02 - The Barbed Rose (31 page)

“Then we will give them the questions to ask, and one of these bodies will attend the questioning without a rider.” Ashbel-Oskina crossed to the eastern entrance and pulled a silken cord hanging there. “This one is important,” she said. “If we cannot ride it, we will seduce it to our cause. And if we cannot seduce it, we will break it.”

“Doesn’t break mean dead, like destroy?” Untathel asked.

“No.” Ashbel-Oskina smacked the other woman in the head. “It just means broken. Broken is not dead, but broken will serve, if the man will not.”

“Kallista,
breathe
.” Torchay shook her again, hoping to bring her back from wherever she’d gone. People were beginning to stare—he knew Kallista hated that—but if she did not take a breath soon, he would give them a true spectacle by breathing for her, mouth to mouth, here in the corridors of power.

They’d been
mingling
. Torchay’s mouth would have twisted in sour amusement were he not so afraid for Kallista. The announcement of Viyelle Prinsipella’s intention to join their ilian had brought a flurry of invitations to luncheons, nuncheons, parties and flings. They’d attended every one Viyelle said was important, and Torchay had to give her credit. She knew just which were the important occasions. When they weren’t at some event or other, they
mingled
with the court in the galleries, courtyards, drawing rooms and corridors, seeing, listening and being seen.

Today, it had been a corridor, once the interminable meal with the Prinsep of Turysh had finally ended. Torchay had never known anyone more dull or self-important, and he had chosen the army as a career. Loitering in the corridor below the Reinine’s tower, half-listening to gossip and watching for danger hadn’t been any more entertaining.

Until, as the sun was sending long golden shafts of light through the western windows, Kallista had gasped and her eyes seemed to turn inward. Torchay had stepped closer, took her arm to support her in case it was needed. Several ticks passed before he had realized she was not breathing.

It had happened once before, Kallista forgetting to breathe, a year ago when her godmarked magic was new. But that had been at night, in a dream, not in broad daylight in a corridor crowded with courtiers while Kallista walked and talked and smiled among them. He would not panic. He could not.

“All right.” Torchay met Obed’s eyes and saw him chase away the same mortal fear that gripped himself. “We haven’t time to get her back to our rooms. I need to breathe for her now.”

Obed lifted her in his arms and went to one knee, preparing to lay her on the hallway floor when Kallista’s eyes flew open and she dragged in a deep, gasping breath. She glanced up at Obed, then searched until she saw Torchay and her hand reached for him. Relief flooded Torchay as he took it and kissed it. Her other hand gripped Obed’s as she struggled to find her own feet.

“Demons,” she whispered.

“Here?” Torchay spoke as quietly as she, despite his alarm. Why didn’t she call on their magic? Or had the demon struck from ambush?

Kallista shook her head. “Back to our rooms.”

Her hand trembled even when he held it tighter. Something had gone very wrong. Torchay wanted to carry her to safety in his own arms, but her safety depended more on his being unencumbered. He signaled to Joh who took her from Obed.

“I can walk,” Kallista complained as they started off.

“Not fast enough.” Torchay opened a path through the crowds, glad to know Obed guarded her back. He wanted her safe—or as safe as it was possible to be.

“Wedding nerves.” Viyelle raised her voice to be heard. She smiled, pacified the curious, soothed the fearful. “She hasn’t been sleeping well. I believe she now pays the price.” She kept up with them, skillfully slipping away from the grasping hands and malicious comments, easing their way with her patter.

Torchay was grateful once more for the One’s wisdom in marking a courier for them. He’d been skeptical at first—very well, resentful. Most iliani stopped at four or six. Though they could legally expand as far as twelve, the difficulties of successfully managing so many personalities and relationships made such large iliani rare outside the temples. And temple families tended to change members more frequently than any others. But eight was not such a large number, certainly better than unfortunate seven, and Viyelle had proved a good fit.

Besides, by taking Joh in hand, she lessened the pressure on Kallista. With Obed, and yes, Torchay himself, focused exclusively on Kallista, having Joh wanting her as well made things more difficult. Viyelle eased that tension. And thinking about her kept Torchay’s mind from his urge to panic.

Joh crossed the open space in the parlor and set Kallista on the sofa while Obed bolted the door, then joined them.

“Demons, you said?” Torchay perched on the arm of the sofa, hovering. He couldn’t help it.

“In Turysh.” Kallista closed her eyes momentarily, before locking her gaze on his. “That’s where the rebels have taken Fox. I got that much before I lost him.”

“By lost, you mean…?” Torchay asked carefully. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but Kallista needed to be sure.

“Not dead.” She gripped Joh’s hand tighter and reached over her shoulder for Obed’s, her gaze holding on to Torchay. “The link is still there, so he’s not dead, but it’s faint. Choked off.” She took a deep breath and held it for a few ticks before letting it out. “I think a demon was trying to take him over.”

Torchay recoiled, memory slamming into him. A demon had got its claws into him, had come too damn close to possessing him. It still gave him nightmares, the ordinary sort. Only accepting the God’s mark had kept him from that fate, and only the addition of the magic given him in that moment had allowed Kallista to destroy that demon. They had survived.
He
had survived, but the horror stayed with him. “Did it succeed?”

The fear in Kallista’s eyes echoed the horror in his own. She knew what such a thing meant. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

He held his arms out and Kallista nearly lunged into them, abandoning their iliasti on the sofa. As he cradled her in his lap, offering comfort no one else could, he saw a brief flash of the old jealousy in Obed’s eyes before it melted into understanding.

“Fox is marked.” Torchay found his own comfort in that thought even as he offered it to Kallista. “Marked more than a year. That will protect him.”

“I hope so.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Viyelle’s question was about emotional assistance, Torchay was sure, but Kallista didn’t take it that way.

Her trembling stopped and she lifted her head, thoughts obviously turning. She glanced up at Torchay, then straightened, looking at the others. “We can go get him out of their hands.”

“What if a demon
has
possessed him?” Joh asked.

“Then we will dispossess it. Fox belongs to
us
.” Kallista stood.

Never had she looked more like an avenging instrument of the One. Chills shivered down Torchay’s back as he rose to his feet behind her.

“Excuse me.” Viyelle lifted a tentative hand for notice. “What about the ceremony on Graceday?”

Kallista pulled the other woman to her feet for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “We need time to prepare for our trip. We won’t leave till afterward.”

Viyelle grinned crookedly. “We don’t have to tell my mothers that our wedding trip is a rescue mission into the rebel stronghold.”

“Exactly.” Kallista laughed, though it sounded a bit off to Torchay. Still it was a laugh.

She turned to Joh. “We need you to organize our supplies. Decide what we’ll need to take—quickest, quietest transport to Turysh, disguises, whatever we need—and work with Obed to procure it. Go through army channels. I don’t want anyone wandering the city alone.

“Viyelle, you’re in complete charge of the ceremony, and of your family and the rest of the court. We need to cut back some on the mingling so Joh and Obed can get their work done, but we’ll keep to what’s necessary.”

“Your faint today will give us an excuse to be less in the public eye,” Viyelle said.

“Good.”

“And what will you and I be doing?” Torchay asked, crossing his arms.

“You’ll need to give Joh and Obed a list of the medical supplies we’ll need.”

He’d expected that. He was no East magic healer, but he had the best nonmagical medical training available. All bodyguards did. And he’d taught Obed what he could during those few peaceful months in their mountain home, so that the next time he was gutted—which seemed to occur with alarming regularity—there would be another with medical training. “What about you?”

“I will be consulting with the Reinine and anyone else necessary to get permission to leave Arikon and orders to go to Turysh. Serysta Reinine said that General Uskenda wanted me—us—to spy things out in Turysh, so that should be no difficulty. It would be nice to have orders to rescue Fox, but they’re not necessary.”

“We
will
rescue Fox, won’t we?” Viyelle said in a small voice.

Kallista’s smile held more than a little of the wolf. “Orders or no, we will get Fox out of the demon’s hands.”

“For curiosity’s sake,” Torchay said, dream memories coming back to him, “just how many demons are we talking about?”

“Four.”

“Four demons, all in one place.” He frowned. The others did not look happy, either. “And there were how many in the boat?”

“Two. Well, one of them sort of…ate the other one. But there were two to begin with.”

“And with the five of us, you were barely able to drive them out of the city, but not destroy them.”

“One did eat the other, so there’s just one left now.”

“Did eating the other demon make the first one stronger?”

“Well…yes.”

“And there are
four
demons in Turysh.” Torchay fought back the familiar urge to strangle his naitan.

“Fox is there. His magic makes all the rest of it much easier to control.”

“But you don’t know if he’s been possessed, do you?”

“No. But—”

Torchay stopped her with a raised hand. “You don’t
know
. Just how do you think you will manage
four
demons?”

“We’ll hide. The demon couldn’t find us last year when we were veiled. If we can’t fight them, we’ll grab Fox and go, under the veil.”

“You think it will be that easy?”

“Hells, no. But what else can we do? We can’t leave Fox there.”

Torchay sighed, unable to argue against the agony in her eyes. “Of course we can’t. I simply wanted to be sure you’d thought through all the difficulties.”

“If we haven’t, we’ll improvise.” Kallista waved a dismissive hand.

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

G
raceday dawned clear, fair and warm, spring’s promise nearly melted into summer. Kallista fidgeted, wanting the day over, wanting to be on the road for Turysh. But Viyelle deserved her time in the light and politics had to be considered.

They hadn’t been able to keep the ceremony small and private, after all. Saminda Prinsep had gone to Serysta Reinine who thought holding the preliminary bracelet ceremony outdoors so the whole court could attend was a wonderful idea. Major Naitan Kallista Varyl, Special Attaché to the Reinine, could only smile, bow and acquiesce.

Viyelle had kept it as simple as possible, limiting attendants to one total and forbidding her second mother any beribboned doves or fish swimming in glass towers. The blooming apple trees had been finally deemed sufficient for decoration, though Kallista noted as she arrived with her iliasti at the courtyard’s eastern entrance that the trees seemed to have blossomed with pale green and blue ribbon bows and festoons of netting. The guards providing security around the perimeter were hidden from sight or doubtless they’d be decorated within an inch of their lives as well.

“Mother.”
Viyelle ground the word between her teeth.

Joh patted her arm. “It’s not doves or fish.”

“True.” She took a deep breath and looked up at Kallista. “Ready?”

Kallista straightened her tunic, another of Obed’s extravagances—a long civilian dress tunic in red brocade slit up the sides so her red hose showed. They all wore red of various shades this time, the color of the One’s rose. Kallista rather liked the symbolism of unity. She also liked how splendid everyone looked in their finery.

Torchay’s red came close to matching his hair, shading a bit toward orange. Viyelle’s red leaned toward rose and Joh’s was more of a wine-red, while Kallista and Obed wore bright, true red.

“We do look good, don’t we?” She grinned at the others.

“Arikon will be stunned.” Viyelle grinned back. “We look
magnificent
.”

With a brisk nod, Kallista led out, Viyelle half a step behind her. They took their places near the entrance, to keep Kallista sufficiently close to Joh. Because half the bonded ilian was absent, no prelate presided over this ceremony. It really should have been a small private affair, but no use moaning over it now.

In unison, Kallista and Viyelle turned to face the entrance, and the males of the ilian present emerged into afternoon sunlight. One by one, beginning with Kallista, they each presented Viyelle with a bracelet and made their vows. When Joh stepped back to his place after crossing the circle to Viyelle in defiance of his
di pentivas
chains, Viyelle took all the remaining bands at once from their attendant, her sedil Kendra.

Kallista smiled to herself. She’d never seen such a sour-faced attendant. She accepted the bracelet from Viyelle, received her kiss of promise, then watched as she made the same promise to the others, kneeling to slip on each anklet. As Viyelle strode back to her own place in the circle, Kallista took a deep breath. Time for the speech.

She could give orders to a regiment and discuss strategy with a crowd of generals, but speaking like this gave her the collywobbles. She could do it if she had to, but she would truly, honestly rather not. This was one of the “have to” occasions. As the oldest female in their ilian, that made her their speaker, even if she hadn’t been ranking officer among their military members.