Beneath the Thirteen Moons (17 page)

For some reason Master R’in took it upon himself to explain. “Seer’s heat the water and it’s carried through small tunnels dug into the tree.”

“Won’t it hurt the tree?” wondered Mahri aloud.

The old man’s winged eyebrows rose. “No more than it hurts them for us to carve our homes in the outer bark. As long as we leave the heart pure, no harm will come to the sea tree.”

Mahri sighed with relief and the old man appraised her again. She didn’t like the way he kept evaluating her, like an animal that had shown a spark of unexpected intelligence.

“Anyway, it’d be easier to heat the tub rather than the water,” she muttered.

The Master Seer stifled a smile. “Perhaps.”

Her ignorance of the water-thing seemed to make the women less frightened of her, for they surrounded her
and began to unlace her clothes. They picked at the dirty snar-scale as if it were a dead carcass.

“I take it I’m supposed to bathe?” Mahri kept her voice even. If he thought to completely intimidate her, he could think again.

Master R’in nodded.

“Well, I don’t need any help.”

She tried to push away the hands of the women. One had hold of her vest laces and managed during the struggle to pull them all the way out. Mahri’s breasts sprang free, and old man or no, his eyes near popped out of his head. The women gawked at her as if she were some kind of freak, comparing her body to their white skin, small bones, and delicate, almost boyish figures.

“Barbaric,” mumbled one of the women.

“Positively vulgar,” whispered another.

Mahri wondered if Korl had thought the same as these women when he spewed his charming compliments to her. Wishing it could be the prince, she shoved the women hard, a tumble of frothy material and flying feet.

“I’m sorry,” she hastily told the old man, remembering the sting in her cheek. “But I’ll bathe myself, thank you.”

Master R’in cleared his throat, face flushed bright red. “See that you do,” he muttered. Then quickly, “I’ll overlook it this time.”

The smallest woman wailed and clutched her elbow, but Mahri knew she couldn’t be too badly hurt. The old man ushered them over to the shredded bed and glanced over his shoulder just as Mahri bent to strip off her leggings. His eyes bugged again. “For the love of… shut that door, woman!”

Mahri complied then hugged her naked chest and shivered in the privacy of the bath. She’d never be able to continue this brave act, she told herself. They’d undressed her in front of a complete stranger and she’d had to put up with it, no, actually pretend it didn’t bother her. How many more humiliations would Korl put her through?

Did all the Royals think that Wildings were savage animals?

Mahri immersed herself into the hot water until the wrinkling of her skin was near painful, until the sharp smell of the scented soap and the fruity aroma of hair dressing near overwhelmed her. She tried not to think of the reasons they had for letting her bathe while she dried off with some abnormally fluffy cloth.

Would they give her to the guard to “play” with before they hung her?

Stop it, she commanded herself.

Mahri took a deep breath and left the room, feeling she’d just had her last moment of privacy on Sea Forest. She’d have to be strong now, put on a mask of arrogance like she’d seen Korl do so many times.

After the hot water the air stabbed her skin with frigid fingers and she clutched the cloth tighter around her. The women were still there, the one she’d hurt now looking at her with daggers. The old man sat with his back to the room, small purrs of contentment coming from his lap.

Jaja, you little traitor, she thought with half-hearted anger.

Master R’in tweaked her muscles once, just to let her know that he Saw with the Power. “Don’t harm them again.”

“I should let them insult me?”

“When it’s from envy and spite, yes.”

The small woman stuck her nose in the air. The other held up a concoction of white lace and advanced on Mahri with the air of a trainer handling a tigershark. They stuffed her into the frock while avoiding her gaze.

“Do you dress all condemned Wildings with such finery?” asked Mahri, fingering the tiny pearls that hung from the tiers of lace that cascaded down the skirt.

“Eh,” grunted the old man. “What’s that you say?”

The women stepped back and eyed her with something akin to horror.

Mahri struggled for composure. “The Royals want me to look good, I suppose, for the hanging. Probably consider it an enjoyable event, like entertainment.”

It was the only thing she could think of for putting her into such an outrageous garment. The dress billowed so far out that the women had to stand a few paces away and lean forward to brush her hair. A train of cloth lay draped along her back and spread behind her like the plumage of a peacock-fish.

The small woman gasped at her words and her face softened somewhat. Her hands gentled as she lay a circlet of pearls around Mahri’s dark red hair and began to weave tiny braids here and there among the mass of it.

The old man jerked around, tumbling the chair to the floor as he stood. “You’ll not be hung, woman.” His mouth lay open to say more when he focused away from the Sight and he saw her with normal vision. Those faded eyes traveled from the crown of her softly brushed hair to the hem of white lace and he sighed with what almost seemed like longing. “I understand now, the madness of my prince.”

“What… what do you mean?” Mahri struggled with fear and confusion. If they weren’t going to hang her, what then? She tried not to speculate on her fate. It might be better not to know.

“She’s ready, Master,” whispered the taller woman.

“Hmm, yes, I see that. Let us go then, it’s best not to keep him waiting.”

The executioner?

Mahri had to ask.

“Who?”

“Why, the prince, of course. Never seen him so eager,” continued the old man, hastening her out the door. “Youth, I suppose. Hard for me to remember what it felt like, although you reminded me for a heartbeat there.”

Mahri concentrated on not falling on her face. How did women walk in these things, much less work? She grabbed handfuls of the lace and lifted but still more cloth tangled up her feet. She kept her face lowered and blinked back tears. It’d been ages since she’d cried, where had they come from? It couldn’t be from hearing that Korl couldn’t wait for her death, could it?

Mahri sniffed.

They traversed through high-ceilinged tunnels of polished wood, hundreds of light globes creating a soft brilliance that hung like stars above them. Guard after guard saluted as they passed, the shell adorning their uniforms polished to a high sheen, their swords of bone sharpened to a wicked glint. Other doors opened off their corridor, allowing Mahri’s curious gaze a glimpse of their interiors. Myriad treasures sparkled at her, yet the blackness of her own death lay over all she saw with each step they took.

Master R’in stopped before huge double-doors, easily four times his own height. He signaled the guards to open them and they creaked and groaned with their massive weight. And opened onto a room of such brilliance that Mahri blinked, half-blinded by the sight of it.

More people than she had ever before seen assembled in one place milled along the sides for the entire length of the room. Not room, she hastily corrected, more like the biggest channel she’d ever seen. Instead of water, a carpet of red ran down the middle of it, to a dais that was so distant it looked no bigger than her thumbnail.

The roar of sound hushed when the people caught sight of her, then rose again like a ripple as farther down the room faces turned to stare at her. Mahri swallowed. So many, just for the execution of one lowly water-rat?

Wait, she needed more time, it couldn’t be happening this quickly.

She wanted to scream for help. Instead she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin although she couldn’t seem to stop the spasms of fear that trembled through her.

“Go on,” whispered Master R’in. “I’ll be right behind you, so you’d best do what’s expected of you properly. Or remember, I’ll do it for you.”

Properly? wondered Mahri. How did one die properly? And although the old man’s words had threatened, she’d also sensed that in some ridiculous way he’d tried to reassure her. Could he be letting her know that if her courage failed her, if she screamed and babbled like the savage she was, he’d take over for her and at least give her the comfort of a valiant death?

“Thanks a lot,” she muttered.

Then took a deep breath and stepped on that blood-red
carpet. Jaja screeched from where he perched on the old man’s shoulder and sprang to her own. Master R’in reached out at first, then smiled and nodded as he saw the monk-fish wrap its tail around the back of Mahri’s neck and stroke her cheek with tiny caresses of encouragement.

Is it possible, wondered Mahri, to feel the stares of people as if they were little pricks of ice shards? For her entire body burned with a coldness, the back of her neck prickled with an awareness, that made her want to turn around and run screaming from those hundreds of eyes.

I don’t want to die, thought Mahri. Not like this.

Although she’d faced death every day in the swamps it seemed an abstract thing. But to know it lay before you with a finality that couldn’t be changed—worse, to walk toward it without a fight!

She feared it would take more courage than she possessed.

Mahri stumbled. A sigh of apprehension rose from around her and drifted up to the cavernous ceiling. She regained her footing and lifted her head even higher.

If only she had her staff! Just the thought of it in her hand made her feel stronger and as she walked down that hall of gleaming crystal ornaments and plaques of sculpted bone she visualized fighting her way out of the room.

That smiling woman, with purple feathers stuck in her hair—she’d flee from the look on Mahri’s face as she wielded her staff. That man, watching her with a speculative frown, reeking of some musky perfume that reminded her of sea grass—he’d pull out his ceremonial sword and find it just as quickly broken in two. And those natives, furtively peeking over the shoulders of
the humans with a curious delight on their faces—she’d teach them a lesson for trying to manipulate her!

It gave her courage, pretending to fight back in the only way she knew how. So she wished for zabba. Let the Royal’s see what a Wilding in full power could do!

Something trickled through Mahri’s fantasies, an insidious suspicion that pounded away at her blind fear, that forced her to wonder. Now that she looked back at the crowd, the expressions on their faces weren’t what she’d expect from people waiting for an execution. And this room, why it looked like it could be a ballroom, large enough for a dancing throng. And did the court dress in such finery all the time, as if they witnessed a matter of state?

Mahri, although uneducated, wasn’t stupid. Even if she’d never stepped foot inside the Palace Tree she’d know something smelled wrong.

She’d come near enough to the dais to see the king and queen enthroned, their regal expressions curious, but in no way threatening. And Korl, attired in the most ornate costume she’d ever seen, holding out his hand to her.

Mahri’s eyes widened to enormous proportions. So if this wasn’t an execution what, by-the-thirteen-moons, was going on?

M
AHRI CAME TO A DEAD STOP, HER SKIRT SWISHING
around her until settling in a billow of lace. The pale-green of Korl’s eyes stood out from his face as if to capture her own within that vortex, and of course he succeeded, her heart doing a small flip when that chemistry flared between them. She read in their fathomless depths his intention, the purpose of this ceremony, and her mouth dropped open. It couldn’t be possible.

Korl intended to take her as lifemate!

Relief flowed through her, enough to make her tremble with the force of it. She wouldn’t die today. At least, she thought with sudden anger, not physically. But he seeks to bind me to him even more, until I can never escape, never be free of him.

Korl strode toward her, long strides of rippling muscle revealed by the fluid fabric of his leggings, his brow furrowed in concern and one hand caressing the pommel of a ceremonial sword that lay along his hip. Within a heartbeat he’d reached her side, grasped her elbow in a none-too-gentle grip and began to urge her forward. Mahri stayed rooted to the carpet.

“I won’t,” she hissed at him.

He bowed over her hand, leaned down as if to kiss it. She could feel the warmth of his lips as they moved across her skin.

“You have no choice,” he murmured. “This is the only way I can protect you, Mahri Zin.”

She swallowed. Either take him as lifemate, or face the consequences of being a Wilding and a smuggler of zabba. She snatched her hand away from his lips and heard a sigh of dismay from a hundred mouths. Mahri glanced up at the crowd of onlookers, her gaze drawn to the face of a woman, a bit younger than herself with the same pale hair as the king, but with the blue-green eyes of the queen. She knew, somehow, that the woman was Korl’s half-sister, S’raya. And blinked against the hatred that shone on her face.

Mahri stepped toward Korl and placed her brown hand into his larger, golden one. “I’m not a fool,” she whispered.

Korl half-smiled, that shallow dimple appearing in his cheek. “No, just afraid.”

Mahri stiffened but continued to walk forward. He slowed his stride to hers. She turned her head and pretended to smile at him, as aware as he that hundreds of eyes watched their progress.

“I’m not afraid to die,” she lied.

“That wasn’t what I meant.” His voice lowered to that deep timbre that never failed to make her want to touch him. “You, my water-rat, are the bravest woman I’ve ever met. So it saddens me to realize that the one thing you do fear is me.”

“I don’t…”

He stroked her lips with the callused pad of his finger, instantly quieting her. “Shh, not me then. Just the giving of your heart to me.”

They had reached the dais and the queen cleared her
throat. Korl let his hand drop, his face reddening as the spell of intimacy between them broke.

Master R’in climbed the mosaic step and bowed to the rulers, then turned and faced her and Korl. “Proof of the Bond must be given before all assembled, before the ceremony that will turn this Wilding into one of Royal blood can be performed.” His voice had risen with each word, swelling to a boom of authority that echoed down the cavernous hall.

Mahri’s knees wobbled and her head spun and she wanted to slow everything down. First, she’d thought she went to her death and she hated Korl with a passion. Now, she wanted to kiss him with gratitude for saving her life, and give him a good hard kick for trapping her this way.

She felt Jaja stroke her cheek and sighed. She’d almost forgotten his comforting little presence.

Mahri found herself being turned around by the pressure of Korl’s warm fingers. She faced the assembled throng and a sudden weakness assailed her, so that she had to lock her knees to keep upright. So many people, so many different expressions. Surprise, disbelief, hatred, fear.

She froze inside herself and heard the snap of zabba between Korl’s teeth as he crunched the root. She watched the assembly stare at him, their heads bobbing when his eyes sparkled with the Power, then felt them pierce her with expectant gazes.

“Share my Power,” whispered Korl.

Mahri couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Thoughts and emotions swirled through her brain and she couldn’t make sense of any of them. Jaja slapped the back of her head, setting the crown of pearls around her brow askew.

“They don’t believe we’re Bonded,” he continued. “It hasn’t happened in generations and they seek proof. Do you think they’d let just
any
water-rat become their princess?”

She groaned. A princess, that’s what she’d be? By-the-moons, she couldn’t do this! Mahri felt as if the bars of a cage had settled around her and with each passing moment they’d contract until her breath was strangled from her lungs. She bunched her muscles to flee and knew Korl must’ve sensed her near-flight.

He caught her face with his hand, yanked it around to face him. “I love you,” he growled. “Let that be enough for now.” And bent his head down to kiss her.

Another sigh swelled the room; an occasional titter and an embarrassed clearing of the throat. But Mahri was dimly aware of it, trapped in the fire of his mouth, the feel of his breath on her face, the smell of his skin invading her senses. She had no control when he touched her, even in front of others.

Mahri lay open to him and didn’t need to take, for he fed her Power. It tingled through her pathways, shivering up her spine.

Jaja chirruped with delight, right in her ear, and she jumped away from Korl. They stared at each other, both panting in the quiet room, both their eyes now spitting sparks of green Power.

“I am witness,” boomed the voice of Master R’in. “That this woman had no access to zabba this day. Are there any here who deny this Bond?”

The hall exploded with noise, but no voices cried out to say nay.

She heard King Oshen rise from his chair and the
room became still. “So be it,” rumbled a voice very familiar to Mahri. He sounded much like Korl. “Let the ceremony begin!”

He came forward, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “And none too soon,” he muttered at them.

Korl still held Mahri with his gaze and wouldn’t let her go. The Power thrummed in her system and helped to heat the fire in her body. She’d missed his touch, had forgotten the effect it had over her. Had it only been two days since she’d last seen him? In that room of treasures it had felt like forever so that she ached for him now with an intensity she couldn’t fight while he kept looking at her.

The king cleared his throat and spoke to Korl, low enough so that only they could hear. “By-the-Power son, get a hold of yourself! You’ll bed her soon enough.”

Korl blinked, his face suffused with red, making the scars on his cheek stand out, then busied himself with straightening the front of his jacket. Mahri breathed a sigh of relief and controlled the fire in her loins by sheer force of will.

“Not if I can help it,” she mumbled with false bravado.

The king’s eyebrows rose almost up to his hairline and he looked from the two of them with puzzled speculation. “There are some things you haven’t told me, Korl.”

“She’s a challenge, to be sure.” He shrugged, his face all arrogance. “But you know I always get what I want.”

King Oshen threw back his head and laughed, while Mahri fisted her hands and glared. She Saw into the red carpet at their feet and before Korl could stop her Mahri Changed it to blue, with swirls and eddies woven
throughout, like her beloved waterways. Fish and monsters and the wonders of her swamps formed beneath their feet and she grinned with delight, now feeling more at home.

Jaja chirruped with glee and scampered down the lace of her dress, pointing at the designs in the new carpet for the benefit of the astonished crowd. Master R’in gaped and muttered something about the power of a Wilding. Queen P’erll frowned thoughtfully and stole a glance at her daughter. S’raya clutched the arm of a man dressed in black, who patted her hand and appraised Mahri with a look that felt as if he peeled back several layers of her skin.

There’s more undercurrents here, Mahri realized, than in all the channels of Sea Forest.

“I understand,” said Korl as he studied the new carpet, grinning with recognition at a many-tongued monster. He threaded his arms through hers and signaled at the Master Seer to begin the ceremony.

Mahri wondered if he truly did. “It’s where I belong,” she whispered, gazing at a school of silver-fish that swam around her dress.

“You belong with me,” growled Korl.

And while R’in droned on and they were wrapped in vines of heart flower, then blessed with the salty waters of Sea Forest and crowned with diadems of crystal coral, Mahri stared longingly at the weave of her carpet and Korl held her to his side as if he’d never let her go.

Her surroundings became a blur as she remembered her first ceremony when she’d taken Brez, how she’d thought they’d be together forever. But Mahri was wiser now and although she smiled at people that
were introduced to the new princess of Sea Forest, inside she felt like she was dying. Perhaps this, then, was her execution.

They entered another room and sat at a table laden with more food than she’d ever seen in her lifetime. The aroma of succulent meat and spiced bread made her mouth water, yet when Korl forced a bite on her she had to swallow several times before she could get it down. Conversation swirled around her and she heard little of it, wrapped so inside of herself that even Jaja had given up reaching her. Instead her pet proceeded to snatch food from Mahri’s plate then crunch with a regal air, challenging anyone to deny him the meal.

She barely noticed the snickers and whispers of “water-rats” and “animals at their tables.” Then Korl called Jaja onto his lap, let him sample the foods from his own plate, and the snide comments ceased.

Prince Charming, thought Mahri. Always doing something that makes me admire him even more. I wish he’d just stop it.

Her enticed gaze traveled along the firm slope of his shoulder, to the hollow of his throat, and she remembered the softness of his skin there.

What’ve I done? she cried. I’ll be chained to this man for the rest of my life. I’ll have to fight every day against falling in love with him. Korl’s right, I’m afraid to give him my heart and mind, for if I make him a part of me as I did Brez, I’ll never survive if I should lose him.

Korl’s full mouth spread while he laughed about something with his father, creating that dimple in his cheek, drawing Mahri’s mesmerized stare to those parallel scars.

No, she thought, it’ll be worse than it was with Brez, for I always held a part of myself separate from him. I’ll be more vulnerable than ever before, because Korl does things to me, touches places inside of me, that have always been my own. If I fall in love with him we’ll be so entwined that there’ll be no “me” and “you.” Only “us.”

Mahri’s chest fluttered and she stifled a moan.

The room grew quiet and still when a bone dancer began the evening’s entertainment, all eyes glued to the instrument that whirled in deadly precision around the girl’s head, all ears straining to catch the song that keened through the holes of the bone
‘ka
. As enraptured as the rest, Mahri started with surprise when she felt a soft tap on her shoulder and looked into the soft black orbs of a native, the scarlet band of a palace worker wrapped around its throat.

Where’d it come from? she wondered, scanning the room. Natives were everywhere, serving dishes and clearing plates and filling glasses. She just hadn’t noticed them before. Perhaps because they hadn’t wanted her to.

Then she caught the gaze of Master R’in as he studied the native and her, frowning at both of them with puzzled alarm. So, she wasn’t the only one aware of the native’s presence beyond their shadow of servitude. It gave her small comfort.

“What do you want?” she hissed. “Seems to me that your plan is going along just fine, whether I like it or not.”

The native’s bush of fine-scaled fur lifted around its head and those black eyes tried to speak to her. Mahri felt it tap upon the barricade around her mind and Jaja turned and snapped at the creature. For a moment the two stared at each other, Jaja’s tail fanning out into a bristle,
in some silent battle of wills. Then the native sighed and her monk-fish nodded his head with indignant satisfaction and turned back to his half eaten candied pom-poms.

He won’t destroy the mind-barrier for them, thought Mahri with relief, and stroked her pet’s tail back down into a smooth coil.

The native then pointed across the table, at the pale head of Korl’s half-sister and her black-attired companion, then drew a webbed finger across Mahri’s throat and bared its teeth at her. And then disappeared.

Mahri blinked. Where had it gone? She glanced around the room and couldn’t see any of the natives, except as a dark blur passing among the courtiers. Then she Saw with the small dregs of Power left from Korl, and this time could make them out more clearly, as their structure was slightly different from a human’s. She knew if she could get access to more zabba, and if she cracked her mind-shield, that not only would she See them but could Speak to them as well.

She wondered if Master R’in could too, and resolved to seek him out, for some reason feeling that she could trust the old man. In the meantime, the native had aroused her curiosity.

“Korl.”

“Aah,” he turned toward her and smiled. “You’re not mad at me anymore?”

Drat his dimple, she thought. “Mad doesn’t begin to define what I feel—no wait—I want to talk to you, but only under one condition.”

“And that being?” He leaned toward her.

Mahri leaned back. “Just don’t look at me.”

“You would deny me even that pleasure?”

“And I won’t look at you,” she added, staring past his shoulder. It was her only defense against his allure and she knew she’d best get in the habit of avoiding his gaze if she wanted to keep any of her self control.

His voice gentled to a whisper. “What happens when I look at you water-rat? What are you so afraid of?”

Mahri didn’t appreciate the husky tone of his voice, even if her body did, already responding to it with shivering warmth.