03 - The Eternal Rose (14 page)

This was indeed the woman who had been introduced yesterday at the en-Kameral as Habadra Khori. He recognized her square-jawed face and sharp, high-bridged nose. But rather than the heavy pectoral collar of yesterday, she wore a narrow chain with an amethyst pendant carved into a crane over her simple white muslin dress. Stone felt incredibly overdressed.

“Welcome to my home, Stone im-Varyl.” The Habadra tugged him down to kiss him on each cheek.

He thought about correcting her, but decided against it. If she thought of him as a son of Kallista's Varyl Line, maybe she would give him what he wanted all the sooner. The Tibrans in Kallista's ilian had all adopted her family name, since they'd had none of their own. “I am honored to be here, Habadra."

Stone bowed again, managing to free his hands for a proper Adaranstyle bow with flourishes. Obed had drilled him on forms of address and etiquette. The main thing that had stuck with him was: “When in doubt, bow."

“Come. Sit.” Habadra Khori reclaimed his hand and led him to a cozy seating area beneath the spreading branches of an oak that had dropped its acorns to crunch underfoot. “May I offer you refreshment?"

“Thank you.”
Take what was offered
. He sat on the cushioned bench and scooted into the metal arm when the Habadra sat close beside him. Too close.

Stone managed not to jump or squawk when she set her hand on his thigh and slid it round to the inside where she squeezed.

“I find many things refreshing, don't you?” the Habadra purred.

Stone cleared his throat. Obed's instructions had not included protocol for handling something like this. Gently, in hopes of avoiding offense, Stone picked her hand up from his leg and held it in both of his, mostly to keep her from putting it back. He floundered for a way out. How would Fox do it? Or Joh? What would they say? “Habadra Khori, I am—flattered."

Would holding her hand like this make her think he was interested? Stone eased himself from the bench and gave her back her hand, stepping a safe distance away—he hoped. “But I am married. I keep my vows, honored Habadra."

She made a face, a pout better suited to a younger woman. “Your wife is my servant. I can order her to divorce you."

Goddess
. Was the woman mad? “That would not change my vows, Aila, only hers.” He smiled, hoping he had not ruined things already. If it came right down to it, he supposed he could do sex with this woman if that was the price to free his son and the boy's mother. But he would really rather not.

The Habadra sighed. “Yes, well—I had to try. You're an attractive man, as I am sure you know. Pity that you're an honorable one as well."

She stood and clapped her hands sharply. “I suppose you'll be wanting to see your wife."

“Yes, please, and my son.” Stone bowed again.

“All in due time, my dear.” The Habadra's smile made him ease another step back.

A female servant entered, wearing only the same sort of knee-length kilt as the messenger-champion the Habadra had given Kallista that morning. This one was plain white. The woman was thin, her ribs almost showing beneath dry, dull skin. Her naked breasts sagged and swayed as she strained to carry a heavy tray laden with decanters, glasses and covered platters. Lines of struggle marked her face, spread from the corners of her sunken eyes. Despite the drastic changes, he knew her. “Merinda."

Kallista was right. No matter her faults, Merinda did not deserve this. Stone strode across the courtyard, took the tray from her and slid it onto the waiting table. He tipped her face up, brushed back the hair that had escaped from its leather binding. “Merinda?"

He dropped his voice to softer than a whisper, quieter than the murmur of the fountain.
"Ilias."

She heard him, he knew, for she blinked, but she would not look at him. She kept her eyes cast down, her face impassive.

Stone wished for one of Obed's overrobes or—he could take off his own tunic and give it to Merinda, give her something to cover her nakedness. But would that play into the Habadra's hands? Give up some advantage he needed?

“I take it then that this
is
your wife?” The Habadra's voice was dry, all its previous seductive purr gone.

Stone turned away from Merinda. It wasn't easy, but he faced the Habadra Khori. “Yes,” he said. “This is Merinda. My wife. What has happened to her?"

The Habadra shrugged. “Life. Service."

Stone fought to control his temper. He didn't often lose it, but when he did, it sometimes frightened even him. “And my son? Is he in a similar state?"

Again the Habadra shrugged. “I doubt it. Those who come to service young do not struggle so against it."

Stone took a deep breath, intended to calm him, but it didn't help much. “And what is the redemption price?"

Her gaze sharpened. “I would be within the Law to demand that you take the place of your wife and child in my service, in exchange for their freedom."

“But you will not.” Stone was as hard, as unmovable as his name. “I am Godmarked of Adara. I serve no one but the One who has marked me with His own hand. This is my wife. Her child is my child. I will pay what is owed, but I will not pay more."

“Ah.” Habadra Khori gestured at the wine and pastries. “Then let us refresh ourselves and see whether we can come to terms."

Stone inclined his head in that slight, oh-so-superior way Obed had, and took the glass of rich, red wine she offered. “The redemption price for a man-child of such tender years should be no more than five Adaran krona."

The Habadra sipped her wine and shook her finger at him. “Now Godmarked, you know we must begin with the mother before we can come to the child. She is a healer. A—what is it your people call them? A
naitan.
She is worth a great deal to my Line."

“How much?” Stone tasted his drink, intent on keeping a clear head. It was good wine, not too strong, so he drank again, his nerves making him thirsty. He took a pastry to fill his stomach with something more than wine.

The battle had begun, the opening salvos were fired. It would be long, bloody and hard-fought, but in the end, he would win. He had no other choice.

* * * *

Kallista accepted a plate of food from Torchay. “Do these Daryathi never sit to eat?” she muttered to the room at large.

“Rarely, at gatherings of this sort,” Namida Ambassador murmured back. “More business can be done when one is free to move about."

“We're going to have chairs—lots and lots of chairs. And benches, when we host ‘gatherings of this sort’ at the embassy.” Kallista took a bite of one of the little flaky, rolled pastry tubes. This one was filled with delicately flavored fish and crisp vegetables. Daryathi food was proving a delicious adventure. She never knew what she might bite into next, and so far, everything tasted wonderful. But her knees were beginning to ache and her feet had gone numb a chime or so past.

She took a sip of the wine Torchay held for her, thanking him with a private smile. He wouldn't let her set her glass on one of the delicate mosaic tables scattered throughout the house for the purpose. Anyone would have access to it.

“How do you suppose Stone's mission is going?” Kallista spoke quietly, for Torchay's ears only as she handed him her glass again, daring to voice the thought uppermost in her mind.

“Why don't you tell me?” He raised an eyebrow, reinforcing his question.

“I can't see through his eyes like I can Joh's, and I looked earlier. Joh's outside the house with Viyelle and Fox. I don't like you playing servant like this."

“I'm not playing servant. I'm playing bodyguard. You should be used to it by now.” He drank from her glass. Not servant behavior, since he drank after her rather than before. He couldn't claim to be checking it for poison. The blatantly insubordinate behavior made her feel better.

So did what she could pick up of Stone through the link. Despite an undercurrent of worry, he was focused intently on a task. Kallista could sense his determination, but little more. She smiled at Torchay. “Things are going fine. I think they're bargaining. He's not worried—not any more than he has been."

He picked up a fresh glass of wine from a passing server and handed it to her. “Check it,” he ordered.

She rolled her eyes, but she bled off a tendril of magic yet again to check the wine for poisons. “Clean. Like all the rest of it. I checked it
all,
remember?"

“Then—” He held up the glass he'd been drinking from for a toast. “To Stone's success."

Kallista touched her new glass to his and drank. “To bringing them all safely home."

“What are we celebrating?” Obed's smile touched only his lips as he joined them. Women kept drawing him away to flirt, as fascinated by his tattoos as Kallista had been, though all but the marks on his face and hands were hidden. Kallista might have been jealous, but she could sense a flare of jealousy through Obed's link over her moment with Torchay, that was more than enough for everyone.

“Nothing yet.” She smiled at him, sending a surge of reassurance down his link. “Only the hope of success. Things seem to be going well enough."

With a last touch of Torchay's hand as she handed him her empty glass and a quick glance into the blue of his eyes before he lowered them, Kallista looped her arm through Obed's and turned him toward more of his aunt's allies and guests.

“And if all those women keep flirting with you so blatantly,” she said, “I may decide to lock you up safe at home the way Bekaara tells me husbands were once kept."

Instead of laughing as she hoped he would, Obed looked at her with haunted eyes. “Would you? Do you care that much?"

“Obed.” Kallista halted in the middle of the noisy, crowded party. She set her plate aside so she could take both his hands. “I care more than that.
I love you
. I love you enough to trust you. To trust that you love me. Can you love
me
that much?"

His eyes flicked to all the people around them, now staring at the little domestic drama in their midst. Kallista didn't care. She probably would in the morning, but right now, she needed to know.

“Yes, of course. It's not—” He gazed at her, that lost look beginning to fade.

Kallista staggered,
wrongness
chiming through her like the sound of Mestada's booming bells.

“What is it?” Torchay caught her arm, the dishes he held crashing to the floor as he dropped them to catch her. Obed let go her hands to support her other side.

The links
. Frantic, Kallista sorted through them, fumbling as she hunted the sense of
wrong
, the growing pain—
Stone.

She must have said his name aloud. Torchay barked out orders, gathering their iliasti from across the room, summoning their escort. Kallista scooped up magic and threw it down her link to Stone. He was hurt ... Sick ...
Poisoned.

Kallista sensed Torchay and Obed stagger as they bore her along when she drew hard on their magic. She'd practiced the healing magic, hadn't let it slide like she had so much of the other, and once she'd healed Fox at a greater distance. Or kept him from dying so his body could heal on its own. Surely she could keep Stone alive now.

She poured magic into him, trying to see where the poison was killing him. There—his heart slowed. She fought the poison back, working frantically everywhere at once. The awful stuff seemed to have already spread everywhere. Vaguely, she heard shouting, people rushing about, asking foolish questions. Stone's heart beat slower, his lungs struggled to fill with breath.
No
. She would not lose him.

Kallista called even more magic, the demon-destroying magic, shaping it this time for life. If she could shape it for peace, she could shape it for life. She named it, filling it with all her love, all the whole ilian's love for their Stone, and
pushed
it down the link.

It touched him, began driving back the poison, purging it from the blood that had spread it through his body. Stone's love for all of them surged back. Kallista shared it out, knowing they all needed this. He was healing.
He would live.

And the link snapped.

The magic broke. The love ended.

Nothing was there in the place inside her where Stone lived but ... nothing. Emptiness.
Loss.

Kallista screamed.

Chapter Nine

The sound of her scream sliced through Torchay like a demon's terrible, fleshless talons. She screamed Stone's name, over and over again. The horses finally came from wherever the Shakiri's servants had taken them.

“Mount,” Torchay ordered Obed, who seemed only slightly less shocky than Kallista. Torchay had to pull Kallista from Obed's grip to allow the other man to mount.

“Take her.” Torchay gave up the precious burden into Obed's arms so Torchay could keep them both safe.

“What is happening?” Namida Ambassador asked for the fiftieth time. “I have to explain—Shakiri Shathina is outraged—Is the Reinine ill? Is she poisoned?"

“Not poison,” Torchay said, then had to correct himself. He hadn't learned much in the few moments Kallista had linked them all together, but what he had managed to sort out from the confused jumble of impressions was not good. Was so bad it seared his soul.

“Kallista's not poisoned,” he said. “Not here. No one here. Our ili—Godmarked. Stone was attacked. At Habadra House—maybe. I don't know. Don't know all of it, but whatever it is, it's bad."

“Wait—how do you know?” Namida clutched at Torchay as he mounted. “What do I say?"

“It's
magic
.” Torchay held his horse on a tight rein, his agitation communicating to the animal and setting it to circling. “We are godmarked. Linked. She
knows
, Ambassador. She herself is not harmed, but nothing can happen to any of us without her knowing."

“
Reinas,
” the captain of the guard was shouting. “Bodyguard, where do we go?” Everyone was finally mounted.

“The embassy,” Obed said.

"No."
Torchay knew better. Kallista would not want to go to ground, not when one of hers was in danger. They couldn't hold her there if they tried. “We ride to Habadra House."