01 - The Compass Rose (37 page)

“There’s no—” Her hand started toward the place where her child lived, but she didn’t complete the motion.

“Your baby is fine. I believe it was your condition combined with the very powerful magic you had to use to protect yourself and your iliasti that caused your lengthy unconsciousness.”

“Don’t say anything,” Kallista begged. “About the baby. I haven’t told them yet. I don’t want them to find out like this—they’ll worry.”

“You wish to worry alone?” The healer finally helped Kallista sit up.

“Please, naitan.” Kallista clung to the woman’s hand.

“It’s not my place to share news of this sort.” The healer patted her hand. “You have some anxious people waiting to see you.” She moved out of the way.

Aisse rushed forward, her youth showing in her haste, and knelt beside Kallista. She grasped both her hands and peered anxiously into Kallista’s face. “You are well? Truly not hurt?”

Kallista had to laugh. The other woman’s earnestness was appealing. “My head aches, but I’m fine. Help me up.”

She pulled on Aisse’s hands to rise and instantly Torchay and Obed were there lifting her to her feet. Torchay bent to catch her knees and pick her up, but she stopped him.

Stone was there, hovering behind Aisse as if waiting for her to notice him. Or hoping she would not? He took her hand when she held it out to him and came when she tugged. Kallista took his face between her hands and inspected him for injury, reading the magic as it coiled seductively between them. She tipped his head down and kissed his forehead, then raised it and kissed his mouth, warm and oh, so sweet.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Stone grasped her wrists and pulled her hands away from his face, his expression uncomfortable. “You’re the one who saved us.”

“You gave the warning.” She touched his cheek again, briefly, since it disturbed him, and turned to Obed.

She wobbled, and Obed caught her arm, worry evident in his eyes. Kallista tried to smile, but couldn’t. It didn’t seem to matter that she had known him just over a single day. He had become important to her. Cupping his face in her hands, Kallista smoothed her thumbs over the marks beneath his eyes and read his magic.

“It was
your
ear.” Her eyes flew open, sought out the healer naitan. “His eardrum burst—”

The naitan smiled and nodded. “It’s been treated. It will heal.”

“Normally?”

“Of course.”

Kallista tried to check for herself, but she didn’t have a healer’s skill at reading nuance. She patted Obed’s cheek and started to turn away when he covered her hand with his, holding it in place against his beard-roughened jaw.

“My ilias was given kisses. Do I not deserve as much?” Taller than Stone, or even Torchay, Obed had to bend to bring his forehead within her reach.

She’d only kissed him in the joining ceremony, until now had only touched his hands. She feared the temptation of her dreams. But he was right. He was ilias and she owed him everything she owed the others. She touched her lips to his forehead, and when he raised his head, met her gaze with hope and fear in his eyes, she had to kiss his mouth. Goddess, why did he have to taste so sweet?

Kallista turned away, into Torchay’s arms, wrapping herself around him and holding him tight. Now the tears escaped. She hid them in the black softness of his tunic. He tucked her head into his shoulder, his hand cradling it there, and whispered nonsense into her ear until she stopped shaking.

“We have to go, Torchay,” she said, soft enough so only he could hear. “We have to leave now.”

“Aye. As soon as you can travel.” His mouth against her ear made her shudder with longing, but she pushed it away.

“I can travel now.”

“But the lads cannot. They’ve both great lumps on their heads that make them dizzy. A day or two, and they’ll be fine.”

“It’s too dangerous to stay here.”

“I’ll keep you safe. All of you. Trust me to handle it?” His eyes met hers when she looked up. The same clear, blue eyes she’d known for so long.

“Of course I trust you.”

He nodded, accepting her trust with a faint smile. Kallista captured his face between her hands and pressed a kiss to his too-familiar mouth. Less than she wanted, but more than she ought to take, and so piercingly sweet it threatened to bring back tears. Why did this have to be so hard?

The chief healer insisted that Kallista, Obed and Stone all ride back to their suite in chairs. Kallista was grateful the woman didn’t insist on stretchers, but by the end of the journey, she wondered if that might not have been the better choice. It could be no more humiliating to be borne through the palace prone on a litter than to fall from the chair in exhaustion. Fortunately, she managed to avoid it.

In the dark hours of the night, Torchay woke her. They were moving to new quarters, back in Winterhold. The last leg of the journey was made with the three marked ones leaning on each other, trying to stay upright with the help of the two uninjured. At the end of it, Torchay and Aisse tumbled the other three into the same bed with orders to stay and rest until they returned, and promptly vanished on some mysterious errand. Kallista couldn’t stay awake long enough to wonder.

Torchay wouldn’t let her sleep as she wished. He kept waking her from dream-haunted sleep. In truth, she had trouble distinguishing dream from reality. The hard male bodies tucked up against her seemed real enough, but were the kisses? The caresses?

The demon’s red eyes rode the darkness. It hunted her. If it found her—she didn’t know what would happen, but it would be bad. Only when Torchay lay curled around her, her back tucked into the curve of his body, could she hold the demon out of her dreams. She wondered in her sleep what it meant, but only once.

She was vaguely aware that the healer naitan paid a call. Her hand felt cool on Kallista’s forehead. She struggled to wakefulness, afraid the naitan would spill her secret, but she only spoke of magic and exhaustion and rest. Kallista let herself slide back into the dark warmth of Stone’s embrace.

It was the lack of touch that woke her. She was alone in the bed, no one beside her. Kallista rubbed open her eyes to the flicker of a single lamp. Obed sat at the table where the lamp stood, working on some kind of papers, his quill scratching as he wrote.

He went still, then laid his pen down and turned to look at her, his dark gaze drinking her in. “Are you truly awake?”

“I think so.” Kallista pushed her hair out of her face and rolled to her side. “How long have I slept?”

“Most of three days.” He moved to the bed and sat on the edge, reaching for her hand. Kallista pulled it back, afraid of wanting his touch, then hated herself when his face blanked. “The naitan said you pushed too hard, did too much magic. How do you feel?”

Kallista took Obed’s hand in hers, trying to make up for upsetting him, but it didn’t seem to help much. His face remained just as carefully devoid of emotion as before. “I feel…groggy. Disconnected.”

Gingerly, she reached for the magic Obed carried, wondering why it hadn’t already gone racketing around through them. It was there, but sullen, sluggish. She stroked mental fingers over it and Obed shuddered.

“I have missed that,” he said. “Feeling your touch inside me, knowing I am a part of you. I missed it, though I had it for such a short time.”

Obed tucked his cheek into her hand, holding it there against his face, and looked at her. Nothing more. As if he would be content to sit like this as long as she would allow it. It unnerved her.

Kallista cleared her throat. “We need to begin our quest.”

“Everything is ready. We can leave as soon as you are well enough to travel. The time was not wasted.” He smiled. “Your Torchay is a clever man. No one will know we have gone until we are days from here. No one knows we are no longer in Daybright Tower.”

“
Our
Torchay,” she corrected. “He is not mine.”

Obed’s smile warmed. “Of course he is. We are all of us yours. Aisse is a little bit Torchay’s as well, and Stone wishes he was no one’s, but we are yours first.”

And didn’t that thought make her uncomfortable?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

K
allista took refuge from her discomfort in action, throwing the covers aside to stand. Obed took her elbow, giving needed support.

“We must go. Right away,” she said.

“We will.”

But she had to wait through the night and the next day until night fell again before Torchay led them through yet another maze of corridors to an obscure door. It led into a square filled with shuttered shops and teeming taverns. They slipped out of the city in the midst of a merchant caravan and collected their mounts and loaded pack animals at a stable just beyond the gate.

It took almost two weeks to reach Turysh because they rode the entire distance, avoiding the river and its boats. The Tibrans and Obed were so distinctive in their appearance, anyone who saw them would remember. They wanted to avoid notice because no one yet knew who was behind the attack on their ilian. The Reinine’s investigators had discovered that the gunpowder had come from the small stock “liberated” from the Tibrans at great risk and sent to Arikon for scholars and naitani to study. But how the powder had been spirited away and how Joh had come to possess it were questions that still did not have answers.

In addition, Aisse was new to horseback, so they slowed their pace to accommodate her. And that gave Kallista time to practice using the magic from two marked ones.

In Turysh, at the edge of the plain where they would turn north, they took advantage of the city’s size and anonymity to hire rooms at an inn on the rough north bank of the Taolind. The barracks and most of the city lay across the river to the south. The ilian indulged in baths, meals cooked by someone else, and beds without rocks beneath. Kallista accompanied Aisse and Obed to the market to replenish supplies, amused by the obvious pleasure they took in haggling over prices. Before dawn, Torchay had everyone in the inn yard mounting up when the first hint of pink touched the sky.

“I still don’t see what it would have hurt to get a later start,” Stone grumbled, settling into his saddle. “Beds, Torchay. Real beds, for just another hour. Maybe two.”

Not that he particularly minded getting up at this hour, but it was a warrior’s right to complain. Almost a duty. Besides, it seemed to amuse the others when they bothered to notice.

Obed and Torchay finished securing the loads on the pack mules. They’d banished Stone from the task after the first day when the load he’d tied on slid off the mule’s back and bounced along the trail behind it until they got the terrified animal caught and pacified. Baggage wasn’t one of his talents.

Everyone was mounted now, even Aisse, who’d finally acquired sufficient riding skills to stop falling off. Kallista wheeled her mount and rode out of the stable yard to the dusty street heading north.

“No-oooo!” The hoarse scream came from nowhere and everywhere, startling the horses into a skittering dance step.

Torchay pushed his mount toward Kallista, taking up a protective position as he searched all directions for potential danger. Obed caught Aisse’s reins to help her control her horse. Stone couldn’t move, sitting frozen as his mount sidled beneath him. He knew that voice. Its familiarity sliced deep.

“No-oooo!” The shout came again, from the direction of the riverfront.

Stone turned, looked, and his heart ceased to beat in his chest. A tall, ragged man covered head to toe in dirt lurched down the street toward them. He tripped over every obstacle, crashed into everything in his path. When he fell, he crawled until he managed to push himself upright again, never ceasing his limping, lopsided, careening progress toward them.

“Don’t go!” he shouted. The creature was all one color, dust dun from his falls in the unpaved street.

Torchay moved his horse between Kallista and the poor wretch, his hand back, touching the hilt of his lower Heldring blade, but he didn’t draw it. Stone stared, his heart pounding double time. It was impossible. A thousand impossibilities.

“
Khralsh
—” He breathed out the word, whether in praise, supplication or sheer disbelief, he did not know. Then he was off his horse and running.

Stone halted almost nose-to-nose with the man, hardly able to believe what his eyes told him. “Fox?” The name was a whisper. A prayer.

“Who’s there?”

It
was
Fox. Staring from sightless eyes, scarred, limping and far too thin, but it was Fox.
Alive
.

“It’s me. Stone.” Filled with wonder, he touched his
brodir’s
face.

Fox jerked back, stumbled, and Stone caught him. He pulled his arm free, before he was quite steady again. “You lie. Stone is dead.”

“I thought you were dead too,
brodir
.” Stone wiped the damnable wetness from his face with his bare forearm. “I found your body. Your heart did not beat. But here you are. Alive. So can’t it be possible I am alive too?”

“It—” Fox lifted a tentative, dirt-caked hand and Stone caught it in his. “Stone?”

He could bear it no longer and threw his arms around his resurrected partner in a back-pounding hug. Blind, lame, scarred—it didn’t matter. “You’re alive!” He repeated the words over and over.

Finally, when the reality began to sink in, Stone let him go. “What happened? How did you get here? How did you find me?”

“I walked.” Fox moved his hands lightly up Stone’s arms to touch his face. “Is it really you? What are
you
doing here? Where is this?”

A bark of laughter escaped Stone. “A long story, best told when we have more time.” How would he explain everything that had happened? “Come. There are introductions to be made.” Stone could feel Kallista’s curiosity at this distance without benefit of her magical touch.

“Wait.” Fox balked, hanging back. “Stone, no. I can’t. I—I have no caste.” He pulled away as if unwilling to touch any longer. “I am yours to command, warrior.”

Stone wanted to break something, vent his rage in destruction. Had he changed so much in only a few weeks that Fox’s words made him feel so? “Can the casteless command the casteless? I was taken prisoner, friend. A prisoner has no caste.”