The Queen and the Cure (The Bird and the Sword Chronicles #2)(15)
“There was a man who walked with me from Kilmorda to Firi. When my feet bled, he helped me bind them. When my mouth was dry he gave me water. And he told me stories. I was afraid, and he told me stories. I came to Quondoon with a head full of tales and no memories. No sense of myself. It was as though the Creator formed me from the clay, fully grown, like the Changer, the Spinner, the Healer, and the Teller. But even they knew from whence they came. They knew to whom they belonged.”
They knew to whom they belonged.
His brother had always had that sense of belonging. Tiras was arrogant in the way all kings were arrogant, but that was merely survival. Tiras’s opinion of himself guided the opinion others formed about him. A king had to act as if he belonged on the throne. Kjell would have never been able to convince anyone he belonged.
“But now I belong to you,” Sasha said firmly, and she dried his face with a cloth, indicating she had finished.
He sat up abruptly, startling her, distancing himself.
“No. You don’t.” He stood, and a wave of dizziness flooded him. She reached out to steady him, but he shrugged her away.
“You must eat. Sit. I’ll bring you food and more wine,” she insisted, rising beside him. Her hands were folded in front of her, her eyes cast down.
“Sasha.” He waited for her to lift her eyes to his. She was very composed, but her eyes shimmered with disappointment.
“You don’t belong to me. The people I healed, the people you helped me heal . . . they don’t belong to me either. That is not the way it works. I do not want a servant, and I don’t need a woman.” He spoke slowly as if he spoke to a child, and she nodded once, indicating she heard him.
“Mina said I was simple. She said I must obey her and I would be safe. But I am not simple. I am not stupid.” Sasha’s voice was almost musical in its tranquility, but beneath the surface there was steel, and the gleaming in her eyes had changed. He’d made her angry. Good. Some fury was in order.
“You are not stupid. But you are too forgiving and too trusting. You are a Seer, yet you don’t see the obvious,” he said.
“Most of the time the obvious blinds us to the hidden.”
Kjell sighed heavily, pressing his palms to his eyes. The woman had powerful opinions for someone so defenseless. He pulled on his boots and ran fingers through his hair, determined to dismiss her. She stood quietly by, waiting for his direction.
“Where are my men?”
“Jerick is outside. The others have been taking shifts, as you instructed. They are helping bring water from the mountain stream.”
He tried to thank her, but the words felt false, so he simply shook his head and left the house. He had business to attend to, and then he was getting on his horse and leaving Solemn and all her people behind.
The village had come alive. There was new life, and people scurried and scuttled. Children were underfoot, and an outdoor market, not all that different from the market in Jeru City’s square, lined the main thoroughfare. People were selling their wares and talking excitedly among themselves. A new well was being dug. A man from Doha was coming to Solemn. He was said to have the Gift to call water. He would walk without shoes, his toes curling into the dirt, and he could feel the water beneath the surface, no matter how deep. For the time being, the village had assigned all the able men to carry water from the stream near the cliffs.
Kjell was greeted with awe and tears. It made his stomach clench and his hands sweat. His name was called out, and food was pressed into his hands, presents laid at his feet. He tried to give it back, to refuse, but the people backed away, leaving their offerings and shaking their heads. One woman brought him a goat, tugging it behind her with a determination not to be out-gifted.
“No!” he roared. “I am a soldier. I can’t take your goat.” The animal bleated piteously, and the woman looked as though he’d struck her. She wore a pale green scarf over her hair. The material was soft and fine, and the color would not draw the heat.
Sasha had given her veil away.
“I will take your head covering. Give me that instead. You keep the goat.”
“But the goat is a better gift!”
“I don’t want it. I want the scarf. I need two more like it, in different colors. And three dresses. About your size. And boots. For a lady.” He reached for his coin pouch, but the people around him, enlivened by his requests, ran to fulfill them.
The woman smiled, nodding happily, and shyly withdrew her scarf. Her hair was as black as Sasha’s eyes, and Kjell’s mind immediately returned to the things he’d learned that morning. Sasha did not belong in Quondoon.
He brushed the niggling aside, immediately distracted by tradesmen and women, presenting him with veils and gowns and jewelry and shoes, sized to fit a tall, slim woman.
He pushed the ridiculous away—the jewelry and the slippers that would tear with any use—and barked his preferences with little fanfare, choosing colors that wouldn’t compete with Sasha’s hair or absorb the sunlight, and fabrics that wouldn’t abrade her skin or be difficult to wash. He’d never selected clothes for a female, and he spent more coin than he made in a month, just to be done with it. He paid two young boys to trail him with his purchases, but had hardly made it out of the market when he was hailed by the elder named Byron, the brother of the deceased Mina, Sasha’s master.