A House Divided (Astoran Asunder, book 1) (23 page)

"You're not. I'm offering."

"I won't put your life at risk," she insisted.

"Cianne, we're in this together."

Turning back to him, she offered a tremulous smile. "I thought being alone was difficult, but somehow this is much more difficult."

"Trusting your life to another is no easy thing," he said.

"That's not it. I do trust you with my life. What isn't easy is the knowledge that I might be the cause of any harm that comes to you."

"I would have poked my nose into this with or without your interference," he said, making a gentle joke of it. The truth was, he probably would have. He hadn't forgotten the jarring sense he'd had that everything seemed somehow too neat at the Stowley manor. His gift was such that if something nagged at him, some loose thread he hadn't unraveled, he wasn't able to rest.

"Should we perform the deshya again?"

"Yes. I think it would do us both good to spend some time clearing our minds."

A fine mist fell from the sky, but the night was still warm, and the distraction was good. As students advanced in their studies, their parents often staged distractions to try to shake their focus. Becoming a deshya master was more than a feat of physicality, it was a feat of mentality as well.

He couldn't fool himself, though. The rain was nothing compared to how distracted he was beginning to feel by her presence. He hated to see her hurting, and he longed to say something to her about it, but it wasn't his place. He couldn't allow his own unspoken desires to prompt him to do something that might cause her additional pain.

How can Moiria Stowley fail to see her worth?
he wondered as he and Cianne began to move in unison.
How can she be so blind?

It shouldn't have struck him as odd. There was nothing uncommon about Adepts looking down on those without abilities. Even at home, Kila had been one of the few children he knew who had one Adept and one non-Adept parent. Though there were, of course, exceptions to the rule, many highly gifted Adepts tended to see themselves as something more than human. After all, if being a non-Adept was the natural human condition, then being an Adept must be something closer to divinity.

Time was lost to him as they moved, and he realized with sudden clarity that continuing on this way with her put them both at increasing risk. Being with her had begun to feel like time out of time, as if they were stealing from the gods themselves, and there would be a price to pay for it. But how could he deny himself this? What was the harm in it, as long as he strove to maintain his distance?

His life hadn't been devoid of happiness, but the years since his parents' deaths had been years of near-constant struggle, struggle to adapt to Astoran culture, struggle to deal with his bitterness at having been cast out of Cearova, struggle to come to terms with his presence in Astoran in the first place. When he was with Cianne he struggled as well, but even so he had no desire to be anywhere else.

The rain had let up by the time they were finished, and they sat next to one another again. The ground was wet, but it hardly mattered as he was soaked to the skin, his clothing plastered to him. Cianne was every bit as wet as he was, but considering how tight her clothing was to begin with, it didn't make much difference.

He felt a vague whiff of disappointment at the thought.

Once again she unpinned her hair, letting the damp strands hang loose. The moisture intensified the curls, making her hair more voluminous than usual, and he found himself smiling at the sight.

"I look a fright, don't I?" she said ruefully. "Cearus must have a sense of humor to have given me hair like this, considering how close I live to the sea."

"You look anything but a fright," he said. "You've a leaf caught in your hair."

"Where?" She patted her head, trying to find it.

"A little lower. No, to the left."

"Oh, bugger it," she said. "I'll be at this all night. Would you be so kind as to pull it out for me?"

Swallowing, he nodded, and she turned her back to him, allowing him better access. The air felt heavy, and she was so still. He was glad she couldn't see his face, couldn't see how his hand trembled as he reached for her hair. A light breeze kicked up, tangling the strands, and he separated them with gentle fingers.

"And here's the offender," he said, holding the leaf over her shoulder so she could see it. He didn't want to admit that he did so because he was worried that she might think he had invented a feeble excuse to touch her hair.

She took it from his fingers, her skin brushing his. "Invader! How dare you!" She released it, and they both watched it drift away on another breeze.

"You told me I might share my pain with you, if I ever felt so inclined," he said, the words tumbling from his mouth of their own accord. He wanted her to have a reason to stay because she would otherwise feel obliged to leave, now that they were finished with the deshya.

He knew he should let her go. The last time she had been here they had made the mistake of lingering too long, and he had sat in his sitting room watching the sun rise, fretting that she might be caught sneaking back into her manor. Yet he was unwilling to let her go.

Wordlessly, she turned back to him, her gaze trailing over his face. "And I meant it," she said at last.

"I lost my parents when I was young," he said, studying the ground. "My mother was an Enforcer too, and she was attacked one night while on duty. At first it seemed she might survive, but then an infection set in that the Healers weren't able to control. My father was married to an Adept; he understood there were limits to their abilities, but he was crazed with grief. He accused them of having failed her, said they hadn't tried hard enough."

"How old were you?" Cianne asked, her voice hushed.

"I was fourteen."

Her gasp made him look up, and she squeezed her eyes closed. Lines of grief bracketed them, and he could see that she felt his pain as if it were her own. In some ways, it was her own.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice choked.

"Thank you," he said.

The next words would be the most difficult of all. Just thinking of them made him feel as though they were alternately trying to squeeze their way out of his throat and then shove themselves back down. He had never before spoken to anyone about what had happened.

"From there, he got worse. He drank to try to dull the pain, but even that didn't work. He would empty a bottle, pass out, and wake up to the reminder that she was gone, which started the cycle anew."

She looked horrified. "Were you alone with him?"

He shook his head. "No, my uncle helped, took me to his house when my father was in a truly bad state. This went on for the next two years. By then I had begun my apprenticeship, and I spent most of my time at my uncle's house. My father was a recluse, the house falling down around his ears.

"The day after my sixteenth birthday, he took his own life."

"Oh, gods, Kila," she said, covering her mouth with her hand. "That's why you said what you did about strength and pain and weakness. You think he was weak."

"Don't you?" he asked, the words harsh.

Shaking her head, she gazed up at him sadly. "I think he was broken."

Anger lit a flame within him. "Don't make excuses for him."

"That's not what I'm doing, Kila. I understand why you're angry with him. You'd already lost your mother, and then he left you alone. But he must have been in such enormous pain. I can't help but feel compassion for him."

Kila clenched his jaw, unwilling to let her words penetrate. They did anyway.

"It's personal for you, isn't it?" she asked softly.

He didn't need her to clarify. "Yes, I suppose maybe it is," he admitted, dragging a hand over his face.

When he'd found his father, the scene had been so chaotic, so messy. He knew this wasn't necessarily the case with every suicide, but he also knew that his abilities didn't save him from his own presumptions. It was why Toran Stowley's tidy, orderly study had caught his eye.

"I wish I could find the right words to say to you," she said.

"There are no right words, are there?" he asked.

"No. No, there aren't."

Her hand moved to cover his and he let it. They sat there for a long while, contemplating their losses.

Chapter 23

"There you are," Daerwyn said when Cianne walked into the dining room to break her fast with her father. "I've not seen much of you these past weeks."

"I've been busy with Lach," she said, not bothering to hide her weariness from him. After all, there was nothing like making a noble sacrifice for the House.

Her father nodded his approval. "He's depended on you a great deal," he said, satisfaction warming his words. He, for one, showed no sign of being concerned that she was losing her grasp on Lach.

Cianne cast a pointed glance at the servant placing her plate in front of her, giving the young man a smile. "Thank you, Philius."

Taking the hint, Daerwyn said nothing more. While she waited for the servant to leave the room, Cianne tried to decide how to play this encounter with her father. She wanted to see what information she could glean from him, but it went without saying that she would have to do so in an underhanded manner lest she let on to him that she had some inkling of what was going on in the House.

"Lach is in a real state," she said to her father when they were alone at last. She sighed for effect, pushing a bit of ham around on her plate, using the distraction to study her father from under lowered lids.

"So I've heard. Moiria is quite concerned about him."

"She has every reason to be. I've never seen him so despondent."

"I understand there were some raised voices during one of your last visits with him," her father said in a casual tone. He put some ham in his mouth and chewed, brows raised as he waited for her response.

Cianne permitted herself to blush, though in reality it was due to alarm and not embarrassment. Her father was spying on her? She felt a momentary surge of panic. What if he knew she was going out at night?

Lowering her head, she controlled her features, schooling them into an expression of deepest chagrin. "I'm afraid I lost my temper with him. He was… He's not been himself, and it's led him to say some things he shouldn't say."

"Such as?" Daerwyn continued eating as if they were making simple conversation, but she knew he was paying close attention to everything she said.

"He was unkind to me." Fixing her eyes on her hands, Cianne conjured up some tears. Should she let her father see her welling or was it better if she pretended as though she were trying to conceal her hurt? Better to pretend to conceal it, she decided.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Daerwyn sounded displeased.

Time to salvage the situation.

Dashing her hand across her face to brush away the tear she'd allowed to roll down her cheek, Cianne pulled in a deep breath and met her father's eyes, offering him a tremulous smile. "It was terrible, but he apologized to me. He's told me he doesn't know what he would do without me."

There. Let him know she hadn't lost her power.

How sickening this game was, how vile it made her feel. She didn't think she was toying with Lach's feelings, at least not to his face. She hadn't encouraged him to act in any other manner than as a friend. But she couldn't shake the sense of guilt and shame she felt at knowing she was using Lach's feelings as ammunition with her father.

Make him the object of public speculation so that you may hide your own actions and motives. Well done, Cianne.

What else could she do? She wasn't doing this solely for selfish reasons. It was to Lach's benefit as well for her to do her best to discover if there was more to his father's death than there appeared to be. It was to the benefit of the House as a whole to investigate whether the Elders, Moiria, and her father were deceiving everyone. Whatever they were caught up in, it would appear as if the entire House were involved, whether or not they were. Why should the House as a whole suffer punishment for the actions of a few?

Daerwyn looked like a cat indulging in a bowl of cream. "He's fortunate to have you looking out for him."

And you're fortunate to have me to dangle before him, aren't you?

"He's having trouble accepting that his father is gone," Cianne said, deciding to risk it. She wouldn't tell him what Lach suspected, not after she had promised Lach that she would not, but she wanted to see how her father would react to this sally.

"It's never easy to accept that someone is gone," he said, his jaw tightening.

Deciding it wasn't safe to press the issue, she said, "I think it would benefit him to go on a voyage again. There are too many reminders here. It's best for him to get away for a while, so that he can begin to heal rather than remain mired in his grief."

"I tend to agree. It would give Moiria time to get things in order, and when Lach returned he could concentrate more on the future."

She knew full well what he was implying by that, and she lowered her head again, spots of color reappearing on her cheeks. "I don't think now is the time to discuss it with him."