Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (33 page)

She pursed her lips but made no reply to that, either. Some of her fierce joy in seeing him tremble before her faded away, replaced by a low hum of nausea.

He blinked several times, then said, “You’re going to kill me.”

“What would you do, in my place?” She surprised herself by being honestly curious about the answer.

“I would....” His pale skin flushed into instant rage, his eyes taking on a manic glitter; he hissed wordlessly, his hands clenching.
You’d be
begging.
Give me a
moment
of chance and I’ll still have you begging. You
dared
touch my mind!

He probably hadn’t intended to broadcast that thought; still, Alyea’s doubts about whether she was doing right faded away with her nausea.

After a moment, Kippin’s face slid from fury back to grey, then set in bitter lines. He looked at Alyea for a long time, then said, “Don’t give me to Deiq. Promise me that.”

“Don’t try to lie or withhold anything.”

He shuddered all over, nostrils flaring and lip curling in a silent snarl, then nodded. “I’ll answer your questions,” he said. Seeing her expression, he added, “I can’t damn well give you twenty-odd years of information in a matter of hours, which is all the teyanain will give us. Pick what you want to know, and hurry up about it! You think they threw me out here for us to
talk?”

“You have a point,” Alyea said, and glanced reflexively at the door. “All right, then. Tell me about—” About to say:
Pieas Sessin,
she paused. He wasn’t important any longer. “Rosin Weatherweaver,” she blurted, impulse overtaking her.

“Hah,” Kippin said, his whole face crinkling in cynical amusement. “You
would
ask about that little F’Heing
ta-karne
first.”

She sat up straight, startled. He grinned, visibly pleased by her reaction.

“Rosin Weatherweaver,” he said, “was born Roise F’Heing, illegitimate son of Lord F’Heing and a nameless northern slave woman. His mother died from being abused, near as I could tell; the F’Heing don’t have much respect for women and less for northerns. That happened not long after Roise could walk. Might even have happened in front of him, I never did get all the details. When Roise was in his early twenties, he was thrown out of F’Heing lands; couldn’t get the full details on that either. I’m guessing he did something even Lord F’Heing, a man who probably had Roise’s mother raped to death in front of her own son, wouldn’t tolerate, so let your own imagination pick out ideas.”

Alyea grimaced. “Rather not,” she muttered.

Kippin made an odd, humming noise through his nose. She couldn’t tell if he agreed with her squeamishness or was mocking her. Probably the latter. He went on before she could prompt him:

“I
do
know that he came straight to Bright Bay after that, with two companions.” He paused, his gaze glittering with amused malice, then added: “Regav Darden and Azaniari Aerthraim.”

“I don’t believe it,” Alyea said reflexively. Kippin laughed and took another sip of tea.

“Of course not,” he mocked. “But it’s true all the same. Ask her yourself. Scratha’s pet Aerthraim went hand in hand with Roise F’Heing for a while.”

And she’s at Scratha Fortress,
Alyea thought, her heart sinking.
Does Lord Scratha know about this?
She didn’t know which would be worse; if Cafad were ignorant of Azni’s past, or if he’d known. She remembered, suddenly, a conversation with Deiq:

She’ll have Scratha back as a major power in the southlands in a matter of years, if she stays,
he’d said, referring to Azni. And she’d said:
I hope so. I like him; he’s a good man.
Or words to that effect. Vividly, in memory, she saw again Deiq’s sardonic, slanted glance; heard the faint, neutral grunt he’d given in response to that statement.

Alyea shut her eyes for just a moment, feeling bewildered and out of her depth. A faint sound brought her alert again: four teyanain were coming through the door, followed by Lord Evkit.

“Time’s up,” Kippin said with bizarre cheer, raising his cup in salute. He drained the last drops, then leaned forward and set the empty cup on the table.

Alyea opened her mouth to protest. The four teyanain, moving with unstoppable precision, lifted Kippin from his chair, rebound his hands behind his back, and hustled him from the patio back into the main fortress. Evkit sat down in the chair Kippin had just vacated, picked up the small teacup, and threw it well out over the edge of the patio. Alyea listened for the smash and heard only a faint wind-hum in her ears.

“You gave him to
me,”
Alyea said, finding the words she wanted to use at last, and directed a fierce glare at the teyanain lord.

Evkit stared back, his black eyes unreadable. “Did I?”

“I accepted his surrender! I want him back here. He’s
mine.”

Evkit raised one eyebrow, his expression otherwise unchanging. “He was never yours to accept, Lord Peysimun.”

“Then why throw him out here with me and lock the door?” Alyea demanded. “So that I could kill him for you?”

She saw something shift in Lord Evkit’s face for a moment: a scalding moment of depthless rage that dried her throat and tightened her hand around her cup.

Evkit drew a long breath, calming himself, then said, without emotion, “The
hecht—”
It emerged as more of a coughing snarl than a word. “—has told you that he brought
ha’inn
Deiq here.”

Alyea guessed at the meaning of
hecht
as something close to
hask:
traitor, criminal. “Yes.”

Evkit’s head dipped in a tiny nod. “This is a true thing. And
ha’inn
Deiq is now awake, and safe for company. Do you wish to see him, Lord Alyea?”

Alyea wavered, understanding the choice put before her: release her claim on Kippin or lose any chance of seeing Deiq. She was here to rescue Deiq, although apparently the teyanain had handled that part already; but
gods,
she wanted to wring some more answers out of Kippin while she had the upper hand. She’d never have this chance again.

Vengeance or loyalty?

An image of the blood-splashed rooms in Peysimun Mansion rose in her mind. She shut her eyes, her stomach roiling with the strength of her mixed emotions. Was Deiq any better than Kippin, if he could inflict that sort of horrible damage, even in service of a good cause?

A memory of Eredion’s voice whispered through the back of her mind, accompanied by images of sun-drenched murals that called out to the best aspects of a human soul:
I wouldn’t call it love, but he
cares
....

Finally, bleakly, she said: “Yes. Please, take me to see Deiq.”

Deiq sat quietly watching the stars, disinclined to sleep. He rested instead in a half-trance, listening to the wind climbing and sighing through the rocks around him as he waited for something to happen. He’d learned a long time ago that he had far more patience than even desert lords. Whatever Evkit had planned would come soon enough.

The day dawned grey and chill, and without event. He sat still, blinking through the fey haze of mountain mist as it soaked damp into his clothes and set his skin clammy. A vague wind shifted the mists but did little to dissipate them. Eventually, he stirred himself, stood up, and stripped off his wet clothes. After draping the garments over one of the chairs, he stood at the edge of the cliff, looking out into the grey sky.

It took a long time for the haze to thin under the slowly ascending sun, and even then little warmth came through. He sighed and patiently raised his own body temperature until the clammy feeling dissipated into a comfortable glow. The air around him seemed to dry out along with his skin, and the mists cleared from the patio as though swept away by an invisible hand.

Deiq grimaced and eased the warmth of his body closer to human-normal.

The grey hung in the air past the patio edge, but now air currents stirred and pulled at the mist, fraying it into a loose web through which he could see the unruly Sea of Gold and even, if he strained his eyes, the faint outline of the Stone Islands far to the north.

Grateful at least that the exercise had dried away the unpleasantly dank feel of the patio, he gathered up his clothes again. They were almost dry; he passed his hands over them,
seeing
them fresh from a drying-line under full sun, and felt moisture evaporating under his fingers. He dressed, enjoying the warmth he’d put into them as it settled into his own skin, then sat down in the chair they’d been draped over, wishing for something to do.

He was patient; but gods, he got bored easily in situations like this. The obvious solution was to sleep until roused to action, but then Evkit might win one aspect of this stupid waiting game, and Deiq had no intentions of ceding any points he could keep for himself. That was how one had to think with the teyanain: everything was a game, all part of a complex array of political and personal contests too oblique and bizarre for any normal human or ha’ra’ha to understand.

And now the teyanain were splitting—had split, from what Evkit said—and Evkit wanted Deiq’s help with—what? Securing Evkit’s power base? Killing the rebels? Just his presence here in the teyanain fortress, under Evkit’s hand, was likely to be seen as a serious status achievement.

Things were going on in the fortress behind him that he’d never see the first tenth of, but would ultimately decide if the next person through that door would be armed with a deadly drug-tipped weapon or carrying a basket of simple food.

“I
hate
dealing with the bloody damned teyanain,” he muttered under his breath. “They’re almost as bad as the Aerthraim.” He considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “They’re
worse
than the Aerthraim.”

He leaned back in the chair, stared out at the clearing sky, and tried not to drum his fingers on his legs.

At last the door behind him opened. He kept himself in a leisurely pose to hide the tension fizzing through his body and blinked into
other
perceptions for just a moment to check who was approaching. The answer had him up out of the chair and turning before he could stop the reaction.

He caught himself there, held still and waited. From the doorway, Lord Evkit smirked. Four steps closer, Alyea stood staring at him as though—

—oh, gods, he knew that look.

He blinked at her, breathing evenly, then lifted his gaze past her to Evkit. The teyanin lord nodded as though a question had been answered, and retreated silently. The door swung shut again.

Deiq stood still, a barbed ache twisting through his gut.

“So you saw,” he said, his voice flat. “The...mess. I’d meant to....” He caught himself on the verge of saying
clean it up;
that sounded as if he’d spilled a mug of beer.

Alyea blinked as though caught out of a daze and shook her head sharply. “Yes. But I don’t....” Her voice faded away; she blinked again. “You’re different,” she said at last. “You look...strange.”

Deiq glanced down at himself in sudden alarm and discovered his arms were laced with a barely visible trace of silver lines. He started to manufacture an explanation about mist and optical illusions, to weave his voice under her awareness and turn her attention away; but stopped.

“Yes,” he said. “Strong emotions bring that patterning out sometimes.”

Her mouth twisted in a faint wryness. “Eredion said once,” she said, her voice barely audible even to his hearing, “that ha’reye and ha’ra’hain are the most passionately emotional creatures I’d probably ever meet.” She paused. “He also said you were terrified of me,” she added.

Deiq sucked in a startled breath. He hadn’t expected Eredion to tell her
that—
then found himself relaxing in a great rush. It just didn’t
matter.

“You saw what I did at your mansion,” he said, tilting it into an almost-question. She nodded, her expression going predictably dark.

“And heard your warning,” she said, shocking him all over again.

“Warning?”

Don’t follow me this time, I’ll hurt you—
His anguished cry, sent out in a descending stibik-haze, wracked through his mind. He shuddered all over and took a step back, hands up defensively at the sheer volume she’d used; then, remembering the precipice a few steps away, came forward four measured steps.

Just within arm’s reach now, he stared at her.

“I didn’t know that would linger,” he said. “And didn’t think you’d hear it even then. So you can hear mind-speech now?”

“Eredion gave me something—estiqi?”

His eyes narrowed, almost of themselves. He knew the usual side effects of estiqi. “Did he—” Even as he spoke, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching, from
looking,
to see what had happened.

—red hair, not black, clutched in her fingers, and a blue stare, drunk-hazed with the moment—

Deiq went back a step again, his eyes fiercely shut, and then to his knees, slamming a shield against overlapping thoughts between them. He heard Alyea gasp as though slapped, but had nothing to spare to reassure her. He splayed his hands on the cold stone underfoot and breathed in great, racking gasps until the rage subsided.

Eredion wouldn’t have been a problem; he wasn’t a
threat.
But Tank—was an entirely different situation, and dangerous on several levels.

He breathed hard, slowly realizing that the anger wasn’t actually a killing rage: instead, it was something comparatively manageable, drawn entirely from his human side, rather than a ha’reye’s possessive, deadly
MINE!

Rather surprised at how quickly he mastered what he’d expected to be an ugly struggle, he sat back on his heels at last and looked up at her. Not for the first time, her expression held more understanding than he’d expected.

“Eredion had about the same reaction when he came in,” she said without any particular emotion. She turned away and sat down on the long couch. Her lips thinned as she stared at him, her hands fisted against her thighs.

“I expect he did,” Deiq said. He rose with deliberate care and returned to the chair he’d been sitting in, turning it to face Alyea before sitting down. “He knew what my reaction would be.” And why, no doubt.