming to rest on the hilt of his saber.

“I was.”

Steel appeared in a tattooed hand so quickly Kallista did not see where he’d drawn it from. “Obed, you swore to me. He has not offered harm.”

She knew Torchay could move and attack with that lightning speed, but she had not known it of Obed. Where had a merchant-trader needed such skills?

Kallista touched his arm and reluctantly Obed tucked the knife in the sash around his waist. It had not been there before, she knew.

“You no longer belong to the Order of the Barbed Rose?” she asked.

“I will not be part of a group that manipulates its own people into doing murder.” Joh’s eyes held the anger his voice did not.

“But you won’t tell who gave you the powder,” Torchay said.

“I do not know.” Joh pushed the words through gritted teeth. “I was a Renunciate. Only Initiates and above meet the masters without masks.”

“Renunciate? What is that? Tell me about the Order.” Kallista needed whatever information he could give her. She’d never known anyone who admitted membership. The Order kept many secrets, not least, who they were.

“There are nine levels—BARINIRAB—beginning with a ceremony they call ‘Birth.’ Then Apprenticeship, Renunciation, Initiation, Naishar or service, Institution, Rejuvenation, Ascension and Birth again, to a state of unity with the One. The man I met wore the badge of a Rejuvenate on his cloak. I was only at the third level—second, really, for the first is just the ceremony.”

“When did you join? How?”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “It was not long after I was promoted to lieutenant. Some of the other officers sounded me out in discussions about West magic. I was curious. I wanted to learn more, and when they offered the chance to join, I took it. What I learned did not seem…evil. And I did not learn much. That was reserved for Initiates. As a Renunciate, I did not—
do
not know enough to be a danger to them.”

Joh paused before speaking again, holding Kallista’s gaze. “I wish I did. I would tell you all.”

She smiled and tucked her hands beneath her thighs to keep from reaching across the gap to pat his knee. “You will. Every single thing you know and some you don’t realize you do.”

“Brown cloaks with red linings.” Obed spoke, startling Kallista. He fingered the hilt of his dagger. “Are they of this order?”

Joh frowned. “You saw them? Men—women—wearing cloaks like that?”

“In the mountains, on our way here,” Kallista said.

“The middle ranks—Initiate, Naishan, Institute—wear the brown. But I never saw them in public. Why would they be now?”

“Because they’re no longer hiding their goals? Perhaps they were hunting us as they hunted the other naitani.” Kallista still felt the horror of knowing what they had done.

“Hunting
her
,” Torchay said. “The rest of us were just in their way.”

Joh looked as if hell had opened before him and devils were pouring out. Perhaps they were. A single demon had caused all the trouble from the north last year. Was there another? One causing Adarans to turn on each other? Kallista needed her magic back. Now. Possibly Joh could give it to her, but she wasn’t ready to find out yet.

“Tell me how you were marked,” she said.

“How is it that you can sit here calmly and talk with us?” Torchay added. “Why haven’t you lost your wits?”

Last year, Stone’s magic-driven urgency to reach Kallista had him half-leaping from boats or falling into convulsions. Fox had likely been much the same, for he remembered little of his journey to them.

“I don’t know.” Joh shifted in his too-soft chair, chains clacking together. “I believe that I did. I don’t remember much of the trip here. And my hands—” He held them up, showing injuries he might have acquired trying to dig through prison walls. Stone’s hands had borne similar marks when he’d been brought to Arikon and Kallista. “It could be I am rational now in her presence because I was marked not so long ago.”

“When?” Kallista glowered at Torchay to keep him quiet this time. “What happened?”

“Just over a week ago. The guards put us back in the cells after breakfast instead of herding us out into the courtyard because of some disturbance in the countryside. I was reading the
Meditations of Orestes
and praying. There was—I can only call it joy, but that isn’t a tenth of what I felt.” His expression glowed, making Kallista shiver with its overflow.

He shook himself, recovered his thoughts. “And next I knew, I found myself clawing at the walls. It took the prison governor a few days to learn of it, and several more days to bring me here. And a few more for you to arrive.”

“How long ago did it happen?” Torchay asked. “What day?”

Joh shook his head. “I lost so much time—”

“Guess.”

“It—it might have been—It was a Graceday. Maybe the twenty-sixth or-seventh of Terris?”

A chill ran down her back as she met Torchay’s gaze. “That disturbance in the countryside. Do you know what it was?”

“No.” Joh looked from one to the other of them, fear growing in his expression. “Why?”

“The rebels struck throughout Adara on Terris twenty-seventh, assassinating naitani and military officers. The day the One marked you.” Kallista took a deep breath.

She could not put it off longer. Likely should not have delayed this much. The interlude given her to enjoy simply being ilias and mother had ended. She could not stretch it longer by wishing. She was who she was and could not be other. The signs that Joh had truly been marked by the One were all there. It only required her touch to
know
.

CHAPTER FOUR

K
allista slid from her chair to her knees. “Give me your hand.”

“Captain, no.” Joh struggled to rise and Torchay clapped a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. “Do not kneel before me.”

“If I fall, I’d rather be closer to the ground.” She raised an eyebrow. “Surely you remember what could happen when our hands touch.” He’d been there for both Stone’s and Obed’s first touch.

“I—yes.” He sank back into his velvet prison, his whole body tense with nervous anticipation. “What—”

“I don’t know what will happen. Perhaps nothing. My magic has not yet returned since the twins were born.”

“Twins?” Joh whispered in shock while she went on.

“It could be this will wake it. Or not.” She smiled, shifting to one side, off her knees. “I can promise, whatever happens, it won’t hurt.”

Joh did not seem to believe her.

“Torchay, let go of him,” she said.

He looked at her, expression bland. “I’d rather not. You lost the magic the same day I was marked. I want to know what the others know.”

“There’s plenty of time for that.”

“I’m tired of waiting.”

She didn’t think that was his only, or even his primary, reason for keeping his grip on the chained man, but she let it go. Arguing him down would take time she didn’t think they had. “Joh, give me your hand.”

With a faint rattle of the chains holding them together, Joh extended both hands and opened one out flat. He turned his head away slightly, nostrils flaring as if he faced something terrifying. Magic could terrify, she supposed, if one were not used to it. Hoping her smile looked reassuring, Kallista took his hand in hers. And nothing happened.

She wanted to scream in frustration. Her fingers tightened, squeezing his hand. She took his other hand in her empty one, silently shouting for the magic,
Wake up! Do something!

And it slammed into her with a force that brought her high on her knees, bowing her backward in an impossible arc as she screamed with the near-forgotten pleasure of it.

The magic swept every inch of her, a storm scouring her end-to-end with delight, blasting open paths that had withered shut over the winter. Creating new ones.

Dragging her in its wake, the magic roared back into Joh. As Kallista tumbled toes to nose in the wave, there was a sort of wrenching, of something twisting aside or tearing open, and Joh cried out. Goddess,
she’d forgotten
.

She reached for him to soothe his pain and he was there, with her, riding the magic. She tasted his fear, breathed in his desperation, his need to make things right. She saw the colors of his soul, though she couldn’t have matched them to any tints she knew—colors of loyalty, passion, loneliness, honesty, deep and agonizing remorse….

Kallista felt the magic swelling. Something new. She caught Joh tight, wrapping him in her unseen embrace, whispering wordless, voiceless reassurance as the magic whipped across the skin-to-skin contact into Torchay.

He cried out, knees buckling, though Kallista thought he somehow managed to stay upright. The magic lashed them with pleasure, tearing sounds from three throats, but it had not finished with them. Kallista reached out as Torchay spun past, brought him into the web and knotted him there, adding his booming strength to the harmony they made as the magic swelled yet again.

It leapt across the gap to Obed, increasing the pleasure fourfold with the addition of the fourth. His shout drowned them all out and he fell to his knees. Kallista barely had time to bind him into their knotted chorus before the magic expanded again, spinning outward until she thought she would leave pieces of her soul scattered across all Adara.

She fought to keep the men whole. They were helpless and vulnerable without magic of their own and she shielded them with layers of herself.

Then the magic crashed into yet another, and Kallista tasted Fox. He was cold, worried and falling to his knees in snow as he shoved his fist in his mouth to stifle the shout of delight, but he was alive. Was he in danger? Kallista had no time to tell, barely enough time to pull him safely into the bonds, before the magic poured out of Fox and into Stone. Who fell full length on his face in the snow and shouted loud enough to wake the dead.

Laughing, Kallista scooped him up, wove him into place with the others, ready now as the magic rolled on to find Aisse. She was sleeping, somewhere dark and smoky but safe, seeming to think she dreamed when the magic first caught her up. She woke only as it spun them tighter in the ecstasy it made.

Kallista held on fiercely, twining their separate selves into a glorious whole—Torchay’s strength, Obed’s truth, Fox’s order, Stone’s joy, Aisse’s faith, Kallista’s will…Joh’s vision. All her marked ones were there.