Two Queens (Seven Heavens Book 1) (20 page)

“Go get the key.”

“Right here, safely hidden in my pocket.” He drew out the key and was about to unlock then stopped. “I'll lock you to me. That way I can pet her as much as I want.”

The two of them walked over to Kerry, chewing her cud. Orion whistled, but softly. She looked over at them approaching and slowly got up. Orion started petting her. Theo was too shocked at being so close: he just stared at the eye that Kerry had fixed on him.

Orion didn't help Theo. The less Kerry and Theo liked each other the better. Though he couldn't see Theo being much of a risk beside Simon. He was about to ask for the brush when he thought of something else.

“How far are we from Avallonë?”

“Two days. Why?” Theo still stared at Kerry's head a full arm's length above his own.

Orion sucked in his breath. That wasn't enough time. “And that is where we stop?”

“Well, we turn around and head back south again soon enough, except-” his voice fell silent.

“Yes. I know.” He looked at Kerry again. “Let's go get the brush.”

On the way to the wagon he saw Desdemona putting a salve on one of the red beard's arms. The one who had tripped, jamming his hand between axle and wagon, and put Simon in a bad mood this morning.

“Desdemona, I need your help.”

“This is my work.” She didn't look up from her work.

“Kerry needs your attention. Please come, before it's too late.”

“Fine.”

A little later she joined them. Kerry had been brushed and was looking better than before, though the initial surprise of dirty to clean was gone.

“Come on, you said you'd tell me about her.”

His mind had too much to think about to be distracted. He irritably lashed back. “Quiet. Besides, this way you'll see who she is. Words can come later.”

Theo stiffened.

Orion turned to Desdemona. “Now for my promise.” He put his hands on Kerry's shoulders and pressed, talking low. She knelt, forelegs first. He led the girl to her side and steadied her as she mounted. “Easy, Kerry.” Kerry went back to chewing her cud.

Theo's mouth dropped open.

“Hands here and here.” He patted Kerry's rump. “Up girl.” She stood up. Desdemona rocked back and forth.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, face ashen.

“You don't have reins so I'll steer. Trust Kerry, she's never dropped me. Just sit like you would on a horse. Not so tight with the hands, you're not going anywhere. Just in a big circle.” He led Kerry by the halter. Was riding a horse similar? He wanted to try someday. Was that an act of treason? He thought it had been so once.

This was annoying. For Kerry as much as him. One arm lugging Theo the other way up in the air on the halter. No freedom for her head, no easy seat on the four feet going at a kardja pace, not the stilted shuffle of a burdened human.

He let go and turned to watch. Kerry took another step or two then stopped, eyeing her rider. The girl had relaxed a little bit but was still very tense. Kerry was taking it well.

“Talk to her. Tell her you're there.”

“What do I say?”

He thought fast. “What do you tell your patients?”

“Nothing.”

“Think of something.”

“Why?”

“I don't know, tradition. And she's not your servant. She's a friend. If she doesn't want to take you somewhere, she won't.”

He paused. “Squeeze with your knees.”

“I am.”

“I mean relax then squeeze again.”

Kerry jumped and took a few steps forward. The girl screamed. Kerry started running.

“Hang on! Relax!” Orion said. He tried running but Theo banged into him. “Oh well.”

“Now can you answer my questions?”

Hours later Kerry came back into camp. The girl was fallen forward, arms around her neck. Her face was buried in raven hair and milky-white fur.

Simon paused. Orion crumpled, weak from repeated blows. Theo burst in. “The girl rides! What a magnificent creature!”

Orion lay on the ground, crumpled into a fetal position. Blood streamed from his his head. He could not lay on his striped back. He heard Simon walk away and started to sob.

He hurt everywhere. He was a slave, beaten, destroyed. Why try anymore? Surely his new life couldn't be any worse. He'd be sold in Avallonë. He knew how to read. Surely he'd get a job in a great estate, have a bed to sleep on, food, not be beaten overmuch as nobles didn't like disfigured slaves. His parents were gone. Gone! He had to face the truth that Kerry would soon be gone too.

Besides, he'd succeeded, hadn't he? Kerry would not be killed. The young one inside her would survive. Theo's look of awe and Desdemona's wonder from this afternoon flitted across his mind. That was it. This was his free life. It was over.

He kept on sobbing, tears trying to expel the hurt. But only emptiness grew inside. He started humming. The men around him got up. The wagon was moving. Like living dead he walked forward. They traveled later into the night due to the delay that day. Some strength came as he walked, but not enough. The ground was a painful couch to him when he fell where he stood at wagon halt.

He woke up. Something cool was rubbing the searing heat away from his forehead. He seethed at the pain when the cool cloth touched him again, but craved the relief it brought.

He opened his eyes. Desdemona kneeled in front of him, stroking his face with her cloth. Her face caught his eye. It was radiant yet sad. She smiled at him. “How are you?”

He didn't answer.

“What's your name? You know mine but I never asked yours.”

“Orion.”

“Orion.” She finished up with his face then took his hands in his. Her hands were soft and warm. She started tending to a couple nicks on his arms.

“Please, my back.”

She nodded. “Here, sit up.” He sat. She moved behind him and, reaching around him, started unbuttoning his shirt.

He sat there, cross-legged. Her hair fell on his shoulder. It was the closest thing to human embrace he'd had since Enda said goodbye. When was that? A fortnight ago. When he had a different life. When he thought he had lost it all.

She took his shirt off. He heard a quick inhale of breath. He tensed, fearing the pain of her touch. She started slow, away from the most damage, and worked her way inwards. His skin was chafed, musculature torn, and he had bent something when he fell the second time. He gritted his teeth.

Slowly the pain ebbed. It was still there, just smoothed down a bit. He felt exhausted. Tears came again and he tried to stop. The heaving hurt him. He started humming.

“I'll come back,” she whispered. He sat there in the night air, body cold yet aflame. She returned quickly with a blanket. It was no blanket such as he had known but comfortable enough. At that moment, he wished he could give her one woven from Kerry's fleece. A kingly present, not one a slave could give. He kept on humming.

She paused after wrapping it around him. She moved to sit down beside him and eased him until his head lay in her lap. Her deft fingers ran over his head, pushing, rubbing, stroking, weaving through his hair. The pain diminished. She set him down and left. Oh, that he could sleep on her lap! He missed his mother. She would have taken care of him.

In the cloudy world between waking and sleeping he saw her in the distance but she would not answer his cries. Sleep came and bore him into the darkness.

Seventeen

The sun rose to western mountains no longer endless. Far to the north they diminished into the plain. Their way became populated and they traversed many paths. It was a way no longer but a broad road meandering through the fertile Arcadian valley, poised between Kyriopolis to the northwest and Orion's beloved Mount Finola to the southeast, also lying between the northeast Pine Forest where the Silvani hunt and, back along the very path Orion traveled on, another ancient city in the deep south. Vineyards and orchards covered the land except where low stone walls threaded around open fields. They were but a day's journey from Avallonë, Orion heard.

He spoke with Simon once more. “I've done as I've promised. Let me sell her.”

“Yes, you have, I gather from the remarks of passing merchants.” He almost smiled.

“Our deal?”

“What deal? You think I treat with slaves?” His voice became cold.

“You still need me.” He felt something crack.

“And why? You've cleaned it, told me what it is, and showed me that even a witless girl can ride the thing.”

“If I let her. One word from me and Kerry will not bear anyone. You little know the bond between us and our kardja.”

“You do that and I'll beat Desdemona. I'll tear her hair out in front of you.” His hand swept out, pointing at her. The others started listening. “Can you let that happen? No, because you're a fool. When Theo played the fool and freed you, did you flee? No, coward. When you were on the other side of the river with nothing but the girl in your way, did you flee? No. You lack the courage to do what it takes.”

Orion swallowed. “But you don't know how to sell her. You don't know her genealogy, or anything.”

“Isn't that my profession, selling things to fools? As to your ridiculous story about her birth, even a child can come up with a better lie.”

“It isn't a lie.”

He grabbed Orion. “And why should I care? How would I know? That's your problem. You deal in truth and honor and loyalty. You can't survive in this world. I ran a risk letting you deal. You could have escaped countless times. But no. You are a slave to your silly ideas, thinking you could have it all. Turns out you were no risk at all.”

He shoved him down. “You thought you could outsmart me? Think over that tomorrow when you stand in the slave market.” He turned away.

Orion sat there, palms sweating. He had one more secret left, but what was the use? Better to let the new owner get the foal for free with Kerry then help Simon anymore. He wept. He could no longer avoid the truth.

He was not Kerry's owner. He had failed.

The wagon continued on. He jerked to his feet and plodded along. The sights and smells of the fruits they passed went unnoticed. Why didn't he flee when he could? Kerry was valuable: whoever bought her would treat her well. He should have saved his own skin. He could have gotten the ring another way and eventually bought her back.

Once again he was living in an impossible world. What chance did he really have in getting the ring? Once he did, what was the use? Drift from here to there, a wanderer without a home, a precious but unusable trinket in his pocket? Or sell it, and live the life of a rich man, knowing he had lost not only Kerry, his father's legacy, but sacrificed his mother's inheritance as well.

Perhaps it wasn't a bad thing to be a slave. To forget about himself, constantly having to do something for the owner. Not worrying about escaping, or Kerry, or the ring, or his mother's kin. It would be much simpler.

He was startled at something by his side. It was Desdemona. He looked at her.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

He kept on walking. His eyes saw Kerry, bound by a lead cord to Simon's saddle. He was taking no chances with his prize.

She fiddled with her hands. “I wish you didn't have to leave us. It will be so dull.” She stopped. “Oh, I'm so rude.”

“Please stop,” he said. The dull ache inside him grew larger. His foolish mind could flit from a smashing success to accepting slavery in a moment, but he was not his mind. He thought of Theo and Desdemona. He wondered how Kerdae and Enda fared.

“Please, let me. I don't remember my parents, I have no family. When you shared Kerry with me. That was the best thing that ever happened.”

He felt ready to cry. He needed to be strong, stern, ready for the cruel world ahead.

“At least I don't think I remember my parents. I have some images that seem to me memories of dreams. My favorite is lying in a crib with my mother singing me to sleep. I can never see her face, but I know it must be beautiful. Not like me.”

He looked at her. Nothing that he could see had changed from when he first saw the hooded figure in front of Kerry. But perhaps he had changed. Something in her that Kerry realized the first second they met. “But I know it can't be true, for I've seen the same crib in a shop and that was when the crib first entered my dreams.”

“Your face. It's bruised.” He raised his chained hands to touch it. “Did Simon beat you?” A slight shudder passed through him.

“No.”

“Then what? Did you fall?”

“Oh, no. I'm rather contagious to bruising. I often find similar hurts on myself as on my patients.” She laughed, as if it were a trifle.

Orion kept looking at her. “If you didn't know your parents, how do you come by your name?”

“It was given me by a sour old lady who tried to make me help with the housework in Avallonë. I kept on getting sick all the time so she eventually turned me out. I'm much healthier in the country. As I was saying....”

Orion looked at her. Her face reminded him of Enda's right before she asked Astra if she were a witch. “Yes?”

“Can you hum for me?” she blurted out.

Orion felt his face redden. “I'm not very good.”

“I'm sorry. I'm being rude again.”

They walked on in silence for a time. Suddenly the girl kissed him on the cheek then fled to the wagon.

“Please sit.” The girl with raven tresses extended her pale hand. Paris rose from his bow and accepted. He sank into a rich brocade that formed the skin of the well-stuffed chair. Ah.

“As you wish, my lady.” He smiled at her, eyes bright. This was where he belonged. He took in the small antechamber: a wide window looked into the heart of the city and kept the room well lit on days like today. A low stool on his right held a seven-piece candelabra, wicks unlit, at the ready for darker days. It was cunningly wrought in silver with two leaping horses as its base, a clear goblet for oil in between them. He looked closer. One was a unicorn.