02 - The Barbed Rose (37 page)

Suddenly nervous, Joh stood. She did not mean them to go so far here, did she? Joh was truly not a lover of men. Was he a good enough actor to pretend?

On the other hand, Fox
was
ilias, and although Joh preferred women—his own women in particular and by far—he had no personal aversion to showing affection for his ilias in a physical manner. Even if this ilias was a stranger to him. He did have an aversion to Oskina and to the lack of privacy.

Joh squeezed back in next to Fox. Those displaced earlier made smug displays of superiority at regaining their position nearer Oskina. He ignored them, as did she. Instead, she took Fox by the chin and turned him to face her. She kissed him openmouthed.

Fox did not passively allow the kiss as Joh thought he might, given his silent submission to everything that had occurred thus far. He kissed her back, lips, mouth, jaw working as if he would swallow her down. He didn’t touch her. His hands lay idle in his lap. But he kissed her.

Oskina broke away, laughing, her eyes glittering with something Joh did not like. “Your turn,” she said.

To kiss…? Joh let his lips curve in a smile, hoping it wasn’t as ugly as it felt. “I generally prefer more privacy for such things.”

Her face changed, went feral, vicious, lips pulling back from oddly sharp teeth. She looked somehow not quite human, and it made Joh lean away as she hissed. “I have given your preferences all the consideration I care to give. Kiss him. Kiss my pet. If he cannot please you, perhaps I will decide he no longer pleases me. Perhaps I will discard him.”

Discard
—what did that mean? Imprisonment? Death? Or merely casting him aside? Did she know more than it seemed? Did she know Joh would act sooner on a threat to Fox than himself? How?

“Kiss him.”
Oskina licked her lips, eager avidity in her expression. Did she want to see a kiss, or Joh’s self-destruction? Did she care which? Joh rather thought not.

He took Fox by the chin as she had and turned him. He was a handsome man with his bright hair and sculptured features. Joh understood why Kallista valued him, apart from his magic. How would Fox react to this kiss? Joh wished he knew. For himself, it was the watchers that disturbed him most, one more than any.

Joh shifted his hand, covering the exposed mark on the back of the other man’s neck to hold him in place, and leaned in. Just before their mouths touched, he breathed a word. “Ilias.”

Fox jerked, whether in reaction to the word, or to the kiss, or to something unknown, Joh could not guess. He could only hold on and kiss.

It felt strange, yet strangely familiar. Not so different from kissing a woman, save for the faint scrape of beard stubble against his skin. Then something happened. Some kind of resonance between them, or a recognition of like to like—ilias to ilias. It wasn’t Kallista’s sweet call of magic, but it was…something.

It tightened Joh’s hand on Fox’s neck and sent his tongue thrusting into the mouth that opened to receive it. It had them fighting to drink each other down, to roll in that recognition, wallow in the resonance.

The tavern faded away. The only thing in the world was the mouth under his and the thing that sang between them.

Joh had no idea how much time passed while they kissed. Time had no meaning or existence, until Fox began to pull away. Joh held him tighter, clinging to the connection. Fox was struggling, not to pull back, but to continue the kiss. He struggled against the pull, against someone else pulling him.

There were others in the room. Others watching them. Others intruding on this moment of knowing, this—Joh didn’t know what to call it, even what it was, but it was too important to share. He let Fox go, let that woman tug him away.

“I can see why you asked for privacy.” Oskina watched his face so closely, Joh worried what it showed. “I would ask you to kiss me that way, but I fear you failing and that would wound my pride so severely I might do something I would regret.”

His breathing was better. Not under control, but better. Joh risked speech. “I would leave you with no regrets, Aila.”

Fox had his face turned toward Joh, for all the world as if he could see him. It was disturbing.

“I want to watch,” Oskina said. “I want to watch you take him.”

Joh recoiled. He hoped he hid it. The thought gagged him. Not so much the watching by itself—he’d watched his iliasti make love just as they had watched him, with Viyelle and Kallista both, he was sure. Nor was it her choice of partner for him, not so much anymore. Maybe it was the magic that made the difference. Maybe it was only the bonds of ilian, but the thought of touching this man in such a way seemed at least possible. But not in front of this woman.

How could he turn her aside from her purpose?

Joh damned the ale he’d consumed. He needed to think, needed to find the right words, the ones that would change her mind.

Oskina laughed, sending a chill down Joh’s spine. “I can see your busy mind whirring, but in which direction? You cannot tell me you do not want to taste such bounty.”

She caught a fistful of Fox’s short curls and tipped his face up, putting him on display. Then her eyes narrowed. “Nor do you want to deny me my pleasure.”

Think
. Joh tried. “Great Lady, it is not that I
wish
to deprive you of anything. But I have never been able to—to perform well with an audience.”

Her eyes went to tiny slits. “You’re married.”

“Recently. After a lifetime of keeping such things hidden.”

“You hide from your own ilian?”

Joh shrugged. Better not to answer. With luck, she would assume what he wished her to.

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged again. He no longer knew how to argue. Though he did know he did not want this Oskina watching him do anything. He wanted to be far,
far
away from her. And Fox with him.

She tossed off the last of her ale and slammed the tankard down on the table. “Drink up.”

She set Joh’s half-empty mug in front of him and put Fox’s tankard to his mouth. He took it from her and drank, swallowing it all down at once. His throat stretched, working, and Joh realized he stared at that smooth, strong line. What was happening to him?

He finished off what was in his mug, regretting the necessity. He needed a clear head now, and he feared the need would only grow stronger.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

K
allista was curled limp over the table in their over-the-stable room while Torchay pressed his thumbs hard into her shoulder muscles. He wasn’t as good as Obed at this Southron massage, but she ached so after a week of mucking stables that she didn’t care. Of course, he’d only offered to stop her pacing while waiting for Obed and Joh to return.

She pressed her own thumbs into her eyes, trying gently to relieve the ache there. Seeing through another’s vision for so long not only made her eyes ache, it made her dizzy and headachy. The pacing hadn’t helped, but she’d been unable to keep still while waiting. Until Torchay’s offer.

“Better?” He worked his way from her shoulders up her stiff neck.

“I will be when they get back.”

A sliding clatter outside the window announced their approach. Kallista came instantly alert. She stood as Obed spilled through the opening.

“They’ve taken him,” he said between gasping breaths.

“Who? Joh?
Who’s
taken him?”

Obed sank down on the end of the bed, chest heaving. He’d been running a while. The whole way back? “Call him. That woman would not let him go. They recognized him.”

“As marked?”
Alarm skittered through Kallista, crashing through her attempt to reconnect with Joh’s vision.

“No.” Obed shook his head, hair flying. “No, as—as the one who nearly killed you, I think. They were shaking his hand, patting his back.”

“Good. Then surely they won’t suspect.” She prayed so. Quickly. While she checked that the veiling still held. It did.

Viyelle’s hand slid cautiously over Kallista’s elbow, offering comfort as well as magic. Or perhaps she sought comfort. Viyelle had been with Joh more than Kallista had. She touched the younger woman’s hand in thanks for the magic. “It will be well.” She offered them both reassurance.

Kallista drew, taking magic from all those close, and threw it out, seeking the other magic that was hers. It flew unerringly to Joh and latched on with a silent clang, as if
pentivas
bracelets had just locked down.

Her will shaped the magic and it slid inside Joh like fog through an open window, following the spaces where his magic lived. She hugged him to her, breathing kisses on his soul, and he shivered, physically.

Kallista?

“Are you cold? On such a lovely summer’s night?” The melodious voice grated along Kallista’s hearing.

I’m here
. She stroked along his magic.

What do I do?
Joh sounded more than half-panicked. He tasted faintly drunk. What was happening there?
Kallista, help me. Help us
.

Joh’s panic bled into Kallista. She
reached
for his vision, needing to see, but could bring up no more than vague shadows and hints of movement. He was too afraid. That wasn’t like Joh. What was going on?

Joh
. She slapped at his magic to break him free of his fear.
Joh, relax. Let me in. I need to see
.

You can’t?
Horror edged the panic a moment, then he fought it back.
Maybe that’s a good thing
.

No, Joh. I need to see. Let go. Give yourself over to me
. Could he trust her so much? Heaven knew Kallista doubted her own ability to trust like that.

One more instant, he held himself together, then all at once he let go, falling into her magical embrace. She caught him, kissed him, slid his vision over hers as she kept him safe.
Mine
, she whispered to him.
Ours
.

Then she opened his eyes. She stood in a room she recognized as one of the ilian bedrooms in the Mother Temple’s house. She’d been in it more times than she could count when she was growing up. Temple children tended to run tame at all the temple houses in the same city, and one of her best friends had been a child of the Mother Temple. It hadn’t changed much, save for a fresh coat of purple paint on the walls and a white coverlet on the bed.

She noticed those things peripherally, because the center of Joh’s vision was filled with Fox bending over as he stripped out of the last of his clothes and stood, naked.

Joh’s line of sight drifted upward, toward Fox’s face. Kallista didn’t object. She drank in the sight of her long absent ilias. He looked so much better now, well-fed and muscular rather than the gaunt near-skeleton he’d been when he found them last year, despite his recent injury.

Is he healed?
She couldn’t help asking.

Joh immediately looked at the long red scar running down Fox’s left leg.

“What do you think of my pet?” The woman’s voice sounded distant—echoing and tinny.

No
, Kallista murmured.
That one is old, from Ukiny
. But his thigh looked better than before, not hollowed out and misshapen as it had before the surgery.
There should be a more recent injury. On his back, I think
.

Joh moved, walking toward Fox. Kallista took a deep breath and laid her hands flat on the table. She’d suffered very little from seasickness last year on their ocean journeys, even pregnant as she was. But riding Joh’s sight as he moved threatened to bring it on more than any ocean storm. She closed her own eyes to see through only his and pulled a bit more magic. That seemed to help.

Joh walked around Fox as if on morning inspection in the ranks. Likely the pretense helped him cope, for she sensed his panic retreating. There, a hollow scar at midback, no more than a finger’s length and width, it bore the deep purple coloration of a still-healing wound. Another, smaller lay not far from it.

“What’s this?” Joh touched it. Kallista tried to feel it with his fingers, merging deeper into him, but couldn’t quite.

“Oh, he put up a fight, they said, when we took him.” The Oskina woman moved into Joh’s line-of-sight, and Kallista choked back a snarl. She was so deep inside Joh, she feared her rage would come out his mouth.

Oskina was short. Not as tiny as Aisse, but too short for her to look at Joh over Fox’s tall shoulders. She trailed a hand along his waist as she walked around him. Kallista forced herself to back out of Joh, to ride only his vision.

“Do his scars ruin him for you?” the woman asked.

“No.” Joh said nothing more.

What happened to his hair?
Kallista would not complain if Fox’s hair was the worst thing done to him in Turysh, but still, she couldn’t help mourning his curls.
Did that woman shear him?

“At court, the bravos wear their hair cropped short.” Joh brushed his fingers along the shorn sides of Fox’s head. “But not so short as this, virtually shaved. I’ve never seen anyone with hair cut like this. Is it a new style in Turysh? Something you prefer, Oskina Aila? Should I cut mine?”

Don’t you dare
.

Joh’s amusement shivered around her, showing he teased. His panic had faded tremendously, if he could tease. Then they saw Oskina’s scowl and the panic came rushing back. Kallista caught it, tried to ease it.

“He had curls,” she said. “Wonderful golden curls. But when I took him with me to the tailor’s this afternoon, he stole the scissors and cut them off before I could stop him. This was the best the barber could do with what was left.”

Oh, Fox
. What had the woman done that would drive him to such measures? Kallista wanted to kiss him, comfort him—Joh did it for her. He kissed Fox’s temple, right at that shorn hairline.

“Kallista.” Torchay touched her arm, distracted her. “What’s happening? Can we do anything?”

In that distant room, Oskina was touching Joh. “Show yourself, Hero. Let us see how you are made.” She loosened the lacings at the throat of his tunic.