by Holly Lisle
The paraglese toggled the green switch. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”
The sphere began to turn a dull blue. The change was visible throughout the room, and Crispin heard scattered gasps.
“. . . four . . . five . . .” The paraglese toggled the yellow switch. “. . . one . . . two . . .” A cloudy dark spot began to resolve itself within the blue. “. . . three . . . four . . . five . . .” The paraglese toggled over the final switch, and immediately the dark shape in the center of the sphere resolved into a clear image.
The image of Ry Sabir, very clearly alive and moving. He was speaking, though the person to whom he spoke remained invisible.
“That’s my alibi,” Crispin said quietly, though his voice carried through the stunned chambers as loudly as if he had shouted. “Ry isn’t dead.”
“Where is he?” and “What happened to him?” mingled with “Who is responsible for this?” among the onlookers and the council. Crispin pressed his lips into a grim line, and in response moved the two dials that worked the gears within the device. The view moved away from Ry so rapidly that no one could get a clear view of anyone who was with him, though it was clear he was with many people. Not until Crispin had a ship fixed cleanly within the glass did he remove his hands from the dials.
“You tell me where he is and who is responsible,” he said.
The paraglese leaned forward, and gradually his expression hardened into cold rage. He looked up from the glass and then to the councillors on either side of him. “He’s on a ship,” Grasmir said. “One of our ships. One of our trade ships.” The paraglese looked down at Crispin and said, “It would appear that you, your brother, and your cousin have been the victims of conspiracy between the Traders and your cousin Ry. And perhaps his mother. I revoke the charge and rights of this council and find you innocent myself. And I apologize that I cannot ask you to sit on the council that will begin investigating the conspiracy that tried to implicate you in a crime that wasn’t even committed. That your enemies sat on the council that would have tried you was an unfortunate accident—I cannot, though, knowingly appoint you to sit in judgment against them. Though the idea strikes me as ultimately fair, I cannot overlook the bias you will have against them for what they’ve attempted.” He rested his head in his hands for a moment, then pushed his fingers through his receding and graying hair. “However, if you have anything that you would ask of me as paraglese, I will be inclined to look favorably on your request.”
Crispin nodded. “I do have a favor to ask, one that will cost you very little. The Wolves have been without a leader since the death of our beloved head Wolf, Lucien. Our efforts on behalf of the Family are weak and scattered. I would, with my brother and my cousin, lead the Wolves forward for the good of all the Family. I ask only that you support our bid for leadership, and then only if you feel we would be worthy of that honor.”
Grasmir smiled. “It would seem, from the letter that Ry wrote to me before leaving on the trade ship, that one point of this exercise was to prevent the three of you from doing just that. I don’t like conspiracies, and I don’t appreciate being lied to or made a fool of. It is my right to override the autonomy of any branch of the Family if I feel that doing so is in the best interests of the Family as a whole. I feel that way now. Therefore, there will be no bid among the Wolves for leader. I declare you leader of your people, and your brother Anwyn and your cousin Andrew your assistants. Nor will I brook any disagreement with my decision.” He stood. “Go, with my blessing. I dismiss this council. Traders—stay within the walls of the House. You will answer for your actions on this same day next week.”
* * *
They had almost torn the ship apart looking for her when she finally crawled out of the bilge and dragged herself up toward her cabin. Hasmal found her as she fought her way up the gangway toward the main deck. Ian and Rrru-eeth and Jayti were right behind. Hasmal, bless him, had spent the time that he searched for her in thinking, because the first words out of his mouth were, “You had a seizure again, didn’t you?”
Seizure. The falling sickness. That frightened people, but not to the point where they felt they needed to kill the victim. Not like the Karnee curse.
So she nodded. “I think so. I don’t remember. The last thing I remember, I was in my cabin reading. And the next, I woke up in the bilge.”
They helped her up onto the deck, talking about fresh air and sunlight. It didn’t help. She still felt like a week-drowned corpse. She stood, having a hard time keeping her feet under her.
Ian stood in front of her, backlit by the setting sun, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You have the falling sickness.” A statement, not a question.
She nodded.
“How often?”
“Not often. Once every couple months.”
“But often enough that your Family couldn’t hope to make a good marriage for you?”
“Once would have been often enough to prevent that.”
“Damaged goods.”
“That’s the way it is with Family.” Which was true. No one could hope to arrange a marriage for a woman with falling sickness—her dowry would be forfeit but she’d be sent home after the first episode; everyone knew that the falling sickness passed from mother to child. So Kait’s story about taking the book gained another layer of realism—an unmarriageable daughter would end up doing something hideous like translating dead languages in a windowless room for the rest of her life. Further, she had a rational excuse for her absence, and for any future absences. Thank all the gods for Hasmal. She could have hugged him. Would, she thought, when she was clean again, and fed. When she’d slept. She’d eaten rats when the hunger grew too great, but even in her beast form she didn’t like rats. They weighed on her stomach as she stood there.
Ian was nodding, and his eyes bore an empathy that surprised her. He was silent for a long time. Then he said softly, “I know all about the Families and their damaged goods. I do indeed.”
Hasmal said, “We were afraid you’d fallen overboard.”
Kait said, “I’m glad I didn’t.”
And Rrru-eeth, standing off to one side, said, “How did you get all the way down in the bilge without anyone seeing you?”
Kait shrugged. “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything.” She wished that were true. She wished she could at least forget the rats. Weak from hunger and exhausted from the Shift, she staggered, and as the ship rode over the crest of a wave, the deck rose beneath her and she fell.
Suddenly the movement was too much for her. She was wretchedly sick. She crawled to the rail and threw up into the sea.
That put an effective end to the questioning. When she was done being sick, Ian and Hasmal carried her into her cabin, and Rrru-eeth assigned herself to nurse her.
For the next two days, she decided she would do nothing but eat and sleep.
* * *
“So what did you do with the bodies?” Crispin still wore his formal clothing, though he’d gotten rid of the cloak as soon as he came through the door.
“In the garden, beneath your roses. Of course.” Anwyn chuckled. “I trust we didn’t disturb the roots too much.”
Crispin didn’t smile. “I trust you didn’t. I have some very delicate hybrids taking root out there right now.”
Andrew sat playing with the switches of the contraption they’d put together to amuse the Inquisitors. “They like our toy?”
“The paraglese did. The Traders sitting on the council thought it was fine until they saw the ship.”
“Making it a Trader ship was a nice touch,” Anwyn said.
Crispin shrugged. “Doing it that way eliminated two of our problems at the same time—Ry’s disappearance and the Traders’ power.”
Both his brother and his cousin smiled. “Eliminated the problem,” Anwyn mused.
Andrew giggled.
“Eliminated.” Crispin pulled out a chair and sat astride it, facing backward. He draped his arms along the back and
said, “I wish you could have been there. It was beautiful.”
“If we’d been there, who would have worked the magic to make your pretty pictures?” Andrew was frowning.
Both Anwyn and Crispin looked at him with annoyance. “He didn’t mean it literally,” Anwyn said. He turned his back on Andrew and said, “Tell me, how beautiful was it?”
“You know how we’d hoped to have Grasmir support our bid for leadership of the Wolves?”
Anwyn nodded.
“He went one better than that. He declared us leaders. Rather, he declared me leader and the two of you my assistants. We don’t have to win over anyone the pro-Lucien faction might field. We’re in charge, and the rest of the Wolves can’t do a thing about it.”
Anwyn studied him thoughtfully, too clever to point out right then that they had agreed the three of them would share power equally. But Crispin could tell he was thinking about it. It would come up later—not as an argument, because the paraglese had said Crispin would be in charge, and Anwyn wouldn’t be able to prove his brother had manipulated events to make that happen. But it would come up.
Meanwhile, however, all Anwyn said was, “Well, things are certainly going to change now.”
Andrew tittered, evidently already imagining how they were going to change.
Chapter 24
Three weeks of reading the Secret Texts preparatory to learning any actual magic. Three weeks—twenty-seven days—of pondering the history of magic and the future of her world as told through the prophecies, aphorisms, and asides of a man who was undoubtedly brilliant, but sometimes perversely vague. Three weeks of sitting in her cabin from before the sun rose until long after dark, trying to fit what she knew of the events of the past and the present to the complex puzzle Vincalis had left behind—and Kait had finally reached her limit.
When Ian Draclas knocked on her cabin door, she opened it gladly.
“You haven’t come out of your cabin for anything except meals in so long,” he said, “that poor Rrru-eeth is certain some form of sea-madness has overtaken you and that you are pining away from grief in there.”
Kait already felt the pressures of Shift growing inside of herself again, and thought that would make a convincing enough form of sea-madness for Rrru-eeth when it materialized, but she managed a sincere-sounding laugh. “I’ve been studying,” she said.
“Something fascinating, no doubt.” He leaned a bit past her so that he could peer around the cabin.
“History,” she said, moving unobtrusively to block him. “I want to be very sure of the location of the city and its treasures.”
“Of course,” he said. “I hadn’t considered that you might not have finished translating your book when you st—I mean, when you . . . bought it. Of course you hadn’t translated all of it. Buying it, how could you have?” He flushed.
His awkwardness amused her. She moved closer to him, hypersensitive to his warmth and to his scent, which was musky, sensual, and very male, with unmistakable overlays of fresh air and sunshine. He was handsome—she hadn’t permitted herself to think about that, but now she caught herself smiling up at him just to see him smile.
And his return smile disarmed her; in it, she could see surprise and hope and a faint shadow of her own growing hunger.
“You seem different tonight,” he said. She couldn’t help but note the touch of wariness.
“I feel different. I’m lonely, and tired, and I want to enjoy an evening not thinking about lost cities or Ancient artifacts.” She rested a hand on his forearm, and lightly stroked the soft furring of golden hairs.
“Really?” His eyebrows rose; his voice dropped. His smile this time was much more overtly sexual.
She brushed past him and pulled her door closed behind herself. “Yes. Somewhere outside of that room.”
She’d managed to push all thoughts of sex out of her mind since boarding the Peregrine. It made for complications she didn’t want to face. But she knew she would never manage celibacy through two complete Shifts, and she would be better off picking a partner rationally than in the midst of the raging fire of Karnee lust. She’d considered Hasmal as her desires got stronger; he attracted her. She knew there would even be an advantage in taking him as her mate—he knew what she was. He, however, was one of the few men she’d ever encountered who was not compelled by her accursed Karnee blood to think he loved her. In fact, he had clearly stated, when she made a tentative overture, that he bore no interest in her at all.
For all her complaints to Amalee about the men and women who were drawn to her, and how humiliating it was to know that they were not drawn to her at all, but to her curse, Kait found it even more humiliating to run across someone who was immune even to the curse. That immunity suggested to her that she had nothing genuinely lovable about her; that without her curse, she would have been invisible to men.
Ian was not immune, even after his experience with her bout of “falling sickness,” and at the moment she took comfort from that.
He rested fingertips lightly on the small of her back. “If you don’t want to spend any more time in your cabin, would you enjoy visiting in mine?”
“I would love to.”
Neither of them said anything else until she followed him to the door to his cabin and let him usher her inside.
He lit his lamps, and only when the golden glow bathed both of them did he ask her, “Are we going to reconsider being friends now?”
She leaned against his chest and raised up on her toes to kiss him lightly on the lips. “We’re going to be even better than friends, I think.” Her heart pounded and her blood surged through her veins. She’d wanted this—she’d needed to feel desirable, beautiful, wanted. She could see in Ian’s eyes that she was all of those things. She kissed him again, and loosened her tight control over the passion that boiled inside of her; she submerged herself in the touch and taste and scent of him, in the feel of his arms around her and his hands touching her.
She let herself pretend that he wanted her for herself.
And at the same time, she managed to bury her forbidden hunger; she pushed the enemy Karnee, Ry Sabir, away from the center of her thoughts, where he had occupied her free moments while she was awake, and her dreams while she slept.
* * *
Rrru-eeth listened outside the captain’s cabin for a long time. She’d been listening out there every night for more than a week, ever since the first time the captain had taken Kait to bed with him. When she left at last, she joined Jayti in the little corner of one of the storerooms that they had appropriated for their trysts.
She complained to him about what she’d heard, finishing with a bitter snarl. “I can’t believe the captain sleeps with her. I cannot believe he wants her.”
Jayti, lean and dark and easygoing, pulled her down onto his lap and laughed. “Well, be happy for him. He’s been alone for a long time.”
“No.” Rrru-eeth snarled as he started unbuttoning her blouse. She pulled back and said, “I’ve told you before, there is something wrong with her. She isn’t normal.”
“Ruey, how could you of all people possibly care about that? Who’s normal? You and me?”
Rrru-eeth said, “She has things wrong with her. She talks to herself in her room, and she hides things. She and that Hasmal meet in her cabin early in the morning, before the watch shifts. As soon as they go in there, I can’t hear a word they say, but I can still feel them talking. It’s . . . unchancy.” She whispered, “And she has an animal smell to her. I’ve thought that since even before she was sick . . . but since then, I’ve noticed it even more.”
“An animal smell!” Jayti laughed at Rrru-eeth. “You’re jealous of her, aren’t you? Because she’s pretty and the captain wants her. She treats you better than any human woman who’s ever been aboard this ship, Ruey. I’ve watched her. She never asks extra work of you, and she talks good to you. Real good.”
He pinched her buttock and Rrru-eeth growled at him.
“Don’t
you dare,” he said, still laughing. “You’ve fancied the captain ever since he gave you a place on this ship. And now some woman of his own class wants him, and you’ve realized you’ll never be captain’s lady. Isn’t that it? Hmmm? Isn’t it?”
Rrru-eeth shrugged and nestled against his chest. “You can think what you want. But I don’t trust her. And I don’t like her. She’ll turn the captain. You just watch if she doesn’t.”
* * *
In Kait’s dream, they danced. At first, her partner’s face stayed hidden in shadow as they spun and floated over an otherwise deserted dance floor. She felt the music but she could not hear it. All she could hear was his breathing, deep and slow and steady. And his hands burned on her bare shoulders.
In Kait’s dream, they danced, and she began to recall that they danced this way every night. She looked around, feeling as if she had been trapped by the chains of day and had just regained her freedom. The silent music moved quicker, and his breathing grew faster with it. Yearning, and the pounding of her blood in her veins; that was the music to which she danced.
Touch me.
His voice made her very soul tremble. She brushed his skin with her fingertips, and discovered that he was naked. As was she. Magic. This was magic, but not the magic of wizards; this was the magic of man and woman, of lust and desire. This was the dance of sex, and the heart-pulse drumbeat quickened yet again.
Touch me.
In Kait’s dream, they danced skin to skin, floating across an open meadow, and the shadows fell away from his face and his eyes were a pale, beautiful blue, dark-ringed, and his smile burned its way into her heart, and she loved him. Gods help her, she loved him. In her dreams she danced with Ry Sabir, whose Family had murdered hers, who might have had a hand in killing her loved ones himself, and in her traitorous dreams she welcomed his embrace, and she opened her heart to him. In her dreams she knew she loved him—she, who had never loved a man.
In her dreams, they danced, and because he was her enemy, and because in her dreams she was too weak to kill him, she woke.
