The Hidden Icon (4 page)

But there was no one left to stop this. To stop me.

Chapter 4

“My name is Gannet.”

He wasted little time, addressing me when we had only just turned the corner out of sight of the reliquary. My curiosity about him distracted me from my grief, but I didn’t respond. He already knew my name, and who knew what else besides.

Undaunted, Gannet continued.

“Tell me, your stories. Are they meant to frighten, or inspire?”

I was surprised. It certainly wasn’t a question I could have anticipated.

“It’s the listener who decides,” I answered after a moment’s consideration, feeling curious and sad and confused. I didn’t like not knowing how much Gannet could read from me, what he took that I did not offer.

“So they have no meaning if there is no one to listen to them?” He was trying to antagonize me, his blend of interest and indifference exactly like what he had shown before.

“There are always ready listeners,” I said, though I was sure I was talking myself into a trap. “A tale doesn’t exist until it’s been told.”

Gannet’s slight breath could have been a laugh, and I wished that I could see more of his face. Even the conventional means of reading someone were barred to me with this man, with his masked eyes and brow unreadable.

“Then it’s not a very good tale.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and he seemed so sure of himself. Irritatingly so. The nearer we drew to the grounds the more anxious I became, the reality of what I had agreed to threatening to overwhelm me. A few days ago I imagined that death would be the worst thing to befall us, but we could’ve hoped to be reunited beyond the veil.

But something told me the request Morainn had made of me was not a request at all, and I knew it was better to leave of my own accord than to depart my city in chains, or worse.

Canopies of bright silks were hung as though in celebration on the grounds, filtering what little light remained in the day. There were many people busy plying rations and supplies on pack animals, into carts, fortifying tented caravans against the heat. In the center of the bustle was an enormous barge whose size defied travel, but it was toward that vehicle we moved. The soldiers before us dispersed to ready themselves, but did not go far. Three remained still at my back, drawing even closer as though I might, like some wild animal, bolt into the open.

Gannet made no motion to depart as a bearded man approached, plucking in turn at the hairs on his cheeks and the tunic that stuck to his skin beneath his armor.

“Antares,” Gannet murmured. “Captain of the Guard.”

Skin ruddy with heat, I could smell the heavy odor of the Captain’s sweat as he drew near. His linen blue eyes pierced as cleanly as any spear.

“It is a mighty escort for one woman.” Antares spoke as he approached, waving a hand at the busy soldiers. His expression sharpened. “But you’re more than just a woman, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. As I had with Morainn, I felt he knew something I didn’t, but the images in his mind were formless and strange.

“May we board?” asked Gannet, a tightness to his words that hadn’t been there a moment before. Was it what Antares had said? With anyone else I would have been able to dig a little deeper, see more than they wanted me to, but already I knew I couldn’t do that with Gannet. From Antares there was only the curt confidence of a military man.

“With haste.”

I followed Gannet within the barge without being beckoned or spoken to. He seemed more than willing enough to make me aware of what it was he wanted without using words. I felt the compulsion first as though it was my own; the realization that it wasn’t creeping over me like the unexpected chill that comes with passing underground. I couldn’t fight it, not with the soldiers now barring the exit.

The barge, with its many curtained partitions and willowy poles driven into the light planks below our feet, seemed like another world. Hardy little plants vined above our heads, fed from pouches of water that I saw a servant draw from as well. While I gawked at such a useless luxury she filled a cup hardly larger than a thimble, draining it in one swallow. Shielded from the sun, it might be possible to believe you were in the comfort of some gardened pavilion. But then the barge would rock from some little movement, or a whispered conversation would pass through many layers of curtains. There would be little privacy here.

Gannet nudged me, again without words and certainly without touching me, and I followed anxiously. I wasn’t prepared for any more surprises today, but my curiosity was like a hunger, growing and growing, demanding to be fed. The dark plane of Gannet’s shoulders angled before me, and my question tumbled out, clumsy.

“Are you the only one?”

He knew what I meant. Yesterday I couldn’t have imagined anyone being able to do what I could do, but his cool temper, his surety, made me suspect that he was not alone. He was too little like me to be alone.

“Not like you have been,” he replied, his expression shrouded by the mask he wore. “But the others aren’t like me. Their gifts are not the same as mine.”

But they had gifts. They knew things, or could do things, which meant I wouldn’t seem so strange. Not as different among my enemies, as I had been among my kin.

The thought soured in me, but I wasn’t given time to sulk. Gannet stopped and parted a light curtain that divided a compartment near the steady center of the barge. It was little more than a cupboard, furnished only with a bare cot and lidded basin.

“You want me to stay here,” I assumed, and Gannet nodded. But he didn’t leave, stepping closer when behind him came two servants bearing a wicker trunk. I stiffened. He had no smell even as near as he was. I could have lifted a finger to brush the sleeve of his shirt, but I did not think I would feel human warmth. This was madness. No matter what they had offered, I feared what was ahead of me more than what was behind.

When the servants departed, Gannet looked at me again, retreating the few steps he had drawn closer.

“You have many questions. I will have answers when you begin asking the right ones.”

“Will you?” I asked, skeptical. I would have known if my brother were telling the truth, or if my mother were lying to protect me. But with him, nothing. I swept past, seating myself with as much composure as I could manage on the lip of the cot. “You will not find me so agreeable if I am not soon given cause to be. Not to you, and not to your sister.”

Though I could not see his brow behind the mask, I hoped that I had surprised Gannet, that he would not underestimate me. I knew I should’ve waited to show that I knew something about him he hadn’t shared, but I was irritable and scared. And I just didn’t like him much.

“Keep your voice down.” His was low and sharp, like a knife hidden under a cloak. I thought he might grab me, but I didn’t flinch, and neither did he move. His eyes were on the floor. “You must never refer to
Dresha
Morainn… in that way.”

“Why?”

“You can ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Do as he says.”

I started. The last had come from Morainn, appearing behind her brother like a shadow. How long had she been in the narrow corridor?

“I thought I was,” I said, waving my arm to encompass the tiny, curtained chamber. I’d come, as they had wanted. Did I have to be quiet, too?

Morainn’s features darkened, her thoughts complicated. Fear, regret, anger. But not with me.

“You possess one of our secrets. No doubt you’ll collect more. But believe me when I say that sharing them is not worth the price you will pay for it.”

She could make promises, and she could break them. My family would be safe only if I cooperated.

I turned away from the pair, face hot with feeling. I heard Morainn go, but Gannet lingered. I felt the wheels beneath the barge groan and begin to turn, and I wished there were a window so I could see what I left behind. Already in the barge the smells were unfamiliar, the murmured words accented differently than I was used.

I was not alone, but I felt terribly lonely.

“Why me?” I asked softly. I knew he wouldn’t answer, but I couldn’t stop myself asking.

“I’m surprised you don’t know.”

“How can anything about me be a surprise to you?” I snorted, not caring if he felt the depth of my contempt. “I must seem so simple.”

“You are not simple. You are ignorant,” Gannet said, though this was no compliment, either. “And a liar, I think.”

He crossed to me then, the sway of the barge seeming to still as his weight joined mine. I tensed as he drew near. Though he was not a particularly tall man, I was small even for a woman, and for me he was as formidable as a mountain. He opened his mouth as though he might say more on the subject, so deliberate he could’ve been raising a hand to strike me. But when he did speak, his tone had quieted.

“You should sleep.”

It didn’t feel like a command, but the weight of his words hit me like one. I sat down on the cot. Gannet left without saying anything else, but he didn’t need to. Where I was and what was happening to me were my own doing, among the first things in my life that were. Gannet had called me a liar because I openly scorned circumstances that deep, deep down, thrilled me. I feared my captors, but I feared more the ugly independence my choice had wrought, how already it was changing me.

Sleep was laughably beyond my reach. I lay on the cot, eyes roaming the darkness. The sun had set, and I could have mistaken the sudden movement then for the shifting of one of the curtains that divided my chamber from the rest of the barge. But it was too slight even for the wind. I looked down and saw a scorpion, his body like so many links of dark chain, skittering across the coarse blanket but a finger’s width from my hand. I leapt from the bunk, fell, crashed with the creature racing after me. My scream was breathless, strangled, fear mummified in my lungs as the scorpion’s tail, bright as an onyx bead, whipped like a lash above his back.

And then a blade swept him from his mark, leaving a gouge in the floor like the beginnings of a ritual sign.

“
Han’dra
Eiren.” The captain of the guard, Antares, stood there, offering a hand in the same instant that the other pinned the scorpion to the floor with his spear. The squirms of the creature’s dying were brief and soundless. “Let me help you.”

But I didn’t, rising shakily without his assistance and backing as far away as I could. If he was slighted, he didn’t show it.

“We have seen many of these pests in the desert,” Antares continued, though we shared a look that proved to me he was wondering exactly the same as I was.

How had it come to be
here
?

Antares gestured for me to move to the center of the chamber, and after a moment, I complied, my loose skirt drawn up in fists without needing to be asked. He swept the room with his eyes and his spear, stripped the cot, his limbs and armor near enough that I could smell him, the day’s exertions on him, feel his tension without the need of my talents. My discomfort had as much to do with his proximity as that of the dead scorpion. But he was thorough, and I knew that he had finished when he exhaled, for he had held something in his mind as ugly and as hard as the breath in his lungs.

“There are baskets of fruit and root vegetables in a nearby compartment, dark places full of sweet things I am told these creatures like to eat,” Antares lied. Someone had put the scorpion here, or it was not so unbelievable to him that someone would. I didn’t know why he would try to deceive me, but I knew that he didn’t want me to worry. That worried me more. “But that one was alone. You’re safe.”

He retreated to the chamber’s entrance, pulling the curtain closed without a word, his look full of more meaning than I could process.

I would never be safe again.

Chapter 5

I couldn’t chart the exact moment we traveled far enough from my home that I no longer recognized the landscape. It wasn’t that sloping sand and rock had much to distinguish themselves, only that it became impossible for me to deny that what I had admired at a distance now troubled and slowed the sprawling caravan. We were stopped in the highest hours of the heat nearly every day to replace a wheel or tend to a split beam, to bury a beast or see to rations reduced for the soldiers who marched all around us. I didn’t know what to think of my being fed at all, especially now, when they made the choice to keep me in comfort over their own.

Though burdened with the barges and pack animals and carts heavy with rations, we were moving with surprising speed over the desert, closer every day to Morainn’s kingdom, to Ambar. Even riding hard I imagined it would take twelve days to reach home, maybe more, and I did not like to dwell on the distance, increasing with every hour.

At night it was easier to imagine myself somewhere more familiar, and the quiet gatherings by fireside were not unlike those I remembered in the caverns deep in the desert. My presence was compulsory, but I tried to ignore that fact. We stopped only for a few hours, to wash and eat and rest, but it was enough.

As it was during the day, when I wasn’t confined to my chamber I was with Morainn. Why she kept me close I didn’t know, not when there were armed guard enough to ensure I wasn’t going anywhere. She had two maidservants, Imke and Triss, who didn’t seem to do much but complain of the sand in her clothes and her food, the flies as plump as her littlest finger alighting on everything. But they were a distraction, and she couldn’t have enough of those. I wanted deeply to dislike Morainn, but she was not unkind. She wasn’t even terribly spoiled, though I wasn’t surprised to learn after our first encounter that she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take no for an answer.