Warrior (38 page)

With more moral strength than he’d thought he owned, Wrayan broke off the kiss and pushed the woman of his dreams away, shaking his head, a part of him unable to believe that he was voluntarily passing up an opportunity like this. “Brak threatened to kill me if I ever slept with you again.”

“Then we shan’t sleep,” she suggested seductively.

“He meant it, Shanan,” Wrayan warned. “And he had good reason. I don’t want to be responsible for bringing a demon child into the world. Do you?”

She shook her head reluctantly and rose gracefully to her feet. “I should never have told you Brakandaran still lives. Then you would not fear his censure.” She held out her hand to him and helped him up, drawing him closer as he stood. “I will treasure the short time we did have together, though, my love. It will sustain me through the long nights ahead.”

This close to Shananara, Wrayan could barely breathe. He could feel her hot breath on his face and the outline of her inhumanly perfect body again his own. “Sustain you? It’s
ruined
me.”

“I didn’t mean to spoil you for any other woman,” she breathed softly, brushing the hair off his face with a finger that felt charged with lightning. “I’m sorry.”

“Just let me go, Shanan.
Please
.”

She nodded and stepped back from him. “I can see I am being cruel by lingering here. And I really should get back. Will you and the child be all right now?”

Wrayan nodded, unable to speak for fear he would open his mouth not to say good-bye, but to beg her to stay.

As if she knew what he was thinking, she smiled at him and then turned towards the road.

Already, at her silent command, the demons had begun to materialise out of thin air. There were hundreds of the little grey demons; the oldest and most numerous belonged to the royal family. He watched in silent awe as they blurred into the meld. A few moments later, a magnificent golden dragon, the size of a two-storey building, took shape before him. When the meld was finished, Shananara stepped forward and scratched the bony ridge over the dragon’s eyes fondly, then turned to look at Wrayan.

“Goodbye, Wrayan.”

“Goodbye, Shananara.”

“Wait!” He hurried after her, slipping the chain of the tiny crystal cube Brak had given him over his head. Oddly, it felt like a polished cube of crystal now—it no longer felt magical. Only a lump of stone.

Shananara stopped and turned to look at him. He held it out to her. “You should take this. It was Brak’s.”

“It still is,” she assured him with a smile.

“If he’s still alive . . . you’ll see him again before I will.”

The Harshini princess smiled wistfully. “I don’t know when Brak will return to Sanctuary, Wrayan. You keep it. I’m sure he won’t mind. And you never know. You may get a chance to return it.”

He glanced down at the little crystal cube with its etched dragon embedded in the centre and shook his head. “It’s too tempting.”

“What’s too tempting?”

“This,” he replied, holding the chain up for her to see. “I know you have to hide, Shananara, and I know you probably won’t emerge again in my lifetime . . . but . . . please . . . don’t leave me with a way to call you back and expect me not to use it some day. I don’t think I’m that strong.”

She stepped a little closer and reached out for his face, her smile so bittersweet he wanted to drown in it. “I think that’s the nicest thing a human boy has ever said to me.”

He closed his eyes, feeling her soft hand on his face, aware he would never feel it again. The mere thought made him want to die of longing. “I’m not trying to be nice, your highness. I’m trying to be honest.”

“An honest thief,” she chuckled, dropping her hand and stepping away from him. “But you needn’t fear the temptation to call me out of hiding, my love. A
couremor
can only be loaned to another the once, before the maker must infuse it again with their magic.”

“A
what
?”

“This little trinket Brak left you is a
couremor
,” she explained. “Roughly translated into Hythrun, it means a link between lovers, or a lover’s link. We used to make them, long ago, back when it wasn’t all that uncommon for humans and Harshini to be . . . intimate. A Harshini would infuse it with magic and leave it with their human lover so they could call him or her in time of need. Or longing. It only works once though, partly because it’s not that easy to store magic in an inanimate object, and partly because it was safer that way. We don’t make them any more. There isn’t much point, these days.”

Wrayan was still more than a little confused. “But if Brak infused it with magic, how come it called you?”

“It calls to the one you love, Wrayan.”

He looked away, unable to meet her eye. The pain was torment. She knew he loved her, but deep down she didn’t really understand what it meant to him. That was why they called it Kalianah’s curse. The Harshini had no real comprehension of human love.

“What if Rorin had used it?” he asked, hoping a change of subject would make the ache go away.

“It would have summoned Brak.”

“I’m glad it was you who came,” he said with a smile. “I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d opened my eyes to find Brak kissing me awake.”

She laughed and kissed his cheek once more and then turned to the waiting demon meld. The princess climbed onto the dragon and as soon as she was settled, it beat its massive wings, almost blinding Wrayan with the dust kicked up by the downdraft. He stepped back and watched as Dranymire lifted into the sky and disappeared against the star-scattered night.

He heard a noise behind him and turned to find Rory had finally woken. He was sitting by the fire, rubbing his eyes, and looking around in confusion.

“Hello.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Wrayan Lightfinger.”

“Where am I?”

“Hythria.”

Rory squinted at him in the darkness. “You were in my dream.”

“What dream?”

“The one with the pretty lady. And the dragon.”

Wrayan walked back to the small clearing from the road and sat himself down beside the child with a friendly smile. “You and I need to have a very long talk about a few things, my lad.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“Only if someone else besides you and me saw that dragon just now,” he said.

Despite the distraction of the attempt on Damin’s life, the wedding between Rielle Tirstone and Darvad Vintner went off without a hitch on a perfect summer’s day, a little over a week after the attack.

In the grand tradition of all Hythrun weddings, particularly for those of noble birth, three days later the party was still going on. Marla surveyed the ballroom with satisfaction, leaning back in her seat, thinking that, at last, something had gone according to plan. Not that she would have allowed anything short of the death of the bride or groom to prevent this wedding taking place. The alliance with the Bearbows of Izcomdar, Alija’s own kinsmen, was far too important to Marla for her to allow anything as mundane as an assassination attempt on one of her children to interfere with it.

Damin was all set to spend his fosterage with Rogan, who had been both delighted and honoured to discover he had been chosen as mentor for Hythria’s heir. Rielle had confided to Marla a few days ago that Rogan’s daughter was just as pleased with the arrangement, as the fosterage gave her an excuse to further delay her own wedding to Terin Lionsclaw. Knowing what a headstrong and forthright young woman Tejay was, Marla suspected Terin would be just as delighted with the delay.

The couple was rumoured to despise each other and when they finally got around to getting married, it was destined to be a tempestuous and stormy relationship.

“Good lord! You look like you’re at a funeral, Marla, not a wedding,” Ruxton remarked as he took his seat beside her. He was flushed and breathing hard, no doubt from the energetic dance he’d just partnered his newlywed daughter through. The music had changed and Rielle was dancing with Darvad again, Marla noticed, now her father had retired from the dance floor.

“I was just thinking about . . . things, that’s all,” she replied, looking down over the reception tiredly. This was the third—and thankfully, the last—day of the wedding celebrations and the festivities were in full swing. Marla was looking forward to it all being over and things returning to some semblance of normality.

“Try to smile anyway,” Ruxton suggested. “You’ll scare the bride, otherwise.”

Marla looked down at her stepdaughter who, hand in hand with her new husband, was skipping through a long archway made of the raised arms of the other dancers. She smiled as she watched them and then turned to her husband. “I don’t think anything could dent Rielle’s happiness at the moment.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “Thank you.”

“For what?” she asked. “This was part of our deal, Ruxton. You give me access to your intelligence network and I’ll arrange highborn marriages for your three children. You don’t have to thank me for keeping up my end of the bargain.”

“I wasn’t. You promised me a nobleman for my daughter and that’s what you gave me. But you were under no obligation to find her a decent man, or to ensure the union was a happy one. I appreciate the effort you put in, trying to give her some chance at happiness.” He leaned forward to pick up his wineglass. “I think underneath that cold and ruthless exterior, Marla Wolf-blade, you’re a big old softie.”

“Well, don’t let it get around,” she warned. And then she looked at him curiously. “Do you really think I’m ruthless, Ruxton?”

He smiled warily. “This reeks of a trick question. Do you
want
to be ruthless?”

“To be honest, I never really thought about it. It’s just you’re the second person who’s accused me of it.”

“Who was the other poor sod, and was I invited to his funeral?”

Marla smiled. “Not yet.”

“Not
yet
?”

“It was Luciena.”

“Ah!” Ruxton said, taking a sip of wine.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Say ‘ah!’ like that. I know you’re burning to say something else, but you never do. It irritates me.”

“What you do with Luciena Mariner is none of my concern,” Ruxton reminded her with a shrug.

“That was also part of our agreement, remember? You don’t enquire too closely into my affairs and I’ll stay out of yours.”

“But you have an opinion,” she accused.

“Which I’m quite content to keep to myself.”

“What if I want to know what it is?”

“Then I’ll tell you. If you insist. Just don’t get mad at me if you don’t like it.”

“Then I
insist
that you tell me,” she demanded. And then she smiled and added, “And I’ll get as mad as I want to, thank you. I’m the princess in this family.”

“Then far be it for a poor trader to deny you,” he laughed. Ruxton held out his wineglass for a refill to one of the slaves standing back from the head table waiting to serve them, before he added in a slightly lower voice, “Seriously, though, in your shoes, the first question I’d like answered before I did anything is this: did Alija really tamper with Luciena’s mind?”

Marla shrugged. She didn’t know for certain and had no way of confirming her suspicions one way or the other. There was still no sign of Wrayan Lightfinger. The reason for his visit to Fardohnya, along with his expected date of return, remained irritatingly vague.

“Let’s assume for the moment that she did. What then?”

“Then I’d be asking what young Xanda was asking the night the attack happened. Why now?

What’s changed recently that would make Alija attack Damin at this point in time, not a year ago, or a year
from
now?”

“Nothing’s changed,” Marla shrugged.

“Nothing except your decision to adopt Luciena.”

She looked at her husband thoughtfully. “Are you saying her fanciful tale of some long-lost uncle in Fardohnya seeking help for her magically gifted cousin is true and this was just an opportunistic attack?”

“I don’t know,” Ruxton admitted. “All I know is that Mahkas lets nobody near the palace—or Damin—who can’t prove they come from at least three generations of Royalists. I’d be surprised if the Assassins’ Guild was willing to take on a contract to eliminate the High Prince’s heir. They don’t like getting involved in political assassinations that might bring them unwanted attention. It rather limits the options for anyone looking for a way to get close to Damin.”

“Until I brought Luciena here.”

Ruxton nodded. “So put yourself in Alija’s shoes for a moment. Let’s suppose Luciena’s not a Fardohnyan spy. Suppose she really did get a letter asking for money from her long-lost uncle. Xanda believes her.”

“Xanda is hardly what I’d call an objective witness, Ruxton.”

“Granted. But it would explain why Luciena tried to see Alija before we left Greenharbour.”

“But not why Alija visited her.”

Ruxton shrugged. “Alija probably heard about the adoption—rumour travels faster than heat in Greenharbour—and took a punt. She primes Luciena as an assassin and then sits back and waits for nature to take its course, knowing full well the first thing we’ll do after the attack is discover Luciena has family connections in Fardohnya, believe she’s a spy and assume that’s why she killed Damin.”

“I can assure you, nature
will
take its course,” Marla promised. “For Luciena, at least. All the way to the gallows.”

“At which point Alija will realise she’s failed and she’ll have to start all over again, looking for another angle of attack,” Ruxton pointed out.

The music changed and the dancers pushed and shoved into lines for the Novera, which was suddenly popular again, after being almost forgotten for the past five years or so. Rogan Bearbow was dancing with Kalan, while his daughter partnered Damin. Starros was with Leila and Narvell was caught in the grip of some elderly cousin of Darvad’s who almost smothered the child with her bulk. Marla smiled and then hesitated as the music started up, suddenly overwhelmed by memories of the first time she had danced the Novera in Greenharbour. With Nash . . .

Pushing the unwanted images aside, she studied her current husband curiously. “Surely you’re not suggesting I do nothing about this attack on my son?”