Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

50. Damned if You Do

Phedoxia had a premonition that she would die in a warm place.

"You got this one right," I said to her corpse. My voice quavered and I wasn't ashamed of it.

I counted the bodies with slit throats being laid out for burial. Their name tags waited for me in my tent to be recorded, then reforged for the fresh recruits. Renewal and rebirth is the way of the Knowable World.

I counted the bodies again, even though it couldn't reduce the outcome by even one. If it were possible and if I could choose, I would choose Phedoxia, despite her being a thorn in my side for years. Despite annoying me... I pressed the sting of tears out of my eyes with the back of my hand. Soaked up what had already wetted my cheeks on my sleeve. Damn that stubborn old witch!

Not five days ago, when we were sitting next to unconscious Parneres, she had upbraided me for fretting. "You need women to fight, not to guard your old flame. They're like tits on a man next to my magic."

"Huh?" I was only half-listening to her, too absorbed by gazing into Parneres' drawn face. Too busy with the very fretting she was accusing me of.

"Redundant." She drove the explanation through my skull like they drive piles into dirt.

I witnessed the power of her magic many times, but I trusted sharpened steel. "Guards stay. Magic stay."

That should have been the end of our conversation, but Parneres' fingers spasmed, grasping for something known only to him.

"Parneres?" I leaned forward, hoping for a whisper, a nod or a flutter of his thick eyelashes. And I found nothing, until his eyelashes trembled when I sighed. It wasn't him, it was my breath. I glanced at my High Scribe. "Could he hear us?"

Phedoxia shrugged.

My gaze drifted away from the overgrown walnut that passed for her face to Parneres' serene features. Then it slid down the length of his lithe frame. The bandaged cuts oozed nothing vile. The bruises hid under patches of healing paste. His legs remained splintered, his skin hung loose under the ribs, but he looked like he could open his eyes at any moment and smile at me.

Except he never did. He remained unconscious despite medicines and magic.

I hugged myself to ward off the chill on this sweltering afternoon. "Why isn't he waking up, Phedoxia?"

Phedoxia measured me with a glance of her black eyes, the only young part of her. Or a visible young part, at least. "Do you know what his tattoos mean?"

"The Scorpia on the elbow is his cousin's brand. The rest, maybe they're marking him as a member of his tribe or a clan? A gang?" I felt the weight in her question, no matter how gently she'd asked it. I hated that I floundered when answering it. For over a decade, I pined for Parneres and chased shadows, but I'd never asked him about his native land, his tattoos or anything else personal. It must have been important to him and I was too busy with Kozima's charade. Wrapped up in joining the Deadheads. Surviving in the streets of Palmyr... I'd never asked.

Phedoxia shook her head. "What was the first thing that popped into your head when you met this man for the first time?"

At least this was an easy question. A dreamy sigh escaped my chest. "That he is the most beautiful man in the world."

"So did I, so did I..." She dismissed my goggling eyes with a wave of her hand. "I'm telling you this because I don't find men attractive. In my youth, I preferred the company of women. What fire was in my heart--and there wasn't much--it all burned out in pursuit of knowledge. If I find him beautiful when I'm uninterested and he has one foot in his grave, it means one thing."