A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, book 1)

by Nicole Ciacchella

  He didn't see any point in making more elaborate plans. Simple was best in this situation, since they had no idea what to expect.

  "Do you know where the meeting is to take place?" he asked.

  "No, but I know my father will be there. I'll follow him."

  "I don't really like this. We've only four days to prepare. You'll be going in blind, and they'll have taken precautions. We'd be better off surveilling this meeting and then trying to spy on the next."

  She shook her head vehemently. "We haven't the time, Kila. My father is pressuring me again, and my attempts to hold him off are wearing thin. Waiting until next month wouldn't gain us anything at any rate, as from what we can tell they never meet at the same location."

  "Yes, but it would still give us an idea of the level of their security."

  "Perhaps, but perhaps not. We don't know who makes the arrangements, and it's reasonable to assume that the responsibility shifts. We would need months of covert operations before we might feel comfortable, and even then we wouldn't know exactly what I'd be walking into. At least this way we don't have time to give ourselves the illusion of security. We know what we're doing is risky, and I will be on my guard. It's the best we can do."

  She was right, even though he didn't want to accept it. "We train every night until the meeting, if you think you can get away. Not just the deshya, but combat as well."

  "I can, and I agree that we should."

  It was better than nothing, he supposed.

  Chapter 25

  "You agree with them." Lach stared at Cianne, his face a mask of outraged disbelief. "You think they should send me away."

  "Lach," she said, hoping to placate him, to halt the storm that was brewing.

  "No! I can't believe this, Cianne. I can't believe that you of all people agree with them. How could you do this to me?"

  She couldn't take it any longer. Though she liked to think she did a good job of hiding it, the strain was starting to wear on her. She could only worry about so many things at once, and at present she had Lach to worry about, she had whatever was going on in the House, her father's involvement, Kila's safety now that she had dragged him into it, and her heart, her traitorous, treacherous heart.

  Just once, just once in her life she wished she could be open about everything, wished she could stop pretending, stop concealing, stop obscuring, and live an honest life.

  "Lach, I can't help you," she said.

  Opening his mouth, he turned to let loose, but she slashed her hand through the air, stopping him.

  "It's not that I don't want to help you, it's that I can't help you. I've tried, Lach. Cearus's divine love, I have tried! You have no idea how desperately I wish I could fix this for you. You have no idea how hard it is for me to watch what this is doing to you and to know that I'm powerless to stop it."

  "Don't I?" he asked, his voice quiet. His shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes, collapsing in on himself. "When you hurt, Cianne, it's like I hurt too. I thought I understood what pain was, when I had to watch you go through your mother's death. I thought I knew. And by Cearus, if this doesn't feel like the worst betrayal of all, but I had no idea.

  "This… This is killing me. Night and day, all I can think about is his face. Sometimes I hate him, want to scream at him, want to tell him I'll never forgive him for doing this to himself, to me, to the House. Then others I can't accept that he did do this, know in my bones that he couldn't have. But what if that's what I want to believe? I've never feared the sea, but I fear this. I fear it'll rise up over my head and swallow me whole."

  "That's what I'm afraid of too," she whispered.

  "That's not even the worst part of it, not for me. The worst part of it is knowing that if it does happen, I'll have left you the way my father left me."

  Why? Why now of all times did he have to choose to bare his heart to her again? She couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear, but how could she be expected to say the thing she knew would be the final blow, the one that would break him at last? How could she be expected to destroy him when he was at his most vulnerable?

  "You're stronger than that, Lach. You're not going to let it swallow you, which is why you have to go," she said, pushing his unspoken confession aside. She hated herself for doing it, had to turn away from the pain in his eyes, but what other choice did she have? She was in an impossible situation and doing her best to claw her way out of it. "If you stay here, you'll keep doing this to yourself. Your mind will keep running in these circles, and then you'll be so trapped you may never find your way out again. You'll never forgive yourself if you betray yourself and the House that way. Return to the sea, Lach. It's where you're meant to be. It's where Cearus wants you to be. It's where your father would want you to be."

  His face twisted in torment, he tilted his head back and covered his eyes with the heels of his hands. A silent scream parted his lips, and he didn't breathe for so long that Cianne was terrified. When he breathed again at last, the sound was painful, as if he were drawing in shards of glass along with life-giving air.

  "Sometimes I'm afraid I don't want to move on," he said, in the smallest voice she had ever heard him use. "Sometimes I'm afraid I want to be stuck like this."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. I don't know."

  Shoulders shaking, he pressed his hand against his eyes so hard the skin around them went white. His pain was terrible to behold, made worse by the fact that Cianne could do nothing to relieve it. She might be able to distract him, but she couldn't make the pain go away, no matter how hard she tried.

  I'm destined to bring him nothing but misery.

  Wrapping her arms around him, she pulled him close. He resisted her at first, but then he collapsed, taking them both down to the floor in a heap. Sobs tore from him, wracking his body so violently that Cianne's teeth snapped closed on her tongue and she tasted blood. Still she didn't let go. There were so many things she couldn't give him, but she could give him this.

  "I am trying," he said, his face pressed against her neck with such force he was cutting off her breath.

  "You need to get away," she whispered. "Staying here is no good for you, Lach. You need to be at sea again. At sea you'll be closer to your father. At sea you'll find your peace."

  "Will you be here for me when I get back?" His sobs were slowing, the tension seeping from his body, telling her he was relenting. She felt relief, but it wasn't as powerful as she had expected it to be.

  "Of course I will. I always have been."

  Would she be? She had no illusions about what she was up against. If she stumbled on something, she might very well have to leave in a hurry, without a word to him or anyone else. She hated the thought of leaving him, knew he would suffer from it as she had suffered when Kila had left.

  "I'll go," he said, the words coming out a low moan.

  She understood his feelings, as strange as they might strike others who hadn't experienced such grief. That was the funny thing about pain, that everyone experienced it differently. It made no sense that anyone would want to hang onto something that caused them agony, but she too had wanted to hang onto the pain in the wake of her mother's death. She hadn't been interested in healing, in moving on, because it meant accepting a world in which her mother had no part. Lach didn't need to say it in so many words, but she knew he had come to understand her better than he ever had before, that he was experiencing the exact thing she had tried so hard to articulate to him all those years ago, but for which she had never found adequate words.

  Yet he still doesn't understand you at all. He still sees so little of you.

  She had made that choice, and she had to live with it.

  "You can do this, Lach. I know you can."

  Pulling away from her, he gripped her arms lightly, locking her in place so that she had to meet his eyes.

  "Cianne, I… I've never asked anything of you. I know… You know how I feel about you. You know that I love you with everything in me. I know you
care about me, but I know you've struggled with your feelings. I know you're uncertain, and so I've tried my best not to push you. You've felt pressured so many times in your life, and I've always sworn to myself that I wouldn't be one of the people pressuring you, no matter what.

  "But I feel like all my strength is gone. Getting out of bed in the morning seems like more than I can handle. I feel so weak, so useless. You're the only person who makes me feel like it is possible, like I can function again. It's not going to be easy for me to be away from you."

  "Lach, please," she said, tears flooding her eyes. Her throat closed, rendering her unable to say more.

  Shaking his head, he said, "I'm not asking you to promise me anything. I know it's not fair of me to put even this much on you. It's one thing to need someone, but I don't want to suffocate you with my need. Being apart from you will be extremely difficult for me, though, and I have to feel as if you're with me. I'm trying to be strong, but I need your help. Can I have a lock of your hair? I'll wear it in a ring, and then you'll always be with me."

  It seemed such a small question for such a huge request. Giving him her hair was a promise of a sort. She needed him too, needed him as her friend, needed to know she had someone on her side, but he didn't need her like that. She was frightened of his need, of the magnitude of it, of what it meant for her to deny that need. He could say he wasn't asking her to promise anything, but he was edging closer to that point every day.

  "I don't want to mislead you," she said, the words strangling her. "I can't mar—"

  "Ssh," he said, laying a gentle finger over her lips. "I know you don't want to mislead me. You're not. I'm not asking you for anything more than this. I know you, Cianne. You're afraid of hurting me, which is what makes you such a good friend. But you're not hurting me because you've said nothing to hurt me. I'll go on this voyage, and when I come back we'll be friends, as we've always been."

  She nodded, but she didn't dare hope. Perhaps distance and time at sea would be what he needed to learn to accept the fact that she didn't want to marry him. Perhaps it wouldn't, but she had to give him that chance, had to hope that he could come to terms both with the loss of his father and her inability to offer him anything more than friendship. She hoped he would grow to understand that her not loving him as he wanted her to love him wouldn't mean she was lost to him as well.

  "All right," she said, emotions making her voice hoarse.

  He flashed her a quick, unsteady smile and stood, leaving the room. Cianne didn't bother to rise. Her knees were too weak and she was too weary.

  When he came back he had scissors, and he knelt next to her, looking at her questioningly. She nodded and he lifted her hair carefully, his eyes reverent. She looked away. The sound of the scissors severing the lock sounded so final that something burst in her chest, nearly making her double over.

  "Thank you," he said.

  She said nothing. There was nothing she could say.

  He left her alone once more and she collected herself as best she could. He was waiting for her near the front door when she emerged at last.

  "I'll bring you a gift," he said, his smile faltering.

  Her lips wouldn't cooperate, so she settled for a nod.

  "May I come see you tomorrow, let you know when I'm leaving?"

  "Yes, please," she managed to reply.

  He kissed her cheek as he did every time he said goodbye to her, and she waited until she was home before clamping her hand over her mouth to hold back her scream.

  How long would it be before her father discovered that Lach had her hair?

  The day couldn't pass by quickly enough for her, and she felt a sense of rising desperation as she waited for the sky to darken, for time to release her from her prison.

  Her first breath of night air tasted like freedom, and she sucked it in, inhaling until her lungs could hold no more. Her clothing hugged her like a second skin, warm and soft.

  Why stay? Why not throw every caution to the wind and ask Kila to leave with her?

  It was a mad idea, and she knew it. It was also intoxicating, so seductive that she crouched in the shadow of her manor's chimney and closed her eyes, allowing the images to wash over her. None of it was definite, no detailed picture of the house they'd live in or where they could possibly go, because none of that mattered. All that mattered was that she was with him in her dreams, that she had broken away at long last, that she at last had everything that was dear to her in the world.

  She held the thought close and then she released it. She couldn't be happy that way, not because she wouldn't be happy with him, but because she would know she had abdicated her responsibility. Whether or not he would agree wasn't even worth consideration because she would never put him in that position. What could he say in response to something as wildly inappropriate as that?

  He isn't immune, a sly voice whispered at the back of her mind.

  She was fully aware he wasn't. She had caught him looking at her, had seen the conflict in his eyes when they lingered on her face or her lips. He was attracted to her and determined to hold himself back from acting on that attraction for reasons she well understood. Part of her wanted to surrender to the attraction, she couldn't deny it. That part wanted to throw herself in his arms and give in to every fantasy that had ever played out behind her lids.

  It wasn't good enough for her, though. Oh, she wanted him, craved him in a way she had never before known, but her urges weren't confined to her body. What she felt in her heart was real. Everything in her world made sense when she was with him. She felt ensconced in warmth, safety, and contentment. Her soul recognized the twin to its own.

  That was worth so much more to her than a temporary physical release. He might be attracted to her, but she didn't know if his feelings extended any farther than that. If she surrendered to her urges, if she gave up everything for one night with him, it would never be enough for her, she was wise enough to recognize that. She would have precious moments to hold onto, and she wasn't discounting that, but she would be left without the things she most desired. What good would that do her?

  All or nothing, that was what it was to be, she supposed. What other option existed? She was no more able to deny what she felt for Kila than Lach was to deny what he felt for her. She wanted nothing of a pale imitation of love, wanted nothing of spending her time trying to make someone feel for her what she felt for him. She had witnessed what it had done to Lach, and she wouldn't allow herself to plummet into that same pit.

  Chapter 26

  "Well done," Burl said as they watched a junior Enforcement officer lead the shopkeeper's murderer away.

  "Thank you," Kila said.

  He was satisfied to have closed another case. Since the ledger had proven to be such a dead end, he had gone back over the crime scene, combing it for several hours before noticing something they had missed the first time around: a scrap of torn parchment with part of an emblem on it. He had then walked the city streets for two hours, examining shop signs, until he had found one with a matching emblem.

  The case had evolved quickly from there. It turned out that their victim hadn't been murdered by the supplier with whom he'd been overheard arguing, but by a competitor who was being driven out of business by the victim's securing exclusive agreements with their mutual suppliers in a latch-ditch effort to save his own business at the expense of his rival's. Fifteen minutes of intense questioning had been enough for Burl to break the man. Sobbing and shaking, he had confessed, telling them about the axe he had used, how his first swing had missed. Every detail he provided was an exact match for what they'd found at the crime scene.

  "You could be a valuable asset to Enforcement," Burl added.

  Kila darted a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. She was focused on the arrest, but he had the impression that she was assessing his reaction to her words.

  "I'd like nothing more."

  Nodding, she swept a frank gaze over him and headed back to her desk witho
ut another word.

  The day was quiet. A few petty thefts were reported, and one altercation at a dockside tavern, but nothing that concerned Burl and Kila. He was grateful for the chance to catch up on some of the reports he'd neglected, and to have some time to think.

  He had spent hours with the missive Cianne had given him, breaking the code at long last. Something about its pattern had teased at the edges of his recollection, and he had dug through his things until a prickling intuition told him he'd found what he'd been searching for. Sure enough, his old code book, one his mother had given him as a child, had provided him with the answer he'd been searching for, enabling him to determine that the code used was a standard Arcarian cipher. From there it had been a simple matter of determining the matching text, which hadn't posed much of a challenge for him as during the investigation into Toran Stowley's death, he had noticed the spine of one of Stowley's books protruding slightly from the shelf and made note of the title. A quick trip to the Cearovan library provided him with the tome he needed, and within hours he'd deciphered the message.

  As he'd suspected, the note consisted of dates, figures, and initials. He needed to retrieve Stowley's ledger and examine the two side-by-side. The initials in the missive didn't match those in the ledger, but he remembered seeing matching figures and dates, and he suspected the note and ledger listed the same transactions. If they were simple business transactions, why go to such lengths to obscure them? It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that they were perfectly legitimate, but Kila had a strong suspicion the money hadn't been used for purchasing material goods, but for purchasing information, or silence.

  Twilight fell over the city, and the warm glow of the candles made Enforcement headquarters seem cozier and more modern than ever. Hearts and minds indeed. Kila knew for a fact that plenty of his colleagues felt a great deal of gratitude toward the Houses for having liberated them from the cold and dank of their old headquarters.

  Burl gathered up her things, fastening the top of her greatcoat with a clasp that had long since garnered Kila's notice. It was just a little too finely wrought, the metal a little too pure for it to be a simple costume fastener of the type most Enforcement officers wore. Burl was meticulous, but she apparently hadn't been able to resist this one small show of wealth. She paused at Kila's desk, her hand resting casually on its surface.