Oria's Gambit (17 page)

He hadn’t meant to be thinking that so
loudly. “Not true,” he countered with ill grace. “We will never be
free of each other.”

“You will be free of my immediate presence,”
she amended, with such equanimity that he brought up some lurid
thoughts about her, just to shake her up.

“Stop that.”

“Why should I? And don’t you dare lecture me
on my responsibilities to my people. I came here for them. Married
you
, for them. You’re not the only one making sacrifices
here.”

“I never imagined I was,” she gritted through
clenched teeth.

There—not so cool and remote.
You radiate
emotional energy as fierce as the sun’s heat in summer.
By
Arill, he’d use that to thaw her, make her deal with him as a
partner, if not her equal. Barbarian and mind-dead he might be, but
irresponsible ruler he wasn’t. “I think you do imagine that,” he
taunted her.

Oria refused to look at him, but her fingers
flexed on the railing. Apparently she did that a great deal because
she’d worn the gritty stone smooth in places, always up in her
lonely tower, secluded from the world.

“Princess Oria, all alone in her quiet world,
with her flowers, her jewelbirds, and her Familiar. Well, I have
news for you. You’re no longer alone. You don’t get to be. I’m your
husband and you will not shut me out. Not out of your ambitions.
Not out of your emotions.” He leaned in, letting her feel all the
heated desire she stirred in him. “And not out of your bed.”

“Stop doing that!” She scanned the sky,
looking for that pet lizard she liked so well, no doubt.

“Why should I?” he repeated the question,
ruthlessly pushing her.

“Because.” She rounded on him at last, face
flushed from fury, the heat, or both. “You want to know a secret?
Fine. Here’s one for you. To receive a mask, we have to prove that
we’ve achieved
hwil
.”

“Like your golems and your blank masks,” he
sneered. “Creatures devoid of feeling.”

“If only,” she snapped back. “You wanted to
know so badly what it is? Well ask some other priestess because
I’ve never achieved
hwil
. That’s right, I faked it, with my
mother’s help. And if they find out, they’ll take my mask away, and
I will never become queen. So wrap your clever brain around that
concept and stop trying to get to me emotionally.” Her breath
caught, nearly a sob. “If you won’t do it for my sake, then do it
for your people. Because you’re going to destroy us all for the
sake of your cursed male pride.”

“Oria.” He caught the sleeve of her robe as
she turned away again. He was an ass. “Hey. I didn’t know. I can’t
know these things unless you let me in on these secrets. That’s my
whole point.”

“Well now you do. There: one more in my vast
array of flaws.” She wiped furiously at her cheeks. “You wanted
into my feelings? Here I am, a whole boggy, bloody mess of
them.”

Oria’s sensitivity … both her blessing
and her curse.

“I don’t believe you’re flawed.”

“What do you know of it, Destrye?” She
demanded, all Báran princess at her imperious best.

He held onto his patience by a thin thread,
the sun hot on his oiled hair that she’d tended with such care. A
mercurial woman, restless and changeable, his sorceress wife.
“Obviously not a whole lot, since you refuse to explain it to
me.”

She didn’t reply, pressing her lips against
whatever tart—or wounded—reply she’d had on the tip of her tongue.
Then she gave a glad cry as Chuffta winged up, landing on the
balustrade with a scrabble of talons on stone. Wings still spread,
he balanced as he snaked his long neck against her throat, letting
her embrace him, running slim fingers over his shining white
scales.

Lonen was in a hell of his own making that
he’d be fighting sick jealousy over her love for the dragonlet. His
fingers itched to grab his axe and chop something up. Oria, for
example. In fact, maybe he should work off some of that energy. It
could only help both of them.

Leaving them to their little love fest, he
went inside long enough to strip to his small clothes and grab his
axe, then found another spot on her expansive terrace and set to
running strengthening exercises. His muscles responded stiffly at
first—the wages of too little exercise the past days of riding to
Bára and negotiations and rituals—but gradually they warmed.

His faithful battle axe felt good in his
grip, reassuring, steady, and real. The opposite of magic in its
inert iron. That was something that wasn’t alive in any way. A flaw
in Oria’s assertions. He ran the drills with the axe in his right
hand, then switched to the left. The wise warrior prepared for all
eventualities.

By the time he felt like he could operate out
of a place of calm logic instead of unreasoning, jealous anger, he
dripped sweat. He had to use Oria’s private bathing chamber to wash
off again, which only made him think again about coming in his own
fist earlier, dazzling images of Oria in his head.

All thoughts led to the sorceress.

At least able to behave like a civilized man
again, he found Oria in the shade of her silk sail in the seats by
her fire table, though it was only smooth creamy stone, no dancing
violet flames. A good thing, as a number of plates of food and
pitchers sat there instead. Juli had done her mistress’s hair up in
the complex braids again, and Oria now wore a more elaborate set of
the crimson priestess robes, kind of a cross between one of her
royal gowns and the daily robes. Chuffta sat beside her, tail
wrapped around her wrist like a series of bracelets. And, of
course, Arill take her—she wore her cursed mask again.

He fingered the lock of her hair in his
pocket. She hadn’t intended it as a gift, obviously, but he’d keep
it as such, having found a few pieces of cut ribbon to bind each
end.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, not sure how
else to open the next phase of conversation.

“I won’t fall apart in the next moments, at
any rate.” She stroked Chuffta’s wing and the derkesthai gazed at
him, green eyes full of intelligence, but no accusation that he
could detect.

“Master Chuffta,” he greeted the Familiar as
Juli had, then offered one used by the Destrye. “Did you enjoy good
hunting?”

Chuffta blinked and dipped his chin, looking
pleased indeed. Oria made a little sound of surprise.

“What?”

“He didn’t say anything to me, just
communicated directly to you. He doesn’t usually do that.”

Lonen sat, using a pair of glass picks to
stab a piece of meat. Could be filling his griping stomach would
help his mood immensely. “Probably Chuffta knows that he and I are
in this together with you, so we might as well find ways to
communicate with each other besides through you.”

“Don’t start.” She sounded weary, but he
couldn’t let her off this climbing rope while they still dangled so
far above ground.

“I’m not. I’m continuing. You and I have
things to sort out before we walk into that council chamber, in
order to be a cohesive fighting unit. If only to serve our grave
responsibilities to our peoples.”

She sighed, a rough, injured sound that
grabbed at his heart. “I suppose I deserve that. But you push me,
Lonen. You push and push and…” She finished on another empty
breath, then filled a glass with juice, her hand shaking. Belatedly
she seemed to realize she couldn’t drink with her mask on and sat
there, holding it.

“Here, let me help you take it off.” He rose
and walked behind her.

“You don’t have to—”

“I might as well learn the tricks of it,
right? Something I can do for you when it’s just the two of us, so
you don’t have to call on Juli every time.”

“Fine.” He imagined she rolled her eyes,
which was better than the defeated attitude. “There’s a knife—”

“I’ve already found the knots and can get
them.” They were tucked in among the braids, cleverly hidden, but
not that difficult to undo.

“You interrupt me a lot.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but realized
that she had a point. “You’re right. I’m an impatient brute. I’ll
try to do better.”

She held the mask in place as he worked. “Not
entirely impatient. You seem to be good with knots.”

A peace offering? He’d take it. “I’ve worked
with rope a lot. Climbing trees, cliffs, that kind of thing.”

“City walls,” she said in a more pointed
voice. So much for peace.

“Weren’t you the one who said we needed to
get past accusations and apologies over with?” He finished with the
third set of ribbons and slipped the mask from her hands, setting
it on the tile kept for it nearby. Uncovering the bowl next to it,
he found one of her damp and freshly scented cloths inside and
offered it to her.

Eyes flashing up to him in surprise, she took
the cloth, mopping her flushed face with it. Her eyes were red and
swollen from crying, which meant the few tears he’d witnessed
hadn’t been the end of it. Giving her a moment to compose herself,
he sat again, spearing more meat.

“You’re supposed to use them like this.” Oria
picked up a pair and demonstrated holding them both in one hand,
deftly plucking a grape from a platter.

He studied her hold, emulated it and tried
the same with a piece of meat. Easier to learn on that than on
something slippery like a grape. On his second try he got it and
Oria smiled at him. A real one, if sad. “You’re good with your
hands in many ways.”

Not the time to tease her with the sexual
remark that sprang to mind at that. “I guess so? I’ve always liked
doing things with my hands—wood carving and such.” He set down the
eating picks and studied his hands. “I don’t like that they give
you pain.”

She took a breath. “It’s not pain,
exactly.”

“Okay.” He waited, restraining the questions
that annoyed her so. Instead he piled a plate with a bunch of
leaves, grass, and sticks—or whatever in Arill it all was—and
handed it to her. When she stared at it with a blank expression, he
nudged it a little. “Eat. Long council session, remember. You don’t
eat enough.”

“I feel guilty,” she admitted, balancing the
plate on her knees, sharp under the silk, and poked at the greens.
“I keep thinking what it takes to grow this and where we stole the
water from.”

“It seems to me that you spend too much time
feeling guilty about things that aren’t your fault and you can’t
control.”

“For someone who claims to want to know me
better and be my partner, you criticize me an awful lot.”

“It’s not criticism—it’s good advice. You
can’t lead your people to better lives if you’re not strong.
There’s no sense in starving yourself to make up for the past.”

“Is that why you’ve lost so much weight?” she
retorted. “Because you’ve been eating so well, so you can be strong
to lead your people?”

“Point taken. But in truth it wasn’t guilt
that stopped me so much as lack of opportunity and appetite for the
options I had. Don’t apologize for that either. You eat and I’ll
get us back on topic. It seems to me, as we were discussing
earlier, that your sensitivity to emotional energy is also what
gives you powerful magic. Juli called it your blessing and curse
together.”

“Juli talks too much,” she muttered, but she
speared up some greens and chewed. When she swallowed, she pointed
the glass picks at him. “And I’m not that powerful. I’m still
figuring things out. The magic is strong sometimes, but it’s also
hard to … direct.”

He nodded thoughtfully, grabbing a platter of
cheese and scooping some onto her plate. “So, you’re like a young
warrior after a big growth spurt. You don’t know where your body is
or how to make your size and strength work for you. You’re learning
to swing the magical equivalent of a sword, but right now you’re
your own worst enemy because you keep hitting your own self in the
noggin with it.”

She gave him a funny look. “That actually
makes a weird kind of sense.”

“I don’t know much about magic, but I do know
something about training young men—well, people—in using their
Arill-bestowed gifts. Just because she gave it to you, doesn’t mean
you don’t have to practice diligently to hone those talents into
something you can actually wield with confidence. Natural born
talent only gets you ten percent there. Hard work and refining your
skills is the rest of the battle.”

She was quiet a moment, thankfully eating
with more enthusiasm. “You’re never quite what I expect,” she
finally said.

He grunted a laugh. “Good. As you’re never
what I expect either. We’re a perfect match.”

“We’re not, though.” She gazed at him
somberly, eyes dark with concern. “And the council will know it.
Worse news is, my mother refuses to see me. Her attendants say she
was so upset about my—our—marriage when I sent a message to her
that she said all sorts of horrible things, then fell into a fugue
state.”

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t imagine how that
would be, though if those servants were his, he’d take them to task
for passing along the ranting of a madwoman. That did no one any
good. “You know that, whatever she said, she didn’t mean it. You
said yourself she’s not in her right mind.”

“I know that in my head.” Oria glanced at her
Familiar and rolled her shoulders. “The point is, she won’t be
helping.”

“We’ll do it ourselves then.” He scooped some
stuff onto her plate that looked unfortunately like maggots.
Hopefully it wasn’t really, but if it was… well, good protein.
Maybe he could eventually talk her into eating meat. That would
help fill out those waifish hollows around her collarbones.

“I don’t think I can do it.” She nearly
whispered the words, then glanced down at Chuffta, who gazed up at
her with an intent green gaze.

Practicing being the better man, Lonen gave
them a few minutes to converse, using the opportunity to devour
more of the really excellent meat. Some kind of venison, maybe. And
there were pieces of fowl with a spicy seasoning he really
enjoyed.