6. 5 #2
It might have looked more natural to hold onto this man as we walked.
At least, to the other parkgoers who might have thought us married, and not suspected some unchaperoned stroll.
But knowing that Robar wanted to take me here, to promenade as his wife; and knowing I still wanted that dream to be real, even in the face of his father’s unpleasant assertions: I couldn’t do it.
Even when it was for the benefit of complete strangers, I couldn’t bring myself to imply some relationship between myself and Davian.
He didn’t seem put out by it, or if he was, his expression was well controlled. It seemed often so. I had a feeling that even without his mask, his emotions would be very hard to read.
I wondered at the mask. Some mark leftover from a childhood illness? A gruesome injury from a fight? His masked eye was undamaged, from what I could see. Perhaps it was nothing. Merely part of a facade, part of the role he was playing in his worship of depravity, pain, and death.
As the dust of the path coated our shoes, I tried to make him out.
His walk, his posture, the way he bent his head when others passed, but did not call out a greeting.
There was an air of nobility around him which was common among devotees.
But he was also Aralaji, and that made him far less common among both the nobility and the devoted class.
Thousands of Aralaji had come from Aralaj a few generations ago, during a period of conflict between them and the Guan Empire to their east. At first, they had held no positions in Craetos, and were largely ignored by the Ten.
Then, two generations ago, a couple of Aralaji were chosen as devotees.
One generation later, there were Aralaji House Leaders.
Both Wisdom and the Sun were still governed by those Leaders: Theolis and Aseem, respectively.
Now, the Aralaji were largely accepted within the cities, but there remained a contingent, mostly in the rural areas, who considered the people an imposition despite their devotion and legal status mandated by the king.
The portrait of him, this man walking beside me, made him a rare and bizarre study.
An Aralaji devotee of Pain with an unexplained mask, who carried himself with the confidence of a man raised with money and a tutor, investigating the suspicious disappearance of his wife.
I had met a lot of men, but none with so many uncertain layers, and none who raised so many questions.
We were halfway across the main path when Davian addressed me again. “Have you decided?”
Had I decided to work with him to assist him to uncover whether his wife was killed?
It was hardly an overnight decision, I wanted to say. I had barely managed to recover from the evening.
“Not yet,” I said instead. After my last mishap, I thought it safer to pull my words.
Davian nodded, and we continued through the burnt orange weeds that marked the remainder of the flower garden. I was overheating, and sweating, but since he had brought it up, I did want to understand at least some of his request.
I cleared my throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“You may.”
“Why me?” I asked. I felt him turn to me, but I studied the pebbles on the path as I finished my thought. “I know I had your wife’s ring. But I don’t know anything that will help you. I can’t assist you in any useful way. Surely, once you have my betrothed’s name, that is the end of it.”
His eyes remained on me for a time, and I tried to ignore them as I waited for his explanation. At the end of the flower garden, Davian opened the gate, and held it open for me at the same time as I reached down to hold it myself.
My fingers touched his gloved hand, and our eyes met for a flash before we both looked away, and moved our hands.
We were too close, and I could smell him.
There was lavender there, and something woodier.
His hair had fallen over his mask, and it softened him.
It reminded me of the red himation we draped over Ekris’ marble statue: a hint of humanity.
Then we were through, and a pace away from one another at the end of the garden. Our promenade was complete. But Davian waved his hand back in the direction of the city and the winding canals that led back to the heart of Dytho. “This way.”
We continued our stroll, the pace just as measured. I couldn’t help but notice that we walked a touch closer than before, and when our hands swung at our sides, our knuckles were a breath away from brushing. I held my hands at my waist.
The trees overhead stopped as the cobbled street crossed our path. Davian took us left, and then immediately right. I thought for a moment it was an alley, like the one we had met in. But as we rounded the corner, the space immediately opened out into a walkway alongside a narrow canal.
On our side, the houses were as expected from the wealthier parts of Dytho, with stone buildings fitted with real glass windows and lemon trees dotted between the pavings to the front entrance.
On the other side of the canal, a disused building sat apart from the housing around it.
From the blackened walls and the thick chimney, to the rusted horseshoe still abandoned on the floor under the workbench, I guessed it to be a forge.
Its broken windows were shoddily patched with wooden slats, but I could still see the hint of peeling blue paint on the sun-bleached wooden sign.
It was one of Ragnifort’s, then, the god of the Ten who had been cast down.
There were several of his forges lying in disrepair.
I wondered if the King intended to demolish them, or if he kept them in hopes of his return, as unlikely as it seemed.
Davian still hadn’t answered my question.
Just as I thought it, he spoke. “I’m going to say three things. I would like you to tell me which you think is the lie.”
A shot of panic went through me, but I knew I hadn’t let it slip.
It wasn’t a rule of Ekris, per se, but Talia told us never to tell a patron or anyone else the additional gift that Ekris gave us.
The story of the crying murdered devotee, Xanthe, and the ability to detect dishonesty, was protected within our walls.
We preferred that outsiders only knew the basics, that Ekris would grant his Ekrissians sexual relief in return for our service to his patrons, and we would be part of his harem for the Ten in the Garden.
But Ekris’ gift of detecting untruths was not widely known.
I tried my best to not let my surprise show. “What do you—”
Davian interrupted. “Growing up, I was terrified of Samiscus.”
This was it, the game had started. I tasted the words.
He was terrified of his own God of Pain and Death?
I found it strange, as I figured those who joined his service would be the rare few who were not scared of the god.
But I found nothing in the statement, its delivery, nor his expression, that made me think it was a lie.
“I would have tasted you last night, had you not asked me to leave.”
I stopped.
Davian kept walking, and I quickly moved to catch back up to him. I could feel the blush against my cheeks. It wasn’t often that I was flustered by a remark like that, but something about those words, here, made my stomach clench.
Davian showed no emotion whatsoever. “I wish my father was still alive.”
His delivery was as flat as his previous two comments. There was nothing new on his face; there was no tell in his tone. But I felt a sourness I couldn’t suppress.
“The last one,” I said.
Davian finally looked at me. He nodded once. “That’s why I want you to help me.”
I was right. It followed that his second statement was entirely true. The blush didn’t leave my cheeks.
Davian’s eyes darkened, but he looked away, and navigated us down another street before I could study the change fully.
“You know of Ekris’ power,” I remarked.
“I have heard of it, yes. You aren’t the first to fall from Ekris. You aren’t the first to have retained some part of that gift, too, it seems. I want someone on my side who can tell a falsehood from the truth,” he replied.
I shrugged. “It’s just a feeling.”
He frowned, looking up at a larger building ahead. “I would trust that more than my own bias.”
His own bias? Against what? Or whom?
Then, he slowed, and touched his hand to the small of my back. I stopped, and he was still looking at the building. His hand fell from my back. “We’re here.”
A taverna sat before us. The noise of clay and low conversation fell through a dusty doorway.
The drinking hole’s timber posts supported a hanging painted sign of a white horse reared up, with a beast with large teeth ready to pounce on it.
A tortoiseshell cat sat in the shade beside the open door, watching us with sleepy eyes.
I blinked. “You’re taking me drinking?”
“The Stallion’s Folly,” he said, and his tone was undecipherable. “This is where we were the night my wife went missing.”