02 - The Barbed Rose by Gail Dayton Page A

such luxury. Kallista nodded, smiled, turning her hand toward the chair in invitation. Slowly, hampered by his chains, hesitantly, Joh shuffled toward the chair and lowered himself into it. When he was seated, Kallista strode forward, ignoring Torchay’s protest, slipping past his outstretched hand, and sat in the chair opposite. She left the two chairs on either side for her ever-vigilant bodyguards.
    Neither of them sat. Almost as one, they moved the chairs back out of the way and stood, bright flame and dark, between Kallista and the bound, near-naked, oh-so-dangerous prisoner.
    She waited until Joh met her eyes. “Tell me what happened.”
    He shuttered the bright blue of his gaze as if against pain and drew in a breath through his fine, straight nose. With that fortification, he looked at her again.
    “I did not know the powder would explode.” His voice was deep, intense, laden with emotion. Kallista could almost taste it, reaching with absent magic in a vain attempt to drink it down. His mark pulled at her. This was not what she meant him to tell, but apparently he needed to.
    “What did you think, then?” Torchay’s voice held scorn, rage. “That it would carry them off to sweet dreams of paradise?”
    Joh didn’t look away, focusing only on Kallista. “I was told it would heal you.”
    “Of what?” Torchay spoke again, but Joh ignored him, spoke over the interruption.
    “The vapors from the powder’s burning would enable an East healer to free you of the hold West magic had on you.”
    Now both her men reacted with derision. Kallista ignored them, just as Joh did.
    “I was a fool,” he said, voice gone bitter. “I couldn’t understand then what it meant to be marked by the One. I was a child frightened of the dark with a head full of half-truths and whispered lies, and I let myself believe them. Because I was afraid.”
    Kallista watched him, trying to read the flickers behind his steady gaze, and she waited. Often, silence would bring her more than words.
    “And I was angry,” Joh said so quietly she had to strain to hear. “I—I liked you. But when you married the Tibran di pentivas —”
    “At the Reinine’s order.” Kallista spoke as softly as he.
    “But back then, I felt betrayed.” His mouth twisted in a tiny smile. “Emotions seldom bow to reason. I admired you for treating me as you would any other officer. I had thought you free of the prejudice that sees a man as nothing but passions and brute strength. And then—”
    “I proved you wrong.”
    “It seemed so then. But I never wished you harm. We were officers in the same army. Sedili-in-arms. It was easier to believe that West magic had twisted you somehow. I wanted to think the powder’s smoke would—would return you to the captain I admired. I burned some, earlier, to test it, and that was all it did—make sparks and smoke. I never dreamed…”
    “Where did you get it? The powder?” Torchay had not softened any. Kallista would not have expected him to.
    “From a Barinirab master,” Joh replied without hesitation. “I never saw his face. He disguised his voice. He told me these things, that the smoke would heal and not harm.”
    “You are one of these Barbs?” Obed shifted, hand coming to rest on the hilt of his saber.
    “I was.”
    Steel appeared in a tattooed hand so quickly Kallista did not see where he’d drawn it from. “Obed, you swore to me. He has not offered harm.”
    She knew Torchay could move and attack with that lightning speed, but she had not known it of Obed. Where had a merchant-trader needed such skills?
    Kallista touched his arm and reluctantly Obed tucked the knife in the sash around his waist. It had not been there before, she knew.
    “You no longer belong to the Order of the Barbed Rose?” she asked.
    “I will not be part of a group that manipulates its own people into doing murder.” Joh’s eyes held the anger his voice did not.
    “But you won’t tell who gave you the powder,”