Desert World Allegiances (25 page)

Temar crossed his arms, and he could see an answering flash of worry in Shan’s face. “I didn’t know you were that good with machines, good enough to know if that is reliable enough for a desert trip.”

Standing all the way up, Shan brushed off his hands and then wiped them against his jeans. “I always thought I would be a mechanic. Maybe I should have stuck with sand bikes.” Shan looked up at him, and for a time, the silence grew heavy between them. “I wish I was half the priest Div was in his prime. I can’t help but think he would have noticed something, that he could have fixed something,” Shan said. “I thought the Lord called me to the church to devote my life to it, but now I’m wondering if he just didn’t want me safe for a time.”

“What did you need to be safe from?” The words came out bitter—Temar could hear that. However, from everything Temar had heard and overheard, Naite had been their father’s victim, not Shan.

Shan looked up, his dark eyes wide with some emotion Temar didn’t understand. Now that Temar thought about it, Shan had been in the house after Naite had been sent to Tom. Maybe there was more there than Shan had told anyone. The raw pain was there in his eyes. It bothered Temar—the idea that Shan’s own father had….” Temar’s mind skittered away from the word that tried to form in his mind.

“I guess….” Shan let out a breath. “I guess I finally figured out what my father was really like.” Shan put the screwdriver on the ground and sat right in the dirt of the cavern floor. “I guess I finally figured out why Naite was out causing trouble, trying to get anyone to pull him out of there. I guess I figured out that I’d spent a lifetime trying to hurt Naite because I was jealous, and I’d been part of the problem. I hurt him, and I needed to be safe from my own self-hate.” Shan stopped, but not before Temar could hear the hatred in his voice. Then Shan shrugged, like none of it was important. “Besides, the church was the next best way to get out of the house.”

“So he never…?”

Shan shook his head. “No. He never touched me.” Shan rubbed his hand over his face. “Some days I wish….” He stopped again.

“Wish what?” Temar studied Shan, seeing not the priest or even the man, but imagining the lanky boy Shan must have been. For the first time, Temar realized that there was more than one way to be hurt. Would Cyla feel this pain? When she realized that her plan had turned Temar into the perfect victim, would her eyes be as haunted? Temar didn’t want that. He didn’t want to tell the council what Ben had done. He’d rather the man be exiled for water theft.

Shan looked up for a second before closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Never mind.”

Anger flashed through Temar. Shan was no better than he was. They both carried their scars and their guilt. “Do you think that I can’t handle hearing the truth?” Temar demanded. “Do you know Ben’s favorite game? Do you?” Temar advanced into the cave, his hands fisted at his sides. “He liked to make me choose. He loved it. He loved hearing me ask to be hurt, so do you really think you have to change the subject, as though I were some sort of child?”

Temar stood over Shan, staring down as the silence settled around them, dust motes dancing in the air. Temar breathed fast, embarrassment starting to push aside the worst of the fury. He didn’t want people knowing that, and yet here he was talking about it.

“I think you suffered more than you should have,” Shan said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry doesn’t really change anything.” Temar turned his back, and for one instant, he felt cold fear, as though Shan might tackle him from behind. Hurrying, Temar got to the mouth of the cavern and turned, but Shan was still on the ground. His emotions raged, and Temar took several deep breaths, smelling the coppery dust of the cave as he struggled to calm the storm inside of him.

“You’re right. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t change anything,” Shan agreed after a long pause.

Temar could feel his emotions cool, like glass pulled from the furnace. And maybe he was shedding heat too fast, because he could almost hear his emotions crackle as they cooled and threatened to shatter. If he didn’t get a handle on these emotions, Shan would never let him go on this trip, and this was too important. If he didn’t get evidence against Ben…. Temar refused to even consider what that failure would feel like.

“I’m not weak,” Temar said in a calmer voice, carefully controlling his emotions. “You don’t have to protect me like I’m some child who doesn’t know what happens out there in the real world.”

Shan leaned back, his mouth pulled into a tight pucker, and now Temar felt bone weary. He might not be a child, but he wasn’t acting like a rational adult, either. He didn’t know where he was. Crazy, maybe.

“I wish sometimes my father would have hurt me… hurt me more, anyway,” Shan said, the words coming out so fast that Temar thought, at first, that he must have misheard. However, Shan had this look of self-loathing on his face that matched the words. Temar wondered if he had some company in his insanity.

“I didn’t know what our father was doing to Naite,” Shan went on. “I didn’t understand, and I hated that Naite was the favorite.” Shan spit the last word out as though it was a curse. “I hated it. I wanted to be the favorite, and I used to do my best to torture Naite when we were kids. I thought that if I could show our father that I was better or smarter that he’d pay more attention to me. And then Naite left, and our father starting trying to….” Shan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I didn’t understand,” Shan repeated, this time softer. “And when I did, I felt horrible that Naite had to carry this alone, that I’d acted like a sandrat.” Shan spit the words out.

“Would it make it any better if he’d hurt you too?”

“I don’t know.” Shan spun the screwdriver between his fingers. “At least then I would have known. I wouldn’t have been part of the problem. I’m the priest, and until yesterday, I couldn’t even see how much pain Naite carries. Maybe if our father had—” He stopped and swallowed.

“You can’t think Naite blames you.” Temar kept his voice soft, because right now, he wasn’t the only piece of hot glass struggling to shed heat without cracking.

Shan seemed to think about that. “I don’t think so, but it’s not like we get along.”

From Temar’s point of view, the brothers got along pretty damn well. Naite hadn’t hesitated to help them. True, they fought, but their arguments never got hateful. They never made the sort of insults that would cut a person to the bone.

“I wouldn’t want Cyla hurt, not even if it meant she was nicer about all this,” Temar said. “And let’s be honest, Cyla is not going to be all that reasonable about this.”

“Maybe she shouldn’t be,” Shan pointed out.

Temar nodded. There was plenty of reason for getting upset about the situation. The problem was that Temar really didn’t need his sister coming in and stirring everything up, including his own feelings. “I don’t need her acting like I can’t take care of myself, and Naite doesn’t need you to feel guilty.” Temar thought maybe he’d offended Shan because the man just looked at him. Shan’s hand had been traveling over the dusty bike, but now it stopped, the fingers resting against the rusted fender.

“Maybe you should go into the priesthood.”

“No.” Temar quickly answered. “I’d rather work with my hands.” He felt a flash of desire as he thought about working glass, watching it grow on the end of his blowpipe. But the joy faded. Even if people believed him about Ben, Dee’eta Sun wouldn’t want to train him. She’d probably feel so guilty about sentencing him to serve Ben that she wouldn’t be able to look him in the face. Shan was having trouble with that. And other glassblowers needed the income from apprentice fees to keep their shops going. They could not afford to train someone for free.

“Temar?” Shan’s voice was soft, almost apologetic.

“When are we leaving?” Temar kept his voice sharp. He didn’t need apologies, and when Shan kept offering them, it stirred Temar’s emotions too much.

Shan physically jerked back at the tone, his gaze skittering away. “It might be best if you stayed here. There’s food, and the cave hasn’t been used for years. It’s safe.”

That was the tone of voice Cyla always used before doing something outrageously stupid. “Here?”

“Here,” Shan said firmly.

“Oh no. This is my fight. If you’re going, I’m going.”

“I don’t need you to come along.”

That stung. Part of Temar wanted to curl away from those sharp words, and the flash of guilt on Shan’s face suggested that Shan hadn’t meant to be quite so harsh. However, Temar wasn’t a child. He didn’t back away from a little discomfort. Or even a lot of discomfort. He would like to figure out which of his feelings were real, and there was a tiny voice at the back of his mind that said he could do that more easily if he had some distance from Shan, but they didn’t have time for that.

“You need someone to watch your back while you do this finding out, and if I don’t go, you won’t have anyone.”

“I won’t get caught.”

Temar snorted. “The last time I heard that, it was Cyla saying it about going into Landowner Young’s field. Or maybe it was Ben. Ben’s pretty damn sure he’s never going to get caught. Both got caught.” Temar frowned as he realized that wasn’t quite true. “Cyla got caught, and Ben is more in the process of getting caught, but no one can be that confident. You need someone to watch your back.”

Shan left the bike, taking two steps toward Temar. “If they catch you….” He stopped, but the truth hung in the air between them. Ben would kill Temar. No question. He’d kill Cyla too, only Temar trusted Naite to keep her safe.

“And they’ll kill you,” Temar answered. He watched as Shan’s fingers twitched open and closed.

“I can tell them some story. I don’t know who shot at me, but I walked off the desert.”

“All the way to the relay?”

That made Shan flinch. The story had so many holes that it wouldn’t even carry stones, much less sand. And the truth was much finer than sand, as the saying went. “It would make them think twice. They don’t know that I have any information.”

There was this strange inflection on the word “information” that made the hair on the back of Temar’s neck stand up. It was like feeling the air from the kiln wash over him. “What do you know?” he asked.

Concern flickered on Shan’s face. “About the water Ben’s diverting.” He said that too fast. Temar took a step forward and studied Shan’s face.

“Are priests supposed to lie?”

Shan almost smiled. “I thought we already established that I’m not the best priest.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Turning his back, Shan rested his fingers against the bike again. The silence grew heavy between them, and Temar could feel his rising discomfort. Two months ago, he would have retreated, but he had a whole new definition of and tolerance for discomfort these days.

“Ista Songwind had circuits,” Shan admitted. From the way he said it, slow and soft, he hadn’t wanted to offer up that bit of information, but Temar couldn’t figure out why Songwind shouldn’t have circuits. She specialized in cleaning and restoring them. If she had a motherboard circuit, that would fit with the idea they thought to make a grab for more land, but they’d talked about that possibility. No, there wasn’t enough land. However, without more water, trying to terraform more land would be idiotic. Even if they did steal enough water to get the land going, all the other valleys would find a way to make them pay for a theft of that scale.

“What haven’t you told me?”

Shan’s hand, which had gone back to stroking the sand bike, now curled into a fist. “The big master circuit boards that are used for valley doors….”

Temar waited for more of an explanation. Eventually Shan seemed to sag as he turned around and leaned back on the bike. “There was more than one or two. There aren’t more than a dozen of those on the whole world, and they’re all carefully protected. At least, that’s what Holmes told me when I apprenticed with him, and he was a master mechanic who would have known. But she had a dozen of them, and she had your sister cleaning them. An apprentice. A new apprentice.”

“But why have a new apprentice—?”

“An apprentice so new that she wouldn’t know what she was looking at or ask too many questions,” Shan cut him off. “I thought maybe some sand devil had forced Red Plains to pull all their circuits, but Tom said the weather’s been quiet. So where did all those circuits come from? Why do they need so many? She had more there than Landing’s Valley, and that’s the largest growing valley on Livre. I don’t understand it, but none of this is adding up.”

“We already knew most of this. Even if you think you’re wrong about the valley, we have to check at the relay. Why should I stay here?” Temar didn’t understand what had changed.

Shan looked at him with honest pain in his expression. “If they find you, they’ll kill you.”

“They’ll kill you just as quickly. They already have tried to kill you!” Temar protested. He remembered the cold guilt when he thought that Shan was dead because Temar had sent him off on some chase. He remembered that guilt, and he wouldn’t live with it again. “I will go with you.”

“It’ll be—”

“Don’t,” Temar interrupted. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. Don’t take away my choice, here.” Temar swallowed. He hadn’t meant to say that much—reveal that much.

Shan looked at him, a dozen expressions flitting across his strong features, and Temar couldn’t understand any of them.

“If you get yourself killed, my soul is going to implode from the weight of the guilt,” Shan warned seriously.

Temar grinned. “I don’t plan to. I’m the cautious one, so I fully intend to watch your back from a very safe position.”

“If this conspiracy is as far spread as I suspect, I’m not sure where that safe position might be.” Shan didn’t even try to hide his worry. However, Temar had grown up worrying about his father, his farm, his sister’s growing recklessness, and his own increasingly dismal future. Worrying was an old friend. As long as he didn’t get left behind like some child, he could handle whatever got thrown at them.

“The only danger I can’t handle right now is the danger that you’re going to leave me here to worry and feel useless. Shan, I really can’t handle that. Everything we do is one more step toward making Ben Gratu pay for everything he did to me. I need that,” Temar said firmly. Shan studied his face, and Temar could feel the emotions shift between them.