The Oracle's Queen (5 page)

“Maybe he shouldn't do that,” Ki warned. “It might not look right to people, him waiting on your squire, too.”

“People can go hang,” Tamír snorted. “Wash your damn hands.”

T
restle tables were brought to the terrace. Tamír and her people ate with the duke and his two young sons, Lorin and Etrin. Ki had played with them on their previous visits and found them to be good, solid sorts, and smart.

Lorin was a tall, quiet boy a few years younger than Tamír. His brother, who was of an age with Baldus, stared at her wide-eyed throughout the meal, as if expecting her to change form again before his eyes.

Baldus staunchly carried out his duties here, too, until Tamír coaxed him into sharing her bench, and made him eat a few morsels from her portion.

As soon as the meal was done servants cleared away the dishes and Illardi spread out charts of the harbor to assess the damage.

“The Plenimarans knew their job. While the land forces attacked the shoreline, their sailors cast burning pitch on every vessel they could reach and cut the mooring lines. I'm afraid all your warships are at the bottom of the harbor now, or burning on the far reach. Only a few small
carracks escaped. Twenty-seven enemy vessels were captured.”

“Any word of how many ships escaped?” Tamír asked.

“The lookouts at Great Head claim no more than ten.”

“Enough to carry home word of their defeat,” Jorvai noted.

“Enough to carry word of Ero's weakness, too,” Iya warned. “We cannot afford to be taken by surprise again. I have several of my wizards watching the sea, but without knowing where to look, they may not find them. Tell the lookouts to be vigilant, especially in foul weather.”

I
llardi and the others left at last. A large bathing tub had been carried in and filled as they dined and Ki eyed it enviously. They'd lived in the saddle for days.

“Baldus, go into the corridor and keep watch with the guards for a while,” said Tamír. She flopped down on the bed and nodded toward the tub. “You want first go?”

“No, you go on—That is—” A week ago Ki wouldn't have thought twice about it. Now he could feel his face going warm. “I should step out—shouldn't I?”

It seemed a logical enough conclusion, but Tamír suddenly looked close to tears. “Do I disgust you that much?”

“What? No!” he exclaimed, astonished both by the sudden change of mood and that she'd jump to such a harsh conclusion. “How can you think that?”

She slumped forward with her face in her hands. “Because that's how I feel. Ever since Atyion, I've felt like I'm trapped in a bad dream and can't wake up. Nothing feels right! I have this empty feeling in my trousers—” Ki saw color rise in her cheeks, too. “And these?” She glared down at the hard little points under the dirty linen of her shirt. “They ache like fire!”

Ki found himself looking anywhere but at her. “My sisters said the same when they ripened. It passes as they grow.”

“Grow?” She looked horrified at the prospect. “But you want to know the worst of it?”

She pulled the shirt off over her head, leaving herself naked from the waist up except for her parents' rings on a chain around her neck. Ki hastily averted his eyes again.

“That. You can't even look at me can you? Every day since Atyion I've seen you flinch and turn away.”

“It's not like that.” Ki faced her squarely. He'd seen naked women enough growing up. She didn't look any different than one of his sisters, apart from the mottled bruise on her shoulder where she'd been struck during the first attack on the city. It had faded to a green-and-yellow blotch, stippled at the center with the purpled imprint of the chain mail that had stopped the arrow. “It's—Damn it, I can't explain it. Fact is, you don't look all that different than you did before.”

“Lying doesn't help, Ki.” She hunched in on herself, arms crossed over her tiny breasts. “Illior is cruel. You wouldn't touch me when I was a boy and now that I'm a girl, you can't even look at me.” She stood and stripped her breeches off, angrily kicking them aside. “You know a hell of a lot more about girl's bodies than I do. Tell me, do I look like a boy or a girl now?”

Ki shuddered inwardly. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with what he saw. The dark sprinkling of hair covering her cunny looked the same as any girl's. No, it was knowing what used to be there that made his belly clench.

“Well?” She was still angry, but a tear rolled down her cheek.

The sight of it made his heart ache; he knew how much it took to make her cry. “Well, you're still skinny, and your ass has always been kind of flat. But lots of young girls are like that. You're not so old yet to be—ripening.” He stopped and swallowed hard. “That is, if you—”

“Bleed with the moon?” She didn't look away, but her
face went a darker shade of scarlet. “I did, sort of, before the change. Lhel gave me herbs that stopped it, mostly. But I suppose I will now. So now you know it all. These past couple years, you were sleeping with a boy who bled!”

“Damn, Tob!” This was too much. Ki sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. “That's what I can't fathom. The not knowing!”

She shrugged miserably and reached for the dressing gown someone had left across the end of the bed. It was a lady's gown, velvet trimmed with silver lace and embroidery. Tamír wrapped herself in it and huddled against the bolsters.

Ki looked up and blinked in surprise. “There now, that makes a difference.”

“What?” Tamír muttered.

“It makes you look more—girlish.” This earned him a dark glare.

Determined to make things right between them, he looked around and spied an ivory comb on the dressing table. This must have been a lady's room, or else Illardi's duchess had taken pains to equip it properly. There were pots with fancy lids and little odds and ends he couldn't guess the use of.

Taking up the comb, he sat down next to her on the bed and forced a grin. “If I'm to be your tiring woman, Highness, can I fix your hair?”

That got him an even blacker look, but after a moment she turned her back to him. He knelt behind her and began working at the tangles, taking it in sections like Nari used to.

“Don't think I don't know what you're up to.”

“What am I up to?”

“Currying the skittish horse?”

“Well, it needs doing. You're all full of knots.”

He worked in silence for a while. Tamír had thick hair, and it was almost as black as Alben's, but it wasn't as
straight as his. When he was done, it fell in thick waves down her back.

Gradually her shoulders relaxed and she sighed. “This isn't my fault, you know? I didn't choose this.”

“I know that.”

She looked back over her shoulder. With their faces mere inches apart, he found himself lost for an instant in those sad blue eyes. The color reminded him of the Osiat, the way it looked on a clear day from the headlands at Cirna.

“Then what is it?” she demanded. “It feels so different between us now. I hate it!”

Caught off guard, Ki let his mouth run away with him and spoke the truth. “Me, too. I guess I just miss Tobin.”

She turned around and gripped him by the shoulders. “I
am
Tobin!”

He tried to look away, to hide the tears stinging his eyes, but she held him.

“Please, Ki, I need
you
to be the same!”

Ashamed of his own weakness, he pried her hands from his shoulders and held them tightly between his own. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. But now, you're—”

“Just a girl?”

“No. You're to be queen, Tamír, You are already, by right.” She tried to pull away, but he held on. “A queen this grass knight can't sleep close with on cold winter nights, or swim with, or wrestle—”

“Why not?”

It was Ki who pulled away this time, unable to bear the hurt in her eyes. “It wouldn't be proper! Damn it, if you're to be queen, you have to act the part, don't you? You're still a warrior, but you're a woman, too—or a girl, anyway. And boys and girls? They just don't do all that. Not nobles, anyway,” he added, blushing. He'd made do with servant girls, just like everyone else, but he'd never felt ashamed of that until now.

Tamír sat back, lips set in a grim line, but he could see
the corners trembling. “Fine. Leave me, then, while I bathe.”

“I'll go see how Nik and Tanil are doing. I won't be long.”

“Take your time.”

Ki headed for the door. She didn't call him back, just sat there glaring a hole in the bed. Ki slipped out and set the latch softly, his heart in turmoil, then turned to find Tharin and Una watching him expectantly.

“She's—uh—going to bathe,” Ki mumbled. “I'll be back.”

Ducking his head, he brushed past them. As he strode away, it felt like a door of a different sort had slammed shut between them, with him on the outside.

T
amír fought back more tears as she undressed and slid into the tub. She ducked under the water and briskly rubbed the soap over her hair, but she couldn't escape her thoughts.

She'd always been odd, even as Tobin, but Ki had always understood and accepted her. Now it seemed he could only see the stranger she'd become—a homely, scrawny girl he was too embarrassed to look at. She slid a finger through the ring that had been her mother's, gazing down at the profiles of her parents. Her mother had been beautiful, even after she'd gone mad.

Maybe if I looked more like her?
she wondered glumly. Not much chance of that.

She wanted to be angry with Ki, but this sumptuous room suddenly felt too lonely without him. Her gaze strayed to the large bed. She'd seldom slept alone. First there'd been Nari, her nurse, then Ki. She tried to imagine replacing him with Una and cringed, remembering that embarrassing kiss the girl had given her, believing Tobin was just a shy, backward boy. There'd been little time to speak with her since the change, but thanks to Tharin and his organizing, it would be hard to avoid her now.

“Bilairy's balls!” she groaned. “What am I going to do?”

Survive, Sister. Live for both of us
.

Tamír sat up so abruptly water sloshed over the side onto the floor. Brother stood before her, a faint but unmistakable shape untouched by the fire or candle glow.

“What are you doing here? I thought—I thought you'd gone on.”

It was hard to look at him now—the image of the young man she thought she'd be. He was as pale as ever, his eyes as flat and black, but otherwise he looked as he would have in life, right down to a faint tracing of dark hair on his upper lip. Suddenly shy under that unblinking gaze, she wrapped her arms around her knees.

His hard, whispery voice invaded her mind.
You will live, Sister. For both of us. You will rule, for both of us. You owe me a life, Sister
.

“How do I repay a debt like that?”

He just stared.

“Why are you still here?” she demanded. “Lhel said you'd be free when I cut out the piece of your bone. The rest of you burned up with the doll. There was nothing left, not even ash.”

The unavenged dead do not rest
.

“Unavenged? You were stillborn. They told me.”

They lied. Learn the truth, Sister
. He hissed the last word like a curse.

“Can you find Lhel for me? I need her!”

The demon shook his head and the hint of a smile on his dead lips sent a chill through her. The bond of skin and bone was sundered. Tamír could no longer command him. The realization frightened her.

“Are you here to kill me?” she whispered.

Those black eyes went darker still and his smile was poisonous.
How many times I wanted to!

He advanced, passing through the side of the tub to kneel before her in the water, face inches from her. The water went achingly cold, like the river below the keep in
spring. The demon grasped her bare shoulders and his cold fingers bit into her flesh, feeling all too solid.
See? I am no helpless shade. I could reach into your chest and squeeze your heart as I did to the fat one who called himself your guardian
.

She was truly terrified now, more than she ever had been with him. “What do you want, demon?”

Your pledge, Sister. Avenge my death
.

Dreadful realization penetrated the haze of fear. “Who was it? Lhel? Iya?” She swallowed hard. “Father?”

The murdered cannot speak the name of their killers, Sister. You must learn that for yourself
.

“Damn you!”

Brother was still smiling as he slowly faded away.

The door flew open and Tharin and Una burst in, swords drawn.

“What's wrong?” asked Tharin.

“Nothing,” Tamír said quickly. “I'm fine, just—just thinking out loud.”

Tharin nodded to Una and she retreated and closed the door. Tharin swept a suspicious eye around the room as he sheathed his sword.

“I'm almost done here,” she told him, hugging her knees to her chest. “I told Ki he could use the water when I'm done but it's gone cold.”

Brother had stolen the last of the heat.
No, don't think of him right now, and what he'd hinted at
. She'd had too much to bear already, without looking for murderers among what was left of her circle of trusted friends. She clung to the fact that Tharin had not been anywhere near her mother that night. But Iya had, and Arkoniel. Perhaps there had been someone else? It was too painful to contemplate.

“That's a long face.” Tharin helped her from the tub and wrapped her in a large flannel, rubbing her hair with a corner of it.

Tamír dried herself and put on the robe again, not looking at him as she let the flannel drop.

When she was dressed, he urged her into bed and pulled the comforter up around her, then sat down and took her hand. “That's better.”