02 - The Barbed Rose (20 page)

“Someone started shooting arrows at us in the middle of Tailor’s Square.” Torchay poured water into a basin in the big bedroom while the others filed in behind him. Kallista wanted to sit, but she was afraid of the sleep that hovered just behind her eyelids, so she leaned against the wall beside the washstand.

“That was a bit of good work, by the way, Joh ilias.” Torchay wet a cloth and started scrubbing at the dried blood. “How did you know that first one was coming?”

“I saw it.” Joh seemed to want to shrink inside himself as attention turned his way. “Gweric Naitan said to watch the heights, so I did. Just happened I was in the back nearest the assassin.”

Torchay nodded approval. “Good eyes. Good instincts.” He exchanged a glance with Obed. “I’d like you to begin advanced training this afternoon with Obed.”

Both men nodded acknowledgment. Obed spoke. “Another blade in defense of the Chosen One is always welcome.”

Kallista took the cloth from Torchay and turned him so she could clean the blood from his back.

“What can I do?” Viyelle’s voice coming from the open doorway reminded Kallista of her presence.

“You can take a message to the blasted banker.” Kallista dropped the cloth into the basin and leaned against the wall again. “We never did make it that far. Escort him back here. And ask a few merchants to drop by with some of their wares. Clothing. Belts. Boots. We need to outfit Joh pretty much from the skin out, and the rest of us need extras for court. Uniforms. Whoever has the local contract for uniforms. Send for them, too.”

“And I?” Gweric spoke from behind Viyelle. Only now did Kallista notice he had his tunic on inside out.

“Suggestions?” Kallista made the question general. “As a West naitan he’s vulnerable. He needs to know how to defend himself. When Fox gets here, they can work together, but—”

“I will teach him.” Obed inclined his head. “His limitations are not so very limiting.”

“Excellent.” Kallista pushed off the wall. “Where’s lunch? I’m starved.”

Aisse walked stiff-legged across the meadow, hands in the small of her back to help her stretch.

“How are you faring?” Fox walked beside her, worried. “I know you couldn’t rest well in the cave, and now we’re traveling again. That’s even harder on you.” He set a hand on her shoulder and pushed his thumb gently into her aching muscle.

“More.” Aisse managed to speak through her groan of pleasure.

Fox chuckled and complied, bringing both hands to bear in the massage, pleased she let him do it.

“Better now,” she admitted. “This morning, I felt—”

“Unsettled.” Fox finished the sentence for her. “Like something was wrong. Badly wrong.”

“Exactly.” Aisse turned to look at him. “You, too?”

“Yes. And Stone.” He moved behind her again and went back to work. “Do you think Kallista and the others were in trouble of some kind?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I wish I did. I don’t like this.”

“Nor do I. But at least the weather’s turned. If I hadn’t been up to my knees in it, I wouldn’t have believed this pass was too full of snow to travel just two days ago. Not as warm as it is today.”

“Spring,” Aisse said, as if that said it all. And it did. “Come, the babies are almost done. We can eat while we ride. We should hurry.”

“As long as you take no harm from the hurrying, I agree.” Fox escorted Aisse as they joined the others. There, he asked the question worrying him. “How much longer to reach Sumald?”

“At this pace?” Merinda considered. “Three more days, at least. Save for the storm, we’d have been there Graceday past, I’m sure.”

The goat bleated from its tether tied to a pack horse. With a sigh, Fox grabbed the rope and started hauling the animal in, its hooves digging into the dirt in protest. Merinda had insisted that dragging the beast on its side behind the horses because it refused to walk would interfere with milk production. So it rode tied atop one of the pack animals and came down to graze every time they halted to tend the babies.

Fox was getting heartily tired of tying, untying and retying the infernal beast, and especially tired of getting kicked and bit. He gathered it up by the hooves and slung it gently into place. The babies needed it. But when they reached Korbin—goat stew.

“If we’re ready, we should go,” he said when the creature was secured. Kallista would worry if she came to meet them in Korbin and they weren’t there. Their family needed to be together again. It was another thing he
knew
without being able to explain it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he next few days in Arikon passed quietly. So quietly Kallista thought she might scream with frustration. Torchay suggested, and they all agreed, that routine would give another assassin a chance to succeed where the earlier one had failed, so they tried to avoid doing the same thing twice, even rotating bedrooms within their suite. If the palace hadn’t been so crowded, Kallista was sure Torchay would have had them moving from suite to suite.

Some meals they took in their parlor, though with the palace so full the servants were running themselves to the bone trying to keep up with the demands of those who thought they had a right to demand. The ilian often ate in the various dining rooms in both palaces that had been turned over to the military: in sergeant’s mess with Torchay in uniform and Kallista in plainclothes, in officer’s dining with Kallista in uniform and Torchay in his blacks, even in courier’s hall with Viyelle leading the way.

They trained in their suite and any other open space they could find. Of course, any time Torchay bowed to accept her gloves, whatever space they were in became vacant, or mostly so. On occasion Gweric would follow and watch the magic.

The demons haunted them all. Kallista’s dreams remained empty. Her men dreamed of ordinary things—training, sex, walking naked into the Grand Hall for a state dinner. She wanted to show Gweric how to
see
a demon, how it appeared to magical vision, but she found nothing to show. The demon—if it still lurked within the city—managed to elude any magic she sent looking for it. And since the magic still wasn’t working quite properly, Kallista wasn’t sure whether her magic was at fault or the demon might have departed.

Three full days had passed since the archer’s sneaking attack on Kallista, but Obed was not fool enough to relax his vigilance. None of the other military naitani left to Adara had been attacked again. The rebels seemed to be focusing all their venom on Kallista. But he and her other iliasti would keep her safe. When he had trekked across the Southern desert and mountains to find the Chosen One, he had thought his wealth would be of greatest value to his beloved—and it was of value. But his skill as a fighter seemed to be valued even more, and that was a thing that felt strange to him. Strange, but good.

He prepared for sleep, removing his garments, laying his weapons where he could reach them quickly. Joh slept near the door, first defense if assassins got past the guards at the suite’s entrance. Obed was second defense tonight, sleeping with Kallista behind him, with Torchay on her far side against the wall, protecting her between them.

Even after most of a year, sleeping in a bed that held another person—much less two or more others—was another thing that felt strange to Obed. Though he had married her—them—that long ago, it was not until Firstday of this same week that he had truly accepted what this binding of theirs meant. What it was. It was too strange a thing from what he’d known all his life, too difficult to understand and accept all at once, and so it had taken this long.

She loved him. She
saw
him, Obed im-Shakiri, flawed with pride—though he had little enough to be proud of—filled with stubbornness and selfishness and too many more things to name. And she loved him anyway. When his flaws pushed him into doing things that hurt her, she forgave. Because she loved him. He understood it now. He knew it. He felt it. How could he do any less?

Kallista lay in the bed next to Torchay, watching Obed, smiling. He couldn’t help smiling back. The expression was beginning to feel not quite so strange on his face. Obed lay down beside her, turning so she could tuck herself into his back. This was where he belonged.

In his dreams, Obed rode along a muddy track at the back of a small caravan. Four other riders only, with four additional pack animals, two men riding as guard before and behind the two women. There was a live goat tied atop one of the packhorses, bleating in indignant protest. It made Obed smile.

This was the rest of their ilian. Obed realized it when he saw how heavily pregnant one of the women was and matched that state with her cropped yellow hair. The path where they rode led down by a series of crookback turns along a steep mountainside to a thatch-roofed village. Obed’s smile widened. Kallista would be glad to know the others were safe.

Then, when their road came down onto the level plateau where the town was built, Obed saw them. Brown-and-scarlet cloaks in the village. Rebels.

“’Ware!” he cried, spurring his horse to ride ahead. “Beware! It’s a trap! The town is taken!”

In Obed’s dream, Fox heard his warning and threw aside his cloak, drawing his sword. He shouted something to the others. Stone gathered the women and babies, hurrying them back up the trail. But as Obed watched, Fox fell, cut down by rebel swords. One by one, the others fell also, until only the screaming of an infant could be heard over the coarse laughter of the villains.

Obed shouted, struggled to swing his weapon, but his arms would not move. His feet were nailed to the ground. One of the rebels walked to the dead horse that had borne a now motionless Aisse. She swung her sword, and the crying ceased.

He roared his rage and grief. Obed wanted out of this dream. He needed to know it wasn’t real, but he could not wake.

Then he saw it. Or felt it. Or perhaps he smelled it. Evil condensed to its purest essence. Red eyes smirked at him. “Truth,” the demon whispered. “You carry truth.”

“No!” Obed shouted. “Lies! All lies!”

His shout still echoed in the small room when he jerked upright and awake, bringing Kallista with him. She was wrapped around him, her hands on his face, lips to his ear, whispering reassurance. Obed wrapped his arms around her and held on tight, letting his agony go in a groan.

“Are you with us?” Torchay laid a hand on his shoulder.

Obed took a shuddering breath, hoping to clear his head. “I think so. Goddess, I must have been mad. To think I was jealous of your nightmares.” His arms tightened around Kallista. “But if these are the dreams you suffered, beloved, then I am glad to take some of the burden from you. We all are.” He included the others, because he could not speak less than truth. He knew they felt as he did.

“I’m not.” She got to her feet and drew him with her, out of the bed. “I have more defenses than you. Come. Into the parlor. Tell us what you saw.”

Obed’s tale, told as he held tight to Kallista with Torchay at his back and Joh’s hand on his shoulder, made her heart freeze. Frantically, Kallista searched inside her, counting up links. She couldn’t access the magic of her absent iliasti, couldn’t reach them through the links, but since her magic’s more-or-less return, she could at least sense the presence of their links.

“When you woke, you were shouting ‘lies,’” Kallista said. “And it
was
a lie, Obed. You knew it for what it was. My links with them still hold. They are alive and unharmed.”

“Praise be.” He relaxed against her, resting his forehead on her shoulder. “It seemed so real. I am glad to know it was not.”

“Still—” Kallista stroked a hand down the unbound silk of his hair. “It wouldn’t hurt to ask the Reinine to send a warning to her troop heading that way, and perhaps one to Sumald, if they’ve a farspeaker of their own. This dream may have come as warning, and was merely seized by the demon for torment.”

“I pray the One that is so.” Obed shuddered and held her tighter. “Our children…”

Kallista pulled back his hair and pressed a kiss to his bared temple. He had never before referred to them as
our children
, only
yours
. She would not call attention to it. She would simply be grateful it had happened.

“We should go back to bed,” Torchay said. “Get what rest we can.”

“Maybe I can get a warning through to our iliasti.” She had been able to reach farspeakers in Arikon who had no links with her during the assassin archer’s attack.

“All right, try.” Torchay slid his hand along Kallista’s arm. “But don’t exhaust yourself doing it.”

Kallista lifted a hand to cup Joh’s face where he sat behind her and turned her head till his cheek touched hers, accessing his magic that way, though his hand rested on her shoulder. She found the three silent links deep inside where her magic lived and kissed them, willing them to wake.

“Drawing,” she warned, wrapping invisible fingers in the magic she could reach and hauling it forth.

She spun it fine—it had to reach a long distance—and loaded it with warning before she sent it flying down the links, dragging out more and more magic to keep the line unbroken. On and on it sped into an endless distance, draining her energy with every immaterial league it passed. Just before it faded, she caught a faint sense of her absent iliasti, Fox, Stone and Aisse together.

Fox sent a questioning thought, but Kallista had time and strength only to give her love and the warning before the magic frayed into nothingness and she collapsed.

“Up you go.” Torchay lifted her in his arms. “You’re done for the night.”

She looped her arms around his neck and snuggled in. “They’re all right. Could you sense it?”

“No, but I’m glad you did.” Torchay rolled her into the bed and crawled over her to the wall side. “No more dreams,” he ordered. “From anyone. Me included.”

“At least we know I can reach them if we have to,” Kallista mumbled through lips that already slept.

“Good. Now sleep.” Torchay pulled her back against his chest.

“Where’s Obed?”