It was a flower, and looked for all the world like a tiny river lotus, except for the color. It was dark blue, almost black, and gave off a sweet, heavy fragrance.
“This is it?” Seregil asked, eyeing it closely.
“It’s supposed to be white, according to the texts, but this rhekaro makes nothing but these blue ones. They’re worthless,” Ilar told him.
“I saw some of these in the workshop!” Alec exclaimed, reaching for it.
Seregil grabbed his wrist. “Be careful.”
“He said it didn’t work.” But Alec used the tip of his knife to lift the blossom from the cup. Holding it out to the rhekaro, he said, “Sebrahn, can you show me?”
The rhekaro took it carefully in its cupped hands and looked around at the three of them for a moment. Then it moved toward Ilar, holding the flower up as if it wanted him to smell it. The man scrambled backward, face drawn with fear.
“So you’re certain it doesn’t work?” Seregil snatched the flower from the rhekaro’s hand and leaped on Ilar, holding him down and mashing it against his lips.
Ilar clawed at his wrists and they grappled, rolling across the dirty floor. Alec jumped on Ilar’s legs and helped wrestle him down. When Seregil looked for the flower, it was nowhere to be found.
“Where the hell-? Did you eat it?”
“Let me go! I had your word!” Ilar cried, still struggling weakly.
“We never gave you that, actually.” Seregil grabbed Ilar’s face and inspected his mouth closely. “Well, now, that’s interesting. Let him up, Alec.”
Ilar staggered up to his feet, outraged and panting. “You lied to me!”
“How does it feel?” Alec sneered.
“Better yet, how does your lip feel?” asked Seregil.
“My lip?” Ilar raised a trembling hand to his mouth. “What do you mean? Oh!”
The split was gone, the lip whole and pink under a smear of blood as if nothing had happened.
“No wonder Yhakobin didn’t figure it out,” Seregil murmured, grabbing Ilar again and holding him still while he ran a thumb over the healed place. “It does do something, just not what he wanted, apparently. Let’s hear it for your ‘mongrel’ blood, talí.”
He grinned at Alec, and for an instant something came to him along the talimenios bond: Alec was as surprised as he was, but there was something more, something Alec wasn’t telling him.
Alec caught the look and made a discreet canting gesture in Ilar’s direction: Not in front of him.
At the end of his patience, Seregil pulled Alec to his feet. “Come on. We need to talk. Ilar, you stay here.”
As expected, Alec took the rhekaro by the hand and brought it along with them. Seregil led them outside.
“Well?”
Alec rested his hands on the rhekaro’s shoulders. “The oracle at Sarikali said I’d father a child of no woman, right? And Illior knows, Sebrahn doesn’t have a mother.”
Seregil clenched his fists in frustration. “It’s not a child!”
“He is to me, and he’s mine.”
For a moment Seregil was speechless. Then everything fell into place. “You think-? This-Alec, you’re not serious?”
“I am, too! What else could it mean? Look at him!”
There was no mistaking the resemblance between them. Abhorrent as the thought was, Alec might actually be right.
“Tell me again how he was made. All of it.”
Alec told him about the purifications in detail, and then, more haltingly, of the various bodily fluids that had been collected and how. When he got to the semen, he was blushing miserably.
“They drugged you for that, eh? Well, at least you dreamt of me,” Seregil told him, ruffling his hair. “I’m surprised Yhakobin didn’t order Ilar to get that from you…” The look on Alec’s face told him he’d hit a mark. “That bastard!”
“Like I said, he tried, but I wouldn’t.”
Seregil gently clasped him by the back of the neck and rested his forehead against Alec’s. “He can be very persuasive, can’t he? Don’t worry, I understand.”
CHAPTER 42 Sebrahn Stirs
THEY STAYED AT the barn until nightfall. By the time they set out again, striking south by the stars, the rhekaro’s hair was halfway down its back again.
“I told you,” said Alec, as he braided it and tucked it under the head rag he’d fashioned for it. He was wearing his, too, and Seregil decided that they didn’t do much good. No one was going to mistake either of them-or him either, probably-for a Plenimaran, unless they tried dressing as women. And that wouldn’t work, either. Even if they did manage to steal the proper clothing, none of them could pass as the male protector no proper Plenimaran woman would be without. Since there was no help for that, they’d just have to make do with trying to stay as far as possible from any locals.
Ilar was even more sullen now, opening his mouth only to complain. The others ignored him, scanning the moonlit landscape for signs of trouble.
The land grew drier and more desolate as they went and Seregil began to worry about his travel estimations. Their water was nearly gone and so was the food. It was colder tonight, with a hint of frost in the air. Walking kept them warm but left them thirsty. To spare Alec’s strength, Seregil took turns carrying the rhekaro. It weighed very little and hung in its sling without wiggling or any sign of discomfort. Several times, though, Seregil felt it touching his hair with its cold little fingers. It was a disconcerting feeling, but it occurred to him that if the rhekaro could learn, then perhaps it could be curious, as well, and wondering at the fact that Seregil’s hair was a different color than Alec’s. He also noticed that whenever they stopped to rest, regardless of who had been carrying it, it always went to Alec’s side.
A child of no woman, Seregil thought again. And the oracle claimed it was a blessing. His mind and heart both rebelled at such a thought; how could this unnatural thing be a blessing?
And yet, it had healed Ilar’s lip.
The days grew steadily colder, and the wind never dropped. The further south Alec led them, the rougher the way became and he couldn’t seem to find a way that was easier.
As far as the eye could see, the land fell steadily to the south. The ever-present wind cut deeply, sculpting the landscape into strange shapes and deep canyons they had to scramble around. It was slow going, and all of them suffered a fall or two. Alec found a small spring that night, but no food. When dawn came, they slept huddled in the shade of an outcropping, with Seregil and Alec trading short watches. Exhausted and a bit feverish, Ilar slept fitfully.
It was a miserable time, and made more so when Alec was forced to rely on Ilar for warmth while Seregil was walking about on watch. He wasn’t certain which was worse: having to be so close to the man or seeing Seregil with him like that when Alec was on watch. It was some comfort that Seregil didn’t appear to be enjoying the situation any more than he was, so Alec kept his bitter thoughts to himself, hating the whispers of jealousy at the back of his mind.
When it was his turn to rest, he had no choice but to sit close beside Ilar, with Sebrahn, who never showed any sign of being cold, on his lap. Unlike Ilar, the child gave off no more heat than a newt, but it was still good to have the weight of another body against his-one that he didn’t detest, anyway.
“Keep still,” he snarled as Ilar shifted around, trying to get comfortable on the stony ground.
“I’m helping you stay alive. If you were out here alone, you’d die.”
“I’ve managed before,” Alec muttered. “Don’t talk to me.”
“How long are you going to hate me?”
Alec rested his cheek against Sebrahn’s cool hair. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“I know how it all looks to you, the way things were at Yhakobin’s, but what choice do you think I had? The man owned me, body and soul. My life was in his hands.”