Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (3 page)

The restlessness growing inside
himself
was a surprise, though. So when a shivering, nervous messenger tapped at the door with a request for Lord Alyea to meet with the king, Deiq didn’t argue—much—her insistence on going alone. After what she’d been through, and after what they’d shared, she’d easily flatten any human to lay a hand on her, and know ill intent before it came within two blocks.

Oruen still wouldn’t want to see Deiq, much less at Alyea’s side. The man was sharp enough to pick up on the changed relationship between them, and it would make him surly as a bear woken too early from its winter rest. Better she handle this meeting alone. She had the control now to avoid hurting Oruen if he pressed her temper. And if things went really sour, Deiq would
know,
and could step to her side easily enough.

He hadn’t been this strong in a
very
long time. It felt as though some strange sludge had been blasted clean from his veins and muscles, freeing him of all restrictions.

Deiq stretched out on the floor, listening to the rain patter down outside, and basked in an inner warmth that left him feeling generally half-drunk; and that turned out to be a damn good thing.

His memories were returning, in great searing sheets and gobbets. If not for the cocoon of contentment, he might have spent days screaming at the horror of revelation; might have taken the stibik-esthit oil still sitting, untouched, on the table in the highest room of the tower, and slit his arms from wrist to shoulder.

As it was, he thought about ending himself, more than once, as the memories pierced his soul with agonized, helpless fury at his own stupidity. He’d made so many
mistakes...
and either blocked the memories or buried them under the cascade of pain he’d endured over the last fifty years. He couldn’t believe, looking back, that he’d ever been so immature and foolish.

For a thousand year old ha’ra’ha,
Eredion had said once,
you occasionally do a remarkable imitation of a fifteen-year-old human.

Remembering, Deiq thought:
Eredion, you have no damn idea....

The suicidal urge passed swiftly each time, fading into the cooler realization that done was done, and as the future could—finally—be different, killing himself over the past would be stupid and wasteful. And now there was Alyea: finally,
finally,
he had found a companion who wouldn’t
flinch.
It was enough, short though it would be; and with a desert lord, there were ways to extend that time, if she proved worthy of that gift.

So he shut his eyes, drifted from contentment to nightmare and back without making a single external sign of the change, and let himself really rest for the first time in decades.

He even allowed himself to brood—lightly—over the question of
why
feeding from Alyea caused her no discomfort. He hadn’t yet found a sensible explanation for it, and that frightened him more than he wanted to admit. It wasn’t
possible,
and yet, and yet....

A hard rattling knock at the door, far below, finally roused him from semi-sleep. Grumbling, he raked a hand through his hair, yanking it back into a tie; pulled on clothes reluctantly, and padded barefoot down the several sets of stairs to the lowest floor.

He half-hoped the visitor would have lost patience and gone by the time he opened the door. No such luck: a stolid, lean man in News-Rider garb stood in the shelter of the recessed doorway, water dribbling down a handspan behind him. He didn’t back up when the door opened.

“S’e
Deiq?” he said, lifting an unconcerned glance, and proffered a thin, oilskin-wrapped packet.

“Thank you,” Deiq said, and took the packet without asking any questions as to how the man had found him. News-Riders had their ways. He also didn’t bother offering any gratuity. The News-Rider turned with no change in expression and plodded away through the rain, apparently indifferent to the wet, chill weather.

Returning to the highest room of the tower, Deiq lit several lamps with a careless flick of one hand, a trick he hadn’t been able to use so easily for more years than Alyea had been alive. He grinned, watching the wicks flare into life, almost childlike in his sudden joy over such a simple thing.

The packet proved to be a letter, four sheets in all, in a still-awkward hand, front and back. He knew Idisio had written them before he read the first word. He sat down at the table, moving the bottle of stibik oil aside absently, and laid the pages down, frowning and rubbing his hands against each other. He sensed no hint of the taint that Idisio had carried when controlled by his mother, but there was instead a strange
otherness
to the energy in the pages that worried him and made him hesitant to touch them again.

At last, blinking hard against sudden tension, he lowered his head and began to read.

Tank liked tangling his fingers in hair, a holdover from being shaven nearly bald for most of his early life; and Dasin, for reasons he hadn’t explained and Tank didn’t ask about, liked kneeling.

It worked out well enough.

They sprawled on the bed afterwards, both breathing hard, Dasin’s bony back and shoulders hot and knobbly against Tank’s chest.

“That merc,” Tank said when he caught his breath, continuing the conversation they’d interrupted some time earlier. “You have to go meet him, Dasin.”

Dasin let out a soft, annoyed grunt, pushing one shoulder back hard. “Can this wait?”

“No.” He worked his fingers into thin, damp blond hair and tugged lightly at the shorter, curly hairs near the base of Dasin’s skull. “You can’t keep avoiding it.”

“Hhhhh. Bastard. Taking advantage of the moment.”

“Yep.”

Dasin grunted again and rolled up to a sitting position, his back to Tank. “No way out of it, is there?”

“No.”

The thin shoulders tucked forward in a hunch, then out again, determination replacing despair. Dasin stood and reached for clothes. He began to dress, not looking at Tank.

“Don’t agree to pay him more than you’re paying me,” Tank said, propping himself up onto one elbow.

“I’ll pay him what Yuer damn well told me to pay him,” Dasin retorted. He stomped into his boots with unnecessary violence and shot a pale-eyed glare at Tank. “Which is what it is, and not your damn business to ask after.”

“So it is more,” Tank said, grinning without any humor at all. “Figured that.”

He rolled onto his back and laced his hands behind his head, resisting the urge to get up and plant a fist in Dasin’s face. From passion to poison: that had already settled into a routine, and only his understanding of what lay behind the brittle insults kept him from striking—or walking—out.

Tank had held Dasin more than once as the blond shuddered from residual childhood nightmares. That touch, no less than his recent encounter with Lord Alyea, had shown him more than he cared to know about another living person; Dasin’s memories were entirely too similar to his own. But then, Dasin had been there in turn when Tank’s own recently stirred-up memories of horrors past seared him, screaming, from his rest.

They understood each other. It worked out well enough, in the end.

Not a good idea to let Dasin stomp off angry, though. Tank shut his eyes and said, flatly, “Dasin.”

Hostile: “Yeah?” Followed by quiet, then the tick of boots on board, coming closer. A thin hand pressed around Tank’s elbow: the apology Dasin couldn’t voice. “You coming along?”

“You want me to?”

Dasin exhaled hard. “You think I can handle this alone, or do I need you holding my hand?”

“Go ahead and try it,” Tank said, not opening his eyes. Nothing Dasin said or did would shift the basic outcome to any great degree regardless of whether Tank went along; but he didn’t bother pushing that reality into view. Dasin knew.

“Bastard,” Dasin muttered, with considerably less heat this time. He released Tank’s elbow and rattled the few steps to the door, slamming it behind him.

“Yeah,” Tank said under his breath. He let out a long sigh of his own, then reached for his clothes. He had business of his own to take care of, while Dasin was safely elsewhere.

Bright Bay didn’t seem quite so alien, or as frightening, as it once had. Still, he stayed alert while walking the streets, knowing perfectly well that the street thieves had only increased in number since Ninnic’s fall. And while he hated the fact, Tank was
known
by more than one dangerous person; not that he’d ever asked for the attention, but he had it, and staying safe meant always staying aware of his surroundings.

A toddler, filthy and bawling, wandered out directly in front of him: a distraction. Without pausing, Tank shot a hand down and caught the skinny wrist of an older boy coming up from behind. Without any particular emphasis or kindness, he bent the hand back sharply, twisting. The would-be thief screeched outrage.

Tank turned then, and glared down into a dirt streaked, thin face under a mop of grimy blond hair. He bent the trapped hand over a little more, until the boy went down to his knees, squalling in earnest now.

“Next time
any
thief tries for me,” Tank said, leaning in close, “I’ll snap every fucking bone in both hands. Pass it on.”

He let go and turned on his heel, coming face to face with a taller, older boy who’d been moving up behind. Sharp metal glinted in one gnaw-nailed hand. Tank set his feet square and glared ferociously. The boy faltered, paused, and reversed a few steps.

A seagull grackled, sharp and sudden, somewhere nearby. The knife disappeared, and the boy took to his heels. A scrabbling sound behind him told Tank that the other thief had fled as well.

Tank let out a long breath and stood still for a few moments, listening with care; a heavily-laden cart trundled past on the next street over. A flute played somewhere nearby. Ordinary people walked by without even glancing towards Tank, busy discussing or thinking about their own lives.

Had that thief-warning come from Tank’s own actions, or had someone
else—
someone
powerful—
seen the situation and passed the word to leave him alone? The latter possibility set a strong shiver up his shoulders. He blinked hard and started walking again, trying to look more confident than he felt, and hoped that the next part of the plan would go better.

“Hah!”
Sticks clashed together; someone swore.
Thuck
whap—Tank winced at that sound even as he stepped through the arched exit. The smell of sweat, metal, and oil laced the air; in the training ring a stone’s throw away, a thickly built young man lay on one side, curled into a tightly defensive pose, one arm thrown up to shield his face.

Captain Ash stood some distance away, leaning on a wrist-thick wooden staff taller than himself and smiling with catlike satisfaction. His gaze flickered up as soon as Tank stepped out of the archway’s shadow, and he lifted his chin briefly. It was a warning, not a welcome.

Tank stayed where he was, waiting.

“Oh, get up already, boy,” the captain said.

The pole abruptly spun in his hands, prodding the cowering youth in a delicate spot. With a yelp, the young man rolled farther away and scrambled to his feet, eyeing the captain sourly.

Captain Ash grinned at the young man; a baring of small, stained teeth, less than friendly. “You’re a useless sack of shit, boy, whatever your beloved father may have said. I can teach you, but you’ll mop the floors and wash dishes for it while you learn. Still interested?”

The boy spat out a sullen curse by way of answer and staggered past Tank, his face damp and blotchy. One eye was already beginning to swell, and a nasty split in his lip oozed blood over his chin.

“Useless,” Captain Ash repeated, leaning on the staff again. “Comes of nobles teaching their children a fancy dance and calling it fighting. That boy doesn’t know the first thing about aqeyva, though his parents told him that’s what he was learning. Sunlord’s-pox on the watered-down nonsense northerns are trying to pass off these days. Bloody useless. And now his father will come fussing at me over abusing his son. Hells with them.” His eyes fixed on Tank as he spoke, intent and searching; he seemed hardly aware of his own words. Then he said, abruptly, “You still with Yuer?”