03 - The Eternal Rose (24 page)

Then they told her what this Padrey had told them, about the slaves and the Daryathi breeding program. The news burned away the last of the dreamfog lingering in Kallista's brain.

Chapter Fourteen

“I told them you would want to rescue all the slaves,” Aisse said.

“You were right.” Kallista grabbed Obed's discarded robe and put it on as she got out of the bed to pace. She made a few circuits of the room before Keldrey stopped her and belted the robe around her.

“You're distracting the lads.” He tipped his head at the others. “Makes it too hard for Fox and Joh to do their thinking."

“Right.” They had to have their cleverest thinkers on the job. And Viyelle, with her creative, sometimes bizarre ideas that often actually worked. Kallista turned to face her ilian. “We have to get Sky out first, or we're too vulnerable to help anyone. But we're not leaving any Adaran enslaved."

“Are we taking the word of a confessed thief that this is happening?” Obed demanded.

“Do you have any real reason to believe it isn't?” Viyelle retorted. “Other than your experience of living here? Which you have yourself admitted was cut off from normal society."

“There is no proof either way.” Joh stepped in to cut off the impending argument. “We need corroboration. Someone else to tell us whether it's true or not."

“That's easy enough,” Kallista said.

“How? By sending the thief off to spy for us?” Leyja paced crosswise to Kallista's path. “Why would he tell us any truth but the one he wants us to believe?"

“Stubble it, Leyja.” Keldrey pulled her back onto the bed, planting her there with a little shove. “You don't like him because he stole that necklace from you and got away. You're making it personal."

“All we have to do is ask Bekaara,” Kallista said. “She's helped us already. She's an honorable person—everyone says so, and I have my truthsaying magic for just-in-case."

Obed leaned against the bed's headboard. “Yes. She will tell us truth, even if it is an uncomfortable one."

Kallista sighed, turning to look at her ilian all crowded together on the bed, looking back at her. “I'm beginning to think that everything in this place is uncomfortable."

“Oh, I don't know—” Torchay drawled, stretching out on the bed by shoving Joh aside. “Seems very comfortable right here."

“Speak for yourself.” Joh shoved back, sending Fox nearly lurching off the other side.

“I am.” This time Torchay's shove sent Joh stumbling halfway across the room to bump into Kallista.

Joh slung an arm around Kallista's shoulders. “Come along, love. There's obviously no room for us here. We'll find our own comfortable spot."

“Oh no, you don't.” Torchay scrambled from the bed and joined them. “No’ after I've gone to all the trouble of going after her and bringing her back."

“We're still in Daryath,” Obed reminded them, arms folded in disapproval.

“No, we're not,” Viyelle said. “We're in the Adaran embassy. On Adaran soil, as long as we're inside. We got rid of all the Daryathi servants. There's no one left to spy on us."

“You did?” A load of worry lifted from Kallista, then she frowned. “Won't that make them suspicious? And what about that boy? That gift?"

“Stone was murdered,” Joh said. “By his ‘wife,’ true, but the locals still accept the need for heightened security, especially since you've been ‘indisposed.’”

Kallista winced. “Has that caused any problems? Stone wasn't
my
husband."

“He's Varyl.” Viyelle sat up cross-legged on the bed. “Im-Varyl, the way they've been reading it. In the direct line. And they don't quite know what ‘godmarked’ means, despite what you told the new Habadra—she's had her investiture ceremony, by the way—anyhow, they're apparently making allowances."

“And according to their laws,” Fox said, “the ‘gift', the man Habadra sent us, isn't Daryathi any more. He's Varyl-sa. Adopted into your Adaran Line. And in case you need to know, I got tired of calling him ‘Hey You’ during practice and named him.
Night,
because he's dark."

“River, Sky, Night—” Torchay listed the males their Tibranborn had named. “You keep going and no one will have names, just descriptions."

Fox threw a pillow at him, which was batted away. “I thought we were going to do sex. Or at least get to sleep all together for once. What happened to that?"

“I got shoved out into the cold,” Joh said. “And captured the prize.” His arm over Kallista's shoulders curled round her neck and he planted a smacking kiss on her cheek.

“Well, bring her back.” Fox scooted aside to make room. “It'll be crowded, but we'll manage. We've managed with less."

“I don't think this is wise.” Obed was squeezed up against the headboard as people shifted.

“Oh, Obed, don't be such a pooty-face.” Viyelle grabbed his tunic and wrestled it off. She didn't have to wrestle hard.

“That's right.” Aisse, already naked—Kallista didn't know how she'd done it so fast, but she always did—straddled Obed's lap. Aisse caught his face between her hands, her lips brushing his as she spoke. “Don't be such a pooty-face. Don't let Daryath rub all the Adaran off you."

She kissed him, mouth open, rubbing her full breasts against his naked chest, and after a moment, Obed kissed her back the same way, his hands settling on her hips. Kallista had to blink. He'd never gone so far with one of the other women in the ilian, not when she was naked.

“Hey.” Viyelle jiggled Aisse's arm. “Share. Everybody kisses everybody tonight."

Aisse drew slowly back from Obed and looked at Viyelle from the corner of her eye. “Everybody?"

“Every single body.” Viyelle punctuated her words with a decisive nod.

“All right then.” Aisse patted Obed's cheek in a reluctant farewell, then turned and pounced on Viyelle, capturing her for an open-mouthed kiss. After a moment's startled laughter, Viyelle returned it.

“Well, that's not quite fair, is it?” Fox said, watching avidly. “I mean, we're already short of women to begin with."

“She did say ‘everybody kisses everybody.'” Keldrey grabbed Fox for a loud, joking kiss.

When he let go, Fox took hold of his ears and brought him back. “
This
is how it's done."

“Looks like a good plan to me,” Kallista finally managed to say. Viyelle was kissing Obed now, and Aisse and Leyja were trying to swap tongues.

Torchay and Joh exchanged a look, one of those very male ones Kallista didn't want to know the meaning of. Together they picked her up and tossed her onto the bed, into a bony tangle of knees and elbows, following close behind her. Then they kissed each other, leaving her to find her own partner. Keldrey just happened to be free again.

“Oh, Khralsh.” Fox used the name of the warrior face of the One. “Aisse has gone broody again. She wants another baby. A black-haired one this time."

Kallista looked past Joh's shoulder to see Aisse with her hand halfway down the front of Obed's trousers and her tongue in his mouth. He had hold of her wrist, stopping her, but his resistance seemed to be softening.

“So?” Aisse abandoned her pursuit of Obed to roll over and sling an arm around Torchay's neck. “But if I can't have black, I'll settle for red."

“Will you, now?” Torchay slid his arms around her. “Will you settle for a kiss now and discussion later, after all this is done and we're back home in Arikon?"

Aisse stuck out her lower lip. “If you insist."

Torchay laughed and nipped her lip before granting the kiss he'd offered, and Kallista called magic.

It brought gasps from eight throats, including her own. She checked the contraceptive spells, making sure they were in place—they didn't need to be any more vulnerable while in Daryath than they already were—and she opened the web she had built over the years, binding each one to each of the others.

“Keldrey?” She still had presence of mind to ask. He wasn't part of the web.

“I've got him,” Viyelle said.

Kallista opened her mouth to take in sleek, hot, solid strength. She wrapped the web of magic around her iliasti and swirled it round herself in a blanket of love, teetering on the edge. She checked again to make sure everyone was tucked in safe, then she let herself fall.

It wasn't a screaming, searing plummet into passion, not this time. The magic itself seemed to mourn, stuttering as it passed over the place where Stone should have been. They floated, drifting on a gentle river of comfort and rising desire. Stone was dead. But they, the ones who had loved him, were alive. Their love still lived, or it wouldn't hurt so much.

The magic swelled to its own crescendo. The stutter vanished, smoothing out. Not as if Stone had been erased, but as if he were still with them. It was, Kallista realized, the same thing she'd felt just before he died—Stone's love for them.

If not for you—
the thought was Fox's, for the whole ilian—
he never would have known love, would never have understood what it was.

Kallista bathed in the magic, wallowed, poured it over the others and scrubbed them with it. Stone was gone, but the love wasn't. Not while they still lived, still loved. As long as any of them was alive, any of their children, their children's children and beyond, the legacy of that love would continue.

On its own, the magic began almost to glow, stoking the fires of passion in slowly building waves. Kallista moaned, her hands sliding along sleek, warm flesh. She wasn't sure whose, but she knew it was one of the men. She'd never been so lost in the sensations before. She kissed, caressed, loved, riding with the magic in control as it carried them along, into the rapids to drop them screaming together over the cliffs.

Daylight was creeping through the gauzy draperies when Kallista floundered back to consciousness. All nine of them were crowded together onto a bed meant to hold no more than four. She struggled to breathe under the weight of five or six arms draped across her chest—no, that one was a leg. And the hair veiling her vision was not her own since it was a reddish gold rather than darkest brown. So the leg by her face didn't belong to Fox.

It slid up onto her neck—Obed's leg—and she shoved at it. “Get off. Get up. We need to go visit Bekaara today."

Torchay groaned. One of the arms across her middle was his, but Aisse was squashed between them. “How can you be so energetic? I'm flattened."

“Well, get your flat self up out of this bed and get yourself fed and dressed.” Kallista squirmed through the tunnel of arms and legs—there were more across her lower body—to the foot of the bed and out onto the floor. Then she slapped the nearest backside to get Leyja moving. “Let's go, people. We have things to see. People to do."

“I thought we did them all last night,” Fox mumbled, shoving his hair out of his face.

“Bloody hell.” Keldrey sat up, his mouth working as if to rid itself of a bad taste. “I'd ask what I did last night, but I don't think I want to know."

“You were fabulous, lover,” Joh teased, leaning in as if he meant to kiss Keldrey.

“Bugger off.” Keldrey planted a hand in Joh's face and shoved him away. “I know I saw you with Vee."

Joh tugged his hair from beneath Leyja. “Part of the time, yes. The rest—is something of a blur."

“Stop talking.” Kallista pulled on a toweling robe and clapped her hands in meager hope of actually getting them to do what she said. “Start moving. Go. Wash. Eat. Dress.
Now
."

She turned and walked out of the room. Maybe without her there, they would get moving. But even if they kept talking instead, she wouldn't be there to hear it.

“Hey.” Torchay trotted barefoot down the corridor after her, a bit of cloth—a pillowcase?—clutched round his hips for modesty's sake. Though truth be told, he didn't have much of that virtue. “Are you all right?"

Kallista flashed him a smile. “Fine. Why wouldn't I be?"

“Let me think—Stone's dead. You spent most of last week wandering the dreamscape looking for him. You had to put me back together—
again
—before I died. This time I wasn't gutted, but I think it was a closer thing, wasn't it?” He raised an eyebrow at her, obviously waiting for an answer, so she nodded.

“If that's no’ enough,” he went on, “Stone's boy is still Habadra's slave. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of other Adaran slaves who need rescuing. And there's a trial-by-combat tournament coming up that we have to win if we're to winkle Sky out of that woman's hands."

“But I'm
fine
. Truly.” Except for that weird feeling she had of something being ... not right, that had started before Stone's death. Before they'd left Adara, perhaps. But she couldn't pinpoint what it was, and it always went away again. If the feeling got worse, she would deal with it then. She had enough to deal with just now.

She opened the bathing room door and went in, Torchay following her. “And if I'm not fine,” she said, “you can sort me out when we figure out what it is."

“Right.” He dropped his pillowcase, stepped into the pool and sank until the water closed over his head. When he came up again, he shook water from his face. “Come on then. Bathe. We've got things to see and people to do, I believe you said."

“Yes.” Kallista stripped off the robe and laid it on the ledge before slipping into the hot water. Torchay tossed her a bar of soap.

The bathing room door opened and Fox put his head through. “Safe to come in?"

“Of course.” Kallista tossed the soap in his direction. “Unless you're worried about drowning."

* * * *

It only took two chimes of the clock to get everyone ready to pay their call on Bekaara. Besides getting eight of them dressed and ready and five queues properly braided—Aisse kept her hair short, Obed never wore one and Keldrey had no hair to braid—they had to send a messenger to ask whether it was convenient for a visit. It was.

Then Kallista had to change clothes when Omri greeted her with a big hug, and jam-coated hands and face. Finally, after Keldrey got back from his time with Sky, they left him with the children, and rode out to Shakiri House.

A young champion in Bekaara's service met them at the inner gate where their escort remained. He led them through the sprawling residence and up a flight of stairs to a suite of rooms tastefully if sparsely decorated. Kallista studied the wide expanse punctuated with low sofas and thick patterned rugs. She rather liked it. Liked it much better than the rabid ornamentation currently in vogue in Arikon. In the palace there, anything that held still long enough was in danger of being gilded. She had a few army-assigned bodyguards still washing gilt paint from their hair.