“Right,” he said, his blood pounding hot through him. He wanted to march into the room and kiss her. This Miguil wasn’t here, and he saw the look in her eyes, but . . .
Avena would hate him if he pressed. He’d seen her devotion to her religion, knew enough of its teachings about passion. He shook his head, the drink heavy on him. He grabbed her doorknob, noticing the sable of his gloves.
A reminder that he only destroyed what he touched.
“Blessed night,” she said as he closed the door.
“May your hearth burn strong through the night,” he said and closed her door.
He stumbled down to his door and opened it. Carstin rested on the only bed, covered by a blanket. Ōbhin slumped down into a rickety chair and stared at the man. His friend. Ōbhin drifted into sleep thinking about roads.
Chapter Eight
Twenty-Fifth Day of Compassion, 755 EU
Embarrassment found Avena when she woke up the next day. She’d almost kissed Ōbhin and broken her promise to Miguil.
She had only vague memories of their near kiss, her mind fuzzy with drink. For a moment, it was like Chames had held her. He always had driven back that void Evane’s death had left in her soul, that messy gouge that had almost scraped out all her essence. Amid the embarrassment was guilt for hardly thinking of her gentle groom in the excitement of the last week, but now she focused on how much she loved him.
His countenance often swam in her thoughts. Jovial and young, with broad shoulders and a face that verged on beautiful, he always stirred her passions. All the maids and cooks mooned over him, and she’d won him. He was strong yet gentle as he cared for Dualayn’s horses. He had the same touch with them she had with her patients.
Whenever her eyes drifted to Ōbhin as he drove the wagon farther and farther east towards Kash, she reminded herself of Miguil’s laugh. His flashing eyes and bright smile, his skin a beige tan, darkened by working outdoors. For the last year, she had gone on walks with him during the evening, opening her heart to the safety of his embrace. He wasn’t like some of the other men in and around the manor house. Not eager Bran, a boy who hungered for his first time with a woman, or the gardener Dynoth with his too-friendly eyes. Even Fingers watched her, and he was married.
Not that he had a nice word to say about his wife, a woman Avena had never met.
A few days after leaving the Branglin, excitement to be home swelled as they passed Reed Bend, the last village on the outskirts of Kash. It lay along the Reedy River which meandered northeast to the larger Ustern River. At the rate the capital grew, in five years the hamlet would be another neighborhood, a slum overrun with canneries, slaughterhouses, bakeries, and factories. New industries driven by the burgeoning revolution the discovery of jewelchines had fueled over the last half-century. A yellowish smoke hung like a pall over Kash, staining the horizon.
She thumbed back Carstin’s eye. Whatever the White Lady had done still sustained him. It’s like he’s in a trance, she thought. How could she use truth to sustain a man? Dualayn claimed it wasn’t magic, but diamonds couldn’t heal. Topazes did.
She glanced at Dualayn. He stared at the book he’d been given, his cipher. He looked wan, pale. She wondered how much he’d slept. He devoured the book as they rode, only putting it away if the weather turned wet. Rain was common this time of year. The last fields before Kash swelled with spring planting, saffron flowers to fuel the oil, dye, and perfume industries bringing in money from across the Glowing Sea.
“Take the lane ahead,” she said to Ōbhin as the first slum neared. Called the Slops, it was a ramshackle affair crowded with abattoirs churning out salted pork. She didn’t know the name of the village swallowed by hungry Kash. Original buildings stood amid the lesser quality tenements constructed of cheap mud-fired bricks. She pointed to the lake to the south, the waters sparkling blue. “The manor’s on the southern shore.”
The pastoral lands where Dualayn had built his home was slowly being encroached upon by the city. A number of their neighbors, various lords and merchants, had filed grievances with Parliament and the king to little avail. The slums marched on. Lately, Dualayn’s few guards had to watch for slinking thieves and burglars raiding their house.
“How’s Carstin?” Ōbhin said without looking back, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze spilling off the lake. The reins creaked as he turned the horses onto the lane.
“Same,” she said.
“It’s not natural,” said Ōbhin. “He hasn’t changed at all.”
“No,” she said. She checked the bandage around Carstin’s severed leg. The infection still had not spread but hadn’t retreated, either. It wasn’t responding to her meager medicine nor was it advancing. She’d expected the flesh to start to die, but the scent of moldy cheese didn’t fill the air, nor did any pus suppurate from the wound. “I am at a loss to explain it. Father?”
“Hmm,” Dualayn asked, turning a page in the cipher.
“Do you understand what the White Lady did to Carstin?”
“Not yet,” he said. He glanced at the cloth-covered Recorder. “I feel the answers lie in here, though. Some sort of harmonic resonance, I suspect. I wish I had seen her jewelchine, but she kept her back to me. I just saw the light and heard . . . a harmony.”
“Like she resonated with Raleth’s Tone?” asked Ōbhin.
“Mmm, indeed, like a tale out of the Forbidden Kingdom,” Dualayn
