01 - The Compass Rose (12 page)

Sounds intruded—the slap of water along the boat’s sides, the creak of the sail’s rigging, the murmur of voices as the boatmen talked and laughed among themselves. He could feel the hum of magic over his skin as the naitan on shift directed the pocket of winds pushing them against the current. He opened his eyes a slit to be sure his own naitan hadn’t moved. Their chairs sat side by side, wooden flanks touching, but too far for him to sense her continued presence.

“Oh for—” She took his hand, laced her fingers through his. “There. Now you’ll know if I decide to run away.”

Content, he closed his eyes again. The sounds swelled then faded away as he categorized and dismissed them. Without their distraction, his mind began to buzz. He was seriously worried. The not-breathing business was only a small part of it. Though she tried to pretend otherwise, something more had happened to Kallista when that dark and deadly magic swept through her.

She dreamed things that came true. She saw people who weren’t there and talked to them. Dead people, by her own words. Torchay felt a faint chill slide down his spine. West magic was as much a gift of the One as any other. He believed that. But it still unnerved him by its very nature. Not that it mattered. His place was by her side.

She could manifest magic from all four cardinal directions at once and his place would not change. He was her bodyguard. Her welfare, her life was in his charge. And that was why he worried. That, and the fact that he loved her, had loved her for years.

He’d loved her since she took the blame for the fiasco he’d caused, almost getting them both killed in their first year together, in his first combat. He’d been wounded, nearly gutted, spent months with the healers recovering. She’d visited nearly every day. And when he came out, she insisted he be reinstated as her bodyguard. How could he not love a woman like that?

There had been a great deal of hero worship about it at first, but after nine years at her side, he loved her for her flaws as well as her virtues. He would never inflict his emotions on her. She didn’t want it. Her highly disciplined, carefully controlled, duty-bound life had no room for anything as messy as love. But he could pour his devotion out on her without having to speak the words. It had taken nine years to gather the courage to speak of friendship. That was enough.

Shouts from the front of the ship brought Torchay bolt upright out of a sound sleep he didn’t remember falling into. The lanterns on the very back of the ship held back the night’s darkness. He had been asleep for quite some time. He still held Kallista’s hand clasped in his.

Torchay stood, releasing her hand. “I had better go see what that is. Go back to the room and wait for me.”

She gave him her “think again, Sergeant” look and followed him down the narrow walkway beside the passenger cabins.

Just past the cabin area where a passageway cut from one side of the ship to the other, half a dozen crew members were standing over a huddled figure crouched on the deck, arms folded protectively around its head.

“What’s happening?” Torchay asked.

Kallista leaned over the boat’s rail to look around him, trying for a better sight of the situation. Torchay elbowed her back upright with a snarl to stay hidden. She crouched to peer beneath his elbow. His protectiveness could be so annoying.

“We found a stowaway. A Tibran spy.” One of the sailors kicked at their find.

“Don’t hurt me. Please don’t!” the stowaway cried in the high-pitched voice of a child or woman. “I mean no harm. I’m no one. I’m not a spy.”

Kallista tried to squeeze past Torchay. She should have known better. The man could give lessons in immovable to mountains. “What are you, then?” she called past the barricade of his body.

“A woman. Only a woman.” The stowaway shuffled around on her knees to face Kallista’s direction as much as she could. She wore a torn and dirt-stained tunic. Her hair was chopped raggedly short, matted with more dirt, and her thin arms were dirtier yet.

All the crew members had stopped their abuse to stare at Kallista. Even Torchay looked over his shoulder at her until he recalled his duty and swung around to face front.

“Tibran?” Kallista said. “Are you Tibran?”

“No longer. I was born in Haav, over the sea, but I have left Tibre. I am here and here I wish to stay.” Still curled into a ball, the woman stretched her hands along the deck, reaching toward Kallista in supplication.

“Why? Why abandon your home?”

“It has never been my home.” The woman’s bitterness startled Kallista.

“Do you understand her, naitan?” one of the crew members asked. Kallista thought he was a boat’s officer since he wore a tunic rather than going about bare-chested like most of the other males in the crew.

“Yes.” She almost continued with a question but thought better of it. Setting her hand against Torchay’s taut back, she leaned forward and murmured in his ear, “Please tell me you understand what she’s saying.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
orchay turned his head slightly to reply. “No, Captain. I cannot. Is it—could you be speaking Tibran?”

Kallista sighed, letting her forehead come to rest on his shoulder. She was so very tired of waking up every day to discover some new peculiarity about herself, some new magic that had made its home inside her. She wanted it to stop. “I suppose it must be,” she said. “She says she’s from Haav. Isn’t that one of their ports?”

“I believe so, naitan.”

“She also says she’s left Tibre. She wants to be Adaran now.”

“Oh, she
does
, does she?”

Kallista could feel the suspicion bristling from Torchay like some prickly cloak.

“Naitan.” The tunic-clad officer spoke again. “Captain’s compliments, and would you come to the foredeck and assist in interrogating this stowaway?”

“Yes, sir, I would be happy to.” Kallista straightened.

Torchay held his position while the stowaway was hauled to her feet and hustled up the gangway to the high foredeck at the prow of the boat. Only when the party was a certain prescribed distance ahead did he follow, always keeping himself interposed between Kallista and the Tibran.

“I doubt that poor child is much of a threat.” Kallista stalked slowly behind Torchay’s broad back.

“As do I. But anything is possible, and I will not be careless of your life.”

As she rolled her eyes, he spoke again. “And do no’ roll your eyes at me.”

Mouth open in surprise, Kallista halted two steps down from the high deck. “How do you know—”

He turned and held out his hand to escort her the rest of the way. A smile lurked in his eyes and nowhere else on his solemn face. “Because you always do when I say such things.”

She shook her head, smiling despite herself as she took the hand he offered. “I think you have been my bodyguard far too long.”

The stowaway stood before the stout, stern-faced captain, shivering in the night’s warmth. Obviously a woman, now her delicate build and surprisingly full breasts could be seen, she hugged herself, head down, eyes on the deck beneath her bare filthy feet.

Kallista greeted the riverboat captain, one of a prominent trading family based in Turysh. Kallista had known a number of her children in school before the lightning came.

“Who is she and what is she doing on my boat?” The captain clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels waiting for Kallista to translate.

Hiding a sigh, she summoned military posture and took a step past Torchay to see the woman she was to interrogate. “Stand up straight,” she said, disturbed by the woman’s abject demeanor. “Have you no pride?”

The stowaway flinched as if under attack, and huddled tighter.

Torchay leaned close and murmured in Kallista’s ear. “That was Adaran. Maybe if you tried speaking Tibran…?”

She glared at him. She hadn’t known she was speaking Tibran in the first place. How was she supposed to know which language she spoke when they sounded the same to her?

Abruptly, the stowaway threw herself to the deck again, so swiftly that Torchay had a blade out and poised to strike before holding his blow. The woman curled onto her knees, arms once more stretched toward Kallista.

“Please, please,” she said. “Allow me to stay. I will do anything you ask. I will cook your food and wash your clothes. I will rub your feet. I will even service your man—” There came a little pause in the woman’s babbling before she went on. “Though, if I could
choose
, I do not think I would choose to, because he looks large and would probably hurt me, and he is rather ugly, but if you wish it, great lady, I will do it.”

Kallista could hide neither her shock nor a quick amused look at Torchay.

“What?” he muttered, flipping the naked blade in his hand. It was a good-size one, narrow and long enough to come out the back if he thrust it in the woman’s throat.

“What? What is she saying?” the captain echoed.

“She wishes to stay. She is offering herself as my servant.” Kallista turned to Torchay and lowered her voice, letting her amusement out. “And she offered to ‘service’ you, though she’d really rather not, since she thinks you’re ugly and probably too big.” She finished with a significant glance below her bodyguard’s waist, expecting a snort and a roll of the eyes. She got it, along with a blush she didn’t expect.

Puzzled, she swung back to the prostrate stowaway. Was Torchay attracted to the woman? Was that where the blush came from? She’d thought he had better taste.

“How did she get on board?” the captain said.

Kallista finally repeated all the questions.

“I am Aisse, woman of Haav, assigned to Warrior caste. I climbed onto the ship from the water, during the night, when the watch was on the far side.” The woman did not move from her submissive posture. “I beg of you, great lady, if you will not let me stay, allow me death rather than sending me back.”

“Why?” Kallista asked before translating for the captain.

“I will face death anyway, but theirs will not be a gentle one. It is so for anyone who rebels against his lot in life, but it is worse for a woman.” The Tibran, Aisse, looked up then, finally exposing her face to the lanterns’ light.

Kallista recoiled, shock exploding in gasps from throats around her. This Aisse might have been beautiful, might be beautiful again. At this moment, it was impossible to tell, given the swollen discoloration of bruises covering her face.

“What—” Kallista reached for the woman’s hand, beckoning when she did not seem to know what was wanted. “Stand up. Stand up straight and look me in the eye.”

Aisse did as she was told, slowly straightening from her hunched defensive attitude until she stood in a smaller echo of Kallista’s. Her eyes were a dark, rich brown, rarely seen in Adara. The smudges on her arms were more bruises, not dirt.

“What happened to you?” Kallista asked. “Who did this?”

“One of the Farmer caste.” Aisse shifted a shoulder. “I did not know him. He caught me as I was escaping. The morning the warriors died.”

The day of the dark magic. Kallista stifled her shudder as she translated, sensing Torchay’s impatience. He did not respond well to a lack of information.

“When they died,” Aisse went on, “I got away.”

That sent another chill through Kallista. Did she sense the hand of the One in this? “You were already running away, before this beating?”

“Yes. One beating is much like another, just as one man is like another. They are a woman’s lot, men and beatings. But I wish to
choose
. I want a life that is
mine
.”

The sincerity in her voice rang clear to Kallista’s soul. She too had wished for more choices than she’d been given, though she’d had more than Aisse. “Neither men nor beatings are a woman’s lot in Adara.”

“That is why I want to stay.”

Kallista nodded, her mind made up. “Will you renounce Tibre and swear loyalty to me as representative of Adara’s Reinine?”

Aisse started back to her knees again, joy shining through the bruises on her face, but halted at Kallista’s upraised hand and the sight of Torchay’s glittering blade.

“What are you doing, Captain?” Torchay asked through gritted teeth.

Kallista shifted her upraised hand to halt him as well. “Slowly,” she said in Tibran. “Kneel. Swear on the One, the Mother and Father of all, that you renounce all ties and loyalty to Tibre.”

“I worship Ulilianeth, great lady,” Aisse said as she knelt, eyeing Torchay’s blade all the way down.

“A beautiful aspect of the One, but only a small part of Her glory. Do you swear?” Step by step, Kallista led her through the oath, cobbling it together on the spot from other vows she had heard and sworn over the years.

“Naitan.” Torchay stepped close, bending to growl in her ear, “Kallista,
what are you doing?”

“This woman has renounced her Tibran birth and begged citizenship in Adara,” Kallista said in Adaran as she gestured Aisse to her feet. This time it did not take so long for her to stand straight.

“And you gave it?” Torchay demanded.

“I will take responsibility for her as my servant, until we reach Arikon and the Reinine can decide whether to grant her request,” she said to the riverboat captain, “and of course I will pay her passage to Turysh.”

“And you’re sure she’s not a saboteur or spy?” The captain studied Kallista’s new servant with doubt.

“I’m sure.” Though her certainty bothered her. How was she so sure?

“How?” Torchay asked, voice ringing through the foredeck. “How can you know she speaks the truth?”

I just do
. But that wouldn’t convince them. “My magic is of the North.” Her blue tunic would have told them so already, but truthsayers were also of the North. It wouldn’t convince Torchay, but it might the others. Probably.

He retreated first, however, giving her a hard look that faded to worry, then stoic acceptance. He bowed. “As you say, naitan.”

His acquiescence convinced the others. The captain nodded, dismissing the crew still standing guard.

“If I could beg a bath for my servant Aisse?” Kallista said.