Rhapsody: Child of Blood

62

“If you’re really that lonely here among the Bolg, Rhapsody, I will get you a cat.”

Rhapsody glared at him, and the light of the fire burning behind her intensified.

“And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Achmed sat forward quickly, the look in his eyes direct.

“It means that he has been here for a week now, and has shown no signs of leaving any time soon. He is wandering the halls of Ylorc with Jo, with no apparent restriction, despite what I thought was a rather clear directive to keep him away from any area that we might not want broached.”

The hay target at the end of the meeting room exploded with a savage thud.

“Excuse me,” Jo said icily, “who died and made you Supreme Ruler?”

Grunthor looked up from the field map he was studying.

“Oi think that would be Janthir Bonesplit’er, lit’le miss,” he said, then returned to his reading.

“Maybe for the Bolg. I don’t remember taking a loyalty oath.” Jo pulled the dirk out of the remains of the target. “Look, I don’t know what you’re worried about. Ashe is a good sort. It’s not his fault that you don’t trust anybody, any more than it’s mine.”

“This is not a point you want to argue,” Achmed said acidly. He turned to Rhapsody, who had put down the physician’s lyre she had been attempting to study. “I want him out of here by morning.”

Shock rippled across her exquisite face. “Why?”

“I don’t want him here.”

The shock waves were replaced with white anger.

“Really? I agree with Jo; I hadn’t realized that yours was the only opinion that mattered. I thought we all lived here.”

“All right, he can stay. Grunthor, kill him, please. Before supper.”

“Wait,” Rhapsody said, watching the Bolg put down his map. “That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking. Rhapsody, he’s dangerous and secretive. I’ve told you this before. I don’t want him here, but if you’re loath to ask him to leave, bad manners and all, Grunthor and I can handle the social arrangements for you.”

Rhapsody glanced between the two angriest sets of eyes in the room. Achmed was growing visibly more upset, but he would have a long way to go to catch up with Jo. Her sister’s rage was only nominally contained. She stood, trembling with anger, fingering her dirk.

“All right, everyone calm down,” she said, a Namer’s tone in her voice. “First you, Achmed. I don’t think secretive is necessarily a bad thing; you are the most secretive man I’ve ever met, including Ashe. Just because he doesn’t show his face doesn’t mean he’s evil. Maybe he’s scarred.”

“I can’t pick up any vibrations from him, Rhapsody. Whenever he’s around it’s like standing beside the ocean. You know how much I love the ocean.”

It’s not what he is, it’s what he wears.

Rhapsody sat straight up at the sound of the voice in her memory. She listened intently, but no more words came.

“That may be nothing more than the function of something he’s wearing,” she said pragmatically. “What do you think, Grunthor? You’ve been fairly quiet.”

The giant Bolg intertwined his fingers over his stomach.

“Oi agree with ’Is Majesty. Oi don’ think we should let ’im out of our sight.”

“Fine,” said Jo quickly. “I won’t leave him alone in any of the main rooms. I’ll be with him whenever he’s not asleep; how’s that?”

“Fine with me,” said Rhapsody. “He’s leaving soon anyway. I just ask you to indulge me in one more thing, you two,” she said to the men. “May I remind you that he helped quell the Hill-Eye rebellion, and did a credible job at it? He helped us when it was no business of his, without asking or expecting anything in return.”

Achmed stood to leave. “Maybe he didn’t need anything else in return,” he said as he stalked to the door. “Maybe all the reward he needed was in causing the rebellion, himself, in the first place.”

The heavy wooden door slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.

The cool mist of Ashe’s cloak settled on his face, diminishing the heat of his dream.

He turned over in the bed, shrugging away the garment that he wore at all times, night and day, with no exceptions. As he shifted beneath the blankets a pocket of steam rose from the cloak. There was comfort in the mist; it took a little of the edge off his pain. And it kept him safe, hidden from those who hunted him.

He had not been able to dream these twenty years, not since the night when his life had been torn asunder.

In younger days he had come to regard the time he spent dreaming as a blessing, the one chance he still had to be with the woman he loved, would always love, to the exclusion of any other. Her death had been the end of hope for him, or belief in the Future, but he still had his one and only memory of her in the Past. He had come to long for those rare nights when she graced his dreams, smiling in the darkness as she had so long ago.

When he’s in port, it’s actually very tiny —about as big us my hand. And he keeps it on his mantel, in a bottle.

His one and only memory. It had been enough.

And then, one night, even that solitary comfort was gone. Now his life was no longer his own; he was a shell, a pawn in an evil game. The pain he carried, day after day, moment by moment, was ever-present in his mind and body. It was an agony of the soul as well as the physical realm, a torture so complete that it required almost constant force of will to keep from giving in to it. The dream had vanished then, too holy and pure to be able to exist in the same mind that saw what he was forced to see, night after night, moment by moment.

But now something had changed. Ever since he had met her in the marketplace in Bethe Corbair, he had dreamt of Rhapsody. The guilt of the betrayal of Emily’s memory had faded quickly, shoved aside by the ease that her voice brought to his pain, to the throbbing in his head and chest that he had been unable to escape before he met her.

Ashe sat up, untangling himself again from the blankets and the mist cloak. He closed his eyes and breathed shallowly, willing her to go away, to spare him the one thing he held holy. In body and soul, even in his memory, he had been unfalteringly loyal to the woman he had crossed Time to meet, if only for a moment.

There could be no other, he knew. Emily’s place in his heart was a shrine.

So why was this woman there? Why couldn’t he drive her out of it?

I’ll be thinking about you every moment until I see you again.