Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (47 page)

“So you’re nice to
her?”
Dasin said in a low voice, tearing his loaf open and dipping it in the oil. “What’s the reason for
that?”

“She’s feeding us,” Tank said blandly, and grinned at Dasin’s scowl. “Never insult the cook, Dasin. That’s more dangerous than facing down those men outside.”

“Humans like pain,” his mother said.

Idisio blinked out of grey haze and met the warm glare of late-afternoon sunlight. He stopped walking, then realized he hadn’t
been
walking and almost fell over from the resulting disorientation.

His mother perched on a tree stump, watching him with uncanny calm. “They like to give pain, and they like to receive it,” she went on. “It’s one of the things Rosin taught me.”

Her eyes seemed colorless in the bright sunlight, except for a sharp dark ring around the outer edge where the white should have been.

Idisio turned slowly, looking around. Tangled scrub brush and feather-fringe trees surrounded them in all directions. The clearing he stood in was barely a weak stone’s throw across. The trees, from bark to branch to leaf, looked exceptionally jagged and dangerous. The air felt sharp and hard in his mouth.

Humans like pain.
He wanted to argue that assertion: couldn’t.

“Where are we?” he said instead.

“Near the next town,” she said. “I thought it best to have our talk before we encountered more humans.”

Idisio looked at the lines of her face, the coloring in her eyes, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere without her permission. That alone raised his hackles. He directed his best imitation of a Scratha-severe stare at her.

She smiled. “You’re still a child,” she said. “I’m trying to treat you as an adult, son, but I can’t do that if you stand there glaring and sulking at me.”

He bit the inside of his cheek and reluctantly moderated his expression.

“I understand why you’re acting this way,” she said. “You were hurt as a child, son; you were taken from me too young and put among the humans. You had to live as a thief and as a....” Her voice faltered. “I found your place. Your den. Your... your coins. And I saw—what you had to do.”

He looked sharply back to her at that, and found her studying the ground, her face gone a dreadful grey shade. She sucked in a difficult breath, then another; the horrid color flushed into a more normal shade, and she looked up with eyes gone as black as Deiq’s.

“It was a long time ago,” he said. “It doesn’t matter any more.”

The words felt hollow in his mouth, like a silver gloss over rot. He was angry, godsdamned right. He was
ha’ra’hain,
he had deserved better than that: and now he wanted anyone who had ever hurt him
dead,
he wanted to feel
blood.
He should have stood beside Deiq and ripped those gate guards apart; nobody could have stopped them—

He bit his lip, hard, as the only alternative to slapping himself back to sense. His mother’s dark eyes gleamed with amusement. He’d seen that same murderous laughter in the eyes of those who heard the
voices,
over the years. Tank had been the only one to hear the voices and not develop that peculiar glaze to his smile.

Ellemoa growled, deep in the back of her throat, her eyes narrowing.

She doesn’t like that,
he thought, startled by her reaction.
Something about Tank—she doesn’t like him. He—scares her?
It was a potential weapon. He had to remember that—

“He doesn’t frighten
me,”
she snapped. “He’s a threat. He’s trained to kill our kind. He tried to kill
teyhataerth.
“

“I’ve been having visions of him,” Idisio said, and a weight lifted from him, just to confess that so simply.

She showed no surprise, no concern, which added to his relief. “Of course you have. We
see
the future, see in a way the human seers only dream of doing. Only our line can do that. Only you and I, now. That boy is trained to kill ha’ra’hain. He’s trained to kill you, son. Of course you’re having visions. You
know
he’s a threat. You know what he did to
teyhataerth.
“

Her eyes flooded with black for a moment, then reverted to a dark-rimmed grey. Color washed out of her face, seeped back.

“They killed a ha’ra’ha, these humans you think so highly of. They killed
teyhataerth,
and they left. They didn’t care that their own kind were trapped in those cells beneath the city. Didn’t care that
I
was there, starving, in a cell I couldn’t get out of.”

That brought to mind the slick yellow walls of a sun-flooded room with no apparent exit: what would have happened if Evkit hadn’t let them out? An uneasy shiver ran up Idisio’s back.

“Another dishonor, another hurt you’ve faced without me,” his mother mourned. She put a hand over her eyes, her other arm wrapped tight around her ribs, and rocked back and forth, breathing hard.

Deiq cared about status. She cares about
me
. Just me.
It made brash dismissal almost impossible. Whatever her flaws, she saw him as a son—wanted to care for him like a mother.

It was a dreadfully seductive thought.

I’m going to start crying. Talk about something else. Fast.
“If we’re from Arason, how did we wind up in Bright Bay? And how come I never knew I was ha’ra’ha, and Ninnic’s
—teyhataerth—
never saw me?”

She drew in a long breath and straightened, folding her hands in her lap. “There were evil men in Arason. Your father tried to save us by sending us to Bright Bay, but he didn’t realize that it wasn’t a safe place any longer. He had to choose—which of us to protect. He only had strength for one. He chose you.”

Her dark grey eyes filled. Tears began streaking down her face, but her breath and voice remained even.

“He put a protection on you that hid you from even my vision, and pushed you somewhere in the city. And
teyhataerth...
took me.”

In the following silence, the drone of sandbugs seemed very loud. Idisio’s heart hammered and skipped in his chest.
My father chose to save me? He threw my mother into the arms of a monster—to save
me
?
He blinked hard, refusing tears.

“Not a monster. It wasn’t a monster,” his mother said, her voice shrill, then modulated back down. “It wasn’t
teyhataerth’s
fault, what it became. It was all Rosin. All Rosin. It wasn’t
teyhataerth’
s fault. Rosin controlled it.”

“But Rosin was human. How could he possibly control a ha’ra’ha?”

“Rosin convinced
teyhataerth
that he was stronger and smarter,” his mother said. Her black-rimmed stare bored into him; then she smiled a little, a predatory expression. “That’s not important. I’ve been forcing you along this far because you wouldn’t listen to me. I can’t keep doing that. It’s not the right thing to do. I love you too much to force you to obey me. So I’m going to explain it all to you. Listen: Humans and desert lords are nothing but weak, unworthy insects out to use you for their own gain.”

“That’s not true!”

“Will you at least listen to my side?”

He hesitated, torn; but it was the least he could do, after all she’d suffered on his behalf. And she cared about him. She really did. This all came from how much she loved him... He could at least listen. There was no harm in that.

She’s been forcing me along?
He looked back over days filled with grey haze and confusion, of odd, velvet whispers that convinced him to keep going, and felt a sharp alarm.
How do I know she’s not going to keep doing that? She’s lied to get me this far. She’ll lie to me again.

“I haven’t lied to you, son,” she said softly. “That’s one promise I’ve held to. I haven’t given you a single lie—unlike those desert lords you admire so.”

“Stop that,” he said, shivering. “I don’t like you just—pulling thoughts from my head like that.”

“You’re not very good at being quiet, son,” she said. A thin smile flitted across her face, then disappeared back into a deadly serious expression. She leaned forward. “Listen to me. Listen to my side, as you agreed. Listen: Those desert lords used you as bait to trap what they saw as a monster. How is that acting as any kind of
friend,
or even an ally?” She paused, watching his face intently.

“Those men aren’t
good people,”
she went on. “They left dozens of their own kin to die in the dark and the silence. Do you know what a human starving to death sounds like? I listened to twenty-four humans die that way—after those twenty-four had killed and eaten everyone else in their cells first. I could have given them a better end than that. A
faster
end.”

Blood streaming along her hands—slick and hot in her mouth, and the wet crunch of bone—

A thick shock ran through Idisio’s whole body. He stumbled a few steps aside, went to his knees, and vomited. Only acidic liquid came up.

His mother said, pragmatic and cool, “Being ill over words doesn’t change the past. Why allow yourself such an exaggerated response?”

“I’m not cold like you and Deiq!” Idisio snapped, rocking back to his feet, and came forward a step, his shoulders rounding. “I won’t be like that!”

Her eyes cleared to a steady pale grey. “Cold?” she said. “Because I don’t endlessly punish myself for what’s done and gone by?” She paused.

“And Deiq is hardly innocent,” she added. “He’s done things that make what I told you look
kind.”

“How do you know that?” Idisio demanded.

Her eyes narrowed and took on a feral glitter; then it faded into a bewildered expression. “Know what?”

“How do you know that about Deiq?”

“Who?” She glanced around, staring at the long shadows creeping across the clearing. “It’s getting dark,” she muttered. “We should go, son. We have to get to Arason.” She sniffed the air like an asp-jacau scenting after a snake. “We have to go.”

Idisio couldn’t tell if she was faking her sudden confusion or if she genuinely found the shadows so disorienting that she’d lost the thread of the conversation.

She loves me. Whatever else, I have to remember that’s real. She wants what’s best for me. We may not agree on what that is—but she’s honest in that one thing: she loves me.

In the face of that, he couldn’t bring himself to call her a raving lunatic.

He said, “What if I say I don’t want to go to Arason?”

She raised a clear grey stare to his face. “Are you going to say that, son?”

Images unrolled behind his eyes: using blisters and bindings to make himself look diseased and bring in coin as a beggar; a silver coin, turning over and over between his fingers... a hard blow that pitched him nearly the width of a small room, the glares of a roomful of men as they assessed which side of the predator/prey line Idisio stood on... the odd look on Riss’s face as she turned and left his room for the last time.

“Another slut,” his mother said softly. “All she ever wanted was the company of a man powerful enough to protect her and malleable enough to control. Once she saw you for what you are, she couldn’t wait to get away from you. None of the humans will ever really trust you. You’ll be forever watched like a rabid animal—and put down like one, at the first sign that they don’t control you completely, by the very humans you thought of as friends.”

Deiq’s sharp voice drifted back into memory:
Don’t flinch around them.

In the gathering haze of sunset and shadow, what she was saying made perfect sense.

“Is that the life you want, son?” she said. “When you could live peacefully with your mother in your ancestral home, learning the things the humans won’t ever allow you to know? You’ll meet your father. You’ll speak with him whenever you like.”

“My father... .” A surprisingly sharp longing burned in his chest at that.

Silence drew down around them, punctuated by the shirring trill of awakening nightbugs.

“Will you come to Arason with me, son?” his mother said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “Will you come and meet your father, and let me teach you the truth of your heritage? Will you come with me, and be loved and honored and respected? Do you really want to stay with the humans, where you’ll always be the despised, distrusted outcast?”

He looked up, thinking that over. Vivid slashes of orange, red and purple streaked the early evening sky, turning the scattering of clouds into gilded, feathery puffs: each one so distinct and close that he felt as though he could reach out, pluck one from the sky, and cradle it in his hands like a warm puff pastry.

“Puff pastry... yes. I’m a very good baker,” his mother said, her voice threaded with silvery longing. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve handled flour and water, salt and oil. I want to put a loaf of my own bread in my son’s hands and see him smile as he tears into it. I want to clean up the crumbs and run a comb through his untidy hair and pick up the clothes he tosses on the floor. I want to see him laugh and run through the rain and play with rainbows.”

“I’m a little old for splashing in puddles,” Idisio said, but the words came out hoarse and thick.

“You’re never too old for that. I’d run right beside you. Rain is
beautiful.
Cleansing. Sacred.” She sighed deeply. “Please,” she said. “Please, come home with me.”

She held out both her hands, not moving from her perch on the tree stump; and after a long moment of staring at her, Idisio took three steps forward and laced his fingers through hers.

Rain rattled over the roof in a short burst that chilled the room further. Tank half-rolled, tugging the blanket up over his shoulder. The bottom corner shifted with the movement, leaving his feet bare. The blanket had gotten turned sideways at some point.

He muttered a curse and sat up, yanking at the thick fabric to sort it out. Dasin had managed to tuck most of the blanket around himself; in one swift movement, Tank shoved him over onto his back and jerked the revealed fold of cloth free.

Dasin gave a sleep-thick whimper and flung up a hand to shield his face, curling into a tight ball at the same time. Tank ducked the unintentional blow, draped the blanket back into proper alignment, then tried to settle down; but the bed was narrow to start with, and Dasin’s curled-up form used twice the sideways space he’d been occupying before.