THOMAS WASN’T sure what had happened to him in the library that first day with Chelise, but he found that, try as he did, he couldn’t remove her from his mind.
Her heart had been opened to a sliver of the truth; he knew that much. She’d heard the story from history—the unadulterated truth—and she’d become intoxicated by it. Another person might have heard the same thing and listened with vague interest. This much he understood. What was much less in focus was his own reaction to her.
In some strange way, his own eyes had been opened to her. She had heard the truth, perhaps for the first time, but he had seen a truth he’d never seen before. The truth was Chelise. As Elyon saw her.
He spent only an hour with her the next morning, and she seemed guarded. Afraid, even. She walked as he read again, but this time she stopped every few minutes to ask him what the story was about. What time period it had been written in. Who wrote it.
He finally closed the Book and crossed the room to where she’d pulled out a second volume.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You’re distracted.”
She closed the Book. “Woref is ranting and raving like a lunatic. He’s turning the city inside out looking for the blank Books. It’s an inquisition.”
Thomas was quite sure they wouldn’t find them, but he didn’t say so.
“That’s not what I mean. What did I read yesterday?” he asked.
“A story.”
“What story? Tell me the story I was reading when you cried.”
Her eyes looked away, distant.
“It was too much for you?”
“You were reading a story about a princess who was taken captive by an evil man.”
The story he’d read had been a simple accounting of history, hardly the drama she remembered. Yet she’d heard this in it?
Her eyes misted and she bit her lower lip. He found himself wanting to comfort her. She stood in the sunlight from the window above them, face white with morst, eyes gray and dead. A revolting image once. But now . . .
“That was the truth behind the words I read,” he said. “Not what I read. You opened your mind to the truth.”
“Then you shouldn’t read the Books to me anymore.”
“Why not? It’s what you’ve always searched for.”
“Not your truth! I’ve never searched for the ways of an albino! Do you know who I am?”
“You’re Chelise, the daughter of Qurong. And who am I?”
“You’re my servant. A slave. An albino!”
“And do you think there is any truth in this albino?”
She refused to look at him. They stood in an awkward silence. She finally pushed the Book into his hands and walked toward the door. “There is a tour of the city planned for this afternoon. Qurong wants to show the people his prisoners. You will ride in chains behind us. They will mock you. That is my truth.”
Chelise left him without a backward glance.
As promised, Qurong dragged his prisoners through the city that afternoon. The royal family rode three abreast on black steeds, followed by Woref and Ciphus. Then Thomas, on foot and chained—each arm to a Scab warrior on each side. William, Suzan, Cain, and Stephen followed behind with their own guard. An army of a thousand warriors in full battle dress, armed with sickles, brought up the rear.
The horns announced their coming and the streets were lined with hundreds of thousands of disease-ridden Scabs.
Thomas saw the true squalor of the Horde on every side. A baby crawling on the muddy earth between the mother’s feet, screaming to be heard above the din of insults that had become a steady roar. Thomas was certain the children cried as much from the pain of the disease as from any other discomfort.
The guards parted occasionally to allow youth to hurl spoiled fruit at them. What little grass had grown on the yard along the parade route was quickly trampled into mud. Several huts collapsed under the weight of spectators.
There seemed to be a particular infection spreading among a sizable portion of the population. Red sores on their necks, raw and bleeding. Thomas plodded on, afraid to look at them, much less care for them.
The parade lasted about an hour, and not once did Chelise turn a kind eye to him or show any hint of misgiving. She rode erect, with no emotion at all. She was right: this was her truth.
He spent the night in his cell, too nauseated to eat. But he still couldn’t wash her image from his mind. He begged Elyon for her understanding, her heart, her mind, her soul. He finally cried himself to sleep.
He did not dream.
Chelise rode to the royal garden the next morning, as soon as she felt she could get away without the prying eyes of the court on her. She was flirting with a dangerous game. Even the smallest kindness shown to Thomas could drive a wedge between her and Qurong. Her father loved her; she was sure of that. But his love was conditioned by his people’s ways. Hundreds of thousands of men had died in battle trying to defeat Thomas of Hunter. Aiding him in any way would be seen as treason. Qurong could never accept treason, especially not in his own court.
And Woref . . . She shuddered to think what Woref would do if he even suspected the small kindness she harbored for Thomas of Hunter.
She’d settled another matter last night with her maidservant, Elison.
“Why are you so upset over this, Chelise?” Elison had asked. “I would think parading your new slave on a chain would suit you. Thomas of Hunter, of all men! Qurong is calling him his slave, but the word on the street is that it was your idea.”
“How did that get out? Do the walls have ears here?”
“I think Ciphus said something. The point is, the people love you for it. The princess towing about the mighty warrior in chains.”
“No man should be insulted in that way. Especially a great warrior. The people are like ravenous dogs! Did you see the look in their eyes?”
“Please, my lady,” Elison said. “Don’t misunderstand the situation here. Thomas of Hunter is the man responsible for widowing one out of every ten women in this city.”
“He’s great, but not that great.”
“The Forest Guard then. Under his command.”
“The Forest Guard no longer exists. They don’t even carry swords— what kind of enemy is that?”
Elison looked at her, dumb.
“Don’t play ignorant with me, Elison. If I can’t trust you, then who can I trust?”
“Of course.”
She turned to her servant, took her hand, and led her to the window seat. “Tell me that you would rather die than betray me. Swear it to me.”
“But, my lady, you know my loyalty.”
“Then swear it!”
“I swear it! What is this talk of betrayal?”
“I sympathize with him, Elison. Some people might consider that treason.”
“I don’t understand. If you were to say something more scandalous, some service you required of him as your slave, I might understand that. But sympathy? He’s an albino.”
“And he has more knowledge than Ciphus and Qurong put together!” Chelise said. Elison’s eyes widened. “You see why I insisted you swear? To kill Thomas of Hunter would be to take the greatest mind. He may be the only one who can read the Books of Histories.”
Her servant looked at her with dawning. “You . . . you like him.”
“Maybe I do. But he’s an albino, and I find albinos repulsive.” She looked out the window at the rising moon. “Strange that we call them albinos when we are whiter than they are. We even cover our skin to make it smooth like theirs.”
Elison stood in shock.
“Sit.”
She sat.
“You’re forgetting yourself. I would think you should sympathize with Thomas yourself. You’re both in servitude. He’s a very kind man, Elison. The kindest I’ve met, I would say. I simply sympathize with Thomas the way I might sympathize with a condemned lamb. Surely you can find it in yourself to understand that.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I can,” she said, eyes still wide. “Have you . . . touched his skin?”
Chelise laughed. “Now who is scandalous? You’re trying to make me ill? I have no attraction to him as a man, thank Elyon for that, or I might be in a real bind. Can you imagine Woref ’s reaction?”
“Loving an albino would be treason. Punishable by death,” her maidservant said.
“Yes, it would.”
She’d risen then, confident in her simple analysis. It was the first time she’d thought about her use of the morst as a way of becoming more albino. Just a coincidence, of course. Fashion was something that changed, and at the moment this new morst that happened to cover their scaly flesh distinguished women of royalty from commoners. In the years to come, it might be a blue paint.
Chelise passed through the royal garden’s main gate and turned to Claudus, the senior guard who’d grown up as the cook’s son. “Good morning, Claudus.”
“Morning, my lady. Beautiful morning.”
“Anyone pass this morning?”
“The scribes. No one else.”
“Has my slave bathed as I instructed?”
“Yes, and wasn’t he filthy! We gave him a clean robe as well. He’s waiting inside with the Books.”
“Good. I should have asked that you powder him as well.” She nudged her horse and then thought she’d better clarify her statement. “I can hardly stand being near him.”
“Shall we powder him?”
“No. No, I’m not that weak. Thank you, Claudus.”
“Of course, my lady.”
She headed toward the library, eager to be among the Books again. With Thomas. In all honesty the thought of powdering him felt profane to her. She didn’t want him to be like her. Now there was a scandal.
Chelise tied her horse at the back entrance and slipped into the library, chiding herself for sneaking like a schoolgirl. They all knew she was here, doing precisely what they expected her to do. Qurong had insisted on having the Books read to him after her first lesson, but she’d stalled him. She claimed she wanted to surprise him by reading the Books to him herself. Thomas was her slave—the least they could do was let her spend a few days learning to read before robbing her of her gift.
She also convinced him that the other prisoners might be able to read the Books as well. They should be kept alive for the time.
Chelise unlocked the door, put her hand on the knob, took a deep breath, and stepped into the large storage room.
At first she thought he hadn’t been brought yet. Then she saw him, on the ladder high above, searching madly through the Books again. He looked like a child caught stealing a wheat cake from the jar.
“Still looking for your secret Book?” she asked.
He descended quickly and stood with his arms by his sides, twenty feet from her. The long black robe made him look noble. With the hood pulled up and a little morst properly applied, he would look like one of them.
“Good morning, my lady.”
“Good morning.”
“I have a confession,” he said.
She walked to his right, hands clasped behind her back. “Oh?”
“I found the parade yesterday appalling.”
She knew he was probing, but she didn’t care. “I’m sorry about that. My confession is that I found it appalling as well.”
Her statement robbed him of words, she thought.
“No decent man should have to suffer that,” she said.
“I agree.”
“Good. Then we’re in agreement. Today I would like to learn to read.”
“I have another confession,” he said.
“Two confessions. I’m not sure I can match you.”
“I can’t get you off my mind,” he said.
Now his statement robbed her of words. Heat spread down the nape of her neck. He was saying too much. Surely he realized that she could only do so much for him. Light, food, a bath, clothing. But she had her limitations.
“I will never be your savior, Thomas. You do realize that, don’t you?”
“I don’t think of you as my savior. I think of you as a woman, loved and cherished by Elyon.”
“You’re saying too much. We should start the lesson now.”
He looked away, embarrassed. “Of course. I didn’t mean that I had feelings for you. Not as a woman like that. I just . . .”
“You just what? Do you have an albino wife?”
“She was killed by your people when we made our first escape from the red lake. Our children are with my tribe now. Samuel and Marie.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that. She’d never heard that Thomas of Hunter had lost his wife. Or had children, for that matter.
“How old are they?”
“Samuel thinks he’s twenty, though he’s only thirteen. Marie is nearly fifteen.”
Thomas walked to the shelf and pulled out a Book. “I think it’s important that you realize that your teacher respects you. As a student. As a woman who has ears to hear. I meant nothing else. Shall we begin?”
They spent an hour with the Book, carefully going over the letters that he insisted were English. They weren’t, of course, but she began to associate certain marks with specific letters. She felt as if she was learning a new alphabet.
He worked with her with measured reason at first, gently explaining and rehearsing each letter. But as the hour passed, his passion for the task grew and became contagious. He explained with increasing enthusiasm and the movement of his arms became more exaggerated.
They worked closely, she on the chair behind the desk, he over her shoulder, when he wasn’t pacing the floor in front of her. He had a habit of pressing the tips of his fingers together as he walked, and she found herself wondering how many swords those fingers had held over the years. How many throats had they slit in battle? How many women had they loved?
She would guess only one. His late wife.
They laughed and they argued over fine points, and gradually she became more comfortable with his proximity to her. With her proximity to his side, bumping her shoulder when he hurried in to point at a letter she’d missed; to his finger, accidentally touching her own; to his hand, gently tapping her back when she got it right.
His breath on her cheek when he was too passionate about a particular point to realize he was speaking loudly, so close.
She was no fool, of course. Thomas was no buffoon. In his own measured way, he was trying to draw her in. Disarming her. Winning her trust. Perhaps even her admiration.
And she was allowing him to do it. Was it so wrong to bump the shoulder of an albino? Did the guards not touch his skin when they shackled him?
Three hours had passed when Thomas decided that a test was finally in order.
“Okay,” he said, clapping his hands. “Read the whole paragraph, beginning to end.”
“The whole thing?” She felt positively giddy.
“Of course! Read what you’ve written.”
She focused on the words and began to read.
“The woman was give the sword man if running . . .” She stopped. It made no sense to her.
“That’s not what you’ve written,” he said. “Please, in order, exactly as you wrote it.”
“I am reading it exactly as I wrote it!”
He frowned. “Then try again.”
“What’s wrong? Why does it sound so mixed up?”
“Please, try again. From the top. Follow with your finger as I showed you.”
She started again, pointing to each word as she read. “The woman running if horse . . .”
Chelise looked up at him, horrified. “What’s this nonsense coming from my mouth? I can’t read it!”
His face lightened a shade. He stepped forward, took the paper she’d written on. His eye ran across the page. “You’re not reading what’s on the page,” he said. “You’re mixing the words.”
Chelise felt hope drain from her like flour from a broken clay jar. “Then I won’t be able to learn. What good is it if I can write the alphabet and form the words if they don’t make any sense?”
He set the paper down and paced.
Chelise felt crushed. She would never be able to read these mysteries. Was she so stupid as that? Her throat suddenly felt tight.
Thomas faced her. “I’m sorry, Chelise. It’s not your writing or your reading. It’s your heart. It’s the disease. As long as you have the disease, you’ll never be able to read from the Books of Histories.”
She suddenly felt furious with him. “You knew this? How dare you toy with me!”
“No! Yes, I suspected that the disease might keep you from hearing, but the other day you did hear the truth behind the story. I thought you might be able to learn.”
“I have no disease! You’re the albino, not me!” Tears sprang into her eyes.
Thomas looked stricken. He hurried around the desk and knelt beside her. “I’m so sorry. Please, we can fix this!”
Chelise placed her forehead in one hand. She took a deep breath and calmed herself. She didn’t understand his sorcery, but she doubted her ignorance was his fault.
Thomas put a hand on her shoulder. “I can help you. I can teach you to read the Books of Histories, I swear. I will. Do you hear me? I will.”
“What’s the meaning of this?”
Woref ’s voice echoed through the room like the crack of a whip.
Chelise instinctively gasped and sat up. Woref glared at them from the doorway. She’d left the door unlocked?
The general walked into the room. Thomas withdrew his hand and stood back.
“How dare you touch her?” Woref raged.
Chelise stood. “My lord, he was only instructing me on this passage. He did only what I demanded. How dare you suggest anything else?”
“It makes no difference what you instructed him. No man, certainly no albino, has the right to touch what is mine! Get away from her.”
Thomas eased away. “The rules of these holy Books supersede the rules of man,” he said. “Are you saying your authority is greater than the Great Romance?”
“I should cut out your tongue and feed it to Elyon.”
Woref had lost his reason, Chelise thought. “Then we’ll let Qurong decide by whose authority we live,” she said. “Yours or Elyon’s.”
Woref scowled at her, then at Thomas. “I don’t see why any instruction would require his comforting.”
“Comforting?” Chelise smiled wryly. “You think I would allow this pathetic albino to comfort me? We were playacting. It’s a part of breaking the code required to understand that what I can see now is clearly beyond your mind.” Easy, Chelise.
She stepped closer to him and winked. “But then I’m not fascinated by a man’s mind. It’s your strength and courage I find exhilarating. If you were a feeble scribe, I would never consent to our marriage.”
She walked up to him and drew her finger over his shoulder, stepping behind him. “I expected nothing less than this tirade. You flatter me. But you did misunderstand, my lord. Now tell me why you’ve come.”
He wasn’t buying her toying wholeheartedly, but she’d effectively cut him off.
“I have changed my mind about the blank Books,” he said, still stern. “They have vanished. My men have searched every possible hiding place for such a large collection, and they can’t be found. I think the sorcery of this albino is to blame. They disappeared about the same time he arrived.”
“I have no sorcery,” Thomas said.
Woref dismissed the claim. “I demand that you convince your father to withdraw his request that I find the Books before we are married.”
“You’ve talked to him about this?”
“I have. He’s obsessed with these blank Books.”
“And I understand why,” Chelise said. “The blank Books make the collection complete. Surely you can find them.”
“As I said, they no longer exist. I won’t delay my possession of you over this nonsense!”
“Then make my father see the light.”
“He will only concede on the albinos,” Woref said. “I need you to help him see the light in regard to the Books. I can assure you that I’ll make it up to you.”
“How has he conceded on the albinos?” Chelise asked.
“He’s agreed to kill the other four tomorrow. He said that you thought they should be kept alive, but I’ve convinced him otherwise. One living albino is bad enough.”
She glanced at Thomas and saw the fear cross his face. But she had to choose her battles.
“Fine. Let me think about how to persuade Qurong to forget about the blank Books. Now if you’ll excuse us, we are in the middle of a lesson.”
Woref stared at Thomas for a few seconds, spit upon the floor, and walked from the room without closing the door.
“I beg you, Chelise, you can’t let them die!” Thomas whispered.
She hurried to the door and closed it. “It’s out of my hands. How would it look for me to beg for their lives?”
Thomas paced, frenzied.
“We’re on dangerous ground here. Not only you, but now me. I know Woref’s kind, and I promise you that one day I’ll pay for what he just saw. You have to be more careful. Please, keep your distance.”
He suddenly stopped and faced her. “I can dream now!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been drinking the rhambutan juice because Woref has been holding my friends’ lives over my head. He’s just removed that threat! I’ll refuse to eat the fruit and dream tonight. But they may try to force me. Can you stop them?”
She didn’t respond. Why this business of dreams was so terribly important to him, she didn’t know. But he was right; Woref had undermined his own threat.
He rushed over to her and grabbed her hand. “Please, I beg you. And you can’t say a word about this!” He kissed her hand. “Please, not a word!”
“I . . .” He was still holding her hand. “This isn’t keeping your distance.”
Thomas released her and stepped back. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean that. I lost my mind.”
“Clearly.”
“But you’ll help me?”
“I can’t help you. But I don’t see the harm in a few dreams.” And then she added something that shocked even her. “As long as you promise to dream about me.”