by A. C. Smyth
“We don’t have any time. They have used a Chesammos poison and Mistress Ayriene may not know of it. Let me out so I can help her. Or at least tell her what I’ve said.”
“Poisoned, you say? Your stories are getting better, I’ll give you that. First you’re a changer and now Prince Jaevan is poisoned. Very creative. Maybe I’ll give you another couple of hours—see what you come up with then.”
Sylas shouted in frustration. “The Lady burn you for a fool! I am a changer, and the prince is in danger of his life. If he dies, I’ll tell the king you ignored my warnings if I have to scream it out to him with a noose around my neck.” He pounded on the door with his fists again. “Listen to me, flames blind you! You must tell the healer it is esteia. Esteia!” He slammed his shoulder to the door in sheer desperation, never expecting it to give.
The jailer looked as if Sylas’s sudden passion had almost convinced him. “Why should I stick my neck out for you? I go to this healer and you’re not who you say you are, I don’t just look stupid, I likely lose my job as well. You going to make it worth my while?”
Sylas had little money, certainly not enough to make this man step out of line. He felt a pang of regret at pies eaten, ale drunk, and coins casually tossed to street performers. But he did have one thing that might win the man’s attention. He pulled out his pouch and opened the drawstring. The little package was safe inside. He drew it out and untied the thread, linen draping his palm, the linandra bead sitting in the centre. He held the bead up to the bars between finger and thumb. It was a poor stone, and if the man looked closely he would see the flaw running through it, but it might be enough to appeal to his greed.
“This for you, if you take my message.”
The guard’s eyes glittered. “Say now, is that linandra?” He licked his lips, glancing over his shoulder down the corridor. “What’s to stop me coming in there and taking it?”
“You try and I’ll swallow it. You can check the slop bucket for the next couple of days, if you’re that desperate. Now go and tell the healer.” He surprised himself with how firm his voice remained when inside he was quaking with fear. Jaevan had already lost so much time.
And then he heard it, faint as if far away, almost beyond hearing.
We fly, changer?
Had he truly heard it or was his mind playing tricks? The linandra between his fingers took on the same faint glow as when he was tested for sensitivity. He could hear the other kye too, but this one was stronger than the others—clearer. His heart thumped like a punch behind his ribs. There was a moment where it seemed to stop beating altogether, and then it raced with excitement. Was it here, now? Had his true kye shown itself in the king’s dungeons? He wanted to laugh with relief, with despair. Even if he changed here he could not escape—the bars were too close to let all but the smallest of birds through.
He felt it. The lurching, twisting, giddying sense of part of himself being left in the Outlands, the awareness that his mind was shared with something other than himself, the stomach-churning sensation of falling as he transformed. Sylas looked at the bottom of the door from scarcely a handspan off the ground. His clothes lay around him, the linandra bead nestled in their folds. Instead of feet he had claws that scraped and clicked on the stone floor. He spread his wings and turned his head to see them move at his command. Shiny, almost oily in appearance, and blue-black. He was a crow, then, as he had thought he might be. Sylas fought down a glimmer of regret. He was a true changer at last; he should be elated at his success, not disappointed at the form he took.
“Hey! Where’d he go?” He heard the jingle of keys, the creak of the door opening, and then he was back, a human, crouching on the floor of a dank prison cell beneath Banunis Castle. The guard stared down at him, mouth open, eyes wide. “By the Creator! You really are a changer. I saw you. Just for a moment, like, but I saw.”
Sylas fell to his knees on the floor. He was naked, his clothes scattered at his feet. Bent double, he retched miserably, bringing up the remains of his pie. Had anyone told him that changing could nauseate him? He didn’t think they had. He spat, wiped his mouth, and plucked the bead from the pile of clothing, making sure it was firmly in his grasp.
“Take a message to Mistress Ayriene. Tell her it is esteia that ails the prince. Take the message for me and the bead is yours.”
The man licked his lips as if considering a juicy steak, then turned and ran. Sylas could hear his booted footsteps thumping up the steps to the castle.
Sylas found the piece of linen and wrapped the bead once more, taking care not to touch it with his bare hands. It had glowed before he transformed. Was linandra the key? If so, why had no other Chesammos needed a bead? Master Cowin had changed at nine years old. He would not have been close to having the piercing at that age. But enough for now that he had done it at last, and without a call to help him.
The other men watched him silently as he dressed himself.
“It is esteia, isn’t it? Tell me now, before I have Mistress Ayriene give the prince the wrong treatment.”
Neffan stared sullenly back at him, but the young man—the one whom Sylas had treated—nodded. “No harm, since you’ve guessed. It was our only hope of getting Deygan or one of the princes. We will hang for it, but I don’t regret trying. I never wanted anyone else mixed up in it, though. I hope your healer can convince Deygan you weren’t involved.”
Sylas was less worried about that than about saving Jaevan. His only knowledge of esteia was of ingesting it, not putting it straight into the blood. If Ayriene did not know of esteia, as seemed possible, then she would not know the antidote. The guard had to get to Ayriene and make her listen. And then she had to make Deygan listen to her. He sat by the wall again, chewing on his thumb knuckle. Even if Ayriene managed to secure his release, they might already be too late.
Ayriene’s mind raced, even as she held the contact with the kye that gave her the healer talent. The king had sent for her as soon as the royal party returned and she quickly assessed the damage. Prince Jaevan’s temple and a gash on Prince Rannon’s forearm were healed in a few moments. Prince Marklin had been pushed into the bottom of the carriage by a guard, and was shaken but unhurt. King Deygan had been struck on the chest but was only bruised, saved from worse injury by the leather tunic he wore under his robes. Ayriene gave Marklin a sedative to help calm his nerves, and as an afterthought made one up for the other two boys as well.
News came that the attackers had been apprehended and were in the castle prisons. Ayriene would not have been surprised if Deygan had ordered them hanged there and then, such a rage gripped him. Five men, all Chesammos, the soldiers said: one injured, but the others fit to stand interrogation, should His Majesty want them put to the question. The rebellion was spreading, then, if they felt confident enough to attack the king in his own city.
It all seemed routine at that stage. The injuries were healed and the boys given a herb tea to settle them; she had no need of Sylas. But when, inexplicably, Jaevan and Rannon showed other symptoms, she had a messenger sent to summon him to the king’s chambers. When the messenger returned to say there was no sign of him in the castle—that he had been seen since leaving for the procession—she was surprised but not concerned. Maybe he had been in the lower part of the city and was unaware of the attack on the king’s party. Or had overcome his usual preference for solitude and found some part of the city where celebrations and carousing were in full swing.
Now she really needed him, and no one had seen him for hours. Damn the man! Where had he gone off to?
Rannon and Jaevan both developed a fever shortly after. Some sort of infection from their wounds was possible, certainly, but she would not have expected it so soon. Rannon had the more delicate constitution so she concentrated on the younger prince first, linking with her kye to try to support his healing. No matter what she did, she could
not bring the fever down, and when Rannon and Jaevan were both bathed in sweat, she had to resort to the more traditional method of sponging them with cold flannels. King Deygan called in a servant to assist. Sylas was still nowhere to be found.
Soon, Prince Rannon moaned and thrashed in his fever. Bruises formed on his chalk-white skin where no stone had struck him. Ayriene had to admit she was baffled. If she had had time to collect her thoughts then maybe she could have made sense of it, but two royal princes growing sicker by the minute under her care left little time for anything but keeping them alive.
The king’s apartments became a sick-room. Prince Marklin retired to his own room with a nurse to keep him out of the way. Ayriene was considering a second dose of sedative for the boys when a knock came at the door.
“Who is it?” Deygan barked.
Ayriene did not raise her eyes from Rannon. The child was failing. His skin was almost entirely covered with bruises, and they were spreading fast. His heart beat fast but more faintly by the minute. She could help steady a failing heart, but the boy’s body was collapsing and she could do little more for him. And Jaevan was fading too, despite his greater strength. It would not be long before Ayriene would have to choose to abandon Rannon to help Jaevan. As crown prince, his needs took priority, but it broke her heart to leave Rannon to die. Where in the Creator’s deepest hell was Sylas? There was little enough he could do, if a healer talent was failing, but his absence was inexcusable.
“Beg pardon, Your Majesty. Madam healer,” a nervous-looking servant said. “This man would not be put off, Sire. Says he knows what is wrong with the young prince.” She cast a quick look at Jaevan, his face slick with sweat, tossing and moaning and trying to shake off the blanket that Ayriene had pulled up around his shoulders.
“And is my son the talk of the castle now?” Deygan shouted. “Who has been gossiping? Was it you? I’ll have your back striped for you if it was.”
“No, Sire, no,” she said, eyes darting from Deygan to Jaevan and back. “I swear I said not a word to anyone. But he came here saying it was poison, Sire. I thought maybe the lady healer should hear him, in case it was important.”
“Send him in,” said Ayriene, before Deygan could say anything. She would listen to anyone who had a hint of what was wrong with the boys.
He was an unsavoury looking man, with battered leather jerkin and equally battered boots, and he smelled of sweat and old food and latrines. His hair was close-cropped, and by instinct she noted the broken veins on his face. He drank too much, like as not, and limped like one who was afflicted with gout.
“Your Majesty. My lady,” he said gruffly. “There is a man in the cells claims to know her ladyship.” Ayriene was anything but a lady, but few knew how to address changers, and giving her a rank to which she was not entitled was safer than giving offence.
“In the cells?” Ayriene could not think who she might know who had been consigned there, or how he might have any inkling that Jaevan was ill, or what ailed him.
“Aye, m’lady. Brought here with the Chesammos as attacked His Majesty, he was. He says he’s a changer and…” he looked uncertainly at Deygan, “he did change. Just for a few moments, like, but he did it, by the Creator. He really did.”
“Sylas?” she breathed.
“Aye, m’lady, that was the name he gave. There was poison on the stones they threw, he says. He said I must be sure and say to you that it was esteia.”
“Esteia?” Ayriene said, scrabbling for her herbal. It was not a name she was familiar with, but Sylas had all but memorised the tome. She would not be surprised if he now knew more plants than she. “Is he still in the cells?”
The man nodded, seeming unsure if he should bow when spoken to, and settling for ducking a nervous half bow to each of them when addressed. “My lady, he is tending two of the men what were brought in. One was hurt when they were captured and one has some sort of fever, by the looks. Yon changer man says he is innocent, Sire. But he was arrested along with the others. He didn’t have a bag of stones as they did, right enough, but he did have a sling and—” His eyes dropped and his battered boots shuffled uncomfortably, smearing the Creator knew what onto the carpet. “He said he wasn’t one of them, Sire, and if her ladyship knows him then maybe he was picked up by accident, like.”
“No stink without shit,” Deygan said darkly. Ayriene knew Deygan did not like Sylas being in the castle. It was no accident that there were no Chesammos in Deygan’s household, and Deygan heartily disapproved of his eldest son’s more liberal approach.
For a moment Ayriene wondered if Sylas might have sought out the rebels, remembering his reaction to the Namopaia raid. Just a moment, then dismissed. He would not do anything to harm Jaevan. And if he had—well, she would meet that possibility later. Right now, she needed him.
“If you want me to save your sons, I need my apprentice here. If he is right, and the Creator knows I think the boy is onto something, then I can keep the princes stable in their present condition a little while longer. If it is this poison, as he claims, then he needs to find an antidote and make it up.” Her herbal had no mention of esteia, far less an antidote, but she would not admit that in Deygan’s presence. It could be Sylas knew it by a local name.
“Can’t someone else do it? Under your instruction?” Deygan’s white eyebrows drew together in suspicion.
“Does anyone in your household know how to make up an infusion, Sire? And if they do, can they recognise medicinal plants reliably? If they bring back the wrong one they will waste valuable time, or worse, make the princes sicker. Sire, your sons’ lives are at stake. I need you to trust me and let me have my apprentice, even though he is Chesammos.”
The king harumphed and stroked his beard. “Very well, then. But he will be your responsibility. There will be guards on the door and in the room, and if he lays a finger on any of my sons I’ll have him killed without question.”
“Agreed.” She turned to the guard. “If there is an antidote nearby, tell him to fetch it. If not, bring him straight here. And hurry, man. We have little time.”
She turned her attention back to the princes. Jaevan held his own, but she was losing Rannon. Even if Sylas knew the antidote and could find it quickly she was afraid it would be too late for the younger boy. She very much feared Deygan would be short an heir by nightfall.
Chapter 23
Sylas burst through the door a few minutes later, not stopping to consider that the room he entered in such an unseemly fashion formed part of King Deygan’s personal apartments. He registered the silver-haired man almost too late to skid to a halt and effect a rushed and hardly adequate bow.
“Your Majesty,” he acknowledged the king, who watched him with narrowed eyes and no attempt to disguise his contempt. “Mistress, I think I know what ails the princes.” On the way up the guard had confirmed his suspicions that two of the boys had been hit and were now sick, and that the healer didn’t seem to be making them any better. His eyes flickered to Jaevan, then to Rannon. He gasped at the sight of the younger boy, and Ayriene moved smoothly to block the child from his sight.
“Esteia, the man said. Do you know of an antidote?”
“Yes, Mistress.” If it is not too late. That thought rose unbidden in his head. Jaevan had bruising on his face, but it didn’t seem to have spread beyond his neck and shoulder. Rannon was a mass of bruises, his torso almost completely purple. “Mistress, when the bruising has spread so far—”
She cut him off. “Do you know where to find it?”
“It grows near the esteia. I’d know where to find it in the desert, but here… I would not know where to find it in Banunis, Mistress.”
“Then you must fly,” she said.
His jaw dropped.
“Me? But I can’t change.”
“The jailer said you changed in the cell. Wa
s he lying?”
He hesitated. He had changed back in seconds, but he had changed, there was no doubt about that. “No, Mistress. But you can change better and fly faster than me.”
“And the time you would waste drawing the plant for me would use up any time I gained. To say nothing of the risk that I might bring back the wrong plant, even with a drawing.”
First flight was always accompanied. There was too much risk of an untried changer losing their bearings and flying beyond the reach of the aiea-bar, or overflying themselves and dying of exhaustion, or becoming prey to one of the real hawks that lived on the island. “Will you come with me?” He knew what the answer would be.
“I cannot leave the princes, Sylas. I am giving them what strength I can through the aiea-dera. Without that, they might succumb to the poison so fast that even an antidote would not help them.”
He had given the jailer his linandra bead, as promised, but now had the sinking feeling that the bead might have been the key to his changing. How could he admit to Ayriene that the price of his freedom had been her gift to him?
“Sylas?” When she spoke, he realised he had fallen into thought. “I can pipe for you.”
“I… I don’t know if I can do it again. In the prison I was angry and desperate and…” And he had had the linandra.
“Look at Jaevan, and ask yourself if you are desperate enough.”
His heart bled to see his friend. The boy dozed fitfully, the fever making him restless and pale as death around the blotches that marred his fair skin. “How would I carry it?”
She rummaged in her pack and handed him a pouch. “This is what changers use to carry things in bird form. You’d need to be careful not to stretch yourself, but leaves—leaves?” She raised an eyebrow enquiringly and he nodded confirmation. “Leaves wouldn’t weigh too much. You should be safe enough carrying them back.” Ayriene grasped his wrist. “I know you’ve got it into your head that you can’t change and you’re probably nervous about flying alone, and I don’t blame you. But I wouldn’t ask it of you if I didn’t think you could do it. Will you try?”