“I’ve no doubt of that. We’ll all be experiencing ripple effects of the galla infestation, the Kai kingdom most of all.” He didn’t envy the Khaskem. That the kingdom of Bast-Haradis hadn’t yet disintegrated was a credit to Brishen’s even-handed rule as regent.
A statuesque study in light and shade, she turned to face him fully. “All the Kai owe you a debt of gratitude for fighting alongside the herceges. You sacrificed much. Suffered much.”
Her voice echoed with memory. He knew what she recalled in her mind’s eye because he saw it in his own. Her steady grip on his sword pommel, the resolute horror in her face when she’d skewered him on the blade and embraced him in her strong arms so he wouldn’t fall. A shared intimacy of purposeful savagery in the service of a man trying to save a world from destruction. Nightmares of that moment still plagued Serovek. He suspected they plagued Anhuset as well.
“Not nearly as much as some.”
“Megiddo.”
He nodded. “And others. I’ve heard rumors. The Kai unable to capture the mortem lights of their dead, a loss of magic. All of that has something to do with the galla.”
She’d gone stiff as a spear shaft while he spoke, and her expression closed as tightly against him as the door he’d barred to the kitchen earlier.
“I suppose so,” she said in a flat voice. “If you’re inclined to believe rumors.”
He didn’t press her to expound upon his commentary, and the tightness around her mouth warned him he’d find the endeavor a futile one if he tried. She had, however, confirmed what he’d begun to suspect. The galla were defeated and once more imprisoned, but that triumph had come with more than the price of Megiddo’s sacrifice. The demons spawned by the ancient Gullperi had left their mark on the Kai in ways beyond the razing of Haradis.
She caught him by surprise when she abruptly changed the topic. “You’re a wealthy margrave with influence. Why haven’t you married?” Her sharp teeth gleamed white in the darkness at his wide-eyed stare.
He recovered quickly enough and matched her smile with a wry one of his own. Subtle verbal deflection wasn’t her strong suit. “Who says I haven’t?”
His question took her aback. He saw it in the way her fingers tightened on the stem of her wine goblet and the slight jerk of her shoulders. “Well then, are you or aren’t you?”
Tonight was obviously a night for recollection. None of it cheerful.
He stared into the black pool of wine in his goblet, seeing the vision of a sweet face and brown eyes. He had cared for but not loved the woman he’d married. He’d instantly loved but never had a chance to know the daughter she bore him. He still grieved them both. “I was,” he said. “A decade ago. She was proud. Beautiful. Long hair that she wore tied back with silk ribbons.”
Anhuset’s features eased, and she tilted her head to consider him as if he were suddenly a brand new enigma to her. “You like soft women.”
He chuckled, welcoming her comment. “I like strong women. Soft…” He bowed to her. “Or not.”
They were both quiet for a moment, staring at the shadow-shrouded mountainside that even the bright moon no longer illuminated.
“I’m not sure I’d know what to do with a hair ribbon,” Anhuset finally said, addressing the stars above them.”
“Probably strangle someone with it.”
She choked on the wine she’d just sipped, and Serovek thumped her on the back until she quieted. Then she laughed, and he was lost.
There was the magic of the Kai, and then there was the sorcery of Anhuset’s laughter. The purr of a cat mixed with the promise of a warm fire and the sleepy seduction of a satisfied lover, all bound together into a sound that rolled out of her throat and rasped past her lips to bewitch him.
“I will take that as a compliment and bid you good evening, margrave,” she said, setting her half empty goblet down on the balcony’s railing cap. “I'll see you at dawn?”
He remembered to nod, even as all the blood in his body rushed toward his groin. He’d bless the darkness for its concealment except for the fact his companion saw better at night than she did during the day. “Shall I send a servant to fetch you?”
She declined the offer and wished him a peaceful sleep. He watched her until she disappeared from sight.
Serovek groaned under his breath. “Peaceful sleep. Not likely,” he muttered. He drained the contents of his goblet and did the same with Anhuset’s. He didn’t remember the last time he’d indulged in such a luxury as restful sleep, but maybe this time his dreams wouldn’t be of a doomed monk but of a silvery-haired woman of imposing gravitas and firefly eyes. One could always hope.
Chapter Four
No voices, no nightmares, no lights.
“Pluro Cermak’s farmstead.” Serovek gestured to a stretch of fallow fields sleeping under a thin blanket of new-fallen snow, the treeless landscape dotted by a large house and several barns. “Megiddo rests there.”
Shielded from the sun by her hood, Anhuset still squinted for a better look at the place where the monk’s body, alive but soulless, slept protected by ancient Kai magic. Her horse’s breath streamed out in misty clouds that hung in the cold air, obscuring part of her view. A year ago, Anhuset might have sensed the presence of sorcery. No longer, and the reminder of what she—and all the Kai—had lost in the galla war deepened the hollow inside her.
She and Serovek had departed High Salure just before dawn, accompanied by a half dozen of his soldiers as they descended from the mountain fortress to the flat plains at its feet. They had ridden a half day, finally stopping on this small hillock overlooking the farmstead. The rattle of a bridle and occasional creak of a saddle as someone shifted in their seat mingled with equine whuffles and the far-off call of the first birds returning north in anticipation of spring. Otherwise, their party was silent, waiting for their leader’s next instructions.
Serovek’s face was grim as he gazed down at his vassal’s holdings. Anhuset had seen the margrave flippant and teasing, an unabashed flirt who never failed to raise her hackles with his glib wit. She’d also seen him brave and self-sacrificing, displaying more nobility than sense on occasion. He was charming, ruthless, and calculating. A man of many facets who’d dug an arrowhead out of her shoulder with gentle hands, executed a murderer with those same hands, and ridden into battle alongside a man his own king considered a possible enemy. She’d never seen him like this: remote, forbidding, as if the task of returning Megiddo’s body to the Jeden monks was a trial to be endured.
“Is the monk’s brother willing to give him up to his order? Or is this a thing he’s obligated to do?” She’d assumed the first, but the death of a loved one, especially an unnatural death like this, sometimes made people react in strange ways and hold on to that which had already left them long ago.
Serovek maneuvered his mount to start down the slope. Anhuset stayed abreast of him as the others fell in behind. “My impression from his letter is that he welcomes the monastery’s willingness to take over guardianship of his brother’s body. He simply needs someone else to take Megiddo there.”
A man bearing a strong resemblance to Megiddo, only older, met them at the door. A woman, coiffed and layered against the cold, stood next to them. Both bowed stiffly, and their gazes shuttled back and forth between Serovek and Anhuset, lingering on her the longest.
“Welcome, my lord.” Pluro Cermak offered a second bow. “We’re most pleased to have you guest with us. Come in from the cold.”
Anhuset didn’t follow Serovek across the threshold. The invitation had been for the vassal’s lord, not his escort, and she considered herself part of that group. They would wait outside until Lord Pangion had spent time with Cermak in courteous fraternization.
Serovek was having none of it. He half-turned, scowled at her and the soldiers with her, and motioned them forward. “Hurry it up. You're letting all the heat escape just standing there.”
Cermak’s wife gaped at them like a caught fish, eyes wide as she huddled behind her husband while the margrave and his party hustled into the hall. Anhuset entered last, using her heel to shut the door behind her.
Pluro motioned to the fire roaring in the hearth at one end of the room. As startled by the twist in social protocol as his wife, he still managed to remember his hosting duties. “Please warm yourself by the fire. I’ll have food and drink brought.” He turned a severe look on Lady Cermak who fled for the kitchen.
Soon, a parade of servants, led by Lady Cermak, brought out cups of warm ale and hot tea, along with boards of bread and dried fruit set on a table not far from the hearth. Anhuset nursed a cup of the tea, warming her hands around the heated ceramic.
“I hate it when he does this,” one of the soldiers closest to her muttered. “We’re better off in the kitchens flirting with the maids.”
Another elbowed him. “Stop complaining. It’s a sight better than standing outside freezing your balls off, and the ale isn’t half bad.”
Not part of their conversation, Anhuset kept her thoughts to herself, but she agreed with the first soldier. Every state dinner or social gathering she’d ever been forced to attend at Saggara had been an exercise in awkwardness. Brishen and Ildiko, raised among the intricacies of court machinations in Haradis and Pricid, navigated those dangerous waters with effortless finesse, and she’d witnessed Serovek do the same when he visited Saggara. She, however, lurched and stumbled her way through such interactions. The humble kitchen seemed a much more inviting place to her as well, even if it was in a human household, where the gods only knew what horrors lurked in the stew pots suspended over the cooking fires.
She grumbled under her breath but adopted a neutral expression when Serovek waved her to where he stood with Cermak and Lady Cermak. The woman’s eyes grew wider with every step Anhuset took, her face paler. Had Serovek’s master-at-arms been present, Anhuset might have put a wager forward over how long it took for the lady of the house to bolt, certain if she didn’t, she’d be eaten.