the buildings where they flew. Here, shops of all sorts stood hip to thigh, unlike the capital where each type of business had its own street, if not its own neighborhood.
A tailor operated next door to a jeweler, next to a shoemaker, a grocer and so on. Because of the odors they generated, the tanners and the livestock markets were relegated outside the city walls. Kallista had worried about that, about running out of food during a long siege. But that was before the cannon made themselves known. The siege hadn’t been a long one.
A bakeshop along their route still displayed loaves and sweet buns on its fold-down countertop as the baker bustled about preparing to close.
“Wait.” Torchay touched Kallista’s arm, and when she stopped, he approached the baker. “How much for what you have left?”
“Can’t you read?” She jerked a thumb toward the sign. “Two buns or one loaf for a krona.”
“It’s the end of the day, your customers have gone home, and your bread was baked before dawn. You don’t advertise South magic preserving. It’s not worth that price.” Torchay spoke quietly, patiently to the baker. “I’ll give you two kroni for the lot.”
“Listen to me, soldier.” The baker spat out the word. “You got no business telling me what my wares are worth. I made these loaves with my own two hands. I don’t need magic for that. What do you make? Death? What value does that have?”
Kallista stalked toward the plump baker, her foul mood flaring into sudden temper. “What value is your life? If it weren’t for soldiers like him, you would already be living in a Tibran harim with half your iliasti dead. This man is ready to give his life for you, you ungrateful bitch, and you begrudge him a few loaves of bread?”
She knew her anger was out of proportion to the situation, but she couldn’t help it. She’d had enough self-righteous scorn from the locals who looked down their lofty faces at the soldiers defending them yet screamed for help at the first sign of trouble.
But she didn’t realize she’d removed one of her gloves until the shock of skin against skin made her jerk and stare down at Torchay’s bare hand clasping her own.
The baker’s wide eyes said she understood the threat, if not what had caused it, and she was tumbling bread into a rough sack as fast as her hands would move. “Pardon, naitan. Pardon. No offense meant.”
“None taken.” Though that was a small lie. Kallista had taken offense. And she knew better than to do so. She couldn’t change popular opinion. Her own behavior, though unconscious and unintended, had only reinforced the impression that those who served in the military were too wicked or too stupid to do anything else. Anything productive.
She considered removing her hand from Torchay’s grip and replacing the glove. But that would make her inadvertent action seem even more of a threat, withdrawn now that she had what she wanted.
“Thank you, aila.” Torchay held out two kroni. The baker waved them away and he set them on her counter. “I pay my debts, aila. I just mislike paying more than what is due.”
With the sack gripped tight in Torchay’s other hand, he and Kallista continued down the street. Around the corner, out of sight of the bakeshop, she jerked her hand free and rounded on her bodyguard.
“Are you mad? Have you lost the remaining threads of the feeble wits you might once have possessed?” Kallista held her bare hand in front of his face. “I am ungloved.”
“You hadn’t called magic. I was safe enough. I’d have been safe enough even if you had. You have more control than any naitan in the entire army. Probably in all Adara.”
Torchay’s calm unconcern infuriated her. “You don’t know that. The sparks don’t always show.”
“I know when you call magic. I don’t have to see the sparks. And I know you don’t have to unglove to do it. To do anything.”
Kallista yanked her glove back on in short, sharp motions. “Do not ever do that again. Ever. Do you understand me, Sergeant? If you do, I’ll have that chevron if I have to strip the skin off your arm to do it, and see you flogged.”
“You don’t approve of flogging.”
“For this I do. Never touch my bare hands. You know this. You learned it the first day of your guard training.”
Torchay gazed at her. She could see the words building up inside his head, battering at his lips in their desire to get past them. Other naitani had trouble with their guards getting too close, wanting more from the relationship than was possible, but Torchay had never shown any sign of the failing. Was this how it began?
She didn’t want to imagine trouble where none existed. She and Torchay worked well together. She didn’t want that to change, didn’t want to offend him by making faulty assumptions. “If you have something to say, say it.”
He shook his head. “No, I have nothing—” His mouth thinned into a straight line, lips pressed together, stubbornly holding back the words. She would get nothing more out of him, not now.
Torchay turned his back to her, scanning their surroundings for potential danger, pulling back into his familiar role.
“Give me the sack.” Kallista held her hand out for it. He needed his hands free for weapons, now that she was safely gloved again. Civilian naitani weren’t required to go about gloved, but military magic was considered too dangerous to risk a naitan’s loss of control.
Anything covering the bare skin of the hands interfered to some degree with the magic. Leather blocked virtually all magic save for that under the most exquisite control. But Kallista didn’t have to remove her gloves to use her magic. She didn’t know any other naitan who could do what she could.
Torchay handed over the bread and moved down the street behind her toward the oversize home where the Third Detachment, Military Naitani, was billeted. The house towered three stories above the street, offering a view over the walls from the flat roof garden. The furnishings were elegant, gilded and ornamented to the extreme, what few furnishings there were. The table shared by the troop had curved gilded legs encrusted with more curlicues, and the top had multicolored woods inlaid in a geometric design. The mismatched chairs they used had tapestry-upholstered seats, or inlaid designs, and yet others were gilded within an inch of their lives. But most of the rooms were vacant, echoing with emptiness.
The ilian that owned it had once been much larger, a full dozen individuals all bound in temple oath to love and support each other and raise the children that resulted from their bonding. The loss of a child and his mother in an accident had fractured the family and a bare quartet of iliasti remained to finish bringing up the few children left to them. They had plenty of room for the entire troop.
Torchay bowed her into the house, but his eyes held hers as he did, watching her. It unnerved her. What did it mean? Anything?
Kallista tossed the bread sack to Torchay as he closed the door behind them. “Alert the troop. I want everyone ready to move into position by full dark. The general will be moving the regular troops into position then as well. The Tibrans won’t have far-seers to spot us in the dark.”
“And we hope they have no machines to do it for them.”
“Bite your tongue.” Kallista gave an exaggerated shudder, but it was indeed something to worry about.
Torchay
