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

by Leona Wisoker

  A strange, stifled voice asked Why? What am I doing here? Why am I lying to her?—then damped into silence as Idisio settled into a ornate, stiff-backed, and thinly padded chair.

  He sat with his eyes half-closed, listening to the girl’s movements as she filled the teapot and brought a tray to the sitting room table in front of him. A vague impulse to study the room passed through him and faded: his surroundings weren’t important at the moment. Only the girl mattered.

  She sat on the edge of the couch, a matching piece to his chair that looked just as uncomfortable, and poured tea with a trembling hand; a tiny tremor, but he saw it clearly. She was nervous and excited by the odd situation, trying to act very adult against a surge of adolescent anxiety.

  Perfect, intuition-voice purred.

  “You keep a lovely home, s’a,” Idisio said, smiling. He leaned forward to take the proffered cup of tea from her hand before she had a chance to set it on the table and slide it toward him. He put his hand palm up a handspan under the cup, then curled his fingers to grip the small vessel from beneath. Flustered and confused by the impropriety, she nearly dropped the cup into his hand. He held still, allowing her to retreat, before leaning back into his chair and taking a measured sip of tea.

  She grabbed up her own cup with a rattled lack of grace, managing—just—not to spill the entire thing onto herself in the process of getting it to her mouth.

  Idisio sat very still and waited for her to recover her poise, his expression neutral and his gaze aimed at his knees. After a few moments, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry, s’e, I’ve been rude. No doubt my father told you my name—” She paused, one eyebrow arching: another test.

  “Of course, s’a Enia,” Idisio said easily. “And I’m Idisio. I met your father at the Copper Kettle; we breakfasted together, by chance, and when he found out I was headed this way he asked me to carry the message to you that he was delayed. Said it would save him the cost of a News-Rider message.”

  The stifled voice nagged at him, asking what the hells he was doing; he shrugged it off. It was simple to pick what he needed from her topical thoughts and a fascinating game to adapt his tone and pacing to the tiny cues she didn’t even know she was sending.

  She smiled, relaxing again. “That’s my father,” she agreed. “Always looking to save some money. But they’ve been hard years of late, so it’s hard to blame him for watching the bits.”

  “That’s likely to change, from what he told me.” Idisio leaned forward and set his empty cup down on the table; flattened his hand over it when she reached to pour him another. “Tea’s not really my drink of choice,” he said. “This was lovely, s’a Enia, but it was enough.”

  “Oh—” She glanced at the sideboard. “We’ve wine....” He gave no reaction. “And... well, I don’t know, it’s a bit rough for a gentleman, but my father always keeps some desert lightning to hand....”

  Her thoughts ran through Idisio’s mind: I hope he doesn’t ask for that. I’d have to drink it with him: the host drinks what the guest drinks. But Father never lets me drink anything stronger than wine.... Oh, dear. I wish Father was here. I’m not at all sure I’m getting this right.

  “Desert lightning sounds perfect,” Idisio said, then put contrition into his tone: “But surely it’s too strong for you, s’a?”

  Color flushed along her high cheekbones, then faded. “I’ll cut it with a bit of tea, for myself,” she said. “If you’ve no objection, s’e.”

  “Of course, and I’ll do the same,” he said. “And I won’t trouble you past the one cup, at that. I wouldn’t want to outstay my welcome. But let me pour this time, if you would, s’a.” He rose, collected her cup and his own, and went to the sideboard. “I’m guessing it’s this white jug, here?”

  Narrow-necked and tall, the glazed earthenware vessel hardly deserved to be called a “jug”; but Enia’s thoughts put that as the proper name for any vessel holding hard liquor, no matter the shape. This bottle is teyanain-crafted, Idisio thought, and felt momentarily dizzy. The world steadied around him quickly enough that he gave no external sign of his disorientation as he poured the clear liquid into the cups. The fumes made his eyes water.

  Good gods what am I thinking ran through the back of his mind, then dissolved like the vapors rising from the cups.

  As he wrapped his hand around her cup, he delicately strengthened the potency of the double spoonful of liquor he’d poured. Not so much as to incapacitate her; just enough to relax her more than such a small amount normally would.

  You don’t want her unconscious, intuition-voice said. That’s no fun at all.

  He set the cups down on the table and retreated to his chair without making eye contact; allowed her to pour the tea, and picked up his own cup properly this time, after she’d sat back away from the table.

  They sat in silence for a few moments, sipping their drinks: Idisio could sense Enia’s anxiety returning as she tried to think of something socially appropriate to say to this strange visitor her father had sent as messenger. She didn’t want this handsome young man to think her an unschooled bumpkin, but what passed for manners in Sandsplit might be entirely different from what Bright Bay nobility considered acceptable. And surely this young man, with his considerable poise and courtly mannerisms, must be some sort of noble. It would make sense for her father to trust someone of note as a messenger, after all....

  They do so much of the work for you, the intuition-voice whispered, dark with amusement. Enia’s mind was so filled with ticking over points of proper behavior that Idisio had a wealth of information to draw upon.

  “Enia,” Idisio said softly. She blinked, shivering a little, and stared at him with wide eyes. “You don’t have to say anything at all. It won’t offend me to sit in quiet for a bit. You’re very good company, without a word spoken.”

  She swallowed, her eyes going even wider, and seemed to have trouble breathing. To cover her confusion, she gulped down the rest of her drink without pause.

  He sipped his more leisurely, allowing her to realize her mistake on her own: the host never finishes a drink or meal before the guest. She sat gripping her cup, blinking hard, visibly trying to decide what to do; he smiled at her, then rose and moved around the table to take her cup from her hand.

  “That’s all right,” he said. He set both cups on the table and sat down on the couch a careful arm’s-length from her. “I’m not so easily offended. Why don’t you stop worrying about propriety? It’s really not so important, after all.”

  Each sentence carried a slightly stronger persuasive nudge; that, coupled with the enhanced desert lightning swirling through her, brought her shoulders down into a more relaxed pose and a flush to her cheeks.

  “Oh, I suppose I am being silly,” she said. “It’s only that I’m sure Father expects me to set a good example for a guest.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Idisio said. “But you are setting an excellent example, s’a. You’ve nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.”

  He put a hand out, palm-up, with the last words; she laid her fingers across his without hesitation, then flinched a bit. He held still, keeping his smile gentle, and she slowly relaxed; just as gradually, he curled his hand, enclosing her fingers, pulling her toward him with the lightest possible tug.

  Even a young human male would have difficulty staying faithful, someone said: a masculine voice amid an echo-vague memory of distress and confusion. It faded before he had a chance to grasp it properly, and instantly seemed irrelevant.

  Enia leaned forward by fractional angles. He eased himself closer by tiny increments.

  Are you saying I’m some kind of animal? That I won’t be able to control—his own voice, this time, laden with rage and panic.

  “S’e—” Enia drew in a deep breath. “I think—I’m sorry—” Her face was flushed and her eyes bright with a conflicting mixture of nervousness and liquor; she began to lean away from him.

  “Call me Idisio,” he said, his grip f
irm around her hand. “And you have nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Idisio,” she said, pausing in her retreat. “I don’t feel quite—right, I’m afraid. I should really—”

  He brushed the fingertips of his free hand against her forehead. “You’re a bit warm,” he said, “but I don’t know that you’re ill, exactly.” He caught her eye and smiled. This time, he made it powerful instead of reassuring.

  Color flushed all the way down her neck. Her breathing went ragged.

  “Idisio,” she whispered, and came the rest of the way into his arms.

  Once more, there came a strange shifting sensation in his mind, as though another pin were being slid from the hinges: and a thick heat began to fill his lower stomach.

  Some kind of animal....

  No, the intuition-voice said. The physical desire is nothing. It’s easily controlled. It’s only useful as a way to distract her while you reach for what you really want.

  A distant part of his mind shrieked in horror: What the hells am I doing? The growing heat scorched the cry into a dried-out, faintly crackling shell of itself. Enia’s increasingly loud and rapid breathing drowned out any remnants of his own inner protest.

  His hands moved across her body. She moaned and tipped her head back, all defenses gone: thinking of nothing, open to every sensation he evoked in her. He hooked a finger into the neckline of her dress and tugged lightly. The fabric seemed to simply unravel out of the way of his finger, leaving her sprawled across his lap in nothing but a pale linen shift.

  She had no thoughts of resistance or impropriety left; lay with eyes half-shut, breathing hard, waiting to see what he would do next.

  Look closely, intuition-voice whispered. Look very closely. Not at her physical body; that’s a shell. See what’s inside and beyond the physical.

  His vision shifted: now he saw a writhing network of multicolored lines laced throughout flesh and bone, swirling, pooling, streaking in hypnotic chaos. In the midst of that chaos lay a single steady, unmoving dark spot; a tiny, dense blotch that seemed, in this new vision, like a keystone in an arch. Or a pin in a hinge.

  At that thought, Idisio felt another shifting, sliding sensation inside himself: one last pin pulled out of the final hinge. His vision flared white, broken only by a single dark, immensely solid point of importance.

  Reaching that spot, touching that spot, possessing that spot, was the only thing that mattered now. The heat of physical desire was spent ashes against this overriding, overpowering need; and the spot was so close, so easy to just—grip—

  He closed himself around the spot and found it to be at once tiny and vast, thin and wide, flat and depthless. Touching it ran liquid sunshine through his veins and a heat beyond belief blasting through his entire being. He pulled the spot into himself, engulfed it, drank it in, bathed in it, rolled it around himself like a blanket—

  Somewhere, someone was screaming, shrill and agonized and piercing. He barely heard it, lost in the explosive ecstasy of the experience: beyond the joy of any physical encounter he’d ever had, beyond any sensation even Riss’s best efforts had been able to—

  Riss.

  The name set off a cascade of suppressed memory, shattering his fierce joy into a steadily rising mountain of horror. A heartbeat later, the piercing shrieks cut off into a broken, gurgling hiss: a death rattle.

  He slammed back to his senses with the force of having fallen off a Horn cliff; choked, gagging on his own breath, his vision swimming and blurred.

  Now you know, son, his mother said, icy and distant. Now you understand what it is to be ha’ra’hain. So go back to your humans and see if you can look any of them in the eye without thinking how good it would feel to do that again.

  His vision cleared as her presence faded from his mind. He looked down at Enia’s limp body, still sprawled across his lap; at her sightless eyes, a trickle of blood working its way from each one. Another thread of blood ran from her nose, and her mouth was filled with blood, her tongue nearly bitten in half.

  Idisio sat still, staring at her, his mind comprehensively blank with shock.

  Deiq’s voice rose in memory: We’re not so different, Idisio. Not nearly.

  Deiq’s dark sarcasm, his thinly restrained temper, took on a whole new significance. He’s fighting against—doing this—all the time—Holy gods. Why didn’t he tell me—no. I wouldn’t have understood or believed him. Not without—this—Oh, dear and merciful gods.

  I killed her. I killed her.

  His vision sharpened: he watched as the colorful lines laced throughout Enia’s body died away to a vague grey tracery. Dust motes sparkled across his vision. He saw the tiny diamond patterns in the skin of her hand; narrowed vision and watched cells dying one by one, blood settling slowly to the lowest point, muscles relaxing and relaxing into complete flaccidity.

  Shuddering with abrupt revulsion, he jerked himself out from underneath her, toppling her lifeless body onto the couch like a discarded rag doll; yielded to panic and bolted from the cottage.

  Chill air struck his face, slapping him from panic into an unexpected rage: My mother did this to me. She made me into a killer, into a monster. She did this to me.

  She has to pay for what she’s done. She has to be stopped. If she can do this to me—to her own son—no. No more. Never again.

  He lifted his head and sniffed the air: her scent hung clear and strong. She hadn’t bothered to hide her trail. He’d find her easily.

  And when he did—he wouldn’t use whispers to settle what now lay between them.

  He checked to be sure that the long Scratha dagger was in its sheath at his side—he must have picked it up before leaving their inn room on that horrific, deadly quest—then broke into a hunting run.

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Tank moved through a mixture of dream, memory, and trance: walked through the halls of a world his/not his, engulfed in a bizarre, blurry-edged clarity. Alyea walked at his side, her hand in his: that firm grip served as his one solid point of reference, the one reassurance that he wasn’t completely lost to reality yet.

  Sunlight spilled across a stone-flag floor; the air was warm and humid, and sharply scented with the fierce spices Banna had used in the breakfast dishes. The plates still sat on the side table, contents reduced to crumbs: littlered’s mouth still felt warm and greasy from the meal. Across the small in-room dining table from him, a lean man with kind dark eyes smiled, watching littlered with a fond possessiveness....

  Tank turned sharply away, pulling Alyea with him. No, he said. No. I won’t look at that. Please. No.

  Perception spun, another room forming around them: a room with blue curtains, flooded with sunlight as the other had been—but the smells here had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with pain.

  The bed rolled under Alyea, the room spun—then it settled, and she sat up, dazed and shaking; accepted the small cup of tea a dark-haired man handed her, and drank it down, thinking of nothing but the dryness in her throat and the tremors in her stomach. Where am I? she said, barely a whisper, hoarse and cracked: and he smiled. You’re where you need to be right now, sweet, he answered. You’re where you want to be right now.

  Something stirred in her at the sound of his voice: a blind, unreasoning defiance. I don’t want to be here, she said. I don’t need to be here. Let me go.

  Oh, sweet, he replied, we’d miss you so terribly if you left us. I don’t think we’re ready for that. You’re entirely too much fun. And you’re having fun, aren’t you? You’re enjoying this. Admit it....

  She glanced down at her naked body: saw a horrifying array of weals and bruises patterned across skin from chest to toes, and knew that more decorated her neck and face. You’re insane, she said, looking back at him, but no emotion came into the words, no conviction, no anger at all: and he laughed at her.

  Alyea stared at that scene with a frozen intensity. Tank pulled her away, pulled her around to face him, to lean against him, intending to sh
ut both their eyes to the madness swirling around them and rest—but the motion turned them both around into another sunlit room and a sour smell, this time: sweat from summer’s heat, and from a beginning fear:

  You’re growing up, the man said, stroking a hand across littlered’s bare scalp; he sounded sad, and littlered tried to think of ways to make him happy again. I won’t grow up, if it makes you sad, he said, but the man laughed a little and said that wasn’t possible. I’ll miss you, he said. You’ve been so wonderful. But you’re growing up, and Banna doesn’t have anyone else that I like right now; so I won’t be back here again. You’ll have a new friend soon, don’t worry. You won’t miss me at all.

  Littlered cried then, and fear brought a sour sweat to his skin: Tan had said last night that this would happen soon. Littlered hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t believed the man would ever leave him. But now it was happening. Don’t leave me, he begged. Take me with you.

  The man shook his head, sad and smiling all at once, and pulled littlered into his lap once more....

  Alyea’s presence pressed against Tank, turning his attention away from the horrified recognition of the reality: he’d allowed himself to remember the pain, because that fueled the rage the Aerthraim had awoken in him, but had comprehensively blocked the earlier times.

  The—gods help him—the good times.

  Yes, Alyea said, close enough to be a part of him now. That was part of it. Memory of Kippin laughing, taunting: You’re enjoying this—see? There, and there, you like that, you’re not above enjoying yourself—see?

  Tendrils of green and gold laced through their shared vision, bringing a prickling pressure against Tank’s chest and groin—no, he said, and struck out with everything he had, rage funneling into a tremendous blow—but this time it swept through mist, ineffective, the force spinning them both around into an overlapping weave of memories.

  Kippin laughed as Banna glared at littlered; Pieas’s sour breath mingled with the reek of a room considerably smaller and less attractive than the sunlit haven of the day before. Can’t pass you off for that crowd any longer, Banna said. Time for you to move to the next set. Her sharp disappointment mingled with Lady Hama Peysimun’s sour expression on hearing Alyea’s tale of being attacked by a young, drunk southern nobleman. You shouldn’t have been out on your own, Hama said, even as Banna spoke: You growing up so fast lost me a good customer. Littlered didn’t understand. Alyea didn’t understand. The man had been his friend—and she’d been hurt—why didn’t mother/Banna seem to care?