Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (17 page)

           
"Blais!"

           
Blais shuddered. Then he reached out
and caught Kellin's thin arms, closing his taloned fingers into flesh.
"Tanni—Tanni—lir—"

           
"Blais!"

           
"—gods—oh, gods .. . no—"
Blais' face was the color of the ash in the firepit. "Tanni—" He let
go of Kellin all at once and lurched to his feet.

           
"Blais—"

           
But Blais did not respond. He
stumbled toward the end of the hall, seeking doors; his grace was utterly
banished, leaving him reeling like a drunken man, or a sick one. He smashed
into one of the doors and shoved it open.

           
Kellin gathered up the fallen knife
and ran after his liege man. Fear of the Lion was quite vanquished; what he
feared now was that something terrible had befallen Blais. Don't let him go,
too!

           
Blais ran even as Kellin caught up,
but his body betrayed him. Only his outstretched hands, rebounding off walls,
kept him upright. Ropes of muscles stood up in relief against naked flesh.

           
"Blais!"

           
And then they were in Blais'
chamber, and there was blood everywhere, on the floor and across the bed; a
lurid arc against the curtains. Blais tore them aside, then fell down onto the
bed. "Tanni—"

           
People crowded in the door. Kellin
heard the questions, the startled exclamations, but he answered none of them-
He could only stare at the warrior who had been his cousin, his liege man, his
friend; who now was a lirless Cheysuli.

           
"Blais—" This time it was
a wail because he knew.

           
Brennan was behind him. "Kellin
. ., Kellin, come away."

           
"No."

           
Hart was with him, face shiny it was
stretched so tautly across the bones of his cheeks. "Come away, Kellin.
There is nothing you can do."

           
"No!" Kellin threw down
the knives, then ripped himself out of Brennan's reaching hands.
"Blais—Blais—you cannot. No! I need you. I need you! You are my liege
man!" He fastened both hands around one of Blais' rigid arms and tugged,
trying to pull his kinsman away from the gutted wolf.

           
"Blais!"

           
Blais turned a ravaged face on them
all, "Take him away .. . take him from here."

           
"No!" Kellin gulped back
the fear. "Tu'Jalla dei—"

           
Brennan caught Kellin's arms.
"Come away."

           
"He can't go!" Kellin
screamed. "I refuse him leave. I am the Prince of Homana and I refuse him
leave to go!"

           
They were all of them in the
chamber: Aileen, lisa, his Solindish cousins. Dulcie's yellow eyes were wide.

           
"Tu'Jalla dei!" Kellin
shrieked. "He has to stay if I say so. He swore. Tell him, grandsire!
Tu'Jalla dei."

           
Brennan's face was stark. "Such
things are for gods to do, not men, not even princes and kings. This is the
price, Kellin. Blais accepted it when he accepted his lir. So did I. So did we
all. And so will you."

           
"I will not! I will not!"

           
Aileen's voice shook,
"Kellin—"

           
"No! No! No!" He writhed
in Brennan's grip.

           
"He swore by blood and honor
and his lir—" Kellin broke it off on a strangled gasp. Indeed, by his lir,
and now that lir was dead. "Blais," Kellin choked. "Don't leave
me."

           
Blais stared blindly. Blood smeared
his chest. "I never knew," he said dazedly. "I never knew what
pain there was in it."

           
Brennan looked old beyond his years.
"No warrior can. Not before it happens."

           
Blais held up his bloodied hands.
"I am—empty—" He shoved a forearm across his brow and left a
bloodslick behind, shining in his hair.

           
"Tu'Jalla dei," Kellin
said brokenly.

           
But Blais seemed not to hear. He
stripped off his lir-bands and the earring and put them on the blood-soaked
bed. Then he gathered up Tanni's body into the cradle of naked arms and turned
toward the door.

           
As one, they all moved aside. Blais
went out of the chamber as wolf blood splashed on stone.

           
"Blais!" Kellin screamed.

           
Brennan lifted him from the ground,
containing him easily. "Let him go. He is a walking dead man; let him go
with dignity."

           
"But I need him."

           
"He needs his ending
more." Brennan held him close. "I wish I could spare you this. But
you, too, are Cheysuli, and the price shall be yours as well."

           
Kellin stopped struggling. He hung
slackly in his grandfather's arms until Brennan set him down. "No,"
he said then, looking up into the face that looked so old in its grief.
"No, there will be no price. I will have no lir."

           
Hart's voice was kind. "You
cannot gainsay what the gods bestow."

           
"I will." Kellin's voice
took on a hard bitterness. "I refuse to have one,"

           
"Kellin." Now Aileen,
moving forward.

           
He cut her off at once with an
outflung hand, "I refuse it. Do you hear?" He looked at his kinfolk
one by one. "They all leave. All of them. First my jehan. Then Rogan. Then
Urchin . .. and now Blais." His voice sounded alien even to Kellin.
"They all go from me."

           
Brennan touched his shoulder.
"This grief will pass, one day."

           
Kellin knocked the hand away.
"No! From now on I walk alone. With no friends, no liege man, no lir."
He looked at Brennan fiercely. "And I will not care."

           
Aileen was horrified. "Kellin!"

           
He felt a roaring in his head; felt
it rush up from his belly and engulf his chest, threatening his throat. If he
opened his mouth, he would vomit.

           
He knew its name: rage. And a hatred
so virulent he thought he might choke on it.

           
"No more," he said
quietly, making it an oath. "The gods cannot take from me what I do not
have."

           
Naked, the woman lay next to him in
the darkness. She had not slept when he was done, for he had, as always,
disturbed her with his intensity, and she could not tumble out of passion into
sleep the way he could -

           
She lay very quiet next to him, not
allowing her flesh to touch his. If she disturbed him, he would waken in ill
humor, and she had learned to avoid his black moods by submitting everything to
him: will, body, spirit. She had learned the trick long ago, when she had first
become a whore.

           
She let his warmth warm her, driving
away the chill of the winter night.-Her dwelling was tiny, not so much more
than a hovel, and she could not afford the endless supply of peat and wood that
others bought or bargained for to get them through the Homanan winter. She
hoarded what she had, although when he came she piled it all on the hearth.
Even if it meant going without for days after.

           
He shifted, and she held her breath.
One broad hand moved across her belly, then cradled her left breast- The
fingers were slack and passionless. He had spent that passion earlier; though
he was easily roused, she did not do it now.

           
She sighed shallowly, not daring to
move his hand. He had bought her body, let him fondle it as he chose. It made
no difference to her. At least he was a prince.

           
She had other lovers, of course, but
none so fine as he. They were hard men, tough men, with little refinement and
less imagination. He, at least, was clean, with a good man smell, lacking the
stench of others who had no time for baths, nor the money to buy wood to heat
water. It was no trouble to him to bathe whenever he wished; she was grateful
for it. She was grateful for him.

           
That he had chosen her was a miracle
in itself.

           
She was young still, only seventeen,
and her body had not yet coarsened with use, so she presented a better
appearance than some of the other women.

           
And she had high, firm breasts above
a slim waist, with good hips below. She would lose it all, of course, with the
first full-term pregnancy, but so far she had been able to rid herself of the
seeds before any took root.

           
But what of his seed?

           
She laughed noiselessly, startled by
the thought.

           
Would she bear a prince's bastard?
And if she did, would he provide for her? Perhaps she could leave this life
behind and find a good, solid man who would forget about her past. Or would he
take the child, claiming it his?

           
It was possible. It had happened in
the past, she had heard; the bastards had been sent to Clankeep, to the
shapechangers, to grow up with barren women. He would not risk leaving a
halfling with a Homanan woman, lest someone attempt to use it for personal
gain.

           
He called her meijha and meijhana,
words she did not know. She had asked him if he had a wife, and he had laughed,
correcting her: "Cheysula," he had said, and then 'Wo, I have no
cheysula. They expect me to wed my Solindish cousin, but I will not do
it."

           
She turned her head slightly to look
at his face.

           
In sleep he was so different, so
young, so free of the tight-wound tension. It was a good face in sleep, more
handsome than any she had welcomed in her bed, and she longed to touch it. But
to do so would waken him, and he would change, and she would see the customary hardness
of his mouth and eyes, and the anger in his soul.

           
She sighed. She did not love him.
She was not permitted to love him; he had told her that plainly their first
bedding three months before. But she did care. For all his black moods he was
kind enough to her, even if it was an unschooled, rough kindness, as if he had
forgotten how.

           
He had spoken harshly to her more
often than she would choose, but he had only struck her once; and then he had
turned away abruptly with a strange, sickened look in his eyes, and he had
given her gold in place of silver. It had been worth the bruise, for she bought
herself a new gown she wore the next time he came, and he had smiled at her for
it.

           
Her smile came unbidden; a woman's,
slow and smug. In my bed lies the Prince of Homana.

           
He moved. He stretched, flexing
effortlessly, and then he sat up. She saw the play of muscles beneath the flesh
of his smooth back, the hint of supple spine, the tangle of black hair across
the nape of his neck. She lay very still, wondering if she had spoken her
thoughts aloud.

           
For a moment his profile was very
clear in the dim light, outlined by the coals in the tiny hearth across the
room. She saw the elegant brow and straight nose. He was yet groggy with sleep
and soft from it; when the sleep fled, his bones would look older and harder,
with black brows that drew down all too often and spoiled the youth of his
face.

           
He slanted her a glance. "Did
you dream of me?”

           
She smiled. "How could I
not?"

           
It was his customary question and her
customary answer, but this time neither appeared to please him. He scowled and
got out of the narrow bed, then reached to pull on black breeches and boots.
She admired as always the suppleness of his muscles, the lithe movements of his
body. It was the Cheysuli in him, she knew, though he did not seem other than
Homanan. She had seen a warrior up close once and still shivered when she
recalled the strangeness of his eyes. Beast-eyes, some folk called them, and
she agreed with them.

           
His were not bestial. They could be
disconcertingly direct and nearly always challenging, but they were green, and
a man's eyes. For that she was grateful.

           
He lifted the jug from the crooked
table and poured wine, not bothering to don the shirt and fair-lined doublet on
the floor beside the bed. She hunched herself up on one elbow. "Are you
going?"

           
"I have had from you what I
came for." He did not turn to look at her. "Unless you have
discovered yet another position."

           
She, who believed she could no
longer blush, burned with embarrassment. "No, my lord." She had
displeased him; he would go, and this time he might not come back.

           
He swallowed down the wine and set
the mug down with a thump. "This vintage is foul. Have you no
better?"

           
"No, my lord."

           
Her flat tone roused something in
him. He turned, and the thin gold torque around his throat glinted. "You
reprove me?"

           
"No!" She sat up hastily,
jerking the bedclothes over her breasts in an instinctive bid for a modesty she
had surrendered years before. "Never!"

           
He scowled at her blackly. His mouth
had taken on its familiar hard line. And then he smiled all unexpectedly, and
she marveled again at the beauty of a man who could be cruel and kind at once.
"I have frightened you again." He poured more wine and drank it,
seemingly unaffected by its foul taste. "Do you fear I will turn into
beast-shape here before you?" He laughed as she caught her breath, showing
white teeth in a mocking grin.

           
"Have no fear, meijhana ...
there is no lir-shape for this Cheysuli. I have renounced it. What you see
before you is what I am." He still smiled, but she saw the anger in his
eyes. "My arms are bare, and my ear. There is no shapechanger in this
room."

           
She held her silence. He had shown
her such moods before.

           
He swore beneath his breath in a
language she did not know. He would not come to her bed again this night, to
set her flesh afire with a longing she had believed well passed for her until
he had come with no word of explanation for a prince's presence in a Midden
whore's hovel.

           
A sudden thought intruded. He might
not come back ever.

           
The fear made her voice a question
she had sworn never to ask. "Will you leave me?"

           
His eyes narrowed. "Do you
care?"

           
"Oh aye, my lord—very
much!" She believed it would please him; it was nonetheless the truth.

           
A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Do
I please you? Do you care for me?"

           
She breathed it softly. "More
than any, my lord."

           
"Because I am a prince?"

           
She smiled, believing she had found the
proper answer. "Oh no, my lord. Because you are you. I care for you."

           
He turned from her. Stunned, she
watched as he put on his shirt and doublet, then swept up and pinned on the
heavy green cloak. It was lined with rich dark fur, and worth more than the
house she lived in. She saw the gold cloak-brooch glitter in firelight, ruby
gemstone burning. The brooch was worth more than the entire block.

           
And then he strode across the room
to her and caught her throat in his hands, bending over her.

           
"No," he said. "You
do not care for me. Say you do not."

           
She grasped at his hands. She wanted
very badly to say the proper words. "But I do! Your coin is welcome—I am a
whore, for all that, and claim myself no better—but it is you I care for!"

           
He swore raggedly and released her
so abruptly she fell back against the wall. He unpinned the brooch and dropped
it into her lap. "You will not see me again."

           
"My lord!" A hand
beseeched. "Why? What have I done?"

           
"You said you cared." His
eyes were black in poor light. "And that I will not have."

           
"Kellin!" She dared to use
his name, but he turned away in a swirl of green wool and was gone. The door
swung shut behind him-The brooch that would buy her freedom was cold comfort in
the night as she cried herself to sleep.