Renegade's Magic (The Soldier Son Trilogy #3)

When he had emptied her hiding place, he sat for a long time by the fire, wistfully sorting through the trove. Long he held in his hand a fist-sized ivory carving of a fat dimpled baby. It came to me that it was a fertility charm, and that Lisana had made efforts not to be so alone in her life. Those efforts had availed her nothing. Great Ones, I suddenly knew, had few offspring, and all such were highly valued by the People. I saw Olikea’s frequent bedding of me in a different light and felt both naive and foolish that I had ever thought she was attracted to me for myself. In my mind, I reviewed her dalliance with me. She had never deceived me. I had supplied the context for our sex, to make myself believe her interest in me was as romantic as it was carnal. It hadn’t been then and it wasn’t now. She had expected me to wield power she would share. And she had hoped to be the mother of a rare and valued asset to her kin-clan—the child of a Great One.

I felt a rush of shame and resentment. My deception of myself was my own fault, but it was easier to be angry with Olikea than to admit that to myself. I stoked my resentment with the idea that she had dared to think of my child as if it would be a valuable piece of livestock. I resolved to have nothing more to do with her.

Then I realized it was no longer my decision to make. I opened myself to Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts, and found that he was giving no consideration to Olikea at all. He accepted all she had done, all she had offered me, all she had hoped to profit as natural and normal. Of course she would want a Great One’s child. Producing such a baby would have benefited both of them in terms of the regard of their kin-clan. Of course Olikea would have fed and pampered and bedded me. It was what a Great One’s feeders did.

Even Lisana’s feeders?

No. She’d had no long-term feeders. She hadn’t wanted that sort of relationship.

And later, when she had tried for a child?

His thoughts darted away from my touch like a fish darting away from a flung stone. Ah. That question stung, did it? Interesting.

He sat by the fire, looking at Lisana’s impressive collection. I could feel both Lisana’s sentiment about it and Soldier’s Boy’s more pragmatic evaluation of what rested there. Before him, if he could find the will to use it, lay the instrument of his rise to power. There was wealth enough there to command instant respect from the People, whether he wore it, traded it, or distributed it as largesse. Here was the foundation of his plan, if he dared to seize it and use it as his own.

But that, of course, was the sticking point. It was not his. It had been Lisana’s; it was Lisana’s still, in his mind, as she lived in his heart. Just looking at it made him feel closer to her. She had treasured these things; it seemed heartless and mercenary of him to raid her cache and then think only of what her treasures could buy for him.

I felt him yearn toward her. He picked up a large jade pendant in the shape of a lily leaf and held the cool stone against his cheek. Slowly it warmed, just as it had warmed against her breast when she had worn it. He opened his heart and reached wildly toward her, but it was a hopeless reaching. Ever since I had defeated him in that other world, ever since his topknot had been torn free of his skull, he had not been able to see or hear or touch Lisana. I had taken his anchor in that world and now it belonged to me. He had glimpsed her in the times I had contacted her, but only through the filter of my awareness. That was not what he longed for. He wanted to live alongside her in that other world as he had when he was her apprentice—her apprentice and eventually her lover.

His mind turned rawly to those memories. He had come into awareness of his own existence slowly, like an opening blossom. Just as I had grown and learned under Sergeant Duril’s tutelage in those years, so he had learned from his mentor. She was the guardian of the path that led to the spirit world. She stood the watch and kept away those who did not belong. It was tedious work and she could never completely relax her vigilance. There was always a part of her that remained on her sentry duty even at their most tender moments. It had been his first lesson in how demanding the magic could be; it took from a Great One whatever it and the People needed. A Great One might have magic, but it was not without cost.

Grief and weariness suddenly washed over him in a double wave. The nagging hunger that was his constant companion gave up and was still. His body wanted only rest. He walked ponderously to the moss bed, in the heavy stride of a man accustomed to his bulk. At the side of the bed, he lifted briefly the slack folds of his belly flesh.

“You wasted my wealth, Nevare.” It felt peculiar to have him address me so deliberately. “Now must I disperse Lisana’s treasure to try to regain my standing. You are so Gernian in your arrogance and wastefulness. But now you must live within me, and I shall teach you how a Great Man of the People conducts himself.”