The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (53 page)

It startled her more to realize she looked…alluring.

Her dress wasn’t all that she’d altered, though the second change proved slightly less dramatic. Northern ladies wore their hair in braids or sculpted curls like crowns upon their head, but daughters of the sand left their hair long and free, at the most held with a net of precious stones.

So Alyneri had had ordered a net of tiny garnets, which stones always brought out the color in her dark eyes. She wore the cap now, liking the way it held her flaxen hair out of her eyes while letting her long locks fall free, liking the way it framed her heart-shaped face, making her dark eyes look larger…

A knock came upon her bedroom door, and she automatically called for entry. Trell came in looking upbeat and prepared for the day, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw her.

“
Alyneri
,” he moaned good-naturedly, pushing palms to his temples, “what are you
doing
to me?”

She turned to face him. But upon seeing his gaze, she followed his eyes to the dress curving around her hips and blushed. “I—I had it made before…everything happened.” 

He approached her at a steady pace, his grey eyes fixed upon her, pinning her in place while her heart tried to race away with her breath in tow. “I have known many women who wore such gowns,” he murmured in the desert tongue that the words should be all the more intimate for their having been spoken thusly. He stopped close and gazed into her eyes as he brushed a strand of hair from her shoulder. “None of them were as beautiful as you.”

Alyneri’s stomach did a little flip. She felt trapped by his eyes, by the heat radiating out of him and her own longing for his touch. “Trell, I—”

He leaned and captured her mouth with his own. She melted at his kiss, and when his tongue found hers…a thrill coursed through her, waking every sense with a current of desire. One hand slipped into her hair and held her firmly. The other hand found the small of her back, and gentle pressure brought her body against his. She felt him powerfully then, felt his own strength and his own desire rising against her.

When he released her, she stood breathless and exhilarated and blushing fiercely.

One finger lingered on her cheek, his thumb capturing her bottom lip while he rested his forehead upon hers. “You mustn’t wear such alluring things, Duchess, if you don’t want this reaction out of me.” 

I shall never wear anything else!

Alyneri finally found her voice, though it sounded very young to her. “I…I shall take your advice under consideration, your Highness.”

His lips spread in a slow and devastating smile. “So,” he said then, easily moving on while she gazed at him in wonder, still enraptured by his kiss. “Fynnlar has gone to see about acquiring a Nodefinder to take us to Tal’Shira. What would you do in the meantime, your Grace?”

Only be with you,
she thought, but she said, “It’s Carnivále. Do you…do you think we could go?”

Trell considered the idea. “It could be dangerous. Brantley might still be looking for you.”

“I thought perhaps if we wore masks…”

Trell took up her hand, but he did not pin her breathlessly that time, only moved his thumb slowly across her skin, seeming to savor the contact as much as she did. “I have never lived in fear of losing my life,” he remarked, holding her gaze with thoughtful regard, “but I would not endanger yours needlessly.”

Perhaps it was the dress that emboldened her, but she straightened her shoulders and said, “I don’t want to live my life carefully, Trell. I want to live it bravely. Ean was impulsive and reckless with his life, and…well, I don’t mean that we should be quite so cavalier, but I…” She paused and gave him a little frown as she confessed, “I have a feeling that adventure will find us no matter how careful we might be.”

It was true. She wasn’t sure if this feeling was the shadow of a Seeing, but it certainly resonated within her in a way that defied explanation. 

“Whatever path we’re upon, we have to walk it, eh?” Trell regarded her intently.

“Something like that.”

He released her hand and ran the back of his fingers down her arm, his touch stirring up heady urges. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and tried not to imagine what it would be like to lie with him.

“Very well, Duchess,” he said after a moment, flashing a smile. “We’ll walk the path together and boldly face whatever it brings.”

Wherein Alyneri wondered if she could ever love someone more.

The sun hung low above the Bay of Jewels as Alyneri and Trell took a coach from the villa toward the Rue Royale, that broad boulevard running through the center of the city, where the largest of the parades and fetes were being held. 

Carnivále in the Cairs was an extravagant fete, a combination of traditions as celebrated by the disparate races and faiths who populated the city. The men and women from Rimaldi celebrated Carnivále with the reversal of traditional roles, where men dressed as women, women dressed as men, lords dressed as slaves, and rather more bizarre interpretations.

Other traditions were represented in the vast party in the streets, in costumes or with toasts, in rituals by candlelit ceremonies or processions of singing and chanting celebrants. At one point Alyneri watched in baffled wonder as a host of dark-skinned maidens ostensibly bathed in a fountain—until Trell explained that the Solstice was the time when the Wind God collected the prayers of the people and delivered them to Jai’Gar. In Duan’Bai, this was a time of corporal purification, fasting and contemplation, but in the Cairs, where frivolity reigned, it seemed the ritual cleansing had been uniquely reinterpreted. 

The sun had nearly set when they arrived at the Rue Royale to find the party in full force. A parade celebrating the Bemothi Festival of the Sun was just passing as Trell and Alyneri exited their coach, and she stood in mesmerized awe at the majestic creations moving past. Puppets ten paces tall were animated by puppeteers, who wore their stilt creations upon their backs like inverse marionettes. The puppets dove and danced, spun and cavorted while their puppeteers moved in lively unison below. Both puppets and puppeteers wore amazing costumes of similar design, so they seemed merely extensions of each other.

Trell held her hand firmly in his, and as the parade moved past, he tugged her on. He and Alyneri wore ‘his’ and ‘her’ velvet masks, which Fynn had reluctantly acquired from one of his many contacts—lovely, feathered things tied on with long silk ribbons. Trell’s grey eyes seemed unearthly behind his sapphire mask, while her dark eyes looked molten against sanguine velvet.

Into the crowd Trell pulled her, the both of them smiling at the display. Music and laughter surrounded them, as much a part of the harmony of celebration as the clinking of glass or metal and cheers made in toast. Trell pulled them up short as a long line of running girls went streaming past, laughing and shouting, all of them wearing pale silk shifts that did little to hide their assets, their long hair tangled with flowers.

“Would you rather see me in that?” Alyneri asked with a sly smile once the girls were gone.

He leveled her a telling look. “I would rather see you in nothing.”

That brought a bright flush to her cheeks, and she buried her head in his shoulder and giggled helplessly.

He squeezed her hand. “Come. I hear music.”

They made their way to a square where a troupe of acrobats were doing flips on a canvas trampoline held by their counterparts. Alyneri watched one of the lithe men flip and twist and corkscrew his way back onto his feet just in time to be thrown up into the air to perform another combination to a cacophony of cheers.

Trell dragged her on toward a café whose tavernmaster had rolled out large casks of wine, and he bought them each a drink served in a painted wooden cup. At their next stop, Trell bought sweet cakes drenched in orange water and honey, followed by minced lamb pies from a street vendor and then pheasant tarts from a woman with a tray standing outside a
taverna,
whose street-side tables were packed to bursting with masked revelers.

On and on they walked and ate and drank, mixing with the celebration and taking of it what they would. Night fell and the stars appeared, barely visible beneath the haze of torches and the smoke of fire candles, which had started going off almost as soon as the sun dipped to the horizon. At one point, Trell bought Alyneri a sparkler stick that utterly captivated her. The long, taut wick sprayed light from its tip in a slow burning coal that left one end desiccated while the flame continued its brilliant expiration.

While it burned, Trell stood behind her with his arms tight around her waist, watching over her shoulder as she gazed in excited fascination. “That’s you,” he murmured in her ear, nodding to the brilliant sparkle. Then he pointed to the ashen end. “That’s me.”

She elbowed him and he chuckled and pulled her closer.

Shortly they found themselves in a small square off the main boulevard where musicians played upon a stage and masses of people danced with no particular rhyme or rhythm.

Trell pulled Alyneri into the fray and spun her to the pulsing beat of bongos and tambourines. Lutists picked up the melody as the pipe-players released it, and their fevered strumming seemed to mimic the beating of Alyneri’s heart. Her face hurt from smiling, and she was lightheaded from the wine and sweets, from the constant nearness and heat of Trell’s body next to hers, from his smoldering gaze and irresistible smile.

As the musicians all joined together and the music crescendoed, Trell grabbed her into his arms and spun them into the dance. Laughing as they turned, Alyneri held his gaze so as not to become even more dizzy. So it was that she saw the flash of movement behind him and knew the moment his eyes went blank, and she screamed.

Someone had hold of her even as Trell was falling. They dragged her away from him into the shifting crowd. She yelled and struggled, shouting for Trell, but she was just one more overzealous partygoer.

As soon as they had cleared the small square, her captors shoved her into a waiting coach. Inside, rough hands pinned her down in darkness while others tied her hands. She kicked and shouted and bit anything that came near her mouth—that is until they pushed a foul-smelling rag inside it and gagged her.

It was dark in the coach, and the men kept Alyneri on the floor between three sets of boots. One set demonstrated its willingness to kick when she attempted to sit up, and after that she stayed down.

He’ll come,
she told herself as she alternated between cursing her own stupidity and chastising herself for ‘daring to live bravely.’  That the odious Lord Brantley hadn’t yet shown himself did not prevent her from blaming him, for surely this was of his devising.

Trell will come,
she assured herself again, and though the coach cleared the Rue Royale and turned downhill, heading for the harbor, Alyneri did not cry.

***

Trell came to as rough hands were dragging him into an alley. He could still hear the musicians playing close by, so he knew he couldn’t have been unconscious for long. Their first mistake was in not killing him in the square. Their second was in not relieving him of his sword.

He felt it securely at his side as the two men dragged him by his arms. He could hear the footsteps of others following. As yet, they had no idea he’d woken. By rights, as hard as they’d hit him, he probably should not have woken at all. If not for the Mage having ‘shored up his pattern’ as Alyneri phrased it, this alley would’ve likely been his final resting place.

For a split second as he gathered his wits fully about him, Trell thought of these things, and how he owed his life to the Mage yet again. By the time this adventure was over, he would no doubt owe the man three lifetimes of service in exchange.

The pounding in his head offered a powerful antidote to unconsciousness. As soon as Trell was sure of himself, he pulled his legs up beneath him, shoved his left foot forward to anchor himself, and swept his other leg in front of the man to his right, sending him stumbling. The man on his left cursed the other’s perceived clumsiness, and Trell used the momentum to wrench free of their hold.

He drew his sword as he spun away and finished the turn, plunging his blade into the first man’s chest. His second assailant shouted and grabbed for him, but Trell sidestepped and sliced his blade down across the man’s back, opening his flesh to the bone. He elbowed a third man, who came rushing up behind him, catching him in the nose with a spray of blood, and he kicked away a fourth, who tumbled over one of the fallen and cracked his head on the stone wall. 

It was a close and fervent battle to dispatch the rest. Trell was quick and agile and skilled with his blade, and the men who’d been sent for him were naught but thick-necked ruffians willing to kill for coin. Trell felled them dispassionately, his only concern being Alyneri.

One he left alive for this purpose. As the man lay on the ground moaning around the hole in his gut, Trell grabbed him by the shirt and jerked his face close. “Where did they take her?”

The man coughed and sputtered.

Trell shook him, but when that seemed to send him toward unconsciousness, Trell hit him in the jaw instead. There would be no mercy for these fools. “Where?” he demanded when the man opened his eyes again.