Praise for Gail Dayton’s
The Compass Rose

“With unadulterated sensuality that practically ignites the pages and a fantasy quest that is as masterfully intricate as it is entertaining, Dayton’s The Compass Rose will absolutely blow away fans of romance-powered fantasy. In a word: wow!”

–Barnes & Noble’s Explorations newsletter

“Gail Dayton has created a world that is so colorful and vivid readers will feel they made an adventurous visit to this enchanting realm.”

–The Best Reviews

“The Compass Rose captured me from the first page…. Gail Dayton eloquently weaves a saga of unrequited love with the fear of rejection that haunts us all [and] cleverly and sagely reveals the heart and soul that unites a group of strangers into a family.”

–Fallen Angel Reviews

“Top Pick, 4–1/2 stars: Court intrigues and romantic interludes keep the plot moving at a brisk pace.”

–Romantic Times BOOKclub

GAIL DAYTON
The Barbed Rose

To April and Rhys.

You make me proud.

And to Jason, who does, too.

CONTENTS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

GLOSSARY

Cast of Characters

Kallista Varyl, Captain in the Adaran army, naitan of the North, lightning thrower, Godstruck of the One

Torchay Omvir, Sergeant, Kallista’s bodyguard and godmarked ilias

Stone Varyl vo’Tsekrish, former Tibran Warrior, godmarked ilias

Fox Varyl vo’Tsekrish, former Tibran Warrior, fighting partner to Stone, godmarked ilias

Aisse Varyl vo’Haav, Tibran woman, godmarked ilias

Obed im–Shakiri, Southron trader, godmarked ilias

Lorynda Varyl, twin infant daughter of Kallista and Torchay

Rozite Varyl, twin infant daughter of Kallista and Stone

Niona Varyl, infant daughter of Aisse and Fox

Merinda Kyndir, Adaran East naitan healer

Serysta Reinine, ruler of Adara, North naitan truthsayer

Keldrey, Serysta’s bodyguard and reinas

Leyja, Serysta’s bodyguard and reinas

Ferenday, Serysta’s bodyguard and reinas

Syr, Serysta’s bodyguard and reinas

Gweric, Tibran male magic hunter

Joh Suteny, former Adaran guard lieutenant, convict

Viyelle Torvyll, Prinsipella of the Adaran prinsipality (province) of Shaluine and government courier

Karyl & Kami Varyl, Kallista’s twin sisters by blood

Sanda Torvyll, Prinsipas of Shaluine, Viyelle’s birth mother

Saminda Torvyll, Prinsep of Shaluine, Viyelle’s aunt by blood and Second Mother

Kendra Torvyll, Prinsipella of Shaluine, Viyelle’s sedil and cousin by blood

Vanis Kevyr, Prinsipas of Shaluine, Viyelle’s birth father

Mowbray Syndir, Prinsipella of Shaluine

Tiray Syndir, Prinsipella of Shaluine

Dessa Torvyll, Prinsipella of Shaluine

Bella Torvyll, Prinsipella of Shaluine

Huyis Uskenda, Adaran general in Ukiny

Huryl Kovallyk, Serysta’s High Steward

Domnia Varyl, founder of the Varyl bloodline, West naitan and prelate

Kallandra, North naitan, military lightning thrower

Miray, Kallandra’s bodyguard

Tylle, Adaran guard lieutenant

Elliane, East naitan healer

Fenetta, North naitain farspeaker at Adaran court

Omunda, Chief prelate of Arikon and Adara

Oskina, Rebel leader

Ashbel, Demon

Ataroth, Demon

Untathel, Demon

Xibyth, Demon

Tchyrizel, Demon

Keqwith, Demon

Khoriseth, Demon

Zughralithiss, Demon

CHAPTER ONE

“Halt. Stand and identify yourself and your business.”

Kallista Varyl, Captain Naitan of the Reinine’s Own, just recalled from extended leave, somehow managed to refrain from swearing. The guard at the Mountain Gate leading into Arikon was only doing his duty. He couldn’t know the urgency riding her.

She saluted, snapped off her name and command. “I’ve been ordered to Arikon by the Reinine herself.” She handed over a copy of her orders.

The guard’s eyes widened when he saw the seals and signatures on the paper, but still he blocked her path.

Harnesses jangled as another in Kallista’s party pushed her way forward and saluted. “Courier Viyelle Torvyll, Prinsipella of Shaluine.” The courier began formally, then switched to a familiar, friendly tone as she addressed the guard. “You know me, Daltrey. You were standing duty here when I rode out to fetch the naitan back. This is Captain Varyl. These are her iliasti. I can swear to their identity. I know them all from the last time they were in the city, at court. The captain has urgent business. Do you honestly want to delay them?”

Kallista remembered the prinsipella from last year as well, and not fondly. The young woman had been a useless, annoying, mischief-making blot on Adaran society, and that was before the quarrelsome magic had got hold of her. Still, she seemed to have found something better to do with herself since then, joining the courier corps.

The prinsipella-courier had brought the Reinine’s orders to Kallista along with a warning of the rebellion stirring down on the plains. Viyelle had traveled back to the capital with Kallista’s party, fought through rebel ambushes with them, and at this moment, Kallista was liking the courier more and more.

“I’m sure you can, Prinsipella.” The guard, who had to be nearing the end of his military service, which would make him all of twenty-two, blushed under Viyelle’s attention, but he did not budge. “But rules are rules and with this rebellion on, it’s worth my head if I break them. The captain must be identified by an officer she served under previously.” He signaled to another footguard.

“I’ll go for you,” Viyelle said. “It’s on my way, and I’m mounted. I’ll be faster. My orders were to get the captain here, but she’s not here till she’s reported in, is she?” She turned to Kallista. “I’ll leave your horse in the palace stables so you can find it later.”

“Yes, fine, go.” Kallista waved a hand and the courier clattered off at the best speed she could make. Perhaps she did mean to make amends for last year’s calamities, as she said. Kallista decided to reserve judgment, watch and see how things unfolded. This guard, however…

Kallista glared at him, thinking hot and angry thoughts. He cleared his throat, stiffened to even more rigid attention, and didn’t move.

“Don’t twist yourself into a knot,” Torchay murmured from beside her, trying to calm her temper when it didn’t want to be calmed.

Sergeant Torchay Omvir had been doing that sort of thing for the past ten years, first as her assigned military bodyguard, and for the past year as her ilias—one of her temple-bound mates. He was an exception to the old saying that redheads have fiery tempers. Kallista’s temper was many times hotter than his, but her hair was so dark a brown as to be almost black, while Torchay’s hair was a deep, pure, true dark red that curled wildly when not confined ruthlessly in a military queue as it was now.

“Look around you,” he said. “Have you ever seen this many people at the Mountain Gate? Something’s happened.”

She wanted to let her anger rage, but Torchay’s murmur reached her, despite all. She looked.

Here on the north side of the city, where Arikon backed up into the sharp beginnings of the Shieldback Mountains, the walls didn’t rise so high as those facing the valley to the east and south. The mountain itself gave protection to Arikon. Fewer people lived in the mountain valleys than down in the vast eastern plains, and those who lived in the mountains beyond the Shieldbacks found it easier and quicker to come through the Heldring Gap to the plains and thus to Arikon, though the distance might be greater. In all the times Kallista had been in Adara’s capital city, the Mountain Gate had never seen more than a few dozen individuals seeking admittance, even on the busiest days.

Today, merchants driving carts laden with household goods were lined up behind farmers driving livestock before them, and they stood behind craftsmen bearing the looms or anvils or hammers and saws of their trade, all waiting for access to the city. Old people rested by the side of the road. Children chased each other, playing loud games with best friends just met while their parents tried to keep track of them. Kallista had been vaguely aware of the crowds as this half of their ilian approached the gate, but she hadn’t truly seen them.

Guards searched baggage, and one by one, those wanting into the city filed up to a table set before an army colonel with a single row of red ribbons fluttering fore-and-aft from her shoulders and a male naitan dressed in North magic blue. He looked weary, as if he’d been working magic for hours on end.

The next in line came up to the table and laid her hands flat on the rough wooden top. The naitan covered both her hands with his, and the colonel began asking her questions. A few minutes later, the naitan nodded, the woman gathered up her goods, joined the family waiting near the gate and together, they entered the city.

“Truthsayer?” Kallista spoke her thought aloud, not seeking an answer. No wonder the man looked tired, if he had to verify every person wanting to enter the city. She shivered with a sudden chill. “You’re right, Torchay. Something has happened. Something bad.”

And the rest of their ilian was on the road alone, traveling to the northern edges of Adara and Torchay’s family, away from the rebellion disturbing the eastern plain. Her babies—twin daughters—were so small, only ninety days old. Not even three months yet. How could she have left them? What kind of mother was she, to be here, instead of there, with her children?

“Obed should have gone with them.” Her voice was bitter, angry, quiet. “You should have gone with them. How can they travel safely all the way to Korbin Prinsipality with only one able-bodied fighter? We sent him alone to guard a pregnant woman, a blind man, a healer and two tiny babies.”

She whirled her horse to ride north and find them, keep them safe. The two with her—the best fighters in their ilian—would never leave her.

Torchay threw himself at her reins and missed, landing hard in the lingering puddles on the rocky road. Kallista called for speed and her mount did its best, but there were too many people crowded in the road and she wasn’t—quite—willing to sacrifice someone else’s child to save her own. Obed caught up with her easily, wresting the reins from her hands.

Kallista fought for the reins, for control of her horse. Confused and frightened, the animal reared. Obed caught her around her waist and pulled her onto the saddle in front of him. Kallista’s fear flashed into anger and she turned it on Obed, her fury rising as he accepted her blows without expression, without reaction, simply allowing her to rain them down on him.

“Damn you,” she raged. “Don’t you care about anything?” She wanted to mark him, to cut him open and see if he would bleed. Her beautiful, exotic Southron ilias with his black hair, brown skin and the tattoos of his devotion to the One God written on his face and body was beyond anything in Kallista’s experience. She didn’t know how to deal with him. And just now, that infuriated her.

Like the rest of their ilian, he’d been marked by the One and bound by that godstruck magic into a whole as unlike other iliani as a military troop was from the rabble of a mob. But since her daughters’ birth, Obed had been pulling back, withdrawing into himself until he seemed a stone carving, rather than a man. And she didn’t know why.

His behavior worried her, for more reasons than the personal. It drove cracks through their ilian, because much as she tried to hide her hurt at Obed’s actions, she couldn’t quite, and that made the others angry for her sake.

Torchay pushed his way into the space around the restive horses, limping slightly. Kallista refused the rising guilt, but it seeped inside her anyway. She’d caused that limp. Obed released her into Torchay’s arms and he pulled her from the saddle, holding her tight when she would have turned her anger on him. He wouldn’t let her strike him.

“You don’t want to cause any more of a scene. Not here.” He spoke into her ear, holding her head still with one long-fingered hand planted on the back of her skull. “Think, Kallista. If you ride out of here, you’re more likely to lead the danger to them. You’re the godstruck. You’re the one the rebels will watch, if they’re watching any of us. You don’t know for certain that there is any danger at all, do you?”

Gradually, his words sank in and made sense. She did not want to make anything worse than it already was. She stopped struggling and Torchay loosened his hold. He didn’t let go of her entirely—he knew her too well for that—but he would know she was listening now.

“You have to trust in the plan.” He led her back toward their place near the gate where his well-trained horse waited, calmly cropping grass. Obed followed, leading Kallista’s mount.

“They’re my daughters too, remember?” Torchay said. “Blood or no, Lorynda and Rozite are both mine. Don’t you think I want to be there myself, watching over them, as much as you do? But this was the plan. To draw attention our way, make anyone interested come after us. And for that, we need Obed here.

“If we’re drawing attention to you, I want our best fighters protecting you, and that’s Obed and me. I won’t risk you, too. We fought through rebels more than once on our way here, and more than once, it was Obed who made the difference. Trust the plan. Trust Stone and Fox and Merinda to keep them safe.”

“Fox is blind, and Merinda’s a healer, not a fighter.”

“You know as well as I do that Fox’s blindness doesn’t make any difference in his ability to fight. That extra sense of knowing he has from your magic gives him eyes in the back of his head. You’ve seen it. You know it. And a healer’s exactly what they need right now with Aisse so close to her time. You brought Merinda into the ilian. She’ll watch over the girls and Aisse like they were her own.”

The durissas rites weren’t used much in the cities any more, but in the countryside, in the mountains and plains, they were still fairly common. During a crisis a person could be temporarily made ilias, or two iliani could bind themselves into one, swearing to guard the others—especially the children—as their own.

Merinda had come out from the capital, a cheerful, comfortable tabby cat of a woman, to help with the twins’ births and wait for Aisse’s baby, so she had been present and available when Courier Torvyll had brought word of the emergency. Merinda had accepted Kallista’s offer, taken the bracelet from Kallista’s own arm bound together with the band from Torchay’s ankle, and become part of their ilian just before they’d left on their separate journeys.

Usually a durissas bond lasted only as long as the crisis, though sometimes it became permanent, if a child resulted or the parties agreed. In this instance, Kallista didn’t care much which way it went, as long as Merinda took care of those who needed her. Kallista couldn’t do it, and it was ripping her apart.

At the gate again, Torchay looped an arm around her neck for a rough hug. “They’ll be all right.”

“How do you know?” Kallista couldn’t stop the retort, her fears eating holes in her. “You don’t have any idea how they’re faring.”

“But you do.”

Did she? She should. At the least, she ought to be able to find out. Kallista took a deep breath, fighting for calm. Could she do it?

Turning her back on the city, she faced North and opened herself. There, that was the sound of all the people dammed up before the gate, talking, laughing, complaining. She named it and set it aside, letting it fade from her consciousness. And that was the horses, and those noises belonged to the other animals—cows, chickens, dogs, cats. Kallista closed them from her mind as well.

She shut out the sound of the wind whipping the flags atop the city walls and making the trees whisper to each other. One at a time, she identified and eliminated the sounds falling on her physical ears. With everything that was in her, she listened for more. And she heard nothing.

No hum from the mountains. No whisper from the sun. No joyous song of magic.

She wanted to scream with frustration. Once, she had destroyed a demon with the magic she wielded. Today, she could not destroy a gnat.

Kallista pulled back inside herself and let the physical world back in. Other female naitani gradually lost their magic during pregnancy and gradually got it back after the birth. Kallista’s had vanished all at once, and it had yet to reappear. At least she still had the assurance of the magical links binding her to her iliasti that the magic would return.

She wouldn’t worry—hadn’t worried about the magic’s absence until Courier Torvyll had arrived at their mountain home, where they had retreated for the birth of their children, with news of the rebellion spreading from the plains westward into the mountains, toward Arikon. Now Kallista wanted it back. The sooner her magic returned, the sooner she could help quash the rebellion and go back home.

Needing the reassurance, Kallista reached for the place deep inside her where her magic slept, where the links with her iliasti abided, and touched them with incorporeal fingers. There was Torchay and there, Obed. And—stormwaves of panic rolled through her.

She caught Torchay’s arm to keep from falling. “They’re gone.”

“What?” He put an arm around her, held her up. “Who’s gone?”

“The others. Fox and Stone and Aisse. The links are gone. I can’t find them.” She wrapped her hand in his tunic and held on tight, shaking. “Oh Goddess, they’re gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped, again taking refuge from fear in anger. “The links were there. Now they’re not.”

“Look again.”

She already was, scarcely aware of Obed dismounting, coming to stand close, at guard. She rummaged through that hidden place. Obed, there. Torchay there. Fox…not there. Nor Stone. Nor Aisse. Frantic, she reached, as high and wide and far as she could. And she could not get outside her own skin.

“Oh Goddess, oh Goddess,” she whispered over and over in prayer, having no other words, trusting the One to know what she prayed for.

“Kallista.” Torchay shook her. He caught her face in one hand and turned it up to his. “Captain. Don’t fall apart on us now. We need you. They need you. Don’t assume the worst. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”

“Prepare for the worst,” she mumbled through numb lips.

“Prepare, yes. But don’t anticipate trouble before it comes.”

“Yes.” She gathered up all her fear and shoved it into a mental box, sitting on it to get it closed. She stiffened her knees by sheer force of will and made herself stand on her own, away from Torchay’s support. “Yes, you’re right. They are a long way off, after all. A hundred leagues or more. Almost two, if they’ve already reached Sumald.”

Goddess, if only Torchay or Obed could search on their own—but all the magic was hers to control. Without her at the center to power it, the rest had no connection to each other. Kallista took a deep breath, swallowed, blinked her eyes dry. “We’ve never been so far apart, have we? Not since the links formed. And with my magic the way it is…”

“Aye. I’m sure that’s the only problem.” Torchay still watched her with haunted eyes.

Obed took a moment from watching the crowd to look at her. Was that concern in his eyes? Who was it for?

“Are you all right, then?” Torchay called her attention back from its wandering.

“Yes.” She wiped her face. She hated tears, most especially her own, but since the babies, she hadn’t been able to control the stupid leaking. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He tilted his head toward the gate, a spiral strand of red hair escaping from his queue to slide across one eye.

Kallista followed his direction and saw an officer striding toward them—a general by the layered fringe of red ribbons sprouting from the shoulders of her dun-brown infantry tunic. A few more paces and Kallista recognized General Huyis Uskenda. She had been in command of the garrison where Kallista was serving last year during the beginning of the Tibran invasion.

The Tibran king had sent his boats and warriors—and his cannons—to take Adara from those who lived here. He might have done it, but for the magic that struck Kallista on the city walls of Ukiny the morning the Tibran army invasion very nearly succeeded.

“General.” Kallista drew herself to attention and saluted, relief ringing through her. Uskenda was one of the better commanders in Adara’s army, more concerned with effectiveness than appearance or her own comfort. “Captain Naitan Kallista Varyl reporting for duty. I would like to request a troop escort for my family, General, to—”

“Wouldn’t we all, Captain. You’re not getting it.” The general’s gaze paused on Torchay, acknowledging his presence, then moved on to Obed. “Who’s this?”

“My ilias, Obed im-Shakiri. You may have heard I married after you sent me to the capital last year. There are six of us in all now. We have two babies and our other ilias is pregnant.” Kallista raised her right hand to show the single bracelet from her only female ilias. “They’re traveling alone to—”

“You vouch for him?” Uskenda ignored Kallista’s implied plea. “You and your sergeant I know, but—”

“He’s no rebel.” Kallista risked interrupting the general. “He’s godmarked like the rest of us. Like our other iliasti. They’re carrying out a request from the—”

“We have no troops to spare,” the general snapped the words out, voice hard as iron. “Do not ask again, Captain. Do not even hint at asking.”

Kallista braced to hard attention, staring straight ahead at nothing at all. “No, General, I won’t.”

Uskenda didn’t waste another moment, turning on her heel. Kallista fell in behind her, Obed and Torchay on guard at either side. They marched past the long lines of people waiting their turn with the truthsayer. Their frantic desperation to get behind the safety of the walls and their resentment toward those who seemed to be bypassing the system gathered thick enough to make an almost physical barrier for the small party to push through.

Something had happened. Kallista knew it, but didn’t dare ask what. Not now. And sergeants didn’t question generals about anything, so Torchay couldn’t ask. She slid a glance toward Obed, the civilian. Would he understand what she wanted to know? And if he did, would he ask?

He met her look, flicked his eyes toward the crowd, the truthsayer, the full troop of guards at the gate, then looked back at Kallista. He somehow bowed without moving his head. “General,” he said, his exotic Southron accent stronger than usual, “has something occurred that makes all this security necessary? Why a truthsayer?”

“You don’t know?” Uskenda addressed her response to Kallista.

“We’ve been on the road almost a week and the courier took even longer coming with the Reinine’s orders, so our news of Arikon is a good two weeks old.” Kallista tugged at her gloves, a fresh attack of worry making her hands itch. Because the magic was returning? She stretched to keep up with the general’s brisk pace.

Uskenda’s face went grim, worsening Kallista’s fears. “Graceday before last, twelve days ago, assassins struck all across the country, targeting naitani serving with the army. Even here in Arikon itself. Thank the One, your location was kept secret for your safety, or likely they’d have attacked you as well.”

“We were already on the road coming here by then.”

“They’d no’ have touched her,” Torchay muttered at almost the same moment.

“Yes, well—double thanks to the One. Besides military naitani, they went after high-ranking officers—colonel and above. I would have thought they were Tibrans retaliating for your…for the deaths last year, but…”

Kallista hid her reaction. It still disturbed her, some of the things her new magic had done. When she had destroyed the demon, all those who had worshipped it—all the Tibrans in the Ruler caste and many of the high-ranking Tibran Warrior caste—had died with it. It had ended the war, but left Tibre in chaos. “Are you sure they weren’t Tibran?”

“They were Adaran. Adaran traitors.” The general spat her contempt on the gray cobblestone paving. “The one who attacked me wore her infantry uniform. Bodyguards turned on the naitani they’d sworn to protect.”

“Impossible!” Torchay burst out, shock and horror wiping out discipline.

“Not all of them turned, Sergeant.” The general’s eyes warmed in a faint smile. “But enough. They targeted the military naitani with the generals. I’m the highest ranking officer left. The army is in shambles, half or more of our soldiers gone over to the rebels. We’ve scarcely a dozen naitani still alive, and those that are—”

Uskenda paused in midstep, her foot hovering in the air while she seemed to make some decision. She pivoted, taking her step in a new direction. “The Reinine gave orders to bring you to the palace as soon as you arrived, and I am doing that, but we will take a different path.”

She held Kallista’s gaze as they kept moving through the crowded streets. “You need to know what we are up against.”

Fox took the warm, squirmy bundle Stone handed him and tucked her inside his shirt, next to his skin. A squeak of protest told him Lorynda was not yet interested in sleeping, so he turned her around to allow her to see out while he wrapped them both in his layers of clothing. He had trouble with some elements of infant care, particularly cleanup, since his blindness kept him from seeing when the job was properly done, for which he thanked the One daily. But he was a master at keeping the babies warm and not bad at getting them to sleep.

He leaned his head against the rock wall behind him, then as the cold from the stone penetrated, he fumbled for the hood of his cape to pull up an extra layer between himself and their shelter. “Still snowing?” he asked the cave in general.

“Can’t tell.” Stone’s soured voice came back. “It covered the cave entrance sometime last night. But it’s been snowing for six days running. Why would it stop now?”

“At least we’re not out there in it.” Merinda spoke from near the fire.

Fox was getting heartily tired of her forced cheer, her “look on the bright side” comments. If it didn’t require moving from his spot, he’d throttle her. But as it did, he supposed he would have to let her live.

“You’re right.” Aisse’s voice so close to him would have startled him if he hadn’t known where she was. “We could be out in the storm, but we’re not. And I for one, am grateful not to be in the saddle all the hours of daylight. Fox, do you have room for Rozite, too?”

“Aye.” He opened his cloak and overshirt again and loosened the lacings on his tunic more. The second twin snuggled in next to her sister and seemed to take on some of her calm, losing her restless fidgeting. They were warm and soft and smelled like contentment.

Fox rested his cheek atop their fuzzy heads a moment as he wrapped the coverings more securely about them. Then, with the babies secure in his arms, he closed his useless eyes and let his senses flow outward. Somehow, the act of shutting his eyes helped him know the things he couldn’t see.

There was Aisse, lowering herself onto the pallet nearest the fire. Was it normal for her to sleep so much? He supposed it was, or Merinda would be jollying her awake. The healer took her responsibilities seriously, urging Aisse to eat more when she picked at her food, watching the babies with sharp eyes and with magic to see how they fared in this cold. Fox just wished she didn’t have to be so bloody cheerful about it.

At the moment, Merinda was busying herself near the fire with something or other. And Stone knelt near the cave’s entrance, his attention focused on it. Perhaps trying to measure the depth of the snow?

Fox let his knowing quest onward. It was how he had brought them all to this place, the day the late spring blizzard had fallen on them. Right up until the moment he “found” the opening in the rock, he’d been afraid that the odd extra sense Kallista had given him couldn’t do such a thing. But it had. They had shelter from the snow and the cold.

Outside the cave, the world lay empty and silent. They might be the only souls left in existence, for all Fox could tell. He couldn’t sense things at much of a distance. He stretched, reaching as far as he could, wanting desperately to feel Kallista’s comforting touch against…whatever it was she touched inside him. He found only emptiness.

It had been months and months since any of them had felt that seductive brush of magic across their souls. He missed it. He wondered whether they would ever get it back. Kallista said they would, but when?

Stone was moving, doing something where he knelt, but Fox couldn’t tell what it was. “Learning to dance on your knees like the horse tribes?” he asked.

“Digging a path out of this hole you’ve buried us in.” Stone’s voice sounded sharp, on edge. The women didn’t seem to notice, but Fox had been partnered with Stone for almost twenty years. Since they’d entered Warrior Caste training at six. He knew the man’s nuances.

Carefully, Fox rose to his feet and walked toward the cave entrance where he sat down with his back to the drifted snow. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to be sitting in snowmelt in another five ticks if you don’t move.”

Fox shifted a pace away and waited, wishing this knowing of his let him know more than mere presence or motion. He wanted to see Stone’s face, his expression. “Well?” he finally had to prompt.

“We’re running low on supplies.” Stone kept his voice quiet as he continued digging. “There’s enough for the adults for about a week yet, but milk for the babies—they’re too young to be able to eat our food, Merinda says, even were it chewed for them. They could do it for a bit, in an emergency, but not for long.”

Fox’s arms tightened around the little bodies snuggled in against his chest. “We have to find more. A cow. Something.”

“How, if the snow doesn’t stop?”

“We’ll find a way. I will not let our children die.” The fervor in his own voice surprised Fox.

Children had little value in Tibre, until the males joined their castes at six. Women had no caste save the one that they served, so girl children were worth even less. In Tibre, children belonged to the caste, to no one. These tiny girls were his. His and the rest of the ilian’s. That made all the difference in the world.

A gust of icy wind announced that Stone had broken through the layered snow. “Still snowing,” he said.

“How thick is the snow cover?”

“Maybe two paces. Not bad.” Stone moved a short distance away, then returned and laid something over the fresh opening that blocked the wind a bit. Fox touched it; a saddle blanket. Stone laid another atop the first.

Fox was about to rise and head back nearer the fire when Stone sat on the cold cave floor beside him. Apparently in the snowmelt he’d warned Fox against, for he swore and moved to Fox’s other side.

“So, is Merinda ilias? Like the rest of us?” Stone asked in a voice quieter than any Fox had heard from him.

“I—” The question tumbled Fox’s thoughts into a stinking pile. “What do you think?” Maybe if he played for time he could dredge an answer from his memory.

“I don’t know. You were there when it happened, right before we left. You heard what Kallista said when she gave her the bracelet.”

“Ilian together,” Fox quoted. “But that’s not what she said—what any of us said—the night you all married me. Was it the same before?”

As one of the original four in their ilian, Stone had been through the ceremony three times, once when the ilian was formed, once when Obed joined them and once for Fox. “Those were all the same. Not like with her. So I’m asking. Is it just to help look after Lorynda and Rozite, or is it—?”

“You want to have sex with her?”

“Khralsh.” Stone swore by the warrior face of the One they all worshipped. “It’s the other way round. You can’t see the way she’s always touching me, or the looks she gives me. She says we’re ilian now, that I don’t have to be—uncomfortable, she said. You know how long it’s been, what with Kallista so soon after her time and Aisse so near hers and the magic gone besides. It wouldn’t be a problem, except Merinda’s always…there.”

“And you never were one to turn down sex.” Fox grinned. “I wish I could see it. Stone Varyl, vo’Tsekrish, evading a woman’s advances like some—some girl before her rites.”

Stone clouted him openhanded on the back of his head, gently, because of the babies. Otherwise he’d have dealt him a blow hard enough to lay him flat. All in fun, of course. “You’re just jealous she’s not chasing you.”

“Damaged goods.” Fox couldn’t blame her. What woman wanted a man cursed with blindness?

Stone snorted in derision. “I think she’s more afraid Aisse would have her head if she tried.”

“Aisse?” He went still, as one of the babies twitched in her sleep then settled again. “Not that she couldn’t do it, but why would she want to?”

“Beside the fact you sired the child in her belly? She favors you. Over all of us.”

Fox choked off his laugh. “Small favor. Just because she will consent on rare occasions to actually speak to me as well as point and order.”

“See? Favor. So what do I do about Merinda? Is she ilias?”

Fox sighed. “I don’t know, and there’s no one to ask who does, with all of us here born Tibran.”

“Except Merinda.” Stone’s sigh was a longer echo of Fox’s. “I won’t betray my ilian.”

“No.” His brodir’s loyalty was never in doubt. Once given, it remained. Fox took another deep breath. “Ilian together, Kallista said.”

“And Torchay.”

“So.” Fox moved a tiny hand that was digging tiny furrows in his skin with tiny fingernails. “All we can do is assume that means what it says. We are ilian together, in all ways. If you want what she offers, take it.”

Stone remained where he sat. “I wish Kallista were here.”

“So do I. But since she’s not, we can only muddle through as best we can.” He froze. “There’s something outside.”

Stone scrambled for weapons as Fox stretched his peculiar sense in a desperate attempt to discover what it was. Rozite squalled when Merinda plucked her from inside Fox’s shirt but quieted once she was placed against Aisse’s warmth.

“Not human,” Fox said, relinquishing Lorynda to the healer. “Large. A deer, perhaps. We hunt.”

“In the storm?” Stone asked as he handed Fox a quiver of arrows and a spear.

“I can find our way back,” he said with a confidence he did not quite possess. “The babies might not like the blood, but it will feed them, will it not?”

Stone merely moved aside the blankets from the entrance and ducked through it.

CHAPTER TWO

The new path General Uskenda took led Kallista and her men around the bulk of the palace, along the broad surrounding avenues where trees planted decades ago for beauty were being cut down to recreate the defensive space. On the downhill side east of the palace, they passed through an iron gate in a high wall. Kallista felt the tingle of barrier magic as they crossed into a quiet garden where invalids wrapped in thick dressing gowns basked in the pale spring sunlight while they sat on scattered benches. Beyond the garden rose a tall sprawling building, Arikon’s main healing center.

Uskenda led them inside and cut sharply right, taking them up a wide stairway to the third floor. She strode down the long corridor that turned left, then right again before she rapped on a door and entered.

A man with bandages wrapping every visible part of him—head, arms, torso—struggled to rise from the bed where he lay.

“No, no, Sergeant. Don’t get up.” Uskenda motioned him back, and he subsided to a seated position, adjusting the blanket over the smallclothes that were apparently his only garment.

“How is she?”

“The same. They’re keeping her under for fear of what might happen when she knows—” The injured man broke off, voice thick with emotion.

Kallista knew him, knew his face, his voice, but she couldn’t place who he was.

“Miray.” Torchay stepped forward, knelt and carefully took the man’s hand in his. The pieces fell into place for Kallista.

This was a naitan’s space, with an outer and an inner room. Miray was bodyguard to a young naitan who had served with them in the Kishkim swamp campaign five years ago. Kallandra had the same lightning magic as Kallista, so that was the only time they’d served together, but Kallista had liked the young woman. She believed they had moved beyond fellow naitani to comrades. Perhaps even friends.

Kallista glanced at the general and found her looking back, her expression even more grim. What now? Hadn’t she suffered enough shocks today? But Uskenda showed no sign of relenting from whatever her purpose might be.

“Might we look in on her?” Uskenda paid the bodyguard the courtesy of asking permission, though in his condition he could do little to stop them, did he want to. “Just the naitan and myself, to keep from disturbing her.”

Miray turned his face away, releasing Torchay’s hand. “Deep as they’ve got her dreaming, nothing short of hell opening would disturb her. And even that might not.”

“I’ll wait here.” Torchay moved into the chair beside the bed. Obed simply widened his stance in front of the doorway standing guard.

Kallista did not want to go into that other room, did not want to see Kallandra lying motionless on a healer’s bed, but she could not avoid it. Not only because the general insisted, but also—Kallandra was one of the Reinine’s Own, a military naitan. Kallista could not turn away, could not fail to give the other woman the respect and honor that was her due.

Uskenda opened the inner door and stepped back, waiting for Kallista to pass through. The smaller room was dim, lit only by a sliver of reflected light from a high clerestory and that entering by the doorway. Kallista moved to one side to wait for her eyes to adjust to the gloom and for the general to enter.

After a few ticks, she could make out a form lying still and dark against the pale sheets. General Uskenda stood at the foot of the bed looking down at the woman in it. Then she looked up at Kallista, but remained silent. How bad were the injuries?

Kallista swallowed down her dread and crossed the small space to stand beside the narrow bed. Kallandra’s face showed the years that had passed, or perhaps the strain of her injuries, but seemed otherwise unmarked. Kallista took in the rest in one swift glance, saw Kallandra’s arms lying atop the sheets with bandages swathed from her hands past her elbows.

No. That wasn’t right. Something was off, something wrong about the bandages. They were—

Kallista’s right knee buckled, but her left somehow held and she did not fall when she realized what it was. The bandages did not begin at Kallandra’s hands. She had no hands.

Her arms stopped short somewhere between elbows and wrists, the thick pads of bandage mocking the missing length.

“Oh dear, sweet Goddess,” Kallista whispered. Her hand groped for support, found the wall. “What—”

“Outside.” Uskenda jerked her head toward the open doorway.

Kallista nodded, tears burning her eyes again. She took a moment to whisper a blessing on the desperately damaged woman and stumbled back into the bodyguard’s antechamber. Torchay jumped up and ushered Kallista to the chair he’d vacated as Uskenda closed the door gently behind them.

“What happened?” Kallista whispered.

“What?” Torchay demanded. “What is it?”

“They took her hands.” Miray’s voice was ice, cracking. “The thrice-damned murderers took all their hands—the naitani’s—before they killed them.”

“Goddess.” Torchay’s hand drifted to the sword hilt locked in place over his hip, one of the twin Heldring-forged short swords he wore in the double scabbard on his back, as if he thought an assassin might lurk nearby.

“Kallandra is still alive,” Uskenda said.

“But she has no hands,” Miray retorted.

Kallista couldn’t suppress her shudder. Obed took one step out into the hall and emptied his stomach on the tile floor, then returned to guard as if nothing had happened. Kallista steeled herself against the horror that spun her head and roiled her own stomach, tightening her focus to Torchay standing in front of her. To his hand resting on his hip.

It emerged from the leather cuff holding one of his everpresent blades, which the sleeve of his tunic didn’t quite cover. Narrow, long-fingered and remarkably free of scars, his hand showed the calluses of his trade and the dirt from their rough journey to this place. His hand…

Kallandra had no hands.

Torchay caught Kallista’s hand, clasped it tight, saying nothing. What was there to be said? Almost all naitani needed their hands to use their magic. Bakers kneaded preservation magic into bread with their hands. Weavers wove waterproofing or longwearing strength into fabric with their hands. Healers laid their hands on the sick and injured to mend their hurts. And soldier naitani aimed their magic and sent it against the enemy with their hands.

Only farspeakers and sometimes truthsayers did not use their hands. Some farspeakers had to hold an object that had belonged to the one to whom they spoke, and only a few truthsayers—the Reinine was one—did not have to touch a person to know if they lied.

This was why all military naitani were required to wear gloves in public. Any covering over the hands interfered with the use of magic, and leather blocked all but that under the most exquisite control. Because military naitani held deadly magic, the public’s fear of what might happen if it escaped the naitan—and the occasional frightening incident—had brought about the glove regulation.

What would losing her hands do to Kallandra? To any naitan?

Kallista shuddered, squeezing Torchay’s hand tighter.

“The Reinine is waiting,” the general said. “We must go.”

“Yes.” Kallista let Torchay pull her to her feet. “Blessings of the One on you, Miray, and on your naitan.”

Miray looked up at her, his eyes widening as he seemed to realize just who offered these blessings. “Thank you, Godstruck. May it be as you say.”

She left the room at a normal pace, but couldn’t help feeling as if she scuttled like a bug running for the safety of darkness. Kallandra’s injuries were too unsettling, too horrifying. When Obed fell in beside her, Kallista reached for his hand, too, needing the feel of a hand in both of hers, needing to know she could still do it. He gripped her tight, as if he needed the same assurance.

“You don’t need your hands to do magic,” Torchay said quietly as they reached the first flight of stairs.

“Not for the ilian magic, the godmarked magic, no. I don’t think so.” She refused to release either hand as they started down the stairs, forcing them into an angled formation. “I used my hands to direct it, shape it, but not because I had to. It was just—they gave me something to see. But for my lightning, I need my hands.”

“They will not touch you,” Obed said. “I swear my life on it.”

“I swore mine ten years ago.” Torchay waited while they caught up with him on the second-floor landing. “We’ll keep you intact.”

“But who are they?” Kallista burst out. “What do they want?”

“To change the order of the universe.” Uskenda led them in the opposite direction from the entrance stairwell. “The rebellion was instigated by the Barbs, the Order of the Barbed Rose. BARINIRAB. They want—”

“They want to destroy West magic.” Kallista finished the sentence for her. “And I’m the only practitioner of West magic Adara’s seen in fifty years.”

The Order of the Barbed Rose was an ancient and heretical conspiracy shrouded in mystery, often fading from public knowledge for decades at a time, becoming no more than a whispered tale told round hearth fires. And always it tempted the people because of its enmity toward West magic.

West magic was about endings and mysteries, things that couldn’t be easily understood or explained by mortal beings. Though death’s ending was as much a part of life as birth, it frightened people. So did unexplainable mysteries—such as seeing things that had yet to happen or talking to the dead. And what people feared, they often wanted to destroy. The Barbs, whose influence had been slowly growing over the past fifty years or more, seemed to think that by destroying the magic, they could destroy death itself.

Kallista hadn’t been born with West magic. Her personal magic was of the North—the ability to cast lightning bolts from her hands. It had awakened just after puberty, as magic usually did in those gifted by the One. A person either had magic or they did not, and they only received one gift, which never changed.

A good half of Adara’s naitani held the practical South magic of hearth and home, magic that called the hearth’s fire or brewed better beer or built stronger tables. Most of the remaining naitani were divided between the East magic healers and growers, naitani who dealt with living things and beginnings, and the North naitani whose magic operated on inanimate objects and natural forces like wind or lightning. A very few were given the mysterious talents of the West.

But since that day on the walls of Ukiny a year ago, Kallista had been able to call magic from three of the four compass directions. That is, she’d been able to until the magic left her half a year later in the Tibran capital.

Merinda believed pregnant naitani lost their magic because using it was too hard on the mother. Kallista hoped that was so, and not because the magic somehow harmed the unborn child. She hadn’t seen any signs that either Rozite or Lorynda was less than perfect, but she’d used so much magic in those early months…. She thrust that worry away yet again. Her babies were born and she wanted her magic back.

General Uskenda opened a heavy barred door at the end of a twisting corridor to reveal another, heavier iron-bound door behind it. She knocked a rhythm with the hilt of her dagger, received a second rhythm in return and responded with a third before the sound of keys turning in locks came to them. The door cracked open and they stepped through into a well-manned guard chamber inside the palace wall.

Kallista had known there was direct access to the main healer’s hall from the palace, but had never known where it was. Now she did, and the thought disturbed her. As if she had been shown the way because she might need it in the near future.

“Whatever the Barb’s goals,” Uskenda said, accompanying Kallista down the stairs to the courtyards and gardens surrounding the palace buildings, “they did not make you one of their victims. A few others were spared—those who were deep in the countryside on assignment, or whose bodyguards were able to fight off the assassins until help arrived. That is our fortune and the rebels’ misfortune. We will need all the fortune the One shines our way, I fear.”

The general scowled. “Civil war is always an ugly thing, and they have taken much of the northern coast. They can get firearms from Tibre.”

“Maybe it won’t come to actual war.” Kallista knew she was grasping sand, but hope was all she had just now.

“It wouldn’t, if you could take out their leadership like you did before.”

Kallista held her tongue. Until her magic returned, she couldn’t light a candle with a spark, but no one needed to know that.

Nor did the world need to knew that she—and her ilian—had ended last year’s invasion in such a spectacular fashion. She couldn’t stop the rumors, but as long as no one knew for certain…

“Or if you could repeat what you did in Ukiny,” the general went on when Kallista didn’t respond, “that would make these rebellious idiots think twice.”

True. When every enemy in a two-hundred pace radius died in the space of a breath, it did tend to make those remaining rethink their plans. Kallista shifted her shoulders against another magic-born thing she didn’t like remembering. “These are Adarans. I hate to use such a weapon against our own, even if they are rebelling against the Reinine.”

“If it comes down to it—”

“I know. If things reach that point, we’ll have to use whatever we have. But we’re not there yet. Are we?”

“No.” Uskenda begrudged the word. “But if things don’t change, it could be soon.” She turned Kallista and her iliasti over to the guardpost at the east entrance to Winterhold Palace and departed.

A guard led them through chaotic corridors. Not only was half the land in rebellion against the duly-chosen Reinine and the other half apparently in Arikon seeking refuge or assistance, but it was also nearing time for the annual move from the snug, warm chambers of Winterhold to the cool, airy Summerglen Palace in another part of the enormous royal complex here in the center of Arikon. Trunks and crates lay stacked in the halls and servants bustled everywhere, weaving their way through the throngs of military.

Kallista craned her neck as they passed through one particular section of the palace, but she couldn’t see whether the courtyard where she’d first practiced her new magic—the one blown to bits by gunpowder—had been repaired. Only by the grace of the One God and Kallista’s poorly controlled new magic had she been able to shield herself, Obed and Stone from the blast.

Palace windows stood open today to let in the warmish breeze. Doubtless a few days earlier, they’d been closed tight against the chill rain that had frozen the travelers on their entire journey south. Except for the overflow of soldiers and the organized chaos of the move, court looked much the same as the last time Kallista was here.

Courtiers dressed in eye-blinking color combinations milled about vying for notice and position. The younger reckless set still swaggered in their half capes with their short-cropped hair and their fancy fencing swords at their sides, putting on a show. Viyelle—prinsipella, now courier—had been one of them. Was she still?

Serysta Reinine waited in the war room behind her audience chamber. The Winterhold audience chamber was vastly different from the one in Summerglen that Kallista had passed through on her first meeting with the Reinine. This chamber was all warm dark woods and cozy tapestries meant to give at least the illusion of warmth, but the war room was much the same. Save for the extra bodies. It was crowded with dozens more army officers and prinsipi, all demanding attention at once.

One of the Reinine’s bodyguards noticed Kallista and her companions and murmured a word in his charge’s ear. The Reinine turned away, giving the room her back.

“Thank you for your concerns.” High Steward Huryl spoke. Kallista hadn’t seen him until that moment, but she instantly recognized that thin voice with its falsely humble tone. “The Reinine will take them all under advisement. Thank you.”

Spreading his multicolored arms wide in their fluttering stripes of black, gold, blue, green and white, he herded the room’s occupants before him. They complained, especially the prinsipi, but they went. Huryl followed them out. Kallista glanced back to be sure they were truly gone and recoiled. The High Steward was just slipping out the door, looking back into the room, his face filled with virulent hatred.

The glimpse was for but a second, before the door closed on him. Had she seen it, or only imagined it? And if she had seen that hatred, who was it for? Huryl’s glance had raked the entire room, and Goddess knew, Kallista had not gotten on well with the man during her previous sojourn in the palace complex. Maybe his hatred was for her alone. The Reinine had promoted him to his present high position. Why would he hate her? If indeed Kallista had seen what she thought.

Torchay touched her arm. “K’lista? She’s waiting.”

Right. Kallista moved into the room, stopped well away from the bodyguards, put her right leg forward and swept into a low bow. “My Reinine, you have need of me?”

“Get up, get up.” The faint chime of metal on metal accompanied Serysta Reinine’s brisk movement away from the windows.

As Kallista rose from her bow, her gaze fell on the low shoes and snug black stockings of the nearest bodyguard and the slim gold bands around his ankles. Two on the left, two right. Kallista hid her surprise and speculation, but she couldn’t stop her mind from spinning.

She recognized the man from her previous visit. He’d been in the Reinine’s service for some time even then, and he hadn’t been married. The Reinine’s bodyguards did not usually marry. The other bodyguard, much younger and unfamiliar, wore no anklet. But that one did. Kallista shot a quick glance at the Reinine, at the three bangles chiming softly together on her left wrist and the one on her right.

Serysta Reinine waved the bangles, flashing them imperiously. “Yes, I married my bodyguards. Yes, I know it was of no political benefit whatsoever. No, I do not care.”

Kallista bowed again, deeper this time. “Far be it from me to question, my Reinine. I married my own bodyguard. I know the…bonds that can grow over the years.”

When she rose this time—was the Reinine blushing? Surely not.

“Please, be seated. All of you.” Serysta gestured to the chairs set before the room’s hearth as she chose a high, wingbacked seat for herself. Kallista took the chair nearest the Reinine, and the four men ranged themselves about them, standing.

Serysta glowered at all the bodyguards. “Sit down. Please.”

Her ilias—the stocky man with short-cropped iron-gray hair—answered for both, shaking his head “no” without speaking. Kallista glanced at her own iliasti. “It’s no use arguing. They get even more stubborn and protective once you’ve married them.”

Serysta sighed, still glowering. “I’ve noticed.”

Her gray-haired ilias gazed at her blandly. They spoke a whole conversation without words before Serysta jerked her eyes away to stare at her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath. “Has your magic returned, Naitan?”

Kallista’s insides knotted up. “No, my Reinine, it has not.” She lifted her gloved hand. “This is simply regulation. And protection from the cold. I am most heartily sorry.”

“As am I, Naitan. We could use your talents now.” Serysta lounged back in her chair, her gaze on the low fire, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. “Will it return, do you know?”

“I believe so.” Kallista quelled a brief surge of panic, mentally stomping down the lid of the box where it had been penned and throwing a strap around it. Then another. She had to trust that the One would keep the others safe. They were needed.

“Is something wrong, Naitan?”

Kallista attempted a smile. “As you suggested, we sent the rest of our ilian to safety with the children. We’ve never been separated like this since we were bound together. It is an…adjustment. Especially since we are bound with magic as well as oaths.” She paused to clear her throat.

“My Reinine, we sent them off before we knew of these assassinations, or of the army’s defections. Two babies, two women—one of them pregnant and near her time—and two fighters, one of them blind. If I could beg of you a troop escort—”

“Ah, Naitan.” The Reinine’s eyes were filled with a sad sympathy. “There are no troops to send. None we can trust. They will be safer alone and anonymous. Truly.”

Kallista wanted to ask again, wanted to beg on her knees, but she didn’t want to risk the kind of reaction she’d gotten from the general. “Then may I ask a farspeaker send a message to Korbin, to family there? They can send a party to meet them.”

“Yes, of course. Write out your message and I will have it sent immediately.” The Reinine gestured at the table between them littered with papers, inkwells and quills.

Kallista scratched out a brief message and the Reinine’s younger bodyguard passed it to a servant outside the door. The message would go by farspeaker to Korbin’s capital and from there by courier to Torchay’s family, but it should reach them no later than tomorrow. Weeks sooner than a message could arrive over land.

She took a ragged breath and looked up at the Reinine. Kallista had never fully answered her question. It was time she did.

“The bonds of magic are still there,” she said. “But at the moment, I cannot use them. The fact that they exist makes me believe that the magic will return. When? I cannot say. Merinda Healer said that because I had twins, it could take longer for things to return to normal.”

Serysta obviously bit back a curse. “Is there anything to hurry the process along? We need your particular magic rather badly. The few military naitani we have left are scattered and will take time to bring in safely. That blind Tibran you brought back seems to have some skill at foresight, but he’s so afraid of his gift—”

For a moment, Kallista was confused. Fox had no magic of his own, except for that uncanny ability to sense his surroundings. Then she remembered. The boy they’d rescued, the one they’d brought with them from their trip to the Tibran capital. He’d been a casteless “witch hound,” used by the Ruler caste to sniff out users of forbidden magic. They’d taken his eyes first. Fox couldn’t see from his eyes. Gweric had none to see with.

“How is he?” Kallista had left him with her family in Turysh so her birth mother could work her healing on Gweric’s feet, broken by his Tibran masters to keep him from running away. When he was well enough, he’d been brought to Arikon, to the naitani academies for training.

“Well enough, I suppose. Getting around better than I would have believed. What can you do to speed up the magic?” Serysta refused to be distracted.

“I don’t know. I’ve consulted with all my sources. They don’t know either.” Kallista’s only real source of information was the last godstruck naitan so blessed by the One. Belandra had lived a thousand years ago, but she came visiting from time to time to advise her successor. Belandra, however, had been older when the Goddess struck her. She’d already had all her children, and none of them had been twins.

Serysta Reinine’s lips thinned as she pressed them tight together in an uncharacteristic show of impatience.

“What is it you need?” Kallista asked. “Perhaps there is some other way we can provide it?”

“I need to know what these rebels are doing. I need to know their goals, where they will strike, what their numbers are—everything there is to know.”

“Don’t you have spies?” Kallista knew she did. Uskenda would not have left so necessary a thing undone.

“I did. I have sent six persons to infiltrate the rebels. Somehow, they found each one and sent them back in pieces.”

“Goddess,” Kallista murmured, not missing the grim looks the four bodyguards exchanged. “Did your people have magic?”

“One had a small illusion gift. Otherwise, no.”

“You’ve no magic just now either, Captain,” Torchay reminded her.

“The others were all sent to infiltrate?” Kallista got the Reinine’s nod of confirmation. “What about observers?”

“None sent specifically for that. We’ve been gathering information from the troops coming in, but that’s all. So far.”

“We could—”

“There are others with those skills,” Torchay interrupted. “Those who could do a better job without risking you. No one else can do what you can.”

“Not even me.” She reached for her magic, stretching as high and wide as she could. And found nothing.

“It’ll come,” he said. “Likely the more you fret, the longer it will take.”

Kallista made a face. “Likely.”

“Your sergeant is right,” the Reinine said. “We’re not yet at the point of desperation. Pray the One we never reach it. There is another matter to discuss, however.”

“Of course, my Reinine.” Kallista bowed as best she could while seated.

“Before you left here with your godmarked iliasti, I sent word across the country that anyone with a similar marking should be brought to Arikon.”

“I remember.” She refrained from touching the back of her neck where she and her ilian had been marked. Red and raised, something like a birthmark, her mark resembled a complete Compass Rose, the symbol of the One. The marks on the others were a rose alone, without the compass points reaching from it.

She’d once believed the godmarks in the old stories to be symbolic rather than literal, just as the stories themselves were some allegorical fable, rather than historic fact. They’d all learned otherwise.

Now, Kallista’s insides tied double knots. “You’re reminding me of this because another marked one has turned up.”

Serysta Reinine’s smile held kindness beneath the cynicism. “As it happens, yes.” She lifted a hand and the younger bodyguard returned to the door, opened it and murmured to someone outside. They waited.

Kallista’s knee jumped in a quick, jittery beat, until she noticed and stilled it. The silence stretched her nerves taut, as if someone should be telling her something she ought to know, but wasn’t, and that lack of knowledge would blow up in their faces like the gunpowder in the practice courtyard.

Finally the door opened again. Iron shackles rattled in the audience chamber as the wearer shuffled across the polished wood floor. Guards entered first, then a wild-looking man chained hand to foot. His tangled hair fell well past his shoulders, blending with a ragged beard. It matched the dirty rags he wore. This was the godmarked man?

Kallista stood, wondering whether she was appalled for his sake or her own. Did she want this man in her ilian?

“Is he so mad that he must be treated like this?” Torchay moved between Kallista and the chained man.

“The mark has affected him profoundly, yes.” Serysta Reinine remained seated, tips of her fingers tented together. “However, he wears chains for another reason. He has come here from Katreinet Prison.”

She crossed her legs and swung her foot in a leisurely fashion. “Do you not recognize him?”

Kallista stepped forward, next to Torchay, which was as close as he would allow her to approach. Obed glided a few steps more, placing himself nearer the prisoner. She studied the man, tried to picture him with his beard shaved and his hair neat. He looked up at her, the blue of his eyes blazing bright as one of her sparks.

Then intelligence flared in those eyes, sharp and clear, and she knew. She breathed his name. “Joh.”

CHAPTER THREE

The prisoner in the Reinine’s war room straightened to attention and bowed as formally as his chains would allow. “Captain.”

Joh Suteny had been the lieutenant in charge of the guards escorting Stone as a prisoner of war to Arikon last year. He had stood as witness to the wedding that bound their original four together. And he had been the one to hide the gunpowder inside the broken gargoyle in the courtyard where she practiced her magic with Obed and Stone.

He had fired the sparking trail that exploded it and nearly killed them. He had confessed to his own actions but refused to lead them farther in the plot. And now he claimed to be marked by the One?

The odd rumbling Kallista had been hearing for some moments erupted from a growl into a roar, pouring out of Torchay. She jumped toward Joh—Torchay had come close to killing him the day of the explosion. But Torchay launched himself in the other direction, at Serysta Reinine.

“Torchay, no!” Kallista spun, too late to catch him. The Reinine’s bodyguard grappled him, having to grab hold again and again as Torchay kept slipping free. The other guard moved to help and Obed stepped as if to prevent him.

“Stop it.” Kallista’s hand on Obed’s chest held him still. She sprang at the fighting men, inserting herself between them before blades could be drawn. She shoved hard at Torchay. He tried to push her out of the way, but the attempt disengaged him from the Reinine’s man and Kallista was able to move him farther away.

“What is wrong with you?” She snarled the words, trying to keep a semblance of discretion. “Attacking the Reinine? Is madness catching?”

Torchay’s eyes still failed to focus on her. He panted with his rage, fists closing, opening, closing again. “She’ll no’ force that on us. Pentivas or no, we’ll no’ be makin’ that one ilias. I don’t care if she’s the Goddess Almighty.”

Kallista glanced over her shoulder. The Reinine still sat, seemingly unconcerned, in her high-backed red velvet chair. Her bodyguards flanked her, close enough to touch, but they held their places.

“Obed,” Kallista said. “Go see if he has the mark.”

His eyes flashed dark fire, but he bowed obedience and strode toward the chained man who was trembling so hard now that his bonds set up a faint rattle. Obed pushed the prisoner’s head forward, brushed the matted tangles away from his neck and looked to see what might be there. A moment later, he met Kallista’s gaze and nodded, once, slowly.

So. Yet another problem to be solved. Kallista took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

“We will not have him,” Torchay said through clenched teeth.

Before anyone else could speak, Joh did, startling them all. “Is that your choice to make?”

Kallista held Torchay beside her with just a touch this time. “It is all of ours, his as much as anyone’s.”

“Is it?” Joh said. “Who made the first choice, when you took a Tibran as ilias?”

Torchay glanced back at the Reinine, but Kallista shook her head, finally following where Joh was trying to lead her.

“It wasn’t the Reinine,” she said. “It was the One who chose to accept what we offered. The One bound us together before any ceremony was performed. Who are we to reject the gifts She brings us?”

“Do we no’ also have the gift of free will? The right to choose where we go, what we do and who we do it with?” Torchay’s expression was as closed as his mind.

Kallista sighed. She didn’t yet know what she herself thought about this new situation. What with the hard riding of the past week, she hadn’t truly dealt with the separation from half her family and the absence of her ten-week-old babies, much less the concept that rebel assassins wanted her death. She’d faced death before—both on the battlefield and directed particularly at her.

Which of course was the problem, since the hand that had directed it in particular belonged to the man standing before her in chains. She needed time. More than she would be given, likely, but she would take what she could get.

“My Reinine.” She turned and bowed to the ruler of all Adara, remaining at a distance to keep the royal ilias and his fellow bodyguard happy. “Would you allow me time and the space for privacy? I must confer with my iliasti. While I do that, perhaps—” She paused to choose her words. “Perhaps the prisoner would benefit from a bath and a shave, more suitable clothing. Then, if you will permit, I should like a chance to speak privately with this man, to investigate his claim. I think it a thing done best without an audience.”

“You’ll no’ be meetin’ him alone.” Torchay’s north mountains accent was as thick as she’d ever heard it, an indication of the extreme emotion possessing him.

Kallista turned her head a fraction, addressing him quietly. “No, of course not. This is a matter for the ilian. I want you both there.”

“Do I need to order guards present to protect Suteny?” the Reinine asked.

Now Kallista faced Torchay head on. “Must I order you to hold back your hand? Will you, if I do?”

He did not look happy about it, but he nodded, a single abrupt jerk of his head. “Aye. I’ll no’ kill him—unless he makes the first move.”

“Fair enough,” the Reinine said.

Kallista looked then at Obed. She knew better than to assume he would keep any promise Torchay made. “Will you swear to the same?”

His expression bland, Obed inclined his head in agreement, a lock of black hair sliding forward on his face.

“Your word, Obed,” she insisted. “I want to hear you speak it.”

A tiny smile curved his lips and he bowed deeper. “I will not kill this man, unless he makes the first move. This I swear to my Chosen One.”

“Agreed.” Serysta Reinine came to her feet and addressed the guards officer. “Have a servant direct you to the palace barbers. When your prisoner is presentable, take him to the Noonday Suite in Daybright Tower. I assume, Captain, that your previous quarters will be acceptable. Since we will all be moving to Summerglen in another few days, I see no sense in locating you here only to uproot you so soon.”

Kallista swept into her best court bow. “Thank you, my Reinine. Your generosity is gratefully accepted.” She bowed again, this time to the bodyguard mate of her ruler. “Thank you, Reinas, for your restraint and for the life of my ilias. I apologize for his foolish and reckless behavior.”

The gray-haired man inclined his head. “It’s not your apology to make. But for the thanks—you’re welcome.”

His face flushed red, Torchay stepped forward and bowed stiffly, head almost touching his outstretched knee. “My apologies. I was…overcome.”

The older man did not respond, leaving Torchay bent in his awkward bow, until the Reinine spoke his name. “Keldrey.”

He exchanged a look with her before relenting. “Apology accepted. But—” he went on as Torchay straightened “—if it happens again, I’ll cut out your heart.”

Torchay met the man’s gaze without blinking, giving back stare for stare. Finally he tipped his head in a slight acknowledgment. Keldrey did the same. Torchay spun on his heel and urged Kallista from the room following the already departed prisoner. Obed waited until they passed him before whirling in a dancelike move to act as rear guard.

“What was that all about?” Kallista thumped Torchay on the arm when the door shut behind them. “She is the Reinine of all Adara, not some backwoods naitan with a grass-green bodyguard.”

Torchay shrugged. “A bodyguard’s a bodyguard, whoever the body to be guarded.”

She thumped him again. “We do not have time for you to be playing ‘whose is bigger?’ games. And if you ever do something that stupid again, I will let him cut out your heart.”

He gave her a look that so obviously meant “We will see whose heart is removed,” and she thumped him once more.

Servants were still whisking dust covers from the elaborate white and gold furniture in the suite when they arrived. Every piece Kallista had ordered removed during their previous sojourn, clearing the first two-thirds of the long central room for a practice area, had been replaced, requiring them to thread their way through the obstacles.

“Perhaps we should have paid a visit to the palace barbers as well.” Kallista stripped off her grubby overtunic, letting it lie where it fell. “I scarcely feel human.” She plucked at the damp shirt beneath. She didn’t think she’d been dry since they left home.

“Servants will bring baths,” Obed said. “I requested it before they departed.”

“Bless you.” She touched his cheek, stretching up for a kiss he ducked away from. He disguised it as a bow, graceful as a dancer, but he could not disguise the truth. He did not want her kiss.

Hurt, she turned away, found Torchay there as always, and kissed him. But that was not fair to him, to give kisses because they were refused elsewhere. She rested her forehead in the curve between his neck and shoulder, taking comfort in the arms around her until the tension in him broke through her pout.

Kallista tried to move back, but Torchay’s arms tightened, holding her in place. His hand moved, cupping the back of her head, and he turned his face to nuzzle her ear. “This has to end, Kallista,” he murmured for her only. “We’ve arrived. We don’t need his sword. If he hurts you again, I’ll kill him.”

“You can’t.” She kept her voice low despite her need to scream at something. Obed’s behavior offended Torchay most, because he knew her best, saw better how it hurt her, cared more that it did. “He won’t. He hasn’t.”

“Has he no’?” He softened his grip enough she could see his face, turned toward Obed with angry challenge in his eyes.

“We need him, Torchay.”

“The One sent him. She can send another.”

“You think She will? If we destroy Her gift?” She worked her hands free and clasped his face between them, forcing his gaze away from Obed to her. “Do not turn your anger at this…this mess onto one who bears no fault for it.”

“I blame him only for his own faults.” Torchay tried to lift his head, to glare at Obed again, but Kallista held him with a touch he could easily break.

“Your anger is out of proportion with this fault.” She brought his face down to hers and kissed him.

No longer seeking comfort or offering thanks, this was a kiss of desire rekindled and passion delayed. She scuffed her hands through the week-old growth along his jaw, savoring the bristly softness against her palms. He opened his mouth over hers and she welcomed him in, needing the taste and feel of him like she needed the very air to breathe. His hand at her waist slipped lower, cupped her bottom and brought her in hard against his arousal, thick and straight and all for her.

Kallista’s moan nearly drowned out the distant sound of a genteel knocking at the door. It registered only when Torchay set her away from him. “Too much demands our attention now,” he said.

The quick, gasping rate of his breath eased Kallista’s frustration. A bit. Most new mothers did not wait so long before welcoming their mates back to their beds. Because Kallista had borne twins, and because her magic was so strange and so strong, Merinda had advised caution. So Kallista had followed the healer’s advice.

Now, caution drowned in a flood of passion and she was in no mood to resurrect it. She needed this, needed to know soul deep that what family remained to her here was indeed hers as she was theirs. And if Obed didn’t want her, Torchay did. But he was right, damn it. Now was not the moment.

Her own breathing finally under control, Kallista glanced up, saw Obed following the teams of servants bearing tin hip baths and willed him to look at her. Maybe the magic was returning, for he did what she wished. Or maybe the guilt she read in his eyes the few seconds he met her gaze made him look.

Why guilt? Did he believe he should want her kisses? He had wanted them—wanted her—once with a fervor that pulsed so powerfully through the magic linking them it had come near driving her insane. What had changed? Could it be changed back? Did she have any right to do so?

Torchay ordered the tubs set up in three of the small private sleeping rooms off to each side of the main parlor. A wise decision. If they’d bathed together in the same room, Kallista feared little bathing would have been accomplished. On her own, she washed quickly and efficiently, using the extra can of water to rinse her hair of soap. Dressed again in fresh clothes provided by the ever efficient Torchay, she was the first to emerge, her hair spread across her shoulders to dry.

She notified the servant waiting outside the suite door that her bath was ready to be removed and returned to find Torchay, clean and freshly shaved, if a bit crumpled around the edges. She was no better. Saddlebags did not keep clothing in the best of press. He drew her like one bespelled, but the only spell was the man himself. Fortunately, Obed joined them a moment later or she might have shocked the servants. Certain things called for the privacy of the ilian.

The last tub had just been carried out when another knocking, this one far from genteel, pounded at the door. Likely the guard had been waiting for this moment. Kallista caught Torchay’s gaze, then Obed’s, silently reminding them one at a time of the promises they had made. Then she called out. “Come.”

The door flew open and the guard lieutenant filled the opening, a sturdy young woman with a square jaw, taut now with disapproval. “The prisoner, as ordered, Captain. My men will remain here at the door.” Obviously she disapproved of leaving her prisoner unguarded.

“Outside the door, if you please, Lieutenant.” Kallista tried a smile, but when that had no effect, she put on her captain’s face. “Produce your prisoner.”

The lieutenant saluted and stepped back, vacating the opening. With a rattle of chains, Joh Suteny was shoved stumbling through the doorway. The ornately carved door slammed shut behind him with a noticeable “on-your-head-be-it” boom.

Kallista could only stare. Joh’s rags were gone, replaced with…nothing. He wasn’t quite naked, she realized once she managed to blink. He’d been given a loincloth, the sort worn by the poorest of the poor beneath their ragged tunics when summer grew too hot for trousers. It didn’t cover much.

He stood motionless there at the far end of the room and let her stare. Kallista had always thought Joh a fine-looking specimen of Adaran manhood, but she’d never suspected him of hiding this sculptured perfection beneath his uniform. She took a deep breath. If the One had indeed marked him, as Obed had verified, Her appreciation of male beauty had not diminished any over the past year.

“Come.” Kallista beckoned him closer.

Hobbled by his shackles, Joh did as he was bid. Kallista sensed more than saw Torchay’s tension and quieted him with a touch. Joh’s hair, beginning to dry from its washing, streamed from the dropped peak at his forehead back over his shoulders nearly to his waist. He’d worn it in a queue before, but one three times longer than an enlisted man’s short regulation braid. The prison had obviously not required him to cut it.

His hair was brown, a rich color lighter than Kallista’s own near-black, and much darker than the pale brown left behind after Stone had cut away all his gold fluff. The warm shade somehow made his eyes seem a brighter blue.

The barber had removed his beard, revealing the clean angles of Joh’s face, exposing the crisp edge of the mouth that had so often before been pressed into tight disapproval. Now, his lips pressed themselves together, but with some other emotion Kallista could not read. His face was the same, but different—more lines, or perhaps the same lines carved deeper. He seemed somehow thinner, though his defined musculature mocked that thought. Still, he seemed…as if all the unessential bits had been burned away leaving behind pure Joh.

“Far enough,” Torchay’s voice growled out.

Joh halted, his chains rattling to rest. Kallista heaved a little sigh, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at Torchay’s overprotective attitude. Joh stood a dozen paces away, too far for her to see any mark. Too far even for comfortable conversation. But she could change that when the time came.

“Sit down.” She gestured at the gilded seating surrounding them.

“There.” Torchay pointed to a high-backed chair upholstered all over in a pale yellow velvet. Kallista remembered it as deep and soft and well nigh impossible to get out of in a hurry. A good choice.

Joh looked at the chair and back at Torchay as if asking whether he was truly meant to sit in such luxury. Kallista nodded, smiled, turning her hand toward the chair in invitation. Slowly, hampered by his chains, hesitantly, Joh shuffled toward the chair and lowered himself into it. When he was seated, Kallista strode forward, ignoring Torchay’s protest, slipping past his outstretched hand, and sat in the chair opposite. She left the two chairs on either side for her ever-vigilant bodyguards.

Neither of them sat. Almost as one, they moved the chairs back out of the way and stood, bright flame and dark, between Kallista and the bound, near-naked, oh-so-dangerous prisoner.

She waited until Joh met her eyes. “Tell me what happened.”

He shuttered the bright blue of his gaze as if against pain and drew in a breath through his fine, straight nose. With that fortification, he looked at her again.

“I did not know the powder would explode.” His voice was deep, intense, laden with emotion. Kallista could almost taste it, reaching with absent magic in a vain attempt to drink it down. His mark pulled at her. This was not what she meant him to tell, but apparently he needed to.

“What did you think, then?” Torchay’s voice held scorn, rage. “That it would carry them off to sweet dreams of paradise?”

Joh didn’t look away, focusing only on Kallista. “I was told it would heal you.”

“Of what?” Torchay spoke again, but Joh ignored him, spoke over the interruption.

“The vapors from the powder’s burning would enable an East healer to free you of the hold West magic had on you.”

Now both her men reacted with derision. Kallista ignored them, just as Joh did.

“I was a fool,” he said, voice gone bitter. “I couldn’t understand then what it meant to be marked by the One. I was a child frightened of the dark with a head full of half-truths and whispered lies, and I let myself believe them. Because I was afraid.”

Kallista watched him, trying to read the flickers behind his steady gaze, and she waited. Often, silence would bring her more than words.

“And I was angry,” Joh said so quietly she had to strain to hear. “I—I liked you. But when you married the Tibran di pentivas—”

“At the Reinine’s order.” Kallista spoke as softly as he.

“But back then, I felt betrayed.” His mouth twisted in a tiny smile. “Emotions seldom bow to reason. I admired you for treating me as you would any other officer. I had thought you free of the prejudice that sees a man as nothing but passions and brute strength. And then—”

“I proved you wrong.”

“It seemed so then. But I never wished you harm. We were officers in the same army. Sedili-in-arms. It was easier to believe that West magic had twisted you somehow. I wanted to think the powder’s smoke would—would return you to the captain I admired. I burned some, earlier, to test it, and that was all it did—make sparks and smoke. I never dreamed…”

“Where did you get it? The powder?” Torchay had not softened any. Kallista would not have expected him to.

“From a Barinirab master,” Joh replied without hesitation. “I never saw his face. He disguised his voice. He told me these things, that the smoke would heal and not harm.”

“You are one of these Barbs?” Obed shifted, hand coming to rest on the hilt of his saber.

“I was.”

Steel appeared in a tattooed hand so quickly Kallista did not see where he’d drawn it from. “Obed, you swore to me. He has not offered harm.”

She knew Torchay could move and attack with that lightning speed, but she had not known it of Obed. Where had a merchant-trader needed such skills?

Kallista touched his arm and reluctantly Obed tucked the knife in the sash around his waist. It had not been there before, she knew.

“You no longer belong to the Order of the Barbed Rose?” she asked.

“I will not be part of a group that manipulates its own people into doing murder.” Joh’s eyes held the anger his voice did not.

“But you won’t tell who gave you the powder,” Torchay said.

“I do not know.” Joh pushed the words through gritted teeth. “I was a Renunciate. Only Initiates and above meet the masters without masks.”

“Renunciate? What is that? Tell me about the Order.” Kallista needed whatever information he could give her. She’d never known anyone who admitted membership. The Order kept many secrets, not least, who they were.

“There are nine levels—BARINIRAB—beginning with a ceremony they call ‘Birth.’ Then Apprenticeship, Renunciation, Initiation, Naishar or service, Institution, Rejuvenation, Ascension and Birth again, to a state of unity with the One. The man I met wore the badge of a Rejuvenate on his cloak. I was only at the third level—second, really, for the first is just the ceremony.”

“When did you join? How?”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “It was not long after I was promoted to lieutenant. Some of the other officers sounded me out in discussions about West magic. I was curious. I wanted to learn more, and when they offered the chance to join, I took it. What I learned did not seem…evil. And I did not learn much. That was reserved for Initiates. As a Renunciate, I did not—do not know enough to be a danger to them.”

Joh paused before speaking again, holding Kallista’s gaze. “I wish I did. I would tell you all.”

She smiled and tucked her hands beneath her thighs to keep from reaching across the gap to pat his knee. “You will. Every single thing you know and some you don’t realize you do.”

“Brown cloaks with red linings.” Obed spoke, startling Kallista. He fingered the hilt of his dagger. “Are they of this order?”

Joh frowned. “You saw them? Men—women—wearing cloaks like that?”

“In the mountains, on our way here,” Kallista said.

“The middle ranks—Initiate, Naishan, Institute—wear the brown. But I never saw them in public. Why would they be now?”

“Because they’re no longer hiding their goals? Perhaps they were hunting us as they hunted the other naitani.” Kallista still felt the horror of knowing what they had done.

“Hunting her,” Torchay said. “The rest of us were just in their way.”

Joh looked as if hell had opened before him and devils were pouring out. Perhaps they were. A single demon had caused all the trouble from the north last year. Was there another? One causing Adarans to turn on each other? Kallista needed her magic back. Now. Possibly Joh could give it to her, but she wasn’t ready to find out yet.

“Tell me how you were marked,” she said.

“How is it that you can sit here calmly and talk with us?” Torchay added. “Why haven’t you lost your wits?”

Last year, Stone’s magic-driven urgency to reach Kallista had him half-leaping from boats or falling into convulsions. Fox had likely been much the same, for he remembered little of his journey to them.

“I don’t know.” Joh shifted in his too-soft chair, chains clacking together. “I believe that I did. I don’t remember much of the trip here. And my hands—” He held them up, showing injuries he might have acquired trying to dig through prison walls. Stone’s hands had borne similar marks when he’d been brought to Arikon and Kallista. “It could be I am rational now in her presence because I was marked not so long ago.”

“When?” Kallista glowered at Torchay to keep him quiet this time. “What happened?”

“Just over a week ago. The guards put us back in the cells after breakfast instead of herding us out into the courtyard because of some disturbance in the countryside. I was reading the Meditations of Orestes and praying. There was—I can only call it joy, but that isn’t a tenth of what I felt.” His expression glowed, making Kallista shiver with its overflow.

He shook himself, recovered his thoughts. “And next I knew, I found myself clawing at the walls. It took the prison governor a few days to learn of it, and several more days to bring me here. And a few more for you to arrive.”

“How long ago did it happen?” Torchay asked. “What day?”

Joh shook his head. “I lost so much time—”

“Guess.”

“It—it might have been—It was a Graceday. Maybe the twenty-sixth or-seventh of Terris?”

A chill ran down her back as she met Torchay’s gaze. “That disturbance in the countryside. Do you know what it was?”

“No.” Joh looked from one to the other of them, fear growing in his expression. “Why?”

“The rebels struck throughout Adara on Terris twenty-seventh, assassinating naitani and military officers. The day the One marked you.” Kallista took a deep breath.

She could not put it off longer. Likely should not have delayed this much. The interlude given her to enjoy simply being ilias and mother had ended. She could not stretch it longer by wishing. She was who she was and could not be other. The signs that Joh had truly been marked by the One were all there. It only required her touch to know.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kallista slid from her chair to her knees. “Give me your hand.”

“Captain, no.” Joh struggled to rise and Torchay clapped a hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. “Do not kneel before me.”

“If I fall, I’d rather be closer to the ground.” She raised an eyebrow. “Surely you remember what could happen when our hands touch.” He’d been there for both Stone’s and Obed’s first touch.

“I—yes.” He sank back into his velvet prison, his whole body tense with nervous anticipation. “What—”

“I don’t know what will happen. Perhaps nothing. My magic has not yet returned since the twins were born.”

“Twins?” Joh whispered in shock while she went on.

“It could be this will wake it. Or not.” She smiled, shifting to one side, off her knees. “I can promise, whatever happens, it won’t hurt.”

Joh did not seem to believe her.

“Torchay, let go of him,” she said.

He looked at her, expression bland. “I’d rather not. You lost the magic the same day I was marked. I want to know what the others know.”

“There’s plenty of time for that.”

“I’m tired of waiting.”

She didn’t think that was his only, or even his primary, reason for keeping his grip on the chained man, but she let it go. Arguing him down would take time she didn’t think they had. “Joh, give me your hand.”

With a faint rattle of the chains holding them together, Joh extended both hands and opened one out flat. He turned his head away slightly, nostrils flaring as if he faced something terrifying. Magic could terrify, she supposed, if one were not used to it. Hoping her smile looked reassuring, Kallista took his hand in hers. And nothing happened.

She wanted to scream in frustration. Her fingers tightened, squeezing his hand. She took his other hand in her empty one, silently shouting for the magic, Wake up! Do something!

And it slammed into her with a force that brought her high on her knees, bowing her backward in an impossible arc as she screamed with the near-forgotten pleasure of it.

The magic swept every inch of her, a storm scouring her end-to-end with delight, blasting open paths that had withered shut over the winter. Creating new ones.

Dragging her in its wake, the magic roared back into Joh. As Kallista tumbled toes to nose in the wave, there was a sort of wrenching, of something twisting aside or tearing open, and Joh cried out. Goddess, she’d forgotten.

She reached for him to soothe his pain and he was there, with her, riding the magic. She tasted his fear, breathed in his desperation, his need to make things right. She saw the colors of his soul, though she couldn’t have matched them to any tints she knew—colors of loyalty, passion, loneliness, honesty, deep and agonizing remorse….

Kallista felt the magic swelling. Something new. She caught Joh tight, wrapping him in her unseen embrace, whispering wordless, voiceless reassurance as the magic whipped across the skin-to-skin contact into Torchay.

He cried out, knees buckling, though Kallista thought he somehow managed to stay upright. The magic lashed them with pleasure, tearing sounds from three throats, but it had not finished with them. Kallista reached out as Torchay spun past, brought him into the web and knotted him there, adding his booming strength to the harmony they made as the magic swelled yet again.

It leapt across the gap to Obed, increasing the pleasure fourfold with the addition of the fourth. His shout drowned them all out and he fell to his knees. Kallista barely had time to bind him into their knotted chorus before the magic expanded again, spinning outward until she thought she would leave pieces of her soul scattered across all Adara.

She fought to keep the men whole. They were helpless and vulnerable without magic of their own and she shielded them with layers of herself.

Then the magic crashed into yet another, and Kallista tasted Fox. He was cold, worried and falling to his knees in snow as he shoved his fist in his mouth to stifle the shout of delight, but he was alive. Was he in danger? Kallista had no time to tell, barely enough time to pull him safely into the bonds, before the magic poured out of Fox and into Stone. Who fell full length on his face in the snow and shouted loud enough to wake the dead.

Laughing, Kallista scooped him up, wove him into place with the others, ready now as the magic rolled on to find Aisse. She was sleeping, somewhere dark and smoky but safe, seeming to think she dreamed when the magic first caught her up. She woke only as it spun them tighter in the ecstasy it made.

Kallista held on fiercely, twining their separate selves into a glorious whole—Torchay’s strength, Obed’s truth, Fox’s order, Stone’s joy, Aisse’s faith, Kallista’s will…Joh’s vision. All her marked ones were there.

The magic pushed them, pulled, whirled and tumbled them as it rose to explosive heights. Again and again, Kallista hauled it back, building the power and the pleasure with each check of its escape while it bounced again through each one of them. Her pleasure fed theirs, which fed back to her and into the magic which then spilled back through each of them to push the cycle higher still.

“Goddess!” Someone screamed it, or maybe all of them did. And the magic exploded out of Kallista’s control.

It blasted through them in a seven-fold sexual climax before it erupted into a cloud of glittering fallout visible to every naitan in Adara who might chance to look toward Arikon. Then it drifted slowly down, folding back into its separate homes.

Kallista blinked, alone inside her body again, and found herself seated on the floor, her arms draped across Joh’s naked legs, her face buried in his lap. Torchay sat slumped against her, weighing her down, and Obed lay curled on his side a short distance away. She shoved at Torchay and he shifted his weight off her, leaning bonelessly against the chair holding Joh.

“Beware of what you ask for,” Torchay mumbled through lips that didn’t seem to be working quite right.

“I asked for nothing.” Obed sounded bitter, his voice choked with some hidden emotion. He’d told her more than once that he wanted nothing to do with sex by magic.

Kallista wanted to go to him, to bring him closer, but she couldn’t move from her spot. She stretched out her leg, touched him with her bare toes, and he flinched away.

“I’ll kill him.” Torchay lifted a hand toward the sword hilt over his shoulder, then let it fall again. “Later. When I’ve rested up a bit.”

“Don’t kill him just yet, please.” Kallista rolled her head to one side and Joh gasped. The chains rattled and she realized his hands were tangled in her hair. He started to pull them back, but Kallista managed to close a hand over his wrist and prevent it.

“I hope Fox and Stone manage to get themselves out of the snow before they get frostbite,” she said, her mind not quite turning all its gears yet. They were alive. They were safe.

“What are they doin’ in the snow anyway?” Torchay raised his hand again, and this time managed to push his half-dry curls out of his face by means of lowering his head to meet his hand.

“Hunting, I think. That was the impression I got.” Her thumb made little circles on the skin inside Joh’s wrist. “I imagine they scared off whatever they were hunting and everything else within hearing distance.”

“Aye, likely.” Torchay opened an eye, then both of them, meeting Kallista’s gaze. “They seemed well, safe enough.”

She settled her cheek more comfortably against Joh’s thigh. “They did, didn’t they?” The box full of fear had vanished from her mind.

Torchay sighed, pushing away from the chair to sit unsupported. “Might as well not have bothered with bathing. Soon as I change my trousers, I’ll get the key from the lieutenant.” He shook his head at her. “Do you always have to pet the new ones?”

Was she? Kallista lifted her head a fraction and saw her hand stroking over Joh’s thigh, her other caressing his wrist. “I suppose I must.” She slanted a look at Torchay. “Did I not pet you enough when you were first marked?”

“We were busy escaping from Tsekrish, as I recall.” He leered playfully at her, a bit of Stone rubbed off on him, perhaps. “But if you want to make up for it, I won’t object.”

She lifted a hand weighted down with invisible rocks and pointed at the suite door. “Go get the key.”

“After I change.” He crawled to his hands and knees and used Joh’s chair to pull himself to his feet. In silence, Obed hauled himself upright and staggered after him. Kallista bit her lip, watching him go, then put her worry out of her mind. If Obed refused to share what troubled him, she couldn’t resolve it on her own.

If things didn’t get better, something would have to be done. She didn’t want to let him go. Besides her personal feelings, they needed the magic he carried, but if he couldn’t bear to stay, she would have to do it. That could wait, for now.

Her neck scarcely seemed strong enough to connect head to body, much less actually raise her head from its very comfortable spot, but she forced it to do so anyway. “Joh?”

His cheeks were wet with tears that squeezed from beneath his tight-closed eyelids. When she whispered his name, he raised a shoulder and wiped his face across it. “Sweet Goddess—” His voice rasped like stones grinding together, its former deep richness lost. “What was that?”

Kallista had to laugh, though it sounded little better than Joh’s croak. “The magic.”

“Saints and all the holy sinners—why didn’t the Tibran fall to his knees and beg you to keep him when I brought him as a prisoner to Arikon?”

“It’s never been like that before.” She had lazed on the floor long enough, but halfway to her feet, a wave of dizziness hit her. She managed to collapse on the arm of Joh’s chair, then slid down into the seat, more on top of him than beside him. “Sorry,” she mumbled, holding her head up with both hands.

“Head down.” He nudged at her elbows propped on her knees. “You shouldn’t have tried to stand so soon.”

“They did.” And she was the captain. Maybe she didn’t have the same strength as her men, but she’d always been able to match Torchay in sheer endurance.

“They weren’t holding that—that madness together. You were.” Joh urged her head toward his knees, moving his chains out of the way.

“It wasn’t like that before.” She let him push her where he wanted, unable to argue, until the dizziness began to fade. Then it felt too nice, even if she was bent nearly in half. And she could think again.

“What was different about it?”

“Before, it was only me and the one I was touching. Well, except with Obed, when Stone got in the way. But then it was only the three of us, because we were all touching. And it only happened when the marked one wasn’t with us when he was marked. Like you. It didn’t happen with Aisse and Torchay at all.” Kallista lifted her head again, and when the dizziness remained at bay, she sat up, resting her head against Joh’s shoulder in case it returned.

Joh cleared his throat. “Never everyone at once?”

She took a deep breath. “You smell good. They didn’t bring us scented soap.”

“Doubtless because I had more odors to scrub away and disguise.” The smile was audible in his voice.

“At the weddings,” she said, finally answering his question. “When we all took hands at the end, something like that happened, but not so…intense.”

“Ah.”

“And of course, we were all there together and holding hands. That was before Torchay and Aisse were marked, of course, which could be the difference. That they weren’t part of the magic then. But I think it happened this time because my magic has been asleep for so long. When your mark woke it, I think it needed to—to make sure we were all still together. All still bound.”

“What happens next?” Joh asked.

“I get the key to those shackles of yours.” Still tying up his trouser laces, Torchay came out of the far right-hand bedroom, the one he’d briefly shared with Kallista when they were here before.

Joh tensed when the red-haired bodyguard spoke, but the sergeant strode past them, paying more attention to his pants than to his naitan snuggled in the lap of the man who had almost killed her.

“What is he doing?” Joh did not understand.

“Getting the key.” The captain rolled her head off his shoulder. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes. Are you all right?”

“Quite well.” Obedient to her word, Joh looked at her, let her search his eyes with her lightning-bright gaze. “Other than feeling I’ve been beaten with washing paddles, wrung out and hung to dry.”

She snuggled in again, her hair soft and damp on his shoulder. Why? He had no right to questions, had no right to anything, but his mind buzzed with them. Joh tipped his head back in the chair and closed his eyes, trying to calm the buzz. It didn’t work. The captain’s presence distracted him, kept the questions coming, kept his mind twirling with a thousand contradictory thoughts.

“I don’t understand.” Joh’s words slipped out through clenched teeth. He couldn’t hold them back. “Why has Sergeant Omvir left you alone with me? Why am I still alive? I almost killed you, for the One’s sake.”

“If She forgave you, how can we do less?” Then Kallista shook her head, her dark hair sliding across his skin in a damp caress. “But it’s not that, Joh, not truly. It’s more. We know you now. We know.”

Something ran icy fingers down his spine where it pressed against the warm velvet of the chair. West magic was as much a gift from the One as East healing. He knew that. He believed it. Now, after his long study and thought in prison, even more after what just happened. But it still unnerved him when he saw it in action.

“We were all together in the magic.” The captain was still speaking. It was getting difficult to think of her as the captain, with her half-lying in his lap like this and him wearing little beside chains and a smile, especially since the magic. But he had no right to think anything at all.

“I know you now, Joh,” she went on. “They know you. And you know us. There’s no room for lies in the magic.”

He felt her face move against his skin and thought she might have smiled as she spoke again. “There is room for misunderstandings. Great, big, stinking enormous ones. But we do know for certain that you mean us no harm—and never did. And now, you’re bound to us so tight that no one will be able to take advantage of—of any confusion.”

“No.” The guard lieutenant’s voice rang through the chamber with such force, Joh flinched in spite of himself. Lieutenant Tylle had regulations written on her spine and nothing but contempt for those she guarded. Not that he deserved better.

“No, what?” The captain spoke casually, did not change her lounging posture, but the habit of command rang in her words.

Sergeant Omvir came to attention, looking decidedly unmilitary with his hair curling loose around his face. “Captain—”

“No. I will not allow you to remove the chains from my prisoner,” the lieutenant interrupted. “This man is an inmate at Katreinet Prison, despite his current…relocation. As long as he is outside the walls of the prison and not in a properly secured cell, he will be kept in chains.

“Now, if you are through with your…consultation—” The lieutenant’s expression betrayed her disgust at what she assumed had been their purpose—and truthfully, she was not far wrong, given what had happened. “I will take my prisoner back into my custody and return him to his cell.”

“No, Lieutenant Tylle, you will not.” Captain Varyl rose to her feet, backing the lieutenant away as she did so. The captain now was powered with the energy she’d seemed drained of only moments ago. “Do you forget who is captain here? This man is now in my care. He is—”

“Does a quick fuck substitute for transfer orders now?”

The captain stood motionless, shocked by the lieutenant’s insubordinate obscenity for only a moment. Then she backhanded the shorter woman across the face with a power that rocked her on her heels and sent her stumbling back. Omvir caught the captain around the waist and swung her back before she could follow up on the blow.

Joh struggled out of the chair to his feet, his chains setting up a furious rattle. What had just happened? Was the captain defending her own honor or—or his?

Surely not his. He had none. Though he had begun to hope he might be given the chance to regain some small part of it. Still he was not worth a quarrel. “I am ready to go, Lieutenant.”

Tylle reached out to grab his arm and the captain blocked her. “And just how far do you think you’ll get, Joh?”

What did she mean by—? Oh. He remembered then, how for weeks the Tibran couldn’t get more than twenty paces from her without collapsing in a fit. Joh sank back down, perching this time on the edge of the chair so he could stand more quickly if need be. He was well and truly bound to her. Trapped by his own will. If he had not offered himself to the One, he would not have been accepted, and now he could go nowhere but at her side until the link between them was fully forged. And she terrified him.

Captain Varyl had pulled paper from a nearby desk and was scratching out a message with the poorly trimmed quill left on the desktop. A moment later, she thrust the message at Sergeant Omvir. “Take this to the Reinine. It’s a request for transfer orders.” Her eyes flicked toward the lieutenant. “Take it yourself, Torchay. Don’t hand it off to a servant. Obed can stand in as bodyguard. His skills are almost the equal of yours.”

“Better, in some things,” the sergeant muttered, tucking away the note, then reaching up to gather back his hair. He tied it, rather than braiding it properly, but it helped make him look a bit more military. “Maybe we ought to see about getting Obed a set of blacks.”

“I have my own blacks,” the dark man spoke, seeming to appear from nowhere, dressed in unrelieved black; a loose, foreign-looking robe over Adaran tunic and trews.

The captain’s bodyguard looked him up and down. “So you do. But there’s nothing about them to show who you serve, is there?” He spun on his heel and departed, leaving Joh feeling caught in undercurrents he could not map.

“Please, Lieutenant, sit.” The captain’s military mien faded a bit and she gestured at the chairs, playing hostess. “Obed, ring for refreshments, if you would.”

“My presence here is for duty, Captain,” Lieutenant Tylle sneered. “Not pleasant diversion.”

“Sit.” The steel in Captain Varyl’s voice had the lieutenant plopping down hard on one of the spindly armed chairs.

“You think I know nothing of duty?” The captain snarled, bracing her hands on the wooden arms, her face inches from the guard lieutenant’s. “There is a rebellion in Adara. These rebels threaten to destroy everything we hold dear. But rather than stay and see my family—our pregnant ilias and my children—to safety, I obeyed my Reinine’s orders. I left my babies—twins, just ten weeks old.

“Ninety days, lieutenant—that’s how old my little girls are. But I rode to Arikon with half our men because Serysta Reinine commanded it. Only two of the men in our ilian stayed with the babies—and one of them is blind. We did not know about the assassins’ attacks on the army and its naitani until we arrived. We did not know whether our iliasti still lived. But my Reinine commands and I obey.

“We rode eight nights through the rain to get here. We have not had anything to eat since we arrived, but went straight into conference with the Reinine, then directly here to deal with Lieutenant Suteny’s godmark. And you dare snivel at me about duty?”

“I—I—” The lieutenant gabbled, opening and closing her mouth, her face gone pale in the face of the captain’s anger.

Joh glanced at the man with the tattoos on his face. Obed. Joh remembered him and the spectacle he had created with his first appearance in Arikon. Now Obed glared at the lieutenant, as angry with her as the captain was. Joh would find no help in calming the situation there. He had to do something. It would not go well for his captain if she did what she seemed to be considering. Striking the lieutenant once as she had was bad enough. Striking her again, like this, would be far worse.

He touched her arm, cringing inwardly at the rattle of chains as he did. Goddess, he hated that sound. “Captain. You’re tired. Perhaps a bit—overwrought? I am sure Lieutenant Tylle didn’t mean anything by her words.”

“And I am sure that she did.”

“I—I apologize,” the lieutenant managed to stammer. “I did not know. That is, I—”

Captain Varyl glared a brief moment longer. “You see the folly of assuming what you do not know?” Then she sighed and allowed Joh’s touch to move her back. “Apology accepted. Goddess knows, I’m exhausted.”

She straightened, closing her eyes with another long sigh. Now, finally, her tattooed ilias came to urge her into a chair. Then servants arrived with food and the small crisis was over.

The captain and her ilias ate. The lieutenant nibbled. Joh refused refreshment. He was a prisoner, a convicted felon who should be in prison rather than here in luxury. Besides, the chains would rattle and clash every time he brought the food to his mouth, and though he deserved it, he could not bear that humiliation.

Sergeant Omvir returned from his errand, saluted sharply, handed over the papers he held, saluted again, then collapsed gracelessly into the nearest chair. He dropped a cloth bag at his feet with a faint clank, and began stuffing himself with the food that remained. “Goddess, I’d forgotten how good the cooks were here.”

“Is that a complaint about my cooking?” A fond smile curved the captain’s mouth as she lounged back in her chair.

“Saints, no. It’s a complaint about my own.” He bit off a chunk of bread. “Mine and Obed’s here. And Stone’s. That lad can burn water if he’s no’ careful.”

Joh watched their easy familiarity, greed and envy burning holes in his heart. He wanted that. With a desperation that made him pull back inside himself where it was safe. He couldn’t have it. Not after he’d come so near to destroying it. The sergeant should have killed him when he’d had the chance.

Lieutenant Tylle stood, papers in hand, and saluted. “Captain, I am at your command.”

She removed the key to Joh’s chains from her belt where it hung with her service awards, and laid it on the table, sliding it across to rest in front of Captain Varyl.

The captain returned the salute from where she sat. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stand. There are quarters for you and your men just outside the suite, where Lieutenant Suteny was quartered last year. And I think you won’t take it amiss when I say that I desperately hope you do not return in another year’s time bearing your own godmark.”

“Goddess, no!” Tylle’s face paled in horror and Joh hid a smile. He felt much the same, and he was marked.

“Captain,” she went on, “I hope you won’t take this amiss, but think again about removing the chains. This man is not an officer in the Adaran army. Do not call him ‘lieutenant.’ He is not. He’s a convict. The only reason he was not hanged for murder is that his victims chanced to live.”

The captain’s gentle smile stabbed Joh to the heart. “I know, Lieutenant. We are the ones he almost killed. I have my bodyguards and my magic. All will be well.”

The lieutenant did not look as if she believed it—Joh did not believe it either—but she saluted and left the room. Joh had done the exact same thing many times last year, his curiosity to know what happened behind the closed doors burning him whole.

Now, he was left behind, his curiosity about to be fed, and he remembered the sergeant’s words. Beware what you ask for. Joh was not certain he wanted to know what would happen now that the parlor doors were closed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Captain Varyl tossed the heavy iron key to Sergeant Omvir, who set it back on the table. He picked up the bag he’d brought with him. “Reinine sent you something else. Said if you mean to have him out of those chains, you’d better be willing to put him in these.”

Omvir opened the bag and pulled out a set of di pentivas anklets with their delicate looped and chiming chains. The bracelets followed. Unlike a woman’s ilian bangles, they were wide and close-fitting, with clips and locks that would fasten a man’s wrists together and bind him closer than the chains Joh currently wore.

All four of them stared at the decorative bonds spilled across the table. They were shackles just as truly as the iron that bound him now, their delicacy deceptive due to the magic that had forged strength into them. The main difference was that his present chains marked him as felon, as prisoner. The others would declare him ilias, part of a family.

Di pentivas rites lingered from Adara’s ancient history like the odor of some stinking mold from a forgotten closet, from the days of warlords and the battles of metal against magic. The magic—even more predominantly female then than now—had prevailed of course, and to keep the peace, many of the men on the losing side were married di pentivas into Adaran iliani.

The men had no choice in the matter, and could not divorce or be divorced from the ilian. However, if they settled into the marriage and accepted it, they could eventually leave off the wrist bands and exchange the anklets with their looped and chiming chains for the ordinary anklets of a married man.

Though they were still legal, no one practiced the ancient rites any longer, nor had in a hundred and a half of years. Save for Kallista and her ilian, last year.

The captain touched one of the chains. “They look like the ones Stone wore.”

“They are. I don’t think the Reinine will let you give them back again. She didn’t seem best pleased you gave them back the once.”

She stirred the chain on the table and looked up at her bodyguard ilias. “So?”

The red-haired man took a deep breath and scrubbed his hands across his face. “What do you want me to say? What can I say? It would be stupid for me to object now. He’s already ilias.”

“What?” The word was startled out of Joh and he wanted to hide when the others turned their eyes on him. “You can’t be serious.”

“As a sword’s bite,” Obed said.

“I told you.” The captain’s gentle voice sliced deep. “The only time anything remotely like that seven-fold magic ever happened before was during the ilian ceremonies. When the One bound us together into an ilian. This time, She did not wait for the ceremony to bind us. Torchay is right. We are already ilian.”

“Madness.” Joh gripped his hands tight so their shaking wouldn’t show, but he could do nothing to stop it from spreading through his entire body.

Again she smiled that sweet, cruel smile. “Isn’t it? Look at the ilian you’re part of. Even with you, we’re as much Tibran as Adaran. You get used to the madness after a while.” She pushed the iron key toward her bodyguard again and this time he took it up.

“Sergeant—” Joh sank back into the chair as if he thought he could escape the man. “You’re her bodyguard. It’s your duty to protect her. You said it yourself. This is impossible.”

The hawk-nosed man paused in the act of unlocking the leg irons and looked up. “So was that bit of business that happened when she touched you.” He turned the key and the lock fell open, the chain fell to the ground. “And my name’s Torchay. You’d best be getting used to using it. The one of us you’ve not met face-to-face is Fox. The rest you know.”

“Sergeant, think,” Joh hissed out the words. Were these people all mad? “Where’s the man who would take on the Reinine herself if she endangered your captain?”

“Oh, he’s here.” This time when the sergeant looked up, death rode in his eyes. “Never mistake that. He’s always here.”

He tossed aside the first set of iron shackles. “But you’re no danger to her, now. Not physically.”

The sergeant picked up one of the di pentivas ankle bands and fastened it around Joh’s left ankle, saying the words Joh had never expected to hear, beginning the process of binding him into the family. When Omvir moved back, the captain was there, fastening on the other band, shackling Joh again in bonds forged of silver, magic and sacred vows.

He shook his head, not sure whether he was trying to deny the captain’s action or the emotions snarling through him. She gave him her kiss and the dark, tattooed man moved in, fastening a gold bangle around his ankle, saying the same words.

Joh shuddered. He could not do this. He could not possibly be part of any ilian, much less one he’d almost destroyed. “Sergeant.” He tried once more when the red-haired bodyguard took up the iron key, this time to unlock the manacles.

“Torchay” he corrected. “And now you’re one of us, you’d better be calling her Kallista. She doesn’t like it when we don’t.”

The first iron cuff dropped away. Torchay spoke matter-of-factly as he took up a wide, gold band. “You might want to wipe your face.”

Saints and sinners. It was covered in tears. He’d never been good at handling things like this and he had been bombarded with so many conflicting emotions in the last few moments. With his liberated hand, no chains rattling, Joh swiped his face dry. Goddess, he hated this, hated feeling so churned up, so guilty, so grateful, so overwhelmed.

When Joh went still again, Torchay—the sergeant—fastened the di pentivas band around his wrist, then did the same on the other side.

“I’ve made no oaths in return,” Joh muttered, resentful that they paid his objections no mind. “I’ve given no bands.”

“You’re di pentivas. You don’t have to.” Torchay sounded almost cheerful.

Then the dark one, Obed, slapped his hand down on the table between them. When he pulled it back, two plain slim anklets and a matching bracelet lay there gleaming. “There,” he said. “Give them. Swear the vows. They are written on your heart whether you say them with your mouth.”

“Where did these come from?” Kallista—no, the captain—asked the question in Joh’s mind.

The dark man lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “You said we should keep a supply, for instances such as this, when the One adds to our number.”

This happened often? Joh supposed it must, recalling last year’s events.

“Have you been carrying them with you all this time?” Kallista reached out as if to touch the bangles, then did not.

“I had to get more, after Fox. But since then, yes.” Obed turned those strange, dark brown eyes on Joh and fell silent. The other two did the same, just watching him. Waiting.

Joh let his head fall back against the high softness of the chair and shut his eyes. He should not be here. He had almost killed them, for the One’s sake. And yet—

He couldn’t deny the mark, couldn’t deny that the magic had swept him along with the others. Nor, much as he might wish to, could he deny wanting what they offered, or the paralyzing fear of taking it.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his burning eyes. He had been praying for a chance to serve, for a way to make things right, but deep down he had never really thought the One would take him up on his prayers. Now, however, the opportunity was here. He could not turn his back on it, no matter how much it terrified him. He could only take the next step and trust to his newfound practice of faith that he would not fall off a cliff.

He moved his hands from his eyes, marveling at the silence when no chains rattled, and focused his bleary vision on the bands gleaming softly atop the inlaid wood. Taking up the smallest, the band meant for Kallista, Joh struggled to the edge of the chair and fell off it, onto his knees.

The sudden motion had the other men startling, touching hands to blades, but nothing more. Kallista shifted, as if she meant to rise, to meet him.

“No.” Joh shook his head, crossing the small space between them on his knees. “I come to you. I may wear pentivas chains, but I come to swear my own vows.”

He slid the band over the hand she held out to him, adding it to the other four bangles on her left wrist. “I come pledging myself to you. Heart to heart, my body for yours, in whatever comes our way. We, above all others, joined as one before the One who holds all that is, was and will be. So I swear with all that is in me.”

The tears were back. This time he let them go, for wonder of wonders, there were tears on Kallista’s face as well. She bent and touched her lips to his before wiping her tears away with a little self-conscious laugh.

One at a time, Joh took up the ankle bands and repeated the oath, first to Torchay, then Obed. And it was done. The first step was taken. Pray the One the next steps got easier.

Aisse lay on her pallet in the gloom of the cave, pretending to sleep while she waited for the warriors to return. Two babies slept tucked against their sedil still inside her who never seemed to sleep and even now thumped and turned. Aisse could feel Merinda watching her.

The healer was worried, she knew. It had to have been alarming to see Aisse come awake screaming, caught in an apparent fit. But the woman wouldn’t leave her alone, endlessly pick, pick, picking, wanting to know what had happened, how she felt, was the baby moving? As if she couldn’t see it moving in great waves and bulges.

Aisse sighed. Merinda went silent and still in her corner, forcing Aisse to pretend at dreaming, smacking her lips, mumbling wordlessly. Merinda would drive her mad. She might be ilias—of a sort—but she wasn’t marked. She didn’t know what the magic could do, hadn’t been caught up in it when it swept through them. Aisse hadn’t known herself it could reach so far.

Perhaps it was petty, but Aisse didn’t want Merinda to know. The magic was hers. Hers and the men’s. Merinda didn’t have any part of it, nor did she need to. Not unless Kallista said, and Kallista wasn’t here. Merinda could do sex with the men if she wanted. Aisse didn’t care about that. But the magic was theirs alone.

“The mighty hunters return.” Stone burst through the low cave entrance. “We come, bearing success before us.”

“Actually, we come dragging a goat behind us,” Fox amended, ducking inside. “And if Stone hadn’t shouted loud enough to be heard back in Tibre, we’d have a deer as well. If he could have shot straight enough to kill it.”

Hiding her smile, Aisse heaved herself more or less upright, patting the babies back to sleep when they stirred. Fox hauled on the rope he held, and true enough, a small goat came baa-ing into the cave. Its hooves scrabbled against the stone floor as it fought to free itself of the tether.

“It came running up to us,” Fox said. “I think it wanted to be milked. Something must have happened to her kid. But it doesn’t seem to like ropes.” The goat kicked at him and he dodged the blow.

“It heard me shouting and came.” Stone winked at Aisse as he sat beside her near the fire. “Thought I was calling it. See there? If I hadn’t shouted, we wouldn’t have the goat and since we were hunting food for the babies, a she-goat is better than a deer any day. I’m frozen.”

“Why were you shouting?” Merinda brought him dry trousers from the packs across the fire.

Stone surprised Aisse by looking her way rather than Merinda’s, question in his eyes. She gave him a subtle shake of her head and he answered with an equally subtle nod. He took the trousers and stood to change, delaying his response further.

“I fell,” he said. “Tripped over something under the snow, slid down a bank and laid out full length.” He displayed his ice-crusted frontside before stripping off the wet garments. “It was cold.”

“Come and change, Fox,” Merinda called. “You need to warm up, too.”

“I didn’t fall. I’m not as wet as Stone. Let me see to the animals.” He paused, apparently observing the goat with his other sense. “Does anyone know how to milk a goat, or is this another thing we have to discover how to do?”

Merinda sighed. “I can do it. You come dry off. Warm up.” Her green robe swished against her wool-clad legs as she strode across the cave to the side reserved for the animals—riding horses, pack horses and now the goat.

Fox waited for her. “Thank you, Merinda.” He set his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead, both cheeks, then her lips, brief and almost—but not quite—chaste. He left the healer staring after him in bemusement for a moment before she turned slowly toward the goat. It baa-ed at her.

“What was that?” Stone asked when Fox reached them.

“You said she wants sex. If we give her that—as much as we can right now, more later—maybe she will not ask questions. She doesn’t need to know about the magic.”

“Yes, exactly” Aisse agreed. “What happened?”

“You were there.” Stone pulled his dry tunic down over his stomach and turned his back to the fire, rubbing warmth into his buttocks. “You know what happened. The magic—”

“Yes, but how? Why?” Aisse picked up Fox’s discarded trousers. “These need washing, don’t they?”

“And mine as well.” Stone grinned cheerfully at her.

“Someone I didn’t know was there, in the magic,” Fox said, dressing again quickly. “Did you sense—him, I think. A man. Another ilias? Another marked one?”

“I think you are right.” Aisse frowned. “He seemed familiar. As if I’ve met him.”

Fox shook his head. “I didn’t know him.”

“I think I did,” Stone said. “Maybe someone we met in Arikon? Before Fox found us.”

“Maybe.” Fox gathered up the wet clothing. “At least we know they reached Arikon safely.”

“What are you three discussing so seriously?” Merinda’s voice, coming so unexpectedly from so close at hand, made Aisse jump and jostle the twins. Fortunately, only Rozite protested. Stone scooped his daughter up for comfort.

“When the weather might clear enough to go on,” Fox said. “We need to reach Sumald sooner rather than later.”

He tossed the clothes he held into the pile of soiled baby things and slung an arm over Merinda’s shoulder. He took the bucket of milk from her and set it near the fire. “I can think of more interesting matters to discuss between us.” He led her away toward the shadows at the back of the cave. After a moment, Merinda’s giggle came floating out.

Aisse allowed herself a fleeting smile before turning her mind to the question of how exactly she might maneuver her frigate-sized self around to reach the milk bucket and prepare feeding bottles for the twins.

“Take Rozite,” Stone said. “I’ll make the feeders.” He tipped his head toward the shadows that made such interesting rustling noises, eyes asking questions. “You don’t mind? I thought—”

“Why would I mind? It’s sex, not magic. And she’s ilias…I think.” Aisse frowned then. “Isn’t she? If she is not, I will kill her. When I can get off the floor by myself.”

“We talked about it, Fox and I. We decided she is.”

“You just want to do sex with her.”

Stone leered happily at her. “Of course. I’d rather do it with you, mind, but she’ll do in a pinch.”

“Me? I’m fat. A pig is smaller than I am.”

“But you’re our fat pig.” Stone caught her around the middle and rolled her onto his lap, babies and all, nuzzling her neck under her short-cropped hair.

Aisse squealed, sounding far too piglike for her own comfort, and slapped at him, one-handed, clutching a squalling Rozite in the other arm. Stone just laughed and changed his nuzzling to loud, smacking kisses before he let her go. He handed her the feeder.

“I wish you would have me, Aisse,” he said, voice suddenly low and far too serious. “There’s only you and Kallista, and Kallista’s not here. I miss the belonging.”

Aisse stared at him as he prepared the second feeder against Lorynda’s waking, as Rozite sucked eagerly at the warm goat’s milk. She would never have thought it mattered to him other than the quick, pleasurable release of sex. She kept thinking of him as a Tibran Warrior, one of those who saw women as things, conveniences, rather than persons, one of those who had made her previous life a misery. But he wasn’t. Hadn’t been for more than a year. He was Adaran ilias. As was she.

And he was hers. Like Fox. And Torchay and Obed and Kallista, off away in Arikon. And Merinda too, maybe, for a time. Fox had never hurt her, had given her pleasure and a child. None of the others would hurt her either, because she was theirs. They belonged, all of them together. And if any of them wanted to do sex with her, well then…Aisse wanted it, too. She should have understood this long ago, but at least she understood it now.

“Stone.” She touched his shoulder. “I will have you, if you truly wish it. But—don’t forget to keep Merinda busy.”

He turned, leaned toward her, holding her gaze with those blue eyes that seemed so strange in such a Tibran face. He watched her, coming closer until his lips touched hers, softly at first, then with more and more intensity until he broke off and backed away.

“You do mean it,” he said, controlling his breath with effort. “I was afraid you were just—”

Then he grinned. “Good. After our little adventure in the snow, I can wait. But I have your promise.”

Aisse couldn’t help smiling in the face of that grin. “You have it.”

What was left of the day in Arikon was spent in finding clothing for Joh, resting, eating again and more resting. Now and again, Kallista touched the links inside her with delicate fingers, the magic quiescent. She wanted to test it, to see whether it had truly returned, but after such a display, the magic seemed sluggish.

Tired, perhaps. Goddess knew, Kallista was tired. And without Fox to give the magic his order, she was a bit afraid to tap into the massive power Torchay held. Who knew what that much magic would do if it got away from her?

In the middle of her seventh yawn in as many ticks, Torchay spoke. “Why are we sitting here yawning when there are beds for sleeping just behind those doors?”

The long central parlor was lined on either side with enough small bedrooms for every member of the largest ilian, a full twelve-strong, to find privacy, and one large bedroom in case they found privacy overrated. Last year, at the ilian’s beginning, they had all slept in the separate rooms. Kallista wasn’t having any of it now.

She rolled to her feet and caught Obed’s arm before he could escape on some pretext. “Go.” She shoved him ahead of her, toward the large sleeping room. “In there.”

“I need to—”

“No, you don’t. Whatever it is can wait.” She kept her grip on him, steering him where she wanted him to go. “Joh, you’d better catch up if you don’t want a nasty surprise.”

A quick jingle of silver chain behind her told her their new ilias had heeded her warning. The parlor darkened. Torchay snuffed the lamps save for the one he brought with him when he took over the lead.

The single lamp cast the big room into romantic shadows and made the enormous bed look even larger, as if it stretched past the darkness into eternity. Ivory velvet covered the vast expanse, promising a sensory treat even without the masses of gold, white and yellow silken pillows piled upon it.

“I—” Joh had to stop and clear his throat before beginning again. “I think I should sleep here.” He indicated a cot near the door, intended for children or perhaps a servant.

Kallista exchanged a look with Torchay. Aisse had slept apart for several months until she became accustomed to being part of an ilian, one full of men. Due to her past, she had trouble trusting men. Still did, save for her iliasti. Kallista supposed they owed Joh the same opportunity. It would give Joh and Torchay both a chance to get used to the new situation.

And it would occupy the cot so Obed couldn’t sleep there. If she forced a physical closeness, refused to let him retreat, perhaps he would eventually open up and allow a more complete intimacy. She feared for the magic if Obed kept himself so shut off from her, not to mention the heartache it caused. Why did he have to wait until she had come to love him before pulling back this way?

When she nodded, Joh sat on the cot and unwrapped one of the chains looped around his ankle bands. Kallista watched, intrigued. She hadn’t known the extra chains were more than decorative. Joh threaded the chain through a painted metal eyebolt near the door and snapped it shut with the click of a lock.

“I hope we have the key.” She raised an eyebrow at Torchay before looking back at Joh who was now pulling off his tunic. “Those chains are more than a century old.”

Torchay hung his tunic on a hook by the bed. “It’s on my dress uniform belt. I forgot it when you returned the chains to the Reinine last fall.”

“Did you bring your dress uniform?” Kallista drew back the velvet coverlet, exposing silken sheets.

“We were coming to court. Of course I brought it. You brought yours, too.”

Obed was standing motionless where she’d pushed him, his face shut down, eyes unfocused, seeming to stare inward. Kallista dragged his Southron robe from his shoulders, startling him to awareness.

“Get ready for bed.” She held on to the robe when he would have shrugged it back on. “You’re sleeping here. With us.”

With great dignity, he inclined his head, expression mask-like. “As you wish.”

Kallista sighed, stripping down to her chemise and smalls while Obed slowly removed his weapons, then his tunic and boots. He eyed Torchay who waited bare-chested, wearing only his knee-length smallclothes. With a subtle sigh, Obed unlaced his trousers and slid them off, though he left his undershirt on. Kallista said nothing. He was Southron, after all. Likely he felt the cold more. Torchay blew out the lamp.

With a hand in the warm center between his shoulders, Kallista pushed Obed onto the bed and followed. He gave her his back. She didn’t care, tucking herself around him as Torchay curled himself around her back. Pale moonlight glimmered faintly through the far windows, but Kallista was too tired to admire it. She slept.

As the moon rose higher and night deepened, Kallista’s sleep grew restless. She twisted between her men while dreams battered at thick walls, trying to wake the magic within. It stirred, then tucked itself tight against disturbance.

The dreams circled, probing, teasing. The magic swirled, uneasy, but held the dreams at bay until they found a gap. A tiny chink in the wall, singing with power. The dreams bled through and followed the power, carrying their message along.

Torchay stood in the Veryas Valley before Arikon. Without having to look, he knew his family was behind him—Kallista, their children, Aisse and the others. And danger lay before him.

Why he stood alone, he did not know, but he knew that he alone stood between his loved ones and unspeakable horror.

His twin Heldring-forged short swords were in his hands without having to draw them. They would do no good against the thing that was coming, but he had no other weapons. He had no magic of his own.

He waited, praying with every breath as the darkness rolled toward him. It had no shape, no substance he could distinguish with any of his senses, but he knew it was there, coming inside the darkness. He’d seen it before, known it before, but this was different. Worse. In one small corner of his mind, he wondered if this was what Fox’s knowing was like. Mostly, he waited. And prayed.

Then it was there, filled with hate and an evil so ancient it could almost be touched. Be smelled. Rot and blood and old burning metals, foulness so complete Torchay fought against retching in his sleep.

He slept. This was a dream. It wasn’t real. He could cast the dream aside, turn it from this horror.

But the thing would not go. It slithered past, laughing at his feeble defense, reaching for the helpless ones sleeping behind him. He shouted, lunging at it. The thing did not seem to like his taste, so Torchay ran at it again, and this time, it struck back.

Pain pierced his soul, like knives in his gut but worse. Torchay screamed, falling to the ground, scrabbling on his back in the dirt as the foulness raked through him. He knew this pain, had felt it before, but—Goddess, it hurt.

“Kallista, wake up!” he shouted. He could not do this alone. “Wake up, all of you! Wake up!”

“Torchay.” Strong soft arms around him, quiet voice in his ear. “Torchay, I’m awake. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t, but he was awake now, too, sweating and gasping in Kallista’s arms like he’d just fought off a thousand demons.

“Oh Goddess,” he groaned. “Demons.”

Now he knew where he had felt this pain before—last year, when the demon Tchyrizel had got its insubstantial claws in him, in the Tibran capital, before Kallista destroyed it.

“It was just a dream.” Kallista tried to pull him in, cradle his head against her, but he refused the comfort.

“Not a dream. Or not just a dream.” He shoved his hair out of his face with both hands, wishing he could shove the dream out of his head the same way.

“What do you mean?” Obed was awake, too. Of course.

They were all awake after Torchay’s shouting—probably awake clear to Winterhold. His throat burned from it.

“I’m the one with dreams that aren’t just dreams,” Kallista protested.

“But you’re asleep. Your magic is asleep. I dreamed that.”

“What did you dream? Tell me.”

He wanted to tell her, but speaking the horror aloud would somehow make it real, would bring it into this room that was—or should be—their refuge. “Not here,” he said. “Out there. In the parlor.”

“Torchay—” Kallista began another protest, but he was already moving, heading for the room where he’d left his saddle bags and the key to Joh’s chains. It was a nuisance, having to deal with another new-marked man.

He gathered all the bags from the separate rooms, keeping his mind busy with trivial matters so he wouldn’t think about things he would rather avoid. The key was quickly found and Joh unlocked from his cot cell. Then they all gathered in the parlor, shivering in their sleeping wear.

When they were situated to Kallista’s satisfaction, huddled together for warmth against the spring’s night chill—even Joh—she demanded the dream. Word by word, she pulled it from him, insisting on every detail, every nuance.

Finally, he had no more to give, and she sat back, frowning.

“I don’t like this.” Her fingers tracing lightly across Torchay’s shoulder made him shiver, but he knew her attention was elsewhere.

“Nor I,” Obed said.

“You think I do?” Torchay scowled across Kallista at his dark ilias. The man had used up nearly all the patience Torchay possessed, by the hurt he gave Kallista. And with the former lieutenant added to the mix, the strain would only get worse.

“You truly think this a dream of omen?” Obed shifted, as if to pull away.

Torchay clamped a hand on his wrist, holding him in place on Kallista’s other side. “I do.”

“So do I.” Kallista’s hand moved from Torchay’s shoulder to his bare knee. “And for you to be dreaming my dreams means that things are not right.”

“But your magic woke,” Joh said. “We all felt it.”

“It woke, yes, but…”

Torchay felt the faintest shiver of magic across his skin. Even before he’d been marked, he’d been able to tell when Kallista used magic, but this was different. Better. The magic quivered again and faded away.

“It’s sluggish,” she said. “Maybe because our ilian is separated. Maybe for other reasons. I don’t know. I can’t get it to rise. Not like it should.”

“What—” Joh fell silent without finishing. He obviously still considered himself a prisoner. And since Torchay considered him one as well, that was good.

“Ask, Joh.” Kallista leaned forward to see him past Torchay.

“What does it mean?”

“Demons,” Torchay said. “Felt like demons. Smelled like demons.”

“I think so,” Kallista agreed. “I wish I had dreamed it.”

“So do I.” Torchay shuddered. “I want no more of them.”

Kallista sifted through the dream details Torchay had given her, hunting meaning. Huddled between the warm bodies of her iliasti, she felt cold, a cold that she feared no amount of warm bodies could chase away. “The demon threatens Arikon,” she said. “It’s here in Adara, not across the sea.”

“It threatens us.” Torchay stilled her hand on his knee, pressing it flat beneath his hand. “It wasn’t some mass of humanity I was defending. It was you. It was the twins. And we need your magic to stop it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She would have thrown herself to her feet to pace save for Torchay’s arms holding her back, Obed’s arms joining them. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to bring it back. Belandra doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

“Easy now, love.” Torchay kissed her forehead, offering comfort. “We’re in Arikon. Perhaps there’s something in the archives.”

“You don’t think Serysta Reinine has had scholars scouring the shelves since the girls were born?”

“We can ask. We’ll find a way. Somehow. It will happen. Your magic will return.”

Kallista nestled her cheek against Torchay’s chest, enjoying the feel of skin against skin, and sensed more than felt Obed’s withdrawal. Physically, he was present. Emotionally and otherwise—Kallista sighed.

“I can sense all of you through the links,” she said. “Before today, I couldn’t. It’s improved that much, at least.”

“Aye.” Torchay stood, lifting Kallista in his arms. “But now, you need to sleep. We all do.”

“Without any more dreams.” She meant to catch Obed’s arm, to bring him with them, intended to, but didn’t. He followed anyway as Torchay bore her back into the sleeping room. Maybe her plan was working.

Kallista sorted out the strand that hummed of Obed, barely tasting his faint exotic scent that faded as she sought it. As if he pulled away even here. Maybe the plan stunk.

They had bigger things to think of than a moody, bad-tempered ilias, but Kallista couldn’t help feeling in the bottom of her gut that—despite the demons—this was important. As sleep came to claim her, she wondered whether it might be important because of the demons.

Kallista woke to the touch of kisses along her collarbone above her chemise, to the caress of silk-soft hair trailing over her breasts. She opened her eyes to the sunlit scarlet of Torchay’s hair as he kissed his way up her throat to her mouth.

“Good morn, sweet ilias.” His lips spoke against hers before opening in a deep, drugging kiss.

She felt half-asleep, lost in a sensual dream as Torchay brought her body awake with the stroking of his rough-callused hands. She’d missed this, missed him these last few months.

“Good morn to you.” She returned the greeting as his mouth left hers to follow the path his hands had taken. “No more dreams?”

He shook his head, not bothering to disturb his focus on lips against skin as he shoved her chemise up out of his way. Kallista’s whole being concentrated on the same path, but even so, she noticed the bed felt empty. “Obed?”

“Awake. Gone.” Torchay licked his tongue down the slope of her breast and across her nipple, bringing her up in an involuntary arc. He smiled against her skin and made her gasp.

“Joh?” She could say that much.

“Asleep.” He made her gasp again as his fingers slid between her legs into the wet, slick heat there.

“You sure?”

Torchay lifted his head, met her gaze. “Do you care?”

His thumb stroked across her sweet spot as his fingers slipped inside her, and Kallista came up off the bed onto head and heels. “No.”

He smiled and moved his body over hers, into the place she made for him in the cradle of her hips. She smiled back. Oh, she had missed this, the heat and silken strength of him pushing deep inside her. Her breath sighed out as she took him in, and they fell into the familiar rhythm old as life itself.

“Call the magic.” He breathed the words so quietly, she wasn’t sure she heard him.

“What? Now?”

“Do it. Call magic.” He drew back, holding his weight on his hands, never ceasing the deep rhythm as the lightning-bright blue of his eyes gazed into hers.

“Are you—” She locked her legs around him, trying to hold him still, but couldn’t stop the motion of her own hips. “Is this no more than an attempt to wake my magic?”

She tried to fight free of him. Torchay collapsed, pinning her with his full weight, pressing her down.

“No,” he growled. “This is me making love to you. Nothing more. And nothing less.”

He pushed deeper inside her, and she gasped. “I love you, Kallista. For ten years, I’ve loved you. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

“Then why—” She fought for breath as he stroked inside her again. “Why magic?”

“After yesterday, you have to ask?” He nuzzled her ear, licked her earlobe, brought himself out and back in. “I listened to the others wonder how much better ordinary sex might be with the magic added. I want to be the first to know. I wasn’t the first one marked. I wasn’t the first one you took to your bed. I want to be first at something.”

“Oh, Torchay.” Kallista’s throat clogged with tears she refused to shed—save for the one, no, two, three—that got away. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close with arms and legs, urging him on with an undulation of her hips. She turned, hunting through his wild red waves of hair till she found his ear. “I loved you first,” she whispered. “I love you most.”

He rose back onto his elbows, giving her a faintly mocking smile as he picked up his pace. “I bet you say that to all your iliasti.”

She smiled, tried to shake her head, but the pleasure he gave her distracted. So she reached for magic instead, and found it.

Massive and sluggish, slow to rise, the magic allowed her to coax a tiny shred of it to life. Enough to make Torchay gasp as it flowed down the link between them. She played it back and forth, matching the magic to the rhythm of their increasingly frantic passion. He drove into her, harder, faster, until all three of them—Torchay, Kallista and the magic—exploded into climax together.

And Joh screamed.

CHAPTER SIX

Torchay was on his feet, a blade in his hand, before Kallista could fight off her body’s after-sex lassitude and scramble to the edge of the massive bed. Obed burst into the room, sword drawn, and Joh cried out again, thrashing on his narrow cot.

“Joh.” Kallista stumbled across the crowded space to bend over her new ilias. She smoothed his hair back out of his face and caught it between her hands. “Joh, wake up. It’s a dream.”

Behind her, Torchay had the key, was unlocking the chain from the wall. Joh shuddered, moaned, still caught by the dream. Her dream, she knew, one she should be dreaming. She got an arm beneath his shoulders, hauling his limp weight up into her lap where she could cuddle him against her naked body. Torchay had awakened from his dream when she held him close. Maybe it would bring Joh back.

“Wake up, soldier.” She spoke into his ear. “Wake. Leave the dream behind. You’re needed here.”

Body racked with tremors, Joh’s arms closed around her and tightened slowly, as if the dream were reluctant to let him go. Kallista held him tighter, murmuring encouragement as he fought his way to consciousness.

She looked up once, saw Obed watching with his flat, black stare, his face devoid of all expression. Save for the tension she could see in his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils. He was not happy.

Deliberately, she turned from him, pressed a kiss to Joh’s forehead and rested her cheek against his hair.

“Oh God.” Joh was fully present now, his voice a frog’s croak.

He held Kallista tight enough almost to hurt. She couldn’t tell whether the damp against her breasts where his head was cradled was sweat or tears. It didn’t matter. She stroked a hand down the long, straight sweep of his hair, past his shoulders to his waist. “Tell us your dream.”

Joh let her go, sitting up, drawing himself straight as he wiped his face with both hands. “Not here. Sergeant Om—Torchay is right. This should not be spoken of in this room. It already invades our sleep. We do not need more.”

Kallista pulled on the tunic Torchay handed her, but didn’t take time for trousers. Obed went with her into the parlor, but waited for the others in silence, across the room from her.

“Is this how you keep your vows as ilias? Your promise to be one of us?” Kallista’s question brought Obed’s head around, and he stared at her.

“I ask only to serve you,” he said after a moment, “and through you, the One above us all. But how can I, if I am not given the opportunity. Even the newest among us has been given—”

“Beware what you ask for, Obed.” Torchay came into the room, Joh jingling behind him, both of them fully dressed. “Believe me when I tell you, you do not want these dreams. You don’t.” Torchay settled onto the sofa beside Kallista, touched her shoulder.

Joh sat on her other side, a careful distance away—enough room for Obed between. Kallista beckoned him closer without even glancing at her dark ilias. His choice, his problem. Joh obeyed, submitting to her arm around his shoulders with only a faint twitch.

“Before, when—” Joh hesitated, choosing words. “When Torchay told his dream, I heard him say ‘demons,’ but I still thought ‘dreams.’ I thought ‘A dream is not so bad. A dream isn’t real.’ Demons are disturbing, perhaps even distressing, but in a dream, they aren’t real. I thought Torchay…exaggerated.”

He took a deep breath, hands closing blindly into fists. Kallista covered one with her hand, turning it, clasping it. After a time, he gripped her tight.

“I was wrong,” he said. “It was not as real as you, here, holding my hand.” He curled his other hand around hers. “But it was no dream.”

“Yes,” Torchay said. “What did you dream?”

Joh hesitated, eyes seeming to turn inward. Kallista used her free hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear, wondering whether she should encourage him or simply wait.

“I dreamed demons.” He turned his eyes on Kallista, capturing her gaze, and held it while he spoke. As if she could keep the horror at bay. “Seven of them,” he said. “The number of misfortune.”

Seven. Kallista didn’t speak aloud, not at this point. She wanted him to tell it at his own pace, without interruption, but her heart sank. Seven demons? Goddess help them all.

“Six were small, as if the largest, the oldest—” a sudden shudder caught him, but his eyes never left hers “—the most evil of them had pinched off bits of itself and sent them out to cause independent mischief. No—not mischief. Wickedness. Destruction. Death out of time.”

“Why do you say that?” Kallista asked. “Death out of time?”

He blinked, slowly, the blue of his eyes shuttered, then shining again. “While I was away—in prison—I came to understand that death in itself is part of life. A blessing. It is death that comes out of its proper time that is an evil thing.”

She tucked his words away to consider later. “Did you see all seven of the demons?”

“I could not see forms. Only darkness. Seven…darknesses. Scattered across Adara.”

“Could you see where?”

“Here. At least one of them is here. Maybe two. If not here in Arikon, the second is close, I think. The others—” He grimaced. “I don’t know. Not close, but how far away, I can’t say.”

Kallista struggled to wake the magic, to send it questing forth, seeking evil, but it merely turned round on its rug and lay down again. She swore. Torchay soothed her temper with a hand on her shoulder.

“Why did you shout?” he asked.

“Shout?” Joh chuckled, wry and self-mocking. “Speak truth. I screamed, friend.”

“Ilias,” Torchay corrected.

Joh’s lips pressed tight. He didn’t seem quite ready to accept the name or the role. But he clung to Kallista’s hand. “It attacked me—I assume the same way it did you.” He shuddered and Kallista put her arm around him again, hoping it would help. “That foulness…touched me. It was like—like the filth in the prison, but all that evil concentrated together into one touch that went through me.”

He hunted words, chose them with desperate care. “It touched not just my skin, my outside, but me. It wiped that rotting filth on—on my soul. I can’t—God.” He shuddered. “I may never feel clean again.”

“Now? You feel it now?” The idea worried Kallista. Could a man wear two marks?

She reached through her skin-to-skin link with Joh and kicked the magic awake. It had to be pushed and prodded every inch of the way, leaving Joh gasping with every shove as she hunted any sign of a lingering taint.

“You’re clean.” Relief had her leaning her forehead against his. “The demon left nothing behind.”

“Saints and sinners.” Joh shifted, turning his face away from the intimacy. “Is it like that every time?” He looked at Torchay, who shrugged.

“She lost her magic the day I was marked,” he said. “After she destroyed the demon. I wouldn’t know. Before yesterday, I’ve only been part of the magic that once.”

Both men turned to look at Obed. Kallista looked, too. He wore his tattoos like a mask. “Yes,” he said, voice empty. “The magic always feels good. Sometimes it feels better than other times, but always, it is good.”

“You are sure the demon…left nothing?” Joh squeezed Kallista’s hand, brought her attention back to him. “Why do I still feel it?”

“Memories linger.” She leaned toward him, not particularly thinking of a kiss, but when he turned his face away to avoid one, she felt the loss.

Sick to death of men pulling away from her, Kallista stood and headed for the bedroom. “We need to see what this magic will do. As soon as we eat.”

Through the half-closed door as she hunted clean trousers, she heard the hoarse tenor of Torchay’s voice quietly pitching into Joh. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t you ever again turn away. If she wants a kiss, you give it. Whatever she wants, you give it.”

Joh’s deeper voice rumbled something and Torchay came right back. “Damn right you don’t deserve it. But you don’t get to decide what you deserve. She does. She’s the naitan and the captain. You’re di pentivas. It’s bad enough dealing with that one. She doesn’t need two of you turning away.”

Kallista sighed. She didn’t need to force anyone either. That was as hard on her pride and her heart as having them back away.

“Torchay.” She called his name through the door and the diatribe stopped. Or became quieter than she could hear.

After food and clothing, Kallista collected her gloves and her men and headed out into the huge palace complex, looking for enough privacy to practice her errant magic. She didn’t know whether any magic would come when called, but she didn’t want to take the chance that it would and then escape her control. Finding what they needed, however, seemed to be a more difficult problem than she’d anticipated.

The palace teemed with people. Kallista and her ilian already had neighbors in the suite below them and likely on the floor above, given the thumping coming through the ceiling. Likely had them on the floors above that as well. When they crossed over into Winterhold, it showed no signs of being emptied out for summer. In fact, it seemed more crowded than Summerglen.

Kallista spotted a familiar face in courier’s gray and reached out to snag Viyelle before she vanished in the crowd. “Are you on assignment?”

“No, Captain.” Viyelle saluted with perfect form. “What are your orders?”

“No orders. Just didn’t want to delay you if you already had them.” Kallista stepped into an alcove out of the jostling streams of people, drawing the younger woman with her. All three men took up posts at its entrance, playing bodyguard. Time to give the courier an opportunity to prove herself. The One was a God of second chances. Kallista could do no less. “Has every minor prinsep in Adara decided to take up residence in the palace?”

Viyelle’s grin looked harassed. “It must be so. If I hadn’t already taken oath as a courier, I would now, just to get a little space to breathe. As it is, I still have to share with my mother, because Courier’s Quarters are filled up with displaced colonels and majors. I’m going to beg for an assignment. Any assignment. Anywhere. It’s that or be taken up for matricide.”

Kallista chuckled, amused by the prinsipella’s irreverence. “If it gets too bad, you can come share our suite. We’re only using one sleeping room. There are plenty more.”

“I may. Since it didn’t happen on our trip south, I know you won’t kill me by accident while you sleep.” She winked at Kallista.

“Brat.” Kallista cuffed the back of her head, laughing. “If the rumors give us some privacy, I don’t mind them. But listen, do you know of any place where we can practice our magic? Where no one will get cut if I happen to break a few windows?”

Viyelle made a face. “I’m not sure. Truly? I don’t think so. The palace is overflowing. I have never in my life seen so many people crammed inside, and I’ve been coming here since before I can remember.”

“What of the yard she used last year?” Joh turned slightly, spoke over his shoulder. “It was badly damaged in the explosion. Has it been repaired?”

Viyelle stared at him, and a slow flush rose on Joh’s cheeks. “Isn’t he the one—” she began.

“Yes,” Kallista said. “But that’s over. He’s ilias now. Joh Suteny, Viyelle Torvyll.”

“Ilias?” Viyelle’s shocked expression smoothed into perfect courtier’s courtesy when she glanced at Kallista. “Of course, Naitan. I am honored.”

She put her right leg forward and swept into a graceful bow, flourishes and all. Joh blushed a deeper red and nodded.

“The courtyard?” Kallista prompted.

“Oh.” Viyelle blinked back to awareness, out of her shock. “As he said, it was badly damaged. It may be available. Do you want me to investigate?”

“No need. We can check ourselves.”

“Please, Naitan, let me see. Give me an assignment. Anything. Please. Do not send me back into that den of prinsipi that is my mother’s chambers.”

Viyelle’s dramatically rolling eyes made Kallista laugh. “Go first and find out whether there might be real work for you. If there are more couriers than assignments, then come back and find me. We can discuss matters then. Oh, and Courier?”

“Yes, Captain?” She snapped to attention again.

Kallista blew out a breath. “I wish I knew whether it would be better to quash rumors or spread them.”

“Which rumors, Naitan?” Viyelle asked carefully.

“Any rumors. About my magic. About our new ilias. Any of it.” Kallista looked at Viyelle, seeing possibilities. “You’ve been coming to the palace since you were born. What would you recommend?”

“Spread them. They’re going to talk anyway. See if you can turn them the way you want.” Viyelle’s eyes strayed toward Joh, her curiosity obvious. “I think—it is a good thing to have them a little afraid of you, Naitan. Taking this one as ilias shows you can forgive, that you are not totally heartless. The fact he is di pentivas, though—that shows you are not wholly foolish either.”

“Good.” Kallista squeezed Viyelle’s shoulder, gratified by the good sense she showed. Maybe she had matured some. “And as we were not bosom friends the last time I was here—” she ignored Torchay’s snicker “—everyone will believe you when you share this gossip.”

“Yes, Captain.” Viyelle saluted, face solemn, eyes dancing with mischief.

“It’s not an official assignment, mind. The Reinine may have real work for you. But if you can…”

Viyelle grinned. “I like working with you much more than I thought I would. No wonder you collect men like honey draws bees.”

And she was gone, leaving Kallista staring openmouthed after her and Torchay choking with laughter.

“Come along, woman.” He snagged Kallista by the back of her neck, drawing her out of the alcove. “Let’s go find your courtyard. Your collection is getting tired of standing about.”

The courtyard was exactly where they had left it last summer. The huge slabs of broken stone that had tumbled from the walls in the gunpowder explosion had all been cleared away and the flooring swept clear of stone dust and powdered glass. But the windows lining two of the walls were still covered with boards on both the first and second floors, and the courtyard itself was abandoned.

Kallista made a circuit of the area, noting where masons and carpenters had put in posts and patches to brace the walls. The flagstone paving gleamed dully under its smooth coating. In one of her practice sessions, she’d converted the glass broken out of the windows by a ghost she’d raised into this impervious floor surface. She supposed it might have made the sweeping a bit easier, but otherwise didn’t know what use it was.

“It looks safe enough,” she said. “I doubt the walls will fall down on our heads.”

“Not without another keg of gunpowder,” Torchay agreed easily, watching Joh flush red.

Kallista slapped his arm. “Behave. And it seems quiet enough. The boards over the windows will help. No more glass to break, and it will keep the curious at bay. We may as well work here. We’re not going to find any place better, not with this many people crowded in here.”

“Agreed.” Torchay looked to the other two, received their acknowledgment. He dropped to one knee and raised his hands palm up over his bowed head. “Naitan, I accept your gloves.”

At those words, at the old, familiar ritual of a military naitan preparing for battle, Kallista felt her magic stir. Not the godstruck magic gifted by the One a short year ago, but her own. Magic given at her birth, wakened at puberty. Magic she knew better than her own heart, the lightning that had directed the course of her life.

One finger at a time, she drew off the supple, brown-leather regulation gloves that blocked all magic save for that under the most exquisite control. Once, the gloves could not block her lightning, but that had changed—along with everything else—one bright dawn on the battered walls of a city under siege. Now, Kallista could not swear to what might happen. Which was why they were here, in this protected place.

“Back away.” She laid the gloves in Torchay’s uplifted hands. “All of you. Joh, as far back as you can go. I’m calling my magic first, not yours.”

Obedient but reluctant, the men moved away, all three of them clumped together at the end of Joh’s magical tether. Kallista took a deep breath, refusing to think of the possibility that her magic might not answer her call. She’d felt it stir at Torchay’s words. It was there. It would come. It had to. She wanted her babies safe.

Thrusting her fears back into the box from which they’d escaped, Kallista shook the tension from her shoulders, down her arms and out her bare fingers. Then she turned to face the direction of her magic—North—opening herself to its cold clarity, its icy precision. Its swift, ponderous, terrible face. And she reached, into the North, into the air around her, and called the lightning.

It was slow to build. It didn’t flash into existence in a split second to blast forth and slaughter supper with a smell of burnt chicken feathers, as it had when she was barely thirteen. Tiny sparks skittered across her skin and set the loose hair at the nape of her neck to standing straight out. Kallista swept the sparks down, focusing the magic in her hands until she held a blazing, crackling ball before her.

She wanted to let it dance, send sparks pirouetting from finger to finger, but she could sense her control was precarious. The magic might simply fade away, or it might suddenly blaze with the power of a thousand natural lightnings and go blasting through the courtyard with deadly results.

So she focused carefully on what she wanted the sparks to do, compressing them between her hands until they became one, glowing almost too bright to look upon. Then with an out-flung breath, she threw her hands wide and let the lightning fly. It slammed across the yard into the broken-off head of a gargoyle, scorching it black.

“So.” Torchay sauntered toward her. “The lightning is back, but your control is not.”

“And how would you know, Sergeant Know-It-All?” Kallista called a tiny spark, to be sure she could, and flicked it at him.

He dodged it, experience of years giving him the skill, and she snuffed it into nothing. “Because, love, if your control was all it should be, you’d still be putting on a show to impress our new ilias, rather than just blackening that poor, put-upon gargoyle.”

She flicked another spark at him, catching him this time with a tiny shock on his shoulder. He simply stretched out his hand and touched her cheek, shocking her in return with the static that had built up around her. She laughed. “Not fair. I can’t run or Joh will fall over.”

“Then keep your sparks to yourself, woman.” Torchay beckoned the others over. “What about your other magic?”

“Goddess, you are such a drill sergeant.”

“I’m damn good at it, too. Can you call the other?”

Kallista let out a breath. She had her lightning back. She did not particularly want the rest of it, though she knew it was there. She’d been part of its violent reawakening, after all. However, much as she might prefer it, she couldn’t ignore this godstruck magic. Truly, she wouldn’t wish it away. She needed it. Torchay had seen demons. Joh had seen demons. Seven of them.

She held her naked hand out toward her newest ilias. With the link not yet fully formed between them, she needed skin-to-skin contact to call his magic. Without hesitation, Joh slid his hand into hers and closed his fingers gently. His trust felt good.

When the magic didn’t rouse on its own, Kallista reached into Joh and nudged it. Then she hauled back and kicked it with iron-toed boots. The magic sputtered blearily into motion, and Kallista reached through the links to her other men.

The magic Torchay carried came only half-awake, but his magic held so much power that half-awake felt about right. She twined his magic together with Joh’s, smacking it now and then to keep it alert, and she reached for Obed’s magic.

Instead of answering her call and coming to do her bidding, the magic…turned its back on her. That wasn’t exactly what it did, but that was what it felt like, like all the times Obed turned his back or walked away or looked through her. Kallista reached again, ready to shake it into obedience as she had been forced to do with Joh’s and Torchay’s magic. And it snarled at her, showing sharp, ugly teeth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kallista jerked back, physically as well as magically. The braided magic in her hands fell to pieces, snapping back into its respective homes, leaving her with nothing.

Joh fell to his knees with the backlash, crying out in pain.

Torchay staggered but remained standing. “What happened?” He bent double, gasping as the reaction rebounded through him, hands braced on his knees. “What was that?”

“Backlash.” Kallista tipped Joh’s face up, checked him quickly—no permanent damage—and crossed to Torchay. “Sit down before you fall. Don’t be such a bodyguard.”

“I am a bodyguard,” he rasped out as he sat on the ground. “I can’t help it.”

She could sense his nausea through the link, and when it settled, he would have a terrible headache. The backlash had hit him harder because his magic held so much more power. Like Fox’s magic held order and Obed’s held truth, Torchay’s magic was power, strength. Which apparently had its price.

Kallista fought to control her anger. She had a right to it. Obed’s attitude had put them all in danger. But this was not the time or place to let it out.

Blood trickled from Torchay’s nose and he blotted it with a finger, surprised. Frantic, Kallista dove questing through his veins. If he bled where it could not be seen, it could kill him. But only the small vessel in his nose was broken.

Kallista held back any attempt to heal it. She knew too little of East magic, trusted too little in her control just now, and it was small enough to heal quickly on its own.

“What do you mean, backlash?” Torchay blotted his nose again and looked for something to clean his fingers. Kallista handed him her handkerchief. “What…? Was that magic?” He glared accusingly at Obed. “I thought you said the magic always felt good.”

“Backlash doesn’t.” Kallista pushed Torchay’s head forward. “Pinch your nose till it stops.”

“Bud whad is—” he began.

“Backlash happens when the magic breaks. When it is interrupted for some reason, it snaps back into—usually into the naitan who is attempting to use it. Infirmaries at the academies are full of students suffering backlash. In this case, it snapped back into all of us.”

“So why ab I de odly one wid a bloody dose?” Torchay sounded aggrieved.

“Because your magic is stronger than Joh’s.”

“Whad aboud Obed?” Torchay lifted his head, released his nose and wriggled it, testing for leaks. “He’s just standing there like he wasn’t touched.”

“He wasn’t.” Kallista didn’t look at her dark ilias. Not yet. She was too angry. “Obed and I are going to discuss it as soon as we get back to our chambers.” She got a hand under Torchay’s arm and lifted. “Up you go.”

“Good idea.” He swayed when he reached his feet. “I’ve had enough magic for today.”

“Help Joh.” Kallista snapped the order at Obed as she got her shoulder under Torchay and got him steadied. “And pray the One my temper calms before we get back.”

The crowds they pushed through only made Kallista’s temper worse. Thank the One that the crowds kept Torchay from asking the questions she knew were piling up behind his teeth. And the slow pace they were forced to take gave Torchay and Joh the time to recover most of their strength and equilibrium before they left Winterhold. By the time the door to their suite closed on the stream of people climbing the stairs to the towering heights above them, Kallista was angry enough to chew nails into bits.

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