Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (23 page)

Sara looked at him blankly.

“Your health? Your sight?”

The thought of going blind scared her. She had seen the blind beggars in the streets too often, clutching their alms bowls. She could not abide being so helpless. Traveling with Lance had made her doubly sure she wanted to keep her health. “No.”

“Your hands?” he continued. “Being human, as the shandies have? Your life?”

“No, of course not.” She thought about it. What would she be willing to sacrifice? Her hair? Her little finger? Such small things would not be worth much.

He studied her in silence for a moment. “Then what good is it to you? To anyone from your country? It is slave magic, because only slaves are desperate enough to pay the price for using it.”

Sara thought of what Julen had said of an army of shandies, but regular legionnaires wouldn’t be willing to give up their humanity. They had too much to lose. Nir could threaten a slave’s family, but once the knowledge got out, what was to stop the whole family from changing?

Had all her effort been for nothing, then?

No. Sara’s shoulders straightened. “I love my father and my brother. If they were threatened,” as they were by whatever had caused the massacre, “then I would sacrifice something to save them. And so would many Republicans.”

Lance made a scoffing sound. “Fewer than you think. So you’re determined to get this information to your father?”

Sara saw no point in lying. “Yes. Loma is the Goddess of Mercy, not just of slaves.”

“I’ll have to try and stop you,” Lance said.

“I know.” Sara tensed.

“And yet you’re still here.”

Here, in the intimate dark, with him. “I’m the Child of Peace,” Sara said evasively. “I’m prepared to honor that.”

“Good.” Lance’s head shifted on the pillow. “I suppose that means you’ve sent Julen off in your place?”

She didn’t answer.

“I’ll make you a bargain,” Lance said. “I won’t raise the alarm tonight, if you let me heal you and—”

“No,” Sara interrupted. “You’re still too weak and my headache’s not that bad,” she lied. “I won’t risk sending you into a relapse.”

“Healing you won’t make me sicker,” Lance told her. “I’ll be sick every day for the rest of my life, regardless of whether I ever heal another soul or drown myself in ale and self-pity.”

Sara frowned. “You weren’t sick when we first met.”

Lance tapped his knuckles. “Arthritis.”

Sara remembered. And after the swelling had gone down, he’d immediately started to sneeze. “But you were well when we left Gatetown. Weren’t you?”

“Rash on the back of my neck,” Lance said mildly.

“Oh.”

“Now will you come here?”

Sara gave in. She crawled over to Lance’s pallet. The movement sent tiny daggers of pain into her head.

Lance’s fingertips grazed her shoulder and glided up to her hair, loose and unplaited for the night. “Goddess have mercy.” His hand curved around her skull, bringing with it the familiar feeling of heat and the scent of wildflowers. The pain lifted.

Sara moaned with pleasure. “That feels wonderful.”

“Bend your head. My arm’s weak.”

Sara obeyed, awkwardly resting her head on the blanket near his hand. The pain was completely gone. So completely that she soon shifted restlessly, becoming aware of his half-naked body. “Are you done?”

His fingers flexed in her hair then released. “Yes, of course.”

Cautiously, Sara lifted her head a fraction of an inch. Pain descended with the force of an anvil. With a cry, she grabbed his hand and pulled it back to her head. At the touch of his fingers the pain dissolved again.

“It didn’t work?” Lance sounded mystified.

“No.” Sara bit down on her lip.

“That’s not right. The Goddess’s touch should completely cure you, even after I remove my hand.”

“Your magic has no limitations?” Sara didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry when she automatically fished for more information.

“Two. Death and insanity. I cannot cure the mind.” Lance sounded grim. “It worries me that you still feel pain.”

It worried Sara, too, but just then a huge yawn split her face.

“Never mind.” Lance sounded amused. “We can talk about it in the morning. Lie down—carefully.”

Sara did so, while Lance kept his hand on her head. After a bit of shifting, they arranged themselves with some degree of comfort. It should have felt embarrassing and awkward to lie beside a half-naked man. Instead she found peace in Lance’s touch and quiet breathing. Her eyelids sagged closed.

* * *

Lance knew he should sleep, too—his body needed more time to heal—but he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes just yet. In the morning, he would send some men and the village Finder out to round up Julen—even if he didn’t get lost again, Lance doubted he would get very far on foot. Then he and Sara would be at odds once again, but for now he had this time to study the woman sleeping in the curve of his arm.

Sara was still breathtakingly beautiful, but there was a vulnerability around her eyes that hadn’t been there before, or perhaps he just hadn’t seen it.

She’d meant the stories she’d told him that afternoon to be amusing, but to him they spoke of appalling neglect. Neither of her parents had troubled to even see to Sara’s basic safety. Her stories had made him angry—an emotion that made him uneasy.

Feeling desire for or even liking Sara was one thing, but this urge to protect her could only lead to trouble. She was a noblewoman, the daughter of the Primus of a country inimicably opposed to his own and a spy. For all that he was no prince, Lance was his father’s son, the sometime Child of Peace and an itinerant healer with no house or income of his own to offer any woman. There could never be a future between them.

In a few days, they would arrive at his father’s hall. Lance had intended to visit for two weeks, but now he resolved to leave after a few days. He needed some distance from Sara, time for this attraction to subside into something more manageable.

It was the right decision, but knowing they had so little time left together didn’t make it any easier to sleep.

He woke up to the gentle sound of rain. From the gray quality of the light, he judged it to be not yet dawn. He was aware, too, of a weighted misery in his limbs. His fever had risen again, yet not even that could dispel the ache of desire he felt for the woman beside him. He turned onto his side so he could watch her, just as she opened her extraordinary blue eyes.

“Feeling better?” he rasped. His hand was no longer in her hair. He’d withdrawn it sometime during the night.

“My headache’s gone,” she said, but her eyes were as wary as a doe’s.

“Good.” A silence fell between them, the kind that seemed to thrum.

Sara broke it first. “I should get up before Valda returns.”

“It’s barely dawn,” Lance said. “Stay.”

She hesitated, then rolled onto her elbow.

“If you get up, then I’ll have to rouse the village to search for Julen,” Lance told her. “Which would be a shame, because I don’t want to get out of bed yet.”

She lay back down, but now she was tense, all the lovely lassitude stolen away.

“I want to kiss you.” Lance smiled ruefully. “I want to, but I’m not going to.”

A cute little frown appeared between her brows. He wanted to laugh at her obvious confusion. “I’m just going to lie here beside you instead—and hope that you’ll kiss me.”

Sara wet her lips and almost made him groan as desire stirred more forcefully. “Why?” she asked carefully.

He felt light-headed. “Because I love your mouth, and when you kiss me you press your breasts against my chest.”

That just made her frown harder. She bent forward suddenly, and his heart kicked into a gallop, but all she did was lay a hand on his forehead. “Your fever’s up,” she accused.

“Yes.” Lance nuzzled her hand. “Kiss me, Sara. Please,” he added huskily.

Her hands fell on either side of his head. Her closed lips pressed briefly against his, shushing more than kissing. When she sat up again, her face was becomingly flushed, and her hair tumbled down her back in a sensual mess. “There. Happy now?”

“You didn’t open your mouth,” Lance complained. “I want to taste you.” He must be more feverish than he’d thought. The bluntest things were falling out of his mouth. He wanted more than just a kiss: her warm breasts in his palms, her thighs straddling him…

“Lance!”

Had he said that last bit out loud? He groaned and didn’t know if it was from embarrassment or desire. “I’m dying—” to make love to you, he started to say.

“You’re not dying!” she said fiercely, and then she was kissing him again, dripping salty tears onto his face, her mouth hot and open.

Sara threw herself into the kiss as if by doing so she could keep Lance’s fever at bay. As if she could burn out that false heat with the fire that lived between them, life winning over death.

Needing to be closer, she straddled his hips. Her silk nightgown hiked up. Lance groaned and surged up under her, so that the bulge in his underwear pressed against her opening. It felt so…good. Sara rubbed herself against his hardness and bent to kiss him again. His warm hands kneaded her breasts as their tongues danced together.

She sent her hands racing across his chest in a frenzy of exploration. She loved the swell of his muscles, the tautness of his skin, the line of hair bisecting his chest, his musky scent.

“Sara.” Lance groaned and kissed her throat, making her arch her neck. His fingers found her stiffened nipples and plucked them through the silk while his tongue traced her collarbone. Sweet heat bloomed inside her.

“Sara, look at me.”

Her eyelids felt weighted; she dragged them open. Beneath her, Lance’s eyes glittered with fever. “I need to be inside you.” His body strained upward in illustration, making liquid heat surge between Sara’s thighs.

“Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes.”

She reached down between them and tore at the drawstring on his underwear until it loosened enough that she could shove it down out of the way. Lance didn’t help at all, his own fingers busy stroking her slick opening and making her cry out.

At last his erection sprang free. When Aunt Evina had explained this part to her, Sara had been sure she wouldn’t like it, but this was Lance. She
wanted
him inside her. Eagerly, she positioned herself over his stiffened rod and began to impale herself.

The blunt penetration felt good, but after a few inches he reached the barrier of her virginity. Sara squirmed, discomfort warring with her need to be filled by him.

“Wait,” Lance gasped. But she didn’t want to wait, she wanted to feel. She rocked back on her knees, sliding up a couple of inches, then slammed herself back down. Pain and pleasure together arrowed through her. She held still, trying to make sense of the sensations rioting along her nerve pathways.

Lance’s muscles locked underneath her, his face a mask of restrained passion. “I can’t—can’t go slowly,” he gasped.

“I don’t want you to,” she said clearly. Instinct made her rise above him again and slide down. Yes. There. A little pain lingered, but not enough to slow her down. She began to ride him, going from a canter to a good hard gallop.

“Slow down,” Lance gasped, but she didn’t listen, racing toward some unseen glorious finish line and then—

Yessss.

She collapsed bonelessly on top of Lance, even as his hands clenched on her hips. He slammed home twice more, making stars burst in her vision, and then groaned, finding his own release.

* * *

It had finally happened. She’d given in to the wildness. Her virginity was gone, an irrevocable act. Lying beside Lance while he slept, Sara waited for the self-recriminations to come, but discovered she felt no regret. As the Child of Peace, she would be spending the next five years of her life in Kandrith. When she returned to the Republic she would no longer be of prime marriageable age. And if need be, Aunt Evina could invent some story of her being widowed during her long absence.

No, she didn’t regret making love with Lance. She was fiercely glad he’d been her first, that she’d have this memory in place of Claude or Nir rutting on top of her.

None of which changed the fact that she couldn’t let this happen again. What she felt for Lance wasn’t as bad—yet—as her girlish infatuation for Julen. At fifteen, she’d been convinced Julen was perfect in every way, the handsomest and smartest man in the whole world. She knew Lance had faults: he was stubborn, often grumpy and despised the noble class. Oh, yes, she could enumerate his faults well enough. The danger lay in the fact that his virtues—his kindness, integrity and courage—outshone them in her eyes.

If she allowed passion to rule her, it wouldn’t be long before she started seeing Lance as perfect, before her loyalties to her father and country began to erode. Because, after all, a perfect man could never have had anything to do with the Favonius massacre so what would be the harm in confiding in him?

She had to put some distance between her and Lance. Starting now.

After reassuring herself that Lance’s fever hadn’t grown dangerously high, Sara rolled out of bed and dressed in her Kandrithan clothes, this time in pale green. She was poking dubiously at the embers of last night’s fire when the cottage door opened, letting in the sound of rain. Valda had returned.

“Good morning,” Sara said, but Valda was neither smiling nor alone.

Another woman, dressed all in white, came through the door and stood just inside the cottage. The dripping hood of her cape framed a round face with blond hair going silver. “You are the companion of the man named Julen?” she asked in a peculiar monotone.

Alarm prickled across Sara’s skin. “What’s the matter?”

Valda nudged her. “Just answer the Listener’s question.”

“Uh, yes I am.” The Listener sounded like another title, like the Watcher, but what did it mean? She was wearing a white dress and a white vest. In the skipping song, white had symbolized— She couldn’t remember.

“He has been arrested and deemed guilty of cheating at cards,” the Listener intoned.

God of Malice! Julen was supposed to be on his way to the Gate by now. Sara felt a strong surge of anger—how could Julen have been so stupid? She thought frantically. Lance was still sleeping; maybe she could still save the situation.

“Julen is my subordinate. I apologize for his behavior. I’m willing to pay his fine.”

“His trial is this afternoon,” the Listener said. “You can apologize then if you’d like.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Sara said, her heart beating hard. “Julen is a citizen of the Republic. You have no right to detain him.”

Valda snorted. “This isn’t the Republic, and he deserves to be arrested.”

Sara raised a placating hand. “We don’t know that. We haven’t heard his side of the story.” Not that she thought Julen incapable of cheating at cards. It just seemed unlikely that he would have been clumsy enough to be caught.

“His trial is this afternoon,” the Listener repeated.

She turned to go, but Valda stepped forward and touched her shoulder. “I’ll see you again tonight, Madge.”

“I hope so.” The Listener smiled back at her.

Sara blinked. She hadn’t realized Valda had meant she’d be staying with a pillow friend like some of Aunt Evina’s sophisticated crowd had. Not that it made any difference. Sara’s mind immediately returned to the problem at hand: extricating Julen from jail and getting him on a horse and on his way.

If she was very lucky, Lance might sleep all day and—

“Listener, I would be pleased if you would wait a moment,” Lance said, poking his head out from behind the curtain. He still looked flushed, but his eyes were clear, and he’d pulled on his tunic and trousers. “Do either of you know—” He stopped, shook his head and started again. “I need to know what was at stake in the card game.”

“Money, I think,” Valda said, looking puzzled.

“A ruby ring was bet against a horse,” the Listener said precisely.

Sara’s stomach lurched. Now she understood what Julen had been thinking.

Lance’s jaw set. “Listener, I’d like to ask Sara a question and have you judge its truth.”

Truth, that was what white represented. Sara swore inwardly.

“I will judge,” the Listener said.

Lance turned to Sara and all this morning’s tenderness and passion were erased as if they had never been. He looked at her the same way he had the first day in the carriage: as an enemy, a noblewoman.

And wasn’t that what she was? Sara waited in bitter silence.

“Did you order Julen to cheat at cards or steal a horse?” Lance asked harshly.

Sara lifted her chin. “No.” It was the truth—she just hadn’t inquired closely into how Julen intended to obtain one.

“Truth,” the Listener declared.

Lance still looked suspicious, but he didn’t ask any more questions. “My thanks, Listener.”

The Listener inclined her head, touched Valda’s shoulder in passing and then departed back out into the rain.

Sara couldn’t stand the silence. “I take it a Listener can truth-tell in some fashion? What do they sacrifice?”

Lance seemed to debate with himself a moment before replying. “Listeners sacrifice their hearing for the ability to hear only truth. When someone lies they hear a kind of harsh buzzing instead.”

“That doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.” Not compared to Lance’s.

“It
is
a sacrifice,” Lance declared, vehemently. “She’ll never hear a white lie, that she looks well when she doesn’t. She’ll never hear thunder or the sound of rain. If there was a runaway horse, she would not hear the sound of hooves and know to get out of the way. She cannot hear questions. She will never hear music, or a loved one’s voice, or a child’s laughter. A Listener is wrapped in silence, set apart.”

Sara stared at Lance, taken aback. He’d clearly thought this through in great detail. Why?

“People are wary of Listeners,” Valda said sadly. “They guard their tongues, lest they betray their petty secrets. I know better, and it’s still hard for me. That’s why I live here in the house my husband built instead of with Madge—that and I’m not ready to leave behind the pear tree my mother gifted me with.” Valda looked at Lance. “The Kandrith is a Listener too?”

Lance nodded, his gaze brooding.

Sara wanted to hug him, but they were no longer on that kind of footing. She cleared her throat instead. “I assume the Listener will preside over Julen’s trial?” In the Republic, trials took place in a Temple of Hana with two acolytes arguing the case. For very important trials the God of Justice was supposed to provide a sign of guilt or innocence, but Sara had heard it whispered that the outcome depended on which party had made the most generous ‘donation.’

Lance shook his head. “Julen has already been deemed guilty. The Listener will be there to judge his promise to abide by his punishment.”

“What is the usual punishment?” She wondered if there was some way she could send to her father for more money if need be.

“Repayment of some kind. The Justice will decide what.”

Valda must have noticed her puzzled look because she added, “The Justice is the person most wronged by the offender. Whoever Julen cheated.”

“The ruby ring will probably content him,” Lance said dryly, “though it would be his right to demand what Julen tried to steal from him. Two years’ labor.”

“Two years?” Sara squeaked. “For cheating at cards?”

“Horses are rare in Kandrith,” Lance said.

Sara felt herself pale. Of course. Horses couldn’t pass through the Gate, so stock must be limited.

* * *

The jail proved to be an empty wooden granary. The guard—a dour farmer with a florid face—agreed to let Sara in after Valda spoke to him. In place of a hinged door, the square granary had two parallel grooves into which boards could be slotted as the grain level within rose higher. The farmer removed the top five boards so that Sara could put one leg over and get in—an impossible task if not for her split skirts.

Pointedly, he replaced the boards afterward, leaving Sara blinking in the dimness. There were no windows, but light fell through a number of gaps in the walls. The air tasted dusty with chaff.

A small pallet, similar to the one Sara had slept on, had been provided. Julen rose from it as she came inside. “Lady Sarathena, how good of you to visit me.” He looked his usual handsome and charming self with only the shadow of a beard to show that anything was amiss. “May I offer you a seat?” He indicated the pallet.

Sara ignored the gibe and crossed her arms. “You snail-brained idiot. What were you thinking? You’ve endangered everything.”

Julen’s lip curled. “I am slandered. When I find out who has accused me I shall challenge him to a duel.”

Sara clapped her hands. “Prettily said—but it won’t work. When you were arrested, do you remember a woman in white who asked you if you’d cheated?”

“Yes,” Julen said cautiously.

“That was the Listener, a Kandrithan truth-teller. She judged you guilty. That’s why you’re in jail. Avowals of innocence are not going to help you.”

Julen stared in disbelief for a moment, then swore heartily.

When he finished, Sara continued on mercilessly. “The trial this afternoon is to determine your punishment. Whoever you cheated will be the judge. If we’re lucky it will only be a fine and not hard labor.”

Julen winced.

“Now tell me exactly what happened.”

“After leaving your illustrious company yesterday, I made inquiries about buying a horse. No one was willing to sell, but I managed to drum up interest in a game of chance.”

Sara frowned. The Kandrithans should have been lambs for Julen to fleece—without cheating. “What went wrong?”

“Nothing—at first. I was careful not to win too often. It took hours to build up a pot. I never saw such a bunch of stingy bets in my life.”

“And?”

“And then the boy got lucky. He won the pot. But I persuaded him to make a side bet—my ruby ring against his horse.”

“And you decided to make sure you won by cheating.” Sara shook her head in disgust.

“We need that horse,” Julen said tightly. “Or have you forgotten? I must get to your father with all speed.” He glanced at the floor where the shadow of the guard blocked the light. “You know the stakes. What would you have had me do?”

Sara looked away. Yesterday she hadn’t known about Listeners. If Julen had asked her permission to ensure he got a horse any way he could, she might well have said yes.

Time to make her own confession. “We have another problem. Lance guessed why you wanted the horse. He hasn’t told anyone else. Yet. But even if you get off with just a fine, it’s going to be much harder to sneak away.”

“And if he brings up at the trial that I’m a spy, things could go very badly,” Julen said grimly.