Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

10. RIEKA

10

RIEKA

A party was the last thing I expected to happen in this place. Perhaps my mistake was assuming I knew anything at all.

These people had lived on this prison rail for decades, some born on it, why shouldn’t they have parties when the occasion called for it? The carriage smelled of bootleg whiskey and excitement, a powerful odour that often accompanied brawls, tobacco, and sex, at least from what I’d seen in the last year. Devout gatherings on this scale usually smelled of overindulgent perfumes, incense and aphrodisiacs all in the name of The Celestials. These festivities were being thrown for the newlyweds. The welcome carriage was now converted into a room fit for a ball.

My “husband” as he kept referring to himself to anyone who asked, stood chatting with a few passengers on the other side of the carriage. He was giving me the appropriate space to acclimate to our new situation. His words.

Everyone else I met, because it seemed they all wanted to meet me, kept calling me Kanyk. They also called Rhydian, Kanyk. He was Kanyk, I was Kanyk. It took me an hour of eavesdropping to realise it was his family name. Rhydian Kanyk. So now due to this “marriage”, it was mine too.

My bunk mates had accepted my married status without question, the likely side effect of us only having known one another for three days, and having no reason to doubt anything the other said.

“So does that mean that you won’t be sleeping in the bunks anymore?” Tira asked as she sniffed the glass of whiskey on the table, the one S’vara had scrunched her nose up at when Farox had offered it to her. The young Terrestrial’s eyes widened eagerly as she snapped up the drink and downed it in one gulp before Farox could stop her.

“No,” I answered, watching Rhydian chat with a tall raven-haired Setrali man, the two of them smiling and laughing, moving their hands in that way only the passengers did. Seja it was called. Hentirion had learned at least that much since our arrival. The language had indeed developed in isolation here. The hand gestures, at least according to Hentirion, had become part of the language when words couldn’t convey enough meaning. Rhydian spoke it with such familiarity giving rise to the realisation he’d spent quite some time here.

“Are you not going to join Rhydian in his bunk?” Hentirion asked, indulging himself in a glass of the mulled wine that was being served from wooden barrels some passengers had been rolling into the carriage when I arrived.

“No.”

“Someone is still pissed.” I glared over at Saska. The tattooed Pazgari was lying with his head on Emil’s lap, his third whiskey resting on his muscular chest and unable to keep his thoughts quiet.

“He knows where to find me if he needs me.” My name fell from Rhydian’s lips, a motion of his hands accompanying it. The gesture made me curious, just not enough to talk to him.

The man was a Bloodhound, a traitor to his kind, to all Blessed. To me. He’d sold Kris to slavers and now I was in bed with him. Literally. As his wife.

I hate him.

He was everything that was wrong with our kind. We were already feared across half the continent for the blessings in our blood, for the feats we could accomplish, but to enslave your own kind for money? It took a certain kind of person to callously do something so….

So inhuman, so monstrous .

And I was now married to the man as far as everyone was concerned. I would forever be associated with him both personally and sexually due to one single word. Wife. The collar around my neck may as well have been attached to a leash in his hand. This man had tethered me to himself against my will and I would never forgive him for it. Perhaps I should let him sleep in my bunk and introduce him to Etrina.

“You keep looking at me like that and someone is going to think you want to go somewhere private.”

I scoffed as he glanced at me from over his friend’s shoulder. “You will never touch me like that again.”

“If that is your wish.” Even his voice in my head had that lilting earnestness. It was infuriating.

His body suddenly became rigid, his eyes alert as his attention was drawn to something behind me. I turned and found a man approaching our group. Hentirion’s face lit up at the appearance of the elderly gentleman.

“Kosha,” our unofficial leader said, addressing the tall man. I relaxed. This was the councilman who Hentirion had met yesterday. He’d attempted to welcome our group to the train once before but saw fit to leave us alone since our recent loss.

The council was apparently what equated to a government in this prison, dictating or rather ensuring the customs of this place were maintained. They just didn’t dish out punishment for the murder of other passengers it seemed.

Hentirion attempted a Seja gesture when the man stopped before him, a greeting judging by the mirrored gesture that was returned. He was handsome for a man in his late years. Broad-shouldered and dressed in the same fashion as the majority of the other passengers, a collaboration of cultural pieces symbolising the mixing pot that were the train’s prisoners, in particular, the robe he wore. A Deogn robe, with its thick fabric and embroidered gold stitching, would not have been out of place on the promenade of Aronbok’s High Street.

Unlike men his age in Deos who remained clean-shaven to appear youthful, Kosha bore a well-kept greying beard and moustache to accompany a thick head of white well-groomed hair, which only enhanced his already handsome face.

“How are you finding the barrel whiskey?” he asked in thick accented Prean, his eyes skirting over to me as he spoke. Hentirion smiled. “Tastes expensive.”

He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t plan on a repeat of Keltjar, but I had tasted the whiskey. Better than anything Engar had managed to get up the mountain.

Kosha leaned to his left, his weight distributed on the wooden cane in his hand. “It should.” He indicated to the thin rakish man over by the barrels, the one pouring out the drinks. “Tollen was the best brewer west of Rinnisar.”

“That makes sense,” Farox said before prying a second glass from Tira’s hand. The robust man picked her up with one arm and dropped her beside S’vara on the bench, a resounding “No more,” coming from his lips.

“And how are you finding it here Rieka, may I call you that?” The old man’s eyes were as dark as pewter.

“That is the name I go by.”

Hentirion stepped aside so Kosha could approach, greeting me with the same gesture. “I understand you come to us from The Hetra?”

“I do, yes.”

Standing at least six feet tall, with my head only reaching his chest, Kosha looked more like a retired military general than the politician he purported to be. He moved and everyone held their breath. The chandelier glinted off the collar around his neck, a dainty blue neckerchief tied beneath it. The collar was older, the metal aged, but no less identical to my own. “I don’t think we have had more than three Kanahari on board in all my nine and sixty years.” He smelled of parchment, pine, and—

Deogn sweet limes?

The scent of the red citrus fruit was faint, but I’d spent enough time around it to know. The scent was unmistakable.

“I didn’t even know my grandson travelled that far north on his supply runs.” That word caught me off guard, as did Kosha’s thoughts.

“You are not who I would have chosen for him.”

As if sensing my discomfort, Rhydian’s inner voice cut through. “You heard something in his head, didn’t you? If you don’t want him to suspect anything stay calm, he’ll pick up on your heart rate if you don’t.”

I smiled up at the old man and responded to his spoken comment. “Lucky me he did.”

“He’s like you?” I asked Rhydian, moving so that my back was blocking his view of his grandfather.

Rhydian chose to respond with a pun. “It runs in the blood. ”

I wanted to ask this man what laws he abided by that would allow one passenger to kill another without repercussions. How could Bennic’s murderer just walk around freely, unpunished? I wanted to berate him and this entire place. But that would be an emotional response.

A population this large didn’t come about by allowing passengers to kill one another indiscriminately.

I was missing something. Logic dictated it would be the wrong move to cause a stir right now. The party was being held in my and his grandson’s honour, arguing with the councilman over the ludicrousness of their laws would draw too much attention. There were too many Blessed ears. And I did not know how this Kosha would react to being confronted.

If Rhydian was to be trusted at his word, which at this stage I was still reticent to do, Kosha could just as well be a Bloodhound like his grandson. A traitor to all Blessed kind. He could boil my blood for simply speaking up. No. Things had changed. Rhydian said Kris was alive. I needed to find her and I certainly couldn’t do that if I got myself killed for being ignorant.

My bunkmates made a pathetic effort to hide their interest in the conversation, occasionally glancing over the top of their glasses with keen interest. Except for Saska. He didn’t look interested in much of anything. He’d fallen asleep on Emil’s knee, looking like one of those life drawings that emerging artists would sell in their stall on Artists Row.

“Indeed.” Kosha casually spun his cane. “You may have just saved me the effort of chaining him to the train myself.” His voice was stony and rough, the kind that belonged to a soldier who’d shouted orders for decades wearing away at their vocal cords. Like my father’s voice.

When I admitted my confusion regarding his comment, the man shifted again on his cane. “You, my dear. You are the reason my grandson is likely to stay aboard the train. I believe his words were, ‘If I loved a woman as deep as the ocean I could never part from her, and only when I’ve met such a woman will I marry her’.”

“ Behind you.” Pine and earth enveloped me as Rhydian slid his hand around my waist, pressing his body into my side. The scent was decadent in the alcohol embroiled carriage.

“And I did.” His embrace tightened. I gritted my teeth behind soft lips. “And it was never my intention to bring her back here.”

Kosha made a direct gesture towards me. “And yet here she stands Alastair.”

“Alastair?” I slid my hand across the leather of his jacket, letting my hand rest on his hip.

“And I suppose Rieka is your birth name?” his inner voice chided whilst his gaze remained on his grandfather. “I would rather Rieka be anywhere else grandfather.”

I turned into him, casually sliding my hand up his chest, gazing up into those obnoxious eyes. “I did not think you were the romantic sort, Rhydian?” Careful to ensure my tone didn’t suggest the venom with which I held his name.

The councilman gave his grandson the highest of raised brows. How I longed to hear what thought aroused that reaction in the old man, but unless Kosha was thinking of me directly, the voice in his mind remained silent.

Kosha turned his gaze on me, scrutinizing me, the sour scent of pity perfuming the space between us., “I fear my grandson has done you an injustice, Rieka. How did you ever agree to marry him?”

It appeared we were unconvincing as newlyweds. The moment those words had left his lips his next thought was to question if we were even married.

“He doesn’t believe us, ” I told Rhydian. He responded by taking my hand from his chest and squeezing it in a false display of intimacy.

Keeping my focus on the councilman, instead of the desire I had to rip my hand from his grandson, I sighed. “I was drunk.”

“You were drunk?” Kosha’s shoulders squared up as he glared at his grandson. It was a little satisfying if I was being honest.

“What are you doing?” Rhydian’s inner voice warned.

I ignored him. “I was drunk. My friend Krisenya decided we should play a game of ‘Have you ever?’. Neither of us should drink, we don’t have particularly strong tolerances, and about halfway through our second bottle of Torberry Wine, she asked the both of us, ‘Have you ever been married?’ I said no. And then Rhydian said….”

“Do you know what his reply was?” I asked, hoping my expression came off earnest in the eyes of the councilman as I recounted what memories I had of that night back in Keltjar. Thankfully those events had been absent of Leon or that conversation could have gone in a very different direction.

A crowd had begun to form around us. My bunkmates no longer hid their interest, quite pointedly eavesdropping on the conversation, with more passengers gathering by the second. I waited just long enough that the pause didn’t seem intentional, I wanted as many people as possible to hear my words. Rhydian wanted to make sure people believed the lie, how better than with an origin story?

Kosha stroked his beard. “I would assume he said no, unless there is another wife out there he has failed to inform me of?”

I turned to Rhydian, my expression painfully doting. “Tell your grandfather what you said.”

The tone of this thought was coarse. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Quite the contrary. I loathe it almost as much as I loathe you.”

When Rhydian finally answered, his eyes, a tumultuous blue remained locked on mine. “I asked her to be my wife.”

“Don’t lie to him!” was the only warning he gave.

“Three days later, supply run done, we’re standing in a forest, a temple to the Eldertides and I’m swearing an oath.” Not a single word uttered was a lie. For a split second, the cold unfeeling callousness that I’d felt since that moment in the forest vanished. I saw the man who had spoken those words to me in The Old Man’s Hearth. I saw the way in which he had smiled when he leaned across the table, my shocked face amusing him. How I knew simply by scent he wasn’t lying. The smile he had worn was so genuine, so bright it reached his eyes and I couldn’t look away until his lips were on mine. How he had causally kissed me like we’d done it a thousand times before. I was somewhat thankful I couldn't remember the rest of the evening.

“Well done.”

“Fuck you!”

“Has he said he loves you yet?” came a small familiar voice. I don’t think I will ever get used to the public display of one’s blessings in this place. Deogns only displayed themselves in the privacy of their own homes. Standing behind Kosha’s robe was Ghena, her tail wagging behind her.

“They’re married. Of course they’ve said it,” whined Tira from her position on the bench. S’vara was having to hold her knees down, her hooves clacking on the timber floor. The young Terrestrial appeared to be a fidgety drunk.

Another lie moved its way to my tongue, the taste bitter. Yet before I could speak it, one dripped from Rhydian’s own lips. Removing himself from my side, Rhydian bent until he was at eye level with the young pup. “I told her first.” Ghena smiled at him, her hand reaching up to scrunch his beard. “I told her I couldn’t live another day without her, and as soon as I had built us a home, I would take her there.”

She suddenly growled at him. It was small, not enough to warrant a rebuke. Being of the same breed I was privy to things other Brutes were not. Like how our vocalisations were more than just growls.

That little growl she just made was to signal her dissatisfaction . “You’re going to leave us?” she grumbled in Prean.

Rhydian’s tone rose in false hurt. “Leave you? I could never do that. I would visit the train every day, just like all the other Runners do.”

Ghena’s little face scrunched up. “Promise?”

“When have you known me to break a promise?” he added, petting her head. Ghena leaned into it before running off to an elderly woman’s side, a different woman from the one I had seen that first night.

“So how is it then that she is here, Rhydian?”

All heads, including my own, turned to the woman who’d spoken. Long dark tresses fell like velvet over her shoulders, the red undertones glowing in the illumination of the Bright-lights hanging from the chandelier above. Underneath that oceanic tang she gave off, something acrid waded through. “If you were intent on building this safe place to keep her, how is it that she is here, amongst the likes of us, collared?”

Cutting off Rhydian before he could answer, I gave my reply. “Bad judgement on my part. I followed someone I thought was Rhydian, and they turned out to be someone else entirely. It is as simple as that.” I plastered a caring expression on my face, feeling violated with every movement of muscle.

“Well, I for one am glad you are here, however unfortunate the circumstances.” Kosha tugged on his beard again. “Perhaps you will be the reason he stays aboard the train, Rieka”, his inner voice said. “I’d much rather he chose to abide because of his oath, but a man in love will do.”

A man in love!

Why had I not thought of that? I’d done it before. I escaped Aronbok, crossed through Carfen’s Pass, made it over the Deogn border and all the way to The Hetra because of a man in love. Several actually. I had become exactly who they wanted, and they had done exactly what I required of them. I needed freedom and they gave it to me, mile by mile.

Rhydian was pleasing to look at. He had a cocksure way about him, standing there beside his grandfather, hands in the pockets of his red leather jacket. A charm that some might even find attractive. It wouldn’t be hard to force myself to see him in a different light, however minute that light would be. I’d been with worse men, some who had entirely unappealing physical traits but who I found reasons to like to withstand being in their presence. I’d been with beautiful men who only wanted me for what was between my legs and even then, I found reasons to be in their presence if it meant getting to the next town, the next city. Why should Rhydian be any different?

He cocked a single eyebrow at me, and for the first time in years, I was grateful my blessing could not betray my thoughts without my choosing.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” I said to him alone.

If I’d startled him, he’d done well to mask it. Rhydian removed both hands from his pockets. “If you wish it.”

I don’t hesitate. Hesitation leads to regrets. And I promised myself no more regrets. I reached for him, cupping his face between my hands and I brought his lips to mine. And I waited to see his reaction. At first nothing, my lips touched his, the bristles of his beard brushing against my chin. Then with an untamed wildness that caught my breath in my throat, Rhydian kissed me back. Breathed me in. Devoured the very air from my lungs.

He pressed into me, his body desperately trying to merge with mine, his hand on my lower back seeming to fuse with my spine, keeping me tethered to him. Each second passed into oblivion as my body, every cell of it traitorous, recalled with clarity exactly how this had felt. My mind was able to forget what my body could not. Rhydian cupped my neck with surprising tenderness, kissing me in deviously languid motions that I found myself entirely unable or even wanting him to stop.

I didn’t know how much time had passed when we finally pulled apart. Long enough that Kosha had walked away. Long enough for our heartbeats to have fallen in sync.

Rhydian kept his hand around my waist as I looked up at him, my breath once again my own.

“Quite the actress. Even I thought that was sincere.” He ran a thumb over his bottom lip. Keeping his eyes on me, I gently grasped his hand and drew it to my lips, his scent so close I could taste it on my tongue.

“I’m going to be honest with you,” I told him as my lips teased his skin. “Since you’ve been nothing but honest with me, Rhydian. You’re going to fall in love with me.”

His brows knitted. “Is that so?”

Softly and methodically, one by one I kissed the tops of his knuckles. “You’re going to fall so madly in love with me that the idea of selling me would break you.”

The corners of his mouth slowly lifted into a smile. His hand twisted in mine until it was pressed against his chest and I could feel the beating of his heart through the tips of my fingers. The rhythm was steady as he leaned forward and brushed his lips against my cheek. “Is that a bet?”