02 - The Barbed Rose (5 page)

Courtiers dressed in eye-blinking color combinations milled about vying for notice and position. The younger reckless set still swaggered in their half capes with their short-cropped hair and their fancy fencing swords at their sides, putting on a show. Viyelle—prinsipella, now courier—had been one of them. Was she still?

Serysta Reinine waited in the war room behind her audience chamber. The Winterhold audience chamber was vastly different from the one in Summerglen that Kallista had passed through on her first meeting with the Reinine. This chamber was all warm dark woods and cozy tapestries meant to give at least the illusion of warmth, but the war room was much the same. Save for the extra bodies. It was crowded with dozens more army officers and prinsipi, all demanding attention at once.

One of the Reinine’s bodyguards noticed Kallista and her companions and murmured a word in his charge’s ear. The Reinine turned away, giving the room her back.

“Thank you for your concerns.” High Steward Huryl spoke. Kallista hadn’t seen him until that moment, but she instantly recognized that thin voice with its falsely humble tone. “The Reinine will take them all under advisement. Thank you.”

Spreading his multicolored arms wide in their fluttering stripes of black, gold, blue, green and white, he herded the room’s occupants before him. They complained, especially the prinsipi, but they went. Huryl followed them out. Kallista glanced back to be sure they were truly gone and recoiled. The High Steward was just slipping out the door, looking back into the room, his face filled with virulent hatred.

The glimpse was for but a second, before the door closed on him. Had she seen it, or only imagined it? And if she
had
seen that hatred, who was it for? Huryl’s glance had raked the entire room, and Goddess knew, Kallista had not gotten on well with the man during her previous sojourn in the palace complex. Maybe his hatred was for her alone. The Reinine had promoted him to his present high position. Why would he hate her? If indeed Kallista had seen what she thought.

Torchay touched her arm. “K’lista? She’s waiting.”

Right
. Kallista moved into the room, stopped well away from the bodyguards, put her right leg forward and swept into a low bow. “My Reinine, you have need of me?”

“Get up, get up.” The faint chime of metal on metal accompanied Serysta Reinine’s brisk movement away from the windows.

As Kallista rose from her bow, her gaze fell on the low shoes and snug black stockings of the nearest bodyguard and the slim gold bands around his ankles. Two on the left, two right. Kallista hid her surprise and speculation, but she couldn’t stop her mind from spinning.

She recognized the man from her previous visit. He’d been in the Reinine’s service for some time even then, and he hadn’t been married. The Reinine’s bodyguards did not usually marry. The other bodyguard, much younger and unfamiliar, wore no anklet. But that one did. Kallista shot a quick glance at the Reinine, at the three bangles chiming softly together on her left wrist and the one on her right.

Serysta Reinine waved the bangles, flashing them imperiously. “Yes, I married my bodyguards. Yes, I know it was of no political benefit whatsoever. No, I do not care.”

Kallista bowed again, deeper this time. “Far be it from me to question, my Reinine. I married my own bodyguard. I know the…bonds that can grow over the years.”

When she rose this time—was the Reinine blushing? Surely not.

“Please, be seated. All of you.” Serysta gestured to the chairs set before the room’s hearth as she chose a high, wingbacked seat for herself. Kallista took the chair nearest the Reinine, and the four men ranged themselves about them, standing.

Serysta glowered at all the bodyguards. “Sit down. Please.”

Her ilias—the stocky man with short-cropped iron-gray hair—answered for both, shaking his head “no” without speaking. Kallista glanced at her own iliasti. “It’s no use arguing. They get even more stubborn and protective once you’ve married them.”

Serysta sighed, still glowering. “I’ve noticed.”

Her gray-haired ilias gazed at her blandly. They spoke a whole conversation without words before Serysta jerked her eyes away to stare at her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath. “Has your magic returned, Naitan?”

Kallista’s insides knotted up. “No, my Reinine, it has not.” She lifted her gloved hand. “This is simply regulation. And protection from the cold. I am most heartily sorry.”

“As am I, Naitan. We could use your talents now.” Serysta lounged back in her chair, her gaze on the low fire, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. “Will it return, do you know?”

“I believe so.” Kallista quelled a brief surge of panic, mentally stomping down the lid of the box where it had been penned and throwing a strap around it. Then another. She had to trust that the One would keep the others safe. They were needed.

“Is something wrong, Naitan?”

Kallista attempted a smile. “As you suggested, we sent the rest of our ilian to safety with the children. We’ve never been separated like this since we were bound together. It is an…adjustment. Especially since we are bound with magic as well as oaths.” She paused to clear her throat.

“My Reinine, we sent them off before we knew of these assassinations, or of the army’s defections. Two babies, two women—one of them pregnant and near her time—and two fighters, one of
them
blind. If I could beg of you a troop escort—”

“Ah, Naitan.” The Reinine’s eyes were filled with a sad sympathy. “There are no troops to send. None we can trust. They will be safer alone and anonymous. Truly.”

Kallista wanted to ask again, wanted to beg on her knees, but she didn’t want to risk the kind of reaction she’d gotten from the general. “Then may I ask a farspeaker send a message to Korbin, to family there? They can send a party to meet them.”

“Yes, of course. Write out your message and I will have it sent immediately.” The Reinine gestured at the table between them littered with papers, inkwells and quills.

Kallista scratched out a brief message and the Reinine’s younger bodyguard passed it to a servant outside the door. The message would go by farspeaker to Korbin’s capital and from there by courier to Torchay’s family, but it should reach them no later than tomorrow. Weeks sooner than a message could arrive over land.

She took a ragged breath and looked up at the Reinine. Kallista had never fully answered her question. It was time she did.

“The bonds of magic are still there,” she said. “But at the moment, I cannot use them. The fact that they exist makes me believe that the magic will return. When? I cannot say. Merinda Healer said that because I had twins, it could take longer for things to return to normal.”

Serysta obviously bit back a curse. “Is there anything to hurry the process along? We need your particular magic rather badly. The few military naitani we have left are scattered and will take time to bring in safely. That blind Tibran you brought back seems to have some skill at foresight, but he’s so afraid of his gift—”

For a moment, Kallista was confused. Fox had no magic of his own, except for that uncanny ability to sense his surroundings. Then she remembered. The boy they’d rescued, the one they’d brought with them from their trip to the Tibran capital. He’d been a casteless “witch hound,” used by the Ruler caste to sniff out users of forbidden magic. They’d taken his eyes first. Fox couldn’t see from his eyes. Gweric had none to see with.

“How is he?” Kallista had left him with her family in Turysh so her birth mother could work her healing on Gweric’s feet, broken by his Tibran masters to keep him from running away. When he was well enough, he’d been brought to Arikon, to the naitani academies for training.

“Well enough, I suppose. Getting around better than I would have believed. What can you do to speed up the magic?” Serysta refused to be distracted.

“I don’t know. I’ve consulted with all my sources. They don’t know either.” Kallista’s only real source of information was the last godstruck naitan so blessed by the One. Belandra had lived a thousand years ago, but she came visiting from time to time to advise her successor. Belandra, however, had been older when the Goddess struck her. She’d already had all her children, and none of them had been twins.

Serysta Reinine’s lips thinned as she pressed them tight together in an uncharacteristic show of impatience.

“What is it you need?” Kallista asked. “Perhaps there is some other way we can provide it?”

“I need to know what these rebels are doing. I need to know their goals, where they will strike, what their numbers are—everything there is to know.”

“Don’t you have spies?” Kallista knew she did. Uskenda would not have left so necessary a thing undone.

“I
did
. I have sent six persons to infiltrate the rebels. Somehow, they found each one and sent them back in pieces.”

“Goddess,” Kallista murmured, not missing the grim looks the four bodyguards exchanged. “Did your people have magic?”

“One had a small illusion gift. Otherwise, no.”

“You’ve no magic just now either, Captain,” Torchay reminded her.

“The others were all sent to infiltrate?” Kallista got the Reinine’s nod of confirmation. “What about observers?”

“None sent specifically for that. We’ve been gathering information from the troops coming in, but that’s all. So far.”

“We could—”

“There are others with those skills,” Torchay interrupted. “Those who could do a better job without risking you. No one else can do what you can.”

“Not even me.” She
reached
for her magic, stretching as high and wide as she could. And found nothing.

“It’ll come,” he said. “Likely the more you fret, the longer it will take.”

Kallista made a face. “Likely.”

“Your sergeant is right,” the Reinine said. “We’re not yet at the point of desperation. Pray the One we never reach it. There is another matter to discuss, however.”

“Of course, my Reinine.” Kallista bowed as best she could while seated.

“Before you left here with your godmarked iliasti, I sent word across the country that anyone with a similar marking should be brought to Arikon.”

“I remember.” She refrained from touching the back of her neck where she and her ilian had been marked. Red and raised, something like a birthmark, her mark resembled a complete Compass Rose, the symbol of the One. The marks on the others were a rose alone, without the compass points reaching from it.

She’d once believed the godmarks in the old stories to be symbolic rather than literal, just as the stories themselves were some allegorical fable, rather than historic fact. They’d all learned otherwise.

Now, Kallista’s insides tied double knots. “You’re reminding me of this because another marked one has turned up.”

Serysta Reinine’s smile held kindness beneath the cynicism. “As it happens, yes.” She lifted a hand and the younger bodyguard returned to the door, opened it and murmured to someone outside. They waited.

Kallista’s knee jumped in a quick, jittery beat, until she noticed and stilled it. The silence stretched her nerves taut, as if someone should be telling her something she ought to know, but wasn’t, and that lack of knowledge would blow up in their faces like the gunpowder in the practice courtyard.

Finally the door opened again. Iron shackles rattled in the audience chamber as the wearer shuffled across the polished wood floor. Guards entered first, then a wild-looking man chained hand to foot. His tangled hair fell well past his shoulders, blending with a ragged beard. It matched the dirty rags he wore.
This
was the godmarked man?

Kallista stood, wondering whether she was appalled for his sake or her own. Did she want this man in her ilian?

“Is he so mad that he must be treated like this?” Torchay moved between Kallista and the chained man.

“The mark has affected him profoundly, yes.” Serysta Reinine remained seated, tips of her fingers tented together. “However, he wears chains for another reason. He has come here from Katreinet Prison.”

She crossed her legs and swung her foot in a leisurely fashion. “Do you not recognize him?”

Kallista stepped forward, next to Torchay, which was as close as he would allow her to approach. Obed glided a few steps more, placing himself nearer the prisoner. She studied the man, tried to picture him with his beard shaved and his hair neat. He looked up at her, the blue of his eyes blazing bright as one of her sparks.

Then intelligence flared in those eyes, sharp and clear, and she knew. She breathed his name. “Joh.”

CHAPTER THREE

T
he prisoner in the Reinine’s war room straightened to attention and bowed as formally as his chains would allow. “Captain.”

Joh Suteny had been the lieutenant in charge of the guards escorting Stone as a prisoner of war to Arikon last year. He had stood as witness to the wedding that bound their original four together. And he had been the one to hide the gunpowder inside the broken gargoyle in the courtyard where she practiced her magic with Obed and Stone.

He had fired the sparking trail that exploded it and nearly killed them. He had confessed to his own actions but refused to lead them farther in the plot. And now he claimed to be marked by the One?

The odd rumbling Kallista had been hearing for some moments erupted from a growl into a roar, pouring out of Torchay. She jumped toward Joh—Torchay had come close to killing him the day of the explosion. But Torchay launched himself in the other direction, at Serysta Reinine.

“Torchay, no!” Kallista spun, too late to catch him. The Reinine’s bodyguard grappled him, having to grab hold again and again as Torchay kept slipping free. The other guard moved to help and Obed stepped as if to prevent him.

“Stop it.”
Kallista’s hand on Obed’s chest held him still. She sprang at the fighting men, inserting herself between them before blades could be drawn. She shoved hard at Torchay. He tried to push her out of the way, but the attempt disengaged him from the Reinine’s man and Kallista was able to move him farther away.