The Heart of the Mirage (14 page)

He stirred against me in turn. At first, I thought it was merely discomfort at our cramped position. Then I felt the real reason for his unease pressing into my hips. I jerked my head sideways so that I could focus on his face. He was looking at a point somewhere above my head. The light was dim, but I thought I could see a flush colouring his cheeks. Indignation swelled inside me: how
dare
he!

Before I could do anything to indicate my displeasure, I felt him quivering. It took me a moment
to identify the cause. Laughter. I had no way of expressing my anger; I couldn’t move, and I certainly couldn’t risk saying anything for fear of being heard. I stayed rigidly still while the cause of his amusement remained abundantly clear to us both. Then, reluctantly, my lips twitched. The situation
was
funny. Despite his laughter, he was embarrassed—but there wasn’t anything either of us could do about it. I sucked in my cheeks and tried to suppress the chuckles threatening to erupt.

His head dipped and his lips brushed mine gently, tentatively. I wanted my anger to return, but it stayed obstinately away. His mouth closed over mine, tender, then demanding as his tongue probed and I responded.

The sounds of the search outside continued. Irate officers snarled their irritation, legionnaires vented their frustration in muttered asides to one another. Neither of us moved to break the kiss. Neither of us wanted it to end. I could no longer distinguish the tension of desire from the tension caused by fear of discovery. When the noises finally faded and disappeared, I was hardly aware they were gone. Wave after wave of desire rippled, touching mind and body. Pleasurable tightness travelled across the surface of my skin, an unfamiliar sensation matching the more recognisable pressure building in my loins. Tensiondesire invaded every inch of me, subordinating mind to physical senses. Tissues swelled and warmed and throbbed. I’d never experienced anything so pervasive and thought I would disintegrate if there was no release. Alarm slipped into the cracks between passionate hunger and an overwhelming yearning for this man’s body.
Goddess,
I thought,
I’ve been drugged
.
Again
. But I didn’t want to listen to the warning. In
that moment, I wanted nothing but to satisfy an allencompassing lust.

He broke away and I heard wonder in his voice as he asked, ‘Blessed cabochon—a Magor? Who would have thought it?’

The words meant nothing; I felt only annoyance that he had stopped kissing me when I was still almost incoherent with need. But he gave me no time to say anything. ‘They’ve gone,’ he said and eased himself out of our prison. Wordlessly, I followed, trying to dredge up the vestiges of my equanimity, hearing the whisper of warning in my mind, yet unwilling to listen. No sooner had I extricated myself from the bushes than he had grabbed my hand again and was pulling me up wooden steps to the balcony above. I did not protest—I did not want to protest. My whole body was throbbing.

I noticed nothing about the room we entered. I had already forgotten the legionnaires, I had forgotten who this man was, all I knew was I wanted him as I had never wanted anyone before in my life, that I had to have him or die with wanting.

Later, I had no recollection of how I came to be naked, but I was and so was he and he had entered me and my world would never be the same again. The tension, which I had already thought unbearable, grew still greater until I wanted to scream and scream and go on screaming. But just as I opened my mouth, he touched his left hand to mine and the world splintered around me, slivered into light and colour and sound and beauty and love and velvet touch and I wanted to die with the joy of it.

I floated in magic, in music, in perfume, in tangy peach sweetness, in soft silk, in golden light, in an overload of sensation. Reluctant to descend to reality,
reluctant to question, reluctant to have answers. Sure I had been drugged. Not knowing how that was possible. Not caring. Horrified I had so lost all control over my actions. Appalled
that I didn’t care
.

In the end, it was he who spoke first. He was lying beside me, his glistening naked body brown and muscular and perfect to my still-besotted eyes. He propped himself up on one arm and allowed his glance to roam over the curves of my nakedness. Then he touched a finger to the brown of my nipple and said, ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’

I was accustomed to being considered too tall, too muscular, too swarthy; not even Favonius had ever said I was beautiful. Yet I believed this man. I saw the truth in his eyes even before he allowed me to feel it in my mind. I took up his left hand and touched the swelling there, the swelling that matched mine in shape and size. ‘What did you do?’ I asked in wonderment.

‘Have you never loved one of your own kind before?’

My own kind! Shock shivered through me. I wasn’t one of these people! I shook my head, trying to deny the truth. ‘Who—who am I?’

‘You do not
know
?’

‘There was never anyone to tell me. I was brought up in Tyrans. What I told Parvana wasn’t quite the truth; I was taken to Tyr as a very young child.’ I shielded my emotions from him; I knew he had the same abilities I had. If I’d wanted, he could have read me as easily as a scroll. The talents I once called intuition were no such thing; I knew that now. They were all part of being born different, of having a swelling in the middle of the palm…

‘You have a lot to learn,’ he said.

‘The first lesson was…unbelievable.’

He laughed. ‘We shall take you to the Mirage.’ He touched my slave collar. ‘Soon you’ll be free.’

I studied his face. He was handsome, with eyes like mine: brown and tilted at the corners. A wide mouth that constantly quirked up with amusement, and white even teeth. A nose that was just a shade crooked at the tip. Curly hair that escaped the thong at his nape to fall forward over his ears. I liked his looks. Very much. And I liked the laughter I felt in him.

And I was an agent of the Brotherhood.
Snap out of it, Ligea
.

I said, ‘The Tyranians have something belonging to the Mirager.’

‘So we heard.’ He took a deep breath as though he were faced with a truth too much to bear. With sudden intuition, I knew he had so far delayed mention of it because he was afraid to hear my answer. ‘His—his Magor sword?’

‘I suppose so. It looks like a sword with a hollow, translucent blade.’

‘It’s here, in Madrinya?’

‘Back at the Governor’s residence. The Legata brought it from Sandmurram. The legionnaires said it was heavy, but the shleth carrying it didn’t seem to notice the weight.’

He closed his eyes, gripped by emotions he found hard to control. ‘Ah. You don’t know it, beautiful one, but you’ve just saved my life.’ He gave a sigh and collapsed back into the pallet as though he had just shaken off a horror that had ridden him longer than he cared to acknowledge. ‘Another few weeks and the story of the return of the Magor to their rightful place in Madrinya would have had another hero.’ He was
laughing at himself, but I didn’t understand the ramifications of what he was saying. ‘This Legata, tell me about her.’

‘Ligea Gayed of Tyr. She’s a Legata Compeer of the Brotherhood. We are quartered in the Governor’s residence.’

‘The sword—can you get it? It won’t be heavy to you.’

I nodded, but I was bewildered. Why was he so trusting? He’d only just met me! ‘Can I really go to the Mirage?’ That was far more than I had dared hope.

‘Yes, naturally. Do you think we would leave someone of the Magor to
them
?’

I had to play this carefully. Better, I thought, to forgo meeting the Mirager until we were fully prepared…Besides, I needed to know more of what was going on.

I said, ‘If I go back I won’t be able to get out again until tomorrow morning—’ I gasped and sat up. ‘Oh—the
time
! I shall be missed! And I have to pick up my ewer yet, too.’

He grinned at me as I began to throw on my clothes, but he, too, started to dress. ‘I’ll take you back through the alleys. You don’t want to run into those legionnaires again. Did you really kill one of them?’

I knew I had, and didn’t mind him knowing it; he would hardly be suspicious of someone who’d killed a legionnaire. However, I did not want him to think of me as a deliberate killer, so I shrugged carelessly and said, ‘I hardly think so. I just hit him. Oh, Vortex, there are so many things I want to ask you!’

‘And I you. Never mind. Tomorrow morning: are you sure it will be possible for you to bring the sword out of the house? If there’s any danger, we can send someone in after it instead—’

I froze. The shade in Sandmurram…Goddessdamn, had that thing been sent by the Mirager? I pictured it again. And thought:
It could have been this man’s twin…
except that this man was all too alive. I took a calming breath and said, ‘No, there’s no problem. I’ll meet you at the well. Will you really take me to meet the Mirager?’

‘Tomorrow. I promise. If you have anything precious among your things, bring it with you. You won’t be going back to the Governor’s residence again. Sweet damn, I can hardly bear to let you out of my sight. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

I nodded, but I was distracted. I was staring at the floor, my mind chasing an illusive memory. The tiles beneath my feet were of brown and white agate, quite unlike the usual cheap flooring of the few Kardi homes I had entered on my way to Madrinya. I glanced up at the walls: the adobe had been panelled. The wood was cracked and splintered, the tiles chipped and dirty, but once this had been a room of simple beauty—a nobleman’s house, perhaps, or some wealthy Kardi merchant. And somewhere, faint in the edges of my memory, I was feeling the cool smoothness of polished agate stone beneath my bare feet as I ran, laughing, with other children…

I finished dressing and looked back at him. ‘There is one other thing I’d like to know now.’

‘Anything.’

‘What’s your name?’

He started to laugh. ‘Temellin,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Friends call me Temel. Lovers call me Tem.’

Brand was waiting for me at the door. He took the ewer and prepared to wash my feet, but I refused the service with sudden distaste and bathed them myself. Afterwards, as I undid my slave collar in front of the mirror in the main room of my apartments, I remembered Evander’s arms around me and the legionnaires discussing my rape as if I hadn’t been there…Slave woman. Chattel. Less than human. Less even than a valued animal. My eyes met Brand’s in the mirror and then fell to his collar.

I didn’t think I had shown him anything on my face, but he gave the slightest of cynical smiles and said, ‘So I guess something happened to show you what it is
really
like to be a slave.’

I put my collar down on the desk. ‘Yes.’

‘I knew you would realise one day. In fact, it’s taken a little longer than I once thought it would.’

I sat down at my desk and pulled a blank piece of parchment and the ink towards me. ‘You’re a bastard, Brand,’ I remarked and began to write. When I had finished I heated wax, dropped it onto the bottom of the document and imprinted it with my ring seal. Once the ink was dry I flung it across the desk to him.

He read it without expression. Then, raising his eyes to meet mine, he said, ‘I’m not going to thank you for giving me what was my birthright. But I think you know that.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, confound you. You know me far too well, you Altani barbarian. But don’t expect me to like you for being right.’

‘That’s what older
brothers
are for. To help their little
sisters
grow up.’

‘You’re sodding lucky I don’t throw the ink at you. I shall make arrangements for you to be paid a wage in the future.’

‘
If
I decide I want to stay in your employ,’ he pointed out.

I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes.
If
. I shall also calculate what is owed you in back wages from the time you entered my service.’ It was only while I was waiting for his reply that I knew how much I feared he would leave me.

He knew it too, of course, which is why the bastard didn’t answer immediately. He was punishing me. ‘Salving a guilty conscience, Ligea?’

I noted the lack of title, but didn’t remark on it. ‘Allow me that luxury.’

He grinned. ‘So, apart from the fact someone treated you like a slave, what else happened today?’

What happened? A man made love to me and showed me paradise…‘I have promised to bring the sword tomorrow and they will take me to the Mirager. In fact, they have said they will take me to the Mirage. Free me from slavery.’

‘They didn’t doubt you?’ Without asking for permission, he sat down on the divan opposite the desk and began picking at the fruit on a side table there. I knew he was deliberately indicating what he
considered the only possible basis for any new working relationship: I must consider him my equal. I was disconcerted, stifled the feeling—but thought he sensed it anyway, and was amused by it.

Damn it, I’d just freed him, but he was still a servant, by all that was holy! He ought to have shown me more respect.

He asked, ‘And are you going to go to the Mirage with them?’

I stood up. ‘I don’t know. To discover the secret of crossing the Shiver Barrens, to find out just what this Mirage is—that wasn’t part of my mandate, but it may be even more important than trapping the Mirager.’ I began to pace the floor, scratching my left palm. ‘I think I will decide what to do once I see which way the dice falls tomorrow. I’ll see what happens.’

Brand waved the paper I had signed. ‘I see this is dated three days from now. I am still yours to command.’

I felt a twinge of shame. ‘I wasn’t sure what you would do once you were free. I’m still not sure, and I may need your help in the next day or so.’ I paused, but he was silent, so I went on, ‘I shall talk to the Military Commander today. I want you to follow me tomorrow, and I want legionnaires stationed all around the city within easy call, no matter where I end up. I’ll signal you to fetch them if I need them. No signal will mean I’m going on to the Mirage and the arrest of the Mirager can wait.’

‘And if so, then what? What will you do? How will you get back? Who will help you?’

My lips twisted. ‘What’s the matter, Brand? Worried I won’t be around to pay you what I’ve promised? Well, don’t worry, I’ll draw up all the papers tonight, and have them properly witnessed.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I may well be a bastard, but you can be even more of a bitch. Doesn’t it occur to you I may just be a little worried about you? That I might just help you simply because you ask? You didn’t have to postdate my freedom, Ligea. Vortex take it, what you are proposing is more than dangerous, it’s suicidal.’

‘I’ll be all right. If there’s a way in, there’ll be a way back. You will wait here in Madrinya for me?’

‘Yes, I’ll wait, damn you. And if I haven’t heard from you in, um, say, two months, I’ll come after you.’

‘Now that
would
be suicidal. What I really want you to do is keep Aemid off my back. If she gets a whisper of what I’m doing, she’ll be screaming it to every Kardi in Madrinya and my life will be worth less than the contents of a begging bowl.’

He looked disbelieving. ‘She wouldn’t hurt you.’

‘She’d have me killed rather than see anything happen to her precious Kardiastan. Keep an eye on her. If I disappear into the Mirage, tell her I’ve gone back to Sandmurram. Anything but the truth. I shall leave her manumission paper with you just in case anything happens to me, but don’t tell her I’m freeing her too. Not yet. How is she, by the way?’

‘Resting. She looks a shade better.’

‘I’ll get changed and go to see her. You go to the Military Commander’s office and ask when it’s convenient for me to call.’

‘Please,’ he said.

I stared at him, uncomprehending.

‘You may as well get in the habit of saying it now,’ he told me. ‘I shan’t be a slave much longer.’

I resisted another urge to pitch the inkpot at him.

When I went in to see Aemid, I made sure the lamp was unlit and the room was dim. I didn’t want her to
notice I’d rid my hair of its gold highlighting and its curls.

She still looked tired and old, but she was fighting back, a good sign. I suspected that her physical weakness was as much caused by her mental state as anything else. She had held a dream in her head for over twenty-five years, and the reality diverged so much from her vision that she couldn’t cope with it.

We talked for a while, neutral topics, then I asked, ‘Aemid, did you bring any xeta for me from Tyrans?’

She shook her head. ‘There was no point. It has to be taken fresh or it doesn’t work.’

‘I shall buy some here then.’

‘You’ll be lucky. It doesn’t grow here, Legata.’

‘It doesn’t? Then what do women use?’

‘A drink prepared from a root extract. But it doesn’t work quite the same way as xeta. You can’t just take one dose whenever necessary; you have to take it every day, and it doesn’t work well until you’ve been using it some time. It’s called gameez
.’

‘Damn.’

‘What have you been up to?’ Aemid looked worried.

‘Never mind. Just a passing fancy. I’ll get some gameez.’

‘You don’t normally let your loins do your thinking, Legata.’

Abashed, I said, ‘No, I don’t suppose I do. He just took me by surprise, that’s all, and his—his technique was very good.’ So good I couldn’t put him out of my mind.
Goddess
, I thought,
how can I have lost myself so easily, lost who I am, in this man’s arms? Am I no better than those silly highborn matrons back in Tyr, giggling over legionnaire officers riding past on their gorclaks?

I’d had time to think about what had happened by then. Surely something had enhanced normal desire—
I flushed just thinking about my lack of restraint—but it hadn’t been a drug. It had been something to do with the lump in the middle of my palm. Something to do with being Magor, whatever that was. I wanted to be angry with Temellin, furious he had taken advantage of my inability to resist the stimulus. Instead, I just remembered how good it had been.

After I left Aemid, I had to deal with an irate Legate of the legionnaires, outraged that one of his men had apparently been killed by a slave of mine. I thought of telling him I had done it myself while on Brotherhood business, but decided the fewer people who knew about that, the better. Instead, I told him, in freezing tones, that I had no such young slave girl, which a routine inquiry in the slave quarters would have confirmed, and how dare he accuse my household without making such a logical inquiry first? I then told him what I thought of his legionnaires and his discipline, making it clear I had heard about the incident with the gorclak race the day before, and that I’d also heard it said the slave girl was only defending herself against rape. By the time I’d finished, the officer was not only staggered by the extent and rapidity of Brotherhood intelligence, he was terrified that I was going to report him to his superiors for failure to maintain disciplined troops. He left apologising and humbled.

That night I tossed on my divan with the smell of another man still in my nostrils and his soft laugh in my ears. And I was honest enough to admit the reason I was thinking of not having the Mirager arrested the following day was that I was none too sure it would be possible to capture him without involving one of his underlings, a Kardi called Temellin.