02 the barbed rose, p.10
02 - The Barbed Rose, page 10
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.
“You. In there.” She shoved Obed toward one of the small bedrooms, hard enough to make him stagger. Shoulders hunched, he went. Of course. She’d given him a direct order. “Wait until I come for you.”
She turned to the others and had to make fists of her hands to stop their shaking. She had never in her life been so angry. “Joh, give me your hands.”
When he held them out, his face calm and accepting, she unfastened his wristbands.
“Kallista, what are you doing?” Torchay stepped closer, then swore, blotting his nose. The bleeding had started again.
The sight of his blood showing bright red on the pale fabric of her handkerchief calmed her. The rage was still there, but it was deeper. Colder. Unaffected by petty annoyances like crowds or courtiers. Her hands no longer shook.
“I am going to deal with Obed.” She gathered Joh’s wristbands into one hand. “This is going to end today.”
“Maybe you should wait. Let him stew in there for a while. Give yourself time to calm down.”
“I am as calm as I wish to be. He needs to understand my anger.”
“I don’t,” Torchay said. Joh let his confusion speak in his expression.
“You don’t have to. Not now.” Kallista looked down at the broad magic-spelled cuffs in her hand. “I won’t hurt him—at least not more than he deserves. I have that much control.” Her anger burned cold as she met Torchay’s gaze. “This ends today, one way or another. He will overcome his difficulties and join with us, or I will have his mark.”
“Can you do that?” Joh whispered.
Kallista did not pause to consider. “Today, I think I can.”
She started for the door to the room where Obed waited. “Stay out, no matter what you may hear. You should rest.”
“You expect us to rest after you say a thing like that?” Torchay took a step as if to accompany her, but stopped when she looked back at him. He straightened, saluted. “Yes, Captain.”
“Joh, see he does it,” she ordered. “Our room is close enough to this one that you shouldn’t have problems.”
“Yes, Captain.” Joh was rubbing his wrists. The bands hadn’t chafed. Maybe he felt strange with bare wrists. He had been shackled a long time.
Torchay wiped away another trickle of blood, refreshing Kallista’s icy anger, and she entered the small bedroom.
Kallista did not see Obed as she closed the door behind her, and she wondered if he might have gone out the window. But the window was too narrow for his shoulders to fit, and Obed was not one to run from punishment. From Kallista and uncomfortable emotions, yes, but not punishment or duty.
Then she saw him. He lay naked on the bare wood floor at the far side of the bed, arms and legs outstretched in an X, his nose pressed flat against the floor. Kallista walked past the foot of the bed, staring. His lips moved, brushing the floor with every whispered word.
“Obed?”
He flinched, his whole body jerking as if she’d struck him rather than merely speaking his name.
“What are you doing?” Kallista stepped carefully over his right leg into the space next to his body, between his outstretched arm and leg.
He did not turn his face to the side but kept it pressed straight into the polished wood as he spoke. “I have failed you and forsworn my vows. I am most abjectly sorry for my faults and I beg that you instruct me. Correct my flaws. Discipline my weaknesses so that I might not fail you again.”
It sounded as if he repeated some ritual apology.
Would she never cease bumping into more of his Southron strangeness? It already had her losing her grip on her anger, though not on her determination to solve this problem.
The sight of his long powerful body stretched naked before her could also have something to do with the lessening of her anger. She had never before seen him completely nude, and not often without a shirt. He did not strip down as easily, as casually, as her other men did. Now, she could not help looking, especially since he was so well worth looking at, lean muscle beneath sleek skin in shades of brown from dark to pale to palest.
The wristbands shifted, clinked together, reminding Kallista she held them. She went down on one knee beside him, and was distracted by a silvery mark across the ivory skin of his buttocks. She touched it, and again he jumped as if struck.
Now she was close enough, she could see more of the marks, dozens of them. Scores. All across his buttocks, thighs and lower back, silvery and faint, but there. She traced her fingers across one and then another; Obed shivered, quaking under her touch.
“What are these?” She brushed the palm of her hand lightly over the webbed stripes on his thigh. She thought she knew, but asked anyway.
“Marks of discipline.” Obed’s voice came hoarse and rusty, choked off.
“Scars?”
“Yes.”
Kallista sat, curling her legs to one side, and she sought out, touched, traced all the scars. “How did you get them?”
Obed took a shuddering breath. “When I was first sent to be a dedicat, to be trained as champion for the Shakiri line, I was unruly and without discipline. The first time—”
“No.” She cut him off. She would hear his stories, all of them. She would learn what a dedicat was, what a champion did. But that was for later. “I mean, tell me what thing—what tool made these marks.”
“The lash.”
Kallista sighed. She did not know whether he was being deliberately obstructive or if he simply expected her to know these things. She laid her head on Obed’s back where it rose toward his shoulders, watching her hand move across his marred skin. “Tell me about the lash. What is it like? What is it used for?”
“It is five long strips of soft leather bound to a short handle. It is used for discipline because it gets the attention of the rebellious without causing serious injury.”
“But you have all these scars.”
“I was very rebellious. And I—my skin marks easily, and holds the mark.”
“These marks look as if they’ve been here a fair piece of time.” Kallista rolled her head forward and pressed her lips to one of the scars in the small of his back. Obed jolted and she smiled. “Why is that?”
“I did, eventually, learn discipline. I have not known the lash for fifteen years.”
How young had he been when he acquired these? She would discover this, but later. “And you expect me to use this lash on you?”
Every muscle in Obed’s body went tight, almost bouncing her head from his back. “I have failed you and forsworn my vows,” he said. “I am most abjectly sorry for my faults and I beg—”
“Be still.” Kallista sat up and set her hand on his head to quiet him, combing her fingers through his hair.
She had come into this room filled with a cold and righteous rage, ready to cast him aside if he could not control his moods. She had found him waiting for the worst. Expecting it, as if he deserved nothing more.
Perhaps the problem here was not that Obed was out of control, but that he was too controlled. Perhaps if Kallista took control out of his hands so that he did not have to master himself—would he let her? Could he let himself go so far?
“Give me your hand.”
Obed bent his arm at the elbow, lifting his hand in the air above his head, and Kallista closed a band around his wrist.
“Now the other.” She rose onto her knees and completed her tasks. When both cuffs were on, his hands still raised in the air, she linked them together and locked them down.
Obed’s trembling grew, becoming an almost continuous shudder. Kallista stroked her hand from his head, down his shoulders, across his back to his buttocks and along one thigh. Then she got to her feet.
“I have failed you and forsworn my vows,” Obed began again, voice breaking. This time she let him get all the way through the ritual formula, mouthing the words with him to imprint them on her memory.
“Stand,” she said.
He brought his hands down and used them to push himself off the floor, straightening slowly. He did not seem to know what to do with his locked-together hands, finally letting them hover at chest height. He stared straight ahead, as if he could see through the wall into the room they’d shared last night. And he was beautiful, just as he had been in her dreams before he ever walked into the Reinine’s great hall and into her life. But this was no dream. He was here, naked, aroused and under her control.
“Oh, Obed, what am I going to do with you?” Kallista set her hands on his shoulders and rested her forehead against the warm dark skin of his back. “Are you truly abjectly sorry? Do you even know what happened?”
“I—I am most abjectly sorry for my faults and I beg that you instruct me.” He stuttered as her arms came around his waist. “I—instruct me.”
“You don’t know, do you?” Her hands pressed flat over the smooth skin of his stomach and he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Instruct me.” His breathing did not even out, became more ragged, though Kallista’s hands did not move. “Correct my flaws. Discipline my weaknesses. Please.” The word was a groan. “I would not fail you again.”
She turned her head, resting her cheek against his back, holding him in her arms. “Your discipline is so strong. For fifteen years it has been perfect. What I would teach you is not discipline.”
“Then teach me what you wish me to know.” The words burst from him and he shuddered violently. “Instruct me.”
But how? Kallista could feel the tension humming through him as he trembled in her embrace, as if standing motionless required all the will he possessed. She could sense nothing through the link and doubted she would, as tight as he maintained his control.
