Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (58 page)

Eredion studied Fimre with a growing disquiet. “I asked you to leave her alone.”

“I’m not going to rape the girl! I just find her—intriguing. I’d like to get to know her better, nothing more.”

Eredion watched the lines at the corners of Fimre’s eyes and mouth and gave up. “I don’t know where she is,” he said. “She left last night.”

Fimre’s face brightened. “Excellent,” he said. “I’m sure I could track her down without difficulty, and perhaps she’ll even take on a post in my household.”

He’s after status points.
“She’s not kathain,” Eredion warned. “Don’t underestimate her, Fimre. She’s not a whore to be tossed about lightly.”

“No,” Fimre said, very seriously. “I saw that. I do understand that, Lord Eredion. I won’t press her for more than a walk now and again, I promise you.”

Eredion looked at the sly laughter in Fimre’s eyes and sighed. “You’re mocking me for being overprotective,” he said, “and maybe I deserve that, gods know. But credit me with enough sense to have survived this long, Fimre, if you please. If you’re not going to listen to my words, there’s no point my even sitting here. You may as well turn back to Sessin right now, because you’ll hash this post up beyond salvaging.”

“I’ll listen without mocking,” Fimre said, “as long as you stop loading my ears with a mess of superstitious and paranoid nonsense.”

Eredion studied him for a moment, feeling an oddly distant sense of despair. “You’ll have to learn it your own way, I suppose,” he said at last.

He wanted to say:
You’ll have to learn that this isn’t the Bright Bay that existed in the time of Initin the Red. The culture has shifted significantly since then, and what you’ve obviously been taught to expect doesn’t even exist any longer. But you won’t believe me. I can see that. So I’ll try to explain what I have to teach you in words you’ll understand, and with luck you won’t get yourself killed within a tenday.
But Fimre wouldn’t sit still for all that, so he didn’t say it.

Fimre just smiled and raised his glass. “Here’s to learning,” he said cheerfully.

The tower had long been Deiq’s refuge, his sanctuary, in a city filled with humans who generally made no sense at all. Walking through the crowded streets only confirmed that impression; red-faced men shouted at their wives over spilling a drink or something equally trivial. Children squalled as they fought over a toy already reduced to near rags. The stink of horse dung and human feces alike drew clouds of buzzing flies, which the humans cursed and batted aside without even a thought of removing what drew the insect invasion.

Revolting.

At least the humans still moved out of his way without even looking; avoided looking at him as a matter of instinct beyond their conscious control. He hadn’t lost that much yet. That he’d been able to bring Alyea from the teyanain fortress to where her horse waited was another good sign. Whether he could do as much
without
her by his side was an open question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered.

Safer not to test the limits of his chains just yet. Stay calm, stay quiet, stay
sane.

The Tower, visible across most of the city, was an imposing structure up close—and an abandoned-looking one. Even the street thieves stayed away from this area, thanks to a few carefully spread stories about restless and vengeful spirits—and a few even more carefully orchestrated incidents by way of proof.

Deiq let out a long breath, tipping his head back to stare up the length of the tower. Its height, and the silence in the immediate area, always made him feel a small and insignificant creature in a vast universe of creation.

For some reason that tended to reassure him.

He smiled, tension easing from his shoulders, and went up the steps. The moment he put his hand to the knob, his muscles bunched tight again: someone had gone inside without his permission. He’d been taken without the chance to ward the door, and human locks were easy to slip past.

Someone had invaded his territory.

He stood still, feeling the rage slithering through his veins like a living creature loose in his body; waiting to see if the bonds would stop him. Nothing happened.

A moment’s focus gave him identity for the intruder.
Eredion. Damnit, he ought to know better.
Deiq snorted a hard breath through his nose and went through the door, moving silently as a hunting snake.

Eredion was in one of the second-floor rooms, staring at the murals, this set of an ocean view from the top of the tower on a clear day. He began to turn, eyes widening, as Deiq came through the open doorway; managed a step back, hands rising, before Deiq’s hand locked around his throat.

Mine,
Deiq said, letting his eyes slide out of human-normal.
My territory, tharr. Mine.

Eredion’s eyes fluttered shut. He stood very still, barely breathing.
Vaa ha’inn-va ne,
he said.

Deiq tilted his head to one side, vaguely surprised by that: it was a very old phrase he hadn’t expected Eredion to know. In the closest modern translation, it would run:
Master, I am yours.

No attempt at defense. No resistance at all. Eredion had simply—stopped thinking, at any level, and stood wide open and vulnerable to anything Deiq might attempt.

Alyea would have been kicking me in the shins and screaming at me,
Deiq thought suddenly.
Why is Eredion acting the worm?
It bothered him more than it ought, and his anger faded. He released Eredion’s throat and stepped back a pace.

Eredion’s face regained some color. He opened his eyes, pupils almost wholly dilated, and blinked at Deiq as though waking from a bad dream. A tremor swept through his entire body; a moment later he went to his knees, bending forward to put his forehead against the cool stone floor.

Deiq stared, taken aback. No human had bowed so deferentially to him for hundreds of years. “Eredion,” he said, “get up, damnit.”

“Ha’inn-va,”
Eredion muttered, and scrambled to his feet to stand with eyes directed at the floor. His breathing became sharp and shallow.
“Ha’bit vaana.”
Forgive your servant’s offenses, Master.

Deiq bit his lip, then said,
“Ana-ha, va’bit.
Forgiven and forgotten.”

Eredion’s muscles relaxed, his breathing evening out. He straightened to look Deiq almost in the eye. “Welcome home, ha’inn,” he said in a more normal, if hoarse, voice.

“What the hells,” Deiq demanded, “was all that about?”

Eredion looked away, blinking hard. A faint flush rose to his face.

“I don’t know,” he said in a low voice. “I felt—compelled. I don’t even know what I was saying.” One hand rose to touch his throat—but the base of his throat, not where Deiq had grabbed him. A faint wince ran across his face, and he dropped his hand back to his side.

“Compelled,” Deiq said, voice flattening. A shivery dread worked through his chest.

“Like when you’re in need,” Eredion said, “but—different. Stronger. Do you know, I don’t think you’ve ever been angry at me before. Not like that. And I’m—I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to invade—” His breathing quickened again.

“Never mind,” Deiq said quietly.
“Ana-ha, va’bit.”
He turned away and looked at the murals for a while. Sunlight streaming through the unshuttered windows caught out highlights in the paintings that he hadn’t expected to show so clearly; he had done a good job.

Eredion waited without speaking, apparently understanding that Deiq needed some time to work matters out in his own head.

At last, Deiq turned and moved to stand before the desert lord. “Hold still,” he said, very softly, and put one fingertip against Eredion’s throat, just above the notch; released a tiny, tiny nudge of irritation to that spot.

Eredion flinched, his eyes dilating rapidly.
“Ha’inn-va,”
he whispered. His breath went shallow, and a fine tremor worked through his sturdy frame.

Deiq took his hand away, an ache coiling through his own chest. Eredion’s breath deepened instantly, the tremor stilling. He blinked, regarding Deiq with open puzzlement.

“It’s the collar,” Deiq said, his voice thick.

“Collar?”

Deiq shook his head and moved to stand at one of the windows, looking out over the ocean; so similar to the view on the walls around him, but from a different angle. His own perspective had just shifted as subtly on the nagging question of why Alyea’s reactions were all wrong.

She hadn’t flinched when he touched that same spot. Hadn’t bowed before his anger; hadn’t rushed to serve his needs. Had fought back when she should have been cowering like Eredion. The teyanain, who certainly knew about the collar, hadn’t painted the symbolic line on her throat.

Damnit, I saw it! She’s bound, she has to be.

But no other answer made sense: Alyea’s collar had to be a fake. The Qisani ha’reye would never have left her unbound, even with their clear intention that she not survive the trial; the list of who would have and could have removed that binding was very, very short.

I’m supposed to kill her for that, even though she doesn’t know anything about it. I’m supposed to hunt down and kill whoever was damnfool enough to remove the collar.

A short list. A damn short list, when the ability to create a convincing fake was added in; down to one name, when opportunity was considered. And that one was a name he didn’t want to tangle with.

He’d lose, and badly.

Eredion stood beside him. Deiq could feel the desert lord studying his face, not the ocean view.

“Deiq?” Eredion said, very quietly. “What collar?”

Deiq exhaled hard, damning his careless mouth. He wondered if he should erase Eredion’s memories of the last few moments and start over. Looking sideways into the desert lord’s dark, wary stare, he knew he couldn’t do it.

“When desert lords go through the trial of Ishrai,” he said, returning his stare back to the water far below, “there’s a binding added. A compulsion. To ensure that desert lords always obey the ha’reye and ha’ra’hain. No matter what.”

A long silence ensued. Deiq risked a sideways glance and found Eredion staring out over the water, jaw taut. A vein beat hard in the man’s temple. Deiq had to admire Eredion’s self-control: not a hint of the immense anger that had to be churning through his mind leaked out.

“Why?” Eredion asked at last, the word curt and rough.

“Because without it, humans said
no.”

Eredion sucked in a noisy breath. “The Split.”

“Yes. The ha’reye only consented to forgive humanity when humanity agreed to the—” He thought about saying
binding,
then decided it was too late for polite euphemism. “—the collar. That’s part of what should be in the desert lord training, but it’s been...left out, more and more, over the years.”

“Because no sane human would knowingly put themselves on a damn
leash,”
Eredion snapped. Some recent grief shimmered through his voice. Deiq didn’t press after it.

“I know,” Deiq said quietly. “I’m sorry, Eredion.”

Another long silence. Then: “Can it be removed?”

Deiq shut his eyes, repressing a shiver. “Don’t,” he said, barely audible. “Please don’t ask me that, Eredion.”

“Which means yes,” Eredion said, voice as bleak as Deiq had ever heard it. “And you can. And you won’t.”

“You should have been told,” Deiq said, not opening his eyes. “Before the trials. But so many people refused to continue in the training, when they heard about that part....” He let the sentence trail off.

“It’s one thing,” Eredion said, “to think that you’ve shared of yourself with a ha’rethe, and that you’re linked in a way that makes you hypersensitive to the needs and desires of ha’ra’hain and ha’reye. I’ve come to terms with being a—a—” His voice broke again. It took a moment for him to continue. “A servant, a kathain. Humiliating, but livable. It’s entirely another to see myself as a....” His voice died out, apparently unable to find the right words.

“As a puppet,” Deiq said. “Yes. I know.” He drew in a deep breath. “But without it, any ha’ra’ha or ha’rethe who realizes you’re unbound will kill you, Eredion. Without hesitation. And then they’ll dig in, find out who removed the collar, and come to kill that person.”

Which is what I ought to be doing right now: killing Alyea and going to find the one who was insane enough to risk everything.

And I won’t. Gods help me, I won’t. Which is as good as having done it myself.

He swallowed hard and opened his eyes; met a bleak hatred in Eredion’s stare. Surprisingly, that sent another hot ache through his chest for a moment.
Hells,
he thought, and gave in.

“Hold still, then,” he said tersely.

Eredion blinked, emotions shifting into something like surprise.

“Don’t say anything,” Deiq said. “Just be quiet and hold still. I’ve never done this before. I might kill you.”

Eredion shut his eyes, his mouth thinning with the effort of not saying what was clearly on his mind to say. A thread of recent memory escaped him: Wian’s voice.

The only thing he can do now is to kill me and my child. I’m not afraid of dying....

It didn’t take much wit to guess at the remaining conversation, given the emotional undertones Deiq saw in that one fragment. So Wian had finally slipped her own collar and gone off to fight her own battles; mildly admirable, mostly worrisome, given her well-established weaknesses. Fortunately, that wasn’t in any way Deiq’s concern, especially just at the moment.

I’m not afraid to die,
Eredion said flatly, bringing the focus back to the issue at hand.

“I don’t expect you are,” Deiq murmured.

“Do
it, ha’inn,” Eredion rasped.

“Yes....” Deiq covered the tiny scar at the base of Eredion’s throat with his palm, cupping it to avoid physical contact. Eredion’s breath roughened, muscles rippling along his jaw and throat, then steadied, relaxing into a calm that had to come from an aqeyva trance. Deiq let out a breath, relieved that Eredion’s control was—so far—holding. He shifted to
other
vision to look at the collar.

The binding-lines were a darker color than he’d expected, and heavily shadowed along an inside track. No—not shadowed. Scarred, from where the binding had been jerked cruelly tight multiple times.