Stonewiser (15 page)

“Why did you come?” Eda asked.

Not for the fun, of that Sariah was sure. “I guess I was curious.”

“About Kael and me, I suppose.”

Sariah envied the woman's confidence in her body's beauty, in her femaleness's devastating supremacy. She allowed the woman's words to sink in, to sting like the most venomous of poisons, to burn until she wanted to scream in frustration.

Eda flashed her devastating smile. “The tales I could tell you. You mustn't be resentful about the inevitable.”

We've had our share of adventures together
. Kael never lied.

“He won't be distracted by the ordinary,” Eda said. “He's only suitable for the extraordinary.”

Sariah had no doubt of their respective placement on Eda's ordinary and extraordinary lists. It hurt;
she couldn't deny it, every word and nuance. But wasn't pain the most obvious sign of life to the wounded?

What would it be like to be the forester? To have no curse tainting your blood, no craft haunting your life, no pledges to serve but those made to the self? What would it be like to exist for your own sake, to seek only your own progress, to reign supreme over your body and know it? For an instant, Sariah allowed herself to wallow in her imagination's indulgence. For an instant also, she hated, envied and cursed the woman who had all she didn't have. Then the moment passed and she was her disciplined stonepledged self again.

“He's no simple fare,” Eda was saying. “You ought to know that—”

“Do you smell that?” Sariah whiffed the night's balmy air. “I never knew it stunk.”

“Excuse me?”

“The female estrus,” Sariah said. “The fragrance of racing mares.”

Eda's eyes flamed like fire arrows. “I've been told you are a little… odd.”

“You, on the other hand, are nothing less than sensational. Capitulation is the only reasonable option. Supremacy by awe.”

“You said you wanted to know—”

“I said I was curious.”

“About Kael and I?”

“About you.”

“So you don't want to—”

“No.”

An instant of panic flashed in Eda's golden eyes. She was momentarily thrown off course, a fake retreat. But she was by no means easy to snare. Her lovely shoulders straightened. Her breasts rose and sank in quiet provocation. Most people would mistake the woman for a peacock, dazzling with its brilliant plumage, but Eda's beauty was not idle adornment—it was deadly camouflage.

“So tell me,” Sariah said. “Who told you?”

“Who told me what?”

“About me. You said you were told I was odd. A very knowledgeable source then.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

A man would have believed her. Sariah was sure of that. The yellow eyes blinked, brimming with warm and sudden innocence. Sariah wished she could do that, stun people into a break of the senses, erase the question with a flare of beauty and a hint of a suggestion.

“Beautiful. Powerful. Influential,” Sariah said. “You probably tried to take Kael away from me first. When that failed, you gave us a new deck. Thank you for that. I wouldn't want to seem ungrateful. You're too proud to stoop to stalking, so you must have a very good, logical reason to be here this night. And if Kael falls to you, as he eventually must, that's very good too.”

The forester was not used to defiance. “If I really wanted to, I could have him.”

“Oh, I believe you. Truly, I do. But that's beside the point. Tell me. Why are you here?”

“I've already told you—”

“But it wasn't the truth,” Sariah said. “Your crew. How far away are they?”

Eda opened her mouth and closed it without saying a word.

“Well, there must be a crew. You're too far away from your woods to do this by yourself.”

Eda's gaze turned cold and appraising.

“But they can't be too close,” Sariah said. “Lazar has a good eye, day and night. They must be posing as part of the mob. Aye. You wouldn't risk revealing your hand. It's not compatible with your
other
purposes.”

Eda scoffed. “What do you know of my purposes? What do you know of the ways of the Domain?”

“Not much. I fear you're going to have to tell me.”

“Beware, Sariah. The forester is one of the Domain's last noble houses. So is the house of Ars. In the times before the execration, we were the most powerful of all houses. Ours was a prosperous world. We were the lords and ladies of a healthy land.”

Sariah could see it with her mind's eye, a world in which the likes of Kael and Eda ruled over thousands in justice and wealth; a world of cultivated fields, banquets and celebrations; a dead world, long gone. Did Eda know?

“You of the Guild, you can't begin to understand the meaning of nobility,” Eda said. “You only acknowledge your cursed blood's power and your trade's importance. But I heed the past. I honor my ancestors. I'm no traitor. My house stands fast with the house of Ars.”

“But it's not Ars you're after, is it? It's me you want.”

“Don't overestimate your importance in the great scope of things.”

“And you must want me alive, because your crew is out there, my liver is currently free of your blade, and you're still here.”

Eda waved her sculpted chin in the general direction of the deck shelter. “You must be feeling quite smug with that snotty brute of yours, keeping watch over you at all hours like a faithful mastiff.”

Sariah caught a glimpse of Delis coiled on her haunches, staring from the darkness beyond the threshold like a stalking wolf. She smiled. “I suppose there are advantages to all misfortunes.”

“You're odd.” Eda chuckled. “Entertaining, but odd.”

“It's up to you,” Sariah said. “Whether you keep the peace you cherish with the house of Ars, whether your noble reputation comes out unscathed from this meeting. I wonder how the Domainers will feel when they learn their trusted forester has been playing games with the enemy. Think Eda. Do they really need to know? Does Kael need to know?”

The yellow eyes widened. “You wouldn't dare.”

“He ought to know your game.”

“He wouldn't take your word over mine.”

“I'm willing to see. Either way, I doubt he would like you much afterwards.”

Had the woman been a mare, she would have been foaming at the mouth.

“Who wants me and why?” Sariah asked. “Answer me truthfully, and I won't tell Kael.”

“All I have to do is lie in wait,” Eda said. “All I have to do is wait for you to be trapped or killed. The way of things, it will happen very soon.”

“Be careful, forester, because Kael could be trapped or killed in the bargain, and you could lose your prize. If you're not helpful to me, if you're not forthcoming, I'll make sure that if and when I'm gone, he'll never, ever return to you.”

Eda wasn't easy to shake and yet Sariah needed to know everything she knew. Sariah's tongue was heavy as lead but she pressed on. “A time may come when Kael might want something I can't give. If you came out of this without fault in his eyes, if you left here tomorrow with your intentions secret and your name intact, it could very well be you who could give him what he wants most.”

The realization was slow in Eda's yellow eyes, but when it came, it burned like the summer sun. “Do you swear on your wiser's oath you won't tell Kael about my role in this?”

“If you tell me the truth and leave with Lazar tomorrow morning.”

The woman hesitated. She stared into the Barren Flats wistfully, as if seducing the night to whisper all the future's secrets in her ear. When she finally spoke, she did it abruptly, without bothering to conceal her irritation. “A few weeks back, a man came to the forest.”

“Was he a burly, bearded man with a wide nose?”

“No, he was a matching eyes like you, clean shaven.”

“He wanted to buy your timber, I bet.”

“He bought enough timber and at a good premium.” Eda lifted her chin proudly. “He said the Guild was looking to retrieve you. He said he would pay well for you.”

The forester was the logical choice. She was at the center of the Domain's business, trading with all the Domain's settlements, and possibly with a few towns on the other side of the wall, if Sariah had judged Eda fairly as an avid entrepreneur. Noble blood or not, coin was difficult to refuse in the Domain's direness. And, if someone had been tracking Sariah's progress—or lack thereof—they would have known her deck burned at Nafa and anticipated her need for a new one. Aye. The forester was the ideal contact.

“Did he leave a stone for me?” Sariah asked.

“A stone? No.”

Not Arron, then. He loved his little monsters, his snatching stones. “Did this man have a name?”

Despite the exquisitely sculpted lines of Eda's face, beauty had a way of turning ugly in defeat. “I'm sure you understand. Considering the kind of business we did, he didn't mention a name and I didn't ask. But he did say he would return for you. He said they needed you. He said Mistress Grimly, the Guild's true and only Prime Hand, was looking for you.”

Alabara was by far the most inaccessible of all of the Domain's tribes. An active rot pit besieged the settlement year round. The only way in or out was a slim dead water lane carved on a beam of crumbling sandstone. It spanned the rot flow and connected with the few narrow ribs of red stone that anchored the odd-looking settlement.

Sariah leaned on the channel's ledge, making a show of taking a rest. Porous and easily eroded, sandstone wasn't a particularly good guardian for truth or a trustworthy depository for lasting wisings. Yet Sariah could sense the faint call of the wising protecting the stone surrounding the channel. The temptation was too hard to resist.

She laid her palms on the stone. The call echoed through her like a gust of cool wind. It had been a while since she had encountered wised stone of this magnitude. The links in the stone were loose and distant, the core felt hollow, and the wising was by no means as strong as it should be, but the sheer joy of the contact flooded her like a rush of fresh water, until she was beaming with the amazing sensation and brimming like a full reservoir.

“Sariah?” Kael's voice recalled her to the heat of the waning day. He had to shake her a little before she heard him. “Sorry, but you're smiling like a fool. In this wretched line, it's bound to attract attention.”

With a pang of regret, Sariah released the trance and joined Kael pulling the deck forward. They managed no more than three or four steps before they had to stop again. It was hard, tedious, muscle-wrenching, calf-bruising work getting the deck to start moving, only to have to stop it again right away. They had been in line all day to enter Alabara. The sun was low on the horizon, and yet they were still stuck in the traffic-choked channel.

She looked back to see that their collective disguise as a family was working well. Whoever was looking for Sariah expected two people, not five. That's why they had decided to come to Alabara together, not to mention there weren't any places on the way where they could have dropped off Malord, Mia and Delis.

Malord played the grandfather fittingly, loitering by the door under the shade of the roof's overhang. To avoid recognition, he had shaped himself a pair of bulky limbs by stuffing some rolled blankets under the one he spread over his lap. Sariah wagered he had his heavy mace stuffed under the blankets as well. He was playing snakes and scorpions with little Mia, who had been told in no uncertain terms to be quiet, obedient, and to restrain her power at all costs, a feat that didn't seem hard for her as long as Sariah was nearby and nobody threatened their lives. Meliahs help them all.

Delis knelt by the brazier like a dutiful wife, stirring something, probably dinner, although what she could cook was not clear to Sariah. Delis's face was wrapped, hiding the mark on her temple. Sariah supposed she ought to be grateful for the stench that poisoned the air. In addition to wearing the face wrap, the Alabarians wore translucent, colorful veils to protect their eyes from the sting in the air. The veil didn't hide her features, but the color of Sariah's matching eyes was fairly diffused by it.

For further protection, Sariah had decided to wear male clothing under her weave. Her braid was tucked beneath a young man's cap. She had bulked up her shoulders a bit, toying with the proportions of her tightly bound chest. Her one arm also looked the part, but that was only because of Delis's attempt at concealing her banishment bracelet.

It had happened the night before, as they camped in the flats, waiting for their turn to go into Alabara. They had been discussing the plan that would allow them to enter undetected.

“I will go, regardless,” Sariah was saying.

“You can't go,” Kael said. “If that thing begins to glow, you'll get yourself killed.”

“I must speak to Leandro.”

“You can't come.”

“Do you think you're my lease?”

Delis stiffened with Sariah's indignation. Her eyes darted to Sariah's face. She had the distinct impression that Delis sought some instruction from her, some wordless command that would enable her to pummel Kael, or at least try.

“I can make the glow go away,” Delis said.

“You can? Why didn't you say so before?”