Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (42 page)

Alyea opened her mouth. The daimaina raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. Alyea snapped her mouth shut, bit her tongue hard enough to hurt, and forced her fisted hands to flatten on the table. After a long pause, hands shaking, she reached for the small cup and took another sip.

The daimaina smiled, but no warmth came into her eyes. “This one First Born,” she said, “cannot be killed. Oh, he can be injured, and weakened, and crippled; but never killed. There is a thing among the ha’ra’hain, a blood rage. It comes out when a ha’ra’ha is under such extreme duress that they believe their life is seriously threatened. It is not a thing a ha’ra’ha has any control over. It is a reflex, a jerking away from a flame, that overrides all sense in them and turns them into killing monsters. In a blood rage, this First Born would kill his closest friend, his dearest lover, his favorite pet. It is all the same. And if there are no lives nearby to claim, this First Born will go out and
find
those lives. He will step across rivers, cities, mountains, oceans to find an opponent to destroy, until he is sated.”

Alyea shut her eyes, remembering Deiq’s unexpected appearance followed by a single step that took them into her bedroom, then from Peysimun Mansion all the way to the Church Tower; remembered gore splattered across the walls of Peysimun Mansion. She nodded slowly, not caring if that motion broke any rules.

“Yes,” the daimaina said. “You have seen what this First Born can do. And I do not think he was in full blood-rage at the time. He was not taking lives to strengthen himself. I believe he wished to remain human-sane as much as possible. This is a very dangerous person, this First Born.”

And yet he was captured and brought here against his will, and now he’s loose within your Fortress,
Alyea thought. She felt her mouth opening and plastered her hand across to keep words from spilling out. She had so many questions and comments piling up that she was beginning to feel nauseated.

“The teyanain lord has already told you this is why we imprisoned the First Born when you were here before,” the daimaina continued. “We wished to ensure your safety, because you are a rare thing, a new thing, and such is not generally approved of by the Jungles. They wish all to stay as it is, as it always has been, without disruption; but humanity, like the ants we so resemble to a ha’rethe’s eye, is far too fast moving and industrious for that to be possible. So we made sure that the First Born did not wish you harm, and that the younger did not wish you harm. And while the teyanain lord will never say this, I know he regrets the alarm and hurt caused by his actions, and wishes he could trust the First Born more clearly. And so now, with all of the information you need given, I will present my proposal.”

Alyea glanced down at the cup. No more than two sips of tea remained. She fisted and flattened her hands a few times to ease the tension in her muscles, then took one sip. It seared her throat like acid, and she coughed hard for several moments before she was able to look up at the daimaina again. Her eyes watered. She brushed them clear roughly, forced her back stiff and straight, then nodded.

The daimaina nodded in return. Without more preamble, she said, “This First Born is too strong. We wish to weaken him without harming him, so that he does not present this terrible danger to the world. We wish him to lean more to his human side than to his ha’reye heritage. And as he favors you, we wish you to help us with this effort.”

Although she’d suspected something like this was coming, Alyea felt her eyebrows shoot up almost to her hairline. She almost said
Are you fucking insane?;
stopped herself from voicing the thought aloud just in time.

“It is not something he will know of,” the daimaina said, watching Alyea’s face narrowly. “It is a thing he will not feel, and will not harm him in any way. It will not make him vulnerable enough to be easily killed, it will not completely alter his thinking or his actions. It will merely nudge him, over time, to pay more attention to the human emotions and desires than he normally would, and make it more and more difficult for him to simply hop wherever he chooses at a moment’s notice. A half spoonful of a certain powder that we can provide you, stirred into any dish or drink, once a tenday, is all that is needed.”

Alyea leaned back, biting her tongue hard to stop herself from blurting out several responses, the most polite of which was:
You sneaky bunch of bastards!

The daimaina’s gaze never left Alyea’s face. Her expression remained serene. “The only reason you survived your blood trials, Lord Alyea,” she said quietly, “is because we have been doing this for a very long time already. At full strength and in his balanced mind, this First Born would not have cared. He never would have become involved in the first place. He would have let you die bleeding at his feet unless you had something to offer him.”

Alyea felt her stomach surge in protest; bile filled her throat. She swallowed it down hard, feeling the acid burn etching along the back of her mouth and inside of her chest, and shut her eyes again.

“You may think,” the daimaina said, voice quiet but inflexible as a steel rod, “that doing this risks the First Born finding out, and that he would kill you for the betrayal. But be aware that he will kill you in the end regardless, Lord Alyea. Once you are of no further interest, or if he ever finds himself so weak that he needs all your life to fuel his own, or perhaps just because you annoyed him at a bad time: you will die. It may never happen, but then again, it may: at any time, without warning. This is the truth that every desert lord should know, and should accept and live with, before ever entering the blood trials. Your lives are forfeit from the moment you agree to the first trial, and every day after that is a gift. But the desert Families are too weak, too afraid, to teach this truth. Only the teyanain truly understand; this is one of our differences. So we ask you to help us with this, not because you are our only hope—we will do this, as we have been doing it, regardless of your decision—but because it will make our work much easier to have one who is
invited
to walk beside the First Born involved in the matter.”

The daimaina leaned back a little, her hands twisting more firmly together on the table in front of her, and watched Alyea with alert curiosity, as though the question at hand were nothing more important than whether Alyea had liked the figs.

Alyea sat very still, thinking, for some time. She decided to take full advantage of the promise that she had all the time she wanted to consider the matter.
I did say it was time to turn things around and take control,
she thought ruefully at one point.
I did ask for this, didn’t I? The gods must be laughing.

She remembered, too, the recent feeling of Deiq’s fingers trailing down her exposed throat, and the distant, abstracted look in his eyes as he stared at her.
Mine,
he’d said, leaving her in no doubt that if she so much as twitched, he would immediately rip her throat out.

He will kill you in the end regardless.

She believed it utterly.

The daimaina sat perfectly quiet, seemingly patient as the stone around them, and her bead-bright eyes never stopped watching Alyea’s face.

At last, Alyea let out a long breath and reached for the cup.

Deiq watched the teyanain take Alyea, unprotesting, from the patio. She didn’t look at Deiq as she went by, her gaze fixed on some internal landscape of thought. He widened his vision, as the door shut, to include Evkit: he was smiling, as expected. But the expression lacked its usual arrogant smirk. Evkit looked almost
—sympathetic.

All the guards had left with Alyea. They were alone now.

Deiq returned his vision to human-normal and looked directly at the little teyanain lord, waiting to see what Evkit would say about the moments just past.

“Not easy,” the teyanain lord said softly. “She is beginning to understand, yes? Not easy.”

Deiq cleared his throat twice before managing words.

“Kippin,” he said. “Blood-right.”

“This is not possible, ha’inn,” Evkit returned blandly. “We sit and eat, and talk first.”

Deiq bared his teeth. “I’m not playing games. Kippin.”

“This is not possible,” Evkit repeated. He lowered his chin and looked up at Deiq, sly, almost coquettish. “We talk first. No game. This is important, ha’inn.”

Deiq drew in a long breath. “I’m not hungry,” he said. “So talk.”

“Tea, then. Good thopuh tea.”

“Calcen, ta feth kii,”
Deiq said brutally; the closest kaenic translation would have been
cut the crap.

Evkit’s expression hardened. There was a long moment of silence.

“You have not lost your courage,” Evkit said finally.

“It’s not courage. You’re the one being brave right now, standing between a First Born and his blood-right claim.”

Evkit shook his head. The iron faded from his expression, leaving an odd sort of sadness. “Not,” he said, and motioned to the chairs. “Please, ha’inn. We really do need to talk first.”

Deiq almost refused again, icy anger simmering through his veins. Sitting down to talk was such a damned
human
thing to do, and he didn’t care for the proprieties just at the moment. He looked again at Evkit’s small, serious face, and sighed; and sat.

Evkit took the chair across from him. “Kippin made many big mistakes. One of which was not being able to tell teyanain factions apart.” He paused. “He is a very bad person, ha’inn. I make no argument against that. He deserves to face justice. Here, south, north; he’s offended a number of powerful people. And made alliance with others.”

Deiq waited, not speaking; seeing nothing worthy of responding to yet. Teyanain justice had no regard for alliances or prior claims.

“He plays a number of games very well,” Evkit went on. “He was taught by Roise F’Heing, after all. There are protections he’s put into place over the years that make it unwise to simply kill him.”

“Such as.”

“He has leverage on a direct leadership-line daughter or son of every desert Family.”

Deiq raised his eyebrows, honestly startled at that. “Impressive.”

“The youngest daughter of Lord F’Heing was under Roise’s hand,” Evkit said, soberly. “His half-sister. Roise was not kind to her. Kippin took her, after Roise tired of her, and held her until she escaped in the chaos of your—advance—on Lady Arnil’s mansion. She’s grateful to be alive. Her father—not so much.”

A F’Heing woman, raped and tortured by her own half-brother—no. Lord F’Heing would have her quietly killed. But that wasn’t Deiq’s concern, nor a teyanain problem.

“The youngest son of Lord Darden,” Evkit went on. “Same. Younger than the F’Heing girl, and Roise twisted him with great care; then set him on the F’Heing girl.”

Deiq blinked slowly. “I’m not hearing a reason for you to refuse me Kippin yet,” he said. “And I’m getting impatient, Lord Evkit.”

“Patience, ha’inn. Again, Kippin kept the thread here as well, and kept the two together. The Darden boy believes Kippin is his friend, and is greatly distressed at your attack. The F’Heing girl now bears the Darden boy’s child. The pregnancy is too far advanced to safely kill. The girl wishes to keep the child and see its father dead. The Darden boy currently believes he loves the girl, and that she loves him.” Evkit paused, studying Deiq’s face. “I tell you all this not for your sympathy, ha’inn—I know you have none. I wish only to show you a hint of the complexity. Every one of the leverages I spoke of are tangled together in some way: very much a rat’s nest. Roise was very good at that. Kippin has picked up the threads and tied his own knots. Even the teyanain do not know all of what Roise arranged, and even less of how Kippin has changed those arrangements. But Kippin—he knows it all. He knows everything, every action, every agreement, every name, ha’inn. All of it.”

“You’ve had plenty of time to break it out of him,” Deiq said. “My turn to play.”

Evkit shook his head. “Kippin sustained injuries in his capture; there were—complications along the way. After that, I was occupied with trying to bring
you
back to health and sanity, ha’inn. The faction against me put Kippin out with Alyea while I was distracted, perhaps hoping she would kill him before I could question him. Perhaps hoping he would kill her. Sometimes, the actions of my enemies truly make no sense to me, ha’inn. I have had little real time to speak with Kippin, and that time has not been productive. Roise taught him well.”

Deiq drew in a long breath, let it out. “Lord Evkit,” he said, measuring his words out like drops of water in a desert, “I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t fucking
care.”

Evkit sat very still, his gaze dark, for a long few moments of silence. At last, he said: “I did not think you would care, ha’inn. But the world is much more complicated than even a First Born ha’ra’ha can understand, and this matter too wide-spread and delicate for even your blood-right claim to interfere with. You will have Kippin, ha’inn. I promise you that. I understand your claim. But not now. Not yet.”

They locked stares, cold on cold; neither backing down.

“You are yourself in delicate standing,” Lord Evkit said. “The Jungles are angry, ha’inn. The southern Families are angry. The northern king is angry. Soon, all of these will make moves to resolve that anger. You need allies right now. You need security. Even you cannot always stand alone.”

“And the teyanain are good allies, are they?”

“The best,” Evkit said without a flicker of humor. “The very best, ha’inn. And the most secure ever. We do not turn away from our sworn agreements.”

Deiq didn’t say anything immediately, thinking that over. “When you say
sworn
agreements,” he said eventually.

“Sayek-teth.”

Deiq blinked, twice, very slowly.
Blood oath.
That put the matter far beyond what he’d ever expected.
Kin-rights.
“Just for my letting you have Kippin a while longer.”

Evkit’s lips twitched a little. “No.”

“Ah. I didn’t think so. What else are you after, then?”