Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (46 page)

“Wait,” he said to both voices, “wait, I didn’t mean to—”

“I’ve heard that one before,” the girl snapped, and stalked off.

“I trusted you,” his mother said. “You said you’d come right back to talk. And here I find you pawing some slut instead. That’s not being true to your word, son.”

Shame swamped through him.
I lied. I lied.
A newfound sense of being lesser, a sense of being wrong, placed her in the right; gave her an absolute superiority over him.
She trusted me. I let her down. I have to make it up to her.

Don’t flinch. Don’t flinch.

He tried to explain, as a bridge between the two demands. “I was coming back,” he said, watching the servant girl’s receding back.

“Really,” she said, flat and mistrustful. “Say that twice.”

I lied. I lied. I broke her trust.
He shook his head hard, pushing away the disorientation.
Don’t flinch.
Giving up on eyesight as an aid, he shut his eyes and listened to the small sounds around him.

“You never intended to come back to me,” she said.

He opened his mouth to protest his innocence: remembered, in a burst of sudden embarrassment, his initial intention to run like all the hells were after him as soon as he’d eaten and settled his thoughts. How had he become distracted with the servant girl? That had been stupid. He’d allowed thoughts of Riss to distract him from something important.

“You see,” his mother said, icily severe. “You lied to me. So there’s no talking to be done right now. You’ve eaten; your stomach is full. I won’t allow you to fill that
—that
need. Not yet. Not until we reach Arason, where you’ll have suitable girls to approach. Right now it’s time for you to sleep. You like to sleep. You’ve slept every day of your life and you still think you need to—so, now you trot back to the inn and go to sleep.”

Idisio yawned. He was terribly, terribly tired—but something she said didn’t make any sense. He had to ask her about it. After a moment, he managed words: “I
think
I need to sleep?”

“You’ll understand when you’re older, son,” she said. “Time for bed now. Let’s go.”

He nodded and obediently trudged back toward the inn.

“I’ll be in a bit later,” her voice whispered in his ear as he went. “I’m finding that I’m a bit hungry myself now. Since you broke your promise... Never mind. You go sleep. Sleep. Sleep....”

She woke him shortly before dawn. He sat up, blinking; his vision shifted over to bring a grey clarity to the dark room.

“Time to go,” she told him, her voice light and cheery. “Here—I found you some clean clothes. Put them on and let’s go.”

Half-asleep, he pulled on the clothes without looking at them closely and followed her obediently, knuckling his eyes as he went. She’d found new clothes as well: a dress that fit her better than the last but still hung loose on her skinny frame. He dimly wondered who she’d bought the clothes from in the middle of the night, and with what coin. Then she smiled at him, and the half-clarity faded away completely.

“What a lovely place that was,” she said as they started out of town. “I hope the next one is as nice.”

By mutual agreement, moving faster now without Wian’s weight slowing them down, Dasin and Tank went through Kybeach without stopping. No loss, in Tank’s opinion. Just the sight of the arc of worn buildings, their many flaws highlighted by the merciless southern sun, depressed him.

“Wonder if we’ll ever find out,” Dasin said as they passed the last of Kybeach’s scraggly cornfields, now little more than withered and rotting stalks.

“Huh? About what?” Tank stared at the fields, thinking about what it would be like to have to farm here. It looked like poor land to begin with, and he had a feeling it had been mismanaged. Kybeach had the air of a place that had been struggling on the edge of survival for a long time.

“That gerho merchant.”

Tank glanced at Dasin, surprised.

“Why do you care?” he said without thinking, then felt a flush cross his face at Dasin’s cynical squint. “It’s not like either of us knew him.”

“No,” Dasin said, “but it matters, because the story behind it affects how the village is going to react. If it makes them more hostile to outsiders—if that’s even possible—it’s going to make traveling through Kybeach a chancy business; and we’ll be going through Kybeach a
lot,
if we do this back and forth along the coast for Yuer.”

“If,” Tank said, picking on that word with a sudden surge of hope. “You don’t want to do this?”

Dasin shook his head. “Oh, I want to,” he said. “Never mind that he says he could ruin us; I can handle myself, and so can you. That doesn’t scare me. But you don’t see what he’s offering. We’re going to be rich, Tank; we’re going to see giving gold rounds to a street thief as nothing much. And we’ll be
known.”

“I don’t
want
to be ‘known’,” Tank said. “And don’t forget the
salt
in your bag.”

Dasin’s cheer faded. “I haven’t,” he said, more quietly. “But I don’t feel as strongly about that as you do, Tank. I wasn’t fed dasta, remember? And there’s nothing saying we’re running that, anyway. It could be something as harmless as... as dreamweed.”

Tank blinked and looked away, watching a hawk spiral against the clouds now scudding across the sky.

“It’s not dreamweed,” he said at last, “because aesa is always put in leather or cloth pouches, not ornate boxes. At best, it’s esthit; more likely, it’s dasta. And I
won’t—”
His throat closed. He dropped his chin to his chest and stared fiercely at his horse’s ears.

“But it could be esthit,” Dasin pointed out. “It might even be something totally innocent, to test our integrity. To see if we’d break the seal. It’s the kind of game Yuer would like, isn’t it?”

“I don’t trust him.”

“No. Neither do I. But what he’s offering—it would take
years
to build up to this, Tank. I’m being offered lead spot on a caravan, with some heavy backing; he has
nobles
buying from him! I’d normally have to serve as junior merchant to a pack of fools for years before being offered something like this, until I was the `right age’.” He spat to the side away from Tank, bitterness edging his voice.

Tank shook his head. “That doesn’t impress me,” he said. “My job’s the same regardless of who’s in charge or what the load contains, and money isn’t all that important to me.”

“It matters to
me,”
Dasin said. His voice climbed over the next words: “Money means
power.
Means
freedom.
Means never again having to say
yes
to—” He stopped and bit his lip, staring straight ahead, then drew in a sharp breath and shook his head. In a more level voice, he added, “Will you stay with it—for my sake, if not for money? I’d like to have one familiar face around.”

Tank shrugged, deeply uncomfortable with that glimpse into Dasin’s own background pain.
Over, over, over, past and gone,
wound through his mind like a living shield against the echoes of memory raised by that half-said sentence.

“We’ll see what Yuer says when we get to Sandsplit,” he said roughly. “Maybe he’ll have decided I’m too rude and he doesn’t want me around after all.”

“If he offers you the job, will you take it?”

There was a small child’s terror lurking behind the question; just a whiff, but Tank heard it clearly.

“Maybe,” he said. “I’ll think about it. That’s the best I can give, Dasin. I’ll think on it.”

Dasin let out a breath, his expression deeply relieved.

“Good,” he said. “That’s—good. Thank you.”

“Not doing it for you,” Tank said; but the echo of his own words, in his mind, sounded false.

Dasin shot him a sideways grin, arrogance resurfacing, and said nothing.

The blue-shuttered house on the eastern edge of Obein proved to be, on first inspection, tidy and quiet, much like the Fool’s Rest Tavern in Bright Bay. Closer, Tank saw men sitting at outside tables. During the day the tables would have been within a shady spot. Now, with evening rapidly drawing down, the men sitting there were little more than bulky shapes against the greying light.

Closer yet, their expressions were visible: they watched Dasin and Tank’s approach with the same cool amusement as Yuer’s guards had displayed.

Dasin dropped back a pace, allowing Tank the lead. Tank took it and strode toward the front door, ignoring the tables, as though intending to walk straight into the house. Not surprisingly, two of the men were on their feet and blocking his path before he came anywhere near the doorway. He stopped well out of arm’s-reach, met their flat stares directly, and said, “Seavorn sent us. We’re to stay the night here. We’re carrying a package for Yuer.”

The men studied him, in no hurry to make a decision. At last, the shorter of the two, a muscular man with heavy pox scars, missing teeth, and thinning brown hair, said, “Haven’t seen you before. You replacing Baylor, then?”

“Don’t know who that is,” Tank said, not giving any ground. “Just know what Seavorn told me to say. Do we go somewhere else for a meal and a bed, or do you let us in?”

The man snorted, seemingly amused. “You don’t go anywhere after prancing up with that sort of talk,” he said. The wavering light of the single torch by the front door did his pitted, scarred face no favors. “Ever hear of manners, boy?
Hello
and
please
go a long way, you know.”

“I wasn’t under the impression you were the type cared much for formalities,” Tank said. He could feel Dasin’s fear shivering along his back, and hoped Dasin wasn’t letting it show on his face.

The man stared at him, breath hissing between his teeth, then said, “Boy, you got some nerve. If Seavorn hadn’t sent word to watch for you and let you through, I’d be wiping you through the dust right now.”

Wisdom said
Apologize and let it go;
as usual, temper won.

“Go ahead,” Tank said, stepping back and spreading his hands. “Give that a try.”

Dasin made a vague, agonized sound. The men at the door looked past Tank and laughed.

“Your boy there’s about pissing himself over that,” the taller one observed. “Doesn’t like the notion of you getting scratched, I’m guessing. Nah, let it go, Ger. He ain’t worth aggravating ourselves over. He won’t last, not with that attitude.”

“Tank,” Dasin hissed, barely audible,
“don’t,
damnit. Not this time.”

Tank lifted his chin, hoping the men hadn’t heard that, and said, “So, about dinner, then.
Please.
And a bed for the night.
Please.”

“Tuh.” The shorter one shoved the door open and jerked his thumb toward the opening. “Go on, then. Arrogant little squirt.”

Tank kept his back straight and his head high as he went by, senses alert for a surprise attack; but the door shut hard behind them without incident, and Dasin let out a sobbing gasp of relief.

“Are you trying to get us
killed?”
the blond demanded, whacking Tank’s shoulder hard.

Tank shook his head, looking around the small room. It was similar to Yuer’s home, if rather smaller; the front door led into a large sitting room with comfortable chairs arrayed around a large table. Heavy draperies covered the walls, obscuring any exits other than two large front-facing windows.

The room had no fireplace. Tank found that a relief. And the room was empty at the moment, another good sign; if someone had been sitting in one of the chairs waiting for them, Tank thought he might have bolted on the spot.

“Doesn’t do any good to show manners to men like that,” he said absently. “They’d take both sides and own the road once all’s done. Either Yuer’s name is enough protection or it’s not, and that’s something we needed to know for sure.”

One of the draperies moved. A thin woman with long blonde hair emerged, eyeing them cautiously.

“You’ll be wanting something?” she said. Her voice carried a heavy northern accent, and her green eyes were watchful.

“Dinner and a bed for the night,
s’a,
if you please,” Tank said.

“You wanting company?” Her gaze flicked to Dasin, assessing. “We only got one girl right now, and I’m off the duty for a few more days.”

Tank repressed a grimace of distaste. “No. Just a meal and some sleep.”

She nodded and held aside the drapery to reveal a door behind her. “This way, if you please, then,
s’es.
Bread’s done, and chicken’s almost ready. I’ll show you to your room after you eat.”

The kitchen turned out to be a rough-plastered, low-ceilinged room, thick with the aroma of fresh bread, rosemary, garlic, and roast chicken. A trestle table filled most of one wall, easily enough to seat fifteen men. Tank and Dasin sat side by side, their backs to the wall, without a word needing to be said on the matter.

The girl brought them each a hand-sized loaf of black bread and set down a shallow dish of oil. “Test loaves,” she said, “but I always like them better myself. And that’s walnut oil there; we’ve a good old tree out back.”

“Thank you,” Tank said. “You run a good kitchen,
s’a.”

Her lined face broke into a cheerful smile. “That’s kind of you,” she said. “Good to hear a friendly word now and again.” She turned away toward the stove.