Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (6 page)

“I know. I’ll do that now.”

She nodded and started for the door, then stopped, twisting her hands together. “I’m a little—” She hesitated, jaw working as though chewing on what to say. “A little lost. You’re the only one I know. You and Lord Scratha. It’s a little scary. This whole—” She paused again, biting her lip, and finally shook her head. “I get scared. I get worried if I don’t know where you are. It’s just—strange, here. I’ve been having these d-d-dr—” She stopped, one hand over her eyes, then dropped it back to her side and looked at him.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said lamely, not sure what else to say. “It’s not so bad here.”

She stared a moment, her expression somewhere between bewilderment and annoyance, then shook her head and left without further comment. He let out a long sigh, listening to her settle back into her reading practice, and tried to see her point.

He couldn’t. He’d always relied on himself to survive. Friendly faces dropped in and out of one’s life without warning. She’d grown up in a secure life, with parents, with family, with a community. While that had turned against her in the end, she’d
known
something he’d never dreamed of and still couldn’t quite understand.

He had more sympathy for Lord Scratha at the moment. The man was dealing with people in his
place,
his territory; people he didn’t entirely trust, people who would more than likely stab him in the back given sufficient profit from the move. And if one of those people turned Idisio against him, or Deiq, Scratha’s life could get very unpleasant very fast.

He’s anxious to keep you happy,
Azni had said. That made more sense to Idisio, by far, than Riss’s uncertainty.

Thank all the gods Riss won’t be in Conclave with me.

He immediately felt guilty for the thought. Riss deserved better than that. But as he began cleaning himself up and picking out clothes from the pile Cafad had sent him, he couldn’t convince himself to feel any other way.

“I declare this Conclave open,” Lord Scratha said. His gaze tracked along the table, touching each face with an almost tangible heat. He regarded Idisio with the same baleful ferocity; with a slight shock, Idisio realized that Scratha considered him dangerous as any of the desert lords around them now.

No,
Deiq said, expressionless, his gaze on the tall Scratha lord.
He has to look like he thinks of you as dangerous. He hasn’t come round to really seeing you as what you are yet. Trust me—you’ll know when he does.

Idisio said nothing, not trusting himself to reply without being overheard. The etiquette and process of mindspeech still baffled him; safer to stay silent and avoid mistakes. Deiq had years of practice; Idisio had a little over a day.

He looked around the table, trying to be discreet in his survey, and caught a number of other sly glances going around. Most flinched when they saw him looking their way, or grew suddenly still and guarded.

They sure don’t see me as an ex-street thief,
he thought ruefully, and hoped that Scratha wouldn’t ever look at him the way the gathered lords were now. It
hurt,
in a weird way, even more than the times of being spat on as a whore, beggar, and thief in Bright Bay.

Those times had been about what he
did.
The looks now were all about who he
was.
What
he was. He glanced at Deiq and found the elder ha’ra’ha’s dark face lined with bitterness.

Get used to it,
Deiq said; then his expression smoothed out to blank indifference again.

The massive metal doors began clanging shut, one by one. The echoing noise made Idisio think of prisons and cages, and he repressed a strong urge to bolt from his chair and out the last door before it closed.

To distract himself from his growing anxiety, Idisio studied the desert lords around the table. Scratha wore the most elaborate outfit, a loose silk shirt and pants in severe shades of grey and black, laced throughout with complicated embroidery; Azni wore the simplest, a rippling, unadorned dress of blue and crimson. The colors made the one look simpler than it was and the other more elaborate:
peacock and gravekeeper,
someone thought just then, and Deiq coughed into his hand, the corners of his eyes crinkling briefly.

Idisio blinked hard and looked elsewhere, unwilling to find amusement in that comparison.

Evkit stared directly back at him. His cold, cold eyes held no hint of flinch or guarding. A moment later, Deiq’s elbow dug painfully into Idisio’s side, jolting his attention away from that hypnotic gaze.

“Thanks,” Idisio muttered, rubbing his ribs. Deiq slanted an unforgiving stare at him and went back to watching the proceedings. Idisio tried to follow suit, but his attention kept drifting to the banners around the table. Voices rose and fell around him, unheeded, as he found himself tracking common patterns, colors, and themes; not simply pretty pictures. It was another language, like the whistling.

“Pay
attention,”
Deiq said in his ear, his voice as close to a growl as a human throat could manage. Idisio blinked hard and sat up straighter.

“This Conclave has already begun on something of an...unusual note,” Lord Scratha said, his gaze settling on Lord Evkit. Tension arced through the air like a silent whipcrack, then faded as quickly. Scratha turned his stare on Lord Alyea; she stiffened and glared back at him.

Prickly as a cactus,
someone thought.
Can’t wait to see
her
hit the change.

Deiq raised his head and sent a hard glare down the table. Lord Irrio blanched and dipped his head in awkward apology.

What was
the change?
Idisio caught Deiq’s eye and lifted an eyebrow in a tiny, inquiring twitch, hoping nobody else would see it. Deiq stared at him for a moment, as though deciding whether to answer, then said, curtly,
Later.

“A Conclave begun with a plot revealed and a death chosen isn’t what I expected when I called you all together,” Lord Scratha said. “Normally that sort of thing happens at the end of a Conclave.”

Idisio stared. Had the man actually made a
joke?
Idisio hadn’t known Cafad had it in him.

As Cafad went on with the opening formalities, Idisio found his gaze drifting to Gria, newly discovered heir to Scratha. She sat rigid and grim, the white and ruby silks she wore only accenting the underlying paleness of her face. Underneath the mass of elaborate beadwork and jewelry they’d draped her in for the Conclave, she looked more like a child than ever. Her voice, when she spoke, came out steady and far more confident than Idisio could tell she actually felt; like Riss, she found this entire situation terrifyingly alien.

Her fear surfaced openly for a heartbeat when she glanced down the table at Lord Evkit. In response, Evkit’s mouth twitched in the slightest, tiniest smirk.

Idisio, don’t look at Evkit,
Deiq said irritably.

Why not?

Just. Don’t.

The elder ha’ra’ha’s flat delivery reminded Idisio of Cafad just before the man lost his temper; he wisely shut up and kept his gaze away from Evkit after that.

“The ways have been shut,” Cafad declared. “You may not travel to or from my lands using the hidden ways unless I permit it. And I will not grant that permission to any of you.”

He glared at Evkit.

Idisio glanced at Deiq and found the elder ha’ra’ha suspiciously devoid of expression. A moment later, Evkit jerked to his feet and began shouting; Idisio felt an uneasy tremor run through the room. Cafad’s eyes took on the all-too-familiar dark glitter of temper rising fast.

A burning wave of pain swamped over Idisio’s entire body. Time distorted, voices blurring into incoherent waves; dimly, he heard Scratha began bellowing.

A hard slap to the side of the head shocked Idisio out of the pain and the haze all at once. As he blinked vision back into the moment, Deiq bounded atop the table, stamping his booted feet hard.

The table shook. The shouts cut off dead. Everyone stared up at Deiq as though he’d lost his mind.

“Stop,” Deiq snapped. “That’s enough, my lords! With all due respect, that’s enough. You cannot
afford
to lose your tempers with a full ha’rethe below you!”

An image of desiccated trees turning fully leafed, of a long-blocked well returned to full functionality, ran through Idisio’s mind. A strong shiver worked down his back.

Stop, damn you,
Deiq cut in, his voice taut and black. Abrupt panic urged Idisio to run screaming from the room. Blood seemed to haze the very air. Again, Deiq’s voice lashed out:
Stop it! Use your aqeyva training, Idisio, this isn’t the time for you to go vapid on me!

Idisio sucked in a deep breath, heartbeat thudding in his ears, and struggled to turn his attention inwards. Slowly, too slowly, his heartbeat began to ease; without warning, Idisio felt a massive pressure, as though a giant hand had closed around his entire body.

Slow it down,
Deiq ordered.
Slow. This beat. Listen: one. One. Two. Two. One. One... good.

Idisio hung suspended in a strange half-world for a long, stretched moment, as Deiq forced the beat into vein, nerve, and flesh with brutal efficiency.

Don’t flop around!
Deiq snapped, his tone a feral snarl.
Pick up your end already!

Idisio blinked and focused with every ounce of willpower he possessed. Panic and pain smoothed away in a heartbeat, and he clicked over into a glassy calm. Deiq let out a hard breath, settling back into his seat.

“What would Conclave be without everyone losing their tempers?” Lord Salo said, voice as wobbly as Idisio’s knees felt.

“Other places, fine,” Deiq said grimly. “But not
here.
Lord Scratha, if you cannot discuss that particular matter calmly, I suggest you drop it altogether.”

Scratha glared. Deiq glared back. Tendrils of tension whipped through the room like snakes.

Snakes, red and black, writhing across the bed—Lord Scratha’s arm swelling as he panted, fighting off the deadly venom—

Idisio, stop it!
Deiq snarled.
Will you drop into a full aqeyva trance already? Block everything out. This isn’t over yet. I’ll pull you out when it’s safe.

What—

Deiq cut him off with a ferocious glare that might as well have been a Scratha-vicious slap. Swallowing hard, Idisio focused on his breath, as he’d done so often on the long journey south with Scratha and Riss; followed breath inwards and around into the tight inner coil where everything else disappeared. All sound vanished. Nothing moved in his mind but awareness of his breath and pulse. He hung suspended in a dark grey haze with darker grey walls, and let the world go on without him for a time.

The grey shifted, thinned, and broke apart.

It’s over,
Deiq said, tone considerably calmer, although still taut.
Come on—

An ungentle tug unwound him, like a child’s spinning toy, from his refuge. Idisio blinked several times, vaguely nauseated by the abrupt shift of perception. As his vision cleared, he saw that the expressions around the table had reverted to bland vagueness.

Ha’reye react badly to extreme human emotions,
Deiq said curtly.
Scratha’s never had to learn how to posture without getting genuinely emotional. I had to keep Scratha ha’rethe from reacting to his anger. You were pissing into the middle of it, without meaning to. You don’t have the training to stay out of it, you’re trained to think human, and you actually like Scratha, for some damn reason.

Lord Scratha is a good man,
Idisio said, more than a little defensively.

He’s a human,
Deiq answered.
Now shut up and pay attention. You might learn something.

Idisio drew in another long, quiet breath, eased himself into a cool detachment, and went back to listening to the external arguments bouncing around the table; reflecting, very, very quietly, that at the least, he’d learned to be
damn
careful around Deiq.

Tank stood at the rail of the
Deep Sea Lover,
his mood as bleak as the dappled grey clouds hanging low overhead. The frothed silver-green sea had lost its appeal for him. He wanted solid land under his feet and a
normal life
under his hands again.

For the first time, he considered joining Ossin in his daily ritual of throwing up over the side. Only pride stopped him: he
wouldn’t
let any of them see him that weak. Especially—now—Slick.

Up in the rigging, one of the sailors called out, “Oy, hey, five hunner year!”

From the deck crew, another voice bellowed, “Oy, hey, hey, come the wind!”

The rest of the crew picked up the rough work chant, in a typical call/response form, each sailor providing a different rhyming line:

Oy, hey, five hundred year

Oy, hey, hey, come the wind

Oy, hey, hey, numb the sinned

Oy, hey, hey, dumb the dear

Oy, hey, hey, plumb it near—

None of it made any sense to Tank, but work chants weren’t actually supposed to make sense. They were about keeping the mind busy while the hands did a job.