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Surely not his. He had none. Though he had begun to hope he might be given the chance to regain some small part of it. Still he was not worth a quarrel. “I am ready to go, Lieutenant.”
Tylle reached out to grab his arm and the captain blocked her. “And just how far do you think you’ll get, Joh?”
What did she mean by—? Oh. He remembered then, how for weeks the Tibran couldn’t get more than twenty paces from her without collapsing in a fit. Joh sank back down, perching this time on the edge of the chair so he could stand more quickly if need be. He was well and truly bound to her. Trapped by his own will. If he had not offered himself to the One, he would not have been accepted, and now he could go nowhere but at her side until the link between them was fully forged. And she terrified him.
Captain Varyl had pulled paper from a nearby desk and was scratching out a message with the poorly trimmed quill left on the desktop. A moment later, she thrust the message at Sergeant Omvir. “Take this to the Reinine. It’s a request for transfer orders.” Her eyes flicked toward the lieutenant. “Take it yourself, Torchay. Don’t hand it off to a servant. Obed can stand in as bodyguard. His skills are almost the equal of yours.”
“Better, in some things,” the sergeant muttered, tucking away the note, then reaching up to gather back his hair. He tied it, rather than braiding it properly, but it helped make him look a bit more military. “Maybe we ought to see about getting Obed a set of blacks.”
“I have my own blacks,” the dark man spoke, seeming to appear from nowhere, dressed in unrelieved black; a loose, foreign-looking robe over Adaran tunic and trews.
The captain’s bodyguard looked him up and down. “So you do. But there’s nothing about them to show who you serve, is there?” He spun on his heel and departed, leaving Joh feeling caught in undercurrents he could not map.
“Please, Lieutenant, sit.” The captain’s military mien faded a bit and she gestured at the chairs, playing hostess. “Obed, ring for refreshments, if you would.”
“My presence here is for duty, Captain,” Lieutenant Tylle sneered. “Not pleasant diversion.”
“Sit.” The steel in Captain Varyl’s voice had the lieutenant plopping down hard on one of the spindly armed chairs.
“You think I know nothing of duty?” The captain snarled, bracing her hands on the wooden arms, her face inches from the guard lieutenant’s. “There is a rebellion in Adara. These rebels threaten to destroy everything we hold dear. But rather than stay and see my family—our pregnant ilias and my children—to safety, I obeyed my Reinine’s orders. I left my babies—twins, just ten weeks old.
“Ninety days, lieutenant—that’s how old my little girls are. But I rode to Arikon with half our men because Serysta Reinine commanded it. Only two of the men in our ilian stayed with the babies—and one of them is blind. We did not know about the assassins’ attacks on the army and its naitani until we arrived. We did not know whether our iliasti still lived. But my Reinine commands and I obey.
“We rode eight nights through the rain to get here. We have not had anything to eat since we arrived, but went straight into conference with the Reinine, then directly here to deal with Lieutenant Suteny’s godmark. And you dare snivel at me about duty?”
“I—I—” The lieutenant gabbled, opening and closing her mouth, her face gone pale in the face of the captain’s anger.
Joh glanced at the man with the tattoos on his face. Obed. Joh remembered him and the spectacle he had created with his first appearance in Arikon. Now Obed glared at the lieutenant, as angry with her as the captain was. Joh would find no help in calming the situation there. He had to do something. It would not go well for his captain if she did what she seemed to be considering. Striking the lieutenant once as she had was bad enough. Striking her again, like this, would be far worse.
He touched her arm, cringing inwardly at the rattle of chains as he did. Goddess, he hated that sound. “Captain. You’re tired. Perhaps a bit—overwrought? I am sure Lieutenant Tylle didn’t mean anything by her words.”
“And I am sure that she did.”
“I—I apologize,” the lieutenant managed to stammer. “I did not know. That is, I—”
Captain Varyl glared a brief moment longer. “You see the folly of assuming what you do not know?” Then she sighed and allowed Joh’s touch to move her back. “Apology accepted. Goddess knows, I’m exhausted.”
She straightened, closing her eyes with another long sigh. Now, finally, her tattooed ilias came to urge her into a chair. Then servants arrived with food and the small crisis was over.
The captain and her ilias ate. The lieutenant nibbled. Joh refused refreshment. He was a prisoner, a convicted felon who should be in prison rather than here in luxury. Besides, the chains would rattle and clash every time he brought the food to his mouth, and though he deserved it, he could not bear that humiliation.
Sergeant Omvir returned from his errand, saluted sharply, handed over the papers he held, saluted again, then collapsed gracelessly into the nearest chair. He dropped a cloth bag at his feet with a faint clank, and began stuffing himself with the food that remained. “Goddess, I’d forgotten how good the cooks were here.”
“Is that a complaint about my cooking?” A fond smile curved the captain’s mouth as she lounged back in her chair.
“Saints, no. It’s a complaint about my own.” He bit off a chunk of bread. “Mine and Obed’s here. And Stone’s. That lad can burn water if he’s no’ careful.”
Joh watched their easy familiarity, greed and envy burning holes in his heart. He wanted that. With a desperation that made him pull back inside himself where it was safe. He couldn’t have it. Not after he’d come so near to destroying it. The sergeant should have killed him when he’d had the chance.
Lieutenant Tylle stood, papers in hand, and saluted. “Captain, I am at your command.”
She removed the key to Joh’s chains from her belt where it hung with her service awards, and laid it on the table, sliding it across to rest in front of Captain Varyl.
The captain returned the salute from where she sat. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand. There are quarters for you and your men just outside the suite, where Lieutenant Suteny was quartered last year. And I think you won’t take it amiss when I say that I desperately hope you do not return in another year’s time bearing your own godmark.”
“Goddess, no!” Tylle’s face paled in horror and Joh hid a smile. He felt much the same, and he was marked.
“Captain,” she went on, “I hope you won’t take this amiss, but think again about removing the chains. This man is not an officer in the Adaran army. Do not call him ‘lieutenant.’ He is not. He’s a convict. The only reason he was not hanged for murder is that his victims chanced to live.”
The captain’s gentle smile stabbed Joh to the heart. “I know, Lieutenant. We are the ones he almost killed. I have my bodyguards and my magic. All will be well.”
The lieutenant did not look as if she believed it—Joh did not believe it either—but she saluted and left the room. Joh had done the exact same thing many times last year, his curiosity to know what happened behind the closed doors burning him whole.
Now, he was left behind, his curiosity about to be fed, and he remembered the sergeant’s words. Beware what you ask for. Joh was not certain he wanted to know what would happen now that the parlor doors were closed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Captain Varyl tossed the heavy iron key to Sergeant Omvir, who set it back on the table. He picked up the bag he’d brought with him. “Reinine sent you something else. Said if you mean to have him out of those chains, you’d better be willing to put him in these.”
Omvir opened the bag and pulled out a set of di pentivas anklets with their delicate looped and chiming chains. The bracelets followed. Unlike a woman’s ilian bangles, they were wide and close-fitting, with clips and locks that would fasten a man’s wrists together and bind him closer than the chains Joh currently wore.
All four of them stared at the decorative bonds spilled across the table. They were shackles just as truly as the iron that bound him now, their delicacy deceptive due to the magic that had forged strength into them. The main difference was that his present chains marked him as felon, as prisoner. The others would declare him ilias, part of a family.
Di pentivas rites lingered from Adara’s ancient history like the odor of some stinking mold from a forgotten closet, from the days of warlords and the battles of metal against magic. The magic—even more predominantly female then than now—had prevailed of course, and to keep the peace, many of the men on the losing side were married di pentivas into Adaran iliani.
The men had no choice in the matter, and could not divorce or be divorced from the ilian. However, if they settled into the marriage and accepted it, they could eventually leave off the wrist bands and exchange the anklets with their looped and chiming chains for the ordinary anklets of a married man.
Though they were still legal, no one practiced the ancient rites any longer, nor had in a hundred and a half of years. Save for Kallista and her ilian, last year.
The captain touched one of the chains. “They look like the ones Stone wore.”
“They are. I don’t think the Reinine will let you give them back again. She didn’t seem best pleased you gave them back the once.”
She stirred the chain on the table and looked up at her bodyguard ilias. “So?”
The red-haired man took a deep breath and scrubbed his hands across his face. “What do you want me to say? What can I say? It would be stupid for me to object now. He’s already ilias.”
“What?” The word was startled out of Joh and he wanted to hide when the others turned their eyes on him. “You can’t be serious.”
“As a sword’s bite,” Obed said.
“I told you.” The captain’s gentle voice sliced deep. “The only time anything remotely like that seven-fold magic ever happened before was during the ilian ceremonies. When the One bound us together into an ilian. This time, She did not wait for the ceremony to bind us. Torchay is right. We are already ilian.”
“Madness.” Joh gripped his hands tight so their shaking wouldn’t show, but he could do nothing to stop it from spreading through his entire body.
Again she smiled that sweet, cruel smile. “Isn’t it? Look at the ilian you’re part of. Even with you, we’re as much Tibran as Adaran. You get used to the madness after a while.” She pushed the iron key toward her bodyguard again and this time he took it up.
“Sergeant—” Joh sank back into the chair as if he thought he could escape the man. “You’re her bodyguard. It’s your duty to protect her. You said it yourself. This is impossible.”
The hawk-nosed man paused in the act of unlocking the leg irons and looked up. “So was that bit of business that happened when she touched you.” He turned the key and the lock fell open, the chain fell to the ground. “And my name’s Torchay. You’d best be getting used to using it. The one of us you’ve not met face-to-face is Fox. The rest you know.”
“Sergeant, think,” Joh hissed out the words. Were these people all mad? “Where’s the man who would take on the Reinine herself if she endangered your captain?”
“Oh, he’s here.” This time when the sergeant looked up, death rode in his eyes. “Never mistake that. He’s always here.”
He tossed aside the first set of iron shackles. “But you’re no danger to her, now. Not physically.”
The sergeant picked up one of the di pentivas ankle bands and fastened it around Joh’s left ankle, saying the words Joh had never expected to hear, beginning the process of binding him into the family. When Omvir moved back, the captain was there, fastening on the other band, shackling Joh again in bonds forged of silver, magic and sacred vows.
He shook his head, not sure whether he was trying to deny the captain’s action or the emotions snarling through him. She gave him her kiss and the dark, tattooed man moved in, fastening a gold bangle around his ankle, saying the same words.
Joh shuddered. He could not do this. He could not possibly be part of any ilian, much less one he’d almost destroyed. “Sergeant.” He tried once more when the red-haired bodyguard took up the iron key, this time to unlock the manacles.
“Torchay” he corrected. “And now you’re one of us, you’d better be calling her Kallista. She doesn’t like it when we don’t.”
The first iron cuff dropped away. Torchay spoke matter-of-factly as he took up a wide, gold band. “You might want to wipe your face.”
Saints and sinners. It was covered in tears. He’d never been good at handling things like this and he had been bombarded with so many conflicting emotions in the last few moments. With his liberated hand, no chains rattling, Joh swiped his face dry. Goddess, he hated this, hated feeling so churned up, so guilty, so grateful, so overwhelmed.
When Joh went still again, Torchay—the sergeant—fastened the di pentivas band around his wrist, then did the same on the other side.
“I’ve made no oaths in return,” Joh muttered, resentful that they paid his objections no mind. “I’ve given no bands.”
“You’re di pentivas. You don’t have to.” Torchay sounded almost cheerful.
Then the dark one, Obed, slapped his hand down on the table between them. When he pulled it back, two plain slim anklets and a matching bracelet lay there gleaming. “There,” he said. “Give them. Swear the vows. They are written on your heart whether you say them with your mouth.”
“Where did these come from?” Kallista—no, the captain—asked the question in Joh’s mind.
The dark man lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “You said we should keep a supply, for instances such as this, when the One adds to our number.”
This happened often? Joh supposed it must, recalling last year’s events.
“Have you been carrying them with you all this time?” Kallista reached out as if to touch the bangles, then did not.
“I had to get more, after Fox. But since then, yes.” Obed turned those strange, dark brown eyes on Joh and fell silent. The other two did the same, just watching him. Waiting.
Joh let his head fall back against the high softness of the chair and shut his eyes. He should not be here. He had almost killed them, for the One’s sake. And yet—
He couldn’t deny the mark, couldn’t deny that the magic had swept him along with the others. Nor, much as he might wish to, could he deny wanting what they offered, or the paralyzing fear of taking it.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his burning eyes. He had been praying for a chance to serve, for a way to make things right, but deep down he had never really thought the One would take him up on his prayers. Now, however, the opportunity was here. He could not turn his back on it, no matter how much it terrified him. He could only take the next step and trust to his newfound practice of faith that he would not fall off a cliff.
He moved his hands from his eyes, marveling at the silence when no chains rattled, and focused his bleary vision on the bands gleaming softly atop the inlaid wood. Taking up the smallest, the band meant for Kallista, Joh struggled to the edge of the chair and fell off it, onto his knees.
The sudden motion had the other men startling, touching hands to blades, but nothing more. Kallista shifted, as if she meant to rise, to meet him.
“No.” Joh shook his head, crossing the small space between them on his knees. “I come to you. I may wear pentivas chains, but I come to swear my own vows.”
He slid the band over the hand she held out to him, adding it to the other four bangles on her left wrist. “I come pledging myself to you. Heart to heart, my body for yours, in whatever comes our way. We, above all others, joined as one before the One who holds all that is, was and will be. So I swear with all that is in me.”
The tears were back. This time he let them go, for wonder of wonders, there were tears on Kallista’s face as well. She bent and touched her lips to his before wiping her tears away with a little self-conscious laugh.
One at a time, Joh took up the ankle bands and repeated the oath, first to Torchay, then Obed. And it was done. The first step was taken. Pray the One the next steps got easier.
Aisse lay on her pallet in the gloom of the cave, pretending to sleep while she waited for the warriors to return. Two babies slept tucked against their sedil still inside her who never seemed to sleep and even now thumped and turned. Aisse could feel Merinda watching her.
The healer was worried, she knew. It had to have been alarming to see Aisse come awake screaming, caught in an apparent fit. But the woman wouldn’t leave her alone, endlessly pick, pick, picking, wanting to know what had happened, how she felt, was the baby moving? As if she couldn’t see it moving in great waves and bulges.
Aisse sighed. Merinda went silent and still in her corner, forcing Aisse to pretend at dreaming, smacking her lips, mumbling wordlessly. Merinda would drive her mad. She might be ilias—of a sort—but she wasn’t marked. She didn’t know what the magic could do, hadn’t been caught up in it when it swept through them. Aisse hadn’t known herself it could reach so far.
Perhaps it was petty, but Aisse didn’t want Merinda to know. The magic was hers. Hers and the men’s. Merinda didn’t have any part of it, nor did she need to. Not unless Kallista said, and Kallista wasn’t here. Merinda could do sex with the men if she wanted. Aisse didn’t care about that. But the magic was theirs alone.
“The mighty hunters return.” Stone burst through the low cave entrance. “We come, bearing success before us.”
“Actually, we come dragging a goat behind us,” Fox amended, ducking inside. “And if Stone hadn’t shouted loud enough to be heard back in Tibre, we’d have a deer as well. If he could have shot straight enough to kill it.”
Hiding her smile, Aisse heaved herself more or less upright, patting the babies back to sleep when they stirred. Fox hauled on the rope he held, and true enough, a small goat came baa-ing into the cave. Its hooves scrabbled against the stone floor as it fought to free itself of the tether.
“It came running up to us,” Fox said. “I think it wanted to be milked. Something must have happened to her kid. But it doesn’t seem to like ropes.” The goat kicked at him and he dodged the blow.
“It heard me shouting and came.” Stone winked at Aisse as he sat beside her near the fire. “Thought I was calling it. See there? If I hadn’t shouted, we wouldn’t have the goat and since we were hunting food for the babies, a she-goat is better than a deer any day. I’m frozen.”
“Why were you shouting?” Merinda brought him dry trousers from the packs across the fire.
Stone surprised Aisse by looking her way rather than Merinda’s, question in his eyes. She gave him a subtle shake of her head and he answered with an equally subtle nod. He took the trousers and stood to change, delaying his response further.
“I fell,” he said. “Tripped over something under the snow, slid down a bank and laid out full length.” He displayed his ice-crusted frontside before stripping off the wet garments. “It was cold.”
“Come and change, Fox,” Merinda called. “You need to warm up, too.”
“I didn’t fall. I’m not as wet as Stone. Let me see to the animals.” He paused, apparently observing the goat with his other sense. “Does anyone know how to milk a goat, or is this another thing we have to discover how to do?”
Merinda sighed. “I can do it. You come dry off. Warm up.” Her green robe swished against her wool-clad legs as she strode across the cave to the side reserved for the animals—riding horses, pack horses and now the goat.
Fox waited for her. “Thank you, Merinda.” He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead, both cheeks, then her lips, brief and almost—but not quite—chaste. He left the healer staring after him in bemusement for a moment before she turned slowly toward the goat. It baa-ed at her.
“What was that?” Stone asked when Fox reached them.
“You said she wants sex. If we give her that—as much as we can right now, more later—maybe she will not ask questions. She doesn’t need to know about the magic.”
“Yes, exactly” Aisse agreed. “What happened?”
“You were there.” Stone pulled his dry tunic down over his stomach and turned his back to the fire, rubbing warmth into his buttocks. “You know what happened. The magic—”
“Yes, but how? Why?” Aisse picked up Fox’s discarded trousers. “These need washing, don’t they?”
“And mine as well.” Stone grinned cheerfully at her.
