Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (30 page)

“And you don’t
tell
me the half of what’s going on,” Idisio retorted, “so how am I supposed to understand it? Aren’t you supposed to be explaining all this to me?”

“Try asking instead of insulting and challenging me,” Deiq said severely. “Try listening instead of judging. Maybe you’ll hear some of what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

They sat quietly for a while. Finally Idisio said aloud what he couldn’t get out of his thoughts. “Fine. I’ll ask, then. That servant, in the hallway.” He stirred his soup, not looking up at Deiq. “Would you have?”

“Would I have
what?”
Deiq’s tone was edged with dark frustration and exhaustion.

“You know.” He couldn’t help remembering Riss’s accusation:
Word has it he’ll fuck anything that moves.
It was hard to see Deiq as all that different from the gate guards, at the moment.

“Taken him to bed? Not in the middle of the hallway, no. And certainly not against his will, whatever ideas you might have formed.”

Idisio prodded his soup, took a few bites, then stirred it some more. “I thought you liked women.”

Deiq said nothing for a long moment, then: “I have no preference. That’s one of the human biases I don’t happen to share. Do you?”

Idisio felt his face color. “I don’t care for that side of the road.”

“Well, you were raised human,” Deiq said, tone tinged with condescension. “Perhaps you’ll grow out of that in time.”

“I doubt it,” Idisio said, his voice thin and tight. “I really doubt it.”

Deiq looked up quickly, his dark eyes narrowing. His jaw set, and his whole face went taut for a moment. “Those guards—”

“Leave it alone.”

Deiq’s stare felt like burning coals burrowing under his skin, seeking out the tender bits. “Very well,” he said at last, and returned his attention to the soup.

They didn’t speak again until Alyea came in. Idisio left soon after she arrived, intending to go turn in and get some sleep. His headache had only worsened; the thundering rain overhead felt like millions of tiny hammers against his skull. His eyes felt as though they were ready to burst into flame, and his jaw ached as though he’d been gritting his teeth for hours.

A few steps past the kitchen doorway, the hall went from ordinary to bizarre. Rich tapestries, perfectly fitted,
clean
stone floors, vases of tall red-sage and gods-glory flowers: this wasn’t his world. This wasn’t where he belonged.

What the hells am I doing here?

He looked down at his feet, astounded to realize he was wearing
boots.
Clothes without holes. A belt, for the love of the gods, and a belt knife. Only a light rime of dirt showed under his nails, and he’d recently eaten—the warm, taut feeling in his stomach was unmistakable.

What the hells—?

As quickly, the disorientation passed. He stood blinking like a newborn idiot in the middle of an ordinary servant’s hallway.
Ordinary.
He looked down at himself again and almost laughed. A year ago he wouldn’t have believed such an outfit even worth wearing. Far more useful to sell it; the coin for the shirt alone would have meant food for a week.

But this was his world now. This was his life. He’d succeeded. He’d left the sewers behind forever. He never had to go back to that scrabbling, dangerous lifestyle. He grinned and took a step, his confidence returning.

A man turned the corner ahead and came toward him: almost as tall as Deiq, broad and loose-limbed, with sloppy dark hair and a mean smirk on his face. Idisio sucked in a breath as though gut-punched—he remembered that smirk, that hair—rather shorter, years ago, and the boy had put on a few pounds since then, but—

Silver coin flipping through the air, the sound of Church bells drifting on a humid breeze, and laughter—

He’d never heard names, didn’t know what to call this arrogant young man striding toward him; and the youth stared at Idisio without recognition or any attempt at courtesy.

“You one of the southerners come back with my cousin?” he demanded, his dark glare raking Idisio from head to foot.

Idisio couldn’t help returning the glare.
You think all I wanted was a whore? There’s better than you for that—

“You staring at something, southerner?” The dark-haired youth swaggered forward another step.

“Nothing important,” Idisio said acerbically, and delivered a contemptuous survey of his own.
“Nothing
important.”

A heavy flush rose to the young man’s face. “You watch yourself,” he growled. “Little thing like you, I’ll take you apart pretty fast.” He pushed forward another step.

A sudden, black anger rose in Idisio. “Give me a half chance, I’ll be
glad
to settle with
you,”
he said without meaning to voice it aloud. He heard the old street-thief accent coarsening his words; that, as much as the unexpected aggression, seemed to give the young man pause.

“‘Settle’?” the youth said, and squinted. “We met before?”

Idisio drew a deep breath, a little frightened, a little intoxicated by the depth of his rage; but starting a fight here would reveal his background to Alyea—and Alyea’s mother. Welcome would be thin and short after that, no matter his current status.

He could almost
feel
the silver coin between his fingers, though.

“No,” he said, careful with his accent this time. “Alyea’s in the kitchen, if you’re looking for her. Now get out of my way.”

The youth stared, taken aback. Idisio waited a moment, then started forward. The youth gave ground, moving up against the wall, and stayed plastered flat until Idisio had passed. Then he muttered, “Southerner ta-neka.”

Idisio turned, fast enough to startle the youth sideways another crabbing step, and said, “You want that fight after all?”

The youth glared, bewildered and sullen, then swung away from the wall and headed for the kitchen without looking back, his shoulders stiff with outrage.

Idisio swallowed hard and headed for his room, praying the boy wouldn’t change his mind and come after him. Once round the corner, he managed to slow his pace. He found himself panting, his heart hammering in erratic bursts.

What the hells am I so afraid of?
he thought, bewildered.
I’m not a street thief any longer. He can’t hurt me!

He hesitated. Fear urged him to flee to his room; rage demanded he pursue that fight.

Whoring, while distasteful, was one thing. Even what the guards had done was insignificant, compared to what that boy had done a few years back, to prove himself to his leering companions.

Idisio had been grateful, if a little puzzled, that the scars had disappeared in a matter of weeks.

Trapped and shrieking, bleeding, torn—soaked in urine, covered in raucous laughter and contempt—Now you’re a man, someone said, patting the black-haired youth on the shoulder. Now you’ve proven yourself... No, no need to kill this one, this was enough for today....

The clatter of a single silver coin landing on the ground beside his head, and their voices slowly receding...
He’d never been able to make himself spend that coin. Touching it made him feel filthy all over again. He’d brought it out to look at any time he thought about going back to that way of making money, as a reminder of why he’d started thieving instead.

Idisio shook his head, pushing the memories away, and went on, more slowly, to his rooms. He needed more time to think this through. That had been Alyea’s cousin. He’d always known the boy came from somewhere inside the Seventeen Gates, just from the accent and posture. But—Alyea’s
cousin?

He couldn’t go after his long-dreamed of revenge. Not without drawing Alyea into the fight, and Deiq. He didn’t want them involved, because....

A faint haze crossed his vision, an almost-dizziness. He put a hand out to the wall, steadying himself.

What was he thinking? Revenge? Against a noble? Absurd. He didn’t have the right. He was... just... a... street thief.

He looked down at his sweat- and dirt-stained shirt and leggings and felt a dreadful disorientation. He didn’t
belong
here. No wonder Lady Peysimun had looked at him with contempt, and that boy had seconded the appraisal. He was filthy. He’d always been filthy unless it rained. No—no, he’d bathed recently. These clothes had been reasonably clean, at a recent point. He didn’t live on the streets any longer—but the intervening days, abruptly, lay as blank as a new moon in the sky. How in the world had he gone from a ragged street-thief to—wherever and whatever
this
was?

Memory rose and tumbled like randomly tossed pebbles: that silver coin, turning over and over in his hands; wiping away tears with the back of one hand...
Hand—
a strong hand, clamping over his wrist, a desert-eagle glare bearing down on him. Lord Scratha. Black-hilted throwing knives. Rosemary, roses... flowers...
daffodils,
someone said wistfully, and sighed with longing.

Idisio gagged and staggered sideways and forward, feeling for the wall, grasping after tangible reminder of reality.

I should have stayed on the streets... I should have left you there... Swaying, seasick, vomiting; There is a lake, a ghosty lake... In the town, they said... said. Red. Red was looking for his son....

My son,
someone said, in the tones a starving man might have used to say
my steak.

Idisio patted at the wall frantically, trying to force himself out of memory. He found himself implacably dragged through flashes of the long, weary walk up the Wall, through half-lit tunnels, and into the moment they stepped in front of the Scratha ha’rethe to cement Lord Scratha’s binding. Memory focused on a vivid glimpse of the vision he’d been trying to forget ever since:

“Demon-spawn!” a male voice shouted, heavy with anger. “Burn it! Drown it!” ... a horrible wrenching sensation, an echoing scream—

A burst of pain shook him from the waking nightmare. He’d fallen, shoulder first, scraping along the wall. The arm of his light shirt was shredded, and his arm burned, invisible fire connecting the scraped-raw spots in a blazing net of pain.

Hauling himself to his feet, he looked around to see if anyone had been there to see. The hallway stood empty at the moment. Praying he wouldn’t meet anyone else unexpected, he broke into a dead run.

As soon as the door to his room shut behind him, the disorientation returned. He fought it, staggering to the washbasin, roughly sponging off his scraped skin, using pain to keep focused on the moment. Scant moments after he managed to change out his ruined shirt for a relatively clean one, the strangeness roared in, unstoppable as the tide: he felt a strong need for a cleansing walk through the torrential downpour outside. The fresh—the clean—the safe—he shook his head, blinking, then accepted the simplicity of it. He was a street thief. He didn’t live indoors. He lived
outside.
He
needed
room to walk, to wander. The walls here were too close, the air too warm and stifling and dead.

Dead....

The word sent a shudder down his spine.

I should yell for Deiq,
he thought. A heartbeat later, even that dim alarm lofted away in a scramble to get back outside to the streets, where he belonged.

Kolan had grown up with the Hackerwood on his doorstep—or so he’d thought. As he wandered east through the rough farmlands far from the Coast Road, he came to realize that the looming mass of trees always to his left was a far darker thing than the softly wooded hills of Arason had ever dreamed of being.

He’d always felt safe walking among the outer belt of the Arason Hackerwood. The trees had been spaced apart, thick with leaf-litter, cheerful with squirrels and birds. Sunlight shone through in wide swatches, bringing a dappled peace to every step.

These
trees huddled close together, thick with thorny bushes and broad-leafed southern ivies fighting for space; sunlight wouldn’t reach past the upper branches at best, and the only sounds Kolan heard were the small, slithery noises of snakes and rats.

He didn’t try to enter the woods, which turned out to be a wise instinct. He spent a day here and an evening there, helping farmers and housewives with some small task in exchange for a meal and a dry corner of shed or barn to curl up in for as long as it took to finish the work they had to offer. It served as a reminder of how to live as a human; he watched the people around him, mindful never to get caught at it, as he picked late-season produce, stripped bark from logs being readied for winter, tilled fields under for their end-of-season rest, cleaned out chicken coops, or performed a dozen other tasks found for him.

Nobody asked him prying questions or troubled him with the weight of over-kindness; he did the work and took a bit of food for the road by way of payment, and moved on. Sometimes he left without payment: in the middle of the night, if it suited him. Darkness had been familiar for so long that it was... comforting, in a strange way. As good as sunlight felt, he felt an atavistic craving for darkness at times.

Until he heard the voices: until his walk on the night the Healer’s Moon first died to full dark.

Beautiful... look... look... Look over here, over here, over here....

Kolan stood still, very still, and drew in one breath after another, thinking only of the air moving through his nose and throat and lungs.

You know us. You found us. You love us. Come, come, over here, over here....

Kolan kept his eyes shut and counted his fingers and his toes six times over.

We love you. We need you. We cherish you. Let us help you, here, here, over here....

“One and one is two,” Kolan said aloud. “Two and three is five. Four and three is seven. Eight minus two is six. Eight minus one is seven. Seven plus six is thirteen.”

A sense of perplexity drowned the voices into silence. Kolan kept reciting random simple mathematics until utter silence returned to the night.

He sighed in deep relief and stopped counting. That had been one of the few tricks to work on
teyhataerth,
on the rare occasions when Kolan was clear-headed enough to use it; the ha’ra’ha had always tried to find a pattern in the numbers, and had gotten distracted into a series of its own esoteric calculations very quickly.