Blackmark (The Kingsmen Chronicles #1): An Epic Fantasy Adventure Sword and Highland Magic

by Jean Lowe Carlson

  * * *

  Khenria's movements around Dherran this morning were obvious, bitter and pissed. She banged her cup on the rough table, kicked out the bench to slide into a seat by Dherran, more than was truly necessary. She flipped her knife restlessly in one hand, her grey eyes pinning him, ignoring the breakfast bustle of the inn’s main room around them. Their trenchers of eggs and ham in gravy came and she didn’t eat as Dherran set to. The inn was a steady drone of sound around them, people talking, laughing. Their location was apparently known for the decent food, every table and bench-booth in the plain dining room full.

  Suddenly, Khenria’s fingers flicked. Her knife flipped from her fingers, thunking point-down into the table a mere finger’s width from Dherran’s hand by his trencher. Dherran blinked, looking up to see her simmering with fury.

  “Oops.” She mumbled.

  “Oops?” Dherran hissed, leaning towards her, trying to keep it quiet in the busy inn. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Practicing.” Her lips were tight, angry.

  “Khenria. Aeon’s sack, girl!” Grump murmured from the bench across from Khenria and Dherran. The hard glint in his normally merry eyes spoke volumes. An angry glower flitted over Grump's features. The steady gaze Khenria turned upon Grump in return could have ripped rabbits limb from limb. Grump simmered, something Dherran had never seen him do, then huffed and rose from the table.

  “Grump!” Dherran called out after him. “Where are you going?”

  “Just checking on the horses. I’ll be back.” He gave a distracted wave, then moved towards the main door, with a tightness to his shoulders that Dherran rarely saw.

  “What the hell has gotten into you this morning?” Dherran hissed to Khenria. “What was that all about?”

  “We got into a fight before breakfast.” Khenria smirked. Suddenly, her hand slid out, sliding over Dherran’s thigh to stroke at his crotch.

  “Stop that,” Dherran hissed.

  “Make me,” Khenria hissed back, nuzzling her face to his shoulder. Dherran moved one hand under the table, pressing down upon hers. “Stop, Khenria,” he murmured, his gaze flicking around the room, wary of drawing attention.

  He said stop, but he also hoped she wouldn’t stop. Dherran had lain awake in his bed for the better part of an hour after he'd dismissed her, trying to remember Suchinne but twisting at memories that had been suddenly replaced by Khenria. Feeling her smooth skin, tasting her lips upon his. Those tight, slim muscles beneath his hands. And now she stroked him, cruel and challenging, and he rose for her just as hard as any man who wanted a woman.

  “I said stop.” Dherran repeated, his mutter breathier than it should have been.

  “I don't want to stop.” Sidling very close upon the bench, Khenria nuzzled into his shoulder, her other hand tugging Dherran’s shirt from his trousers, slipping behind his belt, down. “I want you to take me like a real man. Like a Kingsman. And I'm not going to stop... until I have what I want.”

  It was all Dherran could do to not moan in the bustle of the inn around them, to not give anything away. He breathed a single long, slow breath, fighting for control. “Being a Kingsman isn’t all about fucking and fighting, Khenria. It’s about negotiation, and balance.”

  Her chuckle was purring, ruthless. “The only negotiation you ever do is with your fists. And your cock. So let’s negotiate.”

  “Negotiation was never my strong suit. That was Olea.”

  Her hands stilled. “Who is Olea? Someone you knew from… before?”

  Dherran cursed himself. After Suchinne had died, he had sworn he would never mention the five Kingskinder and their past. And he hadn’t, not even to Grump and Khenria. With every punch, every drunken sousing, with every time Dherran roared at the slurs from the crowd and with every woman he fucked, he tried to forget that time. A time when he had been nothing but a young man with a quick sword, a foul temper, and a fierce bird-boned woman, who had always been there to keep him in check.

  Her hand slipped out of his trousers. “Well?”

  Dherran meant to sigh, but it turned into a sour growl. “Stop touching that.”

  Khenria scowled ferociously, then ripped the dagger from the table and hurled it point-first into the floorboards, turning a number of heads. She wanted a scene today, public and brutal, and if she pushed him, Dherran was going to give her one. His eyebrows shot up warningly.

  “Best two out of three, Dherran.” She snarled, not caring to keep her voice down. A few men nearby sniggered to hear the fight, and their women looked over with accusatory scowls.

  “No. I won’t fight you when you’re mad.”

  “Fuck you!” Khenria snarled. “Best two of three! And I want a wager!”

  “I don’t want your wager.”

  “Well I want one, dammit!” Khenria surged to her feet, shouting for all to hear. “I’m not a child, and he’s not my keeper!” She gestured angrily across to room towards the hearthfire, where Grump had reappeared without telling them, leaning against the stones of the fireplace and watching Dherran and Khenria’s interaction with hooded eyes. “He’s just a lonely man who found me out in the woods!”

  “Khenria!” Dherran surged to his feet, flexing his bulk, intimidating. The little hawk had taken it way too far, and needed her wings clipped. “Apologize! Grump saved your hide, in more ways than you know!”

  “It’s all right, Dherran.” Grump’s voice was sad as he sidled over from across the room near the fire. “The girl’s got to grow up sometime. I’m just glad she chose you, after all that gallivanting she’s prone to.”

  “What?!” Khenria was agog at Grump, her mouth fallen open. Her gaze flicked around the dining room, suddenly noting how many people were staring at their public scene. Her face turned crimson. “How…?”

  “How did I know?” Grump had that look that he got sometimes, like the world had failed him, sometime long ago. “You’re not so sneaky, girl. Uncle Grump has ears like a fox and footsteps thrice as quiet.”

  “You followed me?”

  Grump nodded, a quick dip of his chin. “Enough to know what you were up to, the first few towns you did it in. And you and Dherran weren't particularly quiet when you crawled into his bed last night and he refused you. The walls have ears, sweet child.”

  “I’m not a child!”

  “So you said.” Grump sighed, careworn. The look he gave Khenria, of such fatherly kindness and heartache, almost broke Dherran apart. “A lonely old fool needs company. I was tired of being alone when I found you. I will understand if you choose to go with Dherran and leave me behind. I got along in the world before the both of you found each other, and I will do so again.”

  “No.” Dherran’s voice was firm. “We’re a team, and a damn fine one. There’s a purse to be had here in Vennet, not to mention the wagers. We need you, Grump.”

  “Two is pleasure, three is a pain,” Grump murmured, staring past their trio and out the open door of the inn, out to the bright morning sunshine.

  Dherran’s eyes flicked to Khenria. “You’ve got us in a damn fine pickle, sweetheart.”

  Khenria’s snarl was brutal. “Me? You’re the one who can’t keep your prick in your trousers, or so I've heard every night in every town we stay at.”

  Dherran’s temper surged at her vile but truthful comment. And with it came lust for the brutal woman before him, thundering down upon him like boulders crashing down a mountain. Before he knew it, he’d raised his hand, as if to backslap her. And in that moment, Khenria glanced down, her lips curling into a sneer.

  “Hot again already?”

  “For fuck’s sake…!” Dherran arrested his hand. He scrubbed his fingers through his blonde hair instead with a roaring growl. People shrank back from him, staring, whispering all around. “What?!” Dherran roared at them, furious, heated and not caring who knew it. They shrank back. And number of people scuttled for the open door. But they needn’t have. Dherran took his temper and his forge-
fire outside, knowing that if he stayed around people, someone was going to get hit. Defeated by his temper, his desire, and the sultry, bitchy, untamable little hawk, he strode to the door. Jogging down the steps, he made straight for a rain barrel at the side of the inn. There, in the cool breeze of the shade beneath a boxelder, he splashed his head with the cold water. Leaning on the barrel with both fists, he tried to focus on the ripples, tried to watch them to soothe himself.

  Suchinne had been nothing like Khenria, he decided. She had been sweet and kind, while Khenria was a storm always thundering.

  She’s like me.

  The thought was like a slap in the face. And when Dherran glanced up to see the seething girl staring at him from the corner of the inn in the bright sunshine, he couldn’t look away. She gripped him, held him with a surging tide of such intensity that he was magnetized. She took his breath away. Her short scruff of curls was blue in the sunlight like a blackbird’s wing. Her eyes were penetrating, ruthless, piercing him deep into his heart. Her posture was defiant, the strength of the Kingsmen written in her very soul.

  Dherran choked. Without another word, he pushed off the rain barrel and strode away, unable to face it. Aimlessly, he walked away from the inn without a care to where he was headed. Wandering the market in the dusty avenues between shops, he moved in and out of the shadows of bright awnings and rickety stalls. Destinationless, he tried to manage the roiling tension that filled his chest and cramped his muscles. Grump found him finally. Dherran hardly heard his footfalls, as if he was practicing being out in the woods again. And though he lingered at Dherran’s side, he was quiet. When Grump moved over to a tinker’s stand, looking over a kettle sized just for one, Dherran’s heart sank. Grump was purchasing supplies made to support only himself.

  He was planning to leave their trio.

  Dherran sighed, an empty feeling in his gut as he turned back to the leather stirrup-straps he had been looking over. He nodded to the saddle-maker. He needed some to replace his hard-worn ones. Money changed hands. A nice pair of braided reins caught his eye, and he nodded to those as well. When suddenly, he felt the small stature of Khenria at his elbow, nearly unnoticed in the bustle of the dusty market. A bootknife pierced Dherran’s ribs. Blocked by her body, no idle passersby in the market could have seen it.

  “Well done,” he murmured. The saddle-maker smiled, giving him a deal on the reins, thinking the comment was for him.

  Khenria stepped to his side, brushing the fingers of her free hand over a saddlebag with vines tooled upon it. The knifepoint disappeared. Dherran collected his things and turned from the booth. Khenria walked away, sashaying her lean hips on purpose. But something about it pissed him off, suddenly. Dherran reached out quickly, snagging her wrist and spinning her, forcing it up behind her back, bringing her front to his chest.

  To anyone else, it would have looked like an embrace. But Dherran knew how much it hurt. Khenria hissed. He forced her wrist higher, straining her shoulder, wanting it to hurt more, wanting her to know how badly she had hurt him. She gave a squeak of alarm, struggling, but his grip was iron. Heat rising, anger blazing, Dherran crushed her close, giving her a long, deep kiss. A punishing kiss, for what she was doing to him, for how she was raising his dead memories. He could feel her struggling in his arms, between heady arousal and panic at being trapped.

  He let her wrist go. She stepped back, breaking the kiss. The hot slap she dealt him could have nailed him to the ground if he hadn’t been ready for it. People were watching now with amusement, smirking and moving on. A lover’s quarrel was notable for gossip at the midday meal and spice for the afternoon siesta, but little more. Dherran massaged his jaw, tasting blood at the side of his lip.

  “There’s more where that came from.” Khenria spat, but her body was hot with need in her every movement. Dherran decided to let her stay that way. She’d teased him enough for three lifetimes. If she wanted to punish him then he would damn well punish her. But he watched her sober suddenly as Grump caught her gaze from the tinker’s booth. “He’s buying his own supplies. Do you really think he’ll leave us?”

  “You said some pretty hurtful things at breakfast, Khenria.” Dherran admonished, giving her the hard truth. “He saved you. You owe him. And you were acting like a spoiled bitch in there, without a care to his feelings.”

  She sighed, looking more womanly than ever, perplexed. “I didn’t mean to. I just get this… heated feeling. And then I can’t control it. What I do or what I say.”

  A sharp laugh escaped Dherran, hard and bitter. He had said damn near the same words to Suchinne, so long ago. Back when they had been barely teens. And now he could see so clearly that Khenria was just like him, not at all like Suchinne. Rash, impulsive, sexual, rageful. Dherran and Khenria were two fucked-up peas in the same goddamn pod, but something deep within him loved her for it.

  Khenria glanced over sharply, scowling.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” Dherran murmured, trying to pacify. “I’m laughing because you’re far more like me than you’ll ever know. You want to know how I fight so well? Because I can control that rage, that heat. I learned that the hard way. But sometimes it gets the best of you. Sometimes you need someone else to help you control it.”

  Feeling calm and clearheaded from the revelation at last, Dherran started to walk back to their horses at the inn’s stable, and Khenria fell into step. “But I have you to help me control it.”

  Dherran shook his head, suddenly knowing a part of the answer to the tempestuous riddle that lay between them. “You and I are likely to end up fighting each other to the death, Khen. We lose our control around each other. Sure, it’s like a pressure valve, letting off the steam, but...” Dherran nodded back over his shoulder in the direction of the tinker’s wares. “Grump is the kind of man who can help you control it. Not me.”

  Back near the inn, they had reached the stable now, and Dherran stepped down the rows of stalls to his own horse. Ducking through the boards, he set about unbuckling his stirrups and threading the new leather straps on.

  “You had someone teach you, didn’t you? How to control your rage.” He looked up, to see Khenria cool now, leaning against the wall of the stable, arms crossed.

  “I did. A long time ago. Her name was Suchinne den’Thaon. Calmest person I ever met.”

  “How did she die?”

  Dherran's hands paused at the stirrups, having not expected Khenria to be so perceptive. “She died in battle. On the Valenghian border. Suchinne wasn’t a woman to be taken down easily. She was sweet by nature, but that calm allowed her to be ruthless in war. In all the years we trained together, I never bested her.”

  “You?” Khenria’s eyebrows shot up. “She bested you?”

  “Constantly. And she was smaller than you.” Dherran smiled at last, thinking of how many times tiny Suchinne had thrown him ass-over-ears.

  “How is that possible?”

  “The same way it’s possible for me to best you.” He cinched the new stirrup tight, then made a flat knot with the extra leather, letting the leg-flap fall back into place. “You get angry when you fight. The only times you surprise me are when you’re cool and collected, planning your moves in a calm space. Like at the saddle-shop just now. But once I make you angry, you’re beaten.”

  “I can beat you.” Khenria pushed off the wall, striding forward. Reaching down, she caressed his crotch, which responded instantly.

  “I’m working on that.” Dherran twisted his hips away, then ducked under Muk’s neck to attend the other stirrup.

  “Don’t you like me?”

  Dherran glanced up, hearing something new in her voice, something uncertain, fragile. Khenria leaned into Muk, as if for comfort, her cheek to his muscled neck. The great bay turned his neck and snuffled her hair, lipping it. Dherran threw the stirrup-leather up over the saddle, reaching out and drawing Khenria close. She didn’t resist, all fight fled. Dherran lifted her chin, and found her roiling grey eyes red-rimm
ed, full of tears she was trying not to shed.

  “Hey, hey…” Dherran murmured. It was alarming, to see her like this, so vulnerable. As if he’d broken something within her, something that looked strong but was fragile as glass. He leaned down to give her a soft kiss, a touch of lips. “It’s not like that, Khenria. I do like you, Aeon and all the gods bedevil me, I do. But…I have to be your mentor, not your lover. If we fuck, we'll just think about fucking when we're around each other, and I need you to be thinking about fighting. Someday you’re gonna get hot like you do, and face a real enemy. And if I haven’t taught you enough, fast enough… you’re gonna get killed. And then that death is on me.” Dherran kissed her again, softer this time. He didn't want to pull away, and his own eyes were stinging, Suchinne's memory too close. “I can’t have that. I can’t lose you like I lost her…”

  Khenria snuggled close, burying her face in his chest. Breathing in deep hitches that weren’t quite sobs, she kissed his shirt over his Inkings. “I’m sorry, Dherran,” she murmured into his chest at last. “I’ve been awful.”

  He stroked her short hair, kissed the top of her head. “It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

  She nodded into his shirt, sighed. And with that sigh, all the tension went out of her. They held each other, calm and cool for a long moment, listening to the snuffle of horses all around, smelling sweetclover upon the dust. Feeling each other’s heartbeats. At last, Khenria pulled away. “Are you fighting this week?”

  Dherran nodded. “I saw the festival lists last night. I’ve got the fourth slot in the last men’s bare-knuckle round. Six days from now.”

  “Do you think you’ll win?”

  Dherran paused, searching for words. And then the truth found his lips. “I always enter the ring like it’s my last moment to live. That’s how you stay alive to enjoy another one. That’s why I fuck like I do afterwards. My people may have died, Suchinne may have died, but I’ve got someone to live for. Now.”

  Khenria’s eyes brightened, realizing what he meant. The moment expanded around them, and Dherran saw her fierce beauty shining forth, ready to be whatever she was born to be. And he had a sense of rightness, suddenly, that they had come together as they had, even though it was tempestuous like summer storms.

  She was about to pull away, but Dherran held her fast, knowing it was time. “Khenria den’Bhaelen.” That stopped her, as it was meant to. She gazed up at him, surprised. “Are you ready to take your First Alrashemni Seal, your first step towards becoming a Kingsman?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. She nodded.

  “There’s a women’s amateur free-hand competition tomorrow, before my fights.” Dherran continued. “I saw the list yesterday. It still has room. No weapons. No cheating. No dirty play. Honest fighting, but any style goes. Win is by knockout, chokeout, or surrender. The purse is a straight hundred if you make it through the fourth and final round.”

  Khenria nodded fast, hawkish and reckless. Dherran stopped her with a small shake. “As your mentor, I have but one condition for you to pass your First Seal, win or lose.”

  “What?”

  “You must control your temper. If I see you break a heat, you fail.”

  The fierce little hawk placed her open palm to the center of her chest, ready to begin her Seals at last.

  Long past due.

  CHAPTER 14 – ELOHL