CHAPTER ELEVEN
REUNITED!
Burly came into the cell as Kai-La and I laid Lhan on his bed roll. He handed me a leather pack. “There is needle and thread, and some salves and bandages, but I’m afraid there is no water here fit to clean a wound.”
I pulled my canteen off my shoulder. It was still half full. “I have some, thanks.”
Kai-La rose and joined Burly at the door, then looked back. “I know you will do as you will, but you would do better to let him drink that than to wash his wounds with it. Neither will save his life, but a drink will sooth him more.”
“Go fuck yourself. He’s not going to die.”
“Then he will be the only one.”
She walked off down the hall and I got to work. It took way too long. His bandages were so glued on with dried blood that I had to use his dagger to cut them away, and what I saw underneath made me wonder how he was still alive. He had scrapes and bruises all over, but the main wound was in his side, just under his ribs, and it smelled like a dead skunk. It had been neatly sewn up a while back, but it hadn’t been cleaned in way too long, and was so inflamed now it was popping its stitches.
Lhan opened his eyes as I choked out a sob. “You cry, beloved?”
I wiped the tears from my eyes. I was so mad my hands were shaking. “Why shouldn’t I cry? Look what being a hero got you!”
He looked down at the wound and pursed his lips. “Hero? I was the cause of the massacre. I deserve worse.”
“Bullshit. You don’t deserve any of this.”
I gave him some of the water to drink, then got to work. Fortunately, I’d done this before. I’d had basic first-aid training in boot camp, and more advanced stuff in Ranger school, plus I’d spent years riding Harleys back and forth across the states, and had plenty experience patching up myself and my pals after some nasty wreck or bar fight. As long as there weren’t any internal injuries I was good. I just hoped the arrow in his side hadn’t punctured his guts. If it had, I was lost—and so was he. He gasped as I started to cut the stitches, then smiled like a skeleton.
“Ah, Jae-En. I feared I would never see you again. It seems impossible that you still live, that you escaped the priests. The Seven have answered my prayers.”
I kept cutting. “I didn’t escape.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“They sent me back. To my world. I—” I had to stop cutting and swallow. “I thought I was stuck there. I thought I’d never… never…”
Lhan frowned. “You… you came back? But I understood you wanted nothing more than to return to your own world.”
“I—I did.” I looked down at him. “But I changed my mind.”
Lhan’s confusion melted into a look of wonder. He tried to sit up. “Oh, mistress. Oh, Jae-En. Oh, ow—”
I eased him back down, shaking as much as he was. “Even when I came back I thought it was impossible. I thought you were… I thought you’d….”
Then I did lose it. I put a hand over my eyes and tried to hide the tears that were streaming down my face. Lhan gripped my other hand and squeezed with all his might, which right about then wasn’t so much.
“I thought the same of you, Jae-En. But against all odds we have found each other again, and what e’re occurs now, however brief our time, I am content, as you are at my side once more.”
I snorfed and wiped my nose with my hand, then looked him in the eyes. Despite how sick and starved he was, they were still the same as they’d always been—warm, smart, sly and sweet all at the same time. “Yeah,” I said. “Ditto.”
I leaned down to kiss him, but as he raised up he winced and clutched his side and I remembered what we were doing. I pressed him back down.
“Time for that later. Now stay still.”
He tried, but as I went back to cutting the stitches he flinched again and I nearly stabbed him. Maybe he’d be better if he was talking.
“Tell me how you got here, Lhan. From the beginning. When they grabbed me.”
“I would rather not remember… my shame.”
“Tell it anyway.”
I cut the last stitch and the wound opened up like a diseased mouth. It was horrible, but at least it didn’t go deeper than the muscle. I breathed a sigh of relief and started washing it out as best I could with the water from my canteen. He clenched up like a fist.
“Come on. Start talking. From the beginning.”
“V-very well. I—I remember waking to see the priests reaching for you, and tried to rise, but there was a horrible lethargy.”
“Yeah. They drugged us.”
“Aye. But still you fought. It took all of them to hold your limbs. I think it is that which saved my life.”
I looked at him. I fought? It was news to me. “What do you mean?”
“There was one, with a knife. I believe he meant to cut my throat, but he turned to help the others, and went with them to carry you to the balcony, leaving me alone.”
I opened up a pot of goop from Kai-La’s medicine bag and held it out to him to smell. “What’s this?”
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose. “An astringent, for clean healing. Be sparing. It stings.”
I slathered it on like it was peanut butter. He twitched and yipped with pain.
“Mistress!”
“Keep talking.”
Tears were running down his cheeks. “You are cruel, Mistress.”
“Yeah, I know. Go on. You said they left you alone.”
“Yes. I—I knew it was my only chance. I fought the drug, forced myself to stand, then found my sword and made it to the corridor, where it was easier to breathe.”
I got a needle and thread out of the kit, sterilized the needle using Lhan’s lamp, and started sewing the wound back together.
He gritted his teeth. “I meant to return and rescue you, but before I had recovered, he with the knife and another came looking for me. I fell upon them from the shadows, but the drug had me in its clutches. I did not fight well. They wounded me.”
He touched a scar on his sword arm. It was long and fresh, but healed and clean—not like the rest. “I could not lift my sword, so I fell back and hid in…” He blushed. “In a secret room.”
I smiled at that. I’d been in that room. I knew why he was blushing.
“Go on.”
“Again, I meant to return to you immediately, but my head was muddled, and as I struggled to bandage myself I… I lost consciousness.” He punched his leg, and almost tore my stitches. “An unforgivable weakness!”
I grabbed his arm. “Hey! Stay still! What happened next?”
He turned his head and went on. “What happened next is that I woke to Rian-Gi shaking me, and I discovered that it was morning.” He hid his face. “Your pardon, mistress, the shame of it is still unbearable.”
I rolled my eyes. “Lhan. You passed out. You can’t control that.”
“Can I not? The mind controls the flesh. The flesh does not control the mind.”
“Yeah yeah, so then what?”
“Then Rian saw to my wounds and begged me to leave, for he feared the priests would return and find me there.”
I bit my lip, not sure I should tattle, but then I caught myself. I didn’t see any shame in what Rian did. It was the priests who were the murdering bastards, not him. “They did return. That’s how they learned you were with the pirates. That’s how they followed you here. Y’see. It’s not your fault after all.”
Lhan looked up at me, and his face went in about six directions at once—shock, horror, anger, sadness—okay, only four. “Rian-Gi talked?” And then. “Of course. Of course he did. Any man would. They know their business, those villains. Did… did they kill him?”
“Not him. His boyfriend. Rian talked to save him, but they killed the poor guy anyway.”
Lhan closed his eyes and I stitched him up in silence for a full minute, then he shook his head. “You are wrong, Jae-En. It is my fault. It is I who killed Wae-Fen. And I who brought about Rian’s torture. For it is I who foolishly told him my plans. Had I kept it from him—”
“They would have tortured him anyway. And killed Wae-Fen. Come on, Lhan. You can’t blame yourself for the church’s evil shit.”
“I blame myself for knowing we were the subject of their scrutiny and not keeping away from my friends. My lack of proper caution allowed them to catch you, to torture Rian-Gi, to murder Wae-Fen and, by the One, I have hurt these poor pirates worse than all the rest. Thirteen ships burned, hundreds of men dead. Lo-Zhar is right to wish to cast me out and kill me. I am like a plague victim who kisses his children. I harm all I love. All I touch!”
He was close to popping his stitches again. “Lhan! You’re gonna hurt yourself!”
He stayed clenched for a long minute, then sagged back and let out a breath. “How… how did you know? About Rian and Wae-Fen?”
“I went to see him. I came back to Waar inside the Temple of Ormolu, and found out that the priests were hunting you in some place called Toaga. So when I escaped, I went to ask him for a map, and—”
Lhan was staring at me like I’d just grown horns and turned green. “You… you escaped from the Temple of Ormolu?”
“Yeah. There was a teleport gem thingy, and—”
“No one escapes from the temple of Ormolu. But for the priests, no one who has entered it has ever come out again. There are no doors, no windows, and no one is ever seen to enter or leave.”
I tied off the last stitch, then cut the thread and looked for more wounds. There was a nasty one that cut across his hip and halfway around to his butt. I started undoing his loincloth. “That’s because they have teleporters like I was saying. They don’t need—”
Lhan caught my hand as I started to strip him. “That is not necessary.”
“Bro, I’ve seen you naked, remember. And that’s infected.”
“Very well, then I will do it. Give me the salve.”
I started tugging again. “Come on, Lhan. Don’t be a prude. Let me—”
“No! I insist. I—”
The fabric ripped as he tried to pull my hand away, and the loincloth fell apart. He had a thin strip of leather tied around his waist, and there was some kind of stone hanging from it. It hadn’t been there the last time we got naked. He closed his hand around it.
I stared at his fist, shaking. The thing reminded me of the thing I’d seen around Kedac-Zir’s waist when I’d stripped him naked in front of the entire Oran court—a balurrah it was called—only his had been silver. A balurrah was a secret token people on Waar wore next to their skin to remind them of their lover, and it didn’t matter if you were married or engaged to somebody else, you were supposed to only wear the balurrah of the person you truly loved. It was meant only for their eyes. Nobody else’s. And Lhan was hiding his from me.
“What’s that?”
Lhan clenched tighter. “Nothing. Pay it no mind.”
“Lhan, don’t be a douche. Show me.”
He didn’t like it, but he opened his hand, then turned his head away. “Forgive me, mistress.”
I took the thing in my hand and looked at it, heart pounding. It was a smooth pink pebble, about the size and shape of a pocket watch, and there was something scratched into one side of it. It looked like a drawing of a knife with a blade that curved at the tip.
“This is a balurrah, right?”
“Aye.”
My heart sunk. “Whose is it?”
“It… it is yours, mistress.”
“M-mine?”
“Aye. That crude etching is meant to represent your sword, while the pebble is the color of your skin.”
Fucking hell. It was my sword. A breath went out of me that I hadn’t know I’d been holding. “Oh, god, Lhan. I—”
He gripped my hand. “I beg you to forgive me, mistress. It was presumptuous of me to make such a thing without knowing your heart, but I believed I would die, and did not want to—”
“Lhan, you fucking idiot!” I lay down beside him and hugged him so hard I heard him grunt. “What the fuck do you need to be forgiven for? Didn’t I tell you? I came back for you! All I wanted to do when the priests sent me to Earth was get back here. All I wanted was to find you again. I….” I held him away from me and looked into his eyes. “I decided I didn’t want to go back home the second we kissed.”
Lhan looked at me, still unsure. “Truly?”
“Truly.” I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
It took a minute for Lhan’s brow to unwrinkle, but at last he clasped my hands and smiled. It was like a bath in warm whiskey, that smile. It made me all hot and gooshy inside.
“And I decided I would ask you to stay at precisely the same moment. I believed I had not a hope to convince you, but I knew I must try, or lose half my world.”
“Aw, Lhan.”
I leaned in to kiss him, but he held me off and looked into my eyes, all serious. “Mistress. Jae-En. ’Tis sudden, I know, but I fear we have little time left to us, so I would speak now.”
“Uh, speak about what?”
“This.” He took my hand. “That if we are truly of like minds, then I would pledge myself to you as a dhan of Ora should—heart, soul and arm. From this day forth, however few they may be, you will be my dhanshai and I will be your dhan. Your safety and well-being will be my only concern. Your love will be my only goal.”
He was so serious I wanted to laugh, but I kept it in. I couldn’t keep the tears in, though. They were running down my cheeks.
He took my hand and kissed it. “Will you have me?”
There was a dirty answer to that, but I kept that in too. Now wasn’t the time. “Yes, Lhan. I will,” was all I said.
“The One be praised.”
Lhan stretched up and kissed me, and that whiskey bath turned into a sauna. Wounds or no wounds, I was ready to push him down and “have him” as often as he could manage, but all of a sudden he went all floppy again and slumped back, his eyes fluttering.
“Lhan!”
He gripped my forearm. His hand was clammy and cold. “Forgive me… beloved. There has been no food for so long. I… I have little strength. At least we will be Dhan and Dhanshae when we die.”
I stared down at him, feeling helpless, then shook my head, angry. “Sorry, Lhan. Fuck dying. I’m not giving you up after I just found you again. I’m gettin’ us off this rock, and then we’re gonna go have a happily-ever-after somewhere.”
I stood and turned to the door. “Wait right here. I gotta go see some priests about a ship.”