Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (49 page)

Still, Eredion knew back hallways and how to cut through connecting rooms. A few times he was able to signal a friendly servant into the path of an approaching, unwanted conversation-seeker. Fimre stayed quiet, watching everything with a focused intensity that told Eredion he’d remember the route, the helpful servants, and the people Eredion had avoided.

Amused in spite of himself, Eredion wondered—carefully shielding the thought—whether he’d been that keen in the beginning. It was hard to believe the ornamented halls around them had ever provoked a sense of wonder in him. After so many years of dodging and ducking certain faces, it was hard to remember a day when he hadn’t walked with an escape route always in mind.

Sessin Fortress didn’t have nearly as many ways to slip away unobserved...For the first time, he admitted that he would really miss Bright Bay. That some days—most days—it was even hard to remember what Sessin Fortress looked like.

I’ve been here too long.
The thought held a different inflection than it usually did. This time, he found himself wondering if, after all he’d been through, going back to Sessin Family lands would be such a good idea.
I’m becoming a northern, gods help me.

He opened the door to his suite; caught Fimre’s amused glance and realized he’d sighed with relief. Then realized he always did, never thinking much about the small sound. He felt his face heat.

“Long day,” he muttered, avoiding Fimre’s gaze, and turned his attention to getting them through the door and shutting it behind them.

“My lord?” Wian, curled up in his favorite chair and shrouded in a thick blanket, lifted her head and blinked sleepily. A moment later, seeing Fimre, her eyes widened. “My lords.” She slithered upright, clutching the blanket around her. Her face tinted a deep rosy shade, and the color flared down almost to her bare shoulders. Her feet and lower legs were bare, and from her obvious embarrassment, so was the rest of her.

Eredion bit his lip and motioned to the bedroom with one hand. She nodded, bobbed a bow, and edged hastily from the room, careful to keep the blanket clutched around her the whole time. The bedroom door slammed. Eredion let out another, rueful sigh and tried not to meet Fimre’s gaze directly.

“So she’s not too shy,” Fimre observed, “to be sleeping nude in your chair.” He looked around the room with a clear, assessing gaze. “I thought you said you didn’t have any kathain.”

“I said I’d managed without them for years,” Eredion corrected. “And she’s not trained as a kathain, exactly. She’s...a unique case.” He grimaced and indicated a chair. Fimre, still studying the room, took his time accepting the offer.

Finally settling into the chair, Fimre said, “Will she be coming back out, or are you keeping her all to yourself?”

Before Eredion could answer, the bedroom door opened. Wian emerged in a simple, peasant-style blue and green dress, likely the easiest thing she’d found to slip into. She hesitated, glancing at Eredion for a cue; he quirked an eyebrow and motioned her forward, seeing no alternative. He wished she’d taken more time about dressing. Fimre would see her haste not as respect, but as an indication that she got in and out of clothes rapidly. Too late now: Fimre’s eyes were already brightening with interest.

“My lords,” Wian said, offering a respectful, if shallow, curtsey.

“Lord Fimre,” Eredion said, “allow me to present Wian.”

“Wian,” Fimre said. His smile widened. “Lovely.”

The flush came back to Wian’s face. She ducked her face, avoiding their stares.

Fimre lifted a hand, beckoning. “Please come here, Wian,” he murmured; Wian blinked and went to stand tamely beside him. Another slight motion and whispered request, and she perched as readily on his knee.

“Fimre,” Eredion said, warning. “Let her be.”

“I’m hardly even asking,” Fimre said, his attention entirely on Wian’s face. “Gods, you have her trained well.”

“I’m not the one responsible,” Eredion said. “Let her go.”

“I’m not
holding
her,” Fimre said. He reached up and traced a finger lightly along one side of Wian’s face. Her eyes slid half-shut, her back arching a little. “Gods, she’s wide open.”

“She’s been conditioned to react that way to the slightest nudge.” Eredion watched Wian’s blank expression for another moment, then sighed. “Wian,” he said softly. “Get up, please. Come here.”

Wian blinked, straightening, and glanced into Fimre’s smile. A wave of color rose, then as swiftly drained from her face. She almost leapt the short distance to stand beside Eredion’s chair; her fingers dug into his shoulder in a panicky grip. He patted her hand reassuringly.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s all right, Wian. You’re all right.”

Panic turned to a fierce glare. He saw her sense of betrayal rising, and shook his head.

“Wian,” he said, with enough command in the word to stop her from storming away. “Lord Fimre doesn’t understand, that’s all. Could you show him, please?”

She stared at him, her face turning a chalky white now; obviously horrified and disbelieving that he’d ask that of her. He stared back, implacable. Fimre needed to understand Wian wasn’t a whore, nor a kathain, and nothing Eredion could say with words would convince him. Eredion also needed to show that he was in charge, here in his own suite; he’d get no respect from Fimre if Wian defied him. None of that could be explained aloud.

“Show him,” Eredion said, keeping his tone very quiet. “Please.”

She bit her lip and said, in a small voice, “A-all of it, my lord?”

Eredion held back a flinch at the look in her eyes. “Yes.”

She swallowed, her whole face drawing in for a moment; then, in a swift movement, pulled the sash loose and stripped the dress off over her head, letting it fall to the floor in a rumpled heap. As quickly stepped out of her drawers, and stood, eyes shut, face dead white, trembling slightly.

“Good
gods,”
Fimre said, starting wide-eyed to his feet.

Eredion didn’t say anything. Fimre walked a cautious circle around Wian, studying the array of old scars laced over her body, the still-fading bruises and healing scabs in some areas.

“Who the
hells
did all that?” Fimre demanded at last, turning back to Eredion with a ferocious glare.

“Rosin Weatherweaver,” Eredion said. “And a few other roughs along the way. All right, Wian. Thank you.”

She opened her eyes and glared at both of them, color flooding back into her face. “Seen your
fill?”
she said blackly. “Sure you don’t
want
some of this,
Lord
Fimre? Now that you see the reality of what you were drooling over?”

Eredion bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t interfere. Wian had earned the right to a bit of attitude at this point.

Fimre blinked, taken aback; then grinned amiably. “If you’re willing,” he said, “a few scars don’t bother me. Anytime and anything you like, sweet. Just let me know.”

Wian’s face wentwhite and murderous. Eredion lunged up out of his chair and intercepted Wian before she reached Fimre; scooped her up and retreated several fast steps.

“He doesn’t know!” he shouted into her face, but wasn’t sure she heard him through her string of loud cursing. “Wian! He didn’t
know.
Stop!”

“Didn’t know what?” Fimre said, bewildered.

Eredion ignored him, all his attention on not dropping Wian as she writhed in his arms. “Wian, stop,” he said again; finally gave up and called on command:
“Stop.”

She quieted immediately, eyes brimming with tears, and tucked her head up against his shoulder, shuddering all over.

Eredion looked up at Fimre’s honestly astonished expression and said, “Let me get her settled, please. I’ll be back in a few moments.”

In the bedroom, he eased her down onto the bed, murmuring reassurance.

“You’re going to give me to him, aren’t you?” she whispered as he drew blankets over her. “That’s what this is about.” Her fingers tightened around his hand, like a child begging for reassurance. “Just like Rosin.”

“No,” he said. “No, Wian, you’re not a slave to give away. He had to understand, that’s all, and I had no other way to get through to him. I’m sorry it humiliated you. I’m sorry.” He stroked her hair and face gently with his free hand. “You’re not a whore. You’re not a slave. Not now. Rosin’s dead, and that time is all over, Wian. I won’t hurt you like that. I promise. Easy...easy. Shhh.”

Her breathing evened under his carefully cadenced words, her tight grip on his hand easing. “Not...whore,” she murmured.

“Go to sleep,” Eredion said, sliding his words under the level of her conscious hearing. “Shhh. Sleep. Everything’s fine. Go to sleep.”

Not long after that, he drew the bedroom door softly shut behind him, then went to the sideboard to pour himself a shot of desert lightning. Without turning, he said, “That was too close to Rosin’s favorite phrase during a torture session.
This can stop anytime you like, sweet, just do what I want. Anything you want comes after that, sweet, just let me know.”
He lifted the small cup and downed the shot, his own skin prickling with delayed reaction; poured another and tossed it back as fast. “She heard it a lot. I heard it more.”

“Did he
dare—”
The words held sharply rising anger.

“No. Rosin never laid a hand on me. He just made me
watch
it all.”

In the following silence, Eredion took another cup from the tray and filled it, then pushed it aside and flicked his fingers over his shoulder to indicate this one was for Fimre. He gave himself one more refill and stood staring at it, waiting.

Fimre moved to stand beside him. Picked up the cup, set it down again. “Lord Eredion—”

“You couldn’t have known.
Drink,
damnit.”

A moment later, the empty cup clicked on the sideboard. Eredion refilled it.

“She’s one of the unlucky ones,” Eredion said as Fimre slugged down the second shot. “She lived. I’ve done what I can, but there’s no healing what she went through, not totally. Not when you’ve seen your mother raped to death, your father’s guts looped around his neck, your ten-year-old sister violated in every possible way; not when you’ve gone through those violations yourself, for years on end, too stubborn to give in and die. And then Rosin used Ninnic’s child to twist her, so that now she acts the whore at the slightest mental nudge....”

Fimre didn’t say anything, his face very nearly white.

“I stood by,” Eredion said, staring at the wall, “and watched all those things happen to hundreds of people. I healed some of them, because Rosin would do worse things to more innocents if I didn’t. Every time I snuck a prisoner out of their cell, every time I sent a family Rosin was about to go after out of the city to safety, I paid for it by watching something horrible happen to someone else. So that’s what sort of wonderful, generous person I am, Fimre: I saved one person knowing it meant the torture and death of five more, every time.”

Fimre held out his empty cup. Eredion splashed some more liquor into it.

“Leave Wian alone,” he said. “Fimre, leave her alone. Please. She’s been through enough.”

“Yes,” Fimre said, a single, subdued word.

Eredion picked up his cup and tossed back the final shot of rotgut, then let out a long breath as it burned its way down and through his whole body in a flush of warmth.

“Sit down,” he said. “We’ve some more talking to do before I send you off to your quarters for the night.”

Rain thundered down as though dumped from a gigantic bucket. Tank and Dasin slogged through ankle-deep and rising water towards the inn, Delt having headed in another direction entirely after leaving Yuer’s.

“Hope he shows up in the morning,” Dasin groused, head bent against the deluge; his hair storm-slicked into dark brown rat-tails.

“We aren’t going anywhere in the morning,” Tank observed. He blinked rapidly to clear his eyes. “This storm’s moved in for a day or two at the least. Not enough wind to move it past sooner than that.”

His stomach roiled as he heard the echo of his own words in his head:
Two days,
he thought then.
We’ll be stuck here two days. Then the storm will move due north.

His feet began to trade their frozen chill for a dangerously numb feeling. For the first time ever, he missed the overpowering dry heat of Yuer’s home. He put out a hand and nudged Dasin’s shoulder with his knuckles.

“Move faster,” he said. “This water’s getting deeper by the breath. And colder.” Then, belatedly, he reversed the nudge into a hard grip on the thin shoulder. “You did good back there, Dasin. Damn good.”

Bones moved in a shrug. “Did what I had to, didn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Tank said. He released his grip. “Come on, let’s get warm.”

A few steps later, Dasin said, chin tucking down even further and the words barely audible against the roar of rain in Tank’s ears: “Don’t—take the commons room tonight. Don’t.” He hesitated. Tank gripped Dasin’s shoulder again, cutting off the next word; knowing what it would be, not wanting it voiced.

Not wanting to make Dasin beg: as he would, having gone this far towards admitting his vulnerability.

Dasin’s head came up. He turned a quick glance towards Tank, his thin face stark in the dim storm-light, and said, “I know I’m not—”

“Shut up,” Tank said, and shoved lightly at Dasin’s shoulder, not letting go.

Dasin stopped walking and turned to face him. “Why?” he said, the single word filled with bewildered anguish; no telling which version of
why
he meant.
Why do you care about me, why did I have to go through that childhood, why did Raffin go after me—
there were dozens of possibilities, but Dasin wasn’t overly given to introspection, which narrowed the range considerably.

Tank shook his head, not sure what to say. “Some things just are,” he said at last, which answered most versions he could think of offhand. He glanced down at the water swirling around his ankles. “Let’s go get dry before you get swept away like a twig.”

Dasin stood still another moment, face oddly emotionless under the streaks of water running down his cheeks, staring at Tank as though he’d never seen him before.