Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3)

by Leona Wisoker

  “I was raised as a human,” he said.

  “I know.” She turned her head to look at him with mild grey eyes. “It’s a shame. I’m beginning to think it’s ruined you.”

  He sat still, afraid to move in case that sent her into a rage. She studied him for a few moments, then smiled and slid to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Why do they matter to you?” she said. “They’ve hurt you and lied to you and disrespected you. They do worse to each other than anything you have ever endured. I’ve seen it, son. I’ve seen into their minds, over the years; I’ve seen what lies behind the polite smiles and the false promises. Of all the humans I’ve faced, I’ve never seen one with honest motives. They’re like a pack of rabid cats, tearing one another apart.”

  “Not even Kolan?” he said recklessly, and this time she was the one to go motionless, her eyes wide and almost colorless for a long breath.

  At last she blinked and said, “Kolan told himself plenty of lies; he was just better at believing his own lies than most humans. It made him harder to break, because he believed. But it didn’t save him, in the end. Belief in a lie never really works.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?” Idisio pressed. “You escaped. Maybe he did, too.”

  She shook her head, smiling, and said, “No. He’s dead. I know he’s dead, because I killed him.” Her smile abruptly faded to an anguished expression. She tilted her head back and let out a low, keening sound that pierced Idisio’s ears and chest with identical sharp pains.

  He scrambled to his feet, shaking all over, and said, “So you care. You care about Kolan. You’re sorry you killed him! Aren’t you?” It seemed terribly important, in a blurry sort of way, to force her to admit to feelings; to prove that ha’ra’hain could love as fiercely as any human.

  “Yes,” she breathed, her eyes colorless again, and scooted back onto the bed, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them. “Oh, gods, yes. I miss him.”

  Idisio pressed his back against the wall, breathing hard, and tried to think of what to say next. Intuition rose, unexpected and sharp: Deiq’s not coming. I’m on my own. He bit his tongue against the urge to swear aloud, and wished he could doubt the knowledge; but it held the odd, echoing certainty of a true vision. To give himself time to think, he crossed to the single window and stood looking out. A draft of chill air, scented with night-blooming flowers, swirled into the room, dispersing the thickness he felt in his chest. His mother breathed deeply, clearly enjoying the sweet floral aroma; he turned to find her smiling.

  “Tell me about Kolan,” Idisio said, encouraged by that smile. “Tell me why you liked him. What you found good about a human.”

  “He was kind,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “When nobody else would speak to me, he did. He treated me as an equal. He wasn’t afraid of me—at first—even though he knew what I was. Even though his own father thrashed him for coming to see me. Even though the Elders disapproved of him seeing me. He was kind.”

  “And you killed him,” Idisio said. “And you regret doing that.”

  She raised a tear-streaked face toward the ceiling and keened again. The sound put chills up Idisio’s back and raised the hair on his arms.

  “Yes,” she mourned. “I killed him. The only one who was ever good to me.” She buried her face against her knees and let out a choked sob. “You’re right, son,” she said, the words muffled. “I’ve done bad things. I’ve hurt people who didn’t deserve it.”

  “Yes, you have,” he said, his own breath thick in his throat.

  She sat up straight and blinked at him, her eyes watering. “What do I do?” she said. “How do I make amends for doing such bad things, son? Tell me what I should do.”

  “You stop doing those things, for one,” he said sharply. “You stop killing humans just because they annoy you.”

  She wiped the back of one hand across her eyes and said, unsteadily, “It’s not that easy, son. Not after so many years of being told to kill, being made to kill... it’s like breathing after a while. It’s hard to see anything wrong with it.”

  “Well, it is wrong,” he said. “And you have to stop.”

  “What if I can’t?” she said, cocking her head to one side. “What if it’s a part of me, son; something I can’t help any longer? I know I’m not what you’d consider sane; I’m not sane by human standards, certainly. What if that’s what I am, now, and it’s not ever going to change?”

  “I believe you can,” he said. “If you want to. Because you loved Kolan, and you regret killing him.”

  She considered that for a time, twisting her fingers into the skirt of her dress. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I could do that. I don’t know how.”

  “I know someone who can help you,” Idisio said. “If you’ll come back with me, there’s an elder ha’ra’ha in Bright Bay—”

  “Deiq?” She laughed, genuinely amused. “No, son. He’s not someone to trust. He planned to kill me, when they set you out as bait.”

  “No—” Idisio said involuntarily.

  “What did you think they were going to do, once they caught me?” she demanded. “Tie me up and lecture me? Feed me drugs to calm me and bring me back to sanity? Then what? They’d never have let me leave their custody, son. Not after what I’ve done. They’d never have trusted me to walk free. No. They would have killed me, in the end. That was the only path they had in mind.”

  Idisio scrubbed both hands over his face, shaking his head. “No,” he said again. “Stop that. I know what you’re doing. Stop it.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” she said.

  “You’re twisting the truth,” he retorted. “Deiq didn’t want you to die. He wanted to save you. To bring you back to sanity. That’s what they all wanted.”

  She smiled, tilting her head a bit. “You’re a romantic,” she said. “You’re a human-raised romantic. But I won’t go back to Bright Bay, so what will you do when I slip again?”

  Idisio stared at her, appalled by her matter-of-fact tone. “You can fight it,” he blurted.

  “No,” she said. “I can’t.” Her grey eyes flooded with tears. “It hurts,” she whispered. “What Rosin did to me—I’ll never be free of that pain. I’ll never be able to control that rage.”

  He swallowed hard, his own eyes damp. “Then you have to stop it,” he said. “You have to end it. The pain, the anger, all of it.”

  She cocked her head to one side, frowning at him. “How do I do that?”

  He dropped his hand to the hilt of the long Scratha dagger; drew and tossed it, in a careful, underhanded lob, onto the bed beside her. “This is the only way left that I can think of,” he said.

  She stared at the dagger as though she’d never seen one before, then looked up at him. “This is another vision, isn’t it?” she said, her voice eerily flat. “This is another trick of Rosin’s. I almost believed it, do you know that? But my son would never do this to me.”

  Idisio shook his head. “This is real, mother,” he said, the words thick in his throat. “Rosin is dead. You’re out in the real world now. No visions. No games. No tricks. It’s true. I’m really here, and—”

  “And you really want me to kill myself,” she said. An unsettling dark ring formed around her pale grey irises. He found himself sitting on the floor again, and fought the urge to put an arm up as a shield against that fierce glare. “After all I’ve explained, after all the effort I’ve put into making you understand what we are, you think suicide is the best option for me? Because I hurt a few stupid humans? Son, as fast as they breed, they won’t even notice the loss. In less than a hundred years, they’ll have forgotten all about it.”

  “What about Kolan?” he said, desperate.

  “What about him?” She swung her legs to sit on the edge of the bed again, then rose, ominously slow, to tower over him. “He’s as meaningless as the rest of them. Do you think your stupid little whispers affected me? I’m not that weak, son. Not after what I’ve been th
rough. I let you think you’d influenced me only because I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to know what kind of son I have. Now I know. You’re no better than Rosin. You want to control me to what you consider righteous. And when you can’t bend me to your will, you’d have me kill myself for being what I truly am, what you won’t allow yourself to be.”

  She stood over him, a chill in her colorless eyes that had nothing to do with her usual raging madness.

  “I survived Rosin,” she said softly. “I’ll survive this. Oh, I won’t kill you. I won’t break the Law. Go on your way, little boy, and I’ll go on mine. I don’t need you, and neither does Arason; you wouldn’t be up to the responsibility after all. Better that you never go there. Better that your father never finds out what a failure you’ve turned out to be.”

  She began to turn her back on him, then paused and swung around to look him in the eye.

  “But before I go,” she said, “you’re going to learn something from me that you’ll never learn from those friends of yours. Something your precious Deiq is far too afraid to show you. I’m going to give you a glimpse of who you really are; of what you really are, and of what freedom ought to mean to you.”

  “Oh, gods—” he said involuntarily. “Don’t—”

  “There are no gods, little boy,” she said, her eyes darkening rapidly. “There never were any gods. There’s only ever been the ha’reye—and us.”

  A heartbeat later, the world around him went sharply away, swallowed up into the solid black of her eyes.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Tank rode through the token gate at the eastern edge of Bright Bay well after dark without challenge: the single, sleepy guard perched on a stool by the road barely glanced up as he passed. But the easternmost of the Seventeen Gates, not surprisingly, had been shut for the night, and the guards there were wide awake and less than helpful.

  “I’ve a message for Deiq of Stass,” Tank said, dismounting so as to stand at an even level with their stares. “For Lord Alyea. I’m bound for the Peysimun residence. Urgent.”

  They looked at him sideways, taking in the sweat, dirt, and exhausted horse. “Can’t wait for morning?” the tallest asked, skeptical.

  “No,” he said. “Send a messenger to tell them I’m here. Tell them I’ve a message from Idisio. Urgent. I’ll wait. Just tell them.”

  “You’re not a News-Rider,” the man said slowly, pondering. “They’ve got rights to go through any time of day or night. But you—”

  “Send the damn messenger!”

  “I’d be more inclined to help if you showed any couth at all,” the man said stiffly.

  “I’d be more mannerly if you showed any wits,” Tank retorted.

  They glared at one another.

  “I’ll send a runner,” the tall guard said at last. “But I’ll warn you—if he comes back with word that you’re not welcome, you’ll find yourself in a cell for the night as a reminder to cool your temper when speaking to your betters.”

  Tank managed—just—to refrain from observing that he didn’t see where the guard was in any way his better. “Send the runner,” he said instead. “I’ll wait.”

  Shaking his head as though he’d heard or guessed at the unspoken bit, the tall man motioned to his companion and said, “Go wake one of the runners.”

  Tank stood beside his horse, ignoring the dark glares the tall guard kept aiming at him. His entire body ached; the nap in Obein and Kybeach hadn’t done much against his overriding exhaustion.

  At last, a messenger sprinted toward them.

  “Let him through,” he panted. “Hurry, Lord Eredion said, let him through. I’ll take him back.”

  Tank hauled himself back onto his weary horse, pulled the messenger up behind him, and left the damnfool gate guards behind as quickly as Sin could manage.

  The streets stretched too long, too dark, and far, far too quiet. The clack of Sin’s hooves echoed. The few people moving about cast disapproving glares as he went by. Once, a patrol of white-garbed guards moved into his path; the messenger leaned around Tank and waved something that fluttered in Tank’s peripheral vision. The guards stepped aside.

  The Seventeen Gates made a vast circle, and the streets inside the majestic fence echoed that form. After that observation, details and time alike blurred into an incomprehensible mass of movement and pressure.

  “Hey,” the messenger said out of the haze, and delivered a sharp prod to Tank’s ribs. “Don’t go pitching off on me, we’re coming to the Peysimun gates. Wake up!”

  Tank shook his head and forced the world back into its proper shape and size as they rode through a set of tall black metal gates and across a wide courtyard.

  A fountain splashed, nearly invisible in the torchlit darkness, and the scent of jasmine and night-blooming roses drifted through the air.

  “Ride over there. That’s it, stop here.” The messenger slid off the gelding before it had even stopped moving. Tank followed more slowly.

  “Up there,” the messenger said, taking the reins. “See, he’s waiting for you, that man there on the steps. That’s Lord Eredion.”

  One look warned Tank to go more rather than less formal: while Lord Eredion’s clothes were rumpled as though he’d been sleeping in them, still the cut and material were finer than anything Venepe had sold, and the man’s broad, dark face—and title—spoke of southern nobility.

  “My lord,” Tank said, “Lif—Idisio sent me.”

  Lord Eredion’s face tightened: confirmation that the name meant something to him.

  “Idisio,” Tank repeated, knees weak with relief, then fought to remember what he had to say to this elegantly dressed man. “He’s in Sandsplit. With his mother.”

  Another deepening of the fine lines etched into Lord Eredion’s stern face.

  Words ran past his control and turned to babble. The world began to spin around him. He drew in a sharp breath and forced himself steady.

  “She’s going to hurt him,” he said, trying for clarity. “I know she is—” and exhaustion turned his words into a meaningless slurry in his own ears. He hauled himself silent, not at all sure what he’d just said.

  His legs—and his consciousness—gave way underneath him a moment later.

  He awoke to cream-pale walls and the shifting of early morning sunlight through fine glass windows. The scent of gardenias hung in the air, and the bed under him was softer by far than anything he’d ever rested on before. He lay still, disoriented; at last, memory sorted itself out, and he sat up—too quickly: his head swam, and he nearly pitched off the bed before he caught his bearings.

  A moment later, the door opened and a familiar figure slipped into the room. Wian stopped, biting her lip, on seeing him already awake and sitting up; then, shyly, advanced and set a neatly folded stack of clothes on a chair near the bed.

  “They might be a little large,” she said, “but they’re clean. I—guessed at the size.” Her face tinted, turning a palette of relatively fresh bruises into a mottled mess. “Your clothes are being cleaned, and I thought you’d like something—a little nicer. While you’re here.”

  Tank glanced down, realizing for the first time that whatever servant had put him to bed had stripped off all his clothes in the process. He looked up, already wincing. Wian was studying the floor, her face bright crimson.

  “There’s a—shortage of servants here, just now,” she said. “I’ve been—helping out.” She ducked her head, backing up two steps, then turned and left the room.

  Tank let out a long breath, not sure if he should be relieved. At least she wasn’t likely to gossip over what she’d seen. Unless it gave her a benefit, he corrected himself wryly; and realized that her embarrassment had been entirely feigned. He sighed and reached for the clothes.

  Someone—probably, again, Wian—had made an effort to wipe most of the trail dirt from his riding boots, but they still clashed with the more elegant trousers and shirt. The shirt hung a bit loose over the shoulders, and the
trousers ran generous in the leg, but they’d do for a day. His belt and pouch didn’t look entirely idiotic against the outfit, as far as he could tell. He didn’t particularly care if others disagreed—he never went anywhere without his belt pouch near to hand. Just in case.

  That done, hair brushed out and secured into a triple-bound tail, he looked around, uncertain as to the next step. If his clothes were being cleaned, that implied an invitation to stay at least for another day; and he didn’t have enough spare sets to abandon any lightly. Dasin wouldn’t catch up with him until tomorrow at the earliest, and while there were other things he could do in Bright Bay, none, at the moment, seemed as appealing as climbing back onto that wonderfully soft bed and going back to sleep for a while longer.

  His stomach suggested other ideas.

  He cast a wistful glance back at the bed, then shrugged and opened the door. Wian—of course—stood in the hallway, waiting for him. As he stepped out of the room, she cast her gaze to the floor.

  “S’e Tank,” she murmured.

  He regarded her with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance, and said, “Wian, stop it.”

  She straightened and met his gaze, but her shoulders shifted as though uncomfortable with that directness.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I want you to think well of me.”

  “Putting on fake ways won’t do that,” Tank said. “Something to eat around here?”

  She hesitated, then nodded and said, stiffly, “This way.”

  Very probably she’d wanted or expected him to ask after how she came to be here, and whether she’d escaped Seavorn’s tender care. Tank grinned at her back as they walked and kept his silence.

  “You saved my life, you know,” she said over her shoulder after a few steps.

  Tank deliberately misunderstood, hoping to keep things dry. “By kicking Dasin off you? Naw, he wouldn’t have gone that far—”

  She turned to face him, real color flaring in her face. “No,” she said. “By listening. By—by caring. It was the first time someone treated me—right—in a long time.”