The Storm Witch (22 page)

“Can’t,” was all he could finally bring himself to say.

“Say you can’t. Mean you won’t.”

“At the moment it’s the same thing.”

But she was already shaking her head. She let her arms fall to her sides and stepped forward enough to lean against the table. “Not so. Gave your word, to me, to the Pod. Is it worth nothing? That’s not what we’ve come to believe.”

Demons and perverts.
Parno slammed his open hands down on the table. Darlara blinked, but did not back away.

“Anger changes nothing.”

And the worst of it was, she was right. His anger would not bring Dhulyn back, would not restore the world to rightness. In fact, much as he hated to admit it, it might even get in the way of the things he needed to do. Using the
Shora
to spar just now had shown him that he needed to regain his equilibrium, no matter how brightly his loss still burned within him.

He sat down and thrust his hands through his hair. He felt the feather touch of Darlara’s fingertips on his arm.

“Promised me a child,” she said. “Doesn’t mean you stay, doesn’t mean we wed. A child, a new bloodline for the Pod.
You
promised.”

She was in her rights to ask, to remind him. And she was tactful enough, and smart enough, not to remind him that Dhulyn, as Senior Partner, had given her permission.

“Now?” The word was bitter acid as it left his mouth.

Darlara smiled, but it was a small, sad, companionable smile, not a smile of triumph.

“Lie down,” she suggested. “Just lie down for now. Need warmth and a heart beating close to yours. Come, let’s lie down.”

It was not until hours later, when they had done much more than lie down, that he remembered they were in Dhulyn’s bed.

“I
F MY SISTER HAS become a Storm Witch, well and good. But if a new being has taken over her body—how can we know it doesn’t mean us harm?” Xerwin had met Naxot on the peldar court, but they hadn’t yet begun their match. He’d needed to speak to someone, this was a safe place to talk—and Naxot’s interests ran sufficiently close to his own, Xerwin considered, to make him a safe companion to talk to.

Naxot stopped bouncing the rubbery pelot on his racket, catching it in his hand. “She’s done nothing but good so far. She’s helped with some of the crops, and has explained the magic of the lodestone.”

“If she has no evil intent, why has she not declared herself?”

“Perhaps she thinks to test us in some way?”

Xerwin paused in his pacing.
I wish I could believe the way Naxot believes,
he thought, and not for the first time. But it was hard to grow up as he had and believe that his father really was the Light of the Sun.

“I suppose that’s possible,” he said to his friend. “But this feels more like a plot of my father’s than the suggestion of the Slain God.”

Naxot waved this away. “Not even your father, Light of the Sun, acts completely alone.” He spun the racket in his hand and looked up. “The Priests of the Slain God have authority over the Mages and Holy Women. When Telxorn comes to invest your . . . I mean the Storm Witch, surely he will know whether there is cause for concern? And, Xerwin, let’s not forget. Whether this is your sister or not, she
is
a Storm Witch, a Holy Woman. Whatever her purpose here, should we be questioning it?”

Xerwin picked up his racket and put his hand out for the pelot. Naxot was such a good man, straightforward and orthodox. Perhaps, after all, he was a little too orthodox for this particular problem.

 

Naxot Lilso took the long way back to his own House when his peldar game with Xerwin finally ended. He needed time to think. He wasn’t happy with the Tar’s attitude. Xerwin had always been his friend, but there were higher issues at stake here—and more than one way to favor and power at court, if it came to that. However upset Xerwin might be about his sister, and he’d always had a soft spot for the girl, a Holy Woman was a Holy Woman. Xerwin might be willing to set the religious questions aside, but Naxot could not.

Naxot’s route would take him past the Tarxin’s audience chamber.

Dhulyn sat down on the wide lip of the courtyard fountain and rubbed at her eyes, moving her fingers up and out, to massage her forehead and temples as well. Thank Father Moon there’d been no Vision of Parno. That would have been more than she could stand.
I cannot do this again,
she thought. She had never deliberately avoided Visions in the past, but she would from now on. The possibility of having to live through Parno’s loss again and again—Dhulyn took a deep breath, and tried to slow the beating of her heart.

The night air was markedly cooler than the day, a phenomenon Dhulyn had always associated with deserts rather than cultivated land. When she’d first come out of her room, there had been thunder and lightning off in the distance, but that had stopped now. Whatever its source, the coolness was welcome. Not that she had a headache; it merely felt as though she
should
have. Experience was making her better able to recognize Visions of the past, and that same experience had taught her that such Visions always gave useful information. But she’d Seen the episode with her mother before, why would she need to See it again? Why her mother, and why that particular moment, the last time she’d seen her mother alive? Dhulyn shivered, suddenly cold.
I’m the only one left. Again.
She had escaped alive that time, when the Bascani had come and the Tribes were broken. And she’d escaped alive this time as well. She braided the fingers of her right hand in the old sign against ill luck.

“Are you trying to tell me something, my mother?” All the women of the Espadryni, what the rest of the world called the Red Horsemen, were Marked with the Sight. Which did not explain to Dhulyn’s satisfaction how and why they had allowed the Tribes to be broken, leaving only Dhulyn alive.

Was she somehow
supposed
to survive Parno? As she had so evidently been meant to survive the breaking of the Tribes? Was this yet another plan to which she did not have the key? She blew out her breath through her nose. This would be the second time that she’d lost the people most important to her, her family—

Except that the Mercenary Brotherhood was her family. Parno was her Partner, certain sure. But his death did not leave her entirely alone in the world. She touched her Mercenary badge with the tips of her fingers. She still had her Brotherhood, and the Common Rule.

“Pasillon,” she said, invoking the part of the Common Rule that called all Mercenary Brothers to come to the aid of—and to avenge—any other Brother. Vengeance for Parno was her first goal, she reminded herself. If she survived the killing of the Storm Witch—by no means a certainty since she was the child of the Tarxin and therefore well-guarded—then she could think about what came next.

Footsteps along the gallery on the far side of the courtyard brought her head up and her hand reaching for the knife in her belt. But it was Remm Shalyn, returning from his scouting trip into the forest.

“Dhulyn Wolfshead, are you well?” Remm saw her and stepped out from under the gallery. “The Holding Steward will be concerned that your bed is not to your liking.”

Dhulyn shrugged. “I take it your expedition has been successful?”

“It has. We’ll hardly have to go off our own trail.”

Remm came closer, and as he passed through a shaft of moonlight, his kilt sparkled white. Dhulyn sat up straight, remembering another part of her Vision.

“Tell me, Remm Shalyn. Are there Seers in Ketxan City’s Sanctuary?”

Parno shifted the straps on Malfin’s table and let the yellowed parchment roll closed. With his fingertips, he massaged the skin and muscles around his eyes and along his temples. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. Strategy, that was the problem. They were limited in their tactics. Couldn’t swarm, for example; there simply weren’t enough of them. Hard to lay siege to a place from the sea—not that they had the numbers for that either. For a moment, while studying the map, he’d had a glimmering of an idea. If the map was still accurate—and both the captains assured him that it was—he had seen the shadow of the answer, and then it had gone, before he could put his finger on its tail. He put his hands to the edge of the table and started to push himself away before he remembered that the furniture was bolted to the floor.