Divided (10 page)

Taiya, though, seemed to know that this was not the sort of
information they were looking for.  “Well, that is true—but here in Dark
District we don’t know much about that.  Though, that is what this dance is to
celebrate,” she said, confirming what Lee had already told him, “but aside from
that, we don’t know much about it.”

“So what do you know about?” Lee asked, encouraging any
extra information, as he always did.  Lavus’s philosophy on information
gathering was nothing like Lee’s, who preferred to get all rumors and figure
out the truth in them.  Calis much preferred Lee’s way of doing things, and Lee
didn’t even execute the people who gave him false information. 

The girls smiled mischievously and exchanged glances. 
“Well, there is the fact that the younger Tsrali brother comes down to Dark
District sometimes and is known to kidnap young girls!” the brown haired girl
said conspiratorially.

Calis frowned.  Had Tareth really stooped to that level? 
How pitiful.  “That sounds bad,” he said flatly.

The girls nodded their agreement.  “And then there’s the
mysterious Phantom Blade, as everyone has taken to calling him—nobody knows who
he is, but lately he is always there when Tareth or any other noble shows up to
cause trouble for our Dark Districters,” Taiya said softly.  She glanced
around, as if she thought the guy would be there now.

Calis and Lee glanced at one another.  Calis didn’t know
why, as no one had any new information on this person—but hearing about this
vigilante amused him endlessly.  “…Phantom Blade?” Calis asked, as if he found
the story a little childish.

“Oh, I know the name sounds silly.  But he is very real.  He
wears a mask, dresses in black, and he is very handy with a sword.  He shows up
and helps citizens of Dark District with the nobles and then just vanishes. 
It’s the oddest thing.  But he is so handsome!”

“I’m jealous,” Calis said teasingly.  The girls giggled at
his flirting and while the brown-haired girl waved him off, Taiya bit her lip.

“You have no reason to be,” she said.

Lee was obviously thinking on what had just been said. 
There didn’t appear to be any new information in what the girls had said, but
Lee didn’t like to leave any word alone without inspecting it voraciously.  “Do
you think he lives in Dark District?” Lee finally asked.

Taiya shrugged.  “We have no idea.  I doubt that a noble would
help us, so we assume that he does.  For a while, we thought it might just be a
kind traveler passing through, but it has been years now.  So if it was a
traveler, he obviously doesn’t plan on leaving.”  The girls glanced at each
other once again.

A traveler or a boy coming of age.  Those two options seemed
the only available ones, as Calis doubted that anyone would just decide one sun
to risk his own life for the life of others.  That wasn’t a simple decision to
make.  No, this person had to be a bit of a daredevil, to say the least.  “Has
anyone ever spoken to this phantom?” Calis asked.

The brown-haired girl, Claire, answered this time.  “Not
really.  I mean, there has been the occasional time when he’d ask if someone
was alright after a particularly nasty fight, but other than that, no.  He
doesn’t socialize.”

Oh, he socializes,
Calis thought,
just not in his
mask and cape.  In fact, I would wager that he is somewhere at this dance right
now. 
Calis only wished that there weren’t so many tan-skinned people.  In
fact, dark skin seemed more common than pale among Dark District residents.

“People have tried to follow him after a fight, but somehow
he manages to lose everyone.  Even the nobles can never catch him, and they
have horses and guards!” Taiya said.  She leaned forward as if she had to be in
his face to convey this information properly.  She very desperately wanted him
to know that this Phantom Blade was wonderful.  He sounded as much, anyway.

The music died down as the band decided to take a quick
break.  Calis realized how few they’d taken when the quietness of the room
almost startled him.  People still laughed and talked, but the lack of music
was stifling.  People had stopped dancing and most were getting drinks with the
lull in the activities. 

Finally, Calis took a drink of the mead and found that he
had been exactly correct about its flavor.  What he had not been correct about
was his own thirst, and the way the mead quenched it without being at all
appealing.  He cringed a little as the thick liquid slid down his throat, but
was grateful once it did.  “So where did you two meet?” Claire asked.

Lee glanced idly at Calis, as if this was entirely his story
to tell.  Calis supposed that was fair since he was the one that suggested they
come here.  “We’re from the same town originally—we were friends before we left
and decided to leave together.  Nothing fanciful, I’m afraid.”  His words came
more easily than they should and sometimes he worried about how good he was at
lying.

“And here we were hoping you’d met fighting a dragon!” Taiya
said.  They would think that.  City folk always thought that travelers saw
dragons on a daily basis when in fact a real dragon hadn’t been seen in half a
century.

Lee laughed at the idea, but then shrugged his shoulders. 
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said.  Claire offered him a sweet smile, obviously
trying to reassure him that she didn’t mind.  Calis was a little wary of how
easy it would have been to cart these girls off and have their way with them. 
No wonder Tareth thought to kidnap women from Dark District.  These girls’
inhibitions were entirely gone—and Calis knew it couldn’t be entirely due to
this dance.

When the band picked up again, the two girls let out the
strangest, most synchronized squeal that Calis had ever heard.  “The Soul
Finder dance!” Claire said cheerfully.  “I was beginning to think they weren’t
going to play it.”

“Soul Finder dance?” Calis asked.  That sounded ominous, and
was not anything that he had ever heard of.  When he looked at Lee, he could
see his own curiosity mirrored in the green eyes.

Taiya waved her arm, as if her sister had told a joke
wrong.  “Oh, it’s nothing, really.  Just a fun little dance—or game—that we
play.  Two dance partners stand together, close their eyes and then twirl the
other.  The person who you end up with is supposed to be your soul mate,” she
answered quickly.  She blushed a little, proving that she thought it was silly.

Claire didn’t share her sentiment though and she had a
dreamy look on her face.  “Let’s get ready!” she exclaimed.  “We’ll spin you
two,” she informed Calis and Lee of this as though they had been worried.

Lee looked uneasy, and Calis let out a laugh.  “I’m not
entirely sure that I’m ready to meet my soul mate.”  Surely, if some of these
folks took this ritual seriously, then it could end very awkwardly. 

“Oh, it’s just a game,” Taiya said.  This meant that there
was no way either of them was getting out of this.  But surely if Taiya, with
all her silliness, knew that this was just a game—then the rest of the room did
too.

Only Calis found himself a little nervous about the entire
ordeal as Taiya brought him onto the floor.  He shouldn’t have been, but he
was.  He didn’t know anyone here, and who was to say that the person he ran
into wouldn’t know who he was?  Not to mention, what if his “soul mate” ended
up being some incredibly large woman missing her front teeth? 

It’s just a game, you twit,
Calis reminded himself. 
Though, glancing over to Lee offered no support, as his friend looked just as unsure
about the game as Calis felt.  He didn’t want to be told that his soul mate was
some heinous wench.  With his luck, Lady Avyon had followed him here and she
would be the very person he ran into after the spin.

But the music was building up to the note that Calis was
sure would be when everyone would spin, and they would be faced with the person
they were proverbially to spend forever with.  He didn’t want to do this, but
Taiya wasn’t letting him back out now.  “Ready?” she asked. 

He noticed that nearly everyone had stopped moving, and
absolutely everyone in the room was about to participate in this game.  He
wasn’t ready, he still didn’t want to, but as the stillness of the room beat
down on him he swallowed and offered a wary nod.  “You have to close your
eyes,” she said when she closed hers.

He obeyed her command, sure that he would be knocked into
some toothless woman at any moment.  Then, the note came, a long single run of
the strings.  Taiya’s force was stronger than his, and he kept his eyes closed
until another body slammed up against his.  If nothing else, it felt properly
sized.

For some reason, Calis knew that he was supposed to open his
eyes when the second note rang out.  When he opened his eyes, he actually
gasped at the person standing before him.  It was not a girl at all.  Instead,
it was a relatively small male.  Firstly, Calis was unable to look at anything
but the pure, deep, blue eyes that watched him with subdued curiosity.  They
were bright with intelligence, and there was a deepness to them that combined
the two blues hypnotically and made it nearly impossible to look away.

His black hair clung to his forehead, though it was too
short to do much else.  He had tanned skin and a small frame, and somehow the
two of them had pulled much closer than they were supposed to.  Calis was
glancing down at the boy staring up at him, as Calis held one of the boy’s
hands.  Their lips, too, were frighteningly near to one another.  Calis felt
himself blushing.  The boy—
the
boy that he’d watched and by watching,
had taught himself to dance.  “Hi,” Calis said awkwardly.

“Hi,” the boy returned.

“So, am I supposed to ask you to marry me now?” Calis asked. 
The words hadn’t been checked, and at once, he was horrified that he’d ever said
them.  This person was going to kick him in the shins and run as fast as he
could.  That was not proper in any way.

Surprisingly, the boy didn’t seem at all put off by his
statement.  In fact, suddenly, the boy’s face transformed.  He smiled.  Both
sides of his face had dimples that lit up his entire expression and brought an
entirely new light to his eyes.  The smile was positively fantastic, and Calis
couldn’t help but return it.  “No,” the young man answered gently, “I think you
just have to dance.”

“Well, that is a relief,” Calis said.

So, though he’d never danced with another male, and felt ten
shades of awkward doing so—he pushed the male from his body and then brought
the lithe form against him in an easy motion.  His partner handled this
differently than Taiya had and moved his feet so that the dance more or less
continued after the turn and didn’t just end with the two of them crashing into
one another as Taiya had been content to do.

Because the dance had not been stopped, Calis was able to
keep moving in a more suitable rhythm, and he twisted his partner’s body this
time.  Their feet were synchronized, like some sort of fantastic fusion of
noble and peasant dancing.  Their fingers intertwined with one another, and
Calis moved his charge’s body without pause.

They were entirely in sync, and Calis had never danced with
another person in a way that felt so natural, and so right.  In all of his
years of tedious practice, and even this moon, nothing had felt quite like
this.  All at once, the dance was over, and the two of them were standing face
to face, with Calis not having the common sense to release the boy’s hands. 
“Now, you have to ask me to marry you,” the young man informed him politely.

Calis ducked his head and offered a sheepish smile.  “If I
had known coming here would require such commitments, I would have thought
twice about it.”

His partner quirked an eyebrow.  “You really ought to think
about things before you rush into them, in that case.  Surely, you didn’t
expect to come to a dance and not be forced into a marriage,” he said.  His
voice made it sound as if this was common sense.

If Calis hadn’t understood the sense of humor so well,
mostly because it mirrored his own—then he might have been foolish enough to
worry that his skilled partner was serious.  Fortunately, he knew that his
fascinating acquaintance wasn’t, and that meant that he could have fun.  “Fair
enough.  I suppose I can deal with it, then.  I could think of worse people to
be betrothed to,” he answered seriously.

The boy flushed for a moment, and Calis grinned wolfishly
when he realized that he’d gotten the better of his dance partner.  “Well, I’m
not going to marry you if you don’t have any sort of gift with which to
proposition me, so don’t get too sold on the idea!” he answered seriously,
after composing himself.

Calis couldn’t help the thought that the blush on the tan
cheeks had been nothing short of adorable, and he found himself smiling once
again.  “You are certainly high maintenance!” he countered.

“Apologies,” the boy said quickly, though he was back to
displaying that very attractive smile of his.  Calis was a little alarmed at
the pace of his heart in his chest and how hot his face felt.  His dance
partner cast a quick glance to their hands, which were still wrapped around one
another.  Calis realized that another song had started, and the two of them
were simply standing there—talking—looking out of place.

Once again, the flush of his cheeks worsened and Calis
pulled his hands away from the boy in an instant.  “Ah, sorry.”

The smile dimmed a little into a soft, reassuring warmth
that had Calis feeling at ease despite the other feelings the look inspired. 
“No reason to apologize,” the boy answered swiftly.  “But I brought someone to
this dance, and I’m sure she will throw a tantrum if I don’t attend to her
soon.”

Calis rubbed the back of his neck.  If this had been any
other circumstance, he would have probably come up with some elaborate lie
about how he did too.  But he couldn’t say anything now.  “Fair enough,” he
said with a quick nod.  He wasn’t going to keep this young man from any
girlfriend.  “Though, why would you participate in a… soul mate finding dance…
if you already—that seems like a recipe for disaster.”