The present took up enough of that kind of thing.
With hasty bows, the guards stepped aside, ostentatiously looking the other direction. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, including Lonen in it with a glance over her shoulder. He acknowledged the courtesy with a wry half smile, his gray eyes stony as the granite traded to Bára by one of her sister-cities. If she hadn’t been able to sense the turmoil beneath, she’d have imagined him emotionless. “We’re still in the clear—and this won’t take long.”
“It had better not,” he muttered, following her in through the outer chambers, “or I’ll knock you upside the head and carry you out of this cursed place.”
She ignored him, long practiced at it from paying no attention to Chuffta’s lectures.
“To your chagrin, on many an occasion,” Chuffta noted.
“And great peace of mind on many more.”
He snorted mentally, though his worry threaded beneath. Oria picked up her skirts and her pace, hustling through the elegant chambers. The former queen sat in her usual spot by the window, alone, which was not usual at all.
“Mother!” Oria called out. “Where are your waiting women?”
Rhianna slowly moved her gaze from the window. Her brown eyes focused on her daughter, first puzzled, then with dawning awareness as she saw Lonen also. Her vacant expression crumpled into agonized grief. “You did it. You married the mind-dead barbarian. The worst has come to pass.”
They’d been through this once already and Oria had no intention of subjecting Lonen to her mother’s doom-filled predictions again. She knelt and took her mother’s hands in hers. They were far too thin, and cold despite the growing midday heat. “I married him, yes. But the bond between us is strong—if you can perceive it, you know that much. It will be all right. He hasn’t hurt me.”
Rhianna seemed to look through her. “Not yet. Not until he tires of being married in name only and forces you into his bed—and to your death. You don’t know how horrible men like him can be.”
Lonen didn’t make a sound, but his outrage at the accusation crawled over her skin. Justifiably so. He’d been excruciatingly careful with her, finally understanding the devastating implications for her of skin-to-skin contact. And he’d still found a way to consummate their marriage—however unconventionally—and the memory of the intimate moments of the night before would make her blush if she allowed it. She no longer had her mask to hide such inappropriate emotions, however, so she tucked those thoughts away where her mother couldn’t feel them.
Oria could fake hwil like a High Priestess.
“I’m fine, mother. Don’t worry. King Lonen is a good man. He’ll take good care of me.”
“He’s a barbarian! A mind-dead—”
“Let’s move this along,” Lonen interrupted, using a mock-pleasant tone that didn’t fool her for a moment. He simmered with impatience to be gone and in a few moments more, her barbarian would snap and resume bodily hauling her out of Bára.
“Mother, I can’t explain, but I have to leave Bára. I have to go beyond the walls.”
The former queen’s face contorted in horror and she gripped Oria’s hands. Once she would have shown no emotion, her hwil as a senior priestess and queen without flaw. All that had changed since her husband fell in battle to the Destrye forces. “You can’t!” Rhianna wailed. “It will kill you.”
“It won’t.” Oria kept her voice calm, ignoring Lonen’s urgent worry tugging at her. “Yar brought a bride here from Lousá. Her name is Gallia, and you’ll like her. Be good to her, help her if you can.”
“Gallia came from Lousá?” her mother echoed.
“Yes. So there must be a way to travel between cities. How do the priestesses do it and live?”
She’d hoped to have time in the secret temple archives to discover such mysteries for herself, but she’d flat run out of that luxury.
“You’re traveling to Lousá?” It didn’t seem possible, but her mother gripped harder, grinding Oria’s finger bones together. “Yes! My brilliant daughter, you’re so clever. Go to Lousá and find an ideal husband there. One who will set your magic free. You cannot imagine the perfection of an ideal marriage. It’s what you deserve.”
Better to let her mother believe that, rather than that Oria fled in the face of execution at her brother’s order. “Exactly, mother. But I need to know how to do it. How do I keep the wild magic from eroding my mind and hwil, from making me break?”
Her mother frowned, cocking her head. “Where is your mask?”
“I am here alone with you and my husband,” Oria improvised. “I set it right over there. How do I travel outside the walls?”
“This is taking too long,” Lonen murmured at her. “Better to take the chance and go.”
“Just a few minutes more. We’re still clear.”
“Not so much. Servants have emerged from the temple and sgath is building within. Yar may have won the argument.”
Sgatha take Yar and all his minions. “Mother, if you love me, tell me now.”
Her mother’s face cleared. “You should appeal to High Priestess Febe for the lesson. That’s the proper protocol. You know that.”
Internally Oria groaned. That protocol might be just a titch difficult to manage as Oria had killed Febe the day before. “You always explain things so much better, Mother. Please? As a gift to me.”
“You promised to tell Lonen when things changed.”
“No, he ordered. I never agreed.”
“You said, ‘yes, Your Highness.’”
“That was sarcasm.” Out loud, she repeated, “Please. Tell me what I need to know.”
Her mother released her hands, looking sorrowful, then framed Oria’s face in her palms. “You were such a beautiful little girl. The image of my aunt Tania. Did I ever tell you that?”
“No.” She didn’t even know she had an aunt Tania.
“So powerful. So ambitious and determined. Don’t be like her, Oria. Find an ideal husband and channel your magic through him. Don’t try to do it alone. Don’t be like Tania. Promise me.”
“All right. I promise. How do I survive the wild magic?”
“Oria, it’s time to go. She can’t help you.” For as grim as he sounded, Lonen’s hand on her shoulder remained gentle. His intense energy burned through the silk, but not painfully so.
“He’s right, Oria—you’re out of time.”
“A minute more,” she urged them both. Lonen’s hand tightened on her, aware as he so uncannily could be that she conversed with her Familiar also.
“Did Chuffta give warning?”
“Mother, please!”
“I’m coming there. If you won’t tell Lonen, I will.”
Her mother smiled, leaned in, pressed a kiss to her cheek—and whispered a few cryptic words of advice.
~ 2 ~
Lonen wrestled down the twin urges to throttle Oria for her stubbornness and to simply toss her over his shoulder again.
He should never have put her down, no matter the provocation. That had been his first mistake, followed by a whole sequence that ended with letting her talk him into this fool’s errand.
Worse, he couldn’t pin down where the presentiment came from, but he strongly suspected she was lying to him about passing along Chuffta’s warnings. She got a certain look and feel to her when the lizardling spoke to her and, if his instincts didn’t miss, the derkesthai had been chattering away. Probably with bad news, as all news in Bára seemed to be. He tightened his hand on her slim shoulder, the bones so frail beneath he could crush them if he wasn’t careful.
Totally in contrast to her personality, which might crush him if he let her. Especially if anything happened to her because of it. He’d already faced losing her several times that day, which was plenty for one morning. And they had a great deal to get through before the day ended. He needed her to save his people, never mind his personal feelings.
“Oria, time’s up. Come willingly or I’ll take steps.”
She resisted with surprising strength in that delicate frame, staying poised with her mother’s lips against her cheek. A flutter at the window had him leaping back and drawing his axe in the same movement. Chuffta landed on the stone sill, wide wings buffeting the sides of the arch, which was by no means narrow. Though the derkesthai’s body was no longer than Lonen’s forearm, his wings were each double that, with thin white webbing that showed sunlight between fine bones, like the fingers of a hand. As if the wings were indeed the animal’s forelegs, he possessed no others—only taloned hind legs he used to grip the sill.
Chuffta’s brilliant green eyes fixed on him with uncanny intelligence and there was no missing the urgency in them.
“That’s it. We’re leaving.” With no more warning, he bent down, wrapped an arm around Oria’s slender waist and hauled her unceremoniously off her feet. She wailed pitifully and he hardened his heart. The former queen reached for her daughter, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Oria, wait! Take me to Lousá with you! I’ll help you find a husband worthy of you.”
Setting his teeth, Lonen carried Oria away, Chuffta winging close above.
“I’ll be back, Mother,” Oria cried. “I promise.”
Manfully, Lonen didn’t comment on the likelihood of Oria keeping that promise. If he had anything to say about it—and he most certainly would—his wife wouldn’t set foot anywhere near Bára again.
“You can put me down,” Oria said loudly, maybe not for the first time, as they reached the outer doors. “It might look better for me to walk instead of you dragging me along like some captured slave girl.”
He carried the burden of guilt for many things, Arill knew, but he wouldn’t be ashamed over this one, no matter how she needled him. He’d also take the higher road and not remind her how much her slave-girl-captured-by-the-Destrye-barbarian sexual fantasies had played into their very hot wedding night. She’d could have used her magic to stop him, as she’d done earlier, and she hadn’t. He’d probably behave just as badly if torn away from his one remaining loving family member, too, so he’d give her the rope.
He set her on her feet and Chuffta landed neatly on her padded shoulder, rubbing his triangular head against her cheek as she dashed her own tears away. “Stay right here while I check the corridor,” he instructed her, as if she were someone who listened to sense.
Fortunately, the way was clear—the guards had absented themselves. If Arill watched over him and Oria, the guards had simply run off to avoid punishment, not for other, more sinister reasons. Reaching back through the doorway, he nearly forgot himself and took Oria’s hand, diverting to her sleeve at the last moment. “Come on. Move fast.”
She trotted beside him, face flushed, breathing too hard. “Can you keep up?” he asked.
Her extraordinary copper eyes flashed to his, her expression smoothing into something like her favored remote mask. His haughty foreign sorceress. “I’m not a child, Destrye.”
“No bigger than one,” he said in a dubious tone sure to fire her up.
She glared in fury—and picked up her pace, her tears drying. “When I make you pay for all of this, the price will be dear indeed.”
“I look forward to it,” he replied in all sincerity. At least she was talking as if she planned to survive, which was all that mattered for the moment.
They hurried over the bridge from the palace into the city proper, the denizens turning in surprise at their hasty passage. Because of the way various chasms—all without fences or railings of any kind—riddled the city, rather than take the far-too-exposed main bridge from the palace doors, they had to travel past the guard barracks to reach a bridge to take them over. They crossed and retraced their steps on the other side, weaving amongst the people traveling the path between the chasm and the towers and various associated buildings. Lonen glimpsed the palace guard pouring out the grand doors, weapons bristling.
“Through here.” He tugged Oria through a doorway into a dark pub he recalled from the days the Destrye occupied the city. The proprietor, a genial Báran man, gaped at them. “Princess Oria!” he called out. “And King Lonen? Is all—”
“I’m fine,” she answered, all graciousness, pausing to wave at the people. “Taking a stroll through the city. Such a lovely day.”
She was an abysmal liar, but a decent actress. The man relaxed and the people summoned a cheer. They all supported Oria’s claim to the throne. Because they weren’t idiots.
“Back door open?” Lonen asked, and winked at them. “Better to keep the princess off the main paths.”
“Of course, I—”
But Lonen was already hustling Oria in that direction, taking her through a storeroom with wine—and water—casks, and out again into the scorching Báran sunlight.
“How did you know that place had a back door?”
“Most of your dwellings do. All those open doors and windows you riddle every damn building with.”
“For cross-ventilation.”
“I get it.”
“But you knew that place in particular.”
“They serve that honey ale. The men liked it. I chased down more than a few of mine there, who thought to use that back door to duck me.”
“I had no idea.”
“It was a long week that you slept through.”
She pressed her lush mouth over whatever retort she planned, so he suppressed his grin at her expense. “Where are we even going?” she asked instead. “The city gates are that way. And Yar has the palace guard after us.”
“I saw them,” he replied grimly. “We’re going to the barracks to get my horse.”
“You have a horse?”
“Did you think I walked from Dru?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” She had that faint tone, the one she got when she ran up against her unfamiliarity with the world outside Bára. So fierce in so many ways, so powerfully magical, and yet she’d also spent far too much of her life sequestered in her tower. Even without the challenge of withstanding the wild magic outside the walls, the coming journey would be a trial for her.
She said nothing more as they wove through the puzzle of back alleys and jagged lanes that made up the less polished side of Bára. Here merchants unloaded wares and the occasional work golem performed some manual task, an unsavory sight. The Bárans didn’t like to use animals for labor, a nicety Lonen found ironic given how easily they dismissed the humanity of the Destrye they’d slaughtered for the precious water they hauled about in casks. Besides, though the city golems were innocuous cousins of the ones he’d battled as they attacked the Destrye in relentless waves, and though they lacked the razor-sharp teeth and claws of their fiercer versions, the things still sent a rill of terror through him.
Old habits die hard. Especially when they haunt your nightmares.
Every single person they passed stared in astonishment at the sight of their beloved princess—unmistakable with her metallic copper hair, intricately braided in the priestess style. In retrospect he viciously wished he’d thought to roll her up in a blanket. Easier to transport, less trouble, and not so obvious.
Swiveling his head on his sinuous neck, Chuffta gave him a bright-eyed stare that seemed to be full of humor.
“I don’t suppose you can work magic to cloud people’s minds, make them forget they saw you?” he muttered at Oria.
She glanced up in surprise. “Why would I do that?”
He noted in the back of his mind that she hadn’t denied having that ability—something he’d long suspected. She’d only assured him that she hadn’t sent him dreams while they were apart, not that she hadn’t influenced his thoughts while they were together. “We won’t exactly be difficult to track,” he pointed out, gesturing in frustration at the many onlookers.
Pursing her lips, she blew out a huff of exasperation. It was absurdly entertaining to him to see the gesture again. He’d hated the golden priestess mask that had hidden her face. Though he knew it wounded her pride that Vic
o had stripped it from her, he couldn’t summon up much regret. He liked seeing her face. She might be able to read his mind with ease, but reading her expressions gave him at least a few clues to understanding his enigmatic sorceress.
“There’s only one way out of Bára,” she said. “It’s not a mystery which way we’ll go.”
Grimly, he acceded to the truth of that. It had made the city both impregnable from most assaults and then almost ridiculously easy to take, once they found the key. “Assuming we make it out of the gates, how far will Yar chase you?”
She considered that with a bemused expression—though some of that could be for the city guard barracks they’d entered. “I’ve never been here,” she commented, confirming his speculation.
“The stables are through here, at the other end. Answer my question.”
She shrugged. “If we make it through the gates, he won’t. He knows I’ll die out there. Why bother chasing me beyond the walls?”
Fear stabbed at him, but he put it away. No sense thinking about that. She was certainly dead if they stayed. He turned down a narrow corridor—and several of the guard appeared, blocking their passage, swords drawn, postures clearly belligerent. Wonderful. Thrusting Oria behind him, he brandished his battle-axe. Chuffta flew up to hover above them, hissing, wings working furiously.
“Princess Oria,” the one in front called out. “We are to escort you back to the palace. Please step back while we dispense with this barbarian. We’ll protect you.”
Lonen choked back a curse as she slipped in front of him, as if her slight body gave him protection. The light-framed men of Bára posed no great threat. Even their fighters had become weak in comparison to the Destrye, sheltered too long by their magical overlords. Once they’d disabled their sorcerers, the Destrye armies had dealt with the men at arms with comparative ease.
The Tides of Bára Page 2
