Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert) (25 page)

“Why would that matter?”

“Right now it doesn’t,” he said, releasing her arm. “But one day, it might. Why make your movements more public knowledge than they have to be?”

“Spoken like a man who doesn’t have to worry over reputation,” she retorted. “Being branded as loose can cause me all sorts of trouble, Lord Eredion.”

Eredion shook his head, his mouth quirking into a half-smile, but didn’t speak again until they were walking through the western gardens of the palace. Then he said, “I’ll tell you the point of this walk, Lord Alyea, since you don’t see it yet. If you want to put up walls, make sure you have something worth dying for behind that barrier, and a real enemy ready to kill you for it on the outside.”

The clouds closed in as he spoke, and a fat patter of rain began to splotch the ground around them. Bees and wasps lifted in an outraged cloud from the flowering oregano and fennel rows nearby, swirling and zipping to their sheltering nests. Alyea watched them, only half her attention on Eredion’s words. There seemed to be a pattern to the movements of the insect clouds, something just out of the reach of understanding.

When the last insect disappeared, she looked up and discovered Eredion also gone. The rain intensified to a steady, thick drizzle; she started to hurry inside, then stopped, caught by a strange impulse, and tilted her face to the sky.

Water streaked her face and neck, funneling through clothes and along her arms with liquid chill. She stood still for a long time, not thinking of anything in particular; just feeling the rain, and the wind, and her own body responding to the cooling temperatures.

The world around her wavered in and out of hyper-clear focus. She could pick out the petals on a flower a stone’s throw away one moment, barely see her hand in front of her face the next. Smells clashed and rioted in her nose: mold, damp leaves, dirt, rust mingling with fennel, rosemary, and the climbing roses on an archway to her right. She heard the patter of rain as a thundering cacophony, then as a gentle patter; heard footsteps passing, heard the murmur of voices and the burbling of a young child somewhere nearby.

Lost in the astounding collection of perceptions, it took her a while to realize that one set of footsteps had stopped somewhere behind her, and not begun again.

Blinking water from her eyes, she turned around.

Nobody stood behind her, or anywhere nearby. The nearest archway into the palace proper was a goodly stone’s throw away, and the raised flower beds left little room for concealment. She stood still, listening, and heard only the rattle of rain streaming through gutters high and low.

The magic faded sharply from the moment, and she found herself soaked and shivering, standing like a newborn fool in a heavy rainstorm. Cursing under her breath, she headed for the nearest archway.

Three sides of the palace—west, east, and south—were enclosed by long, wide galleries punctuated with multiple archways. Each archway, in turn, stood flanked by two enormous brickroot planters filled with small evergreen shrubs. Alyea stood just inside an archway and wrung her hair and clothes out as best she could, wondering if she were losing her mind. What had possessed her to stand out in the rain like that?

“The changes,” someone said. She yelped and spun, dropping reflexively into a fighting crouch.

Lord Filin stood there, in clothes of grey and yellow that blended in with the walls around him. He laughed; Alyea, watching closely as she straightened, saw that the humor didn’t reach his eyes.

“Good reactions,” he said. His long, dark face went oddly still for a moment, then relaxed. He moved a step closer, his eyes intent on hers.

“Lord Filin,” Alyea said, her mouth dry.

“Eredion asked me to keep an eye on you,” Filin said. A faint smile tugged his lean face into sly lines. “You look to need a change of clothes.”

She didn’t move, her nerves taut as a drawn bowstring. He wasn’t precisely lying, but he had more in mind than keeping her safe.

“I’ll take care of myself,” she said curtly. “Thank you, Lord Filin, but I’ll find my own way back to my rooms.”

He regarded her with smoky amusement. “You’re coming into the changes,” he said. “Not a good idea for you to be alone right now.”

She realized that somewhere during that comment, he’d eased another step closer, and his eyes were tracking every small move she made.

“I’ll
manage
,” she said, narrowing her eyes. Damned if she’d back up from this weasel!

Filin grinned at her and came forward another step; then checked, his head tilting as though listening. His expression tightened, becoming ugly. He stared at Alyea for a moment, a black glitter in his eyes.

“Damn it,” Filin muttered. He bared his teeth at Alyea, revealing two dark gaps in the row of small, even whiteness. No longer the least bit friendly, he turned and strode away without looking back.

She drew in a deep breath, blinking hard, and looked around. Seeing nobody, she abandoned dignity and bolted for the safety of her rooms.

Deiq was lucky to be alive. Knowing that brought him no joy. Neither did being alive. He listened to the rain still pouring down outside and felt a thirst no amount of water would ease, a hunger no food could fill.

In the darkness beside him, someone stirred.

“You’re brooding again,” Eredion said softly. “What’s the matter?”

Deiq stared at the ceiling, allowing his eyes to shift over just enough to be able to make out the swirled patterns in the plaster, and didn’t answer. His head hurt, but it had reduced to a mild agony instead of an overwhelming one; his entire body still ached as from a brutal beating, and he knew what had caused
that
, all too well.

He’d underestimated the tath-shinn. Badly. In more than one way. She could have killed him; and again, he found himself wishing she had, and wondering why she hadn’t.

“Deiq,” Eredion said, and sighed at the lack of response.

Deiq heard him stand and walk across the room. A few moments later, an oil lamp flared to yellow life and a rank smell drifted across Deiq’s nose: this one used fish oil, not surprising in a port city. It could have been worse: his own farms tended to use vegetable oils, and some of them smelled hideous.

Eredion turned the wick down to a bare glow, set it on the bedside table, and sat back down.

“You may as well tell me,” Eredion said. “I’ll pester you until you do.”

Deiq turned his head, not bothering to revert his eyes to human-normal, and stared at the Sessin lord with as much ferocity as he could summon. Eredion just smiled.

“I’m not afraid of you, Deiq,” he said. “Not anymore. You can’t do anything worse to me than what I’ve been through the past few years.” He paused. “Death would probably be a blessing for both of us, wouldn’t it? But it’s never that easy.”

Deiq shut his eyes; they slid back to human-normal without his even willing it, and instantly flooded with tears. He heard Eredion give a low grunt of surprise.

“Are you
crying
?”

“Fuck off.” Deiq blinked hard, lifting a hand to wipe his eyes clear. “Damn dust.”

“Of course.” Eredion’s voice resumed its usual sardonic tone. “So tell me what’s got you so racked over already. I’ve already picked up bits of it; you think about Meer a lot, you know.”

Deiq turned another glare on Eredion; the desert lord didn’t flinch.

“It’s been me and Alyea,” Eredion said softly. “Filin is too shit-scared of being near you; he stood one watch, said you gave him the creeps, and refused to take another. He went out with the others to look for Idisio instead.”

Deiq narrowed his eyes, catching something
off
about that explanation. Eredion ignored that look, too, and went on without pause.

“And Alyea’s still deaf, isn’t she? Hasn’t hit the change. And we haven’t let anyone else near you. So I’m the only one who’s seen anything.”

Deiq grimaced and turned his head away, feeling tight muscles creak. He’d have to spend some time stretching as soon as he had the physical strength to raise a hand for more than wiping his eyes clear.

“Deiq,” Eredion said again, with a maddeningly soft, patient tone that warned this could go on for hours; and Deiq surrendered. This was probably the safest time and person, all things considered. He couldn’t get out of bed to attack Eredion, and if Eredion chose to attack
him
. . . Well, as he’d just said, death could be a mercy.

“All right. Let me think how to say it.”

After sorting through events in his head for a while, he began unrolling into Eredion’s mind, with painstaking delicacy, a story that he’d never allowed another—human, ha’ra’hain, or ha’reye—to hear.

He knew as soon as he eased, unnoticed, past the guard post at the southern edge of the city that something was dreadfully wrong. A choking sense of horror filled the air here, muffling and stifling his perceptions.

Traffic in this part of town was light; few people came north these days. Most went south, under whatever guise or guile would get them past the hard-faced guards. Nobody bumped into Deiq as he stood still, unwilling to move further into the city until he understood what was going on. The guards cast him more than one suspicious glare; he ignored them as he searched for the source of the dread. The emotion felt like a thick, clinging fog, like a living thing determined to seep into his pores and every possible opening.

Like a living thing. . . .

“Oh, hells,” he said aloud, and took a hasty step back towards the safety of the border. Half a heartbeat later blackness surrounded him and a thin, resonant voice spoke in his mind:

Welcome, nephew. Going somewhere? Now wouldn’t that be rude, not to visit while you’re here. Huge eyes opened in the dark, golden and catlike and flat; Deiq only had time to think how odd that appearance was before fragile laughter shredded the air. And speaking of while you’re here. . . .

Jagged lace stripped through his veins as the ha’rethe began, without any pretense of tenderness, to feed. . . .

Deiq cut that memory off before it had a chance to echo pain into Eredion’s mind and moved on to a later moment:

He woke to white, a coolness on his forehead, and the discovery that he couldn’t so much as lift a hand. But he wasn’t bound, just exhausted, and someone sat to his left. He turned his head and blinked at the thin man watching him.

“Good morning,” the stranger said, smiling. He wore a baggy, strangely styled white tunic without ornamentation; Deiq saw no jewelry, tattoos, or other rank indicators. His dark hair, blue eyes, and relatively pale skin spoke of a northern heritage, probably from somewhere above the line of the Hackerwood.

Deiq worked up enough spit to swallow, easing the desert dryness in his throat, and said, “Who and where?” Even that brief sentence tore at his voice, turning it into a rasping husk.

The man bent and retrieved a plain clay jug and cup from the floor by the bed. He had wide, strong farmer’s hands, but clean and neatly trimmed as a courtier’s. Pouring water from the jug into the small cup, the man said nothing until he had set the jug back down, and then only: “Can you sit up on your own?”

Deiq worked his way to a semi-upright position. Leaning on one elbow, he accepted the cup and sipped it slowly, eyes closed. It felt like the first liquid to pass his cracked lips in years, and tasted faintly of almonds.

He could sense the memory of that sharp taste working through Eredion’s mind, calling the moment into vivid immediacy and provoking echoes from the desert lord’s own past: some of which Deiq did
not
want to get drawn into just now. He gently deflected the ghost-memories and kept Eredion’s attention on the story at hand.

When the cup was empty, he held it out without opening his eyes, held it steady as the man refilled it, and drank it as slowly as the first. They repeated the silent exchange three more times before Deiq turned the cup upside down and handed it back to indicate he’d had enough.

“You’re in Bright Bay,” the man said then. “We found you wandering the streets in a daze. Well . . . I found you, actually. And as I didn’t want . . . Well, I brought you back here. To our tower. To heal.”

Deiq stared at the man, frowning, then looked around at white walls, white curtains over a narrow window, and a mosaic of small blue, green, red, and black beads hanging over the bed. The air smelled of lavender, sweet-clove incense, and old sweat, a nauseating combination to his sensitive nose. He shut his eyes and slid back down to lie flat, unable to stay upright another moment and too sick with realization to try.

“Church,” he said through his teeth. Of all the places to wind up . . . the man’s loose clothing wasn’t a tunic, but a Northern Church robe.

“Yes,” the man said. “The tower of the Northern Church. Infirmary section. I’m Meer, by the way, Meer of . . . well, I suppose of Bright Bay now, but I was born in Isata.”

Deiq found the steady calm of Meer’s voice restful and unthreatening. The voice that broke in a moment later, by contrast, was harsh and more than a little whiny:

“I heard voices! Is he awake, Meer, or are you talking to yourself again?”

Deiq kept his eyes shut and his face relaxed as though he were, in fact, still asleep. Meer apparently shared that instinctive decision.

“Still asleep,” the thin man reported without the slightest quaver of deceit in his voice. “I’ll tell you when he wakes, Rettin.”

“We can’t keep him here much longer,” Rettin complained. “He’s been out for days. I don’t like him being up here, Meer. Now that there’s a spot available, I want him moved—”

“Not yet, Rettin,” Meer interrupted. “Give me another day. Please. If he’s not awake by tomorrow night, we’ll move him. I just feel so strongly that he’s going to wake soon that I don’t want to risk that yet.”

The simple sincerity in Meer’s voice impressed Deiq. This man was good at lying with a straight face.

“You and your hunches,” Rettin grumbled, moving away.

Again Eredion’s memories caught and turned over, like tiles loosened by a strong wind. He’d known Rettin: a petty, scheming, selfish man, who came to a perfectly appropriate end not long after that encounter. Deiq resisted curiosity and left that memory alone; he’d ask Eredion about what had happened another day. If he sidetracked now, he’d never find the courage to return to this story. The worst part wasn’t far ahead—if he could just get through it.

When the door had shut behind the intrusion, Deiq opened his eyes again to find Meer watching him with a pensive expression.

“It’s good you’re awake,” Meer said in a low voice, obviously more cautious about being overheard. “I couldn’t have stopped him from moving you tomorrow night to the lower rooms. And those are . . . not healthy places to rest. You’re only up here because all the . . . beds . . . are full downstairs. And now that there’s an opening. . . . “ He shut his eyes and swallowed hard. “Gods save us and forgive us our sins,” he murmured.

Deiq propped himself back up on one elbow and regarded Meer with interest. A little sifting, more challenging than he’d expected, gave him a vague impression of those lower rooms; places where the priests questioned those suspected of plotting against Mezarak—and made half-hearted attempts to repair the wounds of those already questioned: enough to allow another round.

He definitely didn’t want to go there. The search through Meer’s mind, which should have been simple, had drained what strength resting had given him. He needed to sleep for several more days, and Rettin clearly wouldn’t allow that. Weak as he currently felt, fighting back would be difficult, and the images in Meer’s mind suggested they’d tie him down well enough to make it completely impossible.

The water had relaxed his throat; he could speak clearly again. “You’re a priest yourself?”

“Priest-healer,” Meer nodded.

“Herbalist?”

“No.” Meer glanced away, seeming vaguely embarrassed. “Well, somewhat. I use herbs too. But I was given something of a gift by the gods; a healing gift, for those in need. It’s a small gift, nothing of consequence, really. But it helps.”

Deiq regarded him with considerably more respect. A true healer, then: a damn rare gift among humans. Outside Church control, they were called witches, abominations, and monsters; but even Wezel had been a hypocrite about permitting healers who worked under the banner of the Church.

“Are you the only healer in this tower?”

“No. The only one . . . not working the lower rooms. I’ve been refusing to do that.” Meer looked down at his hands, twisted together in his lap, and sighed. “Well, that’s not important. Right now I need to know who you are, friend, and what you’re doing here. Before Rettin finds out you’re awake. We didn’t find any papers on you. No pass tokens. Nothing at all.”

“They must have been stolen,” Deiq said. “I came in through the southern gate . . . a while ago. And I suspect someone hit me over the head. It’s all rather hazy.” He met Meer’s eyes and smiled a little, seeing the healer recognize the same bland sincerity Meer himself had used with Rettin.

Meer’s generous mouth twitched. “I see,” he said gravely. “Do you happen to recall your purpose in town, s’e? Who you were coming to see, perhaps?”

Deiq considered the relative safety of various answers, then said, “I own a business with interests in town. I was coming to speak with one of my factions here, to check the accounting books.”

“Really?” Meer said, eyebrows lifting in polite skepticism. “Which business is that, s’e?”

“The southland Farms,” Deiq said, and watched Meer’s expression crash into astonishment.

“Oh, gods,” Meer breathed, eyes wide. “You’re Deiq of Stass?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Rettin would love to get his hands on you, s’e. And I doubt you’d like that much.” He glanced at the door, chewing his lower lip anxiously. “I’ve got to get you out of here.”

That hadn’t been the reaction Deiq expected. Without the strength to try another fast sifting for information, he was reduced to voicing the question aloud: “Why?”

Meer seemed surprised at his patient’s ignorance. “Because your farms, s’e, are seen as dangerous to the northern economy. The head of this tower, s’iope Itilin, has been getting very fierce about how Bright Bay shouldn’t have to rely on southern imports. What’s so funny?”

Deiq lay back, chest heaving with suppressed laughter, trying not to make too much noise. At last, catching his breath, he said, “I set up the farms so the southlands wouldn’t have to depend on the north for food any longer.”

Meer grinned nervously, his lips staying tight shut over his teeth. “And now they’re doing so well the north likes food from your lands better than that grown in our own soil. I see. But Itilin, and others, are convinced that your farms were a deliberate attempt to steal away precious income and resources from Bright Bay and the coastal villages. There’s been a fair amount of discussion over your farms, s’e, and some of it’s ugly.” He cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Along the lines of taking some of them over in the name of the northern kingdom.”

Eredion sighed a little at that, remembering his own attempts to steer opinion away from that option. Deiq saw the faint traces of violence edging through the desert lord’s recall, and suspected Eredion had gotten his hands thoroughly dirty in service of keeping the peace. That was his job, after all; still, just for a moment, Deiq felt the pressure of a deep sadness that it had even been neccessary.

Deiq sobered. “That would mean war with the entire southlands,” he said. “None of the desert Families would stand for that.”

Meer shrugged, spreading his hands helplessly. “I’m only a priest-healer, s’e, and I only know what I overhear. And that tells me I need to get you out of this tower before they find out who you are—and without them seeing you leave. But you can’t even walk yet, and I have no way to carry you out unseen.”

Deiq drew a breath and shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the first stirring of awakening hunger. Once he fed, he’d have the strength to simply step out of this tower to a safer spot miles away, without any worry about the priests following or finding him.

“I know a way,” he said, “but it’s . . . not going to be easy.”