Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [81]
Acronis rumpled his hair with his hand, clearly disturbed. Then he brightened. “I have an idea. I promised Chloe I would bring Skylan to meet her. When she sees this barbarian—and hears him talk—she will not want anything to do with him. Where is he?”
“He is in the atrium, my lord, waiting your pleasure,” Zahakis said.
“Bring Skylan to Chloe’s room. I will meet you there. We will spring him on her without warning.”
Chloe sat in her bed, propped up by pillows. The bed, one of the most beautiful in Sinaria, was carved of wood, highly polished and embellished with gold and seashells. The coverlet was of damask embroidered with flowers. Bowls of fresh-cut flowers from the garden, roses and lilies, perfumed the air. The day might be gray, but her room was always filled with light.
Chloe was reading the journals her father had written during the voyage. She loved reading his journals. They provided her a glimpse of the world that lay beyond her bedchamber, a world she would never see.
Acronis’s writing style was didactic, the work of a scientist. The fifteen-year-old girl took the dry words and made them live, embellishing the scenes he described with her own romantic notions. She saw the Dragon Kahg in his words and longed with all her heart to see a dragon for real. She laughed out loud when she read about Zahakis with the jellyfish wrapped around his hand, and her heart beat fast when Skylan and the captives made their bid for freedom. She was moved to tears when she read of the prow snapping off, how the brave men had given way to despair.
Chloe was in the middle of Acronis’s description of a Vindrasi battle, reading an account of how they formed a shield wall, when her father and Zahakis brought the slave Skylan into her room.
Skylan was taller than her father and Zahakis. His fair complexion was tanned. His hair was the color of the sun. His eyes were blue as the sky. She had never seen such blue eyes before and she was charmed by the intensity of their color. He was broad through the chest and shoulders, the cut of his muscles visible beneath his leather tunic, and she could understand why her father had chosen him for the Para Dix. What she found most fascinating was that he stood tall and proud, his head held high, his eyes boldly, even defiantly, meeting her gaze. He might have been some proud and noble lord, except for the horrid tattoo on his arm that marked him a slave.
His clothes were the worse for wear and stained with what she thought might be blood. He smelled of saltwater and wet leather and something indefinable. . . .
“Life,” Chloe said softly to herself. “He smells of life.”
He did not smell of her life, of perfume and scented oils and oranges and cut flowers and garlic and whatever Cook was fixing for dinner. Smells that were always pleasant, always the same, smells that never seemed to dissipate even when Rosa opened the doors to let in the air. Even the air smelled the same to Chloe, day after day after day.
Skylan was different. His smell made her want to inhale deeply and, at the same time, wrinkle her nose. He was danger, the unexpected. He was life, the life she had never known. The life she never would know.
He was a warrior. Men had died by his hand. Chloe felt a qualm of fear and was forced to admit that perhaps her father had been right. She shouldn’t be in his company. And then she looked more keenly into the blue eyes.
He stood unmoving beneath her scrutiny. Yet she saw in the blue eyes that wanted to appear so impassive and cold a flicker of uncertainty. Chloe had read her father’s descriptions of Skylan’s people, his way of life, and she suddenly realized how strange and unfamiliar this world was for him. He must be feeling confused, overwhelmed, desperately unhappy.
“Skylan will suit me, Father,” Chloe said. She saw Acronis raise his eyebrows. He seemed about to argue and she raised her small hand to forestall him.
The young man had shifted his gaze and was now staring, narrow-eyed, at her.