Kismet's Kiss: A Fantasy Romance (Alaia Chronicles) (43 page)

She winced from the image and glanced away, toward the empty hall entrance. It took her a moment to realize the children hadn’t yet returned.

Kuramos, too, was staring in that direction with his brow furrowed. Then he turned further, and something about the stillness of his face told her he was now looking at her out the corner of his eye. She swung her head back to the altar, guilt twisting around her heart.

“Now the rings, symbol of eternal union.” Sabrang held up a golden pair. “This dusk has begun Raliyam, celebration of Kismet’s birth and the commencement of a night and a day sacred to kin and family. Tonight, this man and this woman pledge to share their lives and entwine their families. Priya, look at your groom to give him your eternal promises.”

And then, as the handmaiden gazed up at her betrothed with eyes glimmering with love and joy, Varene felt her composure shatter. Almost before she realized it, she had risen and slipped toward the sanctuary of the hall.

She nearly smacked into Kuramos.

They stared at each other for an awkward moment, then Varene hurried into the torch-lit hall with the sultan at her heels.

I wanted to escape, yet here he is again!
His presence glowed in her mind. “Why are you following me?” she whispered.

“I’m not,” he growled. “I’m trying to find out where my children have gone.”

“Oh.” She gave an internal sigh. The empty hall ended in a T-junction. “I only saw them all leave. Mishka and Tahir found a cookie rolling down the corridor.”

“Who rolled it?”

“I couldn’t see.” She noticed the lines of tension around his eyes and frowned. “It had to be one of the servants, trying to amuse them.”

He grunted in answer.

They reached the junction and looked both ways. No one was about.

An ache burrowed into the back of Varene’s neck. She wished she could just walk away. “Would they have gone to their quarters?”

Kuramos shook his head and stared down the hall. “Burhan went after them. He wouldn’t have left with them without telling me or one of my wives.”

‘…or one of my wives.’
His simple words knocked the wind out of her. Then she got angry.
This is stupid, Varene. You chose this path. Get used to it.

Again she wished she could just point her shoes in another direction and get away, but it wouldn’t be kind to leave him searching.

Priya’s voice echoed down the hall as she spoke of her love for Sohad. Varene glanced up at Kuramos, aching at the irony.

His gaze skated away from hers, then narrowed as he stared over her head.

She swiveled around and saw that the door to the sultanas’ hammam was ajar. There were no guards by it…perhaps because everyone who might have used it was at the wedding. “Are the children allowed into the baths by themselves?”

“No. Not without supervision. And Burhan is the wrong age to enter, anyway.” But still he eyed the entrance.

She supposed the restrictions made sense. At fourteen, Burhan was too old to be bathing with naked women. Or much too young.

“Let’s take a look.” She strode toward the door, head cocked to listen for laughter or sounds from the children. Maybe they were playing hide-and-seek. But all she heard was Kuramos’s footfalls behind her and the echo of Sohad, now avowing his love for Priya.

She reached the thick doors and pushed open the one that was ajar. There was an odd tang in the air—something she’d smelled before, but couldn’t quite place, and the air glinted in shimmering colors. Moving toward the raised platform of the changing room, she heard Kuramos step into the antechamber behind her and slam the door shut. She spun back, surprised that he’d closed them in.

He hadn’t. Another figure stood by the doorway, a beefy woman dressed in the white and gold silks of the palace uniform.

“Chaaya?” Kuramos said in a doubtful voice. His weight shifted toward the balls of his feet, a warrior’s stance, and his hand flexed over the hilt of his scimitar. “Why are you in here?”

The woman gave a hardened smile, then lifted her flattened palm and blew a sparkling powder from it toward the sultan and Varene.

Colors once more exploded into Varene’s mind. Her knees unlocked and her body slid to the floor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

V
arene’s limbs felt like they’d melted. She stared out at the room, but couldn’t focus or shift her eyes—or move at all, even a finger. Her field of vision held only the dim, torch-lit walls of the antechamber and the moist green carpet runner crushed against her cheek.

She tried to scream, but no sound emerged. Humid air rattled in and out of her half-open mouth, so she knew her lungs were working, but automatically, as if in sleep.

A sharp chuckle needled her ears, and metal clattered as a lock on the door slammed home. “By the Goddess’s grace, such luck—the sultan, too, and his sorceress whore.”

The woman by the door in a palace servant’s garb—Varene had never seen her before. Chaaya, Kuramos had called her. But who the hell was she?

Footsteps reverberated on the marble and the silks of the woman’s clothing rustled. “All these years, O Lord. O Usurper.” Then came a muffled thud, and a bitten-off groan from Kuramos.

She kicked him?
But Varene’s urge to tackle Chaaya deadened in her mind, snared in paralysis.

At least Kuramos groaned.
That was more than Varene could do—which meant, she hoped, that he hadn’t been as affected. Whatever that powder had been, he weighed more and might have inhaled a lesser dose, pound for pound. Or maybe it was just slower to affect him, and he’d soon worsen…

Think, Varene!
When the particles had blown over her, she’d crumpled to the floor as if her bones had evaporated. She couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, which meant she’d lost control of her voluntary muscles—and Kuramos seemed in a similar state.
Think.
A powder… Which one? What substance could do this?

“‘Rene… ‘Rene…” he mumbled.

Her heart wrenched as he called out for her. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t touch him—or even answer.
I’m here, my love! I’m fighting it. Please, Mother Fate, let him do the same…

“Oh, how sweet,” Chaaya snapped. “Concern for your Teg trollop.”

She grabbed Varene’s arm, yanking until her limp figure rotated on the floor—enough that a blurred image of Kuramos’s barely-moving body came into view. Varene struggled to sharpen her sight, but her eyes refused to obey.

“There,” Chaaya growled at him, “you see? She’s just as crippled as you. If not more.”

A nebulous, broad face hovered at the edge of Varene’s vision, peering. Then pain burst over Varene’s cheek and the corner of her lips smacked the marble floor.

“Hm. Definitely more.” Chaaya cackled.

“Ch’dren,” Kuramos slurred.

“Ah, yes.” Chaaya hauled his wrists over his head, then shuffled backward, dragging him with her out of sight.

Panic sluiced through Varene’s veins. Where was she taking him? What had she done to Mishka, Burhan and Tahir?

Concentrate! Heal yourself so you’ll have a chance to help.
But the sounds of Chaaya struggling and cursing as she heaved Kuramos’s paralyzed body over the step into the main section of the hammam ripped at her soul, until fury swarmed through her blood.

Feel the answer
, she admonished herself.
Feel it.

She called to her kyrra, hoping she could at least control that, if nothing else. It answered her in a dampened hum, hindered by torpor. But she delved into herself, into her cells, looking for answers.

Deep inside, she found them. The messages going through her nerves were blocked by the poison. Her mind could no longer communicate with her muscles.

She rifled through her memories. Bloodweed? No, that caused nausea and vomiting. Not yicsa, because her skin wasn’t burning. And salt-spider’s venom would have induced agony from internal blisters.

Staggerrose? Ha. “Cripplerose” was a more apt name for what she was experiencing. But…if the seed contents had been highly refined and dried to a powder, perhaps… Wouldn’t it fit?

Her stomach lurched. Staggerrose nearly always delivered death within fifteen minutes without a Healer’s care or ingestion of the only known antidote: acava bark. Acava could explain why Chaaya hadn’t been affected—but how long had it been since she’d attacked the children? Varene knew of no case where a Healer had been struck. Could she even cure herself, much less the others?

She sent kyrra rolling through her body in a wave, urging her nerves into repair.

Another vicious jerk on her arm wrenched her concentration. She found herself being dragged into the dusky hammam, her head bashed viciously on the single stair in the process. Fortunately, the headache that ensued helped clarify her thoughts.

“There.” Chaaya rolled her over with sharp digs of her toes into Varene’s ribs. “Now you’ll get to see your lover’s death, even as your own soul departs for its judgment.”

There they were, Kuramos and his three children, living rag dolls crumpled on the hammam tiles near the central pool. Their faces were turned up to the ceiling, eyes unmoving. If Mishka, Burhan and Tahir were also awake and conscious, whatever terrors they were feeling were hidden behind the paralyzed masks of their faces.

She could see them, though, Varene realized with a shock. Her eyes could focus again. Perhaps that meant her muscle control was returning. She redoubled her kyrra’s efforts.

Chaaya stepped over her and squatted her bulky haunches by Kuramos’s chest, a pose that revealed the jeweled, ivory-handled dagger in her belt.

Not just
a
dagger. The Dagger of Ayaaz.
The blade of Kuramos’s forefather, the very one the sultan had nearly killed himself with.

“Why, Chaa’a?” Kuramos breathed out.

“You murdered my mistress, you lump of filth. You assassinated the High Priestess of Naaz. Did you think there’d be no vengeance from the Goddess?” With malicious jerks, she unbuckled his scabbard and stood over him. “I’m here to administer it.”

Under all heaven’s stars…
The secret that Kuramos had refused to tell Varene—had he ordered an assassination? Murder of the High Priestess of the very Goddess he worshipped?
Why?

“M’stress? You…worked f’me…forty years…” His voice seemed weaker, more strained. Unlike Varene, his gaze was growing vacant.

And he hadn’t denied Chaaya’s accusation.

The assailant fingered the golden scabbard and stepped to the side of the pool where just days ago, Varene had conversed with Kuramos’s wives. “I was a novitiate of the temple before I came here. Recruited by the High Priestess herself to join your household.” Triumph thrummed in her voice, and her long black braid swung in the flickering light like a pendulum.

“Spy,” he hissed.

“And a good one.”

Chaaya…Chaaya!
Memories swam into Varene’s mind.
The Staff Mistress who sent Priya to me, hoping the illness would kill her.
Varene’s right hand, squashed beneath her torso on the wet tiles, curled into a fist.

I can move my fingers.
Hope flared through her.

Chaaya dangled Kuramos’s sheathed scimitar over the pool. “His weapon, my Goddess. Take it into your waters, into the deep.” She let go with a flourish and it plunked into the steaming water. “Now he’s as powerless as his line should have been since Lakshya’s day.”

When Chaaya closed her eyes and bowed her head in prayer, Varene took the opportunity to wiggle her hands, toes and ankles.
I’m getting better. It’s working!

Drums began to beat through the walls—the sounds of the wedding being celebrated by oblivious guests. With the music, the dancing, the feast on the tables, no one would be missing them.

“Goddess of Vengeance,” Chaaya intoned, “my mistress Intisar should have been born to the throne of Kad. She became, instead, Your beloved High Priestess. Thanks to this man’s treachery, she is dead.” She raised her hands in supplication. “Tonight I complete my service to her, and my oath to serve You through her. I will return the Dagger of Ayaaz to its rightful owners.”

So Intisar had been one of the Lakshyya—one of the two royal lines bitter that Ayaaz hadn’t chosen them. Cautiously, Varene flexed her weakened hands and glanced at her lover.

He’d been so strong in muscle and in mind, but now he was sinking deeper into the paralysis. Into death. Beyond him, Mishka and Burhan and Tahir lay inert.

Varene clenched her teeth. Kuramos was a pious man, devout and faithful to Naaz. Surely a goddess worthy of him, of his faith, would not orchestrate such an evil death for innocent children!

A sandal scraped the floor, and Varene held still as Chaaya stepped back to the cluster of lax bodies. She tugged on them, straightening and maneuvering until the royal bodies together formed a large circle, the toes of one brushing the head of the next. Mishka’s small heels were just visible beyond Kuramos’s dark hair.

Chaaya lit four black candles and placed them on the floor in the center of the circle, then knelt at the sultan’s side, just feet from Varene. “Did you think yourself immune, Filth, here in the palace that isn’t even yours?
My mistress
arranged for you to buy that particular parrot with badly-clipped wings, and then for ailing fowl to be shipped here under everyone’s noses.”