The Barbed Rose. Gail Dayton

no political benefit whatsoever. No, I do not care.”

      Kallista bowed again, deeper this time. “Far be it from me to question, my Reinine. I married my own bodyguard. I know the…bonds that can grow over the years.”

      When she rose this time—was the Reinine blushing? Surely not.

      “Please, be seated. All of you.” Serysta gestured to the chairs set before the room’s hearth as she chose a high, wingbacked seat for herself. Kallista took the chair nearest the Reinine, and the four men ranged themselves about them, standing.

      Serysta glowered at all the bodyguards. “Sit down. Please.”

      Her ilias—the stocky man with short-cropped iron-gray hair—answered for both, shaking his head “no” without speaking. Kallista glanced at her own iliasti. “It’s no use arguing. They get even more stubborn and protective once you’ve married them.”

      Serysta sighed, still glowering. “I’ve noticed.”

      Her gray-haired ilias gazed at her blandly. They spoke a whole conversation without words before Serysta jerked her eyes away to stare at her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath. “Has your magic returned, Naitan?”

      Kallista’s insides knotted up. “No, my Reinine, it has not.” She lifted her gloved hand. “This is simply regulation. And protection from the cold. I am most heartily sorry.”

      “As am I, Naitan. We could use your talents now.” Serysta lounged back in her chair, her gaze on the low fire, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. “Will it return, do you know?”

      “I believe so.” Kallista quelled a brief surge of panic, mentally stomping down the lid of the box where it had been penned and throwing a strap around it. Then another. She had to trust that the One would keep the others safe. They were needed.

      “Is something wrong, Naitan?”

      Kallista attempted a smile. “As you suggested, we sent the rest of our ilian to safety with the children. We’ve never been separated like this since we were bound together. It is an…adjustment. Especially since we are bound with magic as well as oaths.” She paused to clear her throat.

      “My Reinine, we sent them off before we knew of these assassinations, or of the army’s defections. Two babies, two women—one of them pregnant and near her time—and two fighters, one of them blind. If I could beg of you a troop escort—”

      “Ah, Naitan.” The Reinine’s eyes were filled with a sad sympathy. “There are no troops to send. None we can trust. They will be safer alone and anonymous. Truly.”

      Kallista wanted to ask again, wanted to beg on her knees, but she didn’t want to risk the kind of reaction she’d gotten from the general. “Then may I ask a farspeaker send a message to Korbin, to family there? They can send a party to meet them.”

      “Yes, of course. Write out your message and I will have it sent immediately.” The Reinine gestured at the table between them littered with papers, inkwells and quills.

      Kallista scratched out a brief message and the Reinine’s younger bodyguard passed it to a servant outside the door. The message would go by farspeaker to Korbin’s capital and from there by courier to Torchay’s family, but it should reach them no later than tomorrow. Weeks sooner than a message could arrive over land.

      She took a ragged breath and looked up at the Reinine. Kallista had never fully answered her question. It was time she did.

      “The bonds of magic are still there,” she said. “But at the moment, I cannot use them. The fact that they exist makes me believe that the magic will return. When? I cannot say. Merinda Healer said that because I had twins, it could take longer for things to return to normal.”

      Serysta obviously bit back a curse. “Is there anything to hurry the process along? We need your particular magic rather badly. The few military naitani we have left are scattered and will take time to bring in safely. That blind Tibran you brought back seems to have some skill at foresight, but he’s so afraid of his gift—”

      For a moment, Kallista was confused. Fox had no magic of his own, except for that uncanny ability to sense his surroundings. Then she remembered. The boy they’d rescued, the one they’d brought with them from their trip to the Tibran capital. He’d been a casteless “witch hound,” used by the Ruler caste to sniff out users of forbidden magic. They’d taken his eyes first. Fox couldn’t see from his eyes. Gweric had none to see with.

      “How is he?” Kallista had left him with her family in Turysh so her birth mother could work her healing on Gweric’s feet, broken by his Tibran masters to keep him from running away. When he was well enough, he’d been brought to Arikon, to the naitani academies for training.

      “Well enough, I suppose. Getting around better than I would have believed. What can you do to speed up the magic?” Serysta refused to be distracted.

      “I don’t know. I’ve consulted with all my sources. They don’t know either.” Kallista’s only real source of information was the last godstruck naitan so blessed by the One. Belandra had lived a thousand years ago, but she came visiting from time to time to advise her successor. Belandra, however, had been older when the Goddess struck her. She’d already had all her children, and none of them had been twins.

      Serysta Reinine’s lips thinned as she pressed them tight together in an uncharacteristic show of impatience.

      “What is it you need?” Kallista asked. “Perhaps there is some other way we can provide it?”

      “I need to know what these rebels are doing. I need to know their goals, where they will strike, what their numbers are—everything there is to know.”

      “Don’t you have spies?” Kallista knew she did. Uskenda would not have left so necessary a thing undone.

      “I did. I have sent six persons to infiltrate the rebels. Somehow, they found each one and sent them back in pieces.”

      “Goddess,” Kallista murmured, not missing the grim looks the four bodyguards exchanged. “Did your people have magic?”

      “One had a small illusion gift. Otherwise, no.”

      “You’ve no magic just now either, Captain,” Torchay reminded her.

      “The others were all sent to infiltrate?” Kallista got the Reinine’s nod of confirmation. “What about observers?”

      “None sent specifically for that. We’ve been gathering information from the troops coming in, but that’s all. So far.”

      “We could—”

      “There are others with those skills,” Torchay interrupted. “Those who could do a better job without risking you. No one else can do what you can.”

      “Not even me.” She reached for her magic, stretching as high and wide as she could. And found nothing.

      “It’ll come,” he said. “Likely the more you fret, the longer it will take.”

      Kallista made a face. “Likely.”

      “Your sergeant is right,” the Reinine said. “We’re not yet at the point of desperation. Pray the One we never reach it. There is another matter to discuss, however.”

      “Of course, my Reinine.” Kallista bowed as best she could while seated.

      “Before you left here with your godmarked iliasti, I sent word across the country that anyone with a similar marking should be brought to Arikon.”

      “I remember.” She refrained from touching the back of her neck where she and her ilian had been marked. Red and raised, something like a birthmark, her mark resembled a complete Compass Rose, the symbol of the One. The marks on the others were a rose alone, without the compass points reaching from it.

      She’d once believed the godmarks in the old stories to be symbolic rather than literal, just as the stories themselves