Oracle (5 page)

    
“I
thought that was one of the things you liked best about me.” He stepped closer,
closing the space between them.“My lack of manners.”

    
She
tilted her head to the side and looked up at him through her lashes. “And what
makes you think I like
anything
about you?”

    
“A little
birdie told me.” He slid one arm around her waist, pulled her close before
pressing his lips roughly to hers.

    
Daniella
placed a hand firmly on his shoulder and pulled
back as much as she could. “Not here. Someone might see.”

    
“Isn’t
the risk half the fun?” He nuzzled the side of her neck.

    
“Not when
the High Priest is here.” Her nails dug into his shoulder as she strained
against his embrace. “It’s one thing for the servants to gossip and another for
our little trysts to endanger my brother’s chance at the throne. Let go of me.”

    
Mark
released her. Much as he didn’t want to stop, he knew the difference between
mock protests and a serious no. “Forgive me, I’d forgotten the High Priest
would arrive today.” He straightened his shirt. “But why worry? He can’t leave
the kingdom with no king and isn’t as if anyone but Richard has a claim to the
throne.”

    
“Such
words only prove your ignorance,” she snapped. “Have you also forgotten we have
a cousin with as much royal blood in his veins as flows through ours?”

    
“Lord
Charles?” Mark asked. “
He
wants the throne? But surely you don’t think
he can convince the High Priest to give him the crown over the king’s only
son.” He studied her face. “Do you?”

    
“I don’t
know.”
Daniella
paced away from him. “I warned my
brother not to pursue Anastasia until after the crowning. But did he listen?
No. Instead, he went behind my back and sent the Chancellor to Duke
Ulric’s
estate to demand her hand with thinly veiled
threats. And Charles knows exactly why he wants her.” She huffed. “Our cousin
never would have sought the throne before, but with his sister’s safety at
stake there’s no telling what he might do. And if he’s determined enough, he
could ruin everything.”

    
“If I
know you like I think I do,” he smirked, “then I’m sure you have something in
mind in case he does try to snatch the crown.”

    
“I have an
idea, but I’d rather not speak on it at the moment. Hopefully, no action will
be necessary. I’ve done enough to assure Richard the throne. I’d thought my
work done. But then he had to go and make some fool move on his own.” She
sighed, stopped with her back to him and her arms crossed. “I swear, he is such
a nuisance. If only a woman could hold the throne. Then I wouldn’t need
Richard.”

    
It always
bothered Mark to hear her speak so casually of killing. For though she had not
come right out and said it, he knew it was what was on her mind. She had killed
her own father, after all. But he wouldn’t let her see how such words disturbed
him. It wouldn’t fit with the persona he’d carefully cultivated for her
benefit. If she could see beneath his rough and ready facade he had little
doubt she would drop him like a hot rock.

    
“The
kingdom should be so lucky to have you for its queen.” He trailed his fingers
up her arm. “You know, you
wouldn’t
need Richard at all if you had a son
of your own.”

    
Daniella
laughed. “Surely you jest. For a son I would first
need a husband and I have enough dealing with Richard. I hardly need another
man in my life. And a child.” She actually shivered. “My skin crawls at the
thought. I raised my brother and he was enough child rearing for my lifetime.
Why this talk of me having a son anyway?” She turned to face him. “Trying to
get rid of me, lover?”

    
“Never.”
He cupped the back of her neck with his hand. Perhaps his next words would be a
bit too bold, but if she took them wrong he could always play it off as a joke.
“I was actually making you an offer.”

    
“A
bastard son?” She fingered the collar of his shirt, her expression so serious
he near dare hope she might actually be considering the idea. “The High Priest
might put a son of mine on the throne if Richard were to meet an untimely end,
if not for Charles. My cousin is next in line for the throne before any son of
mine.”

    
Mark
shrugged. “One measly Lord would not be so hard to get rid of.” The words
slipped from his lips before he could think better of it. Something in her eyes
made him wish he’d held his tongue.

    
“Remember
you said that.” She turned and walked out of the kennel.

    
He
watched her go with a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “As if I could
forget.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

    
Kat stood
beside her horse, drinking from her canteen and trying to pretend she wasn’t
watching Jesse. She shouldn’t be watching him. Didn’t
want
to be
watching him. Six months in the Dells should have been more than enough time to
get over him. Apparently, it wasn’t. Every feeling she’d thought she was past
had come rushing back as if they’d never been apart. She knew he’d take her
back if she said the word and couldn’t deny the temptation. But to go back
would only mean setting herself up for more heartbreak. If Jesse couldn’t
understand what he’d done was wrong, then they had no chance of going anywhere
in a relationship.

    
“I dare
say this is the most barren landscape it has ever been my great misfortune to
traverse,” Ethan said. “At the moment I would take even the most flea bitten of
inns, provided it had water enough for a bath. I swear I smell as foul as this
beast.” He glared at his horse as though it were the cause of all his
misfortune.

 
   
Kat rolled her eyes as she put the cap back
on her canteen. Ethan might be of good use to them if they ran across some
trouble. He might even be able to help once they reached the temple. But in the
meanwhile he was making this trip twice as miserable as it would be otherwise.

    
“I guess
you’ll have to settle with being dirty like the rest of us,” Jesse snapped.

    
“But the
rest of you are accustomed to being dirty.” Ethan sniffed. “I am a spy, not a
mercenary. My place is in a cozy bed with some Lord’s mistress, learning all
the dirty affairs of state. Not out here under this infernal sun.”

    
“Then why
are you here?” Jesse asked. “You knew exactly where we would be going when Kat
brought you in on this job. And it’s only going to get worse when we reach the
desert. If you’re so miserable, why not go back home and spare the rest of us
from having to listen to you.”

    
Ethan
stared coolly back at him. “For the same reason you’ve chosen to betray the
wildlings. Oh, so many shiny
starstones
.”

 
   
Jesse flushed, his gaze shifting briefly to
Manny where it could not stay. Manny said nothing, nor did he look at any of
them. Though he was standing a little ways off, it wasn’t so far away he hadn’t
heard what Ethan said. He was always the silent sort, but this was different.
So much so it was even starting to make Kat feel a touch of guilt.

    
For as
long as she’d known Jesse and Manny they’d had a relationship which at first
seemed almost like master and servant. Jesse never spoke a command to the
wildling, and yet the man seemed to take his every word as an order. But after
having gotten the chance to know them, she’d come to realize she was wrong.
Their friendship was like no friendship she’d ever seen before. It was some
kind of bond she couldn’t understand, and yet it was obvious how deeply it ran.
It bothered her to think she might have destroyed their bond for the sake of
wealth.

    
She kept
trying to tell herself it really wasn’t her fault. Jesse chose to come along
with her of his own free will. He didn’t have to give in to the idea of being
wealthy beyond imagining. He could have said no. Such thoughts had assured Kat
she’d done nothing wrong in the beginning, not so much now.
 

    
“Do you
think we’ll reach the village soon?” Kat asked, slipping her canteen back into
her saddlebag.

    
“I don’t
know," Jesse said. “Maybe. Wildling settlements shift. Because the water
went dry or the animals caught sick, or the spirits sent someone a dream.
Whatever. Back at the trading post, Pander said they’d moved east. He didn’t
say how far.”

    
Kat
frowned at his tone. Before the colossal mistake which was their short lived
romantic relationship, she would have tried to talk to him about what was
wrong. But back then they were friends and now they were.... Well, she wasn’t
entirely sure. And it was Jesse’s fault more than hers. He was the one who made
the move that took their relationship from friendship to something more and he
was the one who turned something more into nothing.

    
Manny
turned and came back to stand beside Jesse’s horse. Still, he didn’t say
anything or even look up. Jesse acted as though he didn’t notice being ignored,
but Kat knew him well enough to catch the slight tightening of his jaw which
proved otherwise.

 
   
She climbed back into the saddle and settled
in for what she expected to be a long ride. And she wasn’t wrong. The sun had
slid far toward the western horizon before they had their first glimpse of the
village.

    
In her
mind, Kat hadn’t known exactly what to expect after hearing Jesse say the
village sometimes moved. She couldn’t really fathom how you could pick up a
town, which is what she had assumed the village was, and move it. Now she
understood.

    
While in
the Dells, she had seen some ramshackle, hobbled together homes, but nothing
like this. She wasn’t certain the cluster of hide covered structures could even
be properly called buildings. The entire place looked as if a strong wind could
lift it up and carry it away at a moment’s notice.

 
   
Upon arrival they were quickly surrounded
by smiling faces, though no one approached. Like Manny, they were bronze
skinned and wore their black hair shorn close to the skull, even the women.
Their bodies bore numerous tattoos, expect for the smallest children, who were
as blank as a canvas waiting to be painted.

    
Everyone
wore short breeches bunched at the knee, but while the men were bare
chested
, the women covered their upper bodies with beaded
vests. Nobody wore shoes. A woman around Jesse’s age with a cobra tattooed on
the left side of her face approached Jesse’s horse.

    
“Hello,
Jesse.” She smiled warmly at him. “Welcome home.”

    
Jesse
returned her smile, though his was somewhat strained. “Hello,
Nika
. It’s good to see you.” He swung down from the saddle
and they embraced.

    
Kat felt
an irrational surge of jealously. It was ridiculous both because she no longer
had a good reason to be jealous and because she wasn’t the least surprised the
‘she’ Jesse had referred to earlier was a girlfriend. Knowing him, he probably
had more than one in the Wild Lands, if not in the village itself.

    
“Manny.”
Nika
stepped over to her fellow wildling and squeezed his
arm. “How goes your journey?”

    
He
shifted his gaze away from hers. “The path yet evades me.”

    
“The
light will find you in time.” She looked past him at Kat and Ethan. “Jesse, you
bring friends.”

    
“Yes,
well...” Jesse cleared his throat. “Kat and Ethan are working a job with me.”

    
Kat
pressed her lips together. She wanted to remind him of exactly who was working
a job with who, but considering he seemed right at home here and she was a
stranger she thought it better to hold her tongue.

    
“A job?”
Nika
raised a brow. A small scar ran through it, but it added
to her features rather than detracted from them. She was really rather pretty.
“What kind of job brings you to the Wild Lands?”

    
“I came
here to talk to you about it,” Jesse said, “but it’s best we do so in private.”

    
“All
right.” She turned and Kat saw a second tattoo, this one on her right arm from
her elbow to her shoulder. A tree of some sort. “Follow me, please. All of you.
I’m happy to offer the hospitality of my home.”

    
As
Nika
led them toward one of the larger buildings, Manny and
Jesse were repeatedly greeted by the other occupants of the village in what Kat
found to be a strangely deferential manner. Though she knew Jesse had spent
time in the Wild Lands, she didn’t know exactly for how long and what his life
had been like. His past from before he and Manny arrived in Marigold was
something of a mystery to her. Jesse was not one to speak of the past and
forget trying to get information from Manny. It occurred to Kat for the first
time that coming to the Wild Lands might offer her some of the answers she had
never been able to get from Jesse.

    
Inside
Nika’s
home, the floor was nothing but animal hides spread
out across the ground. A faintly aromatic scent, originating from a shelf lined
with various bottles and boxes, filled the air. In one corner sat a small tree
with purple blossoms in a pot which looked rather heavy to be in a home
designed to be packed up and moved at any moment.

    
“Do you
like it?”
Nika
asked, coming to stand beside Kat. “It
is called a
patoku
plant. It was gifted to me at my
joining ceremony after I attained oneness with the earth spirit.”

    
“You lost
me,” Kat said. “Maybe you can explain? I’m afraid I don’t know much about
wildling culture.”

    
Jesse drew
a sharp breath in through his teeth. “They don’t use that word here. Only
outsiders call this place the Wild Lands. Its proper name is
Kartesk
and
Nika
is a Child of
the Divine Light.”

    
“It’s all
right, Jesse,”
Nika
said. “I see no insult in the word
from her.” She smiled at Kat. “You have a good soul.”

    
“Oh. Uh.
Thank you.” Kat tried to smile back. It wasn’t easy. Her father held no faith
in gods or spirits or such and she had been raised the same. Spiritual people,
like
Nika
and Manny, made her slightly uneasy.
Deke
had always said nothing was more dangerous than a true
believer.

    
“You are
welcome,”
Nika
said. “And yes, I would be happy to
explain. The joining ceremony is something one goes through once they have
attained oneness with their kindred spirit. Not all my people have a kindred
spirit, only those of us chosen from birth for some special purpose. Those
chosen by the earth spirit, as I was, are healers. The air spirit chooses our
holy ones, the fire spirit choose our war leaders, and the water spirit chooses
our peace keepers.”