Guardians of the Desert (Children of the Desert) (30 page)

The palace only went quiet late at night; evening still echoed with the raucous laughter of courtiers and jesters, the shrill giggles of women whose companions had succeeded in getting them drunk enough to tumble later, the barking of restless asp-jacaus, the chatter of young men challenging each other to casual shows of strength and agility. Even taking the back hallways didn’t erase the echoes, but at least Alyea didn’t have to walk through most of it.

The guards let her into the king’s casual room with a friendly nod. She returned the greeting absently, her mind still running over that strange moment when Eredion had chased her from the room.

“Lord Oruen,” she said, then blinked, shocked back into awareness of her surroundings, as the door clicked shut behind her.

Oruen nodded and motioned her to a chair near his left hand. Alyea sank into the seat without protest, staring at the gaunt woman who knelt, sobbing quietly, before the king.

“I thought you’d like to be here,” Oruen said over the dark-haired head that leaned almost in his lap, his gaze sober and his voice barely audible.

Alyea almost asked
For what?
; then the weeping woman lifted her head and the words died in her mouth. “Oh, gods,” she said instead, leaning abruptly forward and holding out her arms. “
Wian!
”

Her former servant wiped a hand across her nose and sat back on her heels, refusing the embrace. Her once-lush dark hair hung dull and roughly cut short, revealing deep, recently-scabbed scratches and yellow-brown mottling across her face and throat. Her light, low-cut shirt did nothing to hide similar marks.

“Why’d you call
her
in?” Wian demanded, turning a furious glare on the king.

Alyea’s jaw dropped at the hostile greeting, but Oruen didn’t seem in the least surprised.

“Because she’s the only person in this city,” he said, “that would have ever championed you at the risk of her own life. I think she deserves some truth from you.”

Wian ducked her head and wiped at her nose again, wincing as the motion pressed on a bruise.

“I didn’t want her here,” she muttered, and seemed about to start crying again.

Oruen regarded the girl with compassion but, it seemed to Alyea, little sympathy.

“Apparently, Lord Alyea,” he said, “some of what this young woman told you about Pieas’s attack on her was . . . not entirely accurate.”

Alyea sighed. “I already know that. That got sorted out before I killed him.”

Oruen shot her a hard stare but said nothing aloud.

Wian turned stark white under the bruises. “Oh, gods, you killed him? I really am dead,” she whimpered. “They’ll kill me now.”

“Nobody’s going to hold you to blame for that,” Alyea said, puzzled. “I didn’t kill him because of you, Wian. There were other things going on at the time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wian said, shivering. She bit her knuckle, which already bore marks of similar recent gnawing, and rolled her eyes appealingly at the king.

“Pieas had some friends with tempers,” Oruen told Alyea, his gaze remaining on Wian. “She’s afraid of them, not us.”

“He did say something about that,” Alyea said slowly, trying to remember. “He said they were angry at him over . . . a disagreement.”

She wasn’t about to go into the matter of Pieas’s promise to his sister; that tangled mess wasn’t really relevant to anyone but Lord Scratha and Pieas’s sister Nissa, at this point.

“He claimed,” Alyea continued, “that the night he fled, they roughed Wian up and dumped her in his room to make him look bad, since he’d already been accused of attacking her once. That was part of why he ran, and took Wian with him. He claimed that he never hurt her along the way, but he had to tie her up because she was raving from some drug they’d given her.”

Wian ducked her head and stared at the floor. “That’s . . . true,” she said, clearly abashed. “At least . . . I think it is. I don’t remember much about that time. I only came clear . . . on the way back to Bright Bay. There was a man who . . . helped me understand things better.”

“I don’t understand why you’re here, Wian,” Alyea said, a little sharply. Oruen shot her a sardonic glance, as though understanding her thoughts perfectly.

Alyea found herself deeply annoyed by the girl’s deceit. While she despised Lady Arnil’s attitude, she’d actually been relieved at the thought of not having to face Wian again. Pieas’s assertion of innocence in front of the gathered desert lords, and its acceptance as truth, placed Alyea, as Wian’s previously staunch defendant, in an uncomfortable political position. She’d hoped to avoid a direct confrontation with the king over the way she’d involved him in the whole mess.

“I’m not going back to that life,” Wian said, squeezing her eyes shut. “I won’t. I can’t. And so I thought . . . the king might. . . .” She opened her eyes and looked up at Oruen, then down at the floor.

“Wian came to me in open court,” Oruen said mildly, “begging for sanctuary. I thought it best to take her aside before she said anything . . . unwise . . . in public hearing.”

“Sanctuary from what?” Alyea demanded.

“When Pieas didn’t come back, and no word came,” Wian said, still staring at the floor, “and then you came back, as a powerful person, and in a rich merchant’s company, they’re saying. . . .” She snuck a glance at Alyea’s face.

Oruen lifted an eyebrow, his mouth tugging to one side in a faint smile.

“True,” Alyea said, ignoring Oruen’s amusement, and motioned Wian to continue.

“They got angry. They told me they’d hold me to blame if anything happened to Pieas because of me. Because I should have done better at embarrassing him in the first place, instead of upsetting you into challenging him and winding up with him running away.”

Alyea shook her head, bemused. “It wasn’t your fault, Wian,” she said helplessly.

“His friends apparently don’t see it that way,” Oruen noted. “And I doubt you would talk reason into men angry that they lost their prime source for illegal drugs and other black market items. Such as children for—and from—the southern katha villages. Those are the southeastern coastal child brothels, in case you’re unfamiliar with the term, which I’ve been in negotiations to shut down since I took the throne.”

His expression turned bleak.

“Wian has been able to supply an astonishing amount of information about Pieas’s activities over the past few years. And a lot of it, I must say, sounds very much like
my
business, and I wonder why he wasn’t brought back
here
for trial instead of being dispatched in the desert.”

Alyea’s stomach shrank into a small, swirly ball of queasiness.

I deserve death
, Pieas had said, kneeling and staring up at her.
Several times over. And that’s just for what I remember of the past few years . . .
She hadn’t asked further after his crimes, so intent on getting through her final blood trial that the notion of bringing him back to face kingdom justice simply hadn’t arisen in her mind.

And by that point it had been far too late for any such attempt; Sessin Family never would have stood for it; there were a dozen other reasons kingdom justice had never stood a chance. But she could have at least asked what else he’d done. . . .

“I didn’t know,” she muttered, biting her lower lip, and decided to redirect the conversation into less dangerous channels. “How in the hells do you know all this, Wian? I thought you’d never seen him before that day at the palace!”

“I was told to watch him,” Wian said, listlessly wrapping the edge of her skirt around her fingers. “So I watched him. But I guess his friends noticed me, because they grabbed me one day and said I had to work for them now, or they’d kill me. And they set me to embarrass Pieas, so that he’d have to come back to them for help. It took me a long time to find an opportunity. It was my first try that you walked in on. I didn’t expect you. I thought someone else was coming down the hall.”

“Who told you to watch Pieas?” Alyea demanded.

Wian ducked her head further and mumbled something inaudible even to Alyea’s sharp hearing. Oruen, his face grim, answered the question before Alyea could press the servant girl. With an air of extreme distaste, he said, “Rosin Weatherweaver.”

Alyea stared at him, her breath suddenly short. “That
bastard
—?”

“Yes.”

Alyea shut her eyes against the bloody memory of agony and a good man’s death.

No tears . . .

She’d sworn, in the aftermath, that whoever betrayed them would suffer just as much. And had never considered Wian as a possibility before.

“Wian,” she said, forcing her voice to a coldness she didn’t feel, “are
you
the one who reported my aqeyva training sessions to the priests?”

Wian didn’t look up or speak; a moment later, she stiffened and began to make a strange gagging sound.

Oruen said sharply, “Kindly don’t kill her in my casual room, Lord Alyea.”

The words jolted Alyea out of incandescent rage into a stark awareness of the larger situation—and the guards now standing just behind her. Wian slumped into a trembling huddle, sucking in noisy, rapid breaths; Oruen raised a hand and the guards retreated, much more slowly than they had advanced. She could feel their dark regard at her back, their readiness to attack if she turned on the king. It was time to get out of the room.

“Thank you, Lord Oruen,” Alyea said through her teeth, and stood. “I’ll leave you to your decision of what to do with . . .
her
. I think I need some air.”

She stalked out, her hands fisted so tightly she thought the bones might crack from the strain.

Had any drunken fools, of either gender, crossed her path at the moment, Alyea would have slapped them into sobriety just to vent her temper. But the hallways were quieting now, the various parties moving into individual rooms and behind shut doors. All she saw was a lone, tired jester, who nodded at her and swigged from a hip flask, making no move to amuse her. She nodded back and passed him without speaking.

To her surprise, the door to Deiq’s suite was not only locked, but guarded. One of the young trainees stood rather self-consciously before it.

“Sorry, Lord Alyea,” he said awkwardly, bowing. “Lord Eredion’s orders. He said not to let anyone in. Especially you.” His relatively light skin darkened with quick embarrassment. “I shouldn’t’ve said that part,” he admitted. “He said to tell you Deiq needed rest and left alone for a while.”

Alyea held her temper just barely in check and snapped, “Where’s Eredion?”

“I don’t—” He paused, assessed the glare in her eyes, and said, “His quarters are in the west wing. It’s a blue door with gold leaf designs on it. But, Lord Alyea, you shouldn’t bother him right now—”

Not listening to the remainder of his protest, she strode away. Deiq needed rest; that she wouldn’t argue one bit. But she needed to let loose her temper, and Eredion would have been her next choice anyway. She had a feeling he wouldn’t keel over quite as easily as an ordinary human would.

She hoped not, at any rate.

It took some time of hammering on the locked blue door before it opened. Eredion peered out, blinking sleepily. His hair was damp, as though he’d just come out of a bath. “Whayya want?”

She pushed past him into the room. “I need to talk to you,” she said, then paused, taking in the sight of the thick clay jugs lined up on the floor. One had been tipped over, clearly indicating it was empty.

Eredion sighed and shut the door, absently locking it again. “I’m always the one they run to,” he muttered. “Have a seat, Lord Alyea.”

She hesitated, frowning at the liquor jugs, then glanced around the rest of the room. Eredion’s outer suite was plain and masculine, with one large, well-worn overstuffed chair in the center of the room and four plainer chairs tucked up against the walls by way of seating. Not a couch in sight, but the windows were open, allowing an evening breeze to wander over the richly detailed rugs and the dark wood of the sideboard. The room smelled of sweat, dust, dirty laundry, and cheap liquor.

Alyea looked back at the jugs, then at Eredion, trying to gauge how much he’d already had to drink, and whether talking to him would do her any good at all.

“I’m not drunk yet,” Eredion said, flopping down in the overstuffed chair. “I had a damn good start on it, though.”

“I take it this isn’t a good time,” she said dryly. “Maybe I ought to come back.”

“No,” he said. “May as well stay and tell me what’s blazing your temper. I felt you coming from halfway across the palace. Kinda hoped you were headed to boil the garden lake, but I suppose I should have known better. What’s happened?”

His eyes and speech were perfectly clear, although she’d never expected to hear him speak so casually. Deciding to trust him, she pulled one of the chairs round to face him, sat down and told him about Wian’s confession.

He grunted when she finished. “That’s all?”

She stared at him. “The weapon master that trained me in aqeyva died because of that bastard Rosin Weatherweaver,” she said. “I still have scars myself from that day.”

Eredion sighed deeply and leaned forward to haul one of the clay jugs into his lap. Uncorking it, he said, “Lord Alyea—” He took a deep swig. Then, wiping his mouth, he continued, “Rosin Weatherweaver did a lot worse things in his life than whip a disobedient servant to death. Your scars are nothing. Hells—” He took another swallow of rotgut. “
I’ve
got worse scars than that, girl. And done worse myself.”

Too astonished at his indifference to listen closely to the actual words, she protested, “But Wian betrayed me! I trusted her!”

He regarded her with a wry expression. “So?” he said. “She was trying to stay alive. Can you really blame her for that?”

“I would have protected her if she’d been honest with me!”

He laughed, and she deflated, hearing her own idiocy in the echo of the mirthless, bitter sound.

“Right,” he said. “Very noble of you. And very useless.” He drank deeply from the jug again.

“I know. I couldn’t have done anything to protect her, not really,” she said in a low voice. “But I swore back then that if I ever found the servant responsible for betraying me to the priests, that I’d see them whipped to death themselves.”

“All right,” Eredion said, utterly indifferent. “Go ahead. You’re a desert lord now. You ask for something that trivial, Oruen’ll fall all over himself keeping you happy.”

She stared at him, horrified. “
Trivial?
”

“You still don’t get it,” he said, and set the empty jug on the floor. “This servant, what she did, whatever revenge you take on her for it—it’s like a grain of sand on the beach. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. Let her live, order her killed, it’s all the same. It doesn’t affect anything important. All it does is define what kind of person you are. If you can sleep at night after ordering her whipped to death, then go ahead. I certainly won’t stop you. I don’t give a shit.”