Oria's Gambit (16 page)

As soon as Lonen disappeared into her private
bathing room—even before sending for Juli—Oria pulled a fresh set
of priestess robes from the clothespress, hastily changed her
chemise, and scrambled into the far more modest clothing. No more
temptation, for either of them. She picked up her mask, wanting the
comfort of its obscuring help, too, but the way Lonen had asked
that she not… Well, she’d apparently developed a soft spot for the
Destrye king because she set the mask aside again. She seemed to
have a great deal of difficulty refusing him his requests, no
matter how far she strayed from her usual behavior. A dangerous
sign.

Especially that lapse in using grien on him.
And sexually! Really, she couldn’t imagine what had gotten into
her, except that it had been so satisfying to see the look on
Lonen’s face. Plus she’d had to do something to vent all that
sensual energy she’d absorbed. He deserved it, too, teasing her so
mercilessly, making her lose all semblance of
hwil
. He’d so
thoroughly seduced her that she’d been on the verge of dropping her
chemise and demanding he show her how he pleasured himself.

Don’t you do that, use your own hand, to
pleasure yourself?

The question burned in her brain. Was it true
that everyone else did that? Something she really didn’t want to
envision, the people she knew and loved, doing… No. Banishing that
line of thought.

She really shouldn’t have teased him, not the
least because no one could know that she could use active grien
that way. Stupid and impulsive. Of course Lonen wouldn’t know the
difference, but he might slip up and say the wrong thing, betraying
her secret. But making sure he knew enough not to meant having to
explain in the first place and she really wasn’t at all sure that
was wise. He might be insisting that their marriage was a real
partnership, but only the day before he’d called her an enemy.

He talked of wedding dances, but they truly
danced along a very thin line, each of them on opposite sides of
it. She needed to keep that firmly in mind—and not fall into his
flirtatious games.

She couldn’t imagine what had gotten into
her.

A scuffing sound alerted her to his approach.
He emerged dressed in his Destrye clothing again. The animal skins
had been dyed dark, as all the Destrye warriors seemed to wear. Was
that for war or did they never dress in colors at all? Even his
shirt woven of some plant material looked nearly black in the
shadowed interior. At least the leather pants did more to conceal
his flagrant manhood than the Báran silk trousers did. Though,
judging by his relaxed and pleased expression, that might be
because he’d relieved himself while in there. Something else she
didn’t want to know.

“You’re blushing,” he commented.

“It’s warm in here.”

“Especially for you with those layers of
robes on.”

As those layers formed at least a meager
defense against his seductive ways, she had no intention of taking
them off again. “Sit here if you want me to fix your hair.”

Lonen sat in the chair before her, then
leaned closer to examine the mirror, tapping it with a curious
finger. “I’ve never seen such a thing. Like perfectly still lake
water.”

“Which I’ve never seen. It’s more glass,
treated with a liquid metal on one side, so it reflects.”

He sat back in the chair with an amused
grunt, shifting his study of the mirror itself to her, his gray
eyes intent on hers. She concentrated on pouring some oil into her
palm, so her curiosity wouldn’t lead her to peeking into his
thoughts. Careful not to touch his scalp, she brushed her oiled
palms over his curls. They were softer than they looked, though
coarser than her own hair. And intriguingly exotic. Still, it made
no sense that it gave her pleasure to comb her fingers through
them.

“Juli is having food sent up so we can
breakfast here in the garden. We do have meat for you. The council
session might last a long time, so you’d be wise to eat
heartily.”

“Fattening me up?”

He was too thin, it was true. Thinner than
he’d been before and the guilt chewed at her, thinking of the Trom
burning their crops. “I’d like to visit my mother beforehand, try
to persuade her to attend. This is her plan as much as anyone’s.
Hopefully once she sees we’re married, she’ll relent and accept the
reality of it.”

“It’s something she’ll be able to know, just
by looking at us?”

The man thought in questions. But he knew
some of this already, so it wouldn’t be telling him something new.
Still, each secret revealed seemed to open the windows to a dozen
more, making it more and more difficult to determine where to draw
her boundaries with him. That thin line. “With sgath, yes. That’s
how I see with my mask on.”

“What’s that like?” He asked it easily
enough, but his eyes met hers in the mirror, that obstinate
challenge in them.

“I don’t know how to explain it. Don’t smirk.
I was thinking how to describe it.” She rapped him on the scalp
with the glass comb.

“Ow.”

“See? The sand is blowing in your tower
now.”

“Fair enough.” He grinned at her. “I’d like
to blow more than sand in your tower, Oria.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

He sighed, trying to look sorrowful, but his
playfully sexual thoughts tugged at her. “So my mother always
says.”

She resisted. “Is your mother alive?”

“Uh-uh. Not letting you distract me with
questions. You were thinking about how to describe seeing with
sgath to me. Is that related to the moon, Sgatha?”

“Yes. We believe Sgatha governs the flow of
sgath.” She drew the comb gently through his tangled curls, then
closed her eyes to see it with sgath. “It’s like … like
everything radiates a kind of light. Your hair looks different than
your skin, and my hands look a different color from those. Even the
comb has a little glow.”

“Juli said magic comes from life, but the
comb isn’t alive.”

Opening her eyes, she looked at him in the
mirror. “It is, just not in the way you think of it. Everything has
energy to it. This comb, like the mirror, are both made of sand,
melted and transformed, but which used to be part of the ocean.
They carry a kind of … memory of what they once were.”

He frowned. “That makes no sense.”

“I told you it was hard to explain.”

“I know, I know—don’t get all huffy. Go
on.”

She pulled at the curls a little harder than
she needed to, but he didn’t wince. “That’s all there is to
tell.”

“Liar,” he mocked, softly.

“Ask me questions then, which you’re so
brilliant at anyway.”

He didn’t even have to pause to think. “So,
everyone who wears a mask can see with this sgath?”

“The priestesses,” she corrected. It wouldn’t
do for him to insult a Báran priest by suggesting he used sgath.
“The priests use grien.”

“Governed by Grienon.”

“There you go.”

“And does grien work the same way?”

Shifting sands here. “I don’t know, as I’m
not a man.”

He grinned, vividly picturing her standing in
her chemise in the light. “Now that is a truth.”

His curls reasonably tamed and oiled, she
went to fetch the leather tie he’d left on the table by the bed.
She handed it to him, not certain she could gather the springy
stuff together well enough without risking touching his skin. He
didn’t take it, however. Instead he picked up a long lock of her
hair where it streamed over her shoulder and coiled it around his
finger. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

“Besides centuries of secret temple
knowledge? I can’t imagine.”

He tugged on her hair. “Your sarcasm makes me
makes me want to toss you on that bed until you’re too delirious
with pleasure to think straight.”

That made her head reel right there. “I had
to marry a Destrye with an enormous idea of himself.”

“That’s not the only thing that’s enormous.
You’ll find out someday and then I’ll accept
that
apology
when you tell me how wrong you were.”

“Ha!” She tried to step back, but he held on,
his eyes turning somber.

“Oria—I can’t be your partner in this if you
keep me blind and deaf. There’s something there, about sgath and
grien that you’re not telling me.”

She pulled at the leather tie, tugging it
between her fingers as she’d been in the habit of doing since Lonen
had left it behind. How was he reading into her? She’d faked
hwil
well enough to fool the High Priestess, she certainly
should be able to hide a lie from a mind-dead foreigner. “I’m not
keeping you blind and deaf. I can’t imagine what makes you think I
am.”

No longer soft, the gray of his eyes went
flinty, looking more like the granite she’d first thought of when
she saw him full of battle fury and spattered with blood at the
city gates. “I don’t know what it is either, but it’s like there’s
part of you in me now. Maybe you gave me some of your magic.”

“That’s not possible.”
Was it?

“I really hate it when you tell me
something’s impossible, Oria.”

“Then you’re in for long years of misery,
because someone has to be practical in this marriage.”

“You said the magic ritual bound us
together,” he flung back at her. “Magic. Connection. You. Me. I’m
in you and you’re in me. And I know when you’re lying to me.
Another ground rule for you—I also hate it when you lie to me.”

She struggled with her rising anger and all
the emotion he emanated. Too much input from him, on top of all
that had gone the night before, no matter how much better she’d
done. She might be faking
hwil
most of the time, but it
still took a measure of equanimity to do that much. Not a state of
mind being around Lonen helped her to achieve. Terrible timing,
when she couldn’t afford any apparent lapse of
hwil
before
confronting the council. Even as she wrestled both his emotional
energy and hers, the marginal control she managed eroded like sand
slipping through her fingers.

She needed Chuffta and he wasn’t there.

“
I’m coming back. Stay steady.”

Could it be some of the Destrye was in her?
That would explain her uncharacteristically salacious behavior. But
she had too much grien in her already—she couldn’t afford to have
even more. Lonen waited her out, holding her leashed by the lock of
her hair, implacable, though his thumb absently stroked over
it.

She took a steadying breath. “You don’t
listen well. There are things you can’t know. That would be beyond
dangerous to me to reveal to you.”

He didn’t like it, his brows lowering and
some of that dark anger brooding in the background of his thoughts.
“I wouldn’t do anything to endanger you, Oria.”

“You wouldn’t mean to, no.” She slapped the
tie on the table, snagged a ribbon knife, and neatly cut of the
lock of hair he held—then swiftly made good her escape. “But as
both our peoples have amply demonstrated, we don’t have to set out
with the intention of harming each other in order to do it in grand
fashion.”

“It’s hardly the same thing,” he nearly
growled.

She pointed at him. “Destrye.” Then tapped
her breast. “Báran. It’s exactly the same thing.” She turned to
go.

“We’re not done talking, Oria.” Some of his
frustrated anger snaked around her, adding to the uneven charge
already building. Hopefully Chuffta would return soon. She
desperately needed to vent.

“You want to be my partner? Use that anger to
help me get the council to ratify me as queen. That’s why we got
married in the first place, not to loll in bed all morning and play
sexy games. This is a marriage of state and so it will remain. We
both have grave responsibilities to our peoples and you’d do well
to remember that, King Lonen.”

H
e nearly lunged after her.
Stopped himself by dint of will that had carried him through
battles that stronger men than he had fallen to. How had things
between them deteriorated so swiftly? All he knew was he’d undone
everything he’d built.

No,
she
had cut the fragile ties of
trust they’d been creating, snicking it to pieces with her little
silver knife.

She might as well have plunged it into his
heart. Walking away from him with that chill in her gaze, leaving
only a shining lock of her copper hair behind. Metal could be cold,
too. He’d do well to remember that in dealing with her.

Forcing himself to keep to a walk, he tucked
the lock of hair in his pocket, and then his hands. An extra
measure to ensure he didn’t forget himself and touch her. Or
throttle her.

He sauntered onto the terrace, scanning it.
The brightly colored silk banners that provided shade hung lax in
the still air, the brilliant blossoms of fabulous flowers likewise
hanging off draping vines, trees and stalks. The ones that hadn’t
dried to brown crisps drooped, wilting in the sun. A low drone
hummed around him, like heat given sound. No, it came from insects
buzzing around the blooms and small birds, moving so fast as they
dipped from plant to plant that their wings became a blur. The
jewelbirds.

Not in the shade as a reasonable person would
be, Oria instead stood in one of her habitual positions, over by
the stone balustrade, gazing out at the city and the sere plains
beyond. The sun glinted off her cape of hair, like the hammered
copper drums of the Destrye.

She dazzled him. Seduced and infuriated him.
All thoughts led to the sorceress. She’d well and truly bewitched
him and yet cared nothing for him except as a player in her
plans.

He was an idiot to have married her.

“You only have to put up with me a few days
more,” she said, still in that imperiously cool tone and not in the
way he found irresistibly desirable either. “Then you can go home
and be free of me.”