Flushed, Cazia looked away. The other soldiers closed in, blocking her view again, for which she was both grateful and resentful. Why had she looked away? Cazia tried to peek at him again, but at this point, the other soldiers had gotten over their shock and had crowded around him, clapping his shoulder and exclaiming in Surgish too fast for Cazia to follow. They knew him, obviously.
At a sharp call from a spear with a tall green comb, the soldiers stood at attention. No one bothered to point their spears at the cured man any more, but Cazia was another matter.
The naked man knelt. The man in the green comb stepped aside, and the armored scholar stepped forward. He had taken off his helmet, revealing a puffy face with an olive complexion, small dark eyes, and too-generous mouth. With his helmet on, he looked like a hero out of stories. With it off, he looked like a thief who had just escaped from the pit.
Tyr Freewell. Her father. Goose bumps ran down her back.
He walked toward Cazia, looking her over carefully as though she was already a corpse. She tried to see something of herself in him, but it was impossible. For one thing, she didn’t know her own face that well. For another, she hated him from the moment he gave her that serpent-eyed look. She didn’t want to have anything in common with this man.
He turned away from her without speaking. To the kneeling man, he said, “Yenssorth, isn’t it?”
The soldier answered in Peradaini. “Yenswont, my tyr. I’m honored that you remember me at all.”
Tyr Freewell’s voice was light. “What happened to you, Yenswont?”
“I can’t remember, my tyr. One moment, I was lying in the pen, feeling as though my whole body would burst, and then I was here as you see me.”
“Interesting.” He turned toward Cazia again. She was uncomfortably aware of how close his hand was to the knife at his belt. Cazia made sure hers were as far as possible. “I assume this is your doing, somehow. Something to do with these ridiculous blunt spears?”
Just as she was about to answer, one of the spears prodded her shoulder with the flat of his blade. She felt the sharp sting of the metal as it scratched her ever so slightly.
“The stones are called kinzchu stones,” Cazia said, trying to speak clearly and bravely. “They steal the grunt’s curse at a touch.”
Every spear turned toward the cart and the weapons there. Only Tyr Freewell kept his attention on Cazia. “And yet you bring them to me,” he said. “A girl who speaks Peradaini as one raised in the Morning City itself.” Cazia tried to explain, but he spoke over her. “Don’t bother. I know who you are. I also know why you’re here.” He leaned close to her. “There’s no one else, is there? There’s no one else to win this fight for your beloved king.”
“No,” Cazia answered. There was no way she would tell this man that the Twofins would be getting the same weapons, assuming Stoneface could overcome the mob of grunts she’d seen inside the Twofin walls. In fact, there was no way she would tell the tyr about Stoneface, either.
“No, of course not,” the tyr said with a greasy smile. “The Durdric would club your head in if you showed up in their lands with enchanted stones. And the Simblins have all but vanished.”
He turned toward the weapons strapped to her cart and reached out to touch one. If the kinzchu stone stole his magic, he would collapse, and Cazia could call to him… What was the Surgish word for father? It had never occurred to her to learn it. Peradaini would have to do.
But the tyr withdrew his hand at the last moment. He was more clever and more cautious than she expected. He turned to the man in the green comb, giving rapid-fire instructions in Surgish. Soldiers began unloading the kinzchu spears.
Cazia did not see what came next. She was grabbed by the elbows and half carried, half dragged off the field. Rough hands took her knife and her metal-encased mace. The crowd stared down at her in mute amazement. Before she was halfway to the raised section of the field where her father had stood his ground, the green-combed commander was standing beside the naked soldier she had cured, addressing the crowd in a loud voice. Cazia, of course, could understand none of it.
“I can make more of those stones,” she said, in case they had been ordered to execute her.
Someone behind her kicked her legs, hard, making her fall forward. The strain on her arms was painful enough to make her cry out. “Shoost lenz,” a voice said from behind, and she decided it would be best to be as quiet as she could.
The performance for the night had ended early, but no one complained as they shuffled out of the stadium. Everyone seemed stunned by the sight of one of their own, cured of The Blessing. Cazia had thought it lucky that the first man they transformed was a Freewell soldier, but it suddenly struck her that it was not luck at all. He’d probably been bitten in battle and then thrown into a pen until he’d transformed.
Song knew how he’d felt about that. How any of them felt, knowing they were going to change and then be murdered for the entertainment of their friends and families. Cazia tried to imagine it, but as she looked at the grim, miserable, angry faces around her, she realized she would never understand these people. Her people.
She was led out of the field and across the torchlit bridge to the holdfast. The moon had risen and she could see the city better; the traditional courtyard outside the holdfast was mostly taken up by piers and waterfront shacks. The high, lit sentry tower was impressive enough, but the two smaller, darker towers at the most central part of the building were like nothing she’d seen before. One was a typical squat round tower with a crenelated top, but a stone bridge extended from it.
The bridge connected to the second tower, which appeared to be a single large round wooden room standing atop stone pillars. The only way in or out seemed to be the one stone bridge.
Mother. The thought came to her unbidden, but it made sense. If Tyr Freewell needed a place to keep Ellifer’s sister hostage, that tower was it.
Cazia, however, was not taken to the top of a tower, where the summer breezes would keep her cool. Instead, she was brought into the holdfast, dragged down a long flight of stairs, and thrown into a stone chamber deep underground. The air was stale, muggy, and smelled like an outhouse. The darkness was filled with quiet moans and sobbing from other cells.
She was turned and dropped onto a bench. The room was clean, at least. There was no excrement on the floor and no corpses in the corner. The pot at the end of the bench was even empty.
The guard pointed at her emphatically, as though trying to catch her attention. “Briks rukes, dirst falls.” She wouldn’t have realized he was speaking Peradaini if he hadn’t been using hand gestures as well. Break rocks, dirt falls. If she tried to escape by tunneling, she would suffocate herself in a collapse.
He shut the door, threw the bar, and stalked down the hall, taking the torch with him. Utter, impenetrable darkness filled the room. Cazia could have cast a light spell, but she held back. Not every cart driver was a full scholar, and if she could hide her abilities for as long as possible, so much the better.
What she could not do any longer was go without water. She lay back and cast the Fifth Gift above her, letting the water flow into her open mouth. It made a bit of a mess, but she needed it badly. After she’d taken her fill, she drew the half-loaf of meatbread from the inner pocket of her robe. The guards had taken her knife belt and mace, but they hadn’t bothered to search her.
Sated, she dropped into a deep sleep.
It seemed only moments later that she was awakened by torchlight again. Three guards, with their long knives drawn, stood outside her door as it opened. They did not have to say anything. Cazia followed them.
She was taken to the servants’ quarters, bathed, brushed, and given a long-hemmed robe made of rough cloth. After that, she was led into the upper part of the holdfast. By the light through the windows, she guessed it was late morning or early afternoon. No one spoke Peradaini to her and she did not try to speak to them.
She was brought to the tyr’s private chambers, where setti
ngs had been laid out for the two of them. She stood quietly in the corner for a few moments, looking out the window at the way the green trees swayed in the wind, until he entered.
Tyr Freewell wore scholar’s robes without the armor. Cazia had seen him cast one of the Gifts in front of a crowd, but it was here, in the seat of his power, that she really let the truth sink in: this man is a tyr and a scholar, and has been for years.
“I decided I was too harsh with you last night.” Tyr Freewell gestured to the stool at his right hand. Cazia allowed him to sit just before she did. Platters were set in front of them: baked freshwater fish with apple mush and bread.
Cazia’s mouth watered but she kept her hands in her lap. Last night, he’d said he knew who she was, but was that true? “Thank you.”
Tyr Freewell picked up the heel of his loaf, so she did the same. As he dipped it into the mush, she had the feeling that he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. We do have something in common after all. “Can you read? You never responded to my letters.”
Cazia tossed her piece of bread onto the plate unbitten. He did know who she was. “Don’t even try that,” she said. “Not with me.”
He seemed faintly amused. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t lie about writing me letters that the Italgas intercepted. Don’t pretend you sent me New Year’s gifts and a lovely bouquet for my Tenth. And yes, I can read. There’s only one reason you care about me: because the people of your holdfast expect it. I know it, and Colchua knew it, too.”
“Then he’s dead.”
Already I’m telling him too much. “He is. He changed into a grunt and I killed him.”
Tyr Freewell stopped eating. “You did?” As if it was something she should be proud of.
“I did,” she said sourly. “Do you want to hear the story?”
“No,” he said, pulling off a piece of pale fish with his fingers and holding it close to his lips. “I’m sure it’s properly tragic, but it’s not important anymore. There were letters, you know, but I don’t know if they were ever sent. Your mother wrote them.”
A chill ran through Cazia’s whole body. Her mother? Ulia Italga, sister to King Ellifer? “Never sent?”
“You mother dictated them but didn’t have the nerve to send them. You’ll understand when you go to meet her.”
Cazia suddenly had no appetite at all. Why did she have to wait until the world was so close to collapsing to meet her mother?
Tyr Freewell scooped up a bit of apple mush with his bread. “How have your studies progressed?”
“As a scholar?” The tyr nodded. “I made some progress, but not as much as I should have. I had too many enemies in the palace to get Doctor Twofin’s full attention.”
“The reports I have received say that you’re his star pupil.”
Cazia dipped her bread in the mush and tried it. Ugh. Both were delicious, but together, they were a mess. “Only compared to Lar and little Jagia.”
“You’re not a very good liar, are you?” the tyr asked lightly. “Why did you come here?”
He can see through any lie I tell. Of course, that’s what he would want her to believe. Cazia felt uneasy sitting within reach of his knife. Was her father really any worse than the other tyrs? Was he really worse than Tyr Gerrit, who had leered at Ivy through the silver mirror?
“There’s no simple answer to that,” Cazia said truthfully. “As you said, you’re as far west as we can go before we get to sea giants or Durdric, so I’d hoped The Blessing hadn’t spread far enough to overwhelm you. Also, since I’m your daughter, you might be less likely to murder me.”
“Who sent you?”
“What do you mean?” Cazia asked. “I sent myself.”
Tyr Freewell chuckled without looking up from his fish. “You’re a fifteen-year-old girl. You’re not the one making decisions.”
“Oh, no?” Cazia said, her blood rising. “Who else is there? What king, or tyr, or general is left to tell me where to go and what to do?”
Tyr Freewell slammed his fist on the table in sudden rage. “There’s me!” he roared. “I will command you and you will obey. If you don’t, you can spend the rest of your life in a cell. Now, you will start making more of these kinzchu stones, and I will see them fashioned into spears and arrows.”
“Good,” Cazia said stubbornly. “That’s why I came here. Can your people bring me more of this stone? I don’t know if my spell will work on any other type.”
“It will be brought to you. You will do this work. For me. Hah! Once, I thought to be king of Peradain, but now I see I was born to be king of all Kal-Maddum.” He smiled down at Cazia, his red-faced rage seemingly forgotten. “And you will be a princess over all the world. Soon, we will rescue our fighting men and…” He caressed his upper lip with his pinky, “… females of child-bearing age from the grunts’ curse, and then the land will be ours.”
“They aren’t all fighting men,” Cazia said. Had her father overlooked the obvious? “The Blessing takes everyone, young and old, merchant and servant.”
“The young and fit are the ones we want. The others are of no use, except as bait for more grunts.”
Fire take me, I have to kill my father.
Chapter 27
He swept out of the room as though heading to his coronation. Cazia was left alone with two half-finished platters, and she quickly gobbled the fish and bread until there was none left.
Bait. Her father wanted to use people as bait. Old Winstul the lumber merchant, with his bony arms and wobbling belly, would have been tied to a tree as a lure for grunts, probably at the cost of his life. Without him, Cazia would be delivering sacks of kinzchu stones instead of functional weapons.
For all his guile, her father was a vicious fool. Communities can not run on soldiers and pregnant women alone.
A pair of servants entered. They were young women about Cazia’s age, and they were careful not to look up at her. Females of child-bearing age…. Her skin crawled.
Had he gone hollow? That would have excused his callousness--in fact, Cazia could have restored him to his old self with the touch of a kinzchu stone.
Then she remembered the way he had looked at her. Had Doctor Whitestalk ever had a shrewd expression? Had Cazia? No, a wizard’s expression was usually blank, sometimes grief-stricken. It was rarely smug and calculating.
No, this was the man she’d been told about her whole life. The man that Colchua said was a monster. And she had already turned over the kinzchu weapons to him.
What could she do? Maybe there was no choice; her father was the tyr and she would have to follow. It’s not like she could just overthrow the man. She didn’t know the names of any of his people, not his generals, his spymasters, his tax collectors. Fire and Fury, she was a fifteen-year-old girl and she didn’t even speak the language.
The others are of no use, except as bait…
The memory of her iron dart sliding between Colchua’s ribs came back to her suddenly. A sudden rush of anger surged through her, and she shut her eyes to wait for the chills and sorrow to pass.
Her food finished, she pushed the platters away, half expecting a sudden bout of stomach cramps or dizziness. No signs of poisoning presented themselves, so she sat, quietly, feeling pleasantly full, and tried to think of what to do. Either she needed her father to see reason--and the oily, disgusting way he had spoken to her made her doubt that was possible--or she needed to find someone sensible, like Tejohn, who could take command. She needed someone with authority who could take over without a mini-civil war.
And she’d delivered the kinzchu spears to this man. She had made him indispensable to the survival of humankind.
Suddenly, Cazia remembered the Surgish word for mother. She turned to one of the servants waiting to clear her platter away and said, “Do you speak Peradaini?”
The girl glared at her and shook her head. She almost looked insulted. Fine. Cazia sighed, then pointed to the girl, then to herself. Then she made h
er fingers walk across the table top, and said, “Mialj.”
The servant made a show of controlling her response—a very different thing from actually controlling it—and turned her palms toward the ceiling: she couldn’t help because she couldn’t understand.
Cazia pantomimed again more forcefully that she wanted to be taken to mialj and the servant kept shrugging to show her confusion. She said something in Surgish quickly and repeated “mialj” as a question. She had no idea who they were talking about.
Cazia pretended to be surprised. “Mialj,” she said simply. “Ulia Italga. Well, Ulia Freewell.”
That caused the expected amount of commotion, and it was no time at all before the servant girl brought someone who could speak Peradaini. While Cazia convinced them she was Tyr Freewell’s daughter, she refilled her broth bowl with a water spell. I’m a scholar like him. None of them wanted to believe it, but she had just eaten a private meal with the man, something that was apparently pretty rare.
“He said I could visit my mother,” Cazia insisted. Actually, he’d told her to make more kinzchu stones, but since no one had brought the correct rocks yet, she figured she had a little free time. “You don’t have a choice. You have to take me to her.”
In another holdfast, her insistence might not have worked, but the Freewell servants had a frightened, hunted look to them. Doing as they were told was a habit, the same way it had been for Chik, the Tilkilit warrior.
The servant who spoke Peradaini was a steward from the kitchens, but he looked just as starved and listless as the girls mopping the stone floors in the hallway. He led Cazia through a locked and guarded door into a round room, then entered one of the towers. At the top of the stairs was another set of guards.
Beyond them was the scholar-made bridge that lead to the last tower, the one that was just a wooden room atop stone pillars.
Cazia had been higher off the ground than this, of course—she’d been taught to fly carts—but for some reason, this narrow bridge with no rail on either side woke the butterflies in her stomach. Still, a chance to see her mother? She strode across the stone walkway, one two three four five steps, then knocked on the door.
The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way Page 30