“I will then. What do you remember?”
“Pain. And thirst. One of the women giving me water. I couldn’t understand anything—their words were gibberish. I think maybe one of the surgeons tried to get her to stop, but she gave me water anyway. I was lying with the dead and dying. They expected me to die.”
“Who was it? The woman, do you know?” Aisse had come close while Fox was speaking. His nostrils flared as if he could smell her presence.
“Piheko. She made me understand her name later, in the women’s quarters.”
“She has a kind heart.” Aisse moved away again as Fox turned his surprised face to Kallista.
“Aisse is Tibran,” she said. “She ran away. Now she’s ilias. You were in the women’s quarters?”
“Not at first. Piheko fed me till I could walk again. No one paid me any attention till then—I know because they left me alone—but when I could rise from my pallet and walk, I was noticed. They saw my blindness when I tripped and fell. They spoke and I could not understand what they said. That was the day I lost my caste.” He fell silent, tears welling from his sightless eyes. Kallista squeezed his hand. She didn’t know what else to do.
“After they—Afterward, someone carried me to the women’s quarters and left me there. The women wouldn’t let me in but Piheko still fed me. She gave me a dress to wear and half of an old blanket so I had some cover.” His voice was flat, emotionless, as if he told of what happened to someone else, but the tears still flowed.
“A dress tunic?” Kallista was confused.
“Women’s clothing,” Aisse said. “Only for women. A dress is like a dress tunic, but never with trousers or leggings. So to do sex, is only required to lift the skirt.”
“Ah.” She understood now. In a caste system where women have little value, clothing a man in something only women wore would show contempt for him.
“While I healed again,” Fox said, “I…served. I was beast of burden for the women—blind, deaf, dumb—an idiot. Or I was their pleasure toy. The laborers played games. They liked to trip me, then—”
“Stop it.”
Stone’s chair clattered to the floor as he jumped to his feet. “Do you have to know every damn bloody detail, humiliate him again with the telling? Leave him be!” He stood there another moment, breathing hard, making and unmaking fists, then he spun and slammed out of the room.
The telling seemed to hurt Stone more than it bothered Fox who had lived it. But Fox had been stripped of all pride and will. Stone hadn’t. Worried, Kallista weighed her options, horribly few. She could sense Stone’s turmoil and wanted someone nearby. “Aisse, go after him. Watch, but from a distance.”
Aisse scowled a moment, then shrugged, nodded and slipped from the room.
Kallista looked back at Fox who clung to her hand now with both of his. “When did you leave?” she asked. “How?”
“I don’t…exactly know. I remember a need to find something—you, I think—a need so strong it hurt. One day I woke up on the edge of camp. No one cared if I left, so I kept going. I could understand speech, once I left. Folk directed me to the temples, where I was given a shirt, trousers, food. The need pushed me, refused to let me quit, showed me the path when it should have been impossible.”
“Do you still feel it? That need?”
“No.” He lifted his face for all the world as if he could see her. “I found you. What else do I need?”
Oh, she did not need the weight of this responsibility, did not need to be the center of anyone else’s universe. But she had offered, the One had accepted, and she could not lay the burden down again until their task was done.
“Thank you for telling us, Fox.” Kallista patted his hand and gently disengaged. “We needed to know what kind of healing you might require.”
Fox sat up straight, surprise in his expression. Kallista waited for him to ask, to say anything, and when he did not, she sighed. “There may be nothing a healer naitan can do for you, aside from your leg. I know one here in Turysh who can work wonders, even half-healed as it is. Perhaps there is one who can help your sight. We should at least ask what is possible.” And perhaps a healer could help mend his broken soul.
It was afternoon before a knock at the door announced the arrival of the healer. Aisse answered it and the tall, pale, dark-haired naitan smiled a greeting. As she entered, she looked up at the others in the room and her smile faded.
“Hello, Mother.” Kallista tried to smile, but didn’t think she succeeded any better than her birth mother.
“Had you planned to let any of us know you were in town?” Irysta set her box of herbals and medicines on the table. “Does anyone actually need a healer or is this one of your games?”
Obed stiffened at the caustic words, but Kallista stilled him with a gesture. She moved to stand behind Fox, resting her hands on his shoulders. “No game, Mother Irysta. Fox was injured in Ukiny just before I last came through Turysh. The wound has healed badly, possibly been reopened and healed again. I ask that you do what you can for him.”
Irysta glanced at the others in the room, her eyes lingering briefly on Fox. “Your sedili informed me that you had finally joined an ilian. Your other parents were disappointed that you didn’t see fit to have the wedding at home. I told them it was only one more example of your lack of proper family feeling. How was he injured?”
“I don’t remember,” Fox answered for himself.
Kallista was grateful. She would likely have included some bitter sniping about her mother setting aside her prejudice against soldiers. Irysta would never refuse treatment to anyone, regardless of how an injury occurred, but she would make her disapproval apparent.
“I don’t need an audience for this.” Irysta waved the others out of the room. “Where is your injury, Fox?”
“On my thigh.”
Irysta gestured him toward the bed, opening her box while the three who could leave did so.
Kallista helped Fox to his feet and guided him to the bed. “I assume you want him to remove his trousers before he lies down.”
“I can scarcely examine him through them.” Irysta looked up. “Why are you still here?”
“Because if I leave, Fox will go into convulsions, and if Obed leaves, he will.” Kallista put up her hand to forestall her mother’s protests. “I’m sure you don’t want to force us to demonstrate. I’m told it’s rather painful. Just mark it down as another peculiarity of my unfortunate magic, all right?”
Irysta sniffed, disapproving as always, and turned to her patient. Kallista moved to stand near Obed. He touched the back of her arm lightly, and when she didn’t move away, slid his hand down to clasp hers. Always, whenever she came close enough, he would touch her as much and as long as she would allow it. Not long, most times. But at this moment, she welcomed his touch. She found his unquestioning devotion a comfort.
“This wound looks to have been made by something long and sharp. Like a sword,” Irysta said, probing it. “Are you a soldier?”
“I was a warrior once, but no more.” Fox spoke through gritted teeth, as if in pain, and Kallista reached for his magic.
Their link was new, forged afresh just this morning since that first terrible day. She could sense only his presence, and that vaguely. Not like Stone’s heart beating with hers, or the touch of more than Obed’s hand. Kallista gently disengaged from Obed and crossed the room to the foot of the bed. Reaching over the footboard, she wrapped her hand around Fox’s ankle. She called a thread of magic to soothe his pain, hoping it would do as she asked. Through the connection of their touch, she could feel the easing take hold.
“Karyl told us your ilian was four strong,” Irysta said absently, mind on her own magic as she bent over Fox’s wound. “Not six.”
How to answer that? She had sent a separate message to Mother Dardra asking her to preside over the addition of Fox to their ilian. She
ought
to invite the whole family, but that would lead to questions and complications and…
“Obed joined us just over a week ago,” Kallista found herself saying. “And I would be honored to have you as witness when Fox joins us this evening.”
That brought Irysta’s head snapping around. She stared at Kallista a long moment, suspicion in her eyes, then turned back to her patient. “For one who resisted family life for so long, you’ve taken to it with sudden enthusiasm.”
“When the One forms the ilian, who are we to deny it?”
“You do understand that your iliasti will expect you to stop indulging yourself with your troops. They’ll expect you to be faithful.”
Kallista sighed. Irysta would believe what she wished and no amount of protest or explanation would change her mind. “That’s not going to be a problem.”
Irysta glanced from Fox to Obed behind her then gave her daughter a sour look. “I don’t suppose it would be. Still, I had hoped I instilled enough discrimination in you that you wouldn’t stoop to snatching beggars off the street.”
Kallista swallowed down her anger, leaving it to churn in her gut. “How is Fox? Can you help him?”
“I will not be able to restore complete mobility without surgery, because healing is so advanced.”
“How long would it take him to recover? When would he be able to travel?”
“By boat? I’d say six—”
“Horseback,” Kallista interrupted.
Irysta frowned. “That’s very strenuous. Hard on the legs. No sooner than ten weeks—ninety days—at minimum. More rest would be better.”
In ninety days, her pregnancy would certainly be showing. She couldn’t afford to wait, unless there was no other choice. “Can you do anything for him now, without the surgery? If he waits, will it make a difference? Can you still help him later?”
“Yes, of course I can help him now. I can restore much of the strength and some flexibility. If he waits longer, I may not be able to recover his complete mobility. It could well make a difference. But then I expect no better from you than to put your own wishes ahead of—”
“How much difference? Between one hundred percent recovery now against fifty percent later?”
“No, not so much.” Irysta pursed her lips, thinking. “I would estimate surgery now would restore perhaps ninety to ninety-five percent mobility, while waiting would be…perhaps around eighty percent. Possibly better, but there is no guarantee of that. Without surgery, I might be able to improve his mobility to half of what it was.”
Kallista looked at Fox, patted his foot to be sure she had his attention. “What do you want to do?”
“As you require, naitan,” he said, eyes pointed toward the ceiling. “Stone has told me of your mission.”
“Mission?” Irysta put thirty-four years of disapproval into that one word.
“Orders from the Reinine.”
“And you’re taking your ilian?” Disapproval
and
shock. Irysta was improving her nonverbal skills.
“They have orders as well.” Kallista made her decision. They couldn’t afford the time for such a small difference in healing. “Do what you can for him now. We’ll do the surgery when we get back.”
Now something like smug disappointment joined the other emotions in Irysta’s voice and on her face, as if the decision made her unhappy, but she expected no better. “I’ll be here.”
She gathered a handful of herbs and burned them in the lamp’s flame. “Fox, did you lose your vision when you were injured?”
The smoke mixed with her magic, sending him drifting. “Yes,” he murmured.
Kallista pulled her own magic back, afraid of interfering with her mother’s activity, but somehow he clung, refusing to let her go. She stood in a metaphysical corner of Fox’s body, trying to pretend she wasn’t there as she watched how her mother hurried the natural healing along, knitting together the severed muscle as much as possible.
It was interesting. Briefly, Kallista wondered if she might be able to do something of the sort now. She had West magic as well as North. Why not East? But she was a soldier, not a healer. Her duty lay elsewhere.
Finally Irysta straightened and dismissed her magic. Kallista could see what she had done, could see where just a bit more binding might—but she didn’t know anatomy, didn’t trust her own magic, so she left it as it was done. “Will you be at the ilian ceremony, Mother Irysta? You never did say.”
“There is a healer at Northside Temple who might be able to do something about his vision.”
“She’s already been sent for. And you still haven’t said if you will come.”
Irysta busied herself with her box, arranging the containers inside just so. “Are you certain you want me there?”
“Of course I do. If you want to be there, and if you can keep from—I know I disappoint you. I’m used to it. I’ve felt your disapproval all my life.”
Irysta spoke into the pause. “I don’t—I never—”
“Don’t bother denying it,” Kallista interrupted. “We both know the truth. Insult me all you want. But leave my iliasti out of it. Fox is a soldier, separated by war and injuries from his…sedil, Stone, one of the original four in our ilian. Now Fox has found us again. He is no beggar from the street and he is the brother of my ilias. How can we not marry him too?”
This far from the war, the Tibrans could pass as Adarans from a distant prinsipality, and she would not explain the marking by the One. It would take too long and might call attention. The less attention they drew, the better.
“I am not trying to insult you, Kallista,” her mother said with tight-lipped calm. “Or your iliasti. I am merely trying to instruct you on proper behavior—”
“And insulting us by assuming we aren’t already behaving that way. Look—are you coming or not? It’s up to you. I don’t care either way.”
“If you don’t care about your own birth mother—”
“That’s not what I said,” Kallista interrupted again, surprised she hadn’t already lost her temper and stormed out. “I invited you because you are my mother and I’d like to have you there. But if you can’t bring yourself to attend, it’s not going to ruin my life. It won’t even ruin my day. If you can’t be happy for us, that’s your problem, not mine.”
Where had that understanding come from and why had it taken so long to figure it out? She lifted her hand from Fox’s ankle and stared at it. Was it the magic? Or was it that she had an ilian of her own now? That would naturally make her mother’s opinions less important than any of theirs. Obed’s unconditional approval apparently had its good points.