“I look ridiculous,” she huffed.
“You look pink,” he replied. He circled her slowly. “And you chose to bathe in amaranthine why?”
Ildiko told him the story of her necklace. “I didn’t want to lose it. I know someone could have fished it out of the vat for me, but I panicked.” She lifted the necklace from where it nestled under her bodice laces and handed it to Brishen. “I think it’s worth very little in coin but is precious to me. The clasp broke as I leaned over to get a closer look at the cold dye.”
Brishen raised the chain for a better look. “It’s a good piece. Remember the constable from Halmatus?” Ildiko nodded. “A jeweler resides there. He can repair the clasp or fashion a new chain for your necklace.”
Ildiko eyed the necklace longingly. Her hand itched to snatch it out of Brishen’s grasp, but she squelched the urge. He deserved her trust, even with those things precious and irreplaceable to her. She clasped her hands behind her back. “Would it take long to fix the clasp?”
He must have heard something in her voice, something hesitant and fearful. “Not long. I can deliver it myself if you like.”
Ildiko clapped her hands. “Oh yes, please, would you?” Mortification rushed in hard on the heels of euphoria. “I’m sorry, Brishen,” she said. “You’re not a messenger boy. Someone else can go.”
Brishen offered the necklace to her, his head cocked in a way that Ildiko was fast recognizing as a sign of his amusement. “You misunderstand me, Ildiko. I’m not going alone. You’ll go with me. I’ve no eye for the delicacies of a woman’s trinkets. You can deal with the jeweler. I’ll just be there to keep you company and cross the man’s palm with the coin he demands for his work.”
She scooped the necklace out of his palm and held it close. “That is a wonderful idea. I know you’re worried about the dangers of Beladine raiders, but I’d love to visit more of the towns and villages under Saggara’s protection.”
He’d been reluctant to let her venture to Lakeside, convinced only by Anhuset’s promise to bring a small army as escort and the fact the town was within walking distance of the estate and redoubt.
Brishen lifted her hand, turning it one way and then the other. “At least it wasn’t nettle dye,” he said and kissed her knuckles before leaving her for a much-needed bath.
He was right. Nettle dye was green. There were worse colors to sport than pink.
They met again for their supper in the great hall and afterwards in his chamber for another game of Butcher’s Covenant in which Brishen out-maneuvered her and slaughtered every man on her side of the board without losing more than three on his side.
“You’re getting better,” he said as she lay the intricately carved pieces into a silk lined boxed and closed the lid.
Ildiko snorted. “That’s a lie and you know it. Just when I think I’ve outsmarted you, you kill off one of my men.”
Brishen poured them both a goblet of wine from a nearby pitcher. “You’ve outsmarted me on several occasions in the game. Your weakness is you over-think your strategy and question yourself until you react instead of plan.” He handed her one of the goblets along with a comb. “You are, however, far better with a comb than you are with Butcher’s Covenant.”
Ildiko took the comb. “That doesn’t comfort me. One is an exercise in strategy, the other carding wool.”
He dropped down onto his haunches in front of her chair and tilted his head back to gaze at her. “I am no sheep.”
She gathered his hair into a waterfall that spilled down his back and set to combing out the dark strands. “Trust me, Brishen, no one with eyes will ever mistake you, or any Kai for that matter, for sheep. More like wolves.”
Brishen sat passive before her, his wide shoulders slumped, his breathing slow as Ildiko glided the comb through his hair in long strokes.
“Tell me a tale,” she said.
It was their bargain. She groomed his hair, and he told her stories of his childhood in Haradis. Some were funny, others grim, though he told them in a matter-of-fact voice as if it was quite commonplace for mothers to lash their children with a horsewhip because they had a slight lisp and couldn’t quite master one of the simple spells all Kai children learned.
Ildiko guessed Brishen had been rambunctious, resourceful and clever. And he’d been born with a compassion and nobility of character neither of his parents possessed.
“What would you like to hear?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment. Her request was more for an answer to a question than a story of the past. “Why are you nothing like the man who sired you and the woman who bore you?”
It was as if she touched him with a hot brand. Brishen jerked forward, back stiff as a spear haft. He gained his feet in one fluid motion and turned to Ildiko with his hand outstretched. “Come with me,” he said.
She stared at him, then took his hand without question. He led her through the manor, down to the first floor and out a door that led from a buttery to the bristling thicket of brambles and wild oranges that hemmed in one side of the estate.
A pale moon hung thin in the sky and did nothing to illuminate the earth below it. Ildiko stumbled along behind Brishen, blind as a mole in daylight. Her husband moved surefooted in the suffocating darkness, guiding Ildiko toward a destination she assumed would answer a question she was starting to regret asking.
They stopped before a patch of wall that surrounded part of the manor’s loggia. Brishen uttered a word in a language Ildiko was certain couldn’t have been bast-Kai. A shadow, paler than its siblings, parted from the stone, exposing a set of three indentions cut shallow in one of the masonry blocks.
Brishen placed the three fingers of his right hand into the depressions and whispered another arcane word. Ildiko gasped as the block softened until it melted into the stones on either side of it, leaving an opening black and deep.
She almost batted his arm away when he reached inside the hollow. For all she knew, something with teeth longer and sharper than a Kai’s lurked in that space. Brishen didn’t hesitate and pulled out a small urn. He faced Ildiko, gently cradling the urn.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The answer to your question.”
He lifted the lid. For a moment nothing happened, then suddenly a feeble light no bigger than a dandelion puff and just as delicate floated upward until it hovered above its housing.
The glow of Brishen’s eyes provided the only illumination between them, but it was enough to gild the tiny light as it flickered and bobbed between them. “My sister,” he said softly. “Or her memory at least.”
Ildiko gasped softly. His sister. He’d never spoken of another sibling, only the indifferent brother she met briefly in Haradis. Brishen’s revelation begged more questions, the first being why would his sibling’s mortem light be here at Saggara, hidden away by spellwork, instead of at Emlek where the Kai held the memories of their dead?
“She was never formally named, but I call her Anaknet. I’d seen eleven seasons when she was born.” The tiny mortem light floated toward him and balanced on the back of his hand. “She was born with a club foot, an imperfect child and unacceptable to Secmis. I thought her pretty.”
A sinking dread grew in Ildiko’s chest. He would tell her something terrible, something to bind her insides into knots . She was tempted to cover her ears, tell him to stop and apologize to him for asking her silly questions, but she stood silent before him and waited for this childhood tale to unfold.
“Secmis murdered her four days after her birth. She broke her neck. I saw her do it.”
“My gods,” Ildiko breathed, horrified at Secmis’s monstrous cruelty and the knowledge that Brishen, a young boy, had witnessed it.
Brishen continued, his voice flat and distant. “Secmis is a mage-leech. She gains power and long life from forbidden spellwork and the consumption of souls and memories. She was old when my father was a child, though now she goes by a different name and claims lineage from another c
lan.” Anaknet’s mortem light danced over his palm.
“I took Anaknet’s light and released her soul before my mother could steal both. Anhuset and my old nurse Peret helped me with the lamentation and got me through the memory sickness. Peret kept the light for me tucked away in the hollow of a birch tree in her sister’s garden. When I was given Saggara, I brought Anaknet here.”
He coaxed the mortem light back into the urn, closed the lid and returned the vessel to its hiding place. Different spells reformed the masonry block until it hardened, leaving only an expanse of blank wall.
Brishen faced Ildiko fully, and even through a vision compromised by darkness and tears, she still saw the sparks of red that danced in his eyes. “I hate my mother, Ildiko,” he said in that same flat voice. “Down to the marrow of my bones. One day I will kill her. She knows this.” He looked at the place where the urn rested. “Anaknet is why I am who I am, wife. Because I refuse to become like the monstrosities who bore us.”
Ildiko sniffled and scraped her sleeve across her cheeks in the futile effort to staunch the flow of tears. She reached out to Brishen, carefully, as if he were an injured animal caught in a trap. He accepted her touch, and soon she was wrapped in his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “So very sorry.” She stroked his hair, holding him for what seemed like hours, listening to the rapid hammer of his heartbeat and the shallow breaths that sometimes verged on sorrowful moans. The Kai didn’t weep, but they mourned just as deeply as humans.
When he finally stepped away from her, his eyes had lost their red sparks and Ildiko’s had dried of their tears. She grasped one of his hands in both of hers. “I swear I will take this knowledge to my deathbed, Brishen.”
One corner of his mouth turned up, and he meshed his fingers with hers. “I know. It’s why I told you.”
They walked back to the manor in silence just as a thin line of crimson spread across the far horizon to announce the dawn. Sinhue greeted Ildiko at her door. “Your Highness, are you unwell?” She ushered her charge inside and made her sit on the bed while she poured water into a cup and handed it to her. “This might help. Do you need a cloth for your eyes? They’re swollen and red.”
Ildiko sought and found the a partial lie to tell. “I was crying.” She hiccupped a giggle at Sinhue’s bewildered look. “Humans weep when they’re sad. I was missing my family. I’m fine now, though I’ll take that cloth.”
By the time she’d bathed her hot face and changed into her nightrail, the sun had risen enough to turn the plains into a golden sea. Ildiko slipped quietly into Brishen’s room and found him, still dressed, standing in a clot of shadows near the open window. He stared eastward, into the blinding dawn and didn’t turn as she padded closer to him.
“Stop, Ildiko.”
Startled by the abrupt command, she halted. “Brishen?”
A faint sigh, and his voice gentled. “It will be best if you sleep in your bed alone today.”
An icy rush of hurt punched her in the gut. She staggered inwardly for a moment, then righted herself. This had nothing to do with her. His recounting of his sister’s death had left her emotionally wrung out. She suspected that for him it had torn open old wounds that had scabbed but never healed. He wanted to tend them in isolation.
Solitude, however, wasn’t always the best comfort. She eased another step forward. “Are you sure you wish to be alone in your grief?”
His dry chuckle held no humor. “If it were just grief, no. I’d want you here.” He still refused to face her. “I’m not only grieving, Ildiko. I’m bitter; I’m angry and I’m lusting.” His voice deepened on the last part of his declaration and sent Ildiko’s heartbeat into a gallop. “Those emotions together offer nothing but misery and violence for both human and Kai. It’s dangerous for you to be in here with me. Go to your room. I’ll talk with you tomorrow.”
She fled, carrying with her his words before she shut and bolted the door between them.
“Thank you, sweet Ildiko.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There were times when the day lasted forever and night never came. For Brishen, this was one of those times. He stared unblinking at the bolted door between his and Ildiko’s chambers until his eyes burned. He’d caught it—the brief flinch of hurt tightening the skin around her eyes before it disappeared, and her pale features eased into an expression of concern.
Brishen thanked the gods he and Ildiko had begun this marriage with such unadorned honesty between them. She’d taken his warning at face value and done exactly as he hoped by fleeing and bolting her door. No cajoling or long explanations for why he wasn’t fit—or even safe—company at the moment. She might not be able to discern emotion in his eyes, but she knew him well enough now to know his words weren’t empty ones.
Even through the thick walls and closed door, he heard her soft voice and Sinhue’s as they both prepared to sleep. The words were indecipherable, but he found their cadence soothing. They soon faded, leaving only a heavy quiet that leached from the walls to join the shadows that fled from the encroaching sunbeams and pooled at his feet.
Twenty-two years had passed since he witnessed his mother murder his sister, and the memory remained as clear as if it happened the previous night. Secmis’s hands cupping Anaknet’s head, fingers like spider legs that curved around the tiny skull until her claw tips touched. The baby’s fists curled in innocent sleep. Partially concealed behind the nursery door and made mute with horror, Brishen watched as the queen gently held Anaknet’s head for a moment and gave one quick twist.
He shook his head to clear it of the memory. He could block out the image but not the grotesque sound—a soft snick, barely more than a whisper that over time gained the volume of a thunderclap in his dreams and recollections.
Brishen never imagined he’d tell another person about Anaknet. Only two other people knew what he’d seen and done those many years ago. One died a decade earlier of old age; the other would cut out her own tongue before she surrendered her knowledge. Both had been pivotal in helping him abscond with Anaknet’s mortem light and release her fragile soul before Secmis claimed it, and he remained forever grateful to them. His old nursemaid and his cousin were braver than any ten Kai warriors combined. Had Secmis discovered their roles in his plan...he shuddered at the thought.
Now Ildiko knew as well. Brishen turned away from the door separating him from his wife. She was like a skein of raw silk, strong as steel with a luster woven into her blood and bones. She held him in her arms as he keened an old grief. Like all Kai, he didn’t shed tears. Ildiko; however, had shed them for him, and he’d caught the taste of salt and sorrow on his lips when she brushed her mouth across his in a gesture of comfort.
The need to embrace her, clasp her hard to every part of his body had almost overwhelmed him then. She was solace enrobed in smooth flesh and scented hair. He had kept his hands light on her back, knowing that to hold her the way he wanted, he might injure her in his enthusiasm. Her very human body was far weaker than her character.
Such knowledge hadn’t stopped the lust rising inside him. Warped by anger and simmering hatred for the queen, that lust poisoned the growing desire he had for his wife, turning it into an ugly thing.
When Ildiko appeared in his chamber, dressed in her nightrail and prepared to sleep with him as she did each day, he’d almost lunged at her, blinded by the desperation to sink into her, body and soul. Every part of him ached with the need. Brishen pummeled the temptation into submission, chilled to the core by images of a woman bloodied and broken by a man possessed.
He meant every bit of his thanks when she fled his chamber and bolted her door. Solitude did nothing to cool his rage or his desire. He paced. He drank wine. He called down every curse he knew on the queen and finally, he grabbed his cloak and quit the chamber where he was certain he could smell Ildiko’s flowery scent on his sheets.
Saggara was quiet. Most of its inhabitants slept except for a few hooded gu
ards who saluted Brishen as he strode through the corridors and into the brutal morning daylight. The short walk to the redoubt and its deserted arena did little to soothe his restlessness. He stripped down to his breeches and eagerly took up one of the practice swords set in racks that lined the arena walls.
Swords were not his preferred weapons, and straw men made laughable opponents, but he hacked away at them in a sun-blinded frenzy until straw hazed the air, and body parts lay strewn across the dirt floor. Muscles quivering with fatigue, Brishen glanced up briefly, startled to see the sun had climbed almost directly overhead. He’d been training in full battle mode for two hours, and the sweat streamed off his arms and legs in rivulets. His lungs burned and his body ached, but his head was clear. Mock combat had done its job. The rage had subsided. The lust was still there but mellowed into a desire that bubbled in his belly. He still wanted Ildiko—fiercely, but to savor instead of conquer.
“You’ll be blind for good if you don’t cover up, cousin.”
Brishen turned and squinted at Anhuset. She stood to one side, his discarded cloak draped over her arm. She unlaced the hood from the cloak and tossed it to him. “I’m amazed you can still see at all.”
He caught the hood but held off from pulling it over his head until he could rinse off the grime and bits of straw coating his skin. The cold water shock from the nearby well banished any exhaustion. Water from his dripping hair and breeches puddled at his feet. While the hood offered relief from the punishing light, it weighed hot and stifling on his head and shoulders.
“You look like a half-drowned magefinder,” Anhuset said.
He scowled at her. “Be glad I didn’t shake the water off, or you’d be as drenched as me.” He used his cloak to wipe down his arms. “What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “You know I’ve never been a good sleeper. I thought I might come to the arena and train for a little while. Imagine my surprise at finding you here.” Her eyes narrowed to glowing slits within the shadows of her hood. “Where’s the hercegesé?”