By the Sea of Sand Page 11

  “Jodah-kah. What a pleasant surprise.”

  “You don’t have to call me that. I told you that before.” Jodah frowned. “What are you doing in here?”

  Rehker gestured at the vast expanse of glass. “I like to come up here at night. It’s very peaceful. And the view is marvelous. Not all of us are privileged enough to have a great view from our bedrooms.”

  Ignoring the subtle dig, if that’s what it was, Jodah eyed him. The view from the lamp room would be magnificent during the day, but at night the constant spinning of the light would make it impossible to look for more than a few minutes at a time. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “Are you going to throw me out?” Rehker held up his hands, brows lifted. “I didn’t realize you’d become the guardian of the lamp as well as the lampkeeper herself.”

  Jodah drew himself up, wary. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” Rehker smirked and tried to sidle past him.

  Jodah put out a hand to stop him. The other man tried to keep going, but Jodah was bigger. Stronger.

  Rehker winced and backed off, rubbing his breastbone. “By the Three, Jodah-kah, watch yourself. We all know you’re the biggest and the strongest. No need to brag on it.”

  “I’m not . . .” Jodah’s fists clenched as he looked at the other man. The bright light swept over them both and left darkness behind. He looked with longing to the night outside.

  “You want to go outside.” Rehker’s gaze followed his, and his smirk grew. “What do you want to do out there? Catch a whale? Grab it by the tail? Ride it to the suns and all around the world?”

  Jodah knew at once it was a children’s nursery song. The data stream brightened, pulling words from who knew where. Filling in the rest of the rhyme. “Ride along the sea, free as anything could ever be, just make sure to come back to me.”

  “You got it,” Rehker said. “Think on that, Jodah-kah. Think on lots of things.”

  Jodah shook his head, but the data stream persisted, bright and glowing in the edges of his vision. Forever scrolling. He pressed his temples against the pain he knew was coming.

  “I’m going now. I wouldn’t want your beshera to lose her temper about me being in here. I guess only you get the special privileges.”

  Beshera . . . beloved. This, along with the second insinuation that somehow Teila gave Jodah special treatment, while true or not, set his jaw. “Do you have an issue with something, Rehker-kah? If you do, you should tell me right out. I’ve never been one for dancing.”

  At the honorific, Rehker’s smirk twisted into a sneer, but only for a moment before it was replaced by a bland smile. He backed out of the doorway into the hall, and Jodah went after him. He snagged the other man by the back of the shirt as he made to get away.

  Rehker turned, hands up again, his face full of guile disguised as innocence. “Back off.”

  Jodah didn’t, but he did let him go. “If you’re not going to hold your tongue, then you’d best explain yourself.”

  “Everyone knows you’re fucking Teila and that you have been since you got here.”

  Jodah’s eyes narrowed. “And what business is it of anyone’s? Adarey and Stimlin are lovers, and I don’t see anyone minding about that. And you and Pera—”

  “Pera,” Rehker said coldly, “is not the lampkeeper.”

  “What difference does that make? Do you really think she gives me any better treatment than any of you? And what difference would it make,” Jodah said, “if she did? This isn’t a prison, or a hotel. So far as I can see, Teila makes sure all of you have what you need and how you need it. Why should it matter to you?”

  “Oh, it won’t matter to me. But it might make a difference to her husband.”

  Jodah’s mouth opened. Then closed. “Her husband?”

  “Yes. The father of her son? Surely you know him,” Rehker said. “The boy’s all over the place. Did you think he was born out of a pile of sand?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  Rehker shook his head. “Far be it from me to judge who she takes into her bed, but I think you’d at least have the consideration not to make a fool of another man.”

  “Her husband is . . . gone.”

  “Gone? Is he dead?” Rehker asked, brows raised.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t. Because she hasn’t told you, has she? There are no pictures of the man about, are there? She must keep some, don’t you think? Wouldn’t a widow have at least a few holos of her beshera to remember him by?”

  “Maybe they sundered.”

  “Or maybe,” Rehker said slyly, “he’s off fighting against the enemy while his lovely bride stays home and fucks whoever tickles her—”

  In a flash, Jodah had his fists in the front of Rehker’s robes. He shook the smaller man until his teeth rattled. “You shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”

  “Isn’t that delightful, the wounded warrior going all feral over his lady love—”

  Jodah punched him in the mouth. Blood ran from Rehker’s split lip and Jodah’s knuckles. The pain in his hand was instant and exquisite, and the urge to keep pounding, pounding, punching and hitting and kicking rose inside him like a separate entity. He barely kept himself from hitting the other man again, and only by sheer willpower.

  Rehker grinned, blood lining his teeth. He licked his mouth, blood staining his tongue. “Like I said. I don’t really care, as far as I’m concerned. I just thought you had more honor, that’s all. As one soldier to another, how would you feel if you came home from the war to discover your wife had been spreading herself for someone else?”

  Jodah hit him again. This time, Rehker dropped to his knees, both hands over his spurting nose. Blood spattered the soft golden tiles, and even in the hall’s dim lighting, it was the crimson of a whale’s back. Incredibly, the man laughed.

  “What’s going on?”

  Jodah had been getting ready to kick Rehker, but at the sound of Teila’s voice, he stopped. Rehker got to his feet, one hand pinching his nose to stanch the flow. His laughter faded, and he gave Jodah a sly look before turning toward her.

  “We were in disagreement over the results of a game of Golightly,” he said smoothly. “That’s all. I came to get my winnings, and Jodah-kah insisted I allow him to pay me the full amount he lost to me, though I didn’t want to break him. It was for fun, after all.”

  Teila didn’t look convinced. She crossed her arms over the front of her almost-sheer sleeping robe. Her hair had been pulled to the nape of her neck with a ribbon, but tendrils of it escaped and hung all over her face. She pushed them out of the way in irritation.

  “You’re being very loud,” she said. “And I don’t allow fighting in here. If you must beat each other, you’ll have to do it outside.”

  “Do you have a problem with many of your charges beating each other?” Rehker said from around his hand. He gave Jodah another snide look. “I don’t seem to remember any of us ever raising a fist to someone else before.”

  It was meant to shame him, and her look did. His reaction was not to hang his head, but to lift it. He met her gaze squarely.

  “Rehker was just leaving.”

  The other man nodded, all wide-eyed innocence. “Oh, yes. I was.”

  With that, he pushed past Teila and went to the stairwell. Jodah listened to the sound of his boots on the metal stairs growing fainter before he turned to her. She was still frowning.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why were you fighting?”

  “He was in the lamp room.”

  Her mouth pursed. “Hmm. Why?”

  “I don’t know. But he shouldn’t be.”

  “No, he shouldn’t.” Teila moved past him and into the lamp room, checking the light as it swept in its unending circle. She gave cursory attention to the panel of instruments before turning to him. “Did he say what he was doing here?”

  Jodah shrugged. “He had an excuse. Have you had trouble wit
h him before?”

  “No.” She paused. “We didn’t ever have trouble . . . before.”

  They stared at each other. Without a word, Jodah left the lamp room and headed for the stairs. Behind him, he heard Teila’s shout, but he ignored it. He took the spiral stairs two at a time, heading for the bottom floor. She came after him, calling his name.

  He was still ignoring her when he burst out of the door downstairs and onto the rocky grass, so cold it stung his bare feet. Shivering at the instant chill, Jodah headed in the direction of the sea. He could hear the constant shush-shushing of the moving sands, though he could see nothing in the blackness until the lighthouse swept it with bright white light.

  He remembered stepping into the sea. Not this one, maybe. Something smaller. He remembered easing his feet from rocky ground into the soft, shifting sands, shallow at first, then deeper. To his knees. His calves. He remembered wearing a formfitting sandsuit coated in whale oil to keep the sands from abrading him. He did not remember what he’d been doing.

  Jodah closed his eyes, breathing in the night air, cold enough to freeze the delicate hairs of his nostrils. He spread his arms and tipped his face to the sky, waiting for memories to rush over him, but nothing else came. Behind him came the soft step of feet on the rocks. He didn’t have to turn to know who it was. He could smell her.

  “You’re going to freeze,” Teila said.

  “I’m fine. I can’t freeze.” He had no idea if that were true, but it felt like it must be. He could feel the cold, but after those first few minutes of shivering, his body’s internal enhancements had raised his temperature to normal.

  “Well, I can,” she snapped. Backlit by the light from the lighthouse windows, she looked taller than normal. Her robes fluttered. “Come back inside.”

  “You go. I need to be out here.” Already he was thinking of running along the edge of this sea, which did not lap with shallow edges at the ground beyond, but instead fell off, sharp and deep. He needed to run, to work himself into exhaustion.

  “I can’t leave you out here alone.”

  He turned to her. His eyes had adjusted, his pupils ratcheting wider to capture any stray light. He had the advantage over her, for she’d still be blinded by the night.

  “I don’t need you to hover over me,” Jodah told her. “I’m not your responsibility!”

  She came after him when he started heading away from the lighthouse. Jodah stopped, though the urge to run was now strong enough to make cold sweat trickle down his spine. He heard the rattling of her teeth and cursed under his breath.

  “You’re not even wearing the right clothes!” he cried. “You’re the one who’s going to freeze!”

  “Then come back inside with me.”

  He could’ve just told her about the need burning inside him, but it felt too similar to the fury that had made him take her so fiercely in those beginning days when he still confused dreams with reality. He knew better now—lots better, more than he wished he knew. Rehker’s words about her husband echoed in Jodah’s head.

  “I can’t leave you alone out here,” she said again, each word cut into pieces by the chattering of her teeth. “It’s dangerous!”

  He moved closer to her. “You think I can’t take care of myself? Really, Teila? I’m a Mothers-forsaken Rav Gadol in the Sheirran Defense Force. There’s more technology in me than flesh. I’ve been torn apart and rebuilt. Torn apart again. There’s nothing out here, not beast or sea, that I can’t withstand.”

  “Please,” she murmured. She found his hand with hers in the dark. She tugged him closer. “I’ll worry too much about you out here. Come inside.”

  The words came out of him before he could stop them. “Is that what you used to say to your husband?”

  In the silence that came after he spoke, the wind rushed across the sea, stirring the sands. To him they sounded like the whispers of the flowers in his dreams, the real dreams that he’d been having since he came here, and not the ones the Wirthera had given him. He waited, listening.

  “Yes,” Teila said. “I did.”

  He wanted her so much it was a little like dying.

  “The sea brought him to me,” she said. “And I lost him after that.”

  “To the sea?”

  She moved closer to him again, this time so close the heat and scent of her washed over him, making him shiver worse than the night air had. “No. Not to the sea.”

  “What did you lose him to?”

  She was silent. There was something there, something he was missing, if only he could put the key into the lock. It eluded him. Angry, Jodah sighed.

  “You’re not a widow.”

  “I’ve never claimed to be a widow,” Teila said. “If you thought I am, that’s your assumption. Not my truth.”

  When she kissed him, he let himself get lost in the taste of her. He let her part his lips with hers, stroke her tongue inside. He let her press herself against him. But when she murmured something that sounded like the name he couldn’t claim, he pushed her from him.

  “What would your husband think?”

  “He doesn’t think anything of it,” she told him. “He doesn’t know.”

  Jodah persisted, holding her at arm’s length while the night wind whipped up around them. Her hair tickled his cheek. In the corners of his vision, the data stream brightened, ticking downward with a list of internal computations as his body adjusted to the temperature. She had to be cold, though he wasn’t.

  “What I did in the beginning, I take responsibility for that. It was wrong. I used you—”

  “I told you before,” she put in sharply, “that you didn’t force me. Stop blaming yourself for what happened when you were not aware of where you were. If anything, I should be blamed for it, since I fully knew what was going on. If one of us took advantage of the other, it was me.”

  He would not bend to that, no matter how many times she said so. It would always be his fault. He was bigger. Stronger. “You couldn’t have stopped me.”

  “I didn’t want to!” she shouted. Softer, she added, “If you’d forced me, Jodah, if I had any resentment toward you for it, would I be here now? Would I have made love to you again?”

  The memory of her slick heat stirred him, but he pushed the thoughts away. “What happened in the beginning was wrong for one reason. What happened after is wrong for another.”

  She drew in a breath. “You think it’s wrong for us to be together.”

  “Yes,” Jodah said. “It’s wrong for me to be with another man’s wife.”

  “I am a woman! Not just a wife,” she cried. “I was myself long before I ever knew him, and I am myself now.”

  “You think it’s all right to be with me when you’re still married to him?”

  “My husband was a soldier,” she said slowly. “He chose to leave me behind, knowing he might never see me again. He chose that path for the greater good, for what he believed would be his efforts toward protecting not simply Sheira, but me specifically. He chose to leave me because he loved me. He told me more than once . . .” She broke, then, and it broke him to hear it. “He told me he would do anything to make sure I could be happy. So you ask me what my husband would think, if he knew, and I will tell you that he would want me to be happy.”

  He kissed her until she gasped and writhed in his grip to be set free. He knew his fingers would leave marks, but he couldn’t make himself soften. “This,” he said, shaking her a little, “this makes you happy?”

  When he kissed her this time, she bit his lip. The pain, sharp and instant, was accompanied by the bitter tang of blood. He let her go. Stepped back. Already the blood had stopped. Soon the wound would mend.

  “Do I make you happy, Teila?”

  She said nothing. The wind whispered and sang as the sea shifted behind them. She was still so close he could grab her again, if he wanted to, but he kept his fists at his sides.

  “Sometimes,” she said finally. “And sometimes, Jodah, you only make me ver
y, very sad.”

  Chapter 25

  She’d fallen in love with him that first day. Teila could admit that now, though at the time she’d done her best to deny what she felt for her handsome gift from the sea was anything but lust and possibly affection. But not love, definitely not that. It had taken almost losing him to realize that she couldn’t live without him.

  They’d become lovers without effort. He’d been bold. She’d been willing—surprising him, she thought, when she took him up without hesitation on his charming offer to take her to bed. And after, surprised him again when she waved away his attempts to cuddle her.

  “I’ve work to do,” she’d explained. “I have to check the lamp, for one thing. For another, I don’t want to spend the night in this narrow bed when I have my own much nicer one.”

  Naked, she’d laughed at his snort of affront and left him there. The next day he’d cornered her in the kitchen while she sliced up a milka pellet. She’d allowed him to seduce her, but later had laughed again when he suggested he join her in her “much nicer bed.”

  “You have your own,” she said. “The bed for guests.”

  “But surely,” he’d said, trying again to charm her, “I’m not a guest any more.”

  She’d put him in his place quickly enough with a raised brow and shake of the head. “Why would you presume that?”

  He’d had no answer for that other than his furrowed brow. It had almost made her change her mind, that stubborn look. She’d always had a weakness for arrogant men.

  “Make yourself useful,” she’d told him after that. “If you’re not a guest, then you should work.”

  And he had. Kason had taken over much of the maintenance work that Vikus and Billis had been struggling with, not because they weren’t eager to pull their weight but because as boys they were simply incapable of some of it. Kason, despite his wealthy upbringing, had proven himself more than handy. It had surprised him as much as her resistance to his affections had, she thought, and was glad for his sake that he’d discovered himself to be more than a wealthy man’s son.