By the Sea of Sand Read online

  She hadn’t known then, of course, that it was more than that. Kason’s father was the Rav Aluf, the man in charge of the entire Sheirran Defense Force, which made him more than simply rich. It meant he was powerful, too.

  They’d become a team as effortlessly as they’d become lovers. For nearly a full cycle, Kason had infiltrated her life, learning the ways of the lighthouse and also of her. She’d learned him too. How he liked his caffah, how he looked when he was sleeping, the sound of his laughter. The smell of him. The flavor. And yet still, though she might visit him in his narrow guest bed and they’d done their share of lovemaking in almost every part of the lighthouse that offered space for it, he did not share her bed. They didn’t speak of love.

  Not until the day his father found him.

  Teila had been outside, bringing in her scudder with a good-sized milka pellet dragging behind, when the cruiser appeared in the sky. It had been a long time since she’d seen one, and the noise of it startled her into nearly running the scudder ashore. At first, she’d thought it was the authorities coming to arrest her for illegal milka harvesting—the rules had become so much stricter over the past few cycles, she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’d inadvertently been breaking a handful of them. It wasn’t until she went around the back of the lighthouse and found Kason there with a man who looked so much like him it could only be his father that she noticed the crest on the side of the cruiser.

  The Rav Aluf had sneered at the first sight of her. She’d never forget that he’d given her no chance to prove herself to him, that he’d immediately presumed she’d set out to seduce his son. She’d never forgiven him for that, and probably never would.

  “Come home, Kason,” his father had said. “It’s time. You’ve spent long enough shirking your duties.”

  Kason hadn’t seen her come around the base of the lighthouse, so his answer hadn’t been for her benefit. “I’m not coming home. I don’t want to join the SDF. I’ve found something here that I want to keep.”

  “What’s that? A warm bed? Please,” his father had said. “You can find a hundred women more suited to you than her.”

  “You don’t even know her.”

  Another sneer. “I don’t have to know her.”

  “I’m not coming home.”

  “If you don’t come home,” his father had said with a long, hard look at Teila, “you will forfeit everything. Do you understand?”

  Kason had turned then to look at her. “Yes. I do.”

  “Will you stay?” she’d asked as though she’d just come around the base of the lighthouse and hadn’t heard anything else they’d said. “I’ll make something to eat.”

  “I’ll stay only long enough to convince my son to leave with me,” the Rav Aluf had told her.

  He’d been true to his word, and a terrible houseguest, too. Teila had bitten back every retort that rose to her tongue, determined not to give him the satisfaction of being right about her, but it had been a bitterly won battle. Kason hadn’t seemed as bothered by his father’s constant sniping. If anything, he’d seemed to enjoy baiting him.

  “You let him speak to you like you’re a child,” Teila had said one night when Kason had tried to make love to her and she’d turned her back on him, too aware of the Rav Aluf’s presence.

  “It doesn’t bother me.”

  “It bothers me,” she’d said. “And you allow him to speak to me like . . . like I’m worthless.”

  That had made him sit up. “No.”

  “Yes,” Teila had said. “And you say nothing.”

  “It’s just talk. He’ll leave soon, when he sees that I’m not going with him.”

  She’d turned on him fiercely. “And why aren’t you? Why would you stay here, so far from anything, working so hard, when you could go home and live a life of luxury?”

  His hand on her wrist had kept her from going far. Little by little, he’d pulled her closer, then onto his lap. He’d brushed her hair from her face. “Why do you think, Teila? Tell me why you think I’d rather stay here.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it, in case she’d overassumed. The thought of looking like a fool in his eyes was too much to bear, so she shook her head and stayed silent. Kason had kissed her, soft at first. Then harder. His hands roamed, making her sigh. Making her squirm.

  “Don’t you want me to stay?” he asked her after, when both of them, spent and naked, lounged in his bed. “Teila?”

  Pride and fear had bound her tongue. His hand on her bare back had gone still. He sat up to look at her.

  “Answer me.”

  “I need to check the lamp and get some sleep.”

  He caught her wrist again, this time harder than before. “Check the lamp, but come back to me. I want you to sleep here.”

  “No. Your father—”

  “It’s not his business.” Kason’s voice had gone hard as lightning-seared sand and just as brittle. “Say you’ll come back here.”

  She hadn’t been able to make herself form the words. Silence had filled the darkness between them, colder than the air outside. When she left him, he didn’t try to stop her.

  The next morning, the roar of the cruiser’s thrusters had woken her from restless dreams. She’d leaped from her lonely and too-empty bed before her eyes were even open to run to her window. He was leaving her; she knew it without even seeing him board.

  Teila had never taken the stairs so fast in her life. She’d tripped at the bottom and broken her ankle; the pain had been distant and faint until much later, overshadowed at first by her desperation to reach him before he went away forever. Limping, she hurtled herself through the back door and toward the cruiser, which was just closing its doors. Vikus and Billis had been pressing their goggle-eyed faces to the glass.

  She’d said nothing, made no cry. It was too late. He was going to leave her because she’d been stupid.

  And then, the door had opened. Kason came down the ramp. She’d run on her broken ankle and launched herself into his arms. She’d covered his face with kisses and vowed to never let him go. And, until his father had returned a few cycles later and convinced Kason that his duty to protect her meant serving in the SDF, she hadn’t.

  Chapter 26

  He smoothed a hand over the curved wood, testing it for splinters or imperfections. The pads of his fingertips caught briefly on a tiny rough spot, so he went over it with the smoothing paper again and again until the wood was as slick as glass. Only when the entire hull had been smoothed to his satisfaction did he get out the jar of whale oil.

  He held it to the light, swirling the golden contents. This oil was what lubricated the whale’s jointed segments; over time and with the right amount of grinding, it would become milka. It was far more precious and expensive in this state, because it was so much harder to gather. It was also poison if you tried to eat it, unlike its nutritious and delicious other state.

  He knew these things the way he knew the color of his hair and eyes, that he liked milka pudding, that his favorite color was blue. None of that came from the data stream, which, though still prominent, had begun to bother him less. He knew about whale oil and boats, he thought, because he’d known about them before. And Teila had known he would know.

  Carefully, he poured some of the oil on the wood and began rubbing it in. He used his fingers because it was easier that way to make sure he got the oil into every crevice and pore. Something happened while he worked.

  He relaxed.

  The aches and pains he’d come to count as commonplace began to ease, despite the way he’d been stretching and using his muscles while working on the boat. The tension in his neck disappeared, which in turn erased the throbbing pain in his skull he’d thought would never go away. This was what he was meant to do, he thought as he got lost in the rhythmic motions of his hands working the oil into the wood. Fix. Not break. He was a builder, not a soldier . . .

  “Hey! You!”

  Startled, he turned and nearly knocked th
e jar of oil off the counter. Pera stood in the shed doorway, her eyes wide and her white hair mussed. She looked shiftily around the shed before settling her gaze on him.

  “You need to go inside,” she said. “Something’s happened.”

  He didn’t move, not right away, though he did reach for a rag to begin cleaning his hands. “Something like what?”

  “Something with the fenda.”

  He carefully wiped each finger, making sure to get his skin clean. “What about her?”

  Pera danced, impatient, clearly having expecting him to have run out the door the moment she arrived. “She’s probably dead!”

  “She was old,” he said. “It’s not unexpected.”

  The woman in front of him looked blank for a moment. Then something else filtered into her eyes, an expression he couldn’t quite read, though it wasn’t sorrow or fear. “Teila’s really upset. She’s crying, hysterical. Says she needs you.”

  “Why would she need me?” His words had nothing to do with how he felt, but there was no way he was going to give away anything emotional to Pera.

  “I don’t know, she just does. You should come.”

  He gave a last glance at the boat, which ideally needed another few coats of oil, but it wouldn’t hurt it to be left for a while. Again making sure his hands were completely free of any traces of the poisonous oil, he tossed the rag onto the workbench. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  Upstairs in the lighthouse, the boy wailed in his bed while his mother, Vikus and Billis had gathered around the slumped figure of the ancient fenda in her rocking chair on the other side of the room. Teila looked up when he came in the room, and though tears streaked her cheeks she didn’t look hysterical. She did look surprised to see him.

  “Pera came for me.”

  Teila nodded, stepping away from the fenda’s chair and giving a quick glance over her shoulder at her weeping son. “She’s gone. Stephin found her.”

  At the sound of his name, the boy wailed louder. Crossing to the bed, Jodah sat next to him. “Shh. It’s all right.”

  Stephin buried his face against Jodah’s chest. “I thought she was sleeping!”

  Jodah passed a hand over the boy’s thick, dark hair. He pulled a milka bud from his pocket. “Here.”

  The boy took it, sitting up to look at him. “Mao says not before dinner.”

  “It’s fine,” Teila told him before Jodah could answer. Pera had arrived a few minutes behind Jodah, and Teila gestured at her. “Stephin, go to the kitchen with Pera. She’ll get your dinner for you. I’m going to take care of Amira Densi, all right?”

  Stephin nodded, giving another tearful look toward the fenda. “Can I say goodbye to her?”

  “Of course you can.” Teila took him by the hand and led him to the chair.

  Pera watched the boy tentatively put his arms around his amira, then hug her completely as he sobbed out a goodbye. “Disgusting.”

  Teila hadn’t heard her, but the men had. Jodah shook his head at her, only to earn a wide-eyed look of innocence and a shrug. Vikus glared, while Billis looked uncomfortable.

  “Go with Pera,” Teila told the boy. “Pera, can you please make sure Stephin gets his dinner?”

  Pera’s smile stretched her mouth and showed her teeth, but looked more like a grimace. “Of course. Come on.”

  When they’d gone, Teila turned to him. “We’ll need help wrapping her and carrying her outside. She’ll return to sand soon. I’d like to say some words over her before she does. I think Stephin would like to be there too.”

  “Are you all right?” The question slipped out of him before he could stop it.

  Tears still glittered in her eyes. “Yes. Densi was very old, and she’d been telling me for a while that it would soon be her time. I didn’t want to believe it or think about it, of course, because . . . well. Because I love her.”

  Billis burst into muffled, snorting sobs. Vikus clapped him on the back, but the younger man couldn’t be soothed, even when Teila put her arms around him. Over his shoulder, she said to Vikus, “Take your brother to the kitchen and get him a drink. A strong one. Hush, shhh, Billis. It was her time.”

  Even with her own pain at the forefront, she was so good at taking care of people, Jodah thought as he watched her comfort the younger man and send them both off. She turned to him, her features strained, weariness evident in every movement. She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a long, slow sigh. Then her shoulders slumped and she put her hands over her face.

  He didn’t think about anything else, not his anger or her lies. He gathered her against him and held her close. She gave a low cry but then melted against him. They stayed that way in silence while he measured the beating of his heart.

  “Thank you,” she said finally, pulling away from him. Her eyes were dry, her smile sweet but a little wary.

  Suddenly, he hated that he’d made her feel that way about him. Distrustful. He wanted to pull her close again, breathe the heady scent of her hair, but that would be selfish. Instead, he let her go.

  “You’re welcome,” he said gruffly. “Let me help you.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  Chapter 27

  All fenda returned to sand when they died and, despite the sorrow of it, watching Densi’s disintegration was beautiful. They’d carried her wrapped in a canvas sheet, then laid her on the rocky earth by the edge of the sea. Teila had removed the old fenda’s robes, laying them respectfully aside. Then they’d each spoken of some good memories they’d had of her. Vikus, Billis, and Stephin, too. Venga had even spoken, for though she’d never been his amira, he’d known her for a long time.

  Her skin had begun to flake just as Venga finished. Moments after that, her body crumbled and became fine golden sand. The wind picked it up and blew it toward the sea. It comforted Teila do know the old fenda had become part of the sea again, but she stood for a long time watching even after the others had gone inside. As the suns began to go down and the world became dark and chilly, she rubbed at her arms and murmured a private goodbye.

  When she died, Teila thought, she would not become sand or one with the sea. Her body would be burned according to the Sheirran custom brought from her ancestor’s world. Her loved ones would commemorate her by etching her name on a rock at the lighthouse base, perhaps next to her father’s and mother’s. She’d always known that—death was a part of living, after all. She’d done it for her father as he’d done it for her mother when she was too small to remember. She’d somehow always imagined her husband’s name would go beside hers there on the rocks, but now . . . would that ever happen?

  Upstairs she sat with Stephin until he went to sleep. Her boy, her sweet boy. For so long he’d been all she had, and now he was still all she had, really. She stroked the hair back from his forehead, feeling the dampness of his skin, flushed from all the crying. She pressed a kiss there too, grateful for the chance. All too soon he’d be grown up and not interested in letting his mother love him, at least not this way.

  In her own room she stripped out of her robes and ran the shower as hot as it would go. When steam wreathed the room she stepped into the spray, tipping her face to it and letting her mouth open to wash away the taste of her grief. It didn’t help.

  It was more than the loss of Densi, who’d been part of Teila’s life since birth, and it wasn’t just the problems with the lighthouse or the strangeness with Venga. It wasn’t even just the cold silences with Kason, the man she’d once loved so much it was like being on fire.

  Suddenly, everything was too much, and sobbing, she sank to the floor and let herself go.

  He’d been kind to her earlier tonight, and she hated herself for being grateful for what ought to have been simple compassion. The man she’d married could be arrogant and boastful, but he’d always been kind. The man who’d returned to her had shown glimmers of kindness, though his anger and mistrust had more often covered it up. She couldn’t blame him for it, but
it hadn’t made any of this easier for her. Would any of it ever be easier?

  She sobbed into the shield of her hands, wishing the world away, if only for a little while. The coolness of air moving over her lifted her head. She expected to see her son, seeking her comfort, but Kason stood outside the shower looking down at her.

  She’d been naked in front of him so many times there should be no shame, and yet she curled into herself to cover herself from his gaze. When he bent to lift her, she fought him. Her skin, slick with water, slid under his grasp so that he had to grab her harder. Bruising. Her protests were futile because he pulled her out of the shower no matter how she kicked and hit at him.

  He wrapped her in a thick towel and carried her into the bedroom, where he lay her on the bed and pulled the blankets up over them both. Cocooned in the towel and the sheets, Teila struggled as soon as he let her go, but she hadn’t managed to get free before he’d curled himself along her back. His strong arms pinned her until she stopped struggling.

  He was naked, she realized as he entwined his legs with hers. His breath caressed the back of her neck as he held her still. Slowly, slowly she relaxed. She was exhausted, but she she couldn’t sleep.

  The towel unwrapped a little when he slid a hand inside. Heat on her belly. Heat lower, between her legs, when his fingers brushed her there. She closed her eyes, feeling the sting of tears again. Her lips parted, but all she could manage was a sigh.

  He did not touch her for a long time, but when he did, the stroke of him on her flesh was so tentative, so gentle, she thought she’d imagined it. His lips pressed the back of her neck. She felt the press of his cock against her bare ass just below the towel. She wanted to move, to get away from him, but couldn’t make herself, and not simply because she knew that it would be no use—if he wanted her where she was, he would keep her there.

  There’d been a time when she hadn’t given up to him so easily, back in the earliest days when he’d believed nothing more than his charm could win her. She gave up to him now, helpless against the pull of her heart no matter how her mind protested. He was a stranger; he was her husband.