Karavans (21 page)

She set one hand against her belly.
For you
, she said silently to the child within.
Be well. Be safe. Be free of such threat as Hecari offer
.

ILONA WAS GRATEFUL her blush had long faded when Rhuan rode up from the rear of the karavan, as promised. She sat perched atop the high bench seat, booted feet set against the slanted footboard. Her legs were slightly spread to brace against road ruts and dips, but split skirts or baggy trews lent her modesty upon the road. She had stolen a few moments to twist wayward curls into a long rope of hair, then wound it against her head. Slender glyph-carved wooden rods held the thick coil in place.

She bestowed upon him a smile as he fell in beside her team. “How fare the Sisters and our farmsteaders?”

“Cohabiting without difficulty, for the moment. When the farmsteaders have time to think, they may spend it considering how best to avoid the Sisters.” He grinned briefly. “Though the woman strikes me as willing to face anything, including whores.”

Ilona opened her mouth to say something more, but broke it off as she marked the sudden altering of Rhuan’s expression. She turned her head, following his gaze, and saw the other Shoia, Brodhi, waiting but paces away from the road. Next to him stood a woman.

Not the woman who had been with him the night before. That one had been black-haired; this one’s hair was a brilliant red-gold, markedly more flamboyant than the quieter dark copper of Rhuan’s oiled and beaded braids. In the fullness of the sun, she glowed with a vibrancy that commanded the eye. The woman the night before had faded into darkness.

It crossed Ilona’s mind fleetingly to be startled
and
curious that Brodhi, ordinarily so private, had allowed himself to be seen in public with two different women. But her attention returned to Rhuan. His expression was odd. “What is it?”

Clearly distracted, he glanced briefly at her but did not answer. Instead he sent his horse through the opening between Ilona’s wagon and the one ahead, cutting through the karavan.

The wagons, this early in the day, this early in the journey, did not move so quickly that Ilona could not watch the meeting of Rhuan, his kinsman, and the red-haired woman. She saw him rein in, say something, and after a momentary but telling stillness, he dropped off his mount.

They were nearly of a height, Rhuan and Brodhi, and usually very alike in posture as well. From a distance, one might not be able to tell them apart; she had herself mistaken Brodhi for Rhuan recently. But Brodhi wore the bright blue courier’s mantle across one shoulder, and his body was unaccountably stiff. Ilona was a
hand
-reader, but she knew enough of the language of the rest of the body to recognize that Rhuan’s kinsman was not at ease. It was unusual to see them together, and wholly unheard of for Brodhi to come so near the karavan twice in as many days.

The red-haired woman shot a glance at Brodhi that Ilona could not interpret because of the distance, but she sensed something akin to impatience. And then the woman deliberately placed herself between the two Shoia and made a brief, fluent gesture. Rhuan, after a hesitation, bowed his head as if in assent.

As if, Ilona realized, he gave precedence to her.

The woman put out a hand and drew Rhuan’s knife. She took his right hand, his heart-hand, into her left, turned it palm up—Ilona was reminded of her own reading rituals—and sliced the blade across his flesh.

R
HUAN SHUT HIS teeth with a click as the knife cut into his palm. Blood welled thick and hot—always hot, his blood—running into the lines in his hand, then spilled between his fingers to drip onto the earth. Instincts cried out to stop the flow, to keep his blood from touching anything living, but he knew better. Not when Ferize had begun the binding renewal.

He looked hard at Brodhi, expecting familiar arrogance, but Brodhi appeared no more settled than Rhuan himself. He merely watched, brown eyes hooded, as Ferize cleaned the blade on the hem of her long tunic, then returned the knife home to its sheath at Rhuan’s belt.

She turned then to Brodhi and, without speaking, drew his knife and repeated the ritual, cleaning and sheathing the weapon once the cut in his hand was made. When the blood ran freely, she looked from one to the other, waiting.

Rhuan was aware the last of the wagons had passed. No one now, neither Ilona nor the farmsteaders, would be able to see what was shielded by their bodies. Only that they moved, that they clasped hands in what might appear to be friendly greetings or farewells exchanged. No one would witness that paces away from the verge of the road, where grass grew thickly, their blood dripped onto the earth. No one would see that sod crisped, burned, turned to ash.

“Do it,” Ferize said.

When they did not, sharing only a hard, fixed stare of dominance challenge, she grasped their wrists tightly and slapped the palms together.

“Let be,” she commanded. “For once, let be. Neither of you loses should the other win. You share the blood of your sires, but nothing more. Be what you are required to be, by the bindings of the vows.”

Brodhi’s teeth showed briefly, but it was not a true smile. “These vows,” he said through a thickened throat, still holding Rhuan’s gaze, “are more than a little taxing.”

“And so they should be,” Ferize agreed.

Rhuan said through a throat equally tight, “We wish different things.”

“That matters so little as to be irrelevant.” Ferize’s arrogance, when slipped free of self-control, was far more biting than Brodhi’s. “Do you think the primaries care? They have so many offspring they cannot count them all. Don’t place yourselves, either one of you, so highly in their esteem that it blinds you to what is real and what is merely wished for. Yes, you may become more than you are at present, depending on your goals, but until then you are but insignificant infants mewling for food when it isn’t in the least convenient to feed you.”

“Well.” Brodhi’s tone, after a pause, lightened to something akin to his usual irony. “That does effectively underscore our value, does it not?”

Rhuan’s mouth twisted in sour humor. “Somewhat.”

“It’s done.” Ferize closed fingers around their wrists again and pulled them apart. “Darmuth and I cannot be held responsible for you every moment of the day or night. The binding is necessary, and its renewal.”

Rhuan looked at his hand. The blood was gone, as was the knife cut. The touch of flesh on flesh, blood on blood, had once again replenished that which within them was kinship. And, to employ Ferize’s word, it was
irrelevant
that they were as different in spirit as they were in desires, he and Brodhi. Here, in this place, among powerless humans—equally insignificant infants mewling for food, though they
knew it not—shared blood mattered more than mutual dislike.

Rhuan summoned a careless smile for Brodhi, knowing it would annoy him. “Blame our sires.”

The comment told in the tightening of flesh at the corners of Brodhi’s eyes. For a moment, a passing moment only, a reddish haze flickered across the sclera. Then Brodhi once again donned the habitual mask he wore in place of his face.

“They were fools,” he said, “guided by base lusts. I will do better. But you, I do know, are very like them.”

The brief blood-forced truce was broken. Rhuan turned abruptly back to his horse and swung up. As he gathered the reins, he ignored Brodhi entirely and looked only at Ferize. “Why do you bother? Do you believe the blood-bond will make us
friends
as well as kin?”

“No,” she answered. “I believe it may keep you both unharmed in a place that is dangerous to your kind.”

Rhuan flicked a glance at Brodhi. He suspected his own face mirrored the rejection of that reasoning. But it was done, the binding. Neither of them could hide from one another, even were they thousands of miles apart.

But neither could they hide from the knowledge of their begetting.

EVEN AS RHUAN turned his horse to depart, Brodhi strode jerkily away from him as well as from Ferize. But he sensed her with every hair on his body as she easily caught up. Anger flared anew, tingling deep in his abdomen and kindling in his genitals. His eyes felt hot, hot enough to burst. “You intended it all along. The binding.”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t about wishing farewell to my kinsman.” “No. That was merely a ruse.”

He could barely keep the word from exploding out of his mouth. “
Why
?”

“Because you are an utter fool when it comes to Rhuan.”

“You lied.”

“In this instance I merely avoided the
details
of the truth,” she clarified. “Though it pleases me to lie when necessary.”

“I would expect that of you, yes, when it
pleases
you. But to me?”

Striding beside him, she cast him a glance that could have burned away the grass even as his blood had. “You have your vows. I have mine.”

“You are my mate.”

“Here, I am your
keeper.
”

Though the wound had sealed itself, Brodhi felt the flame in his hand kindle once again. Keeper, indeed. Centuries older than he, infinitely more powerful, owing service to many others before serving him. And he was, she had said, insignificant.

He stopped short. Reached out. Grabbed a handful of shining hair and pulled her around to face him. His vision grew red.

She gave up a foot in height and nearly one hundred pounds in weight. Were she human, he could break her spine, snap her neck, crush her skull. But she was not human. Her pupils, slitted now in the face of his anger, and the scale pattern awakening in her flesh were visible reminders of who, and what, she was.

She placed one hand upon his wrist. He felt the nails altering to claws, tips pressing into his skin. Saw the shape of her mouth changing as teeth elongated.

His throat was full and tight. “Go back,” he managed. “Go back to Alisanos. Go back where you belong, for surely it isn’t here.”

She reached up, took his earlobe into her fingers, and pierced it with a thumbclaw. She grinned at him as he hissed, displaying her fangs. “I could say the same to you.”

Her departure heated the air. He felt at his earlobe, wincing. Blood smeared his fingertips. He shut his eyes a moment, seeking self-control. Once regained, he allowed it
to carry him back toward the tent-city, where he thought the foul liquor humans called whiskey might do for a meal.

THE KARAVAN WAS ahead of him now; Rhuan hastened to catch up. But as he did so a rider fell out of line and waited for him. Darmuth. He brought his horse alongside Rhuan’s as they met and fell in together some distance behind the karavan. This time Darmuth rode a horse of flesh and bone, not a mount conjured out of moonlight.

Something flared briefly in Darmuth’s pale eyes. Pupils slitted vertically. Then he grinned, gemstone flashing in his tooth, as his pupils regained their human roundness. “Trust Ferize to make it happen.”

Rhuan, still disgruntled by the binding ritual and not in the least interested in discussing it with Darmuth, shot him a scathing look.

But Darmuth merely found it amusing. His grin widened into laughter. “I can smell it on you,” he said. “What do the humans call it …hellfire and brimstone?”