The Lotus Ascension (32 page)

Sillara saw now
the endless pain of her life, a pain of being forever divided from Soren. “I
wish I were dead, brother. I wish I had perished in the desert rather than have
to live this way.” Her despair tasted like ashes in her mouth, and she knew
Soren understood her.

“
No, Sillara, no.”
Now it was Soren's turn to force her to look at him. “We are
Tamari. To take our lives in despair is cowardice.”

“
Cowardice would damn us.” Sillara knew it perfectly well. “And for
us, damnation would be separation.”

“
It would be the worst punishment the gods could inflict on us.”
Soren stroked her hair.
“So no suicide.”

“
We would disgrace our mother to do it.” Hot tears still burned
Sillara's eyes. “For if she had given in to despair, we—”

“—
would never have been born.”
Soren completed her thought. “We are Tamari, and we must face our
trials bravely.”

“
Even if those trials have been
brought upon us by our own—
my
own—folly.”
Sillara could hardly speak past the lump in her throat.

“
And I cannot take you away from him.” Soren's teeth ground together.
“For that would be worse dishonor even than cowardice.”

“
Oath-breaking.”
Sillara nodded. “No one of Ellon Tamar's blood has ever broken an
oath, and we shall not be the first.”

“
We are in the best situation we can be,” said Soren.
“For we can still see each other.
We can still be to each
other brother and sister.”

“
It is the best situation we can be in.” Sillara repeated her
brother's words. “But it is still misery now, now that we know the truth about
each other.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “It was such an obvious truth, my
beloved, but we did not see it because we are Ausir as well as Sunjaa.”

“
Sunjaa.
It is commonly accepted for a brother to take his sister to wife,”
said Soren, pulling Sillara back against his chest. “And we
are
Sunjaa.
Had I, oh blessed Abrexa, ever thought to ask our father to give you to me, he
would not have denied me, despite your betrothal to the Ausir King.”

The thought of
being Soren's wife filled Sillara with a joy so great that only the misery of
knowing it was impossible could counterbalance it. “I wonder what our mother
would say.”

“
She is Ausir, Tamari even, but she has turned her back on much of
her Ausir heritage.” Soren's heart was racing beneath Sillara's cheek. “I do
know that if our father gave his consent, she would learn to accept it. And she
would have been glad to keep you in Arinport.”

The pain of
that thought, the thought that their parents would have rejoiced in their union,
was so great that Sillara's mind recoiled. “Soren, forgive me for marrying him!
Please!”

Soren laughed
bitterly. “My love, there is nothing to forgive. He maneuvered you into a
compromising position and then bribed you with … me. His betrayal rivals
Veirakai's when he slew his own brother.”

“
I hate him.” Sillara could not stop her tears. “And I am bound to
him. I shall be his wife, for I have sworn it. But my heart beats only for you,
brother.”

“
I hate him, too,” said Soren. “I hate him for stealing you from me.
I could have accepted it better, though, if you loved him, even if it meant my
greater suffering, my greater loss.”

“
Love him?
Never.
But I do not hate him so
much for wanting to wed me,” said Sillara. “And had he and I ended up crashed
truly by chance, though I should have regretted marrying him until my last
breath, I would not have blamed
him
for it; I would not have
hated
him. I would have blamed myself more. But, oh Soren, he did it purposely.”

“
I know.” Soren laughed again, a brutal sound that cut Sillara's
heart until it bled. “Nathen and Merieke did much the same to me to make her my
concubine.”

Jealousy choked
Sillara. “Brother, I cannot endure her, either, but yet we both have … duties
to those to whom we have, however blindly, bound ourselves.”

“
The Desertmasters call you Queen and me King.” Soren continued to
stroke her hair. “But we are trapped by our given word, kept apart from our own
souls.”

“
You know that you are my soul.” Sillara lifted Soren's hand and
kissed his knuckles. “You know that I love you.” She laughed, too, despite her
still-flowing tears, and she heard Soren's own bitterness in the sound. “Oh, I
know that you love me, and you know that I love you. I can feel your heart,
your emotions, as if they were my own.”

“
We are truly one, in a way that we cannot be with any other.” Soren
tilted her face up to look at him again. “There is this much of comfort then,
for we know that we are still bound to each other in our souls.”

“
And in the afterlife, we shall be together.” Sillara leaned up
toward Soren, and their breaths commingled. Their lips drew closer, and at the
same moment they both pulled back, their chests heaving.

There was no
need for words. They each felt the burning need, the intolerable ache, to make
themselves
one flesh. And they could not do it because of
Sillara's oath. Sillara was another man's wife, and even one kiss was more than
they could dare to take.

“
We would not be able to stop,” said Soren.

“
And then how could we live apart?” asked Sillara.

“
At least this way, we shall not lose each other.”

Sillara
swallowed the sob that rose in her throat. “My life is now simply a waiting for
death. In the afterlife I shall be yours, and that I may be your true wife
there, I shall have to be your sister merely here.”

“
But still my sister.”
Soren pulled her close again.
“Always my sister.”

“
Always yours.”
Sillara wanted nothing more than to cling to Soren forever. “Yours
as I am no other man's.”

“
I know it. Your soul and your love are
mine
alone.”

“
Merieke is not good enough for you.” The words burst out of Sillara.

“
And Konas is not good enough for you! No man could be.” Soren's
words did not seem prideful to Sillara, for she understood perfectly. No woman
could deserve Soren. He was the paragon of men. But when it came to her, there
was no question of desert. There was no thought of being good enough for Soren,
for she simply was Soren's. Their love, their belonging to each other, was a
fact like the earth beneath their feet. It simply
was.

“
Soren, my love.”
Merieke swept into Konas's garden, and Sillara wanted to scratch
out Merieke's eyes. This woman, this slut who had bedded half of Arinport, had
rights
to Soren.

Bile rose in
Sillara's throat, and only Soren's arms around her kept her steady.

“
Yes, Merieke?”
Soren continued to stroke Sillara's hair.

“
Konas tells us that these people name you their King and Sillara
their Queen?” Merieke's voice seemed to Sillara to be dripping with poisoned
honey.

“
That is so,” said Sillara. “They have named me Queen since my
arrival, and they said that my King would step down from the sky as a gift from
the gods. Soren is, clearly, a gift of the gods, and they would have him for
their King.”

Merieke
chuckled, and Sillara hated the sound. “Well, it's just as well that Nathen is
willing to go back tomorrow at dawn.”

“
Go back?” Sillara could not understand Merieke's meaning.

“
Yes, of course. Your father awaits news of you both, and it would be
well if Lord Itenu—or should I call him 'Kamen' now that he is my father, too?”
Merieke smiled and sat beside Soren and Sillara, entwining her arms around
Soren's waist. “If Kamen should find out that his daughter's betrothal to the
Ausir King is about to be overridden by desert savages.”

“
They are not savages,” said Sillara. “They have a culture of their
own, and it may not be as ancient as Sunjaa, but it is certainly older than the
Zenji!” She could not help the jab against Merieke's mother.

“
Can Nathen fly the balloon?” asked Soren. Sillara felt his
disinterest in the subject.

“
I'm sure he can.” Merieke leaned up and kissed Soren's lips. “But
don't worry, love.
I'm
not going back, not until we can leave together.”

Sillara rose
and stumbled back. She could not bear to see this, to see Merieke with Soren,
and as she left, making her way, unseeing, back to the house the Desertmasters
had given her, the only crumb of comfort she had was that Konas was not allowed
near her. That was one pain Soren would be spared.

Chapter Twenty-One

Konas laughed to himself as he sat
near the town well and watched Nathen fiddle with the rigging of the balloon.
The human did not know what went where, so Konas rose to go help him. But as he
got to his feet, Merieke, with furtive glances, met Nathen there. Though they
were far from anyone else and deemed their conversation secret, Konas, with his
keen Ausir ears, heard every word.

“When do you leave?” Merieke asked.
She held a linen-wrapped bundle in the palm of her hand.

“As soon as I can figure out where
this goes.” Nathen held up a metal clasp attached to a longer strip of black
silk.

“Here.” Merieke handed Nathen the
small packet. “Use it carefully.”

“I will, sister. Thanks.” Nathen
slipped it into the belt of his skirt.

Merieke stretched and looked up at
the sky. “What’s your plan, then?”

“I’ll fly this damned Ausir
contraption back to the oasis where father and Kamen are. When they ask where
Sillara
is, I’ll tell
them
Konas
kidnapped her, and that will be the end of her betrothal to the Ausir King. And
if not...” He patted the packet. “Once Kamen burns this gods-forsaken town to
the ground, it’ll keep Konas’s hands off her. Haven’t you seen how familiar he
is with Sillara now?”

Merieke nodded. “He plays quite
freely with her body.”

“I wonder if they’ve fucked.”
Nathen’s shoulders slumped, but then after a moment, he set his jaw and
hardened his gaze. “I’ll saw more than his horns off if I find out he has.”

Konas, having heard all this,
strolled over with an easy smile. “Good morning. Looks like you could use a
hand.”

Nathen smiled back, his lies hidden
under the guise of friendship. “Yes, I don’t know how to attach this.”

Konas took the metal clasp and
clipped it to a ring inside the basket.

“Right,” Nathen said with a
chuckle. “I was looking for something on the outside. Thanks.”

Konas nodded. “No problem. It’s a
good thing I’ll be going with you, then. You don’t seem too familiar with the
way our balloons work.”

Nathen’s smile vanished. “You’re
going back, too.”

After what Nathen had planned,
Konas had no choice. If Konas did not go, Nathen would poison Kamen against
him, and when he came for Sillara, he would kill Konas as quickly as he would
any Desertmaster.
“Of course.
How else will you get
back? You might go off in the wrong direction and miss the oasis by days.”

Nathen sputtered some objection
about watching after Sillara.

Konas thought of Soren and how
Sillara would be alone with him. Every part of him wanted to stay—his jealousy
burned within him—but letting Nathen go through with his lies was just as bad.
Konas was caught between two heavy stones, and he was the grain to be ground
up.

“Can you fly against an unfavorable
wind?” Konas asked, saying nothing of his true feelings.

Nathen shrugged and stared at
Merieke.

“There it is, then.” Konas readied
the balloon for departure and then walked off to get provisions for the trip.
Until he turned the corner, he heard every word of the siblings’ conversation.

“Now what?”
Merieke asked in a
harsh whisper.

“Just let me think.”

“Well, think fast.”

Konas got to the corner of a house
and peeked around to see Nathen patting his belt.

“Well, if I can’t get Kamen alone
to tell him my story,” Nathen said, “this should do the trick.”

Merieke leaned up and kissed her
brother on the nose.

“And what are you going to do?”
Nathen asked, taking his sister by the waist and pulling her against him.