The Unfinished Song: Taboo (19 page)

He moved again, over her, a blanket of perfectly woven muscle and skin. His weight felt good. He slid inside her, and kept going, until his length stretched her deliciously. Another sugar-sharp wave of pleasure shuddered through her. His strokes drove deep into her, like an oar into a fierce current. As his own climax approached, he leaned his head toward hers, to bury his face in her neck and hair, and then she felt him tense and release. He yowled as he came.

He sank beside her, and they shared the sleepy smiles of those first few delirious moments after climax which only intimate lovers treasured as deeply as climax
itself
. He brushed another dozen, dazed kisses onto her face and hair.

“Brena.” He caressed her name, and now something more intense crept into his smile.

She felt a pang.
Had she allowed him to become her husband in more than name, though his loyalties were still to her enemies? Did he feel anything for her more than passion? Did she, for him? She pushed the uncomfortable questions aside; they could wait for daylight, and sanity. She put her finger to his lips.

“I’m warm now,” she murmured. “Sleep beside me.”

First thing the next
morning,
Hadi fetched Dindi from her lodge informing her, in awe, that Kavio had asked him to escort her to see him. The early morning air was perfect for the scenic walk from the Tor of the Initiates to the Tor of the Sun, but
the sweet clear light
, even the calls of the fae, felt like a mockery.
Rather than implicate Hadi in her crime, even this late in the matter, she wrapped her gloom inside herself.

To reach Kavio’s guest domicile, they had to climb first up to the Tor, then to the second elevation of Hertio’s compound. Kavio stood in the doorway of his beehive house. He wore the formal beads, feathers and weapons of a Zavaedi
.
A bad omen
.

“Please wait outside the door while I speak with your kinswoman, Hadi,” Kavio said.

“Yes, Uncle,” Hadi said.

“Dindi?”

She followed his gesture inside. He let the leather flap close over the door, despite the halving of the light inside the room. Now the smoke hole let in the only illumination, a spotlight of sunshine that fell across a caramel leather stool. He indicated that she should seat herself there, in the light, but he himself sat across from her, in the shadow.

She twisted her hands in her lap, waiting for the formal accusation of
hex
craft.
Her fingers bunched her skirt and released it
. “I’ve thought about it. I don’t want a trial. It would only humiliate my family. I will accept my punishment without public ordeal.”

“That is your choice.” He cleared his throat. “There may be another. I’ve given this a great deal of thought since yesterday. It may be that I don’t need to report you at all. If you were, ah, willing.”

She felt her cheeks heat, but her demeanor cooled. “What are you suggesting?”

Kavio stiffened at her tone. “Perhaps it was a mistake to suggest it. If you are so eager to be punished, why should I stop you? But I thought you wanted to dance, so much so you would risk your life for it.”

“But not dishonor myself for it,” she said.

A flush of sudden understanding reddened his face.

“Oh,” he said. “You think…No, Dindi. That’s not what I meant. Why do you think I invited your clan brother to bring you here? Do you think I would arrange to despoil you with him not a stone’s throw from my door?”

“But then…” Relief tangled her embarrassment. “I see no honorable way you could lie to protect me, Zavaedi Kavio.”

“I am a Zavaedi,” he said. “Still, despite my exile. As Hertio has reminded me, I am not forbidden to teach magic. And if you were to learn the Patterns from a bona fide Zavaedi, none could accuse you of
hex
craft.”

“
You
would teach me?”

“Think of it as a secret society of two.
I would teach and you would learn. If I am the Zavaedi in charge of the society, it is my decision
whom
to invite to join, even someone without magic. No one else would be privy to our arrangement, but that is standard for a secret society.”

The idea boggled her with its daring.
A warmth
spread inside her, delight and something more.

“Which Chroma would you teach me?”

“Which do you want to learn?”

“All of them.”

He lifted his brow. “Ambitious.”

“Since I have no Chromas at all, I hardly have reason to favor one over the other. Since you have all six, you don’t either.”

“Fair enough.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “I must warn you, I am a hard taskmaster.”

“So Hadi continuously tells me.” Her air of mischief matched his.

“I will demand no less of you just because you have no magic. If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t be dancing.”

“I can take anything you can give me,” she said.

“No. You can’t. I’m the best dancer in Faaerth.”

Now she lifted her brow.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me I am arrogant. Everyone else has. It’s not arrogance. I do not claim to be the best in
all
things. I am not the best healer or the best archer, there are better builders of megalith structures and I know nothing of smelting gold. But I know my skill at dance.

“So, no, Dindi, I won’t expect you to match that. But I
will
expect you to obey my instructions, to practice until your feet bleed and your legs cramp. I will work you so hard that you
’ll
hate me. If you still want to dance after that
—
only then will you prove to me that you deserve a teacher after all.

“To be honest,” he added, “I expect you to disappoint me.”

Strangely, she no longer felt nervous. Excitement coursed through her. If it had been possible, she would have challenged him to begin his lessons right then and there.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“Do you wish to change your mind?”

“No.”

“What I said didn’t frighten you?”

“I make no claims to be the best dancer in Faearth. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if I were the worst.” She meant that. She had gleaned what she could from her own unorthodox methods, but she was well aware of her shortcomings. Still, she couldn’t stop her lips from quirking into a grin. “But if all it takes to please you is bleeding feet, I think I can manage that easily enough. Even terrible dancers get blisters. Are you quite sure that’s how you want to measure my progress?”

“Are you
laughing
at me?”

“Oh, dear. Is that against your rules?”

“You little minx. We’ll see if you can even last one whole lesson.”

“When?” she asked breathlessly.

“We must steal time. I’ll
summon
you. Be ready.”

Dindi didn’t expect to hear from Kavio for several days, at least, but
as the solstice drew near and she heard nothing from him, she wondered if he had changed his mind.

The solstice arrived, seven days of feasting, drinking and, for the intemperate, puking. The Initiates joined the rest of the throngs of Yellow Bear on the Tor of the Sun to watch the Tavaedies perform the fertility dances. Dindi hoped she would be called to be a serving maid at the High Table again, but she was not. Instead, Jensi arranged for the two of them to sit with Yodigo and Hadi. This was supposed to give Dindi a chance to “net” Yodigo, but instead Jensi spent the whole evening chatting with Yodigo herself, which left Dindi with her cousin Hadi’s complaints for company.

“Being a warrior is not the big blaze of glory they promised,” Hadi grumbled. “All the good training is restricted to the hoity-toity Yellow Bear warriors, or else to the Tavaedies. You know what they make fellows like
me
do? Haul rocks. There’s even one blighter who is
tied
to a rock. A huge rock, I mean, you can’t even
imagine
how big, and he drags it around. It’s crazy.”

After the Tavaedies danced, a messenger, a Tavaedi from the Rainbow Labyrinth came forward. Several of the Initiates giggled, for the Tavaedi wore a costume with exaggerated naked tits, fat hips enlarged by gourds under a cornhusk skirt, and a mask painted like a woman’s face, with exaggerated eyelashes and lips.

Hadi burped. “Muck and mercy, that lady is a fellow!”

“Fa, Hadi, show some respect!” said Jensi. “Can’t you tell it’s an Olani?”

Dindi had heard of Olani, male Tavaedies who dressed as women, but she had only seen one or two before, at a distance. They often served as messengers between clans and tribes.

The Olani held aloft a graven totem pole. In a singsong voice, he proclaimed, “I bring the Year’s Name! Welcome the Year of the Snake Eating Its Tail!”

Other Tavaedies poured out from their hidden places, beating drums, while the feasters cheered and tossed back bowls of beer. Strong, bare-chested men pulled in huge tree trunks and began to carve with stone tools, while the Tavaedies played the drums.

Each midwinter, when the Year was
Named
, the symbol for it was displayed, so it might be carved into the calendar totem posts of all the clans and all the tribes. Naming had been one of the duties of the Vaedi, and though there had been no Vaedi in two generations, the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe still had the honor of Naming the years. Dindi had heard somewhere that during the war between the Rainbow Labyrinth and Yellow Bear, during the reign of the Bone Whistler, there had been no way to share Namings. Each tribe had been forced to Name their own Years separately, and as a result, if one studied the totems from the war years, the symbols were different in different tribes. Even today, this caused some confusion.

This year, on the omen day, a snake had been found dead with its own tail clasped in its fangs. So the year was named for the omen, and the carving depicted the same.
Whether this was a beneficent omen, or dire, occupied much of the conversation.

Then came the real surprise. Another Olani, also a messenger, arrived. He held aloft a stick as well, a slender staff of ash rather than a fat totem pole. The staff was painted blue, white and black, and topped with a crown of shells and a tassel of rare iridescent blue parrot feathers. The Olani did not wear false tits or big lips. In fact, he wore almost nothing at all: a blue loincloth and a black harness set with mother-of-pearl, no more. His nude body was exquisitely masculine, yet slender and supple, and his straight, obsidian black hair, entwined with pearls like a girl’s, reached down to his ankles. It swished and swayed behind him as he strutted.

When he spoke, he did not pitch his voice high, but let it roll out like dark, rough sugar. “I bring the Staff of Peace from War Chief Nargano of the Blue Waters tribe.”

At the High Table, Hertio stood up. “I accept the Staff of Peace. To treat for peace, I will send as my envoys seven honored ones, with another seven to serve them, and Kavio the Exile to lead them all.”

Dindi felt her heart squeeze. Kavio would be leaving… without her. There was no way he could keep his pledge to teach her dancing.

While the crowd buzzed, and Jensi and Yodigo eagerly debated the trustworthiness of the Blue Waters tribe, Dindi pushed her food around on the eating mat. She knew some women somewhere had toiled over the delicacies, and it seemed a pity to waste the food, but she had lost her appetite.

“Dindi.”