Persephone scowled. “Do you want another pinch?” she asked.
“No,” he coughed, bowing his head to hide his smile, “but I thank you kindly for the offer.”
Persephone helped Azriel stagger to his feet, then led him and Cur back to the pool of hot, smelly water. Fleet was nowhere to be seen, but Persephone was confident that he’d find her once he’d recovered from the trauma of his own bravery. Azriel’s shirt was gone, as was his pack, but his weapons—which he’d taken care to hide among the grasses at the water’s edge—were still there.
“Help … help me on with these,” he panted as he fumbled with the knife and the sword.
“I’ll do no such thing,” she replied.
“But if the soldiers return, I … I need to be able to defend you!” he protested.
“As ever, your willingness to lay down your life is a tremendous comfort to me,” said Persephone as she effortlessly plucked the weapons from his shaking hands, strapped the knife in its scabbard to her back and belted the long, sheathed sword around her narrow waist. “However, given the fact that you appear barely able to stand on your own two feet, I expect that if there is any defending to be done, it will have to be done by me.”
“Well, all right,” muttered Azriel, leaning over to catch his breath. “But … I feel it is my duty to warn you that this situation has the potential to cause irreparable harm to my manly pride and … and if that happens, well, let me tell you, madam, the consequences could be truly dire.”
He spoke with such utter solemnity that Persephone nearly choked on the bubble of laughter that welled up inside of her. “I thank you sincerely for the warning, sir,” she said with equal solemnity. “But between you, me and your manly pride, I think you’ll live.”
Three-and-a-half hours later, she wasn’t so sure. Azriel had fought the evil that coursed through his body with dauntless courage—battling his way through the cramps and seizures, refusing to complain about the unnatural thirst that parched his throat and the waves of pain that racked his muscles—but as he once again stumbled and fell, a despairing Persephone had to admit that the poison was winning.
“How much farther?” she demanded after she’d prodded him to his feet once more. When he didn’t answer but only stood there swaying, she reached up and cupped his hot face in her hands. “Azriel,” she said urgently. “Azriel, look at me.”
With agonizing slowness, his bleary, unfocused gaze shifted from the horizon to her face.
“You,” he croaked, as though amazed to find her standing before him.
“Yes, me,” she said. “It’s been three-and-a-half hours, Azriel, and I’ve seen no sign of a camp—Gypsy or otherwise. Are you sure this is the way?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could do so, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, white froth appeared at his lips and he fell to his knees.
“No!” cried Persephone frantically. Dropping to her own knees, she made a valiant attempt to prevent him from falling to the ground face first, but he was so much bigger and heavier than she was that she only managed to steady him for a moment before his greater weight and momentum overcame her. She found herself pinned to the forest floor beneath his outstretched body.
“You know,” he whispered weakly into her wild, dark hair, “if you’d wanted to avail yourself of my lovemaking skills, Persephone, you had only to ask.”
Persephone was so shocked by his impertinence that she actually squeaked. “How dare you even suggest such a thing!” she cried. “I would never ask—”
“Never ask?” interrupted Azriel, chuckling in spite of the terrible pain. “But … hasn’t anyone ever told you that it isn’t … isn’t seemly to take advantage of a gentleman against his will, Persephone?”
“You are no gentleman, sir!” she huffed. “Now, get off me before I am forced to cause you further injury!”
Still faintly chuckling, Azriel laboriously did as she asked and then promptly suffered another racking fit. This one caused him to gag wretchedly and his back to arch so far that Persephone truly thought his spine would snap in half. When the fit was over, she wiped the sweat from his brow and begged him to get up, but it was useless. She was losing him.
“At least tell me where the camp is,” she pleaded. “Cur can stay here with you and I’ll go for help.”
“No … use,” he slurred, as his red-rimmed eyes fluttered closed once more, “you’d … never get back in time. I’ll be dead if I don’t reach it by sundown … remember?”
Persephone pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. This Gypsy was nothing to her and yet for some reason, she could not bear the thought of watching him die. There had to be some way to get him to his tribesmen in time, there just had to be.
Then she heard it.
The unlikely sound of salvation.
CLIP, CLOP, CLIP, CLOP, CLIP, CLOP.
Springing to her feet, Persephone whirled around just in time to see Fleet canter over the ridge behind her.
“Fleet!” she shrieked as she jumped up and down and waved her arms. “Over here! We’re over here!”
With a whinny of joy, Fleet launched himself down the ridge at a death-defying gallop and skidded to a halt in front of her. After giving him a quick hug to assure him that she was just as happy to see him as he was to see her, Persephone coaxed him to lie down next to Azriel so that she could more easily manoeuvre the unconscious man onto his back. She held Azriel in place while Fleet lumbered back into a standing position, then tore a few more strips from the hem of her shift and tied Azriel’s hands and feet together beneath Fleet’s belly to prevent him from sliding off. Finally, panting and sweating with exertion, she dropped to her knees beside Azriel’s dangling head and used shouts, slaps and pinches to prod him back to consciousness one last time.
“Azriel, how do I get to the Gypsy camp?”
“Water—” he croaked.
“Water won’t help a poison thirst!” shouted Persephone in frustration. “The only help lies in reaching your tribesmen and we’ll never get there if you won’t—”
“Water,” breathed Azriel as his eyes rolled back into his head, “fall.”
“He said ‘waterfall,’” reminded Persephone loudly.
Fleet whinnied in distress and probably would have started trampling in circles if Persephone hadn’t had a firm hand on his mane.
“I know,” she shouted over the din of the crashing water. “I don’t understand, either.”
They’d found a waterfall, all right, but Persephone couldn’t see any sign of a camp. To her right was the river, to her left was wilderness and ahead was an imposing rock face. As she struggled to quell her rising panic and figure out what to do next, Ivan appeared with a bloody rabbit in his talons. He swooped low enough to dangle his prize just beyond the reach of Cur’s snapping teeth, then soared out over the river, folded up his wings and dove for the foot of the falls. Just before hitting the water, he made a graceful landing on a narrow ledge Persephone hadn’t noticed before. As he did so, Cur bounded up to the rock face, made a hard right and disappeared only to reappear seconds later on the ledge at the bottom of the falls! The unexpected appearance of his teasing victim understandably ruffled Ivan, who took to the air so fast that he nearly flew headfirst into the falls, but Persephone hardly noticed.
That had to be it—the way into the Gypsy camp.
“Come on!” she shouted, urging Fleet forward as fast as she dared given the fact that Azriel was only haphazardly slung over his back. When they reached the path that led to the bottom of the falls, Fleet started snorting and tossing his head, but before he could suffer a complete nervous collapse, Persephone spied a sugarberry bush. Dashing forward, she yanked out her dagger, slashed off a fistful of branches heavy with berries, whirled around and waved them at the horse.
His demeanour changed instantly. The wild panic in his eyes was replaced with a hungry gleam, he stopped frothing and started drooling, and—most importantly— he began eagerly
cantering toward her. Persephone hurried down the path ahead of him, her heart in her throat every step of the way. In places, the path was so narrow that she could barely keep her footing, but Fleet—whose eyes had not once left the sugarberry branches in her hand—seemed to be paying no attention at all to where he was going. Twice, Persephone actually saw the path crumble beneath his hooves, but he always seemed to be one step ahead of disaster and in no time at all he’d somehow managed to get himself—and Azriel—safely down to the ledge.
There the rock face jutted back just enough to allow a person (or a horse) to follow the ledge behind the falls, so without pausing to give Fleet a chance to consider the thousand tons of pounding water above his head, Persephone plunged behind it with Fleet and Cur hot upon her heels.
The next minute she found herself standing in a small cave. It did not extend very far back, but there was a large tunnel in the right wall. A cool, piney breeze issued from it, ruffling Persephone’s mist-drizzled hair. After giving Fleet his tasty reward for a job well done, she stepped up to the threshold of the tunnel and tentatively poked her head into it. As she did so, over the din of the pounding falls, she heard the faint but unmistakable sound of music.
Though the idea of venturing into the dark unknown brought back nightmarish memories of her months in the mines, Persephone hadn’t come all this way to see the handsome chicken thief die for her lack of courage, so she gritted her teeth and walked forward. Every step of the way she braced herself for the instant the ground would give way beneath her or the roof would cave in on top of her or something feral would dart out and attack her but none of these things happened. Almost before she knew it, they’d reached the other end of the tunnel.
In addition to music, she could now hear voices, clinking cooking pots and cooing pigeons. An enormous, flame-haired Gypsy stood with his back to the mouth of the tunnel, his sword at the ready and his foot tapping in time to the music. In the forest clearing beyond him, Gypsies dressed in faded purples, yellows and reds bustled to and fro in the throes of preparation for something that appeared to have them all very excited.
Persephone didn’t care or even want to know what it was, so long as it held their attention. Turning away from the opening of the tunnel, she silently unsheathed her dagger and dropped to her knees at Fleet’s side. With infinite gentleness, she brushed Azriel’s tangled curls from his face and pressed the palm of her hand to his hot, dry cheek. He was alive, but only just barely. The thought of him dead and cold brought a lump to Persephone’s throat, but she forced herself to swallow past it. Impulsively cutting off a lock of Azriel’s beautiful hair, she slipped it into her pocket and reached for the cloth strips that bound his hands to his feet. Her plan was to cut him loose, lay him on the ground, retreat as far back into the tunnel as she possibly could and then hurl a rock at the red-headed monster standing at the entrance. When he lumbered in to investigate, he would find his deathly ill tribesman and call for help. Persephone had to assume that he’d then pursue her, of course, but with luck, she, Cur and Fleet would be far enough ahead by that point that they’d be able to make good their escape.
It was a plan that meant she’d never see Azriel again— or even know if he lived or died—but there was no help for that. Nor, she told herself fiercely, any reason to mourn it.
Unfortunately, at the very instant she took hold of the strips of cloth, Azriel’s dead weight shifted without warning and the strips jerked so tight around Persephone’s fingers that she couldn’t pull them free. Nor could she simply cut the strips with her dagger, for if she did so, Azriel’s nowprecariously dangling body would crash headfirst to the ground and his neck would surely be broken.
Even more unfortunately, before Persephone could come up with a solution to this dilemma, Fleet noticed that several of the Gypsy women in the clearing were cutting up turnips.
With an enthusiastic whicker, he began to trot forward.
“No!” hissed Persephone as loudly as she dared. “No! Stop! Bad boy!”
But Fleet appeared to be deaf to anything but the juicy sound of his favourite tuber being sliced and diced, and though Persephone twisted and turned and dug her torn heels into the rocky floor and clawed at the walls of the tunnel with her free hand, it was no use.
She could not stop him, and she could not get free of him.
All she could do was cringe as he bashed aside the exceedingly startled, flame-haired giant at the entrance of the tunnel and merrily trotted into the heart of the Gypsy camp.
ELEVEN
AS MORDECAI SLOUCHED through the narrow, torch-lit stone passageway toward the chamber where the Council was about to meet, he glared at one useless nobody after another. Most of the men in the crowd were petitioners hoping to be noticed by someone who could give them money, land, position or a satisfactory ruling against a particularly irksome neighbour. Mordecai despised petitioners—despised the unwashed smell of them and the way they clamoured for the attention of their betters, always jostling and pushing and shoving ratty pieces of parchment under the noses of lords and earls. They never dared to shove anything under his nose, of course, but that was hardly the point. The point was that they were like an unruly herd of farm animals, and if it had been up to Mordecai, he’d have had them all slaughtered where they stood. But, of course, the king indulged them like spoiled children.
The king, the king.…
Not for the first time, Mordecai cursed his own folly in having sent the king from court almost immediately following his coronation. Touting the benefits of fresh air and country living, Mordecai had shipped him off to a royal estate at the northern edge of the Primus Prefecture, along with a large household of his own and all the goods and furnishings befitting an infant king. He’d thought it a clever way to get the child beyond the reach and influence of the noblemen of the great houses, but what he’d not anticipated was that in the absence of a true family to care for him, the little king would turn his sunny, dimpled smile upon the servants around him in the hope of receiving the love he craved—and that they would respond by treating him with such tender affection that it would ruin him utterly. Indeed, by the time Mordecai realized what was happening, the boy was nearly ten years old and had enough of a mind and will of his own that he could not be made to see that he should not be thinking about servants—much less developing affection for them. “They are like pieces of furniture, Your Majesty,” Mordecai had patiently tried to explain one evening not long after he’d ordered the boy king brought back to Parthania. “They serve their purpose and then they are discarded or replaced. Does one talk to a chair? No. Does one consider the thoughts and feelings of a chair? No. One sits on it. And that is all.” In response, young King Finnius had given him a cheeky grin and whispered, “Don’t let Moira hear you talk that way, Your Grace, for I should think you’ve never met a piece of furniture with a will to speak its mind like she has!”
Since then it had always been more of the same—or worse. Still, Mordecai could not be entirely disappointed with the way the boy had turned out. Over the years, he’d grown to have the look of both parents, a fact that seemed to have quelled at least some of the rumours that had dogged Mordecai since the night the queen had given birth and nearly ruined everything. The boy was tall and lithe and, despite his slight build and delicate health, he was a passable swordsman and a fine dancer. He was well educated in spite of his tendency to laziness when it came to his studies, and he could charm the warts off a toad by doing nothing more than being his own handsome self. He had enough natural poise and strength of character to hold the promise of becoming a strong king—something the great lords needed to see if they were to remain true to both the king and to Mordecai’s regency—but he trusted Mordecai completely and almost always took his counsel.
Until lately, that is. Lately, the king kept his own counsel almost as often as he took Mordecai’s, he laughed at things Mordecai did not find funny, and he spoke with increasing eagerness about the day he would sit in Mordecai’
s seat at the head of the Council table and become a true ruling king at last. In truth, if Mordecai did not have long-standing plans to see the boy cold and dead in his grave before he ever had a chance to rule, he probably would have found the young monarch’s selfish and disloyal behaviour very upsetting indeed.
Pausing now before the final turn in the passageway, Mordecai reached up and tried in vain to massage the knots out of his cramped neck muscles so that he could hold his head high without pain. He then carefully smoothed down his glossy dark hair, gave the golden crest of his office a quick polish and adjusted his long, ermine-trimmed robe. No one else at court wore robes as everyday wear—not even the king himself—but Mordecai’s thin, crooked legs looked so ridiculous in tight-fitting silk hose or breeches that he would not suffer to wear them, not even for the sake of fashion. Robe adjusted, Mordecai lastly withdrew a silken handkerchief from his sleeve and carefully mopped the sweat from his smooth brow, for it would not do to enter the Council chamber looking anything other than utterly composed.
Today of all days, Mordecai must look like a king in all but name, for half a lifetime of planning had led up to this moment.
Taking a deep breath, he threw back his narrow shoulders, lifted his heavy head, strode purposefully around the corner of the passageway and promptly collided with a young liveried page who was barrelling down the passageway on some errand of great urgency. Though no more than twelve, the lad was already so sturdy that he somehow managed to stand his ground while Mordecai bounced off his chest and went sprawling across the flagstone, his robe flung aside to reveal the only thing worse than his thin, crooked legs clad in tight-fitting silk hose or breeches: his thin, crooked legs clad in nothing at all.
Dazed by his fall and spitting with fury, Mordecai savagely tugged the robe over his legs and was about to snarl an order to have the offending page dragged to the dungeon when he looked up to see that the wretch had vanished.
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