The Unfinished Song: Taboo (23 page)

As if coming out of a spell, clarity returned to her expression, and she stiffened. Flame-hot embarrassment burned her cheeks. She touched her fingers to her lips, still tender from the press of his mouth.

Stop projecting your own lust onto her, you cad
, he chided himself. When Kavio had first started taking an interest in girls, a few years ago, his father had taken him aside and explained just how easy it would be for someone with Kavio’s magic to hex a girl into surrendering herself to him.
The hard part
, his father had added, full of parental bluster and glower,
would be hiding it from me
. Kavio’s younger self had been insulted by the implication that he even needed to be warned against such a thing. Now he realized how easy it was, not just to fool someone else,
but
to fool oneself.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, stepping back. He focused. The radiance all around him dimmed and furled. “I’m your teacher now. It isn’t right for me to, ehm, indulge myself.”

“If I had magic—“

It would be different, yes
. His gaze shied away.

“It won’t happen again, Dindi. You have my word of honor.”

“Purple.”

He must have looked blank.

“Purple,” she repeated, with elaboration this time. “You showed me the Chromas, and still, none of them stands out above the rest. So let’s start with Purple patterns and then work back toward Red.”

“Right,” he said. “Good. We’ll do that then.” He took a deep breath. “As soon as we put down some salt to damp out all this afterwash from my last dance.”

Once he busied his hands with a task, he found it easier to busy his mind with something other than thoughts of her.
Pontification trumps lust
, he mocked himself.

“Each Chroma has its special strengths,” he said, “and weaknesses. Red expresses power, but can explode itself in rage. Orange guides judgment but can lose itself in calculation. Yellow heals, but also
spoils
. Green, meant to nourish and cherish, can be taken to extremes in which it clings, overgrows and strangles the object of its affection. Blue cleanses, but also floods and freezes. Purple lends courage, but sometimes falls into foolishness.

“You will often find that individuals exhibit the same strengths and weaknesses as their strongest Chroma. Reds usually have a temper. Oranges
can be withdrawn and cruel
. Yellows can be too
controlling
, Greens too sentimental, and Blues too fanatic. And I’ve known Purples who were brave to the point of lunacy.”

“And what about those with all six Chromas?” Dindi demanded. He preferred the glint of challenge in her eyes to the hurt that he knew still hid beneath it. “What is
your
weakness, Kavio?”

You, for one
.
Crazy as that was.
Why should one unmagic maiden hold such fascination for him? He couldn’t be falling in love with her. He barely knew her, and he didn’t believe in all that nonsense about people falling in love as soon as their auras mingled for the first time.

It must be the mystery
, he decided.
How could such a superb dancer have no magic? It defied all laws of magic that he knew. You are a riddle I must unravel. That’s all. I can’t let you go until I solve you. But I can’t forget that it can never be more
.

“I suppose you believe you don’t have any weaknesses,” she said.

Kavio snorted. “Hardly.”

“Well, then?”

“My mother always said that I had the same weakness as she did, as all the Aelfae did,” he said. “The vulnerability that, for all their powers, their enemies exploited to Curse them with destruction.”

Her eyes went wide again. “And what was that?”

“Curiosity.”

The first night of our journey, I sat by myself.

Rthan brought me food, meat and tubers wrapped in a leaf, mainly as pretext to crouch next to me and inquire in a low-pitched voice, “Have you any name to trade me yet, Gremo?”

“Yes,” I said. “I learned that the Yellow Bear warriors keep the names of the warriors who took part in the New Moon Raid secret, but not as secret as they should. They are too proud of their slaughter. More than a hundred kills, when only seven of them undertook the raid.”

“Only seven men?  Impossible. The damage was too great, and in the heart of Blue Waters.”

“They used sleeping magic to lull the guards and ensure the women and children would stay in their huts. Then they tied wooden stakes across the doors of every hut, to ensure no one could escape. Last, they set all the roofs on fire. They stayed nearby to slay by arrow any who ran screaming from the houses.”

I wondered how Rthan must feel to hear this, but I could not tell from his face. Only the heat radiating off of him, an aura as hot as steam, indicated the fury he controlled so carefully.

“There is more,” I said. “The seven men counted the sleeping victims and kept a tally stick of which houses they lit on fire and who they shot with their bows and arrows, so they could celebrate the warrior with the most kills. The one with the most kills was also the one who set fire to your house, Rthan. He knew the woman inside was Nargano’s daughter. He took special pleasure in her screams.”

“His name?” growled Rthan. He did not move from his crouch, but I sensed the rage inside him seethe even more hotly.

“His name I still don’t know.”

Rthan reached out and grabbed me by the neck. “Don’t play with me!”

He was not wise to touch me. I don’t know what I did. All I know is that I felt a flash of anger and a wind knocked him down to the ground. My anger ended quickly and so did the wind, but as Rthan picked himself up, I could see he regarded me more warily.

“You’re a Tavaedi?”

“I know just one more thing about the man that killed your family,” I said. “Though not his name. That, no one would reveal.”

“Tell me.”

“No. First you tell me about the man with the tattoos I described to you. Tell me the name of my father.”

“Why should I? Our agreement was a name for a name.”

“I have discovered far more than you could have on your own,” I retorted. “Because men treat me as though I were as insensible as the rock I carry, and let their drunk tongues wag around me. They would have been far more cautious around you. Besides, when I tell you the final thing I know, I think you will be able to discover for yourself the name. It must be one of seven men! But I will not tell you anything more until you prove you will help me in
my
quest.”

“What good do you expect to come of knowing your father’s name?” demanded Rthan. “He cannot make you one of us, and he clearly did not want to stay as one of you, or he would not have ended his marriage to your mother.”

“He never married my mother. He raped her.”

I had never said it aloud before. Rthan’s eyes widened.

“All the less good that can come of knowing him,” he said.

“That’s not for you to decide. We had a bargain.”

Rthan nodded. “His name was Ezlo of Jumping Rock. We will be passing through his clanhold not long from now.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead, Gremo. The river flooded a few years ago and many of the men of Jumping Rock drowned trying to save their boats.”

“Dead?” My mouth went dry. This was not a possibility I had even considered. “Dead…” I repeated. Stunned. “Dead.”

“You said you had one more piece of information for me,” Rthan prodded.

I forced myself out of the fog of confusion his revelation had cast over me. “Yes…. The seven men who took part in the New Moon Raid? They were all kin of Hertio.”

His eyes gleamed. “Thank you.”

He prowled away.

I sank back into the fugue. I was not aware of another presence until someone touched my arm. I looked up into the keen face of Svego, our guide.

He was the last person I wanted to talk to right now. Looking at the way his smooth, masculine, almost naked body moved, I felt strange things. It was not unlike the sensation that had struck me the first time I saw Kavio. The difference was that when I gazed at Kavio, he was oblivious to me. Svego looked back.

“Sweetling, you need a haircut,” he told me.

I growled at him.

“You’re an animal,” he said. He leaned forward, adding in a husky voice. “I like that.”

“Stay away from me,” I advised in my most withering tone. “You don’t know what I am.”

“Fa, I know
exactly
what you are. You think I can’t spot another Olani when I see one?”

“What?” I sputtered.

He bent and kissed me on the mouth.

In the morning, they were supposed to begin their boat journey, but they could not find their Blue Waters guide, Svego. His tent was empty, and, from the signs of the neatly rolled pack, had not been used the night before.

“I last saw him speaking with
your
henchman,” Rthan told Kavio accusingly. “If that brute harmed the Keeper of the Staff of Peace…”

With perfect timing, Svego emerged from Gremo’s tent. Whistling.

Gremo emerged a moment later. He had been transformed from a dirty, hairy, slovenly mess of a creature into a strikingly handsome figure of a man, with oiled muscles, neatly brushed hair (kept long and free flowing like an Olani) and a clean-shaven square jaw.  Even Kavio could see that Svego had been right. Gremo
was
a handsome bastard.

“Looks to me as though the Keeper of the Staff of Peace has been wielding his staff in all sorts of innovative ways,” Kavio said dryly.

Rthan grunted. He studiously ignored both Olani after that.

The biggest change for Gremo was not the shave, or even his bed partner. He no longer lugged the boulder half as tall as he was behind him. Anticipating Kavio’s question, Gremo twisted his body, so that Kavio could see a rock, as large as a rucksack but a fraction of the original boulder, lashed to his back by cords and magic.

Kavio was surprised but pleased to find that Gremo had been claimed as Olani. It solved the problem of what to do about Gremo’s status as a man with magic
who
had technically never passed his Initiation. All Olani were Tavaedi, and that was that. He considered it a good omen for the journey.
Better than a crab, anyway
.

Svego led them to the spot where the Blue Waters warriors who had brought him to Yellow Bear had stashed canoes. They would ride these down the river back to Sharkshead, the tribehold of Blue Waters.

Kavio watched the surroundings carefully for clues when they crossed into Blue Waters tribal territory. Totems tied to branches in the trees, plus the occasional scratched boulder, marked the no-man’s land between the tribes. The peace party followed a different branch of the river downstream from the Dam, heading northwest. The land beside the river was the same, fens that lined the riverbanks, abutted by rolling hills of spruce, pine and oak. The wild sprites and dryads frolicked no differently than other fae. The sun shone just as bright. Then they reached the first Blue Waters clanhold along the route.

Blue Waters habitations looked completely different than any he had seen.

Kavio’s people built square, half-subterranean houses out of adobe. The Yellow Bear tribesfolk erected their conical houses high on hills, always a safe remove from the river. The Blue Waters tribesfolk preferred to build directly
over
water. Each cluster of huts sat on a wooden deck raised on pylons. Rickety wooden paths, also raised on posts, connected the decks to each other and to piers where dozens of canoes were tied. Instead of a wooden fence, each deck was fortified with a latticework of bones, surmounted by fish skeletons painted blue, red and black. The houses looked like hunched beasts,
constructed
as they were from oiled seal fur stretched taunt over a framework of sticks and bones. The whole clanhold stank of overripe fish, wet animal, smoke, tar and dung.