Kismet's Kiss: A Fantasy Romance (Alaia Chronicles) (35 page)

Of the foreboding statue on the throne, only the sultan’s eyes moved. At his left, his scribe called for the names of each of the men. One by one, the prisoners gave them. As they spoke, baritones and basses and tenors, flashes of the riot came back to Varene. Her gut chilled as she recalled their voices from the mob. “She’s a Teg witch.” “She’ll spew her sorcery throughout Kad.” “Maybe we should kill her.” “Grab them all.” The panic she’d felt as these men had surged around her and roped her to the stake crawled back to her, leaving a vile coating in her throat.

Priya shuddered when she heard the voice of the man who’d threatened to rape her, and she reached for Sohad. He wrapped both his hands around hers and hugged her close.

Varene’s fingers flexed as she wished she could receive that comfort from the man upon the throne, feel safe again the way she had after the riot. Instead, she’d turned him away. Surely it was for the best.

When the sixth man recited his name, Buld clumped his meaty fist into the man’s shaggy head. The prisoner’s forehead hit the marble, whereupon he admitted a different name.

After the eighth man spoke, Kuramos roared, stilling every occupant of the room. “You eight incited a riot and nearly murdered two beloved servants and the Royal Healer of Teganne.” Every plane of his face seemed hewn from rock. “Had you succeeded, nine members of my household would now be dead.” He leaned forward on the throne and thunder rolled from his lips. “Four of them My wives!” Courtiers, guards, and captives alike trembled at his boom.

For the first time since Kuramos had addressed Varene on the ship, he turned his cold eyes to her. “Healer, I may have changed my mind about allowing them the benefit of your skills.” He glanced at Bafar and his lip curled, baring his teeth. “Why aid his arm when his soul is soon to feel Naaz’s judgment?”

With her pulse hammering, she rose slowly to her feet, pleading to Mother Fate that she would make the right decisions. “O Lord,” she began, and took a deep breath. “It matters to me that I help all those I can, if it is in my power to do so. Will you grant that power to me tonight?”

He wasn’t a man who cared for flattery, only for truth. She knew his clever mind would catch the nuances of what she’d said—admitting she was here in Kad, his realm, and that he was the one who could grant her that power, or not, at his will.

His unfathomable eyes stared down at her, deep as the sea and just as deadly. Was he the honorable and good-hearted man she loved, or the sultan of Kad, who stood alone? Her heart shivered at his distance from her, the new barrier between them.

“Healer, you came to my realm to save those I love. You succeeded.” His deep voice reverberated in her blood. “Therefore, if it pleases you, you may bind and aid Bafar the Merchant’s limb. But do not otherwise ease his pain. He has made choices. He must abide by the consequences.”

Do not ease his pain? His injury was an excruciating one. His muscles would be spasming around the distorted joint, causing additional agony. Varene’s lashes slid down and her head sank in an obedience that was only half-felt. But she did not envy the decision the sultan had to make—to execute these men, who had tried to murder three innocents for Kaddite pride and for sport, or to allow them and their hatred to linger in the world, an evil of its own, one that tainted and blackened everything around it.

How could a man make such judgments? And how could he make them and not be affected, not have his soul cut to pieces by the weight of the responsibility?

She turned to her assistants. “Sohad, could you—” she began, but he was already getting to his feet to help. “Priya, I need a large cloth, or a sheet…”

“Will this do?” The handmaiden unwound a long scarf from her hips.

“Yes, but surely that’s too exp—”

“I wish it,” she said quietly, her gaze steady on Varene’s. A symbolic gesture of forgiveness, perhaps. Or maybe a stance of power—the man who’d nearly taken Priya’s life would now wear her gauzy, feminine garment on his arm. Whether it was compassion or revenge, Varene couldn’t blame her. “Very well.”

Varene walked the silent room, Sohad and Priya just behind her, and knelt beside the injured man. She looked at him for a long moment. The court’s hush deepened.

Dark shadows had bloomed under Bafar’s bloodshot eyes—from lack of sleep, and fear, no doubt, during his run from the guards. A corner of his lip bled in a ragged tear. The shadows and the rip would heal on their own, in time—if he were allowed that—but the arm would not. She wondered, then, if it wouldn’t be fitting for him to die, to go to whatever afterworld he believed in, with the evidence of his deed and his punishment still upon him. These men would have murdered her…and Sohad and Priya, too, for trying to protect her. Did they deserve her mercy?

Bafar’s gaze evinced defiance, contempt, and a little fear…of who Varene was, her powers, and the unknown end that would soon come his way.

She would have been dead, and Priya and Sohad with her, but for Kuramos’s rescue. Bafar’s actions had encouraged and fomented the mob, and those behind him had tied the ropes and lit the fire. Yet, if Bafar had been offered the choice to kill them in that bazaar before the riot had commenced, before the insanity had started, would he have done so?

“Hold still,” she told him. “As still as you can. We have to realign the bones, and there will be pain.”
A lot of it.
“Once the arm is bound, the pain will lessen.”

Bafar’s closed lips moved against each other as if he might speak, but in the end, he only nodded.

“Sohad, hold his upper arm steady, please, just above the joint.” Gently, she wrapped her fingers over the man’s forearm and her other hand around his wrist. A guard clamped his shoulders as she gave a slow, twisting pull.

Bafar’s scream shattered the hush and his head wrenched back in pain, but his bones realigned. Varene palpated the elbow joint to check it as Sohad and Priya made a sling from Priya’s veil. The three worked like the well-matched team they’d become. When Varene tested the tension of the wrap and tied the final knot, she found herself pleased by the contrast between Bafar’s brown and grimy tunic and the embroidered flowers on his new sling’s trim.

She moved to rise, but the prisoner raised his head and looked at her. Wrinkles formed across his forehead, and a bead of sweat rolled between his brows and down the bridge of his crooked nose. “Thank you.”

She held still for a moment and their gazes locked. “You are welcome,” she said at last. Sohad helped her to her feet and she stepped away, toward Kuramos, sitting tall upon his throne.

“Royal Healer Varene,” the sultan rumbled, “have you done as you wished?”

“I have.”

But instead of moving to the sidelines, she stayed in place.

“Is there something else?” The sultan steepled his fingers.

“I have another request to ask of you.”

A pause filled the space between them. “You may
ask
,” he said.

She gave a minute dip of her head to acknowledge his warning, but she couldn’t stop here. Not now.

“Great Sultan…You have ordered these men found on my behalf. For my sake, for your loyal servants, Sohad and Priya, who sought to protect me and nearly died for it, and for those in your palace whom we saved. Your captain,” and she nodded slowly at Buld, “did as you wished, well and swiftly. I thank you both for the justice you’ve given us.” She turned to the prisoners. Filthy, bruised, with days-old stubble shading their skin, and with their lives in ruin. Maybe they repented what they’d done, and maybe they didn’t. “They’re here now, and subject to your will, and your mercy. Is it possible, O Lord, that death is not the only suitable punishment for their crime?”

“The punishment for attempted murder is death. They would have slain the three of you. A gruesome, slow, and very painful demise, as I recall.”

She recalled it too, and never would she forget the desperate intensity of his eyes as he cut her bonds.

“Yes, O Lord. I do not, I
cannot
overlook what might have happened. Even so…I was asked to come here to Kad to heal, not kill.”

Kuramos didn’t answer, just watched her with inscrutable eyes. He reminded her of the effigy of Naaz above the infirmary door—mercy and vengeance, the left and right hands of the goddess who sat in judgment of Her people, just as Kuramos did for his.

She glanced at Sohad and Priya, tried to read the resolution they wanted from their faces. All she saw there was tension, nothing she could decipher. Did their thoughts differ from hers?

If so, they’d have to speak for themselves.

“O Lord, several of these men were drunk. It does not excuse what they did, but drink can cause sense to flee. What concerns me more is their belief that the realm from which I come is one of thieves and evil. This attitude seems not uncommon in Kad. And it pains me. Greatly. Your family and servants have benefited from my skills, while others fear and hate them. So as I reflect on these men and their crime, I’d like to suggest an alternative sentence.”

He raised one cool brow. A low murmur of indrawn breaths and whispers reminded her of the noble audience gathered around. Bracelets clinked and fabrics rustled on pillows as she gathered her next words. She felt herself pulling on a fraying rope against the combined might of Kuramos and his court. If she pulled too hard, would it snap?

She hazarded a glance at Bafar, then across at the others, absorbing gazes that were bleak with fear and despair, and simmering hatred.
Ask it.

“I wish that before these men go to their final end, they realize their beliefs about my realm are wrong and have a chance to make amends for the damage they’ve done.”

The sultan’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “By…?”

“O Lord, you could send them to Teganne.” She took a step forward, palm up in plea. “With their families, if they wish—for what they have said and believed has no doubt been instilled in those who are close to them, as well. In Teganne, they would be under the watchful eye of my sovereigns, and receive a chance to learn the error of their assumptions.”

One of the prisoners growled. She ignored him and went on. “They would live in Teganne, surrounded by my people, dependent upon them for their living, for their very survival. They’d realize we are neither thieves nor necromancers. And if they did not change their actions and their words after learning this lesson, then they would suffer the consequences meted out by my sovereigns. If this pleases you, Great Sultan of Kad.”

Behind her, the prisoners’ chains scraped the tiles nervously.

“How can you be certain your prince and princess would accept these eight mounds of offal, and would oversee their punishment?”

Her firm gaze caught the sultan’s. “My sovereigns would wish to avenge themselves upon anyone who sought my death, O Lord. Their vigilance and justice will be appropriate to these men’s offense.” In the ensuing silence, she heard the captives’ panicked breath, their fear rising up like the sour stink of their bodies.

Kuramos stared down at the prisoners, and as his gaze landed on each of them in turn, that man flinched. Then his fierce eyes met Varene’s, seeming to weigh her judgment, and her will. “You have a merciful streak, Healer. But also a devious one.” He gave her a long, slow nod. “The Royal Healer’s request is granted.”

The prisoners shuddered, and one man moaned his dismay.

“And now,” continued the sultan, still staring at her, “their healing treatment is over. You have given them mercy. Let them now feel a portion of the suffering you felt on the stake.”

Kuramos’s gaze swept over the kneeling men and his tone conveyed his disgust. “Your chains shall remain on you throughout your long journey to Teganne by foot, and until your new sovereigns deem fit to remove them. Your actions have shamed Kad, and you will remember the weight of my anger, now and for the rest of your days. You’ve been granted your lives by a Tegannese citizen, one who had every right to demand your deaths in the most painful way. Learn from your mistakes, learn from her justice. Do not waste this chance. And perhaps then, the balance will one day be swept clean. May Naaz have mercy on your souls, for all that you do not deserve it.”

“Bow to your sultan!” the captain barked at the rioters. They pressed their foreheads to the floor, sweat and tears in their eyes, before they got unsteadily to their feet and shuffled out the doors.

At a glance from Kuramos, the scribe stood and addressed the court. “The Great Sultan of Kad gives you leave to depart.”

Varene held her breath, wondering if Kuramos would want to speak to her. She knew she’d told him to stay away, but tendrils of hope clutched her.

Kuramos stepped from the dais and stalked out through the side entrance without a backward glance.