Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (27 page)

Morning saw Tank back at the Copper Kettle stables, bargaining with the stable-master for a horse. Too many silver pieces later, he’d acquired a spirited paint mare, an almost-new saddle pad, a much more worn saddle and an equally weathered bridle. He hooked his saddlebags to the saddle-catches, checked her hooves one last time, then led her out to the mounting block.

Smaller than the fine black he’d grown accustomed to riding, the paint was also much more restless; he had to yank her round into position three times before she stood still long enough for him to mount. The stableyard staff watched with amused grins and made no effort to help. Clearly, a mercenary dumped by his merchant employer didn’t rate much attention past that.

Damn gossips,
he thought savagely, nudging the mare into a reasonably straight line; well aware that further north, the sort of gossip the innkeeper had probably already spread would have put both Dasin and himself in real danger.
We’ll have to be more careful in the future. If there is a future to this.

He gave the mare her head once they reached a clear stretch of road outside Bright Bay. She kicked into an impressively smooth and energetic gallop for almost a mile before slowing again of her own volition. Tank found himself grinning as he patted her white-and-brown-splotched neck.

“Think I’ll call you
Ginibar,”
he said. “That’s southern for
spirited.”
He flexed his toes in the stirrups to test his shin muscles: sore, but bearable. He’d best avoid another long gallop, though.

He almost lost a stirrup when the mare shimmied, as though sensing an opportunity to aggravate her rider. Tank used his knees to bring the horse in line, shoved his foot back where it belonged and laughed aloud.

“Then again,” he said, “maybe
micru
would be a better choice, the way you move.”

The mare tossed her head and pranced a few steps, then settled into a steady, complacent walk.

“You’re right. I like
Ginibar
better,” Tank said, then looked at the long road ahead and sighed. Even from a start this early in the day, Obein would only be within reach if the mare was trained for endurance riding. He didn’t relish stopping in Kybeach again—ever, if he could help it, but that wasn’t realistic.

At best, riding straight through would put him in Obein at the end of a long day, tired and cranky, to face Dasin and a probable fight with Raffin; not a good idea at all. Kybeach had its own troubles waiting for him, but the villages in between offered no stables for outsiders and hardly any for locals. Camping out would have been an easy option with the full kit—but Dasin had taken that along, leaving Tank with nothing but inn-ready supplies to hand, and not nearly enough coin to get a proper tent or even a large enough oilskin to drape over a sturdy low branch. Erratic as the weather had been of late, Tank wasn’t willing to lay bets on a clear night.

“Kybeach it is,” he said to Ginibar. “I hope that stable boy’s moved on somewhere else.”

That stable boy hadn’t moved on, and his sullen glower on recognizing Tank showed that he wasn’t inclined to be friendly, either. Blond hair lank as ever, face as gaunt, his voice held the same self-pitying malice as Tank remembered:

“Whadd
yer
want, then?” he whined, glaring. It wasn’t a real question: with only one stable in Kybeach, the answer was obvious.

“Don’t be dense, Baylor,” another familiar voice said from above. Both Baylor and Tank glanced up, startled. A sharp young face peered down at them from the shelter of a wide-limbed oak tree: the street-thief Tank had—partially—rescued from Bright Bay on his last trip. “I
told
you he was coming back. See? Now show him to the empty stall beside Hunter’s horse.”

Baylor’s face crumpled into a sour sneer. “I’ll have you out as a witch yet,” he muttered.

“No, you won’t,” the former street-thief said complacently, “because I ain’t one. And you try it, I’ll tell on what you been doing with Maper’s nanny-goat.”

Baylor’s face went white, then scarlet. “Lyin’
bitch!”

She just grinned at him. “Horse, stall, no trouble, and ‘member you don’t take no money, Baylor,” she said, then pointed at Tank. “After that, ghost-rid’, you come talk to me.”

He just nodded and followed Baylor into the barn.

Not long after that, Ginibar settled, tack cleaned, and saddlebags over his shoulder, he returned to the oak tree and found her sitting at its base, defiantly cross-legged under the wide skirt of her simple dress. Obviously a hand-me-down, the dress was well-worn and ripped in several spots, decorated with bits of leaf and bark from her tree-climbing activity.

He stood looking down at her. She grinned in return, not in the least intimidated or embarrassed.

“You’ve made yourself comfortable here fast,” he remarked.

“Not yet,” she said, “but I will, with half a chance and a kick to luck’s ass.”

“What do you want?”

She scrambled to her feet. Her hair had been cut back to little more than stubble. It increased the sharpness of the street-rat stare she tilted at him. “I been staying along with Seshya. Not much else’ll have me, here.” Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “Even the innkeep won’t let me stay in one a’ his precious rooms without the coin to buy it or a poke where
I
won’t take it. But Seshya’s turned sick, and the healer-woman died last winter.”

“No,” Tank said reflexively. “I’m not a healer.”

“The hells you ain’t,” she retorted.
“I
ain’t a healer nor herb-knower, but
you
know more’n you let on, ghost-rid’. And with the level of knowing around here being `douse the whore in holy water to cast out the demons infesting her evil womb’, you can only do better.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know as much as you think,” he said. Then, unwillingly: “What’s the matter with her?”

“Come and see,” she said, folding her arms. Her eyes glittered.

“Hells,” he muttered. “Why should I even care?”

“Because you’re the type as would,” she said. “Not like that little skinny waste as left you behind to be with a beater. Don’t know what you seen in him.”

He stared at her.

“They stayed over a night,” she said, tilting her head to one side, and squinched her face up. “Noisy sorts.”

Everything from throat to groin went tight and hot with horror and anger. Tank made a vague, strangled noise and began to turn for the stables again, barely aware of the motion.

“Oy, ghost-rid’, that ain’t the way,” she called after him. “You come help me, I give you something as can shut the beater down good. I seen him around, I know about him.”

He turned to stare at her. “This another
sight
trick?”

“Nope. Straight, this time. I know what scares him.” Her gaze stayed level and calm. “But you got to come help Seshya, ghost-rid’. I ain’t got nowhere else to go, if’n she dies on me.”

“I won’t be able to do anything to help!”

You have a gift,
Wian said in memory.
You should consider being a healer...
Tank shook his head against that idea.
I can’t. I won’t. I don’t know what I’m doing!

“You got somethin’, I can smell it on yer. So you can at least try,” she snapped, scowling.

He stared at her for a moment, then said, “If you’re lying to me, little rat—”

She blew him a raspberry and began walking.

He glanced over his shoulder at the stables, weighing options; swore venomously under his breath and went after her.

Alyea took to the road in the grey dawn, feeling gritty-eyed and exhausted after a restless night of tangled dreams. Ethu had appeared, and Pieas; Lord Scratha, looming and grim, arguing with Ethu over something indistinct. Pieas had moved between them as though to protect Ethu, and Scratha had yanked out an impossibly long sword and run Pieas through; Ethu had disappeared, and Scratha turned to draw Alyea into his arms. She yielded without protest, and they tumbled together fiercely, Pieas’s blood cooling on the ground beside them....

Shaking free of that dream had only led into other, more bizarre permutations, some involving Kippin, and even Tevin. In one, Alyea killed Scratha rather than Pieas, and took her former rapist to her willingly, in front of all the gathered desert lords. In another, she was laid out and bound as a sacrificial whore for all the desert lords to use, and Kippin fought to stop them; but all his efforts were as useful as a flea holding back a sandstorm.

And in the worst dream of all, she tied Kippin and Tevin securely and dealt out endless agony to them, worse even than what they had done to her. She laughed the whole time, and each one of their screams thrilled her to near-orgasms.

She awoke from that dream curled into a tight ball, sobbing hysterically, and lurched to the chamber-pot to throw up repeatedly.

Reality still felt vague and easily distorted as she rode through the damp, quiet dawn. Even the birds seemed to have chosen to stay abed a while longer; only a few muffled chirps and trills cut through the thick air. Lizards flickered along the rocks now and again. Thin clouds of insects rose and fell in ragged patterns, descending onto bushes whose leaves had spread wide to soak up the damp in the air.

Alyea brooded, ever more doubtful of her quest and her sanity as she went on, seemingly the only creature stirring for miles. She had no idea where Deiq was, no trail, no clues; no allies, as Jin had pointed out, and no leverage. She’d rushed off impulsively as ever, with no thought to the needs ahead, and there was no way to backtrack for support now.

“I’m being a fucking idiot,” she muttered, once more aware of the ghost of Tank’s cynicism stirring in her mind. She wondered if it would ever fully go away, or if their encounter would haunt her for the rest of her life, his memories swirling through the back of her mind like a persistent, low-grade nausea.

What would Tank do, if faced with the men who’d hurt him as a child? Her own dream of torturing her tormentors too fresh in her mind, she turned away from that question before the obvious parallel arose: what would she do? She’d already killed one of her rapists, after all: Pieas’s body lay somewhere in Scratha Fortress right now, probably being prepared for return to Sessin Family... Would she kill Tevin? Kippin?

What would you do,
Micru had asked during her final blood trial,
if this man you want dead stood in front of you now?
And her answer, although she’d been thinking of Rosin Weatherweaver at the time, rang sour in her memory:
I would kill him. There is nothing in the way of grace that would make up for what this man has already done....

She wasn’t sure she’d give the same answer today. Easy to talk of killing before you’d done it; easy to let hatred ease the path to bloodshed. What if Pieas’s changed attitude, at the end, had been real? What if she’d destroyed someone who could have turned to the good in the next moment and been a powerful influence in the world?

Ahead, the path bent sharply and rose into a steep hill, then dropped out of sight. Alyea dismounted, remembering this section from her previous journey. It was easier to walk down the abrupt incline on the other side than ride, and it smoothed out not far past the crest.

She led her mare up the slope without difficulty, then took a moment to stand at the top, looking out over the road and lands beyond. Black chappa tree branches, thick with tiny, three-pointed leaves, and slender sagebrush branches, laden with wide grey-green leaves, protruded from the low-lying fog bank. Further up, on the hills and mountains, a blotchy green pattern of growth gave way to increasingly paler browns and grey-blues as rock claimed prominence over softer plants.

A lone bird—a mountain eagle, perhaps, or a hawk of some sort—soared in a wide, deliberate circle far to the west. Alyea watched it for a moment, smiling, then turned her attention ahead to survey the road. It lay empty and silent, snaking like a pale string through scrubby brush and rock.

She turned and looked back the way she’d come. That section of road had no movement either, which didn’t make any sense at all; at least one of the merchants from the previous night’s meeting had been traveling south. He’d even expressed interest in traveling with her, an offer she’d managed to avoid ever answering directly.

Someone else should have been moving along the road by now....

An owl sounded its long, mournful cry.
In daylight?

Alyea spun in a circle, searching for the source of that call, heedless of offending the teyanain. Her mare shifted and snorted uneasily, stamping up a thick splatter of mud; Alyea was forced to put her attention to calming the restless beast for a few moments.

When she looked up again, four teyanain stood in perfect symmetry around her, one to each side. Their arms folded, they regarded her with impassive, dark stares that sent a chill up her back; she looked at their peculiar split, triple-braided hair and felt an icy shock.

Athain.
And not just three, but
four.

The mare snorted again, throwing her head up, then shivered all over and stood still, tail flicking hard in random patterns of discomfort.