“The witch cut off my hand!” the blond man cried.
“Lucky I din’t cut off more ’n that!” Renna snarled at him over Arlen’s shoulder. “You had no right to touch me there! I ent promised to you!”
The innkeep whirled on her, but then caught sight of Arlen and his eyes widened. Arlen’s hood had fallen back as he struggled to hold her, revealing his warded flesh to all.
“The Painted Man,” the innkeep whispered, and the name was repeated as it spread through the crowd.
“Deliverer!” someone cried.
“Time to go,” Arlen murmured, grabbing her arm. She kept pace with him as he shoved past those who did not scurry out of his way. He tugged his hood back in place, but there was still a sizable crowd following them from the inn.
Arlen quickened his pace, dragging her to the stables where he flipped the hand another gold coin and headed for Twilight Dancer.
Moments later they burst from the stables and galloped from the town. The guards at the gate shouted after them as the crowd from the inn came running up behind, but dusk was falling, and no one dared follow them into the gloaming.
“Corespawn it, Ren, you can’t just go around cutting people ’s hands off!” Arlen scolded when they stopped for the night in a clearing not far from town.
“Deserved it,” Renna said. “Ent no man gon’ touch me there again, ’cept I want him to.”
Arlen made a face, but he gave no retort.
“Break his thumb next time,” he said at last. “No one ’ll look twice at you for that. After what you did, there ’ll be no going back to Riverbridge for some time.”
“Hated it there anyway,” Renna said. “This,” she spread her arms as if to embrace the night, “this is where we belong.”
But Arlen shook his head. “Deliverer’s Hollow’s where I belong, and with what the innkeep told me before you pulled your crazy stunt, ent got no time to waste gettin’ there.”
Renna shrugged. “So let’s go.”
“How can we, when you’ve just cut us off from the only ripping bridge in Thesa?” Arlen cried. “Dividing’s too deep to ford and too wide for Dancer to swim.”
Renna looked at her feet. “Sorry. Din’t know.”
Arlen sighed. “Done is done, Ren. We’ll figure something out, but you’re going to need to cover up a bit in towns. Fine to bare your wards to the night, but that much flesh will put ideas in the head of any man sees you in the light.”
“Any head but yours, it seems,” Renna muttered.
“All they see is bare legs and cleavage,” Arlen said. “I see the blooddrunk girl who thinks with her knife more than her head.”
Renna’s eyes widened. “Son of the Core!” she shrieked, and launched herself at him, knife leading. Arlen slid to the side effortlessly, grabbing her wrist and twisting the knife from her hand. He put his hand against her elbow and used her own force to throw her onto her back.
She tried to rise, but he fell on her, grabbing her wrists and pinning her. She tried to put her knee hard between his legs, but he was wise to the move, and moments later his knees were pinning her thighs with his full weight. Her magical strength had dissipated with the sun as it did every day, and she could not force him from her. She screamed and thrashed wildly.
“Making my point for me!” he growled. “Stop it!”
“Ent this what you wanted?” Renna cried. “Someone din’t slow you down? Someone who wern’t ’fraid of the night?” She pulled at his grip, but his arms were iron. Their faces were mere inches apart.
“Din’t ‘want’ anything, Ren,” Arlen said, “ ’cept to get you out of a bad situation. Din’t mean to make you…like me.”
Renna ceased struggling. “You din’t make me do anything ’cept look hard at myself. Everything else, I done ’cause I wanted. You leave me tomorrow, I’ll still paint my skin. I ent going back to prison now I’ve had a taste of bein’ free.”
She felt his grip weaken and could have pulled her hands free if she’d wanted to, but there was something in Arlen’s eyes, a flicker of understanding she hadn’t seen before.
“Thought of the night we played kissy in the hayloft a lot when I was a girl,” she said. “Meant that kiss as a promise, and I felt it on my lips years after, while I waited for you to come back. Always thought you would. Din’t kiss no other till Cobie Fisher, and by then it was the only way not to be alone with Da. Cobie was a good man, but I din’t really love him any more than he did me. Barely knew each other.”
“You barely knew me, too, when we were kids,” Arlen said.
She nodded. “Din’t know what promisin’ meant, either, or that what Lainie and Da were doin’ was wrong. Din’t understand a lot of things I do now.”
She felt tears welling in her eyes, and had no choice but to let them fall. “Seen what you are and how you live. Ent got any illusions. But I could still be a wife to you. Want to, you’ll have me.”
He kept looking at her wordlessly, but his eyes said more. He bent even closer. Their noses touched gently, and she felt a shiver go through her.
“Sometimes I can still feel that kiss,” she whispered, closing her eyes and parting her lips. For a moment, she was certain he would kiss her, but then he let go her arms and rolled off. She opened her eyes in surprise to see him get to his feet and turn away.
“Don’t know as much as you think you do, Ren,” he said.
Renna wanted to scream in frustration, but a sadness in his tone softened her. She gasped, coming to her knees. “Creator. You’re married already!” She felt like she couldn’t breathe.
But Arlen looked back at her, and he laughed. Not the polite barks he might give at a jest, or a cruel sound meant to hurt, but a full laugh that shook his body so much he needed to put a hand on Twilight Dancer to steady himself. She felt her lungs ease as the sound denied her fear. Something in her gave way, and she found herself laughing along as he roared at the joke, hugging her sides and kicking her feet. It went on a good while, and the tension between them had vanished when they finally slowed to sporadic giggles, and then fell silent.
Renna got to her feet and put a hand on Arlen’s arm. “If there ’s something I don’t know, then tell me.”
Arlen looked at her and nodded. Again he pulled from her grasp, walking a few feet away, his eyes on the ground.
“Here,” he said after a moment, kicking the dirt. “There’s a path to the Core right here.”
She came over, looking with her warded eyes. Indeed, the glowing mist eddying about their feet was flowing from the spot like smoke from a pipe.
“I can feel it,” Arlen said, “stretching all the way to the Core. It’s calling to me, Ren. Like my mam at suppertime, it’s calling me, and if I wanted to…” He began to fade away, as if he were a ghost…or a coreling.
“No!” Renna shouted, grabbing at him, but her hands passed right through. “You tell it to throw its call down the well!”
Arlen solidified after a moment, and she breathed a sigh of relief, though his eyes were still sad. “The paint ent why I can’t live a normal life, Ren. This is where drawing too much magic leads. I’m more demon than man now, and honest word, each dawn I wonder if today’s the day the sun’s gonna burn me away for good.”
Renna shook her head. “You ent no demon. Demon wouldn’t be worried about Deliverer’s Hollow, or Tibbet’s Brook. Demon wouldn’t care if some girl he knew got cored, or put his life aside for months to try’n help her.”
“Maybe,” Arlen said. “But only a demon’d ask that girl to become one herself.”
“You din’t ask me nothing,” Renna said. “I make my own choices now.”
“Then take time and make it with care,” Arlen said, “ ’cause it ent one you can take back.”
CHAPTER 31
JOYOUS BATTLE
333 AR SUMMER
ROJER TOLD EVERYONE HE practiced his fiddle by the great stairwell of the manse rather than in his own wing because that precise spot would let the sound echo
throughout the building. It was true enough, but the real reason he had chosen the spot was that it afforded a perfect view of the door to Amanvah and Sikvah’s chambers. For three days, he ’d seen no sign of the girls.
He didn’t know why he cared. What had he been thinking, standing up for Sikvah when he had the perfect excuse to refuse them both? Or letting them stay after they had tried to kill Leesha? Was he actually considering becoming son-in-law to the demon of the desert? The thought of marriage had always terrified Rojer. He had left hamlets half a dozen times in the last few years to avoid that noose.
Marriage is professional death, Arrick had always said. Women are eager to bed Jongleurs, so we oblige them. But once you’re promised, suddenly all those things that drew her to you in the first place need sorting. They don’t want you traveling anymore. Then they don’t want you performing every night. Or at odd hours. Then they want to know why you always choose the sunny girl to throw knives at. Before you know it, you’re working as a corespawned carpenter and lucky to sing on Seventhday. Sleep in any woman’s bed you like, but keep a packed bag next to it, and leave the first time you hear the word promise.
Yet he had leapt to Sikvah’s rescue without a thought, and even now, the beautiful harmony of their voices resounded in his head. Rojer ached to join that harmony, and when he thought of how their robes had fallen to the floor, it brought another kind of ache, one he hadn’t felt for any other woman since he met Leesha.
But Leesha didn’t want him, and Arrick had died drunk and friendless.
Abban’s women appeared now and again to bring food and remove commode pots, but the door to the girls’ chambers never opened more than a crack, and always slammed shut before he could so much as peek inside.
That night at alagai’sharak, Rojer kept a nervous eye on Jardir. Kaval had Gared and Wonda fighting with spear and shield alongside the other dal’Sharum, and they acquitted themselves well. Gared might be too clumsy for sharusahk, but in a shield-press, there was no one stronger, no one who could reach his spear farther from the warded shield wall.
But Rojer felt his absence acutely as he, Leesha, and Jardir followed the press with several Spears of the Deliverer, even though Rojer kept them bathed in his music and the demons did not approach. Sooner or later, Jardir would ask Rojer’s intentions toward his daughter and niece, and if his answer was not satisfactory, violence and death might quickly occur. His.
But thus far, Jardir only had eyes for Leesha, doting on her like a man truly in love. Of course, that made spending time around him no easier, especially when Rojer caught Leesha returning the gazes. He wasn’t a fool. He knew what that meant even if she didn’t.
Rojer breathed a sigh of relief when the sweep ended and they were dismissed into the city. He was thoroughly miserable, his fingers numb from playing and every muscle in his body aching. He was bathed in sweat and coated in a greasy layer of soot from burning demons.
It didn’t help that Gared and Wonda, flushed with demon magic, looked as if they had just hopped out of bed instead of heading back to it. Rojer had never tasted the magic. After seeing the Painted Man dissipate and talk of slipping into the Core, it terrified him. Better to keep the demons at a distance with music and throwing knives.
But after close to a year in Deliverer’s Hollow, the effects of the magic on those who regularly partook were obvious. They were stronger. Faster. Never sick, never tired. The young ones aged faster, and the old ones aged slower, or in reverse. Rojer, on the other hand, felt like he was going to collapse.
He stumbled to his bedchamber, thinking to fall into oblivion for a few hours, but the sweet-smelling Krasian oil lamps in his room were lit, which was odd, since it had still been light out when he left. A pitcher of cool water was on his nightstand, along with a loaf of bread that was still warm to the touch.
“I have had Sikvah prepare you a bath as well, intended,” a voice said behind Rojer. He shouted in fright and spun around, throwing knives coming into his hands, but it was only Amanvah, with Sikvah kneeling behind her beside a great steaming tub.
“What are you doing in my room?” Rojer asked. He told his hands to put the blades away, but they stubbornly refused.
Amanvah knelt smoothly, ritually, touching her forehead to the floor. “Forgive me, intended. I have been…indisposed of late and depended overmuch on Sikvah in my recovery. My heart aches that we have not been able to attend you.”
“It’s…ah, all right,” Rojer said, making the knives vanish. “I don’t need anything.”
Amanvah sniffed the air. “Your pardon, intended, but you do need a bath. Tomorrow begins the Waning, and you must be prepared.”
“The Waning?” Rojer asked.
“Dark moon,” Amanvah said, “when Alagai Ka the demon prince is said to roam. A man must have bright Waning days to hold him steady in darkest night.”
Rojer blinked. “That’s beautiful. Someone should write a song about that.” Already he was thinking of melodies for it.
“Your pardon, intended,” Amanvah said, “but there are many. Shall we sing one while we bathe you?”
Rojer had a sudden vision of being strangled in the bath by the two of them, nude and singing. He laughed nervously. “My master told me to beware things too good to be true.”
Amanvah tilted her head. “I don’t understand.”
Rojer swallowed hard. “Perhaps I should bathe myself.”
The girls giggled behind their veils. “You have already seen us unclad, intended,” Sikvah said. “Do you fear what we may see?”
Rojer blushed. “It’s not that, I…”
“Do not trust us,” Amanvah said.
“Is there a reason I should?” Rojer snapped. “You pretend to be innocent girls who don’t speak a word of Thesan, then you try and kill Leesha, and turn out to have understood every word we ’ve said. How do I know there isn’t blackleaf in that tub?”
Both of them put their heads to the floor again. “If that is your feeling, then kill us, intended,” Amanvah said.
“What?” Rojer said. “I’m not killing anybody.”
“It is your right,” Amanvah said, “and no more than we deserve for our betrayal. It is the same fate we will face if you refuse us.”
“They’ll kill you?” Rojer asked. “The Deliverer’s own blood?”
“Either the Damajah will kill us for failing to poison Mistress Leesha, or the Shar’Dama Ka will kill us for attempting it. If we are not safe in your chambers, we are not safe.”
“You are safe here, but that doesn’t mean you need to bathe me,” Rojer said.
“My cousin and I never meant you dishonor, son of Jessum,” Amanvah said. “If you do not want us as wives, we will go to our father and confess.”
“I…don’t know if I can accept that,” Rojer said.
“You need not accept anything this night,” Sikvah said, “save a song of Waning and a bath.” As one, the Krasian girls lowered their veils and began to sing, their voices no less beautiful than he remembered. He didn’t understand the words, but the haunting tone spoke well of strength in darkest night. They rose to their feet and came to him, gently guiding him to the tub and pulling at his clothes. Soon he was naked and sitting in the steaming water, feeling the delicious heat leach the pain from his muscles. They wove a veil of music around him as mesmerizing as any he had cast over a demon.
Sikvah shrugged, and her black silk robes fell to the floor. Rojer gaped as she turned to unfasten Amanvah’s robes as well.
“What are you doing?” he asked as Sikvah stepped into the tub in front of him. Amanvah got in behind.
“Bathing you, of course,” Amanvah said. She went right back into her song, scooping bowlfuls of hot water over his head as Sikvah took a brush and a cake of soap.
She was firm and efficient, scrubbing the dirt and blood from him while massaging his sore muscles, but Rojer barely noticed, eyes closed, drunk on their voices and the feeling of their skin, until Sikvah’s hands dipped below the
water. He jumped.
“Shhhh,” Amanvah whispered, her soft lips touching his ear. “Sikvah is already known to man, and trained at pillow dancing. Let her be our Waning gift to you.”
Rojer didn’t know exactly what pillow dancing meant, but he could well imagine. Sikvah’s lips met his, and he gasped as she moved onto his lap.
Leesha hadn’t realized Rojer’s bedroom was directly beneath hers until she heard Sikvah’s cries. At first she thought the girl was in pain and sat up, ready to fetch her apron, but then she realized the nature of the sounds.
She tried to go back to sleep, but despite the indiscretion, neither Rojer nor the girl seemed inclined toward quiet. She put a pillow over her ears, but the sounds broke through even that barrier.
She wasn’t surprised, really. In some ways, it was more surprising it had taken so long. Sikvah’s state, after Inevera had been so encouraging of a virginity test, had never sat well with Leesha. It was too easy a play on Rojer’s chivalry, too convenient a way to tempt him into accepting them as brides. Rojer was only a man, after all.
She snorted, knowing it was only half the story. Inevera had played her, as well.
In truth, though she did not approve of a man taking more than one wife, she thought Rojer would have a good influence on the girls, and perhaps the responsibilities of a husband might help mature him, as well. If this was what he wanted…
Even if it is, I don’t have to listen to it, she thought, giving up on her bed and walking down the hall, choosing one of the many empty bedrooms on her floor. She fell gratefully into the covers and expected to drift off immediately, but the sounds had affected her, bringing unbidden images to mind. Jardir, his shirt stripped off, his muscled skin alive with wards. She wondered if they would tingle to the touch as Arlen’s had.
When she finally drifted off, it was to thoughts of passion. In her dreams, she remembered the heat of the fireplace as she and Gared had squirmed together on the floor of her parents’ common room. Marick’s wolfish eyes. The ardent feeling of Arlen’s kisses and embrace.
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