Fires of the Desert (Children of the Desert Book 4) (9 page)

“Yes, Lord Eredion,” Tanavin said after a moment, “because if you break it, I’ll find a way to break
you.”

They locked stares for a long, taut moment, then the desert lord said, “I can only speak for myself. But I agree to your terms.”

“Do you believe me?” Tanavin demanded.

“Yes.”

The redhead squinted, as though trying to examine the inside of Eredion’s skull, for a few more moments; then, apparently satisfied, bobbed his head in a sharp nod and headed for the gate.

Oh, hells yes,
Eredion thought as he followed, waving the guards to let the boy through ahead of him,
I’m far more aware of what you can do than you are, Tanavin Aerthraim. And let’s both hope it stays that way.

The guards were gone, the gates to Peysimun Mansion open. Four steps across the courtyard, Eredion knew what lay beyond would be ugly. From the amount of white showing around Tanavin’s eyes, he felt the thick stain in the air, although he likely didn’t understand it for what it was: the residual rage of a completely berserk ha’ra’ha.

Eredion looked to the left, towards the servant’s entrance. Blood smeared the damp stones, but no bodies or even any arrows from the initial attack had been left behind: another bad sign. Only professionals cleaned up behind themselves so thoroughly. Deiq certainly wouldn’t have done so, whatever his state of sanity at the time.

His failure to return took on an increasingly ominous cast in Eredion’s mind.

As they approached the stairs to the front entrance, Tanavin made a faint, protesting noise in the back of his throat. Eredion glanced at him and saw the boy’s freckles standing out in sharp relief.

“I don’t think—I can help with this,” Tanavin almost whispered. “Whatever—this—is.” He blinked rapidly.

Eredion just shook his head and motioned the boy to follow. Words stuck in his throat, and he found himself wondering if Tanavin would, after all, turn and bolt out the gates. The scrape of booted feet on the stairs behind him came as a mixed relief.

The front doors had been left ajar. He pushed them the rest of the way open, wincing as an all-too-familiar smell hit him. Tanavin gagged briefly.

“Damnit,” Eredion said, not needing to take another step to know the answer to his primary question. “He’s gone.”

Tanavin pushed past and went forward with long, hard strides, shoulders lowered bullishly. Eredion thought about calling him back, then shook his head and followed more slowly, taking in the chaos spread throughout the mansion with a cold eye.

He found Tanavin standing at the entrance to a hallway as though unable to move another step. The boy’s head was flung back, eyes shut, hands fisted and shaking from strain. Eredion glanced at what lay beyond and swore aloud: a familiar white powder coated seemingly everything, and the wreckage was comprehensive, to say nothing of the blood splashed around like water at a blessing-ceremony.

Eredion grabbed hold of Tanavin’s taut arm and yanked him bodily away from the scene. The boy offered no resistance, breath wheezing in his chest.

As they emerged into the cleansing, chill drizzle outside, he seemed to recover some sense. “Where—where—” he stuttered.

“To get warm. And dry. And a stiff damn drink,” Eredion said brusquely.

Tanavin bobbed his head and followed without any argument at all.

Sitting still had never been easy for Alyea. At the moment, it proved impossible. She prowled through Eredion’s suite restlessly, at first nervous of encountering Wian; but after repeated calls for her former servant yielded only silence, she moved more confidently through the rooms.

Eredion seemed inclined to little in the way of decoration. The furniture was basic: chairs and a waist-high table for northern visitors; low tables, kneeling chairs and floor cushions for southerners. Heavy white drapes on the eastern and southern windows blocked the day’s chill and turned the grey light from outside diffuse. Thick carpets in shades of grey and green padded the floor throughout the suite.

Where Alyea had chosen multiple long couches for her sun room, Eredion had three overstuffed chairs, but only one showed signs of regular use. In his small study, the blackwood desk was heavily worn and scratched, and the sturdy desk chair fabric had begun to fray through, showing tufts of a yellowish stuffing: possibly horsehair or a similar material.

She sat down after a momentary hesitation and began going through the desk drawers.

One drawer was securely locked but offered no visible keyhole. She peered at it a while, trying to sort out how to unlatch it, and eventually gave up. The first open drawer proved uninteresting: a collection of pen nibs and shafts, ink jars, parchment, wax, and other writing supplies. The second held an odd collection of pebbles, shells, minor gemstones and bits of damaged jewelry, including one half of a broken amber and silver brooch that looked vaguely familiar for some reason.

A deeper drawer held two heavy books. Alyea lifted them out and whistled under her breath at the titles:
Sessin Book of Blood/Yi Ta Sessin/y. Res i Ninnic
and
Northern Book of Blood/Yi Ta N’hen/y. Res i Ninnic.

She opened the Sessin book and flipped through the pages; the genealogy charts and notes quickly became a blur of tightly scripted words and tiny lines. Struck by a sudden curiosity, she turned towards the end and scanned for familiar names. At last she saw them:
Eredion S., Nissa S. and Pieas S.

After a few moments of tracing lines and squinting at connections, she shook her head and put the book carefully away, not having learned anything particularly useful or even new. She’d known that Pieas and Nissa were siblings; now she knew they’d been twins. She’d known Eredion was their uncle; now she knew that Eredion’s older sister, Tashaye, was Lord Antouin Sessin’s second wife, and that if anything happened to Lord Antouin’s first-born son by his first wife, then Pieas would have been in line to be Lord Sessin. Whether that potential would now transfer over to Nissa, Alyea had no idea. As far as she knew, Sessin, while heavily patriarchal, wasn’t entirely averse to allowing women to positions of real power.

“I suspect what I don’t know about
that
would fill an ocean,” she muttered, and opened the Northern Book of Blood, which proved much more informative.

Some time later, a voice from the main doorway broke her concentration:
“Excuse
me,
Lord
Alyea!”

Alyea barely controlled the startle reflex. She looked up slowly and kept her tone cool. “Yes, Wian?”

Her former servant stared, black eyes hard and hostile, then said, “I
don’t
think Lord Eredion would care for you going through his books.”

“Then he shouldn’t have left me alone here with unlocked drawers,” Alyea said, unhurriedly closing the book and sliding it back into the drawer. “Are you saying
you
haven’t gone through his things?”

A faint flush turned Wian’s skin a shade darker. “I think you should go,
Lord
Alyea.”

“And I think I’ll stay,” Alyea said, leaning back in the chair. She allowed a moment to pass, watching the girl’s climbing fury, then added, “Lord Eredion told me to stay here, Wian. Is that a problem for you?”

Wian’s nostrils flared, then pinched; she let out a hard snort. “It’s not my
place
to say where you can be,
Lord
Alyea.” She lifted her chin and, after a moment’s awkward hesitation, opted to turn away towards the bedroom.

Alyea thought about calling her back for a talk, but there really wasn’t any point, and even less for them to say to each other. She didn’t trust the girl as far as she could heave a horse, and Wian clearly had no remnants of her former devotion left—if it had ever been real in the first place.

How in the hells Eredion had apparently seen fit to welcome a proven traitor into his bed mystified Alyea; and now Wian had access, once again, to the palace. Shaking her head, Alyea wondered if the girl had made a play for the king yet, or if Eredion Sessin was as high as Wian dared reach.

Then again, she wasn’t being entirely fair. She knew, first-hand now, what Wian had gone through; the treatment that had broken Wian to Kippin’s will.

Kippin’s intent face, eyes gleaming with unholy calm, as he ever so lightly traced a razor-edged blade over her skin, creating patterns only he understood...the tickling, burning agony as line after line drew blood to the surface...the shocking white-out of vision when he drenched her with salt water laced with more dasta and then set Tevin loose for the more brutal stage once more....

She shook her head hard to clear the memories, then set the Northern Book of Blood on the desk again and went back to reading. On impulse, she flipped to the entry for
Peysimun
and traced lines, curious to see if she had cousins too “common” for her mother to have mentioned—

—stopped, frowning, and looked more closely at the entry for
Lady Hama Peysimun.

At the
lack
of entries linked to that name.

“Oh, for
fuck’s
sake,” she said aloud, wondering why the revelation didn’t hurt as much as she might have expected.
“That
certainly explains a lot.”

The outer door opened. In what felt like one fast movement, Alyea shut the book, dropped it back in the drawer, shut the drawer and stood, leaping halfway around the desk before she slowed down for a breath.

Eredion’s grim expression, as he came through the main door, stopped Alyea cold. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she caught herself against the desk with one hand and said on a gasping outbreath, “What hap—”

A red-haired young man followed Eredion into the suite, and breath left her completely.

She’d never seen him before, she was
certain
of that; but...she
knew
him. Knew that bright blue stare, remembered the touch of his large-knuckled hands. Her mouth flooded with a strange, fiery-bitter taste that brought tears to her eyes.

He ducked his head, looking away: freckles stood out in sudden sharp relief as the color left his face, and he swallowed hard.

“Told you this was a mistake,” he muttered, barely audible.

Eredion shot him a sharp, irritated glare, then snapped, “Alyea, sit down before you fall over, godsdamnit!”

She almost collapsed back onto the desk chair, shuddering all over and unable to take her eyes off the bizarrely familiar stranger as he followed Eredion into the study. He glanced at the available chairs, then shook his head slightly and opted to lean against the wall near the doorway.

“Alyea,” Eredion said, his expression still taut, “this is Tana—” He paused as the redhead made a faint noise of protest. “This is Tank. You’ve met, briefly, but I doubt you remember it.”

“I remember...something,” Alyea said, her voice faint, and shut her eyes, rubbing her mouth with one hand. “When did I...?”

“Peysimun Mansion is completely empty,” Eredion said, ignoring the question. “Everyone is gone. Servants, guards, your mother, Deiq. No bodies, but plenty of blood in a couple of rooms. And....” He paused again, his mouth tightening even further. “There’s stibik dust in one of the hallways. A lot of it. And signs of a fight there.”

She sat up straight, her woozy half-memory of the redhead fading into unimportance. “They were
expecting
him?”

“I think,” Eredion said, his eyes squinching almost shut, “he may have been the real target.”

Eredion had rarely been so completely and catastrophically wrong, and it left him shaken in his judgments. Bringing Tanavin back to the palace had been a matter of overwhelming instinct: Eredion could think of a half-dozen ugly endings to this situation without even trying, and Tanavin, willing or not, seemed the best shield he could have to hand for most of them.

As the tension rose in the room between Tanavin and Alyea, however, he began to wish he’d listened to the boy’s protests and left him behind, even though that would have meant losing any chance of enlisting his help in the coming conflict.

He steered them out to the main room of the suite in an attempt to at least get some physical distance between them. Before he could point them to opposite seats, Wian came through the bedroom doorway. Her delighted squeal broke through the growing thickness in the air.

“Tank! What are you doing here?”

“Being a fucking idiot,” Tanavin muttered under his breath. The words were only audible to a desert lord’s sharp hearing, but Alyea, thankfully, seemed not to be listening.

Tanavin forced a smile as Wian practically threw herself into his arms. He pried himself loose as quickly as possible, evidently embarrassed by her attentions, and retreated a few steps to keep some distance between them.

“Wian,” Eredion said hastily, before she could start peppering them with questions, “I need you to go ask the king to give us a private audience. Tell him it’s urgent. “

She nodded, flashed one last grin at Tanavin, and darted out the main door.

“You’re bringing this to Oruen?” Alyea said in alarm.

At the same time, Tanavin said, “You want to drag this in front of the
king?”