Oathen (44 page)

…But can he?
Geret looked at her hand
so long, she feared he would refuse her, forcing her to join
herself to Salvor forever. Just as she became convinced that he was
rejecting her choice, his warm hand reached out and grasped
hers.

“Where do I sign?” He squeezed her hand, and
her shoulders slumped in relief.

“No…!” Rhona’s grief-stricken denial echoed in
the room; she turned and bolted back into the hallway.

Salvor glanced at Ruel, who glared back at him
with crossed arms. “This is your fault,” the pirate
accused.

“Mine
?” Salvor asked in disbelief,
while Sanych and Geret looked at each other, confused. “Fine.” He
stalked after Rhona. That didn’t seem to make Ruel any happier; if
anything, he looked more upset.

Ahm cleared his throat. “Let’s get started,
then, shall we?”

~~~

Salvor saw Rhona enter a small storage room
down the hall and followed her in, closing the door. The darkness
inside smelled of dried herbs, salted meat, stone and
dust.

“Rhona, I’m sorry it turned out this
way.”

“It’s not fair!” she cried, lashing out with a
fist in the dark room. It glanced off his chest, and he grabbed her
hand, drawing her to him.

“Fair is in the eyes of the chooser,” he told
her, putting his arms around her, feeling the double bite of his
words. His chances to redeem himself to Sanych had just come to an
end.

She shrugged away from his touch. “Last night
was a mistake,” she said, flinging her bitter words like
knives.

He took a deep breath. “The part where I
bedded you? Or the part where you called me ‘Geret’?”

“I…”

He reached for her in the darkness, brushing
her arm. She tried to jerk away, but he caught her sleeve and
dragged her to him, spinning around and pressing her against the
wall. His body crashed against hers, and the force of his mouth
meeting her lips thumped her head against the stone.

She filled his mouth with Clan curses and
shoved at him with her hands, but he grasped her wrists and pinned
them next to her shoulders. Her chest heaved against his, and her
scent filled his nostrils. His mouth was just as skilled as it had
been the night before, and gradually her resistance melted away.
The kiss grew gentle, sensual. Her hands slipped from his grasp and
knotted in his tunic, pulling him against her.

“My name,” he panted, finally breaking the
kiss, “is Lord Salvor Thelios, and when you tell your friends that
I was the best you ever bedded, and how I’ve spoiled you for Clan
boys forever—by Folly’s little pink bastards, you’d better get my
name right!”

Rhona put her hands on his chest and moved him
back a step so she wasn’t pinned against the wall. Her hands
trailed down his arms, then she wrapped his arms around her waist.
He laced his fingers together at the small of her back, and she
brought his face down to hers for another kiss.

“You are the best,” she confessed in a
whisper, her words a secret gift in the lightless room. “And I hate
you for it.” Her voice broke, but it wasn’t bitterness that spilled
out; it was merely the dry apathy of emotional
exhaustion.

Salvor remained silent, holding her, taking
momentary pleasure in her warmth and companionship, as he’d chosen
to do last night. His life, dedicated as it was to Geret’s safety
and eventual return to Vint, had never truly been his to do with as
he pleased. Any pleasure he enjoyed was, by necessity, soon set
aside.

That includes Sanych now. She’ll
never be within my reach again.

“Stay with me,” Rhona murmured. “I can’t bear
to go watch.”

“As the lady wishes,” Salvor said into her
curls.

Rhona began to sob quietly, and he held her
close in the darkness, smoothing her hair as her tears soaked into
his tunic.

~~~

Sanych stood on the white stone dais,
shivering in fear, as magic-tinged water flowed around her bare
ankles. She squeezed her eyes shut, chest heaving. Cracking her
magic open had been bad enough; the sudden ability to wield light
had gone to her head, and she was still only half-trained in its
use. Now, standing barefoot before friends and strangers, she
braced herself for the spell that would bind her forever to a man
she couldn’t trust.
How in Folly’s name did my safe, comfortable
life lead me to this moment?

Below, Meena held her gaze with a smile.
Behind Sanych, Geret stood in his own pool with his back to her.
Several feet of dry stone separated them.

Ahm spoke to the silent, watching audience.
“This spell employs elements of each candidate’s soul in order to
make the binding permanent. These elements will be represented by a
color that floods the pools of water. No one can say ahead of time
what that color will be, nor what it will mean, since each
Oathbinding is unique. Rarely, the Oathbound pair have similar
shades reflected in each pool, but by far the majority are
represented by different colors entirely, making their bonding
greater than the sum of its parts.

“Let the souls’ elements come forth,” Ahm
chanted. Sanych looked down as color flooded her pool; the water
burbled a pale green.

Geret breathed slowly and deeply, trying to
calm his nerves as he stood in his own red-gold pool. He knew in a
few minutes his head was going to be filled with Sanych’s emotions,
and he dreaded it. He’d been a fool, kissing her when she was with
Salvor, and he regretted not telling her straight away about Rhona.
He hadn’t found time since they’d landed in Shanal, either
. I
wonder if she’ll ever forgive me
, he thought, biting the inside
of his lip,
for the kiss, or for the deception
. He thought
ahead to their eventual return to Vint. Folly
, that’ll be
awkward. A prince and an Archivist? At least
, he comforted
himself,
my uncle won’t be able to marry me off anymore. I’d
never do that to Sanych after this. Not for
anything
.

“Sanych,” Ahm said, interrupting his train of
thought, “is it your Oath to guard and protect Geret, body and
soul, to aid and not hinder him, to set yourself with him against
all who oppose you, and to never raise your hand against
him?”

Geret held his breath, waiting.

~~~

Sanych bit her trembling lip. She looked down
at Meena, her friend and mentor for the last year. Meena met her
eyes with a fervent gleam in her own.
He must think so little of
me
, she thought,
to wall himself away from me for so long.
But Meena needs me to do this. The whole world needs me to do this.
I’ve even managed to convince Salvor that I’m doing it to save
Geret’s life. Have I convinced myself of anything?
Her eyes
drifted from Meena’s, and she shut them tight as her true feelings
for Geret flooded to the fore
. Only that I love him despite his
faults, mad as that sounds. If nothing else mattered but protecting
him, I’d still be standing here
.

Sanych took a big breath and nodded. “Yes,
this is my Oath.”

~~~

Ahm turned to Geret. “Geret, is it your Oath
to guard and protect Sanych, body and soul, to aid and not hinder
her, to set yourself with her against all who oppose you, and to
never raise your hand against her?”

She hesitated so long…was I wrong? Maybe
she doesn’t love me. Maybe it is just duty to her country that made
her pick me
. Geret’s doubts swirled, but he’d given his word,
so with a heavy heart he replied, “Yes. This is my
Oath.”

The watching Scions murmured and nodded their
approval. Meena grinned broadly, and Kemsil nodded, smiling. Ruel
shook his head and looked down the hall where Rhona had
fled.

“Then, by the magic of the earth, and by the
dragons’ blessings, let these two be bound by their Oath,” Ahm
intoned, “forever.”

~~~

Sanych braced herself for the binding,
expecting Geret’s feelings to crash into her mind. Instead, the
pool around her feet swirled and expanded, and the stone between
her and Geret melted away.

The first images tiptoed into her mind: Geret,
as a young boy, laughing and scampering through a field of wheat,
escaping his father’s wrath for his latest prank. Older, he
grinned, revealing missing front teeth, and handed a stolen peach
to his cousin Addan, who sighed and rubbed its fuzz against his
cheek. Sanych’s breath caught at the confusion and loss young Geret
felt, sensing the change in his playmate.

Geret frowned as an image coalesced in his
head: Sanych, no older than three, reading a book on a woman’s lap.
A slightly older Sanych, blonde wisps of hair blowing in the wind,
holding the hands of two women—one with dark brown hair, the other
with lighter hair—as they approached the Temple, never to see her
mother or father again. Geret’s heart twanged, and he was filled
with a sharp ache of empathy.

More images flowed through their minds:
Sanych’s first day out of Highnave, looking for Meena. Geret’s
puzzlement at being invited to live at the Magister’s palace. How
Meena had healed her hand and fed her snow weasel soup. How he’d
laughed when he bested Salvor in their first duel. Her aching sense
of loss when she thought Meena had abandoned her just as the quest
set out. His rage and frustration at leaving some of his fellow
Vintens on the riotous dock at Yaren Fel. Her sudden fear as she
realized her earliest memories had been stolen—then forgetting that
too.

Sanych’s breath came faster; her eyes
unfocused.

Geret trembled and closed his eyes, tipping
his head back.

How she’d hated him for slicing Salvor’s cheek
open! He felt seventeen kinds of fool for allowing himself to kiss
her—why she hadn’t slapped him, he’d never understand. But she’d
been flattered, as well as confused. He’d only kept his distance in
Salience because Salvor had convinced him to. She’d looked forward
to his visits to her library room more than she’d expected; she
found him to be everything Salvor was not.

The waters beneath their feet joined and
swirled. The colors did not mix, but edged alongside one another,
creating a sinuous barrier between them. Sanych’s green reached
around the pool’s edge toward Geret’s feet, and his reddish gold
slid toward hers.

Rhona
. She towered between them like a
sea goddess. Geret ran his fingers through his hair, clenching them
into fists. “I’m sorry, Sanych,” he said aloud.

Geret’s mind saw an image of Sanych, curled in
her bunk aboard the
Princeling
with her hands over her ears,
trying to block the sounds of Geret and Rhona’s spirit-induced
trysting.

Sanych was assaulted with images of the same
scene, yet from the other side of her cabin wall. She couldn’t shut
them out; they were inside her eyelids. Sanych cried out
wordlessly; her voice was filled with rage and denial. Yet, as she
watched, Geret’s foreplay session with Rhona ended prematurely when
the pirate greedily drank straight from a bottle of green liquid,
then toppled off the bed in a blissful daze. Geret giggled down at
her, then fetched an old book and the inkwell and began scrawling
notes across its pages before tearing them out and flinging them
around the room.

Sanych’s eyes flew wide; she dared not
breathe. Geret hadn’t bedded the pirate captain after
all.

~~~

Sanych stood in her jade-hued water and sobbed
into her hands, uncertain, overwhelmed. One final image slipped in
quietly:
Geret rolled into a sprawl among falling snowflakes at
the top of a cliff, filled with skyrocketing hope. He realized that
she was angry with him because she loved him, and that he had a
chance to redeem himself in her eyes. A chance he desperately
wanted.

The water beneath Sanych’s feet blazed;
bicolored light radiated onto the ceiling above. A large section of
jade water pushed through to Geret’s feet and began swirling around
his ankles. Golden-red water surrounded Sanych’s feet as well. A
widening sensation filled her mind, and slowly she became aware of
Geret’s feelings, jumbled and mixed as they were, as a small
portion of her consciousness.

Sanych lowered her hands from her face, wiping
at her tears, her eyes flicking back and forth as she analyzed
these new sensations. A warm euphoria spread through her chest as
Geret’s love for her made itself perfectly clear.

“You weren’t lying,” she blurted, turning
toward Geret.

“You didn’t give up on me,” he said, turning
to Sanych.

Their eyes met. They stood mere steps apart,
seeing each other as they truly were for the first time, all
secrets falling away.

The spell was complete.

Geret’s throat let slip a whimper of longing.
As one, they rushed together, eyes locked, hands reaching. Sanych
threw her arms around his neck, tumbling into him as they splashed
down together. He gathered her close, and they sank to their knees
in the shallow, warm water. She dug her fingers into his long brown
hair and pulled his head down, meeting his lips hungrily with her
own.

Geret sieved his fingers through her pale
golden hair with one hand as he crushed her to him with the other
arm. “I’m so sorry,” he confessed against her cheek, “I didn’t know
how much I loved you until after—”