Seregil lifted the unresisting rhekaro in his arms and deposited him on the window seat. Then he did the same with Alec, lifting him onto their bed and stretching out beside him. “So,” he drawled, sliding a hand down Alec’s side, then up again, rucking up the rumpled linen nightshirt as he went. “Getting our strength back, are we?”
Alec shivered under his touch. “Yes, but it’s still daylight outside, Sebrahn is staring at us, and you left the door wide open. Again.”
Seregil nuzzled his neck. “I’ll close the door.”
Alec grabbed him before he could make good on that. “And I need a bath.”
“All right. You shall have one.” Seregil sighed. “We really are going to have to do something about Sebrahn, though.”
“I know. Now, bath?”
“Yes, my lord. At once, my lord.” Seregil laughed as he headed for the door. “But I still say we’re going to have to find some way of dealing with Sebrahn, and not just because I don’t want him staring at my ass when we’re—”
“I know!”
“It’s like having a dog around. Always underfoot.”
“Don’t say that!” Alec called after him, but Seregil was already headed down the stairs.
Within the hour servants brought up a small brass tub and steaming cans of hot water from the kitchen.
“Sebrahn first,” Alec insisted, fully enjoying handing out a few orders after all the ones he’d been suffering.
“Let me, then,” said Seregil. “You’re too wobbly and you have more than enough bruises.”
The rhekaro had no bodily functions, and no particular smell, but he still got grubby. This was his first real bath, but he showed no sign of fear as Seregil mixed cans of warm and cold water and poured it over him. Sebrahn just sat there while Seregil washed him with the cloth, then lathered his hair. When the bath was over and he had Sebrahn wrapped in a flannel, they both smelled nicely of rose-scented soap.
Seregil gave the rhekaro an uncommonly fond look, surprising after their earlier exchange. “I forget, sometimes, how much he resembles you. And even more so now, thanks to Thero. I suppose it’s almost like seeing you at that age. Now then, your turn.”
With Seregil’s help, Alec sank into the warm water and rested his head on his bare knees, letting Seregil scrub his back and wash his long hair. “Don’t you think I should cut some of it off?” he asked yet again as Seregil’s finger caught in a tangle.
“It’s up to you, talí, but I like it,” Seregil told him, as always.
“Then you have to grow yours out again, since you seem to have forgotten the problems.”
“I am, but I can’t do it quite as fast as our little friend can.” He pulled the chair over to the side of the tub to keep him company as Alec took over with the cloth.
When Seregil sat down, Sebrahn climbed into his lap. Seregil smiled down at him.
Sebrahn is as much pet as child, thought Alec. A pet that can kill. Seeing the two of them like that, he wondered, What do I call this? A “family”?
But he knew better, and that brought a now familiar tightness around his heart. He brushed it aside. Later. They’d figure things out later. Right now he was just going to enjoy the damn bath!
“Are you all right, talí?”
“The water’s just getting cold.”
Seregil helped him out and wrapped him in a large flannel. Alec leaned against him, the water dripping from his hair onto the floor around his bare feet and soaking the front of Seregil’s shirt.
“I do feel better.”
“You smell better, too.”
Seregil’s warm, deep chuckle vibrated against Alec’s heart. Taking him by the hand, he drew Seregil back to the unmade bed. “Sebrahn, go look out the window.”
The rhekaro obeyed the now familiar order at once.
Alec glanced at the door, making sure it was closed. Satisfied, he gave Seregil a push and tumbled them both into bed, pulling Seregil on top of him and holding him tight.
“What’s this?” Seregil asked, smiling down at him.
“If you have to ask, then it’s been too long,” Alec said with a chuckle of his own. “I keep telling you, I’m getting better!”
And Alec must have trained the rhekaro well during the long days up here, Seregil thought later, for Sebrahn never took his gaze from the harbor as they rolled and surged and moaned together, tangled in Alec’s long wet hair.
When Alec woke up again some time later, it was still light out, Seregil was gone, and Mydri was looming over him. “My, aren’t you energetic.”
The look in those dark eyes left him completely tongue-tied as he waited for another upbraiding, but she just shook her head. “How do you do that nightrunning business with such a guilty face?”
Sebrahn squatted at the end of the bed, eyeing the healer with an intensity that made Alec nervous. Sebrahn had already been told that the various household members were friends, but if he’d turn on Seregil, all bets were off.
Mydri shook a colorful little rag and yarn doll from her sleeve and placed it in Sebrahn’s hands. “A gift for you, little one. Be a good—rhekaro and let me see how your Alec is healing.”
Sebrahn regarded the doll for a moment, then tried to stuff it into his own sleeve as Mydri began her examination.
She ran cool fingers over the delicate new skin covering the wounds on Alec’s chest and throat. Then she went about feeling his pulse, listening to his heart and bowels, and clucking her tongue over the bruises on his arms. All the same, when she’d finished at last, she seemed pleased. “You’re healing faster than you have any right to, you know.” She glanced over at Sebrahn, who had given up on the sleeve idea and was staring at the doll again. “Whatever he did, it was powerful, and it’s clear he’s devoted to you.”
She pulled another doll from her sleeve and got Sebrahn’s attention. “Don’t I have a nice baby?” she asked, holding the doll against her chest and patting it gently. “Will you take good care of your baby, too?”
Slowly, Sebrahn copied her, cuddling his own doll. “Baby?”
“You see?” said Alec. “He does understand things.”
Mydri watched closely as Sebrahn brought the doll’s painted linen face up to his own, silvery eyes crossing a little as he studied it. “I’ve seen how he mimics what he sees you doing. Show him gentleness and he’ll be gentle.” She paused, still watching Sebrahn. “I doubt this change of appearance will hide him well enough. His aura sometimes extends beyond this room, and there are those in the house who can feel it.”
Alec waited for her to go on, to tell him she didn’t want him to go to Bôkthersa. Instead she surprised him with a smile that made the blue lines of the healer’s marks under her eyes tilt up. “Our family owes you a great deal, little brother, for all you’ve done for Seregil. There was so much pain in him at Sarikali. Yet even then I could tell that you’d given him back some of what Ilar í Sontir took from him, all those years ago. What was it like, meeting that man?”
“Seregil told you?”
“About how Ilar duped you with a false name, and the way he treated Seregil? Yes.”
Suddenly uneasy, Alec sat twisting the edge of the quilt between his fingers. “It was—strange.”
“It hurt, I’m sure. Both the betrayal, and Seregil bringing him with you.”
“Yes. I still don’t understand why he did that. Ilar treated him like filth once he had Seregil under his thumb, and he was nothing but trouble after we escaped.”
“But according to what Seregil told me, he helped you. Something about a secret way?”
“Well, yes,” Alec admitted. “But in the end he just ran away. We might as well have killed him.”
“Could you have done that, Alec í Amasa?”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “No. He was too pathetic and—well …”
“Let me tell you something that you’re probably too young to have learned yet. Love and hate aren’t so far apart.”
Alec shook his he
ad, remembering. “Seregil told me he used to love Ilar, and now he loves me, but that there was no one else in between, among all the people he bedded. And I could tell that Ilar wanted to make things up with him.”
“And did Seregil let him?”
“No.” Alec didn’t want to think about his own jealousy and doubts. He didn’t want to remember the sight of Ilar naked and trying to kiss Seregil by the stream that day, or the way Seregil had appeared unable or unwilling to stop him.
Mydri smiled and patted his hand. “You can’t change his past, Alec. Neither can he. Let it go and turn your thoughts to the journey home. Now, please listen to your healer and stop throwing yourself around.”
When she was gone he disregarded her admonition and went back to the window seat, bored and wondering where everyone else was. Sebrahn climbed into his lap. The rhekaro still had the doll, and he picked curiously at it as he rested his head against Alec’s chest.
Alec rubbed his cheek against that cool, silken hair and stared out the window. It had finally stopped raining, but the sky remained dreary with low, dark clouds. The harbor beyond was nearly empty today; the fishermen were taking advantage of the break in the weather. Adzriel’s ship, a sleek caravel, rode at anchor like a dark swan.
“Bôkthersa!” he murmured with a thrill of excitement that swept away all the dark thoughts. He’d forgotten to ask if Adzriel would keep him locked away there.
That afternoon Seregil, his sisters, and Micum came to his room. Micum caught Alec’s eye and gave him a warning look. Seregil and the women looked like they’d been arguing. Seregil’s mouth was set in a stubborn line, and Mydri seemed furious.
Adzriel closed the door behind them and locked it.
Mydri was glaring at Sebrahn; it was as if their gentle conversation earlier had never happened. “Adzriel told me about the rhekaro’s true powers, Seregil.” She turned on Alec. “And you said nothing, either!”
“I meant for them to tell you once we were under way,” Adzriel explained, interceding for them.
Mydri was not mollified. “Adzriel, how can you possibly bring something so dangerous to our own fai’thast?”
“Seregil is our brother, in blood if not in name. Since Alec is his talímenios, he’s our responsibility, and through him, Sebrahn.” She gave her sister a stern look. “Whatever Sebrahn is, he’s theirs, and thus ours. Isn’t that so?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then it’s settled. They’ll be safe there, and can take what time they need to discover more about Sebrahn.”
Mydri stood up, angry now. “Adzriel, as your sister, and as a ranking member of the clan, I protest. I love these two as much as you do, but—”
Adzriel gave her a look that cut her off midsentence. “I don’t speak now as your sister, or his, but as your khirnari. And I say that it is safer by far to have this rhekaro within our control than to lose him to those who would use him for ill in the world. I have spoken!”
It was amazing to see Mydri cowed. Alec was a bit shaken himself, and Micum, too. No wonder Adzriel had been elected by her clan, in spite of her relative youth.
“As you wish then, Khirnari,” Mydri said, throwing up her hands. “I only hope you don’t come to regret your decision.”
So do I, Alec thought, sending up a silent prayer to Illior.
“So, what route are you planning?” asked Micum, deftly changing the subject.
“We’ll put in at Chillian and ride from there,” said Adzriel.
“We can cut the ride by half if we go north to Half Moon Cove and go by way of Smuggler’s Pass,” said Seregil. “I can travel that road home with my eyes shut.”
Home. Alec thought he caught a suspicious glitter in Seregil’s eyes and felt a small tightness in his own throat. If Adzriel meant all she’d said, then it was his home, as well.
CHAPTER 3
A Rude Awakening
ALEC DRIFTED off to sleep that night feeling less of an outcast. To the Bôkthersans he was family, rather than an unwanted guest. With Seregil beside him and Sebrahn curled at the foot of the bed, he drifted off into a deeper slumber than he had in days.
So it was a nasty shock when someone yanked him off the bed and onto the cold floor and stuffed something into his mouth. The shutters were open and by the faint moonlight he could make out several darkly dressed men, one of whom was holding a struggling Sebrahn. They’d stuffed a rag in the rhekaro’s mouth, which explained why Sebrahn wasn’t singing a killing song. In a way that was a relief, since Alec had no way of knowing if he’d kill only their assailants or everyone else within earshot, as well.
Seregil, naked and armed with one of the swords they’d brought from Plenimar, was fighting off two more men by the door.
How in Bilairy’s name did they get in without us or anyone else hearing them?
No sooner had Alec taken that in than the two men holding him dragged him to the open window and thrust him out feet first, keeping hold of his hands, and he found himself dangling above the cobbled courtyard. There was no question of pulling free—Bilairy’s Balls, he hated heights!
And falling even more so—which he was. But he hardly had time to panic before two men caught him and pinioned his arms. Both of them wore hoods and black cloth across their lower faces. He struggled in earnest now, though to little avail as they half dragged, half carried him toward the courtyard gate, where more dark figures waited. Where were the watchmen?
Suddenly someone came close enough to try to force a bag over his head. Seeing one slim chance, he struck out wildly, finding the bag man’s belt and the knife hanging there. Wrenching it free, he slashed at anything he could reach and succeeded in stabbing the man holding the bag and driving the two who’d been holding him back long enough to assess the situation. They were too big to be Aurënfaie, armed with long knives and dressed in leathers and boots. He, on the other hand, was barefoot in a nightshirt and badly overmatched. He was wondering if he could outrun them in his current condition when armed men burst into the courtyard and attacked his attackers, Micum in the lead.
Alec got out of the way fast and bolted for the house. Shouldering his way through a crowd of alarmed women, he ran up the stairs, still clutching the bloody knife.
Where was Seregil and why hadn’t Sebrahn sung? He was grateful for the latter, but at a loss to understand.
He found Seregil on the floor by the bed, bloody but still alive, with a struggling Sebrahn in his arms, one hand clamped firmly over the rhekaro’s mouth. Three men lay dead around him, bloody enough to be Seregil’s victims rather than Sebrahn’s.
“Tell him,” Seregil gasped. “Hurry! He won’t listen to me.”
Alec dropped the knife and took Sebrahn’s face between his hands, putting his mouth close to the rhekaro’s ear. “Don’t sing, Sebrahn! That would be bad now. Very bad!”
The rhekaro went still. Seregil waited a moment, then slowly removed his hand and pulled out the gag.
“Baaaad,” Sebrahn whispered.
“By the Light, what happened here?” Adzriel exclaimed, pushing through the excited little crowd that had gathered in the doorway. Mydri was close behind.
Alec was doubly glad of Thero’s transformation magic now, though he could hear others whispering about the color of Sebrahn’s eyes. Mydri shooed the onlookers away and closed the door.
“So?” she asked, hurrying to the bed.
“Assassins and kidnappers, I’d say,” Seregil panted, pressing a hand to his side. Blood was seeping through his fingers, and there was already a small pool of it on the floor by his hip.
Alec looked around frantically. The washstand had been spared in the scuffle. Grabbing the pitcher, he knelt in front of Sebrahn, who’d already slashed his own palm with the knife that Alec had dropped. The rhekaro held his hand over the water, then quickly lifted out the dark blue lotus blossom that formed there.
“Here.” Seregil took his hand away and Alec saw a deep slash across Seregil’s ribs. “Bastard stabbed me w
hile I was asleep. It’s a good thing his aim was off. He should have slit my throat. Bilairy’s Balls! Those sons of whores were good.”
Mydri gave him a light cuff to the back of the head that made him wince, then stifle a grin.
It took four blossoms to close the wound, and Sebrahn laid more on it, sending the healing deeper. When he was finished, Alec cut his own finger more deeply than usual and let the drops fall on Sebrahn’s tongue. The wound across Sebrahn’s palm closed before their eyes.
“It can’t heal itself?” asked Mydri.
“Not that we’ve seen,” Seregil told her.
“Yhakobin made me feed him like this, and the first one, after he sliced them up,” Alec told her. “I saw a hand grow from the stump of Sebrahn’s wrist, and an eye for the first one.”
Mydri stroked Sebrahn’s hair, her expression softer than he’d ever seen it before. “Poor things. Poor, wretched little things! But why didn’t he sing and protect you?”
Seregil shrugged. “Who knows? As it was, he killed Yhakobin only when it was clear that Alec was in severe danger.”
“How in the world would he know?”
“He just does,” said Alec.
Mydri cupped Sebrahn’s chin and looked deeply into his eyes. “So strange!” she murmured. “There is a mind there, but not a normal one, just—like fragments floating around.”
Alec hadn’t realized how badly he was shaking until Adzriel knelt and put her arms around him. “Are you hurt, Alec?” There was blood on his nightshirt.
“No. Where’s Micum?”
“Here,” Micum said, pushing his way through the crowd gathered in the doorway. He was wearing breeches and nothing else. The blood spattered across his chest was someone else’s.
“Get the bodies outside and put them with the others!” Riagil ordered, storming into the room. “The rest of you go back to your rooms. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
“Please, leave us alone to tend our wounded,” said Adzriel.
“I’ll have tubs prepared at once,” Yhali said as calmly as if she dealt with such intrusions on a regular basis, yet Alec very much doubted that she did.
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