The Complete Horse Mistress Collection, page 44
Senovo laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder again. “That does sound horrible,” he said, still using the soothing cadence that I myself had found much reason to appreciate in recent weeks. “However, you’re awake now. The nearest mountains are almost three days’ ride from here, but even in Draebard we would surely see the smoke from such a fire as you describe. No one has reported such a thing. And no one from Draebard is traveling that far away at the moment, so everyone you know is safe. Do you understand?”
“I know it’s not real,” Favian muttered, still wracked by little bouts of shivering. “It just felt real, is all. More real than this, almost.” He gestured around the room with a small wave of his hand.
Senovo patted his shoulder and sat back. “Dreams during an illness can be odd,” he offered. “Still, I think your fever is breaking, so hopefully you won’t have any more like that tonight.”
“S’pose so,” Favian said, not looking at us, embarrassment starting to war visibly with his upset.
“Can you rest some more, do you think?” Senovo asked. “I don’t want to give you anything to help you sleep without speaking to the healer first, but I can call for her if I need to.”
Favian shook his head. “No, I’ll try. Only…”
“What is it, Favian?” I prompted when he trailed off into silence.
Favian wrestled with himself for a long moment. “Could you both stay here for a while?” he blurted eventually.
I hid my smile. “Sure,” I said, not making a big deal of it. “We were going to anyway.” I reached out to ruffle a hand through his blonde hair, and he ducked away, blushing. “By the way, I spoke with your father earlier. He said to tell you he’d be by again in the morning to see you. He’ll be pleased that your fever has broken.”
Favian nodded—a small movement. “He worries,” he said.
Senovo settled back in his chair with a faint huff of amusement. “You’re his son, Favian. It’s his job to worry.”
I paused in my own journey back to my seat, caught unawares by a surge of bitterness. Neither Senovo nor I had seen much in the way of protective worry when we were children, though at least his parents had the excuse of looming starvation when they’d agreed to sell their seven-year-old son to slavers. When it came to me, however, the only thing my own mother seemed to worry about were my unnatural inclinations, as she had been prone to calling them—usually right before she raised her hand or a leather strap to me.
Returning to the present, I took a careful breath and sat down next to Senovo again. Perhaps sensing that I was not going to be a fount of helpfulness just now, the priest leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Well, Little Brother,” he said, “since we’ve nothing better to do right now, this seems like as good a time as any to go over the religious histories again. You will, after all, be required to recite them correctly before you ascend to the rank of novice priest.”
“Yes, High Priest,” Favian replied dutifully, relaxing a bit when it became obvious that there would be no more talk of either his dream or his father.
“Remind me how far you had progressed with the story of Naloth and Utarr in your studies with Novice Feldes?”
“To, umm, the part where Naloth pursues Utarr into the desert and gains her love by bringing the rains,” Favian said. “Upon the sand, warm rain did fall; the grass sprung up and covered all. That bit.”
“Very good,” Senovo replied. “In that case, let us continue…”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in the chair, letting the low, sonorous drone of Senovo’s voice roll over me as he recounted the courtship of the two gods in the most boring and sleep-inducing manner imaginable. My knee pressed companionably against his, out of Favian’s line of sight. When, a rather short time later, the sound of Favian snoring through his partially blocked nose grew louder than the sound of Senovo’s recitation, he trailed off at the end of a stanza.
“You are surprisingly good at that,” I told him, not bothering to open my eyes.
“I wasn’t the only frightened slave-child in the southern Priests’ Guild,” he said, his voice wistful. “As I grew older, soothing the young ones from their night terrors became a useful skill to have, particularly if I wished to have any undisturbed sleep myself.”
And who comforted you after your nightmares, I wonder? Rather than say it aloud, I let my head roll to the side and rest against his shoulder as Favian snored on. Senovo’s body expanded and contracted in a deep sigh under my cheek.
“This concerns me,” he said in a quiet tone. “Favian is a deeply empathic boy.”
I opened my eyes and straightened so I could look at him. “The dream, you mean? It was only a nightmare, surely.”
“I certainly hope that’s the case,” he said.
“What else would it be?” I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion.
Senovo drew breath as if to reply, but we were interrupted by a soft knock at the door. Since I was closer, I rose and opened it, revealing Andoc standing in the hallway. He smiled and leaned down to press a kiss to my forehead.
“Thought I might find you here,” he said. Despite his brief grin, his eyes were troubled. “Come out for a minute, both of you. There’s news.”
Senovo joined us in the hall and closed the door silently behind him. “What is it?” he asked.
“I’ve just come from the meeting hall,” Andoc said. “We have visitors. They arrived just as night was falling.”
“What kind of visitors?” I asked.
“A group of ambassadors have come to talk about the attack on the hill fort.”
My blood ran cold. “Alyrions?” I asked.
“No, they’re Eburosi,” Andoc said. “From, uh… down south somewhere.”
“You might as well come out and say it,” Senovo said, sounding tired. “You’re being cagey, and it’s not difficult to guess why.”
“Sorry. They’re Rhytheeri,” Andoc said after a slight pause, as if it was an admission of some sort.
“Who are the Rhytheeri?” I asked. “Hang on. Isn’t that the tribe who had some kind of conflict going with Meren?”
“It is,” Andoc said. “The Rhytheeri come from the southern coast, but their influence extends as far north as the mountains. They more or less rolled over for the Alyrions as soon as the Empire came knocking at their doorstep a couple of years ago. Started paying the Emperor tribute; let him install a puppet king to rule in Rhyth. That kind of thing.” He paused, a muscle working in his jaw. “We also think that the bounty hunters who captured you two in the forest were Rhytheeri.”
Senovo leaned backward a couple of inches until he was braced against the wall. His voice was completely flat when he added, “And, of course, what Andoc is so tactfully refraining from saying is that the Rhytheeri are my own people—the people who made me a slave and castrated me against my will. The ones I escaped six years ago.”
Chapter 2: A Taste of Home
I STARED AT HIM. “The men who captured us were your own people? You never said.”
Senovo continued to let the wall take his weight. His eyes stared through the opposite side of the hallway, focused somewhere far away as he shrugged a shoulder. “It hardly seemed relevant at the time. There were more pressing concerns.”
“Do you think they knew who you were?” I asked. “That you had escaped from the Rhytheeri, I mean.”
“I hope not,” Senovo said.
“No reason they would,” Andoc added. “People move around to different parts of Eburos all the time. Lots of Rhytheeri come north.”
I wondered how many freshly castrated shape-shifting slaves who had just savaged and killed their owners came north from Rhytheeri, but wisely refrained from asking aloud.
“Is Volya meeting with them now?” I said instead, changing the subject.
“No,” Andoc replied. “Not until mid-morning tomorrow. They pled weariness after the long journey. It’s six days’ ride to get here from Rhyth. We put them up at Threstal’s place for the night.”
“Does the Chief want me to attend tomorrow?” I asked, not wishing to take anything for granted. That Andoc and Senovo would attend such an important meeting was a given. My own welcome was still something of an open question.
“It’s well within your rights as Mistress of the Horses to attend meetings that might affect Draebard’s future,” Senovo said.
“That’s not quite what I asked,” I pointed out in a wry tone.
“Come, by all means,” said Andoc. “I’m sorry to say that if you don’t want to lose your power, you’re going to have to exercise it. Otherwise, Volya will squeeze you out. You already saw what he tried to do to Senovo.”
I nodded. “I’ll be there, in that case. I’m supposed to meet with Keenan first thing in the morning to work on the mounted archery project. I’ll bring her with me—she can act as an observer for Meren.”
“There, see? Now you’re getting it,” Andoc said, letting a faint smile briefly chase the worry lines from his face. “So, are we all staying here tonight?”
“Someone needs to watch over Favian,” I told him, jerking my chin toward the closed door. “His fever’s broken, but he’s having nightmares and I don’t want to leave him alone. His father will be back in the morning, but if you’re willing to take a shift, we could split up the vigil three ways and two could rest while one of us stays with him.”
“Of course,” Andoc said. “Poor kid… I thought he was doing better.”
“It’s merely a case of the coughing sickness,” Senovo said, rallying enough to push away from the wall. “Nothing to do with his wound, which is nearly healed. Why don’t you take the first watch, old friend?”
“That way we won’t have to try to wake you up later,” I added, unable to help myself.
“Ha, yes, very funny,” Andoc said. “You’ve just guaranteed yourself an interesting method of being awoken for your own shift. You do realize that, right?”
“As long as it doesn’t involve cold water in the same bed where I, too, am trying to sleep,” said Senovo, raising an eyebrow pointedly.
“No promises,” Andoc replied. “Now, go get some rest, both of you. I’ll sit with the boy and Carivel can relieve me around midnight.”
* * *
My interesting method of being awoken turned out to consist of a large hand closing over my mouth and a rough whisper in my ear. “Not a sound, now. Don’t wake Senovo.”
After the initial startle, I relaxed into the grip, shivering a bit as Andoc’s breath tickled the shell of my ear. I’d gone to sleep curled around Senovo’s back, one arm thrown over him in a protective embrace, but we’d separated as the night wore on and I now lay on my back, a short distance away on the bed.
Andoc’s other hand trailed possessively over my naked skin, and the breath left my lungs in a long, shaky exhalation. As the flat, callused palm slid across my stomach, then lower, I hitched my leg to the side to give him better access, careful not to make the mattress shift. A pulse of wetness flooded my cunt. Andoc did not keep me waiting, but pressed his hand a bit tighter over the lower half of my face to enforce my silence even as he trailed fingers over my inner lips, gathering the slickness there and dragging it forward to slide across my painfully erect nub.
The barest hint of a stifled whimper escaped from behind his hand, and he whispered, “Shh… don’t move. Don’t make a sound.”
I locked the breath in my chest, staring sightlessly into the darkness as talented fingers pushed me inexorably toward release. The blood was singing in my veins. My muscles kept getting tighter and tighter, but I forced myself not to move beyond the involuntary quivering of my thighs. In no time at all, I squeezed my eyes shut and huffed out my climax silently through my nose, as tingles raced through my body and red flashes flared behind my eyelids.
“Well done, you,” Andoc whispered, sounding amused and affectionate in equal measure.
I relaxed back, dizzy. The hand over my mouth was replaced by chapped lips that grew slick and warm as we kissed. Eventually, Andoc pulled back and pinched my hip to get me up and moving. My hideously embarrassing squeak of surprise immediately woke Senovo, who muttered something uncomplimentary and rolled over with his pillow pulled over his head while Andoc and I tried to stifle our guilty amusement.
“I think we’ve irritated him,” Andoc whispered when he had himself under control again, nearly sending me straight back into undignified giggles.
I dragged myself out of bed on weak knees and stumbled around getting dressed in the darkness. Meanwhile, Andoc took over my place in the bed. A smile tugged at my lips as Senovo’s mumbled protests at the jostling melted into a contented hum, presumably when Andoc pulled the other man into his arms.
* * *
Favian was quiet through all three of our watches, sleeping peacefully. When Senovo returned just before dawn to report that Renthro was with him once more, I returned Andoc’s favor from earlier by drizzling oil over his cock and pumping him lazily in my fist until he spilled, still only half-awake, but with my name on his lips.
I kissed them both and slipped out of the temple to get some breakfast. Though I was still something of a controversial figure among Gretya’s older daughters, I was once again welcome in the cookhouse—a fact about which my stomach was quite relieved. Inviting Limdya to apprentice at the horse pens had reduced the friction with her sisters in some ways, but increased it in others—Limdya’s new path as the only girl among a pack of rowdy boys was not an easy one.
Nonetheless, Charyal had taken her late mother’s policy of turning no one away to heart, and I emerged a few minutes later, nibbling on a hunk of hearty brown flatbread topped with melting butter and dotted with sweet berries. The food made a pleasant accompaniment to my morning walk to the pens, and I arrived just as the first few boys showed up.
Limdya arrived soon after, and I set her to work with Lundis, learning how to trim ragged hooves. Favian’s young friend had been quiet after the revelations about my birth sex—neither openly supportive nor openly hostile—and I trusted him not to make Limdya’s life a misery simply because she’d had the temerity to be born female. It probably helped, too, that Lundis was obviously terrified of her blunt, bossy manner.
When Keenan arrived with Ciero in tow, I had already met with Dalon, my second-in-command, both to let him know about the meeting with the Rhytheeri and to get the day’s activities planned. The sun was up, promising another dry, hot day. It was good that the wet spring had raised a healthy crop of grass in the pasturelands—otherwise the drought that seemed to be setting in might have become a real worry. As it was, there was still plenty of fodder for the animals. And, unless the wind came up and made the dust a problem, today would be a perfect day for practicing archery.
“Good morning,” Keenan said cheerfully, dropping her gear on a convenient table.
“Hello, Keenan. Hello, Ciero,” I greeted.
Ciero, who had traveled to be with Keenan when she decided to stay in Draebard for a while, smiled and nodded. I liked them both immensely, though they were a study in opposites—Keenan, blunt and outgoing; Ciero, quiet and shy.
“Hope you don’t mind if I camp at one of your tables while you two practice your archery,” Ciero said in his soft, self-deprecating voice.
I smiled. “Of course not. What are you working on?”
Ciero lowered a satchel to the table, the strap looped over the stump of his right forearm. He deftly opened the drawstring left-handed and pulled out a large burl of ebony. I caught my breath upon seeing the carving that emerged from it, half-finished.
“Is that Nietre?” I asked in awe, reaching out to touch the chiseled head and neck of a horse.
He grinned, pleased. “It is indeed. I figured I had a perfectly good subject for a carving right here under my nose and might as well take advantage of it.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, meaning it.
“Hopefully the wood will continue to cooperate,” he joked. “I thought there was a horse trapped inside it somewhere when I first saw the piece, but one never knows for certain until it’s finished.”
Keenan wrapped an arm around her husband’s chest from behind and kissed the top of his head as she caught my eye. “Don’t get him started talking about art,” she said with a wink. “We’ll be here all day.”
Ciero blushed. “Yes, yes. Go play with your bow and arrows, dearest. Leave a starving, unappreciated artist to his work.”
She snorted and gave his slightly rounded stomach a firm pat. “I’ll do that, dearest.”
I grinned at their playfulness, but sobered a moment later. “By the way,” I told Keenan as she readied the latest bow that the bowsmith had sent her to test, “We only have a couple of hours to work. There’s a meeting in the village at mid-morning.”
Keenan grew serious as well. “So I’ve heard. They’re saying the visitors traveled up from Rhyth.”
“That’s what Andoc tells me. Apparently the Empire didn’t take kindly to reports of its garrison of soldiers being slaughtered.” I shivered, and blinked to dispel the momentary image of an Alyrion dying on top of me, the chains of my shackles wrapped around his neck. Keenan squeezed my shoulder, a brief and grounding gesture.
“Maybe they should have thought of that before they attacked your village in the dead of night,” she said, voice grim. “Fucking Alyrions. They and the Rhytheeri deserve each other.”
“I’d never even heard of the Rhytheeri until Leader Magoldis mentioned that Meren had some kind of dispute with them,” I said. “Now I can’t seem to get away from them.”
“They’re far enough away that they have no business anywhere near Mereni territory,” Keenan said. “But they’ve somehow diverted most of the water from one of the rivers we use for livestock, until it’s nearly running dry. It’s probably something the Alyrions taught them how to do. Those spineless southern bastards sold their souls for whatever trade agreements and technological advancements the Emperor was willing to give them.”
“I don’t think anyone realized at first how much of a foothold the Alyrions had gained in Rhyth,” Ciero added.
