By the Sea of Sand Read online

  “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