Oria's Gambit (5 page)

Oria began pacing again. Chuffta hopped to a
nearby bench, watching her. “Right now, Yar is away looking for a
bride from one of our sister cities. If he returns with an ideal—a
suitable match, he’ll be married before I can be and the throne
will be his.”

Lonen scratched his beard thoughtfully, its
trimmed and oiled softness an unfamiliar sensation. “Not to be
callous about your ambitions, but would that be such a terrible
thing?”

She laughed, this one bitter with a metallic
echo. “You think I’m power hungry and crave the throne. I suppose
that’s a fair assumption on your part.”

Actually he didn’t think that at all. It
didn’t mesh with what little he did know about her, and he felt
obscurely ashamed of hurting her by the implication. He opened his
mouth to say… something, but she forged on in a rush, wringing her
pale fingers together.

“I did not send the Trom to Dru, but someone
in Bára did. The ways of the Trom are mysterious even to us, but
they can be directed by their summoner. It doesn’t make sense, but
I think it had to be Yar who sent them. He’s the one who summoned
them originally and he must control them still. He has powerful
allies on our council and in the temple, those who believe it’s far
easier to continue to steal water from the Destrye than to cast
about for other options. We also face problems with our sister
cities, because we’ve been supplying them with water—your water—and
trading goods and political favors for it. That leverage is part of
how Yar will be able to convince them to give him one of their
priestesses for a bride. I don’t have a particular yen to be Queen
of Bára, but I desperately don’t want Yar to be king. For the good
of the Destrye, you don’t either. With the power of the throne of
Bára and the sister cities
and
the Trom under his command…”
she shook her head. “I don’t care to picture that future. I thought
you might understand.”

He considered the torrent of information, as
overwhelming as heavy rain on parched earth. When she decided to
confide, she did so full out, something that put him in mind of her
restless, energetic stride.

“So your solution is to marry ahead of him
and be crowned before he returns,” Lonen summarized for them both.
A solid plan, but what had been her intention before he turned up
at Bára’s gates only hours ago? She had to have had something else
in mind. “Why doesn’t he marry a Báran girl—priestess, that is? Or
the same for you—if time is of the essence, that would be easier
and faster. You claimed you didn’t have another man lined up to
marry. Did you withhold information there also?” A
not-so-surprising twinge of possessiveness at that thought. Though
he’d never truly contemplated having Oria for himself, not beyond
those plaguing dreams and the occasional fantasy, not until she
proposed it.

“No—that’s the full truth. I don’t have
anyone to marry because it’s not that easy.” She tucked her hands
in the small of her back, pacing fast enough to make the crimson
silk billow around her legs. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“Try,” he suggested in a dry tone, and her
mask flashed as she glanced at him.

“I don’t think you’re stupid or ignorant. But
I
do
know you’re skeptical about certain elements of magic
and how it works.”

“Acknowledged.” He poured the rest of the
honey over another hunk of bread, scraped the dregs with a piece of
cheese and piled several more on. A slice of meat and it would be a
decent sandwich. As it was, he might never stop eating.

“The temple matches us with our spouses. In
the best of all possible worlds, we find a … good fit and make
a temple-blessed marriage.”

“An arranged marriage.”

“More than that—there’s complex testing that
involves magic.” She waved that off as yet another thing he
wouldn’t understand. Probably he wouldn’t, but it rankled
nonetheless. “Sufficeto say Yar did not find a match in Bára. With
so many of our priestesses lost in the battle with, well, with your
people…” She took a breath, and he understood the feeling. The
memories of that night pained him, too. He’d been the one to kill
most of those priestesses, and their blood still soaked his
nightmares. Oria had seen him with that blood on his hands. No
wonder she didn’t want them and those stains of murder on her
unsullied skin.

“There are far fewer candidate priestesses in
Bára now, and none satisfied the requirements for Yar, so he’s
casting his net wider,” Oria said more briskly. “I’ve received my
mask recently, so I’ve only just begun testing, but I face the same
scarcity with so many of our priests fallen in battle. So far the
results are not promising, which surprises nobody at all even with
a reduced pool, because I’m …”

“A princess?” He filled in, when she
didn’t—but she shook her head.

“Unusually sensitive, let’s say.” A wealth of
feeling crawled beneath her dry tone. Interesting.

“But even if Yar is counting on that,” he
said when she didn’t continue, “on you taking longer to find a
match, why risk it if the throne is at stake, something he clearly
does
have his ambitions set on? Why not settle for the
second- or third-best pick?” As Oria was doing in proposing to him,
it suddenly hit him. A far less savory realization. The honey
wasn’t enough to keep the bread from going dry in his mouth.

Oria stopped in front of him, twisting her
fingers together again, and he viciously wished he could see her
face, read her expression. Although he supposed he didn’t need to
see her to know he wouldn’t like her answer. “Just tell me, Oria.
Truth is best.”

Though he wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“A mate who’s a good fit is … ideal.”
She settled on the word with a frustrated lifting of her hands. “A
temple-blessed marriage trumps one that isn’t. Were Yar and I both
to marry, whichever of us has the best suited partnership—as the
temple evaluates such things—would be crowned.”

“So not only do you need to be married first,
you need to be married and crowned before Yar can return with a
supposedly better marriage.”

“Yes, exactly.” She sounded relieved that he
understood—and maybe that she’d gotten away with not telling him
everything about why the Bárans sought these purportedly perfect
matches. Knowing them, it had to do with power and status. And
magic, more than likely. Something he did not and would never
have.

He pondered letting it lie there. Couldn’t.
“Why haven’t you stepped up your own search, gone to these other
cities to find your match?”

“I was considering it,” she admitted, “before
you arrived. But in the first place it’s much easier for men to go
beyond the walls than it is for women, for complex reasons I can’t
explain, but they’re the same ones that would make it difficult for
me to go to Dru. That same … syndrome will also cause Yar
delays in bringing a bride back to Bára from her home city, so that
gives me breathing room.”

“And in the second place?”

“I don’t have the influence he does. Because
I refuse to be part of trafficking stolen water.”

She said it simply, but the bald integrity of
her statement touched him in an odd way—more than any of Natly’s
declarations of love had. It hadn’t been that long ago that Lonen
had sat on Oria’s rooftop terrace and scorned her for not knowing
whose life’s blood kept her lush garden alive.

“Thank you for that,” he told her gravely,
meaning it. She might be playing a game of omission and
half-truths, but he could count on that about her, at least.

She shrugged that off, pacing away and
seeming uncomfortable. He wanted to ask more about what an ideal
mate for her would be, but likely it would only cause him pain to
hear all the things he could not be to her. Words like that could
never be unheard and would lie between them. After years of
marriage, such small resentments festered and became mortal wounds.
He’d seen enough of that between his own mother and father to want
to avoid the same in his own marriage, if at all possible. His
idealism at work again—to be contemplating a loveless, sexless
marriage of state and still hoping for happiness between them. And
yet perhaps it wasn’t entirely blind optimism that made him think
Oria pushed to marry him instead of Arnon.

“So you call your reasons self-serving
because you’ll get to be queen, which makes little sense since you
don’t really want the power or the glory.”

He had the impression that she grimaced.
“That—and because being queen will give me access to the highest
level of temple secrets. Which will let me discover how Yar
summoned the Trom, so I can do likewise. That’s how I’ll wrest
power from Yar and relieve Dru from the Trom’s incursions.”

“How did Yar get access to these secrets if
he’s not yet king?”

She ticked a finger at him. “You’re good at
this. I didn’t think to ask that question for some time. I’m not
certain, but I think High Priestess Febe broke sacred law and gave
the spell to him. Or she gave it to Nat and Nat gave it to
him.”

“Your brother Nat was king following your
father’s death, so why was that breaking sacred law?”

“Because he
wasn’t
king.” She made a
disgusted noise and waved her hands in the air. “They told the
Destrye that, but Nat wasn’t married either, so the rites couldn’t
be performed. But Febe and the head of the non-magical side of the
council, Folcwita Lapo?”

“I remember him,” Lonen said with grim
distaste for the overblown man.

“They both heavily favored bringing in the
Trom once it became clear the city had fallen to the Destrye.”

“And they now support Yar’s bid for the
throne.”

“Not coincidentally, yes.”

“So, marrying me is the expedient choice, I
can see that, but how likely are they to support your claim? Why
wouldn’t they delay a decision for Yar’s return?”

“A potential pitfall to be sure, but I have
some people on my side, too. My mother, formerly queen, may have
been relieved of her mask and crown, but she still holds a great
deal of sway on the council, in the temple, and in the hearts of
the people of Bára. Also the city guard supports her and me, which
helps enormously. For example, that’s how you came to be personally
escorted to me without anyone else knowing you’re here. Something
I’d like to keep from public notice as long as possible, another
reason to have this conversation here, where no one can overhear.
Finally, though you declined taking a role in governing Bára when
we set terms for our surrender . . .”

Her voice wavered a bit on that word, just as
she’d been unsettled when he’d said it to her earlier, about having
surrendered to him. She wasn’t nearly as unaffected by him as she
pretended to be. Perhaps he stood a chance of wearing her down on
the sexless marriage concept. Surely there must be ways for their
women to be touched, or there would never be babies. He might not
be a Báran man, or a priest, but he knew how to pleasure a woman.
If nothing else, Natly with her bold demands and sensuous nature
had taught him that much.

Oria had found her composure again, her
stride more measured as she paced. “The treaty might say that you
did not care to exact governorship of Bára in any way, but you
are
king of the Destrye and you did conquer Bára. They won’t
like it, and I might have a fight on my hands, but they’ll have to
acknowledge that Bára, and everything and everyone in it, belongs
to you, by right of the ancient laws.”

A heady thought, that Oria already belonged
to him. Had he been one of his rougher ancestors, he likely would
have already dragged Oria back to Dru with him as a war prize, his
to do with as he pleased. The lustful fantasy aroused him
profoundly, appealing to some base instinct even though the more
civilized part of himself stood back in horror. It made him recall
fragments of those old tales though…

“There are stories,” he said, pulling on the
memories to bring them out, “of foreign, pale-skinned women brought
home to be wives and concubines of Destrye warriors, who
inexplicably faded and died. As if they starved for food none could
provide. Is that what would happen to you?”

She stopped, the abrupt change in topic
derailing her stride along with her thoughts, a strange cant to her
body, almost as if she were in pain. Chuffta sat up higher, wings
mantling as his sinuous neck moved in a sort of question. A good
insight, that he reacted to Oria’s thoughts and moods. Another way
to puzzle her out.

“I didn’t know that,” she finally breathed,
strain in it. “We have no such stories.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t.” He kept his voice
soothing, nearly regretting that he’d brought it up, except that it
had garnered such a telling emotional response from her. “If the
women were taken away and died without returning home…”

“Yes. No one would have known what happened
to them. Tell me—were they … used?”

He nearly choked at the euphemism, especially
on the heels of his brutish fantasies, then wrestled with the
chagrin at having to answer, to own up to what kind of people the
Destrye had been before they settled in Dru, tamed by Arill’s
gentle hand. Maybe there was no possible way to explain. For the
first time he understood what she meant, that she could give him
answers, but that he wouldn’t necessarily understand them. He tried
to couch it gently. “If you mean, did the men who captured the
women take them to bed in the marriage sense, the answer is
assuredly yes.”

“Of course that’s what I mean,” she replied
in a tart tone, far better than the pained one, and amusing him
that he’d tried to be delicate. “And how can you be so sure—do the
stories say so?”

“Not exactly, but—” He had to clear his
throat. “Why else take them?”

Her mask faced him as he answered, seeing far
too much in him. “That would have contributed, too. The sex,” she
clarified unnecessarily, “just as it would damage me if you gave
into those … impulses like you imagined just then.”