Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (39 page)

“We took another contract,” Tank said. He resisted the urge to tell the innkeeper that he and Dasin hadn’t been the ones to put the fading bruises on Wian’s face.

The woman nodded and handed over a room key. Tank felt her hard stare on the back of his neck for some time afterwards, even when they’d turned past her line of sight.

“You hungry?” Dasin asked as they tucked their packs and saddlebags under the two narrow beds.

Tank shook his head and sat on the edge of a bed, suddenly too exhausted to even speak clearly. “You g’n,” he managed. “You go.”

“Huh,” Dasin said, and glanced at Wian. After a moment, he added, with clear reluctance, “You hungry?”

She shook her head and sat on the edge of the other bed.

“Give me the money for a meal, then,” Dasin said, his face settling into sullen lines.

She lifted a blank, exhausted stare to him, apparently bewildered; then, shaking her head a little, dug in her belt pouch and tossed him a single silver coin. Dasin caught it, scowling.

“More’n that,” he said.

“That’s enough for a meal, Dasin,” Tank said wearily, rousing from his half-sleep.

“Not unless I want rat shit in the soup! This is
Obein,
not Kybeach, Tank. A decent meal costs more, and after all day on the road I want a
meal.”

Wian motioned listlessly at Tank with one hand, as though to say:
It’s not important, never mind.
She reached into her belt pouch and tossed Dasin another silver round.

“Thank
you,” Dasin said heavily, and stalked out the door without looking back.

Tank kicked off his boots, peeled off stockings, and flopped back on the bed. As his eyes slid shut, he thought he heard the girl say something.

His muscles twitched in a futile effort to sit up and look at her. He couldn’t move past the crashing weariness. His whole body hurt, especially thighs, shoulders, and calves. The notion of getting back on the horse in the morning made overtaxed muscles twitch in protest. Behind closed lids, his eyes rolled uncontrollably for a moment. He hadn’t been this tired since Allonin’s intense training sessions.

Whatever she wanted, it would have to wait.

Sometime later, a faint whimpering noise woke him. He pushed up onto one elbow and squinted into the darkness, listening: grunts, heavy breathing, the shifting of mattress and blankets. And the occasional, stifled whimper or yelp from Wian.

“You fucking ta-neka,”
he said, already moving. His bare feet hit the cold floor; he lurched two steps, reached, grabbed what felt like a shoulder, and shoved.

Blankets thrashed. Tank sensed Dasin rising up, swinging blind and hard. He threw up his own hand, turned the blow aside, grabbed Dasin’s forearm and yanked hard. Dasin thudded onto the floor, cursing. Pillows and blankets scattered.

The smell of wine hung heavy in the air: Dasin had spent the extra coin on drink, not food.

Tank leapt backwards, misjudged the amount of room and tripped over his own bed. He managed to turn the fall into a graceless sideways roll that put the bed between them.

Only the sound of Dasin’s angry panting broke the silence. Nobody moved. Tank crouched behind the shielding bed, listening, straining his eyes to see through the dark.

“What’s the
matter
with you?” Dasin said at last, hoarsely. “You want some for yourself, you could have asked.”

Tank’s hands clenched. “Dasin,” he said, “I know you like to run rough, but with
her?
How
could
you?”

“She asked for it,” Dasin snapped. “Crawled under the covers and grabbed. She’s a whore, Tank.” His tone shifted to a sour amusement. “She’s a pretty good one, too.”

Tank held a number of responses silent. “Wian,” he said, trying for a level tone and almost managing. “Come here. Please.”

A faint shifting sound, a curse from Dasin: “Go on, then, damnit!”; and Tank could
smell
her approaching, moving tentatively through the dark room. She smelled like roses and dirt and arousal. He bit his tongue and gave silent thanks for the darkness.

“Get in the bed, Wian,” Tank said, not moving. “I’ll take the floor.”

He barely managed not to say the thoughts thundering through his mind.

Dasin muttered something, then blankets
shsshed
as he dragged them back over himself. Wian sighed as she settled into the warmth Tank had left behind. He let out a long breath and knelt beside his pack to dig out his rain-cloak; at least it might shield him somewhat from the chill of the floor.

“I was stupid,” she said in a near-whisper.

He stopped and stared at the barely darker spot where the bed stood. “What?”

“It’s why I’m in this mess,” she said. “I was stupid. I trusted someone I shouldn’t have. And then it all got... out of hand. What Dasin did—wasn’t anything. Not to me. Not... not really.”

“See?” Dasin said. “Whore.”

“Shut it,” Tank said, biting the words off.

“I... I knew what he would do,” Wian went on. “And I don’t... I don’t mind so much.”

“I
mind,” Tank said frostily.

“That’s because you’re too scared of women to really let loose and—” Dasin began.

“Dasin.”
Tank glared through the darkness. Dasin fell silent.

“Thank you for caring,” Wian said, nearly whispering the words. “Please—don’t sleep on the floor because of me. It’s too cold for that. Please—”

Dasin snorted and said loudly, “Yeah, right. That’s what she told me. ‘I’m so cold, the floor is so cold.’ Then she grabbed my crotch and offered to help keep me warm if I let her stay. Go ahead, Tank, climb in bed with her. I’ll be listening to you riding her next!”

“Dasin,” Tank said, keeping his tone mild only because letting the anger into his voice would end with him charging across the room, “if you don’t shut up, you won’t walk, let alone fuck, for six months. I
promise.”

Dasin made a disgusted noise and jerked blankets closer around him.

Tank stood quietly for a moment, considering the chill of the floor under his feet, thinking about how damn
warm
the bed had been.

“I’ll take the floor,” he said at last.

Nobody argued this time, although Wian gave what might have been a disappointed sigh.

The damp brought out insects: they flittered past on multicolored wings, settled in Ellemoa’s hair, crawled along her son’s shirt. She brushed away anything that could sting and let the rest be unless they crossed her face.

I have my son back.
And they were clear of Bright Bay, clear of the madness that infested those streets. She could breathe properly, it seemed, for the first time since her precipitious departure from Arason.

A land bird with a fat body and skinny legs erupted from the brush to her right and ran recklessly in front of them. She watched it go, smiling;
swasson,
her son said drowsily.

She turned a startled glance on him. His eyes remained hazed and his gait remained under her control: still, it was worrying that he’d been able to perceive the bird, let alone remark on it. She thickened and tightened the layers of compulsion. He sighed a little, subsiding, a vague frown crossing his face.

Ellemoa bit her lip and glanced west: a light carriage rumbled toward them at a steady, early-morning pace. Beyond the carriage, dense black clouds obscured the towers and turrets of Bright Bay; she’d pitched the storm to stay over the central area of the city until she was well clear. It would take days for the torrential downpour to ease. To the east, empty road bent around a tall mass of trees and vanished from sight.

Kybeach,
her son said: faint, fuzzy, but nonetheless alarming.

“I’m weaker than I thought,” she muttered aloud, and drew her son to the side of the road, watching the carriage approach with a sharp calculation. One driver on the bench, and—she focused vision and
sight
alike—one passenger, dozing within the carriage itself. Not a merchant’s vehicle, but a private, headed for a visit somewhere along the Coast Road.

The horse, a splotchy black and grey beast, began to balk as the carriage drew near. The driver swore and shook the reins, tapped with the whip; the beast planted its feet and refused to continue, tilting and tossing its head to keep a wary eye on Ellemoa.

“Clear out, then, you!” the driver called out, motioning Ellemoa aside. “The beast don’t like your smell, maybe. Whatever, you move yourself aside, I’ve no quarrel with you. Get aside, get aside!”

Two humans would be more than enough to restore her strength, and the horse would suit for riding—her son knew how to ride. He could teach her.

She set her son aside, commanding him without words to
stay put,
and took a single step forward.

His hands locked around her upper arms from behind.
No,
he said, very definitely.
No.

She spun, badly frightened now, and searched his face for any trace of awareness: but the blank stare and clouded mind remained undisturbed. That protest had come from
deep
within him, from a consciousness that knew very well what she’d been about to do—and rejected it utterly.

Her breath caught and shuddered in her chest. She remembered, with abrupt clarity, the refusal of her lover to harm the humans to save her; remembered that he’d chosen to save the child rather than save her; remembered that her son had been among the humans his entire conscious life.

“Move aside, move aside!” the driver howled, shaking his whip at her in clear threat. Too rattled and anxious to take issue with the disrespect, she pulled her son clear of the road, deep into a thin spot of brush, and allowed the carriage to pass undisturbed. The horse broke into a gallop and charged by without pause, eyes white and nostrils flared; the driver shot a brief, dark glare into the brush where she’d withdrawn.

When the road lay empty once more under the rapidly blushing morning light, she steered her son back to an eastward path.

“So you don’t want me to hurt the humans,” she murmured as they walked, considering, and stole rapid glances at his slack face. “That’s going to complicate matters, son. It’s a very long journey to Arason, I think, even for us.” She mulled it over for a time, then sighed deeply and said, “For you, son—for you. I’ll try. To make you happy, I’ll restrain myself until you’re ready to understand. For you.”

“Kybeach,” he said aloud, the word so slurred as to be almost unrecognizable.

“What about Kybeach, son? Oh—you want to stop there?” She glanced back at the dark clouds obscuring Bright Bay on the western horizon. “Well—it should be safe enough. Yes, son, we’ll stop in Kybeach. I’ll allow you a human meal and a human rest, to set your mind at ease, and then we’ll go on.”

“Send word. Send. Send word.”

“Send word to who? Oh—those men I rescued you from? No, son, no, there’s no good can come of letting them know where we are. No, you don’t want to contact them.
You don’t want to contact them.”

“Send. Send. Send. Word. Word. Send.”

She stopped walking and studied his taut face, frowning. “No, son,” she said. “No.
Bad idea,
son. No.”

“Send. Send. Send.” His throat worked as he fought to produce the words, his head bobbing and tilting back with the force of his insistence.

She worried at her lip for a time, glancing anxiously along the road in each direction. “Very well,” she said. “I’ll allow you to send word, son. Let’s go to Kybeach, then, and find a meal and a scribe.”

His hands rose, twitching, then dropped to his sides again. She stepped back a pace, alarmed: he repeated the gesture once more, then said, “Send. Send.”

“You can write?” she said rather breathlessly. “All right, son, all right, I’ll allow you to write the letter. Please, son, come along, come along—Let’s get to Kybeach, not stand here on the road all day.”

He shambled into motion without further protest, and she let him take the lead: thoroughly unwilling, at this point, to have him anywhere
behind
her.

The floor
was
cold, and a constant current of chill air flowed into the room from the space under the door. Tank curled into a ball, head resting on his pack, and shivered his way into a light, restless doze, wandering in and out of odd dreams. In one, Dasin curled up on the floor beside him, offering his own body warmth; in another, Allonin made him get up and run in place to warm up. Lifty pushed him away, snarling:
I don’t walk that road, damn you, hands off!

Tank twitched uneasily, half-rousing. Chill attacked the back of his neck and his arms. He tucked down into a marginally warmer huddle and drifted back into dream. The heat of sunbaked rock radiating up into his body mixed with Allonin’s voice and the scraping shiver of steel as he learned the proper way to sharpen a blade.
Good, Tanavin, you’re getting it; good.

Tanavin.

A name he’d left behind for good reason: he never should have chosen it in the first place.

It wasn’t an homage, as he’d thought it would be. It was a cruel joke, dragging the dead into the world of the living. They deserved to be left in peace. Tank didn’t
want
to remember them any longer. Didn’t want to think about how Tan and Avin had died, while he had lived... didn’t want to think about Allonin’s sideways admission as to why the Aerthraim had rescued him and not them.

Ice was warmer than that calculation had been.

He sighed and stretched a little. Warmth pressed close, too solid to be a dream. He opened his eyes, blurred and slow, and said, “Dasin?”

“Shh,” Wian said. “Don’t wake him.”

Dasin’s snores rumbled through the room.

“Not likely,” Tank muttered. “After that much wine, he sleeps like a rock.” He pushed himself up on one elbow, blinking, trying to focus.

“Please,” Wian said, voice low. “It really is too cold. You’re shivering. Please, take the bed.”

He grunted, memory slow to fill in the details of why his first instinct was to say
No.

“Trade off,” she said. “I’ve been warm half the night. You take a turn. I’ll take the floor.”