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Which of course was the problem, since the hand that had directed it in particular belonged to the man standing before her in chains. She needed time. More than she would be given, likely, but she would take what she could get.
“My Reinine.” She turned and bowed to the ruler of all Adara, remaining at a distance to keep the royal ilias and his fellow bodyguard happy. “Would you allow me time and the space for privacy? I must confer with my iliasti. While I do that, perhaps—” She paused to choose her words. “Perhaps the prisoner would benefit from a bath and a shave, more suitable clothing. Then, if you will permit, I should like a chance to speak privately with this man, to investigate his claim. I think it a thing done best without an audience.”
“You’ll no’ be meetin’ him alone.” Torchay’s north mountains accent was as thick as she’d ever heard it, an indication of the extreme emotion possessing him.
Kallista turned her head a fraction, addressing him quietly. “No, of course not. This is a matter for the ilian. I want you both there.”
“Do I need to order guards present to protect Suteny?” the Reinine asked.
Now Kallista faced Torchay head on. “Must I order you to hold back your hand? Will you, if I do?”
He did not look happy about it, but he nodded, a single abrupt jerk of his head. “Aye. I’ll no’ kill him—unless he makes the first move.”
“Fair enough,” the Reinine said.
Kallista looked then at Obed. She knew better than to assume he would keep any promise Torchay made. “Will you swear to the same?”
His expression bland, Obed inclined his head in agreement, a lock of black hair sliding forward on his face.
“Your word, Obed,” she insisted. “I want to hear you speak it.”
A tiny smile curved his lips and he bowed deeper. “I will not kill this man, unless he makes the first move. This I swear to my Chosen One.”
“Agreed.” Serysta Reinine came to her feet and addressed the guards officer. “Have a servant direct you to the palace barbers. When your prisoner is presentable, take him to the Noonday Suite in Daybright Tower. I assume, Captain, that your previous quarters will be acceptable. Since we will all be moving to Summerglen in another few days, I see no sense in locating you here only to uproot you so soon.”
Kallista swept into her best court bow. “Thank you, my Reinine. Your generosity is gratefully accepted.” She bowed again, this time to the bodyguard mate of her ruler. “Thank you, Reinas, for your restraint and for the life of my ilias. I apologize for his foolish and reckless behavior.”
The gray-haired man inclined his head. “It’s not your apology to make. But for the thanks—you’re welcome.”
His face flushed red, Torchay stepped forward and bowed stiffly, head almost touching his outstretched knee. “My apologies. I was…overcome.”
The older man did not respond, leaving Torchay bent in his awkward bow, until the Reinine spoke his name. “Keldrey.”
He exchanged a look with her before relenting. “Apology accepted. But—” he went on as Torchay straightened “—if it happens again, I’ll cut out your heart.”
Torchay met the man’s gaze without blinking, giving back stare for stare. Finally he tipped his head in a slight acknowledgment. Keldrey did the same. Torchay spun on his heel and urged Kallista from the room following the already departed prisoner. Obed waited until they passed him before whirling in a dancelike move to act as rear guard.
“What was that all about?” Kallista thumped Torchay on the arm when the door shut behind them. “She is the Reinine of all Adara, not some backwoods naitan with a grass-green bodyguard.”
Torchay shrugged. “A bodyguard’s a bodyguard, whoever the body to be guarded.”
She thumped him again. “We do not have time for you to be playing ‘whose is bigger?’ games. And if you ever do something that stupid again, I will let him cut out your heart.”
He gave her a look that so obviously meant “We will see whose heart is removed,” and she thumped him once more.
Servants were still whisking dust covers from the elaborate white and gold furniture in the suite when they arrived. Every piece Kallista had ordered removed during their previous sojourn, clearing the first two-thirds of the long central room for a practice area, had been replaced, requiring them to thread their way through the obstacles.
“Perhaps we should have paid a visit to the palace barbers as well.” Kallista stripped off her grubby overtunic, letting it lie where it fell. “I scarcely feel human.” She plucked at the damp shirt beneath. She didn’t think she’d been dry since they left home.
“Servants will bring baths,” Obed said. “I requested it before they departed.”
“Bless you.” She touched his cheek, stretching up for a kiss he ducked away from. He disguised it as a bow, graceful as a dancer, but he could not disguise the truth. He did not want her kiss.
Hurt, she turned away, found Torchay there as always, and kissed him. But that was not fair to him, to give kisses because they were refused elsewhere. She rested her forehead in the curve between his neck and shoulder, taking comfort in the arms around her until the tension in him broke through her pout.
Kallista tried to move back, but Torchay’s arms tightened, holding her in place. His hand moved, cupping the back of her head, and he turned his face to nuzzle her ear. “This has to end, Kallista,” he murmured for her only. “We’ve arrived. We don’t need his sword. If he hurts you again, I’ll kill him.”
“You can’t.” She kept her voice low despite her need to scream at something. Obed’s behavior offended Torchay most, because he knew her best, saw better how it hurt her, cared more that it did. “He won’t. He hasn’t.”
“Has he no’?” He softened his grip enough she could see his face, turned toward Obed with angry challenge in his eyes.
“We need him, Torchay.”
“The One sent him. She can send another.”
“You think She will? If we destroy Her gift?” She worked her hands free and clasped his face between them, forcing his gaze away from Obed to her. “Do not turn your anger at this…this mess onto one who bears no fault for it.”
“I blame him only for his own faults.” Torchay tried to lift his head, to glare at Obed again, but Kallista held him with a touch he could easily break.
“Your anger is out of proportion with this fault.” She brought his face down to hers and kissed him.
No longer seeking comfort or offering thanks, this was a kiss of desire rekindled and passion delayed. She scuffed her hands through the week-old growth along his jaw, savoring the bristly softness against her palms. He opened his mouth over hers and she welcomed him in, needing the taste and feel of him like she needed the very air to breathe. His hand at her waist slipped lower, cupped her bottom and brought her in hard against his arousal, thick and straight and all for her.
Kallista’s moan nearly drowned out the distant sound of a genteel knocking at the door. It registered only when Torchay set her away from him. “Too much demands our attention now,” he said.
The quick, gasping rate of his breath eased Kallista’s frustration. A bit. Most new mothers did not wait so long before welcoming their mates back to their beds. Because Kallista had borne twins, and because her magic was so strange and so strong, Merinda had advised caution. So Kallista had followed the healer’s advice.
Now, caution drowned in a flood of passion and she was in no mood to resurrect it. She needed this, needed to know soul deep that what family remained to her here was indeed hers as she was theirs. And if Obed didn’t want her, Torchay did. But he was right, damn it. Now was not the moment.
Her own breathing finally under control, Kallista glanced up, saw Obed following the teams of servants bearing tin hip baths and willed him to look at her. Maybe the magic was returning, for he did what she wished. Or maybe the guilt she read in his eyes the few seconds he met her gaze made him look.
Why guilt? Did he believe he should want her kisses? He had wanted them—wanted her—once with a fervor that pulsed so powerfully through the magic linking them it had come near driving her insane. What had changed? Could it be changed back? Did she have any right to do so?
Torchay ordered the tubs set up in three of the small private sleeping rooms off to each side of the main parlor. A wise decision. If they’d bathed together in the same room, Kallista feared little bathing would have been accomplished. On her own, she washed quickly and efficiently, using the extra can of water to rinse her hair of soap. Dressed again in fresh clothes provided by the ever efficient Torchay, she was the first to emerge, her hair spread across her shoulders to dry.
She notified the servant waiting outside the suite door that her bath was ready to be removed and returned to find Torchay, clean and freshly shaved, if a bit crumpled around the edges. She was no better. Saddlebags did not keep clothing in the best of press. He drew her like one bespelled, but the only spell was the man himself. Fortunately, Obed joined them a moment later or she might have shocked the servants. Certain things called for the privacy of the ilian.
The last tub had just been carried out when another knocking, this one far from genteel, pounded at the door. Likely the guard had been waiting for this moment. Kallista caught Torchay’s gaze, then Obed’s, silently reminding them one at a time of the promises they had made. Then she called out. “Come.”
The door flew open and the guard lieutenant filled the opening, a sturdy young woman with a square jaw, taut now with disapproval. “The prisoner, as ordered, Captain. My men will remain here at the door.” Obviously she disapproved of leaving her prisoner unguarded.
“Outside the door, if you please, Lieutenant.” Kallista tried a smile, but when that had no effect, she put on her captain’s face. “Produce your prisoner.”
The lieutenant saluted and stepped back, vacating the opening. With a rattle of chains, Joh Suteny was shoved stumbling through the doorway. The ornately carved door slammed shut behind him with a noticeable “on-your-head-be-it” boom.
Kallista could only stare. Joh’s rags were gone, replaced with…nothing. He wasn’t quite naked, she realized once she managed to blink. He’d been given a loincloth, the sort worn by the poorest of the poor beneath their ragged tunics when summer grew too hot for trousers. It didn’t cover much.
He stood motionless there at the far end of the room and let her stare. Kallista had always thought Joh a fine-looking specimen of Adaran manhood, but she’d never suspected him of hiding this sculptured perfection beneath his uniform. She took a deep breath. If the One had indeed marked him, as Obed had verified, Her appreciation of male beauty had not diminished any over the past year.
“Come.” Kallista beckoned him closer.
Hobbled by his shackles, Joh did as he was bid. Kallista sensed more than saw Torchay’s tension and quieted him with a touch. Joh’s hair, beginning to dry from its washing, streamed from the dropped peak at his forehead back over his shoulders nearly to his waist. He’d worn it in a queue before, but one three times longer than an enlisted man’s short regulation braid. The prison had obviously not required him to cut it.
His hair was brown, a rich color lighter than Kallista’s own near-black, and much darker than the pale brown left behind after Stone had cut away all his gold fluff. The warm shade somehow made his eyes seem a brighter blue.
The barber had removed his beard, revealing the clean angles of Joh’s face, exposing the crisp edge of the mouth that had so often before been pressed into tight disapproval. Now, his lips pressed themselves together, but with some other emotion Kallista could not read. His face was the same, but different—more lines, or perhaps the same lines carved deeper. He seemed somehow thinner, though his defined musculature mocked that thought. Still, he seemed…as if all the unessential bits had been burned away leaving behind pure Joh.
“Far enough,” Torchay’s voice growled out.
Joh halted, his chains rattling to rest. Kallista heaved a little sigh, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Torchay’s overprotective attitude. Joh stood a dozen paces away, too far for her to see any mark. Too far even for comfortable conversation. But she could change that when the time came.
“Sit down.” She gestured at the gilded seating surrounding them.
“There.” Torchay pointed to a high-backed chair upholstered all over in a pale yellow velvet. Kallista remembered it as deep and soft and well nigh impossible to get out of in a hurry. A good choice.
Joh looked at the chair and back at Torchay as if asking whether he was truly meant to sit in such luxury. Kallista nodded, smiled, turning her hand toward the chair in invitation. Slowly, hampered by his chains, hesitantly, Joh shuffled toward the chair and lowered himself into it. When he was seated, Kallista strode forward, ignoring Torchay’s protest, slipping past his outstretched hand, and sat in the chair opposite. She left the two chairs on either side for her ever-vigilant bodyguards.
Neither of them sat. Almost as one, they moved the chairs back out of the way and stood, bright flame and dark, between Kallista and the bound, near-naked, oh-so-dangerous prisoner.
She waited until Joh met her eyes. “Tell me what happened.”
He shuttered the bright blue of his gaze as if against pain and drew in a breath through his fine, straight nose. With that fortification, he looked at her again.
“I did not know the powder would explode.” His voice was deep, intense, laden with emotion. Kallista could almost taste it, reaching with absent magic in a vain attempt to drink it down. His mark pulled at her. This was not what she meant him to tell, but apparently he needed to.
“What did you think, then?” Torchay’s voice held scorn, rage. “That it would carry them off to sweet dreams of paradise?”
Joh didn’t look away, focusing only on Kallista. “I was told it would heal you.”
“Of what?” Torchay spoke again, but Joh ignored him, spoke over the interruption.
“The vapors from the powder’s burning would enable an East healer to free you of the hold West magic had on you.”
Now both her men reacted with derision. Kallista ignored them, just as Joh did.
“I was a fool,” he said, voice gone bitter. “I couldn’t understand then what it meant to be marked by the One. I was a child frightened of the dark with a head full of half-truths and whispered lies, and I let myself believe them. Because I was afraid.”
Kallista watched him, trying to read the flickers behind his steady gaze, and she waited. Often, silence would bring her more than words.
“And I was angry,” Joh said so quietly she had to strain to hear. “I—I liked you. But when you married the Tibran di pentivas—”
“At the Reinine’s order.” Kallista spoke as softly as he.
“But back then, I felt betrayed.” His mouth twisted in a tiny smile. “Emotions seldom bow to reason. I admired you for treating me as you would any other officer. I had thought you free of the prejudice that sees a man as nothing but passions and brute strength. And then—”
“I proved you wrong.”
“It seemed so then. But I never wished you harm. We were officers in the same army. Sedili-in-arms. It was easier to believe that West magic had twisted you somehow. I wanted to think the powder’s smoke would—would return you to the captain I admired. I burned some, earlier, to test it, and that was all it did—make sparks and smoke. I never dreamed…”
“Where did you get it? The powder?” Torchay had not softened any. Kallista would not have expected him to.
“From a Barinirab master,” Joh replied without hesitation. “I never saw his face. He disguised his voice. He told me these things, that the smoke would heal and not harm.”
“You are one of these Barbs?” Obed shifted, hand coming to rest on the hilt of his saber.
“I was.”
Steel appeared in a tattooed hand so quickly Kallista did not see where he’d drawn it from. “Obed, you swore to me. He has not offered harm.”
She knew Torchay could move and attack with that lightning speed, but she had not known it of Obed. Where had a merchant-trader needed such skills?
Kallista touched his arm and reluctantly Obed tucked the knife in the sash around his waist. It had not been there before, she knew.
“You no longer belong to the Order of the Barbed Rose?” she asked.
“I will not be part of a group that manipulates its own people into doing murder.” Joh’s eyes held the anger his voice did not.
“But you won’t tell who gave you the powder,” Torchay said.
“I do not know.” Joh pushed the words through gritted teeth. “I was a Renunciate. Only Initiates and above meet the masters without masks.”
“Renunciate? What is that? Tell me about the Order.” Kallista needed whatever information he could give her. She’d never known anyone who admitted membership. The Order kept many secrets, not least, who they were.
“There are nine levels—BARINIRAB—beginning with a ceremony they call ‘Birth.’ Then Apprenticeship, Renunciation, Initiation, Naishar or service, Institution, Rejuvenation, Ascension and Birth again, to a state of unity with the One. The man I met wore the badge of a Rejuvenate on his cloak. I was only at the third level—second, really, for the first is just the ceremony.”
“When did you join? How?”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “It was not long after I was promoted to lieutenant. Some of the other officers sounded me out in discussions about West magic. I was curious. I wanted to learn more, and when they offered the chance to join, I took it. What I learned did not seem…evil. And I did not learn much. That was reserved for Initiates. As a Renunciate, I did not—do not know enough to be a danger to them.”
Joh paused before speaking again, holding Kallista’s gaze. “I wish I did. I would tell you all.”
She smiled and tucked her hands beneath her thighs to keep from reaching across the gap to pat his knee. “You will. Every single thing you know and some you don’t realize you do.”
“Brown cloaks with red linings.” Obed spoke, startling Kallista. He fingered the hilt of his dagger. “Are they of this order?”
Joh frowned. “You saw them? Men—women—wearing cloaks like that?”
“In the mountains, on our way here,” Kallista said.
“The middle ranks—Initiate, Naishan, Institute—wear the brown. But I never saw them in public. Why would they be now?”
“Because they’re no longer hiding their goals? Perhaps they were hunting us as they hunted the other naitani.” Kallista still felt the horror of knowing what they had done.
“Hunting her,” Torchay said. “The rest of us were just in their way.”
Joh looked as if hell had opened before him and devils were pouring out. Perhaps they were. A single demon had caused all the trouble from the north last year. Was there another? One causing Adarans to turn on each other? Kallista needed her magic back. Now. Possibly Joh could give it to her, but she wasn’t ready to find out yet.
“Tell me how you were marked,” she said.
