Dissident (Forbidden Things Book 1)

by Nikki Mccormack

  “Indigo. I mean…Lady Indigo,” he amended with a slight flush.

  “Lord Caplin.” She smiled at his discomfiture. “What brings you here?”

  “High Council business.” He nodded to the headmaster whose intent gaze was on them. “And you?”

  Her mind went blank. What could she say?

  “I was told you wished to discuss your therapy sessions,” Serivar offered.

  She caught his eyes for a second, grateful. “Yes. They’re interfering with my studies.”

  Caplin cast the headmaster a significant look. “I’m certain Lord Serivar will find a way to help. Have a lovely afternoon, my lady.”

  He offered an appropriate bow for the sake of their audience and she reciprocated with a curtsy as he stepped around her and strode down the hall.

  “Wait. Lord Caplin.”

  He spun, smiling for her. He did have a most charming smile.

  “Might I borrow one of your horses tomorrow?”

  “Certainly. I’ve several who need the exercise. Will Lord Jayce be riding as well?”

  “No.” Too fast. Too curt. She winced inwardly.

  His smile faltered.

  She warmed her tone. “He has an archery tournament. I thought I might go out alone.”

  Caplin’s nod was hesitant. “I’ll see that Terun knows you’re coming.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded again without conviction and continued on his way.

  She stepped into Serivar’s office to confront his curious regard.

  “I know your Uncle is important to King Jerrin, but I didn’t realize you and the king’s nephew were close.”

  “We’ve been friends for years. Why?” She bumped the door shut with her heel. “Is he involved with the King’s Order?”

  “No. Very few council members are.” He shrugged, dismissing the subject, but the way he scowled at the papers on his desk made her uncomfortable. “Why ride alone?”

  Frustration bubbled up. “Whenever I’m not training I’m busy lying to everyone about what I’m doing when I am. I could use some time free of guilt and stress.”

  His gaze was steady. “I never said this would be easy.”

  “No. You didn’t.” The bluntness and truth in his words ground at her failing composure. “Do you have a family, Master Serivar?”

  His expression darkened. He stood and stalked to the back of the room to open the hidden door. The shadowed hallway beyond beckoned. He glanced in her direction, not quite looking at her.

  “More of one than you have.”

  She flinched at the rancor in his voice.

  “Shall we?” He gestured brusquely down the hall.

  Anger pulsed through her, both for the implication that lying was somehow worse for him and for his callousness toward the loss of her parents. Taking a deep breath, she plucked a candle off his desk, spilling wax on the wood, and stomped past him. The long student’s robes caught on a rough edge of the doorway. She grabbed a handful of material and yanked. The sound of fabric tearing answered her efforts and she stormed down the hall. Time would have to be wasted repairing that later.

  At the far end, she shoved open the door and stepped into the training room. Drawing from ascard in the candle flame, she reached out to the candles around the room. All twelve lit simultaneously and, despite her anger, pride swelled.

  “You’ve mastered that.” Serivar slammed the bolt into place hard enough to make her jump.

  She saw what was in the room then and her pleasure faded.

  A body lay on a table in the center. She’d worked on human bodies in healing classes, but the corpse was somehow more disquieting in this setting.

  “What’s that for?”

  “What do you usually use them for?” He strode to the table, gesturing for her to follow.

  “To learn human anatomy so we can heal it. Sometimes we also use them to practice mending damaged tissues.” She stopped across the table from him.

  The individual was a young woman, close to her own age. A swollen, discolored split on the side of her skull appeared to be the cause of death and a cursory examination with the ascard confirmed that. She’d been pretty, if much too thin. Her long brunette hair matted with dirt and blood, painted fingernails broken and torn, grime built up beneath them as if she’d tried to claw her way through mud.

  “She was a whore.” His callous tone implied her occupation made her fate less tragic. “She was found this morning by the river.”

  Indigo gave him a sharp look, hoping he would take the hint and spare her further insight. When he started to speak again, she cut him off. “I’d rather not know her history.”

  “Did I ask what you wanted,” he snapped.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Does someone need a nap?”

  Serivar sucked in a deep, trembling breath. The ascard around them thickened as if responding to his temper. A sword fell from one of the shelves with a loud clatter and she hopped back from the table in surprise. Serivar glared daggers through her and she cringed, realizing how little she knew about his ascard ability.

  “I would love nothing more than to send you home right now with a bruise across your backside from the flat of that sword.” His scowl was enough to assure her he would do it. “However, we have this body today, so we will do this today.”

  “Right.” Indigo stared at the body. A whore. A woman no one would miss, cursed by her low birth to a short life of struggle and obscurity. “Can I ask something?”

  He was silent.

  “Would you have invited me to join the Order if I were lowborn?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why of course not? Potential is potential.”

  He tapped his fingers on the table. “A peasant would have to become a ward of the crown to elevate their status before they could join the Order. That isn’t a reasonable precedent to set. Besides, lowborn tend to have little or no viable connection to the ascard, an effect of poor nutrition in the womb I believe.”

  “What would you have done with me if I had been lowborn?”

  His hands clenched the side of the table, an ominous thickening in the ascard around them again. “If you intend to ask theoretical questions all session, I would rather go home to the family you think so little of.”

  She bit back a nasty retort, wary of driving him to act out his threat against her backside. “What do you want me to do?”

  He took a minute to collect his thoughts then gestured to the body between them. “I want you to do the opposite of what you’ve been taught. Rather than heal, I want to you inflict injury. We’ll start easy, perhaps a cut in the skin. Before we leave today, I would like you to be able to shatter a bone without damaging the surrounding tissue. You will stand no less than five feet away so you are not tempted to touch. Anyone you need to use these skills against isn’t going to let you get that close.”

  She stared at the dead woman. Healing damage someone else inflicted on a body felt like a positive thing, even if it did no good for the deceased. What Headmaster Serivar asked her to do felt more than disrespectful, it felt immoral.

  “Why must I know how to do this?”

  He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, his patience worn thin as fine silk. When he opened his eyes again, he said, “Some tasks you might be asked to complete could put you in danger. You have no weapons training so you must have other defenses. Healing and wounding are two sides of the same skill. Because you can heal well and your connection is as strong as it is, you should be able to do the opposite with little effort. Shall we start or shall I call in someone to erase your memory?”

  For defense? Was that the only reason? Did it even matter? She would rather die than give up everything she had learned. But how far would she go for this knowledge? How far was too far? “Can we at least cover her face?”

  He answered with a frosty look. “Start simple. A cut to the thigh.”

  She backed away from the table and focused her inner aspect on the ascard
in the woman’s skin, narrowing on her left thigh. The leg jerked and she jumped, a squeal of surprise breaking between her lips. The next six attempts were the same. It wasn’t that she couldn’t do it. The power was there and the training to figure it out, but she didn’t want to, and reluctance defeated her.

  Serivar looked on with an impatient glower. There was no getting out of this.

  She clenched her teeth and took a deep breath, realizing as she did so that the body had no stench. Suppressed with ascard? Her instructor’s expression made it clear now wasn’t the time to ask.

  It’s only for self-defense. She walked through healing a deep cut in her mind then reversed the process. A split opened in the thigh and she choked on bile that rushed up the back of her throat.

  Serivar smiled. “Well done. I knew this would be easy for you.” He ignored her appalled look. “Try a torn ligament in the right knee.”

  She waited for her stomach to calm before complying.

  They progressed through a complex series of exercises, culminating late in the evening with shattering a bone and sealing an artery in the heart. He inspected her work using ascard. He was grinning like a mud-covered boy by the time they finished. In contrast, she finished feeling drained, her stomach bound with more knots than a fisherman’s net.

  “Exceptional work today, Indigo. Very few mistakes. You’re unusually versatile. Few people can master both healing and inflicting injury.”

  “You said they were two sides of the same skill.” She spoke slow, afraid her earlier meal might rush the opening.

  “They are, but those with the temperament for healing rarely have the mental flexibility to accomplish the other.”

  She followed him to his office and hurried to the door, not in the mood to exchange pleasantries or discuss the lesson.

  “Indigo.” She stopped with her hand on the lever. “I apologize for my short temper earlier.”

  She nodded and ducked out.

  The residence was quiet when she arrived. Jayce was either still out with his drinking companions or had opted to sleep at home. Either way, she was too tired and unsettled to bother with dinner. She tossed her student robes on a chair on the way to the bedroom. When she opened the door, a candle was flickering on one bed stand and there, in the center of the bed, were Eldrian’s boots.

  Her heart dropped into her stomach.

  A hand grabbed her arm and spun her around, slamming her back into the wall beside the door. Jayce’s face appeared in her swimming vision, his breath stinking of alcohol. He took her shoulders and pressed her against the wall.

  “Who is he?”

  Disorientation from the impact and rising terror jumbled her thoughts. “He? The boots? I… I don’t know.”

  His hand caught her across the cheek. She tasted blood in her mouth. The strike cleared her head and ignited her rage.

  “Don’t lie to me. Who is he?”

  She grasped for calm. “I was wearing the boots when they found me. They left them with me hoping they would help me remember what happened.”

  “I said not to lie to me.” His hand wrapped her throat and squeezed. “Whore. I’ll make you beg forgiveness from The Divine in person.”

  Blood began to pound in her skull. She couldn’t get a breath. Her hands grabbed his wrist, trying to pull him away, but he held fast. His face, red with rage and too much drink, filled her vision, his eyes wild and bloodshot. She reached for her inner aspect, feeling the torrent of power waiting, a caged beast eager to burst forth.

  She stared into his eyes. Her head felt like it was swelling from the pressure. His fingers bit into her throat. She took a tendril of power and reached out, creating an invisible line of ascard through the skin of his throat. Life pulsed beneath that soft surface. It would be so easy.

  I could kill you. A single thought and your throat would split open like rotten fruit.

  All at once, she released her connection, pushing the power away.

  I am no killer.

  Tears spilled from her eyes. She let go of his wrists, stopping the fight and going limp in his grasp. His hand loosened, letting blood flow into her pounding head. He kissed her hard, not caring that she didn’t respond, and threw her on the bed, tearing at her dress. She let him take her there, his efforts clumsy and painful. Eldrian’s boots pressing into her lower back.

  That night, she wept for a long time while Jayce snored, hating him for the way he treated her. She was alone and afraid. Disgusted by the things she had done to the corpse and horrified by what she had almost done to him.

  She could never do such things to a living person. It was cruel and far too easy. She had signed up for this training, but no one had given her a curriculum beforehand. More than ever, she longed for someone to talk to, someone to reassure her.

  She curled in on herself and trembled, trying to remember the feeling of Eldrian’s arms around her. The longing remained, but memories had started to fade and with them, the comfort of believing she’d made the right decision.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jayce woke early for the archery tournament. When he asked her to join him with a charming smile, acting as if nothing had happened the night before, Indigo begged off, insisting she needed the quiet time to rest. After last night, she felt no guilt adding one more to the stack of lies building between them, rising out of the foundation he’d lain when he struck her that day over a month ago now. She faked a smile and suffered a quick kiss before he walked out the door. He took the boots with him, stating that he was going to get rid of the old things. She didn’t try to stop him. Eldrian was in her head and heart, the boots were only boots.

  Nerves that were on heightened alert around him relaxed, leaving her drained. Fifteen minutes later, after hiding bruises on her cheek and neck with a smidge of healing and some powder, she headed for the Duvox family residence in the Palace District.

  The Duvox house stood alongside the high, spear-tipped iron fence that marked the edge of palace grounds. The towering structure boasted attractive russet wood-work and black iron accents that incorporated the palace fence into the décor. The rich dark gold of the main structure sucked in morning light, imbuing it with a welcoming glow that beckoned her. Caplin’s ready smile and his mother’s unfailing warm embrace waited within. His father, a typically gruff man, always turned up a quick, paternal smile for her.

  She hesitated in the courtyard. A cloud passed over, stealing away the warmth.

  Going inside would lead to more evasion and lies. Today she meant to escape all the deception and pressure of training.

  She angled toward the stable to the right of the house. An elderly man whose purpose was to keep watch over slaves working the stable, welcomed her and directed her to where Terun was preparing a fine-boned black mare named Velvet for her. With a flush of shame she realized that, despite high claims to see Lyran people as equals, she’d never acknowledged Terun’s presence any of the times he’d prepared mounts for her.

  Comforting smells of hay and horses and the rustle of the animals moving in their stalls embraced her while she watched Terun handle the mare. He was healthy and well dressed as all the Duvox family’s slaves. Smooth pale skin, white hair, and palest green eyes marked him a lesser man in the eyes of most Caithin people. In his native country, those same traits were desirable indicators of a pure bloodline. Although his features were a bit too sharp and narrow for her taste, he was rather handsome. Not Lord Eldrian’s level of devastating handsome, but far better than average handsome.

  The mare danced away from him a few times, but he corrected her, speaking Lyran commands in a patient, but firm tone. The elegant aristocratic dialect he used speaking to the animal brought Eldrian to mind with a fierce pang of longing.

  He finished by dusting off the saddle seat, then bowed and held the reins out to her.

  She accepted them with a gracious nod. “Thank you.” She spoke Lyran although she knew he had fine mastery of Caithin, meaning it as a courtesy.

  H
is bow deepened a fraction.

  Once mounted, she left the stable and the man who made her think of Eldrian behind, navigating to the south city gates. Merchants setting up in the market were primarily Caithin. With relations between the two countries on edge, fewer and fewer Lyran merchants traveled beyond the docks in Kilty. Even the representative from Lyra formerly residing in the palace had returned to his home country. Palace officials said the king sent him away for his own safety, but their statements often benefited the king. Gossip suggested it hadn’t been that congenial a separation.

  The gate guards allowed her passage on her word that she was riding to one of the large manors butting up against the city walls. Incoming farmers seeking to sell crops or livestock at market kept them too busy to question her in depth.

  She trotted the mare away from the busy gate and turned down the river road. A quiet ride to a riverside meadow would be the perfect way to unwind. There she could sit by the water and exist for a time without obligation. After yesterday, she needed such peace.

  She urged the mare to an extended trot, enjoying the light breeze that passed around them. A fat morning sun, rising over distant hills, already baked the chill from the air. The wide swath of trees flanking the river closed in on her right and vast fields of crops spread out on her left.

  Two men were working off the side of the road ahead. Not wanting to be rude, she eased the mare down to a walk to pass them. One of the men, a Lyran slave, was digging an irrigation trench. His hands and face were gaunt, his clothes dirty, tattered things that hung on his frame. The stocky, bronze-skinned man overseeing the work held a coiled whip in his meaty hands. He glanced her direction, his dark eyes sliding past in disinterest.

  There was nothing uncommon about the sight, but scathing comments her father made about such men predisposed her to instant disgust. Her jaw clenched with the effort of keeping her thoughts to herself and she urged Velvet to a faster walk. A sudden loud crack sent the mare bounding sideways. She reined the animal in hard, spinning her towards the noise, her heart pounding.