Oria's Gambit (13 page)

Only in those the hero rescued the princess,
rather than being the cause of her injuries.

“Are you Juli?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” She curtseyed to him
with grave ceremony. Something, however, about the red curls
escaping her braids to form a sprightly halo around her mask made
him think she wasn’t always so decorous.

“The wedding ceremony,” he told her. “It
required us to hold hands. Oria suffered from my touch and
collapsed immediately after. She hasn’t been conscious since. The
priest said you would know how to help her.”

“Yes, Your Highness. I’ll do what I can.” She
set to gathering supplies, working with deft efficiency. “You are
wed then—the binding worked?”

He hadn’t been aware there was any question
of that. “According to High Priestess Febe, yes. Is there something
I should know?”

Juli shrugged, a graceful gesture like a
dancer’s. “Surely Your Highness understands that Bárans don’t wed
foreigners. So, no, there was no certainty, even though Princess
Oria believed her own magic would be enough to seal the bond, and
give her access to the relationship you hold with your people.”

“I’m a king crowned on the battlefield.
There’s nothing magical about that.” Feeling worse than useless, he
sat in a chair that looked too spindly to hold his weight. It
creaked perilously, but held. For the time being.

“All life holds magic,” Juli replied, brewing
some potion with meticulous measurements. “Only of different
potencies. Here in Bára, we’ve condensed and refined it to our
purpose. In Dru, you have trees as tall as our towers, isn’t it
true, Your Highness?”

“Some of them nearly so, yes.”

“And yet they come from a seed I could fit in
the palm of my hand. How is that not magical? Here now, Master
Chuffta, scoot a bit so I can reach her.” The Familiar obliged with
a rustle of wings and Juli used a small silver knife to cut the
ribbons on Oria’s mask. With an attitude of reverence, she set the
molded gold thing on a tile next to the bed, clearly kept there for
exactly that purpose. Strange people, the Bárans, with their masks
and wasteful practices.

He watched Juli tip the fluid between Oria’s
lips, feeding it to her in delicate sips, all the while careful not
to touch her. “Your touch harms her also?”

Juli nodded, the curls springing like coiled
lamplight. “Not as much as yours, Your Highness—no insult
intended—because I am first Báran and second highly trained in
hwil
, which is why I was chosen to attend her. But she’s
been pushed past her breaking point, so I won’t add to the
strain.”

“What is
hwil
?” Might as well seek to
extend his knowledge while he sat about being useless to his wife.
And possibly to the Destrye. If Oria didn’t recover, all of this
would be for naught. He didn’t know what he could do then, except
perhaps to go home and at least die with them.

Not a pleasant option.

“It’s a core teaching of our temple,” Juli
was explaining. “It means achieving a peaceful state of mind that
allows us to contain our emotional energies. My excellent
hwil
makes me a restful person for her to be around.”

Which meant, by reverse logic, that he
himself would not be restful to Oria. He had zero idea how one went
about containing their emotional energy. Or how to know what it was
in the first place. He spread his hands, looking at them for any
indication of what came out of his skin that affected Oria so. On
his right wrist, a livid scar pulsed an angry red—and yet far more
healed than it ought to be already. He knew how to wield his battle
axe, how to lead his warriors, maybe something of the endless
cascade of decision-making that made up being king, even something
of farming and building aqueducts, now, but he didn’t know how to
keep from harming his own wife with those hands.

“Will she be all right?” He sounded plaintive
and for once he didn’t care. Exhaustion had him by the balls and he
suddenly felt he couldn’t rise from that chair, much less help Oria
or anyone else. Never had he felt his own mortality so keenly.

“I believe so, Your Highness. She recovered
from a far graver condition before, and she’s much stronger now in
her magic than she was then.”

“The other time I touched her.”

“Well, yes and no, Your Highness—many
stresses conspired to cause Princess Oria’s collapse at the
surrender of Bára.” She said it as if it were part of a legend.
Probably it was. Wonderful. He’d go down in Báran history as the
worst of fiends. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

“You might as well call me Lonen. As your
mistress’s attendant, you’ll likely be in my company a great deal.
The Destrye don’t much stand on ceremony.”

“Then you plan to stay in Bára? The rumor
mill had you riding off with the princess before Grienon rose.”

He snorted at that. One thing the Bárans and
Destrye shared—a love of gossip, particularly about the royal
families. “We’re here to stay for the time being.” He stopped
there, unsure of how much of Oria’s ambitions she’d shared with her
waiting woman. “You’re not much like the others,” he noted.

“No, Your Highness? How not?”

“Oria is forever telling me the answers to my
questions are temple secrets. She confides very little.” He waited
to see if Juli would reveal how much Oria had confided in her.

Juli straightened, rubbing her palms briskly
on her robes, as if drying them, or shedding dirt. “May I speak
frankly, Your Highness?”

“Lonen. And please do. I’ve had a surfeit of
secrets and Báran double-talk.” He rubbed a hand over his brow, his
eyelids heavy. Oria seemed to be resting a more natural sleep,
however, and even Chuffta dozed, green eyes slitted as he crouched
beside her on the fancy of a bed.

“Forgive me, Your—Lonen.” Juli began mixing
several new potions, measuring them into various containers, then
combining them into a single goblet. “I should have realized the
wedding ceremony would exhaust you also. This will be restorative
and also let you sleep.”

She handed him the pretty Báran glass and he
studied it dubiously. Ion would have knocked it from his hand, lest
the foreign sorceress seek to poison him. Or kill him in his sleep.
“I should stay awake. Keep watch.”

Juli put her hands on her hips, conveying an
affectionate exasperation that reminded him of his mother, though
the priestess couldn’t be much older than himself. “You rode
straight here from Dru, yes? Probably sleeping little on the
journey and starting well before dawn today.”

When he grudgingly nodded, she pointed at the
glass he still held. “The temple ceremonies drain even the most
stalwart, those in the best of health. There will be no staying
awake for you. The tower is well protected. I’m sure you noted the
guards below as you entered.”

He had, bemused by their crisp, deferential
salutes, instead of challenges, and total lack of surprise that he
carried their unconscious princess.

“And Master Chuffta himself is no minor
obstacle. Rest is what you and Oria both need.”

“Not until you tell me whatever frank words
you sought permission to say.”

She faced him, cocking her head. “She has to
be careful of you, Lonen. I say this as her friend as well as her
serving woman and priestess attendant. Oria has not been much among
people outside her family and priestesses like myself, all of whom
have served her with perfect
hwil
. She is powerful, yes, but
that power comes with a price that requires a delicate balance.
Wedding you is an extraordinary step for her to take. One might say
it’s a choice so courageous as to be foolhardy. You could easily
kill her—or worse. There you sit, hesitating to drink a healing
potion from me because you fear poison. Surely you must see that
you seem no less dangerous to us.”

She had a point. And, he supposed, he’d
already made a choice—one Ion would have beaten him bloody for
considering—in marrying Oria and living among the Bárans at least
as long as it took her to access those secrets she needed.

Lonen drained the glass, grimacing at the
bitter flavor, handed it back to Juli, and wrapped one fist in his
other hand, feeling the pull of the new wound. “Am I so
terrible?”

“You are…” She hesitated.

Big
, came Oria’s voice in his head.
And you carry a great big battle-axe.

“Formidable,” Juli decided, and he thought
she smiled behind her mask. “You radiate emotional energy as fierce
as the sun’s heat in summer.”

“I don’t know how stop doing that.” He set
his jaw in frustration, though it bled quickly away into lassitude.
Juli’s potion worked fast.

“Let me help you, Your Highness.” Juli knelt
at his feet, removing his slippers, then helped him sit up in the
chair, nimble fingers finding the buckles of the shoulder harness,
freeing him of it. She wedged a shoulder under his and levered him
to his feet, though he tried to resist.

“My touch won’t hurt you?” His words came out
slightly slurred.

“Some.” Her voice held strain, though that
could be from his weight. She possessed a surprising amount of
strength, her frame far sturdier than Oria’s, walking him around to
the far side of the bed, between Oria and the doors. “But my
hwil
protects me and I have nothing like Oria’s sensitivity.
It is both her blessing and her curse.”

“Seems like mostly a curse to me.”

“Only because she has yet to fully grow into
her abilities—and you’ve seen very little as yet that she’s already
capable of. She will be a sorceress beyond compare, and a queen to
go down in legend.”

So, Oria had shared her plans. That was good.
Though he couldn’t recall why. Befuddled, he sat on the side of the
bed and Juli undid the ties at his throat, then pulled the shirt
over his head. “I’m sleeping here?”

“Yes.” She eased him back on the pillows, the
silk cool against his hot skin. A breeze scented with Oria’s lilies
wafted from the terrace. His eyes closed of their own accord. “Keep
the sheet between you, but it’s good for you to be with her. You’re
Oria’s husband now. We’re counting on you to take good care of
her.”

She draped another silk sheet over him, again
reminding him of his mother, and days of boyhood long gone, when
he’d slept without fear of dreaming. He might be dreaming already,
Juli’s voice a musical whisper like the moonlit breeze.

“Sgatha knows, no one else will.”

S
he floated through gray
mists, remembering them from before. Which helped her not fight
them. Instead, she accepted the way the mists wrapped her in
cocoons of enshrining silk that healed her, as if she were a
butterfly, soon to emerge with damp wings and no more duties than
kissing flowers. That might be lovely—a life of nothing but the
sugar offered by flowers and the sun on her colorful self, bringing
a sigh of joy to someone’s lips.

“
Until a bird snapped you up.”

She knew that wry mind-voice, too. Chuffta,
her Familiar. Memories came back faster this time, too—good.
Cracking open dry eyelids, she squinted at his triangular face, the
large eyes green as new leaves in spring, his white scales shining
iridescent in the rising sunlight.

“
Welcome back to the land of the
living,”
he said.

She tried to think back, recover more from
the blank mists. “Did I break again?”

“
Well, really you just chipped a little.
Juli patched you up so the cracks don’t even show and you only
slept a good long night rather than days.”

“What happened? Did the—”

A jagged snore interrupted her and she
flipped her head on the pillow to take in the darkly haired and
burly Destrye on the other side of the bed. Lonen. Her—

“
Husband. Congratulations on your
felicitous union. Worst wedding night in history, however.”

“
Oh hush.”

It was good to see him again with her
physical eyes. Lonen lay on his back, face relaxed so the scar that
cut from his forehead, over one eye and down his cheek didn’t pull
to the side as it did when he was awake. More scars criss-crossed
his chest and concave belly—funny that her sgath didn’t show them.
She tried looking with both sights at the same time, something she
hadn’t quite mastered the trick of. The overlapping images tended
to make her dizzy. No one else admitted to it, but she nursed a
theory that the temple had developed the custom of the masks
exactly because they helped prevent that sort of double-vision.

Relinquishing sgath sight again was far more
restful. Besides, she liked seeing Lonen with her actual eyes. Her
husband. The bond resonated in the deepest part of her. Unreal.

His black hair curled in wild disarray, a
dark contrast to the pale silk of the pillows. Dressed only in
light trousers, and with one arm flung over his head, his body
looked long and powerful—and his manhood tented those trousers
dramatically, making her yank her gaze away again.

Something else to put on the list of
intimidating things about him.

Just then he drew in another rumbling snore,
which cut off in a mutter of blurred words, and she rolled her eyes
at Chuffta.
“I slept through that?”

“
He didn’t do it all night. He’s been
making more sounds and thrashing around just in the last little
while. Dreaming, maybe? It seemed to be what woke you up.”

As if to verify the words, Lonen kicked at
something, then shouted. “Go on! Get out of here!” The hand flung
over his head clenched into a fist, his muscles flickering, though
the arm barely moved. He shouted again, anger and fear coiling
around him, his words unclear, as if he spoke through deep water.
Then he growled, more like a beast than a man. His eyes rocketed
under his lids and he made a strangled cry.