The Oracle's Queen (19 page)

“Easier said than done,” Ki grumbled. “She's stubborn.”

“Just like her father.” '

Ki searched Tharin's face. “Did Duke Rhius have people killed for this, Tharin? Or her mother?”

“Ariani never hurt a soul in her life, except herself and that child. Rhius did what was called for when he had to, but never for his own ends. He served Skala and did whatever needed to be done. We put down a few rebellious lords in our day, and some were got out of the way quietly. But it was for Skala. Help her accept that, won't you?”

“I'll try, but you know I'll stand with her, whatever she decides.”

“Just as you should, and so will I. Go on now. You're the only one she wants to see now, I'm sure.”

W
hen Ki slipped in, Tamír was sitting by the fire, chin resting on her hand. It was a familiar pose, as was the look of wistfulness he caught before she looked up. Ki had a sudden urge to stride over and hug her. Before he could decide whether to act on the impulse or not, Tamír turned and gave him a wry look.

“I heard you two whispering out there. What was that about?”

“He said to not let you fret too much.”

“I see. How are you supposed to do that?”

He grinned. “Get you drunk enough to sleep well for a change? I hear you tossing and muttering all night.”

Tamír raised an eyebrow. “That makes two of us, then.”

Ki shrugged. “You talk to Brother in your sleep sometimes. He's still around, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“But why? What's keeping him around?”

Tamír just shook her head, but Ki sensed there was
much she wasn't telling him. “He's not done with me, I guess,” she replied at last. “Don't worry, I can deal with him.”

Ki knew there was more she wasn't saying, but he let it go. “I'm sorry you had to hear all that about Korin. It must have hurt.”

She shrugged. “Put yourself in his place. What would you think? If I could only talk to him!”

“I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.”

T
amír went to bed fretting about Korin, but it was Brother who was waiting in her dreams again, gaunt and covered in blood, his black eyes filled with hatred. He had something in his hands, something terrible he wanted her to see.

“They did this to us, Sister!” he hissed. His hands were bloody, and at first she couldn't understand why. All he held was one of their mother's cloth rag dolls—a boy, with no mouth, just like all the others she'd made during Tamír's childhood. As he thrust it at her, however, she noticed that there was blood on it, too. It was dripping from an open wound in Brother's chest. It was raw, just as it had been in the vision she'd had of him that day at Lhel's tree, during their second binding.

A sudden tearing pain in her own chest stole the breath from her lungs.

“They did this!” Brother snarled. “You! You let them live! My blood is on
your
hands now!”

Looking down, Tamír saw that he was right. Her own hands were sticky with blood and she was holding Lhel's silver blade in one hand and her sharp silver needle in the other.

She woke panting and covered in cold sweat. The night lamp had gone out. The room was in utter darkness but she heard a noise and threw herself back against the bolsters, reaching wildly for the sword belt on her bedpost. Her hands still felt wet, sticky.
Blood?

“Highness!” Somewhere in the darkness, Baldus sounded terrified.

And there was Brother, a glowing, snarling presence at the end of her bed. He wasn't naked or bloody, but he still held that mouthless doll in one hand, while with the other he pointed at her, silently accusing.

Her fingers brushed the strap of her scabbard, and she cried out again as strong, warm hands closed over hers. “No! Leave me alone!”

“It's me, Tob!”

She jerked in Ki's grasp but he held on, and that was somehow comforting, as comforting as hearing him use her old name. She knew without looking that Brother was gone.

The door flew open behind them and a guard was silhouetted in the lamplight from the corridor, sword drawn. Baldus let out a startled yelp as the door struck him.

“Highness, what's wrong?” Captain Grannia demanded.

Ki dropped Tamír's hand and stepped back from the bed, dressed in nothing but a long shirt. “Just a nightmare. Her Highness is safe.”

Tamír could only imagine what this must look like. “A nightmare, as he said,” she snapped. “Go back to your post and close the door.”

Grannia gave them a last confused look, saluted, and obeyed.

Tamír expected Ki to go back to his cot, but instead, he sat down and pulled her close. Too shaken to object, she sagged against him, glad of his arm around her. She was glad for the darkness so he wouldn't see how it made her blush.

“I think we might have just started a rumor,” she muttered.

Ki chuckled. “As if we haven't already.”

“Highness?” Baldus whispered. He still sounded scared.

“It's all right,” Ki told the child. “The princess just had a very bad dream. Go to sleep.”

Tamír's eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough now to make out Ki's form, but she'd have known him anyway. Ki bathed often when he had the chance, but always seemed to smell faintly of horses and leather, fresh air and wine and clean sweat. It was a nice smell, comforting and familiar. Without thinking, she reached up and buried her fingers in the soft hair at the back of his neck and felt his start of surprise.

He hugged her and whispered, “What was that all about?”

“Don't know.” She didn't want to think about it any more, not in the dark like this. Baldus was still whimpering, over there by the door. She knew too well what that felt like, to be afraid in the dark.

“Come here,” she called to him.

The child climbed onto the bed and curled trembling against her legs. She reached down and made sure he'd brought a blanket with him, and then stroked his hair to comfort him. It felt cool and coarse under her fingers, nothing like Ki's.

“I'm sorry, Highness,” the child whispered, voice hitching.

“Sorry for what?”

“For not being brave. I thought I saw a ghost. I thought you saw it, too.”

She felt Ki's arm tighten around her. “It was just a bad dream.”

Baldus fell asleep quickly and Ki carried him back to his pallet, then returned to the edge of the bed.

“This isn't the first time I've heard you calling out to him in your sleep, Tamír, just the worst. Can't you tell me what's going on? I know he's lurking around. I can feel him sometimes, and I see the way you go still all of a sudden, staring at something no one else can see. If there's anything I can do to help—”

She found his hand and drew him back down beside her. “He's still angry at me about the way he died, but he
can't tell me what it is, except that I must avenge him,” she whispered.

Ki was quiet for a moment, rubbing a thumb over her knuckles with a soothing rhythm that sent chills up her arm. At last he said, “There's something I never told you.”

“About Brother?”

“Yes. I'd forgotten all about it. It happened the day Lord Orun died.”

“That was years ago.” She'd tried to forget that day, too, when she'd watched Brother kill her abusive guardian with a single touch of his hand.

“That day you went to see him, I stayed behind at your mother's house, remember? I never told you—I never told anyone—but I
saw
Brother that day, while you were gone. That was the first time.

“I was pacing around in Tharin's room, fretting over why Orun wanted me gone and worrying about you being alone with him and all. Then, out of nowhere, Brother just appears and says something like ‘Ask Arkoniel.' It scared the piss out of me, but I asked what it was I was supposed to ask the wizard about. He wouldn't say, though, just stared at me with those dead eyes of his and disappeared.” He paused. “Then they brought you back half-dead and told us about Orun and I forgot all about it. But now, with him still hanging on this way, it makes me think. Do you suppose Arkoniel knows more about him than he lets on?”

Brother's empty hissing laugh in the darkness was answer enough for both of them.

“If Arkoniel knows something, then Iya must, too,” she replied.

“So maybe you should talk to them? I know you're still angry with them, but they have to help you, right?”

Tamír gave a grudging shrug and Ki sighed and settled more comfortably beside her. His breath stirred a strand of hair against her face. “I don't like to admit it, but I guess I'm getting past being mad at Arkoniel. And why would Brother say to talk to him if he didn't know something?”

“Something else they've been lying to me about all my life?” Tamír muttered bitterly.

“I know, but I believe them when they say they wanted to protect you any way they could. Ask him, will you?”

“I guess I'll have to. I just haven't found the right moment, with all that's had to be done. Maybe— Well, maybe I don't want to know.”

Ki put his arm around her again and hugged her. “You still care for Arkoniel, don't you?”

Tamír nodded. In the months since the change, she'd begun to remember how it had been before. She was still hurt at the deception the wizards had practiced, but deeper than that ran the memory of what a patient, kind teacher Arkoniel had been. She hadn't welcomed him then, either. He'd been awkward and known nothing of children, but even so, he'd done his best to ease her loneliness. And it had been Arkoniel who'd convinced her father and Iya to bring another child to the keep, a companion for her. Ki.

Sitting here next to him like this, the simple fact of his presence fending off the darkness and fear, she decided that she could forgive Arkoniel a great deal on that account. Whether that forbearance extended to Iya remained to be seen.

“Maybe you don't have to ask them,” Ki whispered suddenly. “Maybe you could go to the Oracle's priest instead.”

“Imonus?”

“Why not? He speaks for the Oracle, doesn't he? You could at least ask him.”

“I suppose so.” She was still getting used to the idea that the Lightbearer was her own special patron. “I'll talk to him in the morning.”

She reluctantly lay back against the pillows, knowing Ki would leave her and go back to his cot.

He didn't. Instead, he settled against the bolsters beside her and kept a hold on her hand. After a moment she
felt him shift, and then the quick, awkward press of his lips against her hair.

“No more bad dreams tonight,” he whispered.

Not trusting herself to speak, Tamír just squeezed his hand and rested her cheek against it.

K
i hadn't meant to kiss her. It had been a sudden impulse, and it left him blushing in the dark. Her silence afterward left him even more confused, but she hadn't pushed him away or taken her hand away.

What am I doing?
he thought.
What does she want me to do?

What do I want to do?

Her breath was warm and even against his wrist, her cheek smooth against his fingers. He knew she didn't use scent but he could swear there was a new sweetness rising from her hair, something decidedly unboylike. For an instant, it was just him and any girl, on a bed.

Not just any girl
, he reminded himself, but that only increased his confusion. Was she asleep, or waiting for him to get under the covers with her?

As a friend, or as a lover?

Lover. The thought made him go hot and cold all over and his heartbeat quickened.

“Ki?” A sleepy whisper. “Lie down, why don't you? You'll get a crick in your neck.”

“I—um—All right.” Ki slid down a little.

Her breath was against his cheek now, and one of her braids had shifted to tickle across his hand. He reached to move it with his free hand, but paused a moment, noting how silky it felt between his fingers. He thought of how her fingers had felt against the back of his neck and felt a ghost of that same tingle.

A girl's touch, even with callused fingers
.

He turned his head a little and felt her breath against the corner of his mouth. What would it be like, to kiss her mouth?

His heart was beating so hard now it hurt. He turned away, close to panic. Mixed into the confusion was a slight but unmistakable stir of arousal, something he'd never experienced around her before. Not like this.

“Tamír?” he whispered, not even sure what he wanted to say.

His only answer was the gentle sound of her sleeping breath.

Oh hell!
he berated himself silently, staring up into the darkness.
What am I going to do?

T
amír didn't have any more dreams that night, and woke early the next morning, aware even before she opened her eyes that Ki had stayed with her all night. Her cheek was pressed to his shoulder and she'd shifted in her sleep, letting go of his hand to wrap an arm around his waist. He was still asleep, lying on top of the covers with his head at an awkward angle against the bolsters and one hand clasping her by the elbow.

For one sleepy moment it was like any other morning when they were younger. Then she came fully awake with a start, wondering if it was better to lie still and not wake him or try to get her arm free before he realized what she'd done. Frozen with indecision, she lay there, studying the planes of his sleeping face. His long hair spread across the pillow, strands of it brushing her cheek and hand. His dark lashes looked like fine brushstrokes on parchment against his tanned skin, and a scattering of fine stubble on his chin caught the morning light. His slightly parted lips looked very soft.

So close
, she thought, just like that dream she'd had so often, when they almost kissed on the cliffs above that harbor. What would it feel like? It was so tempting, just to lean a little closer and find out.