Tombor glared at the embarrassed man for a moment, then growled, “You’d better get yourself to the gate, John. There’s a wounded horse there, and Pierstar’s looking for you.”
“My thanks for telling me so, Tombor.” The farrier, looking happy for any excuse to leave, started toward the door.
Tombor watched the man leave, then turned to Silavia. “What was he doing here?”
“It’s none of your concern who I give my honeycakes to!” Silavia retorted. “Not that there wouldn’t be some for you, if you ever came around at a decent hour.”
“It’s this trouble with Yanseldara’s catalepsy!” the cleric protested. “I’ve been busy.”
“So have I,” Silavia snorted. She led the way to a small storage pantry and unlocked the door with a key from her apron. “The oil press is in here, if you want it. Don’t expect me to help you with it.”
Tombor motioned to Fowler, who dropped his ylang blossoms beside the cleric’s and followed him into the little room. Ruha put her own sacks on the floor and tried not to yawn as Silavia glared at her.
“You a friend of Tombor or Tuskface?” the cook asked.
“I am closer to Fowler. I do not know Tombor very well. Is he an important person in Elversult?”
“You could say that,” Silavia replied proudly. “Tombor’s the one who saved Vaerana when the assassins first got after her. He’s done the same twice since—at the risk of his own life, I might add.”
The witch smiled, anticipating the apology she would be due when she exposed Tombor’s heroism as a cult ploy. “I had not realized he is so well thought of.”
Fowler emerged from the storage pantry, carrying a small oil press in his arms. The device was a mere fraction the size of the screw press in the spicehouse at the Ginger Palace, being small enough so that a single cook could move it without help. Tombor followed a moment later, holding a small, empty cask beneath one arm. The two men set their burdens on a vacant table, then the cleric motioned Silavia to his side.
“How do I work this thing?”
Silavia fetched a large bowl from a shelf, then set it beneath the drainage spout. “It’s simple enough. First you put the raw goods in here.”
She pulled the handle, raising the platen and displaying a small wooden box. The bed had a grid of channels cut into the bottom, and it was tilted so that the oil would run into a collection trough at one end.
“Then you lower the top plate, and it squeezes the oil out.” Silavia demonstrated, then stepped aside. “And when you’re done, you clean up after yourself.”
Tombor cast a wary eye at the eight bags of ylang blossoms, then looked to Ruha. “How much oil do we need?”
“Enough to cover Yanseldara from head to foot,” she replied. “I suggest you press all of the blossoms.”
Silavia smiled at the cleric. “It looks like you’re going to be here a while. Maybe I can find some honeycakes for you.”
Tombor’s eyes lit up. “That would make our task more enjoyable.”
“If I may be excused, I shall leave it to you to press the oil.” Ruha did not bother to stifle the yawn that came over her. “I am very tired. Perhaps Captain Fowler can show me to Pearl Tower.”
Silavia raised her brow. “Pearl Tower? I think not. Jarvis isn’t likely to let a pair of strangers in there.”
“No, but you can take her, Silavia.” Tombor tried to remove a gold ring from his chubby finger, but had to moisten the knuckle with saliva before he could tug it off. “Show this to Jarvis, and he’ll know you speak for me.”
Scowling at the imposition, Silavia accepted the ring and threw a cloak over her shoulders. Ruha retrieved the small satchel she had taken from her horse, then waved at Fowler to come along and followed her guide into the gloomy courtyard. They passed several dark sheds similar to the kitchen before turning onto a serpentine path of white crushed rock.
The witch paused there and allowed Silavia to march a dozen paces ahead, then whispered to Fowler, “You must return to the kitchens and help Tombor with the blossoms.”
The half-orc frowned. “You couldn’t tell me that before we left?”
“I could not. Tombor is a cult spy.”
“What?”
“I lack the time to explain, but I am certain. He and Wei Dao were working together.” Ruha pushed the half-orc back toward the kitchen. “Now, return to the kitchen. When he opens the last sack of blossoms, come get me.”
Fowler did not move. “Why?”
“So we can follow him to Yanseldara’s staff, of course,” Ruha whispered. “Go!”
“We?” he grumbled, starting back toward the kitchen. “Collecting the gold you owe me’s getting to be as much work as stealing Storm Sprite in the first place.”
“You stole your ship?” Ruha gasped.
Fowler frowned. “Aye—you don’t think I could’ve bought a ship like her, do you?”
“Truthfully, I had not given the matter much thought.”
Ruha turned to find Silavia waiting fifteen paces up the path, hands on hips.
“Are you coming or not? I thought you were tired.”
“I am tired—extremely tired.” Ruha scurried to catch up. “That must be why it did not occur to me to leave Captain Fowler with Tombor. I’m sure his work will go faster with an assistant.”
“Not much,” snorted the cook. “You can squeeze oil only so fast.”
Ruha followed Silavia down the path, past several intersections to a slender tower faced with gleaming abalone shell. To reach the building’s entrance, they had to climb a detached stairway to the second story, then cross a small drawbridge to an open portcullis. A pair of Maces stood beside the entrance, fully armored in scale-mail and equipped with more weapons than they could have used with six hands. As the witch and her guide approached, the guards continued to stare straight ahead.
The largest, a swarthy giant of a man with brown eyes and dark straight hair, spoke in an officious voice. “By the order of Vaerana Hawklyn, household staff is no longer permitted in Pearl Tower.”
The two guards crossed their lances before the doorway; then the speaker scowled at the cook.
“You know that, Silavia—and especially at this time of night.”
“Don’t get haughty with me, Jarvis!” The cook produced Tombor’s ring and shoved it under Jarvis’s nose. “Take a look at that and do as I say.”
Jarvis pulled back so he could inspect the ring, then snapped his lance back to his side and returned to attention. The smaller man followed suit.
“You have a command from the Jolly One?” asked Jarvis.
Silavia smiled as though she were thinking of telling the huge guard to jump off the drawbridge, but she only stepped back and waved a hand at Ruha. “Tombor wants this woman shown to—” Silavia stopped in midsentence and scowled at the witch. “Not to his chamber?”
Ruha shook her head quickly. “No, and it was Vaerana who asked Tombor to see that I was lodged here.”
If Jarvis was impressed, he did not show it. He simply waved Ruha into the tower, then picked up a candle and lit it from one burning in a wall sconce. Shielding the flame with his free hand, he led the witch up a spiraling staircase. The passage was so narrow that his mail-clad shoulders rasped against both walls at once.
Once they were safely out of Silavia’s earshot, Ruha said, “I am expecting a—” she yawned, “—a visit from Vaerana.”
Jarvis missed a step and nearly fell, filling the stairwell with a ringing clamor as he thrust a hand out to catch himself.
“Is something wrong?” Ruha found the guard’s consternation puzzling. “Has she been here already?”
Jarvis shook his head and smoothed his tabard. “I haven’t seen the Lady Constable, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been here. She might come through the passage from Moon Tower, and I would never know it.”
Ruha considered this worrisome possibility, then rejected it as quickly as it entered her mind. Had Vaerana already come and gone, she wou
ld certainly have left a message with the guards.
Jarvis stopped at a landing and opened a doorway into the main part of the tower, where a short corridor led to a vaulted alcove that served as one of the fortress’s exterior arrow loops. He escorted Ruha past three doors, two with loud rumbling snores reverberating through the wood, then opened a fourth. The chamber inside was as lavishly furnished as it was small, with wool tapestries on the walls, a true wooden bed, a small table with a pitcher and basin, and a stone bench built into the alcove of another arrow loop.
Jarvis lit a tallow pot hanging inside the door, then stepped aside to let Ruha enter. “I’ll tell Vaerana which room you’re in.”
“That is very kind. And do you know Captain Fowler?”
Jarvis’s eyes widened slightly. “The half-orc?”
“Yes. If he asks for me, please fetch me at once.”
The guard nodded, then backed into the hall and pulled the door shut. Ruha sat on the stone bench and peered out the arrow loop at the side of a wooded hill. She leaned her head back against the wall and felt her heavy eyelids beginning to descend. She did not have the strength to raise them.
* * * **
Tang lay facedown on the dark mountainside, his toes kicked deep into the slippery mud to keep from sliding through the ferns down into the swamp. Though he had his palms pressed tightly over his ears, he could not shut out the voices of the dead. The spirits of his soldiers kept wailing at him. Their words were incoherent, but he knew what they wanted. He could feel their craving, deep down in his abdomen where his own shrunken spirit cowered like that of a frightened peasant. They needed him to look at them, to acknowledge the futility of their sacrifice, to intercede with Yen-Wang-Yeh and tell the Great Judge that they had died bravely and well and that their mission had failed through no fault of their own.
Tang could not bring himself to utter the prayer. To concede their valor was to admit he had suffered defeat at the hands of a barbarian; worse, it was to admit defeat at his own hands. When his soldiers laughed at him, he had let his embarrassment dictate General Fui’s death. The price for that arrogance had been the failure of his assault, and the prince did not care to admit—to himself or his ancestors—that he been had such a fool. If that made him a coward, so be it; Shou princes were taught to be cowards, and forgetting that lesson had been the cause of his ignoble defeat.
Tang’s resolve only made the voices echo louder inside his head. He rolled onto his back and sat up. Midnight gloom filled the swamp below like a funeral pyre’s black smoke, spreading an oily, clinging ink over everything it touched. The darkness was broken only by a faint fox fire glow that illuminated the floating corpses of the screaming dead soldiers.
“Silence, I command!” Tang hissed. “Present yourselves at Ten Courts and leave me in peace!”
A gentle sloshing sounded below. Something broke the surface of the black water, sending a crazy pattern of rippling, ghost-faint lights bouncing off invisible cypress trunks. Tang froze, praying the disturbance had been caused by a restless alligator.
It was impossible to say how long the prince stared into the darkness. He was not conscious of breathing until long after the air had grown heavy with silence and the pond had returned to its glassy stillness. It occurred to him that the voices of his dead soldiers had fallen quiet; then he sensed a pair of long reptilian necks rising from the black water. He did not see the creatures so much as feel a pair of lighter, warmer presences among the cypress trees below, but he knew without doubt that his craven outburst of whispering had drawn the attention of Cypress’s wyverns.
Tang had not expected the two reptiles to emerge from the cave that night. They had both suffered a substantial battering during the destruction of the Shou assault party, so the prince had assumed they would lie up for the night and lick their wounds. Still, with a ready supply of fresh meat floating outside their door, it was not surprising they had come out to feed. Tang was glad he had decided not to hazard moving at night. If the creatures had been outside when he started rustling through the brush, they would surely have killed him.
No sooner had Tang finished congratulating himself on his wisdom than the ground trembled beneath his legs. He stifled a cry and, thinking one of the reptiles had landed nearby, reached for his only weapon, a pitifully inadequate dagger. Instead of feeling the sharp sting of a wyvern’s tail barb, however, he heard a series of faint, muffled knells—such as a distant bell or gong might make.
The tolling had hardly begun to fade before a loud purl rolled from the mouth of the grotto below. Cypress’s form—a huge, shadowy darkness far blacker than the surrounding swamp—emerged from the lair and seemed to pause outside the cavern.
The wyverns hissed in frustration and swam, rather noisily, back into the cavern. A loud, basal throb reverberated through the swamp as Cypress’s mighty wings beat the air. Visions of the dragon swooping down out of the darkness filled the prince’s mind, at least until he realized the pulsing was growing softer and more distant. The dragon was flying away.
Tang sighed in relief, then kicked his heels deep into the mud and felt something slithering across his leg. The prince remained motionless until he located the creature’s head, then calmly grabbed it behind the jaws and flung the writhing thing down the hill. He had nothing to fear from snakes—perhaps from the spirits of his dead soldiers, whose voices were again filling his ears—but not from snakes.
* * * **
Ruha slept without dreaming and awoke sometime later, lying on the soft bed with the heavy woolen quilt pulled high beneath her chin. Her first thought was not that she usually took off her aba before sleeping, or that she never pulled the blanket up to her chin, but that she had slept the night away. She threw the cover off and rushed to the alcove, where, to her relief, she saw the treetops still dancing in silver moonlight. Only then did she notice that someone had removed her veil and realized that the tallow lamp had been extinguished—she could not have been asleep long enough for it to burn itself out!—and it occurred to her Vaerana had already come and gone.
Ruha fumbled around in the darkness until she found her veil on the stone bench, then felt her way out the door, into the hallway, and down the spiraling staircase. Jarvis and his partner were leaning on their lances outside the portcullis.
The witch paused to put on her veil, then demanded, “How long have I been asleep?”
Startled by Ruha’s question, they whirled around with lance tips lowered. When she cautiously stepped into the flickering light of their candle, both men sighed and snapped to attention.
“How long ago did Vaerana put me in my bed?” Ruha demanded.
The two guards glanced nervously at each other, then Jarvis said, “Actually, I laid you in the bed.”
Ruha raised a hand to her face. “You removed my veil?”
Jarvis looked first confused, then embarrassed. “The Lady Constable commanded me to—er, she said that you deserved your rest—”
“Vaerana said that?” Ruha could hardly imagine those words coming from the Lady Constable’s lips.
“Yes, about three hours ago. She rushed up the stairs and right back down again.” Jarvis glanced at his companion, then added, “She ordered me to see that you rested comfortably, and to tell you she would look in on you when she returned.”
“Kozah take her for an impatient she-camel!”
Jarvis scowled at that outburst. “There’s no need for calling names. She was only trying to be considerate—and that’s a rare thing for Vaerana Hawklyn.”
“It would have been considerate to wake me!” Ruha retorted. “She was taking advantage of my fatigue. How soon will she return?”
Jarvis shrugged. “She was dressed for battle.”
Ruha cursed again, this time under her breath. “And what of Captain Fowler? I told you to fetch me if he asked.”
“He has not asked,” Jarvis replied stiffly.
Ruha sighed in relief. If Fowler had not come for her, she could still spri
ng her trap. “I want one of you to come with me, so you can show Vaerana where I am hiding.”
“Hiding?”
“It is for the good of Yanseldara. That is all you need to know, Jarvis.”
Ruha started across the drawbridge without waiting for the guard to agree. Before she reached the other side, Jarvis’s heavy steps were booming across the thick planks behind her.
“We’re not supposed to leave our posts,” he complained.
“And Vaerana was supposed to speak with me before she left. Because she did not, we must now improvise.”
They descended the stairs and retraced the meandering path to Silavia’s kitchen. With the door and shutters all closed, the place looked as dark and silent as the other sheds built along this section of the wall. Wondering how those inside could tolerate the cloying smell of ylang oil without opening the windows, Ruha slipped beneath an unruly wax myrtle. She settled into a hiding place so deliberately uncomfortable that she would not fall asleep, then sent Jarvis back to Pearl Tower.
A long, bone-aching time later, Ruha began to debate the wisdom of going to check on Tombor’s progress. She had expected it to take him quite some time to press all eight sacks of ylang blossoms, but the first gray hint of false dawn had already appeared in the eastern sky. Household servants were beginning to trudge about their morning tasks, and it would not be long before some passing groom or maid discovered the witch lurking in the bushes.
Ruha heard the crunch of heavy boots coming down the path. She backed out from beneath the wax myrtle and saw Jarvis and Vaerana approaching. All thoughts of chiding the Lady Constable about last night’s departure quickly vanished from Ruha’s mind. Vaerana was limping badly, with one arm hanging slack at her side and the side of her face so swollen it looked as if she had been kicked by a horse. What remained of her tattered jerkin was black with half-dried blood, and even her boots looked as though someone had tried to cut them off her feet.
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