Ariah (37 page)

“
I don’t sleep well out here,” Shayat said. “The drain.”

“
This is a terrible place.”

“
It is,” she said. The firelight played across her face. She smiled. “It is a terrible place, but I still like the route. I like that it’s part of the route. It keeps me honest, having to manage this place. It makes me think. Rabatha is not that different than here. It’s empty there, too. We’re always a heartbeat away from death there, too. It’s just dressed up in nicer clothes there, and that’s dangerous. Losing sight of that is dangerous. Growing comfortable is dangerous.” She leaned her chin into her palm and looked over at me. “You’re comfortable with Sorcha. You never looked comfortable in Rabatha, but you do with him.”

I felt the question. I didn’t need to be a shaper to hear it unasked:
Is he why you run? Is he why you don’t belong in Rabatha?
“I never was comfortable in Rabatha.”

“
But you’re going back.”

“
I have obligations.”

“
Don’t we all,” she said. After a moment, she sighed. “When I recruited for the crew, I was looking for people like you. The kind with a foot in each place. The kind who is Semadran and not at the same time. I think caravaners need to be that way; I think if you’re not like that, the life eats you alive. I worry about Tam sometimes because of that. I wound up with him, and he’s a cartographer who hates the travel, hates leaving his wife and striking out, and the rest are men who just hate the Qin. Which I understand. But there’s no adventure in them.”

“
You think there’s adventure in me?”

“
There’s nothing but adventure in you. You live up to your name, Ariah. You’re wild.”

I stared at her for a long time. She stared into the fire. The image of her profile silhouetted against the flickering orange light is burned into my mind, a fixed point in time. It’s one of those indelible memories that serves to organize a remembered life. “Shayat?”

“
Hmm?”

What little grace I ever had with such things had been stolen by the herb. Clumsily, and I suspected ineptly, I nudged a door open. “Remember, I am just a quarter red.”

Shayat looked at me. The light caught the shape of her mouth, the sweep of her eyebrows. “Well, I spend half my time outside the Empire. A quarter red is all right by me.”

The night air had grown cold. The fire kept off some of the chill, but not all of it. I tapped out the ashes of the pipe. I wanted to reach for her, do something, but all I could do was tap out the ashes of the pipe. My tongue was loosed by the herb, and I was, at least, able to speak. “Shayat, may I tell you something?”

“
Sure.”

Had I been sober, I never would have said anything that came out of my mouth that night. It was not appropriate, neither the time nor the place. It was presumptuous. It was a stupid thing to do, but I was stoned, and she was magnetic. “The thing about me, Shayat, is that you could do better than me. I have not held to Semadran standards well at all, especially in Vilahna. I mean to say, I am not marriageable. But,” and here I laughed, and I looked at her, “but if I were marriageable, I’d court you, I think. You knew how I felt in Rabatha. I’m sure you did. And I feel more strongly now. You are…incomparable.”

Shayat turned to face me. She wore a strange smile, something like surprise and victory and humor all threaded together. “You are very stoned,” she said.

“
Well, yes. But you were right when you said I was carelessly honest. It’s all true.”

She raised her eyebrows. “That was an out, Ariah. That was me giving you the chance to pretend you never said any of that.”

“
I know what it was,” I said. I inched closer to her. “I don’t want an out.”

“
What do you want?”

“
I want you.” She gave me a surprised, intrigued look. I think she thought I would pull back, that I would come to my senses. I didn’t. I laughed instead, giddy, high now in an altogether different way.

She held her place. She didn’t back away from me, and she didn’t close the distance between us. She held fast. “Why are you going back?”

“
I’m to be godfather to Dirva’s baby. His wife is pregnant.”

“
Godfather?”

“
It’s a red elf thing.”

“
He’s not red.”

“
He is and he isn’t. It’s complicated, and it’s not mine to discuss. What about you, Shayat? What do you want?”

She was silent for a long time. She turned to face the fire, her hand hiding her mouth. Her eyes—large, dark eyes with long, dark lashes—creased at the corners, the shadow of a smile. “Well,” she said slowly, “I have all the time in the world to decide that. It’s not one thing, it’s never one thing, and it’s not always the same thing. Are you cold, Ariah?”

“
A little.”

“
It will be warm in my tent,” she said, and then she doused the campfire.

Her tent was identical to the borrowed tent I shared with Sorcha. It was small, made of camel skins, with a floor of layered, thin, wool blankets. She had a clockwork lamp, which she lit when we crept inside. Yellow light pooled in a corner of her tent. The air was cool in the tent, but it was still and kept out the sandy desert night winds. The tent was small, and the heat from two bodies would warm the air inside it in only a few minutes.

Shayat pulled off her robe and unwound her head scarf. She looked at me, smirking, clear-eyed, utterly self-possessed. “You’re sure about this?”

“
I’m not sure what you’re asking,” I said. I thought it was clear how sure I was.

She ran a hand through her hair. It caught the yellow lamplight and shone gold. “You’re attached to me. I’m curious about you. That’s not even.”

“
Oh.” I smiled at her. “I know that. That’s all right.”

“
You’re sure?”

“
I’m sure.”

“
All right,” she said. “If you’re sure.” She leaned into me, kissed me, and I kissed her back.

Her skin was warm and smooth as silk. Her breath was hot, enveloping. Her pointed tongue darted along mine, sure and confident. She pushed me down onto my back, and I felt the press of her body along mine. I held her face gently in my hands, and she slipped a hand beneath my shirt. Her fingers scratched lightly at my ribs, inching higher and higher. She came up for air. She sat back and pulled off her shirt. She let me look; there was a hot, heavy moment of looking where I drank her in. Her arms were long, toned. Her shoulders were broad, set with proud collarbones that flared out like wings. She held her chin up slightly, and the length of her neck called to me. The curve of her breasts caught my eye and would not let it go again. The hard point of her black nipples in the cold desert air cut through civility, politeness, pretension. I waited, trapped, at her mercy, waited for what she wanted next. I wanted to be taken. I wanted to be used in her service.

“
Take off your clothes.”

I did as she asked. I scrambled out of them, shucking them with more fervor than grace. I did not feel the coldness of the air. All I felt was anticipation. Shayat leaned over me, and ran her hands across my chest. She smiled, and she tucked her face into my neck, peppering my throat with bites. Each one sent a shock wave through me, this delicate dance of pain and pleasure, of her careful control rising and lowering like a tide. I ran a hand along her, jaw to neck to shoulder and down her arm. She caught my hand and held it, tight, and pinned it against the blankets. She took my other hand and moved it to her breast. I rolled the hard knot of her nipple in my fingers, and she sighed. She took me inside her when she wanted. She took me at her pace, and I moved with her, for her, locked in her rhythms. I touched her when and where she wanted; she moved my hands to her hips, her back, pinned them again on the floor. She touched herself, she touched me, and she did it with an intoxicating sureness and right to her own pleasure. She crested a shuddering wave of pleasure, her muscles taut, hard, and then suddenly lax. I would have stopped then and been grateful, but she turned her attentions then to me, and I could not understand my luck.

She brought me to the edge of it and over with her hands. When it was done, she handed me a canteen and a ripped rag. She stretched out beside me, catching her breath, watching me while I cleaned myself. She ran a finger down my spine. I lay down beside her. I laughed, ebullient, knowing I had these memories for the rest of my life. “What?” she asked.

“
Nothing.”

She tucked an arm behind her head. The fine hair of her armpit brushed against me, light as a moth’s wing. She lay with one leg drawn up, one knee jutting into the dark. The light illuminated the hollows and swells of her torso, but her face and legs were beyond it, merging into the darkness. I could see the flash of her white hair and white teeth. “Not bad, professor.”

“
Oh, don’t call me that.”

“
Not bad, Ariah.” She stretched out and rolled onto her side facing me. She grinned, and I basked in her attentions. “It’s rare to find a man who knows when to be led,” she said.

I grinned back. “Your route,” I said, “your rules.”

I sat up and felt around for my clothes. She asked me where I was going, and I told her back to my own tent. “That’s probably a good idea,” she said. She watched me as I dressed, contorting myself this way and that in the cramped space. She traced strange designs on my bare skin with her fingertips until the skin was hidden by clothes. At the mouth of the tent, just as I was leaving, a thought came to me. I turned towards her. “Shayat, do you think this will happen again?”

She shrugged. Her body was strewn out across the floor of the tent, languid and supple as a giant cat. She smiled. “Maybe. If you’re lucky.”

I grinned. I blushed. “I have to be stoned for it,” I said.

“
What?”

“
I want to be stoned for it if it happens again. It’s to do with the gift.”

“
Oh.” She sat up, studying me with her head cocked slightly to the side. “Good to know.”

CHAPTER 25

When I woke the next morning, Sorcha was already awake and dressed. He grinned at me. “You and our fearless leader, eh?”

“
How did you know?”

“
I can smell her on you,” he said.

“
Oh.”

Sorcha laughed. “Good on you, Ariah. I mean it. Let’s get breakfast.”

We fell out of the tent one after the other. Sorcha left me there to wrestle the tent into submission on my own while he secured us rations. Shayat was already saddling her camel, her back turned to me. A grin spread across my face at the sight of her. Sorcha laughed and clapped me on the shoulder.

Tamir crouched by a pack of rations. He looked over at the sound of Sorcha’s laugh. His good eye fixed on me, and I fell into him. His anxiety poured over me like scalding oil. “Hey!” Sorcha waved at Tamir to get his attention. “Hey, Tamir, how long until we hit the desert?”

Tamir stood to his full height and peered down at Sorcha. He popped a dried date in his mouth. He chewed for a second, then turned and walked to his camel. Shayat answered without turning around. “Not long,” she said. “Three, four days. We’re making good progress.”

“
And then what?” Sorcha asked.

“
Then it’s the Mother Desert,” Shayat said.

“
Then it’s the Mother Desert,” Tamir said, “and with her a set of new dangers. No comfort there.”

“
What’s in the desert?” Sorcha asked.

“
Death,” Tamir said. He coaxed his camel down to the ground and threw his saddle over its back. His voice when he spoke that single word conjured a thousand gruesome ends. His voice was always gruff, always dry and scratching as a desert wind on the dunes, but there in the badlands it was cold, too. Tamir’s voice was a wasteland. He drove us through the heat, and I felt nothing but his maddening fear. He drove us in a stop-start-stop-start stutter as the drain interfered with his gifts. Paths became sinuous, circuitous, elusive. At least twice we had to double back and lost a day of travel. Around the evening campfires, none of us managed to choke down much food. We had been in the badlands for a solid week by then, and it had taken its toll on everyone. Sorcha could not sleep and took to slumping only half-conscious in his saddle. Shayat carried herself with a tall, unforgiving stiffness, a holistic resistance, like she could will the land to turn magical. Tamir pulled into himself, taunted by memories, teased by the instability of his gift. And I, I felt the damned drain twice over: I felt it as myself, and I felt it as Tamir. By a week into the badlands, I had lost my ability to marshal the gift. It flared and flickered, grafting onto the lean and quietly terrified cartographer at odd moments, with a fury that blotted me out of my own mind. Shayat had told Sorcha it would be three or four days, but we spent another full week in that terrible place, making less progress each day that passed.