11. The Rain Garden
Chapter eleven
The Rain Garden
Imalroc rocked on the edge of the bed, glaring at the door as if he could burn through it.
He needed to slam into something, or at least go someplace with enough room to really move.
No chance of it. They’d already given him his permitted time training in the interior courtyards.
He couldn’t leave the room without bringing half the shit-brained household down on his head, as if his very presence put them under attack.
Almes and all the whispering servants, even her stupid wife he’d never glimpsed—they were all like Etiana. Vultures. Circling, waiting, hoping to see him collapse so they could rip the flesh from his bones.
He sprang up off the bed and tore around the little room, but there was nowhere to go. He needed to calm his raging pulse. Bitterly, he fell back to the bed and crouched on the edge, one knee still bouncing, sipping at the air until he could take a proper breath.
Yanking one of his boots off, he flipped it upside down and watched a thin line of sand stream onto the floor.
He hated sand. Sand drank up blood the way nobles guzzled down wine.
Sand, with its slippery, shifting movement, its purring hiss when stirred, never failed to remind him of a battlebox. Kibo was fucking covered in sand.
Earthbound gods take Etiana for her lying, poisonous tongue. Damn her, and everyone who tried to strip everything away from him. Damn them to Drida. He hurled the boot at the door with as much force as he could put in his arm.
She was wrong. He wouldn’t hurt Rerdas. He couldn’t imagine trying to strike him, and he couldn’t fathom himself not wanting to strike a handler.
Rerdas was a handler in name only; that was the difference. But then… if the huntmaster really was as good as he sometimes felt—and gods, he felt so good, like a balm, like a full breath of air—it would be worse when it ended.
The battleboxes had never broken him the way they intended. But they’d hollowed him out, torn pieces out of him, gouged wounds that could not seal and scar over. Rerdas thought him unbreakable, but that was only another mask, and only a matter of time before it slipped.
It was too late to create some safety for himself. The huntmaster had already stolen past the walls. Everything that protected him, everything that had kept him alive, melted further each time Rerdas touched him.
A sound in the hall. Imalroc kicked free of his other boot and shot up, hands curling to fists.
There was a faint knock.
When he made no answer, Rerdas’s voice drifted through the door. “Imalroc? It’s just me. May I come in?”
“Fine.” Probably a fucking terrible idea to see Rerdas when his head was whirling like this, and yet… he had to see him. Needed to know if he believed anything his worthless cousin had said.
He didn’t let Rerdas take a full step into the room before he blurted, “I’m not apologizing to her.”
Rerdas shut the door quietly. “Nor should you.”
Imalroc advanced on him. “Those owners and handlers she so admires, those blood-hungry sacks of shit in silk, those are the people you should be afraid of.”
Not me. Please, not of me. It was right there on the tip of his tongue, and he choked it back and swallowed it like bile.
People being afraid of him was the only small measure of power he really had left.
And yet he couldn’t help searching Rerdas’s face as he lunged into the gap between them, aggressively, a challenge, dreading the sight of anything like fear.
Rerdas blinked, but he didn’t flinch. “I think you’re right.” He shook his head. “We all need to get away from this. It will end soon. We’re almost there.” The huntmaster made a swift, instinctive motion as if to touch his shoulder, but hesitated.
Imalroc bared his teeth, trying to counter the pathetic mewl from somewhere deep inside that begged to be touched. He veered away from Rerdas, circling the claustrophobic, whitewashed pen where he was trapped.
“Do you want to walk?” Rerdas gestured to the door. “I could go with you outside, if that would—”
“Yes.” Imalroc snatched up his discarded boots, shoved his feet back into them, and loped into the hall with Rerdas hurrying in his wake.
He filled his lungs with desert air and stormed blindly down the elaborate maze of stairs that descended from the artificial mount where Almes’s house lorded over the city proper.
Date palms and ornamental fountains gave way to sand-carpeted alleys strung with twirling fabric prayer strips and laundry.
Lanterns flared along stone walls that exhaled the warmth they’d soaked up since daybreak.
The sun had dipped below the horizon, but he glimpsed creamy pink, orange, and blue smeared across the narrow panels of sky visible between the buildings.
He turned down a new path every time he saw other people.
Rerdas said nothing about making him walk behind, eyes downcast, as they’d practiced in Kirinoll.
His face wasn’t painted on any of these walls.
People wouldn’t recognize him as easily.
It was still a risk, but he could not slow down.
Each swift step felt vital, like hurling sand in the eyes of every owner, handler, booker, and jewel-adorned fucker who wanted to see him crawling at Rerdas’s feet.
There was a din of activity somewhere ahead, sounds drifting down the street.
Imalroc stopped. A burst of laughter was his warning before a pair of men ambled around the corner.
One was short and spindly, and the other loomed over him, walking with his thick arms tucked in a genteel pose at the small of his back.
The slight, shorter man in front talked loudly, bangles chiming as he lifted an offering to his companion’s mouth. “A little sweet for one who’s been so sweet himself.”
The larger man bent forward and nipped the offering out of the extended hand, making a noise of relish as he chewed. His shirt flapped halfway open, displaying thick arrows of ink tattooed down his neck and chest.
“You’re a mess,” the small man said affectionately, and wiped the edge of the other’s lips. Then he saw Imalroc staring, and his smile faded into unease. The short stranger touched his companion’s chest. “Come, Adomo.” He sped up, banking clear of Imalroc and Rerdas on the narrow road.
Imalroc’s stomach twisted. He knew then what he was looking at, even before the larger man gave him a hostile, alert glance.
Close enough that Imalroc could count the scars on his bare shoulder, the bump in his nose from a badly set break, the way he turned slightly to avoid presenting his nape.
The torchlight flowed over more tattoos ringing his wrists, and then glinted off the chain that linked those wrists together at his back.
Imalroc tracked them with his gaze, but the other battleboxer only looked over his shoulder once.
“Are you—” Rerdas started tentatively.
Imalroc spun, gripped Rerdas’s wrist, and towed him around the nearest corner he could find and then toward a pocket of a courtyard at the back of a building, silent but for the hiss of torches.
The courtyard was an entryway to a dim, empty space with nothing but scrubby plants and rocks set in a ditch big enough to walk into. A spicy fragrance curled in the back of his throat. Imalroc followed it.
“This might be private property,” Rerdas murmured.
But here, the buildings were small enough that Imalroc could properly see the sky, and more importantly, there was no one in sight.
He stepped off the ledge of packed earth and skidded easily down a miniature slope to walk among the spiky plants.
At the center lay a long, narrow ribbon of water, so still it looked like a strip of sky laid on the earth.
“A rain garden.” Rerdas turned slowly to take it in. He knelt beside a jumble of thorns and leaves to croon praise at its delicate crown of yellow flowers. “It’s astounding what can grow in the desert.”
Imalroc sat in the dust and watched him. Listened to him as he talked with quiet admiration about a needly gray bush and a stumpy affront to trees. He leaned back on his palms, let Rerdas’s voice wash through him, and his anger trembled uncertainly in his chest.
“Here, break one of these and smell it.” Rerdas sat beside him, tipping a few brittle sprigs into Imalroc’s lap.
When he crushed it between his fingers, the scent he’d tasted before engulfed him, spicy and warm.
“I remember this. From Swirn.” Back then, he’d thought himself lucky, surviving with a full belly and a natural talent with a practice sword that won Master Xavian’s approval.
He’d thought himself so strong. He had no way to understand what was coming to chew him up and try to swallow him.
“That man in the alley. Was he a battleboxer?” Rerdas asked.
“Probably.” Imalroc swallowed. “Yes.”
“And the other man with him…” There was something dangerously hopeful in Rerdas’s voice. “Maybe they do treat battleboxers differently here.”
Imalroc snapped the rest of the sprigs, felt the little shards of it poking inside his clenched fist. “Don’t be a fool, Rerdas.
That wasn’t anything good. That was a vile man and his chained-up pet.
” He rolled onto his hip to glare into the huntmaster’s face.
“There is nowhere good for a battleboxer. Do you understand? There is nowhere safe, nowhere gentler; there are just places where the whole fucking show is more accepted or more disguised, and that’s worse. ”
He ought to be shouting, but he couldn’t summon it.
Rerdas studied his hands and nodded. “I’m sorry we’ve involved you in all this. I’m not sure how you’ve survived.”
“I’m not sure I did,” Imalroc muttered, shifting away from him.
“You did. You are surviving, and you’ll go on—Imalroc, you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, and you’re almost there. Don’t… don’t talk as though there’s no point.”
There it was again. The admiration in Rerdas’s voice that he craved and feared. Was that all Rerdas saw?