Ah, now the swords are unsheathed. “That would be an act of treachery,” Ulima observed primly, “and therefore forbidden by the ridahs.”
“Truth is one of your ridahs,” growled the duke.
“That is so. What truth do you seek, akreshi?”
“Did you send word of the girl to the Hawks?”
The words lashed, whiplike, reminding her of the wounds she’d seen on Faanshi’s limbs before the girl’s magic had healed them. Ulima drew in a steadying breath, grasping those recollections like weapons within her mind, and lifted her dark gaze at last. “I did.”
His face flushed scarlet, just enough warning for her to act. From beneath her sari’s folds she whipped forth a dagger, snapping it up into the path of Kilmerredes’s descending hand. It threw him back a few paces, forcing him to pull his blow before he sliced open his own arm. “I should kill you right now,” he snarled. “How dare you defy—”
“Defy what, my lord? The laws of this land? The treaty between our peoples? They both command that mages be given to your Hawks, and I’ve done exactly that.”
“Don’t try to wield our laws as your weapons,” Kilmerredes warned. “You may find that they turn in your very hand.”
“You know as well as I that the amulets of the Hawks have no interest in me.”
“Indeed. But we have many other laws. And I swear to you that I’ll find one to consign you to a slave compound for the rest of your days if you defy me again. Pray to your goddess about that, akresha, if you need a subject for your devotions.”
He turned and stalked for the door, wasting no breath on a parting pleasantry neither of them would have believed. Only when her chamber door closed did Ulima return her dagger to the sheath beneath her sari, silently begging the Lady of Time for strength and vigilance.
Holvirr Kilmerredes wouldn’t kill her tonight.
But there were many more nights to come.
* * *
Aenghis Peddersen had probably fed them, and Faanshi knew she’d made it back out to the patch of wild herbs so that she could pick the mint and the soapwort, along with rosemary and parsley. She was also fairly certain she’d prepared it properly, grinding the herbs and mixing them with salt and water for Aenghis’s use. Yet Faanshi never after recalled what else they did before retiring for the night. She ached from too many hours of unaccustomed riding, and her chest throbbed with ongoing phantom pain. Neither gained relief from her wayward magic. Fractured golden shards of it jabbed at her awareness each time she tried to winnow her own true senses out of the dual storm of perceptions flooding her thoughts.
Her sleep was scattered, her dreams shot through with seemingly endless riding on a horse that changed shape and color along with her. The beast carried her at frantic speed away from a searing blaze of light, only to be engulfed when the radiance flared out to consume them both—and then, it hurled her back into her cellar at Lomhannor Hall. All light died, swallowed by shadow, as the duke’s hand with its riding crop lashed toward her.
She flung herself at him, thinking to grab the striking arm before it could deliver its blow. But her body felt wrong, its height and swiftness too new, too strange; her master caught her without effort, and his hand around her neck choked off her air.
You heal on my command!
When the dawn woke her, it wrenched a breathless shriek of alarm from her throat and drove her hands in search of weapons she didn’t actually bear. Then the quality of the light on her face fully roused her, and with wondering eyes, she took in the room she didn’t know.
Like the rest of the house, it was crowded and cluttered. Books with tattered covers competed for space with misshapen fragments of pottery on lopsided shelves. A wardrobe with a missing door stood in the corner, overflowing with old clothing, some hanging on hooks within and some spilling out in puddles of stained and faded cloth on the floor. Mismatched shoes, damaged by water and mud and wear, claimed another corner. Stirred up by her motion and making her sneeze, dust motes hung in the dappled light from the strangest window she had ever seen. It was square, but made up of panes of differing sizes. The largest held glass, thick and warped and giving her only a blurred glimpse of what lay outside. Pieces of mirrors and colored paper filled the rest. Little drafts wafted through cracks in the mirror fragments and the places where paper and glass didn’t quite join up with the surrounding wood.
Faanshi approached it, lifting her fingers to brush them across the big pane of glass. Not a rich man’s window; it wouldn’t have been a window in Lomhannor Hall. But it made do, and oddly, she liked it. It kept her from a proper view of the sun’s ascent, yet it was itself adorned with sunrise colors. Perhaps Djashtet Herself would approve.
She lingered there and leaned her head forward against the papered glass, for only when her eyes were closed could she withstand the feel of being two heights at once. Whether she could chant the ridahs to the Lady of Time with Kestar’s voice thrumming in her throat she couldn’t tell, and her prayers were therefore silent. If Djashtet heard them, She gave no answer that she could hear; the light-dappled peace of the room had to be answer enough.
The rag-and-bone man found her there.
“You know, girlie,” he announced from the doorway, “you don’t have to stay cooped up in here all day.”
His voice nearly made her jump out of her oversized boots, and she whirled around, embarrassed to admit that part of her had thought exactly that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else I might do.”
“Hah. Ain’t that just like those two, haul a girlie off to the elves and leave her at loose ends on the way.” Aenghis beckoned her. “I don’t know what you’re used to where you come from, but put it out of your head. Promised Richard I’d stash you—hah! I could hide five girlies in this house of mine—but you’re not a prisoner here.”
He waggled a peremptory finger at her, and Faanshi couldn’t help but smile a little. He was like his window, it seemed, patched together from pieces but making do. “Yes,” she said, though her brow furrowed at the unfamiliar name. “But wait, akreshi, who is—”
“Richard? The Rook, of course. He’s got as many names as you or I have fingers. Richard’s the one he uses in Kilmerry. Which one did he give you?”
“Julian,” Faanshi said.
“Did he now? Humph.” On this, though, the old man didn’t elaborate. Instead he turned and stumped away, calling as he went, “So come on then. There’s something else you can help me with, since the first thing went so well.”
Scents of mint and rosemary reached her as she hastened after him. The herbal smells didn’t entirely hide the odor of turned meat that had clung to him the night before, but they had lessened it a great deal. “The paste worked,” she said, pleased.
Aenghis snorted as he led her to a rickety staircase at the end of the corridor. “Aye, I can stand to smell myself for the first time in a week. That’s why you get to see this.”
Curious, and marveling all the while at the feeling of curiosity’s indulgence, Faanshi followed him up the stairs. They opened out into the cottage’s attic, and there she found the true wonder of the house: a row of cages along one side of the sloping roof, filled with the fluttering shapes of birds. Soft cooing noises and the smells of straw and feed filled the entire space, as though it were a kind of stable...though she’d never heard of a stable inside a house.
“Messenger pigeons.” Aenghis cracked a grin at her gasp of astonishment. “Used them in the war, back when I was as young as the Rook, fighting against boys who looked a lot like you. Still use them sometimes, when the time is right, since that damned war put me off the Church and all it stands for.” He reached into one cage, the only one of the five without a door, and withdrew its occupant. The slender gray-feathered bird hopped onto his hand and raised its head in expectation.
“It doesn’t look like the others,” Faanshi observed, peeking into the other cages, and then at the chosen bird.
“Not a bit.” The rag-and-bone man scratc
hed the creature gently along the top of its head, then nodded for the girl to step closer. “This one was bred by the elves.”
Drawing in her breath, Faanshi inched nearer. The bird cocked its head, its bearing peaceful but alert. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“And smart. Don’t have to lock her up like I do the others. Takes badly to that.” Aenghis slid a speculative look toward her. “I expect you know something of that, girlie. Here.” With that he took her hand and drew it up to the bird perched upon his fingers. “Step,” he ordered it. It jumped from his hand to hers, and to Faanshi he added, “Hold your hand still. Just let her perch while I get the message on her leg.”
Faanshi nodded, staring at the bird while its master fished into the pocket of his grubby breeches. She didn’t want to look away from the pigeon, but the objects Aenghis produced—a miniscule roll of paper and a leathern tube scarcely the length and breadth of his thumb—caught her eye. “What will the message say to the elves?”
The rag-and-bone man snickered and unraveled the paper partway so that she could glimpse the characters written upon it, tiny, graceful letters she didn’t recognize. “Damned if I know. I barely read Adalonic, much less Elvish. Safer that way. Anybody finds out I sent it, can’t question me on it.”
“But you have so many books in the house.”
“Aye, and I can’t read most of them, either. I take what I find and sell what I can. Maybe someday I’ll learn to read the ones I keep.” Aenghis seemed unruffled, and with adroit motions rolled the paper up, slipped it into the tube and tied it to the bird’s leg. “There. Take her to the window and give her a toss up into the air. She’ll know what to do.”
To be trusted with the task filled Faanshi with pride, yet to have even fleeting command over a creature smaller and more vulnerable than she was added trepidation. Certain that her slightest misstep would dislodge the bird from her hand, barely raising either foot from the rough floorboards, she crept to the open window. Nothing blocked her view of the detritus around the house, or of the trees beyond. There was only the window’s frame, squared off with the same planking that made up the floor, and worn smooth in the very place she laid her free hand for support. Most likely by the hands of the rag-and-bone man.
The pigeon watched Faanshi as she paused. It did indeed seem to know its purpose, and she envied that. “Djashtet go with you,” she murmured, tossing it out the window and into the air. It fluttered, dropped and then, with determined beats of its wings, climbed skyward. She watched it until it grew no larger than a speck against the morning clouds. So did Aenghis, shuffling up to stand beside her, and she glanced up at him when the bird vanished from view. “Which of the other men wrote the message, if not you, akreshi?”
He cocked his eyebrows. “Which do you think, girlie? The Rook can do a lot of things, but writing Elvish runes on a piece of paper that small, one-handed, ain’t one of them.”
“Oh.” Faanshi’s face fell.
“Not too eager to ask young Rab about it, I take it.”
Abashed, she shook her head and looked out through the window, in the direction the pigeon had flown. “Rab doesn’t like me very much,” she confessed.
But Aenghis set his gnarled hand on her shoulder, drawing her gaze back round. “Rab’s hand did the writing, but the Rook’s will made the words. Ask him. He won’t tear into you for it.” Somewhere in the midst of his beard, he smiled. “But I think you know that already. Traveling with those lads, a little slip of a thing like you has got to be braver than she looks.”
* * *
Aenghis’s encouragement aside, Faanshi didn’t feel very brave when it came to speaking with her rescuer, and through the rest of the day she had no chance. Julian and Rab occupied themselves in and around the rag-and-bone man’s house, taking turns keeping watch outside, cutting up the ruined cart in the yard for firewood, or hunting for fresh meat to augment their host’s stores.
Men’s work, or so it seemed to her from what she knew of the ways of Lomhannor Hall; Faanshi was reluctant to disturb it. Nor did they seem to want her to. So she occupied herself with the task of cleaning her bloodstained sari and cutting it into smaller sections for Aenghis’s use. One length of the silk she kept for herself, to wear around her neck. It wouldn’t serve as a proper korfi, but it was the closest she could come, and if it had to, it would shield her face when they rode back out again.
When evening fell and they took their supper, a grim and white-faced Julian shut himself up alone in the room Aenghis had given him and Rab, while the younger assassin settled into a game of two-handed whist with Aenghis. Faanshi could contain her curiosity no longer, or her worry. Julian’s expression tugged at her, and she slipped after him while Rab dealt out the cards.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Rab called after her. “He won’t welcome an intrusion. Not right now.”
“I wish only to ask him a question,” she said, striving to speak with courage she didn’t feel. “I won’t disturb him long.”
“Suit yourself, my dear, but don’t say you weren’t warned if he puts a knife through your dainty little throat.”
The admonition was daunting, but she couldn’t tell how much of it was truth, how much Rab’s black humor. Before he could dissuade her, Faanshi darted off in Julian’s wake, up to the cramped bedrooms on the cottage’s second floor. Distance from Rab reassured her, but the closed door of the room she sought did not. It took her several moments to summon the resolve to knock upon its door.
“Not now, Rab!”
Julian’s tone was oddly strained, and Faanshi’s concern spiked at the sound of it. So did her magic, in a whispered warning of pain. “Not Rab,” she began as she opened the door—and halted, shocked, her hand upon the knob.
He slumped in the room’s single chair, facing the door, his form dappled by the light of the candle on the narrow table between him and the wall. His head jerked up at her entrance, and then weary resignation flashed across his face. “Not Rab. I knew I should have locked the damned door. What are you doing here, girl?”
“I...”
He looked different. He’d taken off the black eye patch, exposing gnarled, puckered flesh. There was only the smallest of holes where the skin drew in on itself, skewing the line of his brow downward and making him look strangely surprised, though there was no shock in his stare.
All thought of her purpose vanished. “Are you all right? What are you doing?”
Both his brows rose, the left higher than the right, and he flicked his hand toward his face. “Cleaning it.”
Only then did Faanshi notice the handkerchief wound about his fingers and the smell of whiskey permeating the room—not whiskey he’d drunk, but rather whiskey into which he’d dipped the kerchief. On the table stood a glass of the stuff, and in that floated a curved, glinting object. His false eye. Letting out a ragged breath, Julian closed the true one.
“I felt it hurt you,” she said. “Can I help you with it?”
“Of course you did.” He slanted a dark look back at her. “Go away. I don’t want help for this.”
Any other man she might have obeyed. But the magic prickled, stronger than any command Julian or any other man could give her. “It hurts you,” she insisted, creeping closer. “I can feel it.”
“The whiskey hasn’t stung like this in years. Not since you...” Julian threw the kerchief onto the table, seized one of her hands and scowled down at the glimmer around her fingers, just visible in the candlelight. “What did you do to me with this magic of yours?”
“I don’t know,” Faanshi said, not knowing whether to linger or flee, but only that she felt oddly safer here than in any other room of the house. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
Astonishment flickered out from behind his harsh expression. “I believe you are,” he murmured, releasing her wrist. Warning sparked in his gaze. “Your hands I trust—if you can keep them steady. This isn’t a task for a shaking hand.”
“I’m braver than I loo
k.” For the first time she almost believed that. “What must I do?”
“Dab the handkerchief into the socket, everywhere you can touch. One finger works best.”
Great Djashtet, guide me. Faanshi set her jaw and stepped forward to take the alcohol-dampened cloth from the table. She’d never touched a man by her own will, and the prospect of doing so now alarmed her, but she’d offered to help. She couldn’t flee now. Her features crinkling at the whiskey’s acrid scent, she wrapped the kerchief about her fingers as Julian had done and reached gingerly for him.
His head bent toward her, and a shudder rolled through him as the cloth met his skin. When he didn’t jerk away or shove her aside, Faanshi grew bolder. With the handkerchief, she ventured through the slit of his ruined lid.
Searing heat bathing his world in a red wash of pain—
She froze, eyes squeezing shut, and only then sensed Julian’s hand pulling at her arm and heard him barking out an oath. “Tykhe! I knew I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” Faanshi interrupted, looking at him once more. Her hands glowed, bathing him in faint ethereal gold, and he had her forearm in an iron grip almost matched by the clench of her free hand around his jaw. The shock of contact faded, anchoring her. It wasn’t her pain. It was his, and it was old, echoing out of his flesh across years she couldn’t count. “No,” she repeated, and to her surprise he relaxed. “It’s all right.”
Her magic steadied at that soft utterance. It twined through her fingers like the handkerchief, enough of a marvel that for an instant it held her fast. Not once could she remember the power settling like that, almost as if it might obey her. If she willed it. If she wanted it.
I do. Right now, I do.
As she brushed the cloth against the delicate, scarred flesh where an eye had once been, magic brushed against the tiny stings of pained reaction. This time when the echoes of agony rippled through her, Faanshi was ready for them. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and sweat dripped down her cheeks, but she locked her attention on what her hands were doing until she was done.
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