Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (50 page)

“He said you thought you were too good for me,” he said abruptly. “That you’d gone off with the high-borns and wouldn’t ever come back.”

Tank set his teeth in his tongue for a careful count of five, then said, “Dasin.”

“And then once I left with him, he said you’d never look at me again because of what I’d done, what he’d proven me to be—” Dasin stopped and squeezed his eyes shut.

The sky flared white; a few seconds later a thunderclap shook the ground. Tank grabbed Dasin’s arm and swung him roughly into motion. “Tell me about it
inside.”

Dasin stumbled along without protest. Tank fought back his towering irritation as he propelled the blond merchant towards the inn; he had a
why
of his own:
Why the hells can’t Dasin quit poking at this?

No point asking questions he already knew the answer to.

He released Dasin’s arm as they entered the inn, trusting that sense would keep Dasin moving towards the room; that trust, at least, was upheld. Once in the room, Tank secured the door—if a simple bar and latch combination could be called
secure.
Dasin just stood there, still fully clothed, dripping wet and shivering, eyes fixed on something invisible—probably a past memory.

Tank snorted and resisted the impulse to slap Dasin’s shoulder; that would only set off another fight. Instead, he edged around Dasin to where they’d left the packs and rummaged through Dasin’s.

“Where’s your aesa?” he said after a few moments. “Dasin. Snap out of it. Where’s your pipe?”

“Raffin took it,” Dasin said vaguely. “All of it.”

“Fucking nit,” Tank muttered, and shoved the packs back under the bed, then sat back on his heels. “Dasin. Get out of those wet clothes and dry off; you’ll get sick.”

“So what?” Dasin retorted, turning to look at Tank, his eyes clear now. “Means I’ll get some rest.”

“Dasin,”
Tank said sharply. “Do you even know where you are?”

Dasin scowled at him. “Sitting in an inn with a goddamn loon, is what,” he said. “I didn’t figure you’d understand.” He turned his back and began to strip off the sodden clothing, letting it drop to the floor in a careless heap.

Tank shook his head and hauled himself upright, the clammy chill of his own clothes reminding him that he was just as soaked as Dasin. Somehow he couldn’t make himself strip down as casually as Dasin was doing; he stood still, watching without moving.

Dasin turned around, completely unselfconscious, and grabbed one of the coarse towels from the washstand. Scrubbing the damp from his skin, he said, “I’ll manage. I’ve managed without before. I’ll just be cranky.”

“More than usual? I didn’t think that was possible,” Tank said before his brain could cut in.

Dasin shot him a sour glare. “Yeah,” he said. “Much more than usual.” He turned his back on Tank.

Tank shrugged his shirt off and draped it over the back of a chair.

“What do you usually do when you run out of aesa?” he asked, idly curious; wondering if the chich sticks in his pack would help Dasin’s mood. He doubted it; those were more specifically for dasta fits than for simple anxieties.

“Get laid,” Dasin said without turning. “But I’m not going back out through that storm to find a safe fuck, and I doubt you want to touch me right now, do you? So I’ll manage.”

Tank stood still. After a moment, he said, “No. I don’t.” He waited a beat, watching Dasin’s shoulders stiffen back into an aggrieved pose, then said, “Dasin. Look at me.”

Dasin’s hands fisted in the towel, and his head jerked to one side in a brief twitch. Slowly, he wrapped the towel around his waist—he had to secure it with one hand—and turned around, his movements deliberate and his stare filled with challenge.

“It’s a long road ahead,” Tank said. “Are you going to run off to someone like Raffin every time you get mad at me?”

“I wasn’t angry at you,” Dasin said levelly. “I was
scared.
You walked off and left me, wouldn’t tell me anything except that there was trouble you had to handle and you wanted me to sit put and wait for you to come back. You think I’m your whore, to treat me that way?”

Tank bit his lip. “Didn’t think of it like that,” he admitted. “Sorry, Dasin. Things were a little—strange at the time.”

“And you
still
won’t tell me anything.”

Tank hesitated, then said, “No. I won’t. It’s better you don’t know.”

“Long road,” Dasin threw back at him. “How long are
you
going to refuse to talk about this?”

“I won’t talk about this with you, Dasin. Ever. If that’s a problem, I’ll find another contract.”

“Asshole.”

“Not the best way to get laid,” Tank observed, unable to repress a grin. “Insults don’t turn
me
on.”

“Like I ever
had
a chance,” Dasin said bitterly. He began to shove past Tank, clearly aiming for the packs and dry clothing; Tank put out one arm and dragged him close. Dasin yelped protest as Tank’s cold, wet pants slapped against his own legs, and tried to recoil. Tank held him still.

“Dasin,” he said. “Stop a moment. Just stop.”

“You’re all over wet and cold—”

“I know. Shut up.”

Dasin finally went quiet and leaned his forehead against Tank’s. They stood without speaking, their breathing evening out and matching; Dasin’s jagged pulse slowed, his equally fractured emotions easing into something more stable. Tank stayed still, not saying anything, not really thinking, just focusing on feelings of
calm,
of
quiet,
of
restful.
At last, Dasin drew in a deep, shuddering breath and let it out in a long hiss.

“All right,” he said, the brittle tension gone from his voice. “All right. Thank you.”

Tank let his arm drop. “I’ll go hunt down some aesa,” he said without any real emotion, still half-hazed in the serene calm he’d somehow layered over Dasin. Dimly, the thought arose that he’d finally found something
useful
he could do; something that didn’t leave a sick feeling of shame in its wake.

Dasin sighed as he sat on the edge of the bed, but all he said aloud, as Tank pulled on his still-dripping shirt, was: “Go see Deea. She’ll have some aesa and a spare pipe. And—take your time. I don’t mind.”

Tank paused, half-turned, looking back over his shoulder at Dasin’s thin, exhausted face; then, shaking his head, let himself out of the room without answering.

Lord Evkit’s eyes narrowed to slits, and the room had gone absolutely silent.

“Marry,” Lord Evkit said.

“Yes,” Deiq said, restraining himself to absolute blandness.

“You ask
me.
To marry you.”

“Yes.”

“As an equal partnership,” Alyea said. Deiq wished she’d stayed silent. The incredulous expression that crossed Evkit’s face was not a promising reaction to that statement.

Silence hung for a long moment.

“Partnership,” Evkit said eventually. “Equal. Ha’inn, you
agree
to this?”

Damnit, I wish she’d kept her mouth shut.
“Yes.”

“Equals.”

“Yes.”

Evkit blinked, then slitted his eyes again. Blinked. Stared at Alyea. Stared at Deiq. Turned his head to the side and whistled sharply.

A door in the rear of the room opened; a teyanain woman in a robe of blue and white came through. Deiq promptly looked at the floor, tucking his chin to his chest, and folded his hands together behind his back. The teyanain
never
let outsider males see their women, not even ha’ra’hain.

Evkit said something too fast and dialect-heavy for Deiq to follow. The woman answered as rapidly. It sounded as if Evkit wasn’t pleased by the situation; the overall tone was suspiciously accusatory.
What the hells did you
tell
her?
and
What the hells did you tell
him
?

Deiq pursed his lips against a smile and kept very, very still.

The argument stopped. The door shut. Silence returned.

“I do,” Evkit said, perfectly calm again. “My conditions. You take
hanaa-aerst-yin
ceremony, you really want this
equal.”

Deiq looked up with a deliberately mild expression. “Binding of Feathers?” he translated aloud for Alyea’s benefit. “I believe I recall that one. That’s acceptable.” Although
yin—unbreakable—
seemed an odd word to add into a feather ceremony, which were typically arrangements of convenience and easily broken. Still, that was a relatively minor matter, probably a teyanain custom he’d forgotten or never learned about. He didn’t give it much thought.

As he remembered it, the feather-joining ceremony mainly involved a ludicrous amount of body painting and chanting. Humans apparently tended to find it spiritually powerful. He suspected he’d find it enormously boring.

Alyea nodded. Her throat worked in a convulsive swallow, and her face didn’t have its normal color. So she was nervous now. Good. He’d have been worried if she wasn’t.

Bloody damn lunatic notion, this whole thing. But he’d done stupider. Probably.

“You go bathe,” Evkit said, tone and expression as chill as the midnight air in the high spots of the Horn. Not happy. Not in the least bit happy. This situation probably strained the bonds of their recent alliance, in fact. Marriage would have been one thing, but equals—He should have warned her to let him do all the talking.

What the hells am I
thinking
? I should have convinced her to wait until we went north again. This isn’t safe, this isn’t sane.

Too late now.

“You go bathe, ceremony prepare,” Evkit repeated, and waved a hand. Teyanain guards came to escort them out, and Deiq went without argument.

He spent most of the next few hours trying to figure out whether he was amused by the situation—or petrified.

You never really tried,
Idisio had accused once, speaking of a prior attempt at following human marriage customs; and Alyea’s challenge still rang in his mind:
You’re changing, and it hurts, and it scares you.

I should have killed her a hundred times over already, the way she’s insulting me and pushing at me. Why haven’t I? Why don’t I react to her aggravating me? It doesn’t make any damn sense at all.

In a thousand years, nobody had talked to him the way she did and survived a moment longer.

He swore in a language forgotten by men hundreds of years before, and let the silent teyanain servants prepare him for a wedding he wasn’t at all sure he wanted.

The
daimaina
came into the room as Alyea stepped into the large bathing tub. The young woman assisting Alyea into the water glanced up, blanched, and retreated as soon as she could; Alyea let herself focus on the heat and the steam, shutting her eyes to the ominous expression she’d already seen on the daimaina’s face.

“This is a bad idea,” the woman said without preamble.

Alyea opened her eyes, looking up at the daimaina, and didn’t say anything.

“You will get yourself
killed.”

“Death is inevitable at some point.”

The woman stared at her, mouth tightening. “If you think this is a different way to control the First Born, you do not understand
anything.
You should have
asked
me first. I would have warned you. Marry if you must—I see the value, I agree, could be smart—but not as equals, this is foolishness. First Born will
never
be equal to a desert lord.”

“He agreed.”

“He lied.”

Alyea shut her eyes. “We’ll find out, won’t we?”

“Now we will,” the woman said dourly. “This ritual you agree to, that makes very certain of it. You should have taken your northern ritual instead, held this marriage elsewhere.”

Alyea lay still and felt a chill in spite of the hot water surrounding most of her body. “Why?”

“This is not some northern noble you are dealing with,” the woman said. “This is a
First Born.
What I told you about changing his reactions only goes so far. This ceremony, the one Lord Evkit choose—it will make him
vulnerable,
Lord Alyea. Do you even
remember
what I told you about the blood rage?”

The water didn’t feel hot any longer. The ice working through her veins had overridden it.

“Yes,” she said, barely audible. “I didn’t think—getting married—would be that serious a matter. I thought it would be mostly—political.”

“Not here,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Not here.”

Alyea shut her eyes and hauled her scattering thoughts back under control; breathed deeply until her heartbeat steadied. Then she said, “Is it too late?”

“Much
too late, now that you have involved Lord Evkit. He always raises stakes.
Always.
It is in his nature, it is how he remains leader for so long: by outbidding every challenger. Asking for this marriage ceremony—for the
head of the teyanain
to marry two
outsiders,
to join a First Born and a desert lord as
equals—
this is a supreme challenge to his pride, his status, his
fii:
the following of the old ways, you would say, the traditions, the protocols. It is this same to the entire tribe of teyanain. He
must
raise and raise and raise, and try to force one or both to back down from this. And
you
must not back down. That is weakness, that will ruin many very serious arrangements and agreements; that will put yourself and the First Born in mortal peril very quickly. You walk through a maze of death with every step from this point on. This was a
mistake,
but now it is done and cannot be unsaid.”

Alyea went through another interval of calming herself. Then, “How do I survive this?”

“Finally,” the woman said dryly, “the
right
question.”

Shaska
drums boomed softly from the shadows at the edges of a monstrously large room. One note, traveling around the room: four drummers, from what Deiq could hear, one in each corner.
Boom—
from the east;
boom—
north;
boom—
west;
boom—
south. And around again.