by Dora Machado
She had not wanted to break Mia. But Mia had been at death's door and Sariah had had no choice. She couldn't abandon the child to suffer the consequences of her breaking on her own. She had to find a way of helping Mia to overcome the attachment. She considered the little girl, cuddled with her head on her lap. Mia's eyes grew heavy with Sariah's infusion. She promptly fell asleep.
“Has she had any other bouts lately?” Kael asked.
“A few, when we first set out,” Lazar said. “Fewer as we neared you and none since a few days back. She gained more control as we came closer to you.”
“How did you find us?” Kael asked. “We took great pains to avoid leaving any tracks.”
“That, too, it's a bit of a mystery,” Lazar said. “The forester helped.”
Another one of Eda's smiles launched gracefully toward Kael. Sariah's blood boiled a few degrees warmer. She didn't like the bitterness unsettling her stomach and turning the good food before her into an unappetizing heap of dung.
“But it was Mia who found you,” Malord said. “The child can sense Sariah. The closer we came to you, the more accurately she could pinpoint your whereabouts.”
Sariah was shocked. “Sense me? How?”
“I'm not sure,” Malord said. “I can feel the attachment in her, but I can't follow where it reaches. Perhaps when you probe her, you'll understand better than I can. It's nothing I've seen before.”
Sariah repressed an urge to groan. If Malord, the wisest stonewiser in the Domain, couldn't understand this, how was she going to fix it?
“Now, now, we mustn't be all dreary and down.” Eda patted Kael's thigh. “Surely you've made some progress with your search for this Leandro, haven't you?”
“You told her?” Sariah stared at Kael, seeing a reckless blabbering fool she had never known before.
“I thought the forester could help.”
Of course he did.
“Kaelin, I wished you had stayed for a few more days,” Eda said. “After you left, the Enduring Woods came to bloom. The flower clusters were a feast to the eye. And the harvest, you wouldn't believe the harvest. The pericarps were glorious—”
“The what?” Sariah said.
“The pods,” Kael explained. “Enduring woods yield their seed in pods instead of fruit, like peas and beans.”
“Poor wiser,” Eda said. “She doesn't understand what we're talking about. It must be hard for you to follow when Kael launches into one of his long land-healing monologues.”
Kael may have bored Eda with such monologues, but not her. Sariah wondered if that was good or bad. Bad, she decided promptly.
“I was telling you about the flowers. The perfume we extracted, Kaelin, it could come straight from Meliahs’ gardens. Here, take a whiff.” The woman stretched her elegant neck toward Kael, an irresistible offer. “Isn't it exquisite?”
Someone's nose was at risk. Kael's? Eda's? Sariah didn't know whose yet, but the injury was imminent. Sariah didn't know much about the woman's occupation, but shouldn't a forester have brawny arms and rough hands from felling trees and stripping bark, instead of shapely limbs and manicured nails?
She stared down at her own hands. They had been nice to look at before she left the keep, unornamented, long fingered and always well-kept as required by the Guild's strict tidiness rules. Not now. The gaudy bracelet looked like a harlot's trinket. The raw skin around her chafed wrist reminded her of a dog with the mange. Her palms were scarred by the twin stones’ searing touch. Her fingers looked stubby and callous. She picked at the jagged nail on her thumb, the one she had accidentally bruised yesterday. And she wasn't even a forester.
“What does a forester do anyway?” she asked. “I mean, you don't exactly look like a timber laborer.”
Eda's chuckles rang like the chimes of a merry bell. “I forget you're not of the Domain. I'm the custodian of the last of the Enduring Woods. I handle the harvesting, production and sale of the woods’ derivatives—perfume, gum, bark and sap—but I don't fell the trees myself. We've got laborers who do that.”
“The forester is an ancient name in the Domain,” Malord said. “Eda's family has watched over the woods since before the rot.”
Sariah supposed she should be awed by the distinction. Eda was a woman of the greatest noble blood, who still endured in the Domain with title, good name, and obviously, coin, since she seemed to know her business well.
“And you came along because…?” The suddenness of Sariah's question silenced the shelter. She felt mildly ashamed, as if she had committed a breach of courtesy.
“I thought I would assist Lazar in his search for Kael,” Eda said. “Since I had given Kael directions, I knew where he was heading. I do enjoy getting out of my woods every so often.”
Her woods. Eda smiled and everybody smiled, and then she said something funny again, and all the men were laughing. The effect of her smile on the opposite sex was astonishing. What was it about the other woman that bothered her so? Eda had not been mean to her, or unkind. She had not been rude, as Sariah had been, or distant, despite her high status. Yet something had Sariah seething, boiling like a neglected kettle on a hot fire every time Eda's yellow-tinged gaze caressed Kael with the length of her amazing eyelashes. Sariah had never doubted Kael. She knew his emotions, his trueness, the extent of his affections. Yet despite all that, this woman still disturbed Sariah, stirring her basest emotions. Why?
Because Eda wasn't a wanted fiend, or a scrawny fugitive, or a rogue wiser with a heart of stone. Because Eda wasn't a weary soul or a well-used, stone-pledged servant. Because instead, she was a match to Kael's merits—earthy, lovely, noble, wealthy, fine of body and character, and high on heat. Because Eda was the kind of woman that belonged with Kael.
It was Kael's grip that brought Sariah back to the conversation, the inquiry of his fingers reaching to interlace with hers, the subtle plaiting of her five cold digits to his four warm fingers. The loss of his middle finger hadn't weakened his grasp. Its absence still pained Sariah, and yet the intimacy was overriding, for he offered his left hand to no one but her.
“Malord, perhaps you ought to return with Lazar,” Kael was saying. “I can't say ours will be an easy road.”
“I know,” Malord said, “but Sariah might yet have need of me. I'm staying, but Lazar here must go back right away.”
Lazar's smile alerted Sariah to news. “Do tell.”
“Kemere,” Lazar said. “She's with child.”
Sariah wasn't blind to the undercurrent of emotion exchanged between the brothers. A sense of quiet awe traveled between Kael and Lazar, wordless joy that spoke of pride and delight. Lazar was beaming. The expression on Kael's face was so honest and raw, so vividly happy for his brother that Sariah found herself wishing foolishly that she could be the source of such joy.
She had done all she could, although only she knew that. She had drunk the last of the potion months ago. In an intricate, cunning trade, she had managed to trick the Guild's Prime Hand into relinquishing one of the Guild's best kept secrets, the Mating Hall's own brew, the only concoction known to unlock a stonewiser's repressed reproduction cycles.
Sariah had no idea if it had worked. She was no ignorant adolescent. On the other hand, her stonewiser biology differed from that of the average woman. She had no helpful experience in matters of pregnancy and birth, which were among the many prohibited topics at the keep. Besides, these days, she wasn't sure having a child was a good idea. Her world was too dangerous, a poor offering for a helpless baby.
It had been Kael's notion, to grow a family in the generations’ traditions, to gift a child with the parents’ labor and sweat, Meliahs’ ways. Like most of Kael's ideas, it was infectious. Lying with him, she had discovered her own little dreams too, delusions, if one believed the ways of the Guild, but at least they were her delusions. She didn't need to worry. The Prime Hand's potion had probably been as rancid and spoiled as it tasted, and her womb continued to be as lethal to life as it had always bee
n.
“Kemere's six months’ gone,” Lazar was saying. “That's why I want to return soon. Wouldn't want to miss a day if I could, but Metelaus was busy with the distributions, and he wouldn't trust anyone with Mia but you and me, Kael.”
“You must be off soon then,” Kael said, “tomorrow at the latest. You never know how long the road is going to be in the Domain. Meliahs forgive you, if you take too long and Kemere's time comes—”
“She'll kill me.”
“And for good reason.”
Kael and Lazar broke out into the quiet laughter the grown children of Ars shared with each other, a very private sound, an honest, contagious chuckling that Sariah loved to hear.
“A toast.” Eda raised her cup. “To the Ars brothers. May they outlast the rot, may they return to the land.”
Resigned to the fate of the barren, Sariah drank to the progress of Ars. She was thinking, though. The forester had come for a purpose. And Kael's dreams deserved to come true.
Twelve
SARIAH WAITED UNTIL both decks were filled with the quiet noises of sleep before she tiptoed over Delis and Mia and stepped out to meet the unspoken summons. The stars were ablaze. For a moment, the woman was part of the night, but then she turned to face Sariah, and her eyes, knowing and two-toned yellow, revealed her as the earthly creature she was.
“You've come.” She patted the place next to her on the deck. “I wasn't sure you would. You seemed too aloof to care most of the time.”
Aloof? Not when her blood was straining through her veins like thickly clotted cream.
“Why did you come?” Eda asked.
Not for the fun, of that Sariah was sure. “I guess I was curious.”
“About Kael and me, I suppose.”
Sariah envied the woman's confidence in her body's beauty, in her femaleness's devastating supremacy. She allowed the woman's words to sink in, to sting like the most venomous of poisons, to burn until she wanted to scream in frustration.
Eda flashed her devastating smile. “The tales I could tell you. You mustn't be resentful about the inevitable.”
We've had our share of adventures together. Kael never lied.
“He won't be distracted by the ordinary,” Eda said. “He's only suitable for the extraordinary.”
Sariah had no doubt of their respective placement on Eda's ordinary and extraordinary lists. It hurt;
she couldn't deny it, every word and nuance. But wasn't pain the most obvious sign of life to the wounded?
What would it be like to be the forester? To have no curse tainting your blood, no craft haunting your life, no pledges to serve but those made to the self? What would it be like to exist for your own sake, to seek only your own progress, to reign supreme over your body and know it? For an instant, Sariah allowed herself to wallow in her imagination's indulgence. For an instant also, she hated, envied and cursed the woman who had all she didn't have. Then the moment passed and she was her disciplined stonepledged self again.
“He's no simple fare,” Eda was saying. “You ought to know that—”
“Do you smell that?” Sariah whiffed the night's balmy air. “I never knew it stunk.”
“Excuse me?”
“The female estrus,” Sariah said. “The fragrance of racing mares.”
Eda's eyes flamed like fire arrows. “I've been told you are a little… odd.”
“You, on the other hand, are nothing less than sensational. Capitulation is the only reasonable option. Supremacy by awe.”
“You said you wanted to know—”
“I said I was curious.”
“About Kael and I?”
“About you.”
“So you don't want to—”
“No.”
An instant of panic flashed in Eda's golden eyes. She was momentarily thrown off course, a fake retreat. But she was by no means easy to snare. Her lovely shoulders straightened. Her breasts rose and sank in quiet provocation. Most people would mistake the woman for a peacock, dazzling with its brilliant plumage, but Eda's beauty was not idle adornment—it was deadly camouflage.
“So tell me,” Sariah said. “Who told you?”
“Who told me what?”
“About me. You said you were told I was odd. A very knowledgeable source then.”
“I have no idea what you're talking about.”
A man would have believed her. Sariah was sure of that. The yellow eyes blinked, brimming with warm and sudden innocence. Sariah wished she could do that, stun people into a break of the senses, erase the question with a flare of beauty and a hint of a suggestion.
“Beautiful. Powerful. Influential,” Sariah said. “You probably tried to take Kael away from me first. When that failed, you gave us a new deck. Thank you for that. I wouldn't want to seem ungrateful. You're too proud to stoop to stalking, so you must have a very good, logical reason to be here this night. And if Kael falls to you, as he eventually must, that's very good too.”
The forester was not used to defiance. “If I really wanted to, I could have him.”
“Oh, I believe you. Truly, I do. But that's beside the point. Tell me. Why are you here?”
“I've already told you—”
“But it wasn't the truth,” Sariah said. “Your crew. How far away are they?”
Eda opened her mouth and closed it without saying a word.
“Well, there must be a crew. You're too far away from your woods to do this by yourself.”
Eda's gaze turned cold and appraising.
“But they can't be too close,” Sariah said. “Lazar has a good eye, day and night. They must be posing as part of the mob. Aye. You wouldn't risk revealing your hand. It's not compatible with your other purposes.”
Eda scoffed. “What do you know of my purposes? What do you know of the ways of the Domain?”
“Not much. I fear you're going to have to tell me.”
“Beware, Sariah. The forester is one of the Domain's last noble houses. So is the house of Ars. In the times before the execration, we were the most powerful of all houses. Ours was a prosperous world. We were the lords and ladies of a healthy land.”
Sariah could see it with her mind's eye, a world in which the likes of Kael and Eda ruled over thousands in justice and wealth; a world of cultivated fields, banquets and celebrations; a dead world, long gone. Did Eda know?
“You of the Guild, you can't begin to understand the meaning of nobility,” Eda said. “You only acknowledge your cursed blood's power and your trade's importance. But I heed the past. I honor my ancestors. I'm no traitor. My house stands fast with the house of Ars.”
“But it's not Ars you're after, is it? It's me you want.”
“Don't overestimate your importance in the great scope of things.”
“And you must want me alive, because your crew is out there, my liver is currently free of your blade, and you're still here.”
Eda waved her sculpted chin in the general direction of the deck shelter. “You must be feeling quite smug with that snotty brute of yours, keeping watch over you at all hours like a faithful mastiff.”
Sariah caught a glimpse of Delis coiled on her haunches, staring from the darkness beyond the threshold like a stalking wolf. She smiled. “I suppose there are advantages to all misfortunes.”
“You're odd.” Eda chuckled. “Entertaining, but odd.”
“It's up to you,” Sariah said. “Whether you keep the peace you cherish with the house of Ars, whether your noble reputation comes out unscathed from this meeting. I wonder how the Domainers will feel when they learn their trusted forester has been playing games with the enemy. Think Eda. Do they really need to know? Does Kael need to know?”
The yellow eyes widened. “You wouldn't dare.”
“He ought to know your game.”
“He wouldn't take your word over mine.”
“I'm willing to see. Either way, I doubt he would like you much afterwards.”
Had the woman been a mare, she would have been fo
aming at the mouth.
“Who wants me and why?” Sariah asked. “Answer me truthfully, and I won't tell Kael.”
“All I have to do is lie in wait,” Eda said. “All I have to do is wait for you to be trapped or killed. The way of things, it will happen very soon.”
“Be careful, forester, because Kael could be trapped or killed in the bargain, and you could lose your prize. If you're not helpful to me, if you're not forthcoming, I'll make sure that if and when I'm gone, he'll never, ever return to you.”
Eda wasn't easy to shake and yet Sariah needed to know everything she knew. Sariah's tongue was heavy as lead but she pressed on. “A time may come when Kael might want something I can't give. If you came out of this without fault in his eyes, if you left here tomorrow with your intentions secret and your name intact, it could very well be you who could give him what he wants most.”
The realization was slow in Eda's yellow eyes, but when it came, it burned like the summer sun. “Do you swear on your wiser's oath you won't tell Kael about my role in this?”
“If you tell me the truth and leave with Lazar tomorrow morning.”
The woman hesitated. She stared into the Barren Flats wistfully, as if seducing the night to whisper all the future's secrets in her ear. When she finally spoke, she did it abruptly, without bothering to conceal her irritation. “A few weeks back, a man came to the forest.”
“Was he a burly, bearded man with a wide nose?”
“No, he was a matching eyes like you, clean shaven.”
“He wanted to buy your timber, I bet.”
“He bought enough timber and at a good premium.” Eda lifted her chin proudly. “He said the Guild was looking to retrieve you. He said he would pay well for you.”
The forester was the logical choice. She was at the center of the Domain's business, trading with all the Domain's settlements, and possibly with a few towns on the other side of the wall, if Sariah had judged Eda fairly as an avid entrepreneur. Noble blood or not, coin was difficult to refuse in the Domain's direness. And, if someone had been tracking Sariah's progress—or lack thereof—they would have known her deck burned at Nafa and anticipated her need for a new one. Aye. The forester was the ideal contact.
