“You hate your rage as much as you revel in it.” Conviction strengthened her voice when she should’ve been speaking in whispers, if at all. “Gifts come with tremendous benefits and terrible consequences. The humans have gained free will as they’ve matured. Our kind claimed that right centuries before. That meant and still means deciding how best to use one’s powers.”
“Fair point. You win. This is me exercising my free will.”
He stalked away. Again.
“You’re used to running,” she called. “That’s the solution to conflicts you can’t resolve. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll shout for Pashkah right now. I’ll bring him down on our heads and we’ll duke it out right here. Tell me I’m wrong, Tallis, that you travel the world because you want to.”
He stopped. Rather than reply or even turn, he bowed his head—just a fraction. He didn’t contradict her, but neither did he agree. She couldn’t have gone through with her threat, just like he couldn’t have replied. Both were obvious.
She jogged to catch up to him. The hem of her sari was soaking wet and coated in mud.
A breeze touched her face when she stood at his back. That breeze smelled of cold and earth and water—and Tallis. The leather coat made him look bulkier, more intimidating, but she knew what lay beneath those layers. Could she say the same about the mind she hid under layers of Masks?
“I know two things,” she said quietly. “First is that a berserker saved my life. No matter what you think of that side of yourself, or how you resist it, I won’t forget what you did for me.”
“And the second thing?” His voice was roughly seductive.
Kavya inhaled deeply and focused on the swatch of skin between his hairline and the coat’s collar. She wanted to touch him there. “To survive against Pashkah, I’m going to need your help.”
CHAPTER
NINE
Tallis stood at the northern outskirts of the city of Kullu, where the valley pass dipped sharply down along the course of the Beas. The sun angled over the eastern ridge of mountains and banished the shadows. Likely it would’ve appeared over a flat horizon several hours before, but it had to climb that rocky barrier before casting its rays over the river.
“The Valley of the Gods,” Kavya said reverently. She stood beside him, her eyes both sharp and somehow unfocused. She seemed to absorb the energy of that scene in a way he would never understand. Perhaps the same would be true of him if he again stood on the Highland moors and looked down over the North Sea. His homeland.
This was hers.
“Did the Indranan inspire the name?”
“Long ago, yes. Before the fracture. We roamed throughout the mountains and down to the Indian Ocean. Later, the Northerners came up this pass and continued on to China. The Mongols were quick learners. Many Indranan stayed with them. The Khan must’ve appreciated having telepaths among his number.” She smiled softly. “Historians get so much wrong.”
“Like Alexander and the Tigony,” Tallis said, matching her small smile. He’d wanted to see the real one again, genuine and full of joy, but this would suffice. A subtle truce. “The arrogant son of a bitch thought he’d done it on his own. The Tigony are a vengeful lot, despite their airs. When he got too full of himself, they made sure his conquests came to an end. Period.”
“How do you know so much about the Tigony? They’re like you said—full of airs.”
“You can’t imagine them telling war stories with a Pendray?”
“The clan that backed the Greeks and Romans, who tried to impose their beliefs on Pendray-backed victims—Celts and Norse and the like. Not the best recipe for heart-to-heart chats.”
“I have a Tigony friend in high places.” Probably an understatement, considering that he referred to the Honorable Giva, the leader of the Dragon Kings’ elected Council. Then again, to call Malnefoley a friend was an exaggeration. They tolerated each other because of shared family connections. Distrust meant they would never be close unless their ambitions aligned. Basically, Tallis was bragging. Idiot. “Let’s just say my brother married a hundred times better than he deserved.”
“You? With secrets? I’ll never recover from the shock.”
With a chuckle, Tallis turned away from her profile. Now that he knew the difference between the Sun and Kavya . . .
She was flesh and blood.
He’d been infatuated with a vision. The best scenario was that the vision was of his own making, but that would mean shouldering the blame for the damage he’d wrought. The worst case was that he’d played puppet to the likes of Pashkah. What he’d revealed in his dreams, what he’d done—Tallis didn’t want to think of sharing that with a vengeful stranger.
Kavya was different. Out here in the wilds of the Pir Panjal, she was well away from her people. She couldn’t read his mind. She was forced to be herself, and that was even more tempting than an image of perfection. He liked how he could unnerve her with his dry humor and even his silences. He’d needed to learn English sarcasm like another language, but it was useful when sparring with a woman who used thoughts more than speech.
His people, however, told stories. Huge, rambling, straightforward stories. Subtleties such as irony and sarcasm hadn’t made sense. Tallis had arrived in England as an exile, completely unprepared for the cultural difference of a few hundred miles.
“What about the Southerners?” he asked.
“What about them?”
“If you in the North managed to mingle with the Han and the Mongols, where did the Southerners go after the split?”
“The coastline and the islands—Indonesia and the like. Some even colonized Australia. Every religion in this region is so fractured. Tiny pockets of belief. We migrated and split and kept splitting. Pods became villages, and villages became cultures. And we’d split again, always so distrustful and willing to move on, start again, if it meant the chance of being safe.”
The Pendray way would’ve been to stand and fight, not run, hide, change, live in fear. He understood the desire to have one’s gift from the Dragon made whole, but the cost was a civilization that resembled a petri dish of bacteria dividing and dividing.
Kavya led the way into a seedy, run-down area of Kullu. The idea that she would assume another Mask turned Tallis’s stomach. He followed, with Chandrani at the rear. He knew they talked to each other. That shouldn’t have bothered him, because they’d taken to voicing important decisions about direction and timing. The remaining, unspoken little things did bother him. For the first time in longer than he could recall, he was keeping company with Dragon Kings. They challenged him. Kavya in particular. As if his mind had tipped sideways, he was confused, angry, and uncertain of his purpose.
Find Pashkah?
Run from him?
Worse, it had been nearly thirty-six hours since he’d eaten. Hunger tended to bring out his less desirable traits. He was irritable and prone to snap harsh phrases. The beast needed to be appeased. Now that he’d called it out of its cage, that dark and raging animal was making more of his decisions.
“What happens after?” he asked.
Her strides were short but quick. She’d had no trouble keeping up with his pace, probably due to her familiarity with these daunting mountains. “After what?”
He needed to stop admiring the way the morning sun turned her golden skin to bronze. She glowed as if she really were the Sun of his dreams. “After you take on another Mask. Can he find you at all? Will you go into hiding? We’ve had different goals from the start.”