Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (29 page)

Rage built, choked—faded into a bleak, aching sorrow.

My son. Has he ever killed anyone? Will he see me as a monster? Will he understand?

She stared at the door for a long time, hoping it would open, hoping the woman would offer to try to understand. It stayed resolutely shut.

Rage began to simmer again, rising to tint the corners of her eyes.
I didn’t have a choice. I was trying to survive. It’s not my fault.

She started forward a step, her hands forming into tight fists.

I’ll make her understand. I won’t kill her, but I’ll make her understand, I’ll make her apologize for being so disrespectful to one of her betters—these humans have to learn—

Another stream of wind swirled past her nose. She froze, focusing on an elusive taint in the air.

My son. He’s here. He’s
here
!

She turned and melted away into the darkness, following the meandering wind’s backtrail; lost it once, twice, three times to a cloud of guttering torch-smoke: finally broke through to a clear area and circled, humming anxiously under her breath, until she found it again.

The West Gate clicked shut as she stepped out of shadow. A stone’s throw beyond the metal bars, she could see the retreating backs of three travelers and a pony. A woman, a man, and a slender young boy.

My son. My son. That has to be my son!

She threw herself forward, keening. The guards outside the Gate raised their pikes; the guards inside straightened to alertness. She stopped, backed up, and turned away, each step dragging as though heavy weights had suddenly attached to her feet.

Three streets away, she stopped, bewildered. Why had she left? The guards couldn’t have stopped her.
My son. My son! I have to go to him....

But tearing through the guards would draw attention. The desert lords in the area would be alerted to her presence. No. She had to move secretly. She had to avoid notice. The wall—that was it. She would climb over the giant wall and find her son, save him, escape with him.

She slipped through shadow to a part of the wall out of sight of the Gate and set her hands to the flat surface; jerked them back with a low hiss of agony as the stone seared into her palms.

What—?

Moving a few steps sideways, she tried again, with a tentatively placed fingertip. Her finger slid aside before touching the wall as though she’d encountered a curved sheet of glass.

Anger rose again.
Wards.
Someone had warded this area against her.
Her,
specifically; a general protection wouldn’t have caused her such pain. This was set to stop her from passing into the Seventeen Gates area.

She began feeling her way along the high wall, searching for any weakness, any gap, any spot where she might slip past the barrier. But the protection was solid and carefully built; by the time she’d gone ten feet she knew the crafter wouldn’t have left any gaps. She could go around the entire perimeter of the Gates and not find a hole to creep through.

She tried reaching through the wards to find her son, to coax him to her side; once, twice, she felt a dim response, but it faded away before she could be sure he’d heard her. She might have reached him, she might have prompted him into coming to her side—or she might not. She had no way to know. The wards simmered constant distraction along the edges of her mental vision, fracturing her increasingly desperate attempts to find her son. This wasn’t going to work either. She had to find another way.

Frustration shivered through her muscles. To be so
close....

Who would do this to me? Who knows I’m alive? Who knows I escaped? Who knows me well enough to use my imprint in a ward—

In a burst of seeming irrelevance, the gravekeeper’s cottage came to mind:
It’s just been a meeting day... Lord Eredion is the sponsor of the group.

Sledgehammer in darkness. An agonized scream—

Connections snapped into place. She
knew
Eredion. He’d been the one to set her free. And his presence was the one woven all through these wards. More connections formed in a rapid cascade: she’d felt him skulking by, easing into prison cells day after day, year after year, to heal the wounds of those with a chance left of survival. Rosin had known, of course. Rosin had laughed about it, and promptly brought the refreshed victims to Ellemoa.

Most of them never left. Some few, on Rosin’s orders, had been carried out, whining like scalded kittens.

Eredion had to have known something like that would happen. After the first few times, he’d definitely known. Yet he’d continued to interfere, dooming the prisoners to a much worse fate than dying in their cells.

She remembered now. If he hadn’t hated himself for sending so many to become piles of stripped bones, Ellemoa wouldn’t be walking above ground. She’d allowed him to live because of that alone. She remembered, and that memory dragged her sideways into another: the walls of her prison wavering around her, dank and oppressive.

Darkness spread across her vision. Clouds filled the sky overhead, and thick droplets of water splattered around her.

I should have killed him. I will kill him. He’s keeping me from my son. I will kill Eredion. Where is he?
She sniffed the air, focusing all her attention on the question:
Not inside the Gates,
came the answer. Eredion had passed into the city proper. He was within her territory, within her grasp.

She slid between the coalescing raindrops and began to hunt.

The Obein market seemed to have twice as many women as men, both as vendors and as customers. Most were dressed in ordinary working clothes: long split-skirts, peasant blouses, modest caps, and sturdy boots. Some few had proper dresses on, mostly with low-cut bodices; Rat, back in full
rough-mannered mercenary
behavior, whistled softly at those women as they passed, chuckling when they shot him icy glares.

“Prancing around on wet muddy grass in little slippered feet,” he observed at one point. “Damn stupid, you ask me. One of ‘em will be ass over sometime this morning, you watch. The ones with the boots got some sense, at least.” He studied a gaggle of approaching bodices, then whistled more loudly than usual. He laughed outright at their collective glares. “These ones are more fun to watch, though. ‘Specially when they fall down.”

Tank didn’t say anything. Rat glanced sideways at him and laughed again.

“You ought to see your face,” he said. “Told you about that attitude, remember? Shake it loose. Half of these ain’t so fine once they settle down out of public eyes. More’n half, I’d guess.”

Tank lifted a shoulder in a sullen shrug and kept his attention on Dasin, who was currently cutting up lengths of cloth and packaging them for the steady trickle of customers around Venepe’s booth. Guarding Dasin rankled far more than anything Rat might be doing or saying at the moment; but it did make sense, from Venepe’s misinformed point of view.

If—or, more probably,
when
Venepe found out about the misunderstanding, the arrangement was likely to go sour very quickly. Tank had a growing, uneasy suspicion that he really should have listened to Captain Ash and steered clear of this contract.

Too late now. He’d have to make the best of it as he went along.

A slender, pale-haired young lady in an exceedingly low-cut gown bent over the corner of the table, examining a length of fine Stone Islands silk-weave. Dasin’s eyes followed a predictable path, his hands stilling on the bundle he was currently wrapping. Tank himself couldn’t help studying the curves presented from the opposite angle.

“Oh, hells,” Rat breathed, then headed for Venepe’s booth at a rapid trot. Dasin, catching the sudden movement, looked up, eyebrows rising. The young woman glanced up at Dasin’s face, then looked over her shoulder. Seeing the fast-approaching mercenary, she blanched and gathered up her skirts to flee.

Three fast steps away from the booth, her feet skidded on wet, muddy grass; she went down in a squalling heap of flounced cloth. Rat was on her a moment later, hauling her upright with one big hand wrapped around each of her upper arms. The front of her dress had pulled sideways, clearly displaying one bare breast.

Rat grinned, glancing down, and said something Tank didn’t catch. The woman, face even whiter than before, shrieked and kicked uselessly at Rat’s shins. Activity ceased as heads turned throughout the market.

Tank found himself pushing between, breaking Rat’s grip on the woman, before he even knew he’d started moving.

“What the hells are you doing?” he demanded.

The woman retreated a few steps, glaring. Mud was splattered over her face and splotched across her dress in great, grassy smears. “I’ll have you up on charges of attempted rape,” she snapped, yanking her dress back into place. “Assault and rape!”

Rat laughed, baring small, discolored teeth. He said, “I told you before, stay away from Venepe’s booth. You think that changed?”

The woman sneered at him and retreated further, then turned and hurried away—with considerably more care this time.

Rat turned slowly and leveled a bleak stare at Tank, all amusement gone from his expression.

“You ever get in my way again,” he said, “I’ll have you
hurting,
boy. You understand me? She’s a thief. Hits the booth most every time we come through here. That low cut dress ain’t but a game, and you and the other wet ta-neka fell right into it. I’d’ve had her this time, if you two hadn’t messed it all up.”

Tank could feel his face heating. “I thought....”

“Thought I was after her ass? Thought I’d take her right there in public, in front of my employer and half of Obein?” Rat shook his head and spat to one side. “You got some bad thinking to unlearn, boy. There’s play-time and work-time, an’ this is
work.
I may not be Hall-hot like you, but
I
earn my pay.”

Tank glanced over at the booth; Venepe seemed to be delivering a similar harangue, more quietly, to a red-faced Dasin.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Rat, with a final ferocious glare, returned to stand across from Venepe’s table. After a few moments, Tank slunk back into place beside him, ears still burning.

It took a long time for his embarrassment to fade enough to risk a question. “What did you mean, you’re not Hall like me?”

Rat slanted a brief sideways glare, plainly still irritated. “I’m unsworn, you dense little fuck,” he said curtly. “We all are but you. Di’n’t your pretty boy tell you that yet?”

Tank’s jaw dropped open; answer enough. Rat rolled his eyes and went back to watching Venepe’s booth with a steady glower.

“You’re gettin’ paid more,” Rat said after a while, unexpectedly. “You ain’t got a pebble of the experience and you ain’t old enough to shave and you ain’t got the godsdamned
sense
of a dead goose, but you’re gettin’ paid more and respected more, ‘cause of a stupid godsdamned wooden coin. So do us all a favor—shut down the attitude before you get a noseful of dirt.”

Tank bit his lip, feeling his face flaring again.

“Sorry,” he muttered again. “I didn’t—I didn’t know.”

“Now you do,” Rat said, not looking at him.

Dasin, looking both sullen and cowed, was back to cutting cloth. Tank noticed that when women approached the booth, Dasin’s gaze stayed carefully above the neck, whatever the provocation. He grinned ruefully; then he remembered that once again, Dasin hadn’t given over a critically important piece of information. Without meaning to speak aloud, he muttered,
“Damnit,
Dasin.”

Rat snorted. “Poor pick as a lover,” he commented. “You’d’ve been safer with the thief.”

“We’re not,” Tank said through his teeth, his irritation with Dasin suddenly sidetracking to focus on Rat.

“Tuh,” Rat said. “If you say so.”

Tank’s breath strangled in his throat for a moment. “I say so.”

“Mind the attitude,” Rat said.
“Mind
the attitude, boy.”

Tank inhaled through his nose and held it, counting, until his fury subsided to something like sense again. He let out the held breath noisily.

“Better,” Rat said, glancing at him appraisingly, then nodded at an approaching trio of middle-aged women in sensible clothing, baskets already laden with flowers and produce. “Look. Watch. These’ll bicker and bother for a good while before settling on a length of the ugliest, cheapest godsdamned thing Venepe carries. Then they’ll try to get your pretty boy’s attention, and if they manage, he’ll be asked to
personally
carry it to their home tonight.” He tilted his head back and laughed up at the cloudy sky, a rough bark of amusement. “Figure they’ll wear him out fair solid. We call ‘em the Horny Vultures.”

Tank, surveying the three women, couldn’t help snorting laughter himself. “You’re joking.”

“Not a bit of it. Like I said—place like this ain’t as pretty on the underside as it looks. They’ve been after Venepe a while now, but he ain’t stupid enough to smile at them—look. There your boy goes, grinning. They’ve got him.”

“Oh, gods,” Tank said, his amusement fading. “I ought to warn him—”

“Ehh, let him unwind,” Rat said. “Do him good. Get the stick out of his ass. You too, since you’re on nursemaid duty. Walk him over tonight, have some fun. Better you than me, mind you, all the way around.” He laughed.

“No thanks,” Tank muttered. He remembered very clearly how Dasin liked to play; he’d never liked seeing women handled that way, willing or not, and he certainly wasn’t inclined to join in. Rat wouldn’t understand that, though, so he settled for: “That’s not my idea of fun.”

“So? Maybe it’s his. Kick your heels on the step or in a bed, the one’s more comfortable than the other,” Rat said, and winked, grinning.

“I’ll take the step,” Tank said.

“Suit yourself.”

It proved to be a mistake to sit down to dinner together. Deiq seemed as tired and out of sorts as Idisio felt.

“You don’t see the half of what’s happening around you, whatever you might think,” Deiq said, “and you misunderstand what you do see more often than not. I’m beginning to lose patience with you, Idisio.”