The Unfinished Song: Taboo (22 page)

“Hu!” he shouted, jabbing the flaming end of the staff forward, then the other flaming end backward, as though at imaginary enemies. “Hu!”

Had it been Hadi, or even Tamio, thrusting the staff about him, huffing and hooting at imagined enemies, it might have seemed comic. But Kavio backed the primal howls and thrusts with such force and concentration that even in this practice ring, Dindi could not doubt how deadly he would be in actual battle. In addition to the bunching and flexing of his thews, his aura lit up fiery Red, as if he himself burned hotter and hotter the more he danced.

“Hu!” He jabbed more foes around him in a circle. “Hu!”

“Hu!” Beat. “Hu!”

“Hu!” He flung his head back to yowl. “Yaaaaarrr!”

He threw the staff one last time, across the length of the quadrangle, and then raced it by backflipping himself, hands over heels, to catch it a final time and shove both ends of the staff, one after the other, into the ground to extinguish the flame.

“Red,” he told her, flinging his chin up. “For war.”

Smoke drifted off the ends of both ends of the staff. Kavio bowed over the staff, arms outstretched. From
his belt,
he plucked two long white feathers, which he used to fan the smoke upwards. He never interrupted his dance, and yet now the entire genre of movement transmorphed from hot, vital aggression to smoky, haughty precision. With the feathers, he soared through another display of acrobatics that recalled the flight
of
a bird of prey.
The Red glare burning around him misted into an Orange gloss.

Dindi had seen other Tavaedies dance some of these same moves, but beside Kavio, other dancers looked sloppy and haphazard. In his wake, he left a puzzle of Orange light as intricate and flawless as threads on a loom.

“Orange,” he said. “For craft.”

The illumination around him softened even further, into ambient Yellow warmth. His movements softened to match, soothing and comforting. She recognized the undercurrent of healing in the scoops and pushes of his arms. Wearing a devious smile, he danced up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

“Yellow,” he murmured into the nape of her neck. “For healing.”

At first, she stiffened at his touch. But she couldn’t maintain her resistance. As he enveloped her in his golden aura, she melted like butter into his caress. His large warm hands massaged the bands of tension across her shoulders. She could feel him rolling the accumulated worries of the past months right off of her shoulders and down her arms. He kneaded parallel muscles down her spine until he reached the small of her back.

Another shift, subtle but electric, tingled her through his touch. She felt it before she saw the Yellow
flower
fruit
into a sensuous Green. His hands entwined her flowing hair and tilted her about, to look up at him, face to face.

“Green,” he breathed, “For
love
.”

At once, he twirled her around him in the steps of the fertility dance she had been practicing when they first met. She matched her pace to his, aware of each time his chest grazed against her breasts or his hips thrust up against hers. When he dipped her back over his knee, she felt him
breathe
hot against her throat, in a kiss that deliberately and tauntingly just missed her skin.

Before she could organize her response to this delicious incursion, Kavio unleashed her and skipped away, as his aura cooled to a bath of icy Blue. She began to wonder if she had imagined his passion, or if it had been just part of his stage persona, without deeper meaning, for in his dance now she sensed nothing but unapproachable perfection.

“Blue,” he said coldly. “For purity.”

Deepening to Purple, he invigorated the slow cadence of his kicks until he was kneeling and kicking and kneeling and kicking with abandon.

“Purple. For valor! Hu! Hu! Hu!” he shouted with every kick. He leaped up, spun around and around a dizzying number of times, shouting, “Hu! Hu! Hu!” then landed in center splits, dipped and rolled to Dindi and stood up, all in one breath-stealing sequence that left her giddy.

Only the sweat tracing his pectoral muscles in rivulets belied his perfect calm.

“Well?” he asked. “Did any part of that dance stand out?”

“Um.” Dindi licked her lips. Somehow she didn’t think that the answer,
The
part where you almost kissed me
, would interest him. She sensed this was another test.

Enthralling. The entire thing had been
enthralling
. She had never seen anyone shine so brightly.

“The whole thing was very…” she reached for an adequate adjective—
effulgent, glorious,
immaculate
—but all she fumbled across was, “…nice.”

He dismissed th
at with a
sardonic gesture. “I’m not interested in an evaluation of my dancing ability, Dindi. I want to know if any Chroma struck you as noticeably more startling than the rest. Did you see a glow?”

“Yes!”

“For which color?”

“All of them.”

“Not possible.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I believe that
you
believe.” H
e held out his hand. Six glowing ribbons rose from his fingertips and palm. “Touch the light.”

She brushed her fingers over the glowballs, but the colors popped like bubbles. Kavio patted her hand, but she sensed his disappointment. Her shoulders sagged.

“I’ve flubbed it again, haven’t I?”

“Dindi, it’s fine.”

“It’s
not
fine.” She clenched her fists. “It’s
infuriating
. I know I’m hopelessly stupid, I can sense I’m missing something, something that should be obvious.”

“Dindi, it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have tested you.”

“But why?” she wailed. “Why am I so dense? Why can’t I ever do anything right? Why do I fail at everything, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I practice, no matter—“

“Dindi,” he said, “Stop. You’re perfect.”

He looked down into her eyes with such intensity that her breath caught in her throat. A
rainbow halo seemed to envelope both of them as he bent down and kissed her, deeply and deliberately.
And she melted into
light
.

“Do you have it?” Vio asked as soon as Vessia was back inside his tent.

“I do not.”

“Fa! We’ll have to try again tomorrow.” He scowled. Even scowling, his face had such a character that she enjoyed looking at it, which puzzled her. She did not normally enjoy gazing on people simply to enjoy the way their features came together, but she found it hard to look away from Vio.

“I should clarify,” she said. His tent smelled musky and smoky and comforting.

“I made the switch, but I hid the bowl before your warriors returned me to your tent.”

“Impossible.”

She spread her arms.

“Take off your clothes!” he ordered.

How unusual. The Old Man and Old Woman who had found her in a field and raised her as their daughter had spent a long time explaining to her that one never took off all one’s clothes in front of strangers; above all, a woman must not do so in front of a man.

“I know you must have the bowl hidden under your clothes. If you don’t take them off, I will strip you myself. Or, if you prefer, simply give me what is mine!”

Vessia shrugged off her shoulder blanket, unbound her breast band, untied the
waist band
of her legwals, and let every scrap of clothing she possessed pool at her feet.

Vio drew in a sharp breath.

Old Woman had told her she should feel something called ‘shame’ standing without clothes in front of a man. She did not. However, her body tingled strangely the longer he stared at her.

He turned his back to her abruptly. “Get your clothes on!”

Anger quivered in his words. What right did he have being angry that she had no clothes on when he had just asked her to undress? Shrugging, she retied her legwals and breast sheath.

“She will notice the switch,” said Vessia.

“I doubt it. She does not know the Looking Bowl’s true power.”

“She does,” said Vessia. “She uses it every day. I saw her reflection, and I am sure she saw it too.”

“Are you dressed?”

“Yes.”

He faced her again, reluctantly. It was strange, as if he were afraid of looking at her naked. “I wonder that Nangi, of all women, would want to look at her own reflection. It can’t be pleasing to her. She knows she is ugly; she often speaks of it, boasts of it, almost, especially when she is angry.”

Vessia remembered Nangi’s exquisite beauty, but felt perhaps this was none of Vio’s business. Also, she did not know yet which was the illusion: the mirror’s reflection or what appeared to the eye. She shrugged.

He glared at her. “What game are you playing, girl? You stole the bowl, but clearly don’t have it on you. If Nangi does know its true power, and will miss it by tomorrow, we have little time to use it, yet you risk angering her
and
me. That is not wise.”

“I will tell you where I hid it, if you will promise me something.”

“I already told you I would free your friend—in time—if you retrieve the bowl for me.”

“I want more. I want to be there when you use it.”

“Why?”

“I want to know what the bowl does. I knew you would not simply answer me if I asked, but now you must promise to let me watch you use it.”

Vio laughed. He went to the door of the tent and murmured something to the warriors standing guard outside.

Returning inside, he grabbed Vessia by the arm. “I should teach you not to try tricks with me. I could find the Looking Bowl a hundred ways. I could tie your arms to the tallest pole in this tent, strip you naked again and whip you until you holler. I could take your friends out of the cage one by one and whip
them
. I could just slit your throat and have my men search the entire camp. But because it amuses me, I
will
let you watch what I do with the Looking Bowl.”

“Then I will tell you where it is.”

“No need.”

A warrior entered, carrying and cleaning the bowl with a damp rag. He set it down, bowed and retreated.

“Did you think I’ve never hidden something in the piss pit before?” smirked Vio. “I’m not new at these kinds of things, you know.”

She felt an irrational surge of anger that her ploy had been so transparent. “I might have guessed the Skull Stomper would surpass my meager skills in skullduggery.”

“You might. And now I will teach you the consequence of toying with me.”

Vio bent down and kissed her.

Dindi moaned in his arms as Kavio kissed her.

Kavio, what in the name of the Seven Faeries are you doing?
He could almost hear his father growling at him. It took an effort to unpry himself from Dindi. She wobbled in his arms, lips parted, eyes misty with confusion, and no wonder. The magic of all six Chromas, stirred up by his dance, swirled around both of them. He had just established,
again
, as if there should have been any doubt, that she had no magic, yet here he was overwhelming her with every spell in the spectrum. It was doubly unfair to her, since he not only had magic she couldn’t even see, never mind protect herself against, she was also at his mercy because of the peculiarities of their arrangement.