The Barbed Rose

“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.