He crossed the terrace and knelt, removing his helm and bowing his head. “Your Highness.”
She managed to restrain the impulse to correct him. She wasn’t queen, not yet, despite all her progress. But, finally masked, she at least stood in the way of Yar taking the throne of Bára—an effective obstacle despite the machinations of Lapo and Febe. Though she and Yar raced each other in a bizarre competition to acquire ideal mates, neither of them had yet located such a person. Having gone through the priestesses of Bára—even testing those not yet masked—Yar had departed for the sister cities to search for a bride. So far Oria had not found a priest whose touch she could abide, but as Yar’s senior, she outranked him, barely. Not queen, but as close as anyone in Bára came to the status, so she allowed the fiction.
“What people believe becomes real.” Chuffta’s mind-voice hummed in relaxed tones.
“Captain Ercole,” she acknowledged. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Not so much, I’m afraid, Your Highness. I bring unwelcome news.”
Oria allowed the sudden tension to flow through and out, keeping her attention on the task of oiling Chuffta inch by inch. Needlework, sitting still, and meditating—none of that worked for her yet, but she continued to find for herself the things that did.
“Oh?” she asked.
“A man at the gates claiming to be the King of the Destrye seeks an audience with you.”
That took her aback. “Claiming? You should recall King Lonen’s face well enough, Captain Ercole. Unless they have a new king?” The thought stabbed at her with surprising force. Lonen’s fate shouldn’t matter to her, though it seemed to. An emotion to set aside and examine later. Another trick she’d learned—to delay her emotional responses for private venting.
“I should say that the man appears to be Lonen, but he shows no sign of being the Destrye king,” Ercole allowed. “He is entirely alone and without any badge of office. I’m afraid he has demanded an audience with you, formal or informal, and said to remind you that you made him a promise.”
Aha.
“I advise against receiving him, Your Highness,” Ercole continued. “The man seems angry to the point of derangement. He has no forces to back his demands. If you shut the gates against him, he’ll have no recourse.”
“Except that I did make a promise,” she said gently, working her way down the soft membrane of Chuffta’s wing. “I will receive him. Make certain he’s given safe passage through Bára. Does anyone else know of this visit?”
Ercole glanced up at her and away. Those who didn’t wear masks were discomfited by them. Sometimes that worked to her advantage. Other times…she wasn’t sure. “No, my men brought the news directly to me and have kept him out of sight in the guardroom.”
“Thank you. Commend them for me.”
“His arrival will become common knowledge once he enters the audience chambers.”
“Which is why I won’t receive him there.”
“Not the old council chambers?” Ercole sounded aghast, uneasy concern rippling off him. Though she’d never made it an official edict, she’d avoided using that room since the day of the Trom’s arrival. Showing his bravado, Yar used it on occasion, for his “private meetings,” but she discerned from his chaotic energy afterwards that he liked it no more than she did. Clearly the rest of the council felt the same way, because they’d started using a different room, never once complaining, though it was smaller and tended to swelter in the afternoon sun.
“I’ll see him here. And if you would personally escort him, I would appreciate that.” Which meant that he would keep Lonen out of sight of curious eyes.
Ercole hesitated. “Your Highness—I don’t mean to question you, but—”
“If you don’t wish to make the climb a second time, I understand.” She deliberately misunderstood him. “I trust whoever you send as escort.”
“I’ll do it, Your Highness,” he grumbled, knees creaking as he stood.
She smiled to herself, letting the amusement mingle with the piercing sorrow of missing her father, and setting to oiling Chuffta’s other wing, working at seeing each fine tarsal bone while also observing the garden. The jewelbirds zipped about in the waxing heat, visiting the heavy-headed lilies. Soon the blossoms would be gone and then where would the birds go?
“They can fly away, to find other sources of nectar.”
“If only the Bárans could do the same.”
Slowly, carefully, like easing herself into an overly hot bath, she let her thoughts move to the anticipation of seeing Lonen. Emotions tumbled up, ready to swamp her thoughts with dread, terror, a curious tingle of excitement, and that sexual heat he’d evoked. Mostly, however, she braced herself to make good decisions.
Because Lonen could only be in Bára for one reason.
“What will you do?”
“Keep my promise,” she replied absently, spreading the delicate membrane between the final two tarsals, so thin light shone through, the blood vessels hot within the skin and bone, flowing with native magic.
“That may require much of you.”
“I have no choice.” She wryly acknowledged to herself the irony of saying the very thing she’d chided Lonen for. As another exercise in concentration, Oria extended her perception beyond the tower. Because she expected Lonen, and via the stairs to the tower, she allowed herself the cheat of sensing in that direction only. Soon enough he impinged on her awareness, a seething sun of virulent anger, fantasies of revenge, and determination. The exuberance of his masculine energy momentarily overwhelmed her, and Chuffta wrapped the slim tip of his tail around her wrist, which felt something like a failure.
“It’s not wrong to need my help. That’s why I’m your Familiar.”
“And I’m grateful.”
The impact of Lonen’s forceful personality diminished, as she allowed it to filter away, venting it through Chuffta and back into the magic below Bára. It would be a good day when she could figure out something useful to do with it, but at least by the time the King of the Destrye stepped onto her terrace, she’d regained much of her calm.
“Your Highness,” Ercole intoned with more than his usual gravity, “as you requested, King Lonen of the Destrye.”
“Thank you, Captain. You may go.”
His rebellious need to refuse, to stay and protect her, punched out and was snuffed just as quickly. With a bow, Ercole withdrew, and Oria indulged in transferring the bulk of her attention to examining Lonen.
He felt different than before, though that burning vitality hadn’t changed. If anything, he waxed brighter and stronger, vivid with frustrated impatience, threaded through with dark desire. It was like a complex bubble surrounding him, ever-shifting, confusing her newly won perceptions. To give her sgath a rest, she backed off her focus, to observe more of his surface. He’d traded his furs and cloak for lighter leathers, anticipating the climate of Bára this time, she imagined, and wore the dust of the journey.
Oddly, she wanted to pull off the mask, to look on him again with her eyes, to compare that visual with what she recalled from weeks before, when she’d been an entirely different person.
Lonen cleared his throat and she realized he thought she hadn’t noticed him. Out of courtesy, she turned her mask in his direction. “King Lonen. I did not expect to meet with you on my terrace ever again.”
The bubble of energy surrounding him popped, spewing entirely rage and betrayed grief. “Then you shouldn’t have sent your creatures after us.”
Giving Chuffta a last pat, she asked him to go to the balustrade to observe from a distance more comfortable for the Destrye. She wiped the oil off her hands, then poured juice for him into the crystal goblet she’d used when they’d met before. “I didn’t.”
He swore, something vile-sounding in a dialect not their common trade tongue. She needed no translation, however, given the feeling behind it. “So you deny that—”
She cut him off. “Come and sit. Take refreshment after your long journey. You
can tell me what happened, so that I may confirm or deny from knowledge rather than ignorance.”
He paused at that, shifting his weight, the blankness of surprise canceling out the stronger emotions for the moment. Then his decision clicked into place and he moved forward—nothing shocking there, as Lonen always seemed to surge ahead once he decided on a course of action—and he closed the distance between them in several strides. Oria steeled herself not to flinch away from the force of his physical proximity.
He stopped short of actually touching her, reeling back the impulse with palpable force of will, then sat on the bench cornered to her, with a huff of breath that sounded very like a laugh, though his face remained stony.
“You’re wearing one of those masks,” he said, not at all what she expected.
She handed him the glass of juice. “Yes. A mark of my new rank.”
“As queen?”
“Very nearly.” She didn’t elaborate more, knowing he wouldn’t like hearing that she’d advanced as a sorceress. And the Báran legalities that intertwined marriage, magic, and the throne would be too difficult to explain to an outsider. “As we discussed before, such things are more complicated in Bára.”
“Isn’t everything?”
She sighed for the truth of that, though those complications at least kept the current power struggle between her and Yar at a détente.
Lonen drank deeply of the cooled juice, a ripple of pleasure in him further dampening the sharper emotions, then held up the glass to the sun. “I have thought about these goblets, made of such a strange substance.”
“We call it glass. Made from sand.”
“Surely that’s not so. It looks nothing like sand.”
She waved a hand at the surrounding desert. “One resource we have in ample supply. It changes when melted. The golems were made in a similar way, with some changes.”
The Destrye barked out a laugh. “Some changes indeed. Only foul magic such as you have here could create a something so obscene.”
Oria sorted through the revulsion rolling off him, complicated with a black sense of betrayal and despair. He reminded her of the glass forges, seething with molten heat so fierce nothing could cool it. “Surely the golems have not attacked? There shouldn’t be any outside the walls.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.” As Lonen’s forced calm snapped, so did the glass in his hand. With an oath, he hurled himself to his feet and flung the broken goblet against the stone balustrade, sending Chuffta into startled flight.
“Oria, the Destrye is crazed,” he warned.
“No.” For she saw it in Lonen’s mind as clearly as the sgath showed her the life signatures of everything around her, the images congealing with horror. “The Trom attacked Dru.”
She collapsed back against the cushions, cold horror making chill sweat run down her back. The mask chafed and she longed to pull it off, toss it aside, and weep freely. Too late. Yar had outmaneuvered her. Her worst fears had come true.
She was forsworn again—her promises broken and scattered to the winds—and the price would be giving up her happiness forever.
~ 29 ~
The impulse to roar his fury, to breathe fire like those fearsome dragons, battled to break free of Lonen’s control. He’d been a fool three times over. All along, through the endless journey accompanied by nothing but his thoughts, he’d nursed the hope that Oria hadn’t known about the Trom attack, that she hadn’t broken her word and betrayed their truce yet again.
Don’t let a bit of foreign pussy make you think with the little head instead of the big one. The words of Ion’s ghost rattled in his heart.
All this time he’d been feeling this nostalgic sentimentality over those brief encounters with Oria. To the point of fantasizing about having her in his bed instead of Natly. And here the object of his prurient dreams and more disturbing nightmares reclined on her plush cushions, clad in crimson robes and wearing that cursed gold mask, cloaked in offensive calm. He should wrench it from her, break those delicate ribbons, so he could look into those haunting copper eyes and learn the truth.
“You made me a promise.” Instead of a roar, the words came out harsh as her fragile glass breaking on stone.
“Yes,” she returned with an equanimity she hadn’t shown before. “And to my knowledge I kept it.”
“Then how did you know the Trom attacked Dru?”
With a heavy sigh, she stood, scrubbing her palms on her thighs, leaving a smear of damp on the silk robe. He hated the thing on her—too like her sorcerous brethren who’d hurled magics at them, and those who’d died so easily under his hand. Oria walked the low wall that bordered her terrace, looking out over the city with every appearance of seeing, which made his skin prickle with unease. The white dragonlet landed beside her, mantling its wings and snaking its neck to fix him with that accusing green stare.
“I see it in your mind.”
It took a moment for Lonen to catch up to what “it” she meant. When he did, he didn’t much like the implication. “You can read my thoughts.” His voice came out flat. From behind, she looked more familiar, though her glorious copper hair was all caught up and braided with ribbons as gold as the mask they held. He missed the metallic fall of it that had so bewitched him from the beginning. Then kicked himself for falling so rapidly under her spell again.
“An overly simple way of putting it, but let’s agree to that.” The mask made her voice strangely hollow. “I see the giant derkesthai flying overhead, a Trom greeting you. There’s…” She faltered. “Char in the air. More dead.”
“Worse than that.” He strode up to her at the railing, intent on forcing her to deal with him honestly. “Our crops burnt to the ground. Much-needed food for the winter, gone. Yes, more Destrye dead, but more deaths to come, from slow starvation and the diseases cold and malnutrition bring. And the water—they’re taking it again, in greater volumes than ever before. Foul magic.”
“They took the water, too?” She sounded faint but with an edge of anger.
“Why did you do it, Oria? Why?” He stopped himself from asking a third time, from begging her not to be what he most abhorred.
The uncannily smooth mask turned to face him. “I didn’t,” she repeated. “I don’t control the Trom.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” This time the question came out as harsh as he felt. Oria didn’t flinch, exactly, but a shiver ran through her, despite the heat. “I was there the day it touched you, and you didn’t die like the others. When it spoke to you and you refused to tell me what it said.”
“You decide what you believe, King Lonen of the Destrye,” she replied, as soft as he’d been hard. “I can only give you the truth as I know it.”
“You’ve changed,” he said, before he knew he intended to. But the tentative belief that perhaps she wasn’t behind the attack gave him an absurd rush of relief.
“Yes.” Not a smile in her voice, but some wry amusement. “So have you.”
“Would you take off the mask so we can talk?” He sounded plaintive to himself, involuntarily raising a hand, as if to remove it.
She stepped back, deliberately out of reach. “Don’t touch me.” No ragged plea this time, but the cool command of a queen. “And no, I cannot show my face to anyone but close family—and then only should I choose to do so. Which, these days, I don’t.”
“Then how do you eat and drink?” He flung a hand at the pitcher of cool juice, belatedly realizing that she hadn’t shared it and thus could have poisoned him.
“Alone,” she said, and turned her mask towards the vista again, for all the world as if she saw it.
“Your ways are very strange and unnatural,” he growled at her in his frustration.
She actually laughed, the sound like raindrops on tin shingles. “Oh, Lonen—you have no idea.”
Absurdly, he found a smile breaking the aching stern tension of his jaw, and he rubbed it, feeling the sweat-stiffened hair of his beard, realizing suddenly how ba
d he must look. He should have taken the time to bathe. Or asked to visit Bára’s baths before meeting with their queen. Or very nearly queen, whatever that meant. He scrubbed both hands through his hair, wishing he could at least tie it back off his neck.
“Here,” Oria said, moving gracefully to the table. It had held a violet fire the night they’d talked but now appeared to be only a smooth white surface, though the glass animals still pranced along the edge. More magic. She picked something up and held it out to him. Bemused, he took it. The leather hair tie he’d worn that night. “You left it behind,” she added, as if that explained anything.
Wordlessly, he took it from her and tied back his hair, happy to have the mess of it off his neck. Though he’d been on the terrace before at night, he’d remembered it as more shaded. Looking about, he noted the bareness of the overhanging branches, the crisp brown of the vines. “Your garden is dying, Oria.”
She tilted her head to the side. “I’m no longer wasting water on it.”
He choked back the protest that it wasn’t a waste. That was the idealist in him again, picturing her in the fantasy of the impossible garden, beautiful and outside the world. The visible evidence helped reassure him about her, though. If the Bárans were behind the latest attack and water raid, at least Oria wasn’t using their ill-gotten resources. Perhaps he could trust her to uphold her promise in good faith then. The hope felt fragile, too full of idealistic wonder, but without her help, the Destrye would surely perish.
“How will you aid Dru then?”
“I’ve been pondering this since you arrived.” Seeming restless, she paced along the balustrade. “I promised you everything in my power and I intend to keep that vow. However, while greater than it was, my power remains constricted in certain ways. I can think of one solution that is rather simple to execute, but vastly complicated in its ramifications. You won’t like it.”
“I don’t like my people dying either.”
“All right.” She returned to her couch, under the gently flapping silk awning that provided the only shade. “Why don’t you join me, Lonen.”
Lonen's War Page 20
