Sing the Four Quarters

by Tanya Huff

  * * * *

  … life is forfeit…

  … at noon…

  This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real. It was a long, incredibly involved dream. He’d wake up, just as the ax came down, sweating, panting, and swearing he’d never touch Zofka’s mead again.

  The short length of chain rattled as Pjerin shifted position, the weight dragging at his wrist. Fist clenched, he jerked his arm forward, the iron links snapping taut between the manacle and the wall. He wouldn’t give his word that he’d not try to escape when they’d brought him back to his cell. It had taken three of them to secure him.

  This was no dream. The pain in wrist, ribs, heart was too real. The terror was too real. The anger was too real.

  He wasn’t ready to die.

  His arm dropped back to his side, the chain collapsing in on itself. Dying meant never seeing Gerek again. Right now, more than anything, he wanted to hold his son. Wanted to hear him laugh. It wasn’t fair that he should lose all the years they could have had together. He wondered how long it would take Gerek to forget him. Why would he want to remember a father who’d died a traitor’s death?

  Exhaustion kept him from howling in frustration and rage. Tears prickled against the inside of his lids, spilled over, and burned paths down both cheeks. Perhaps he should have begged a private audience with the king, told him what the bards had done, warned him that his kingdom was being eaten away from within. But then, why would he listen?

  It was impossible to lie under Command.

  And I’ll pitch myself right out of the Circle before I beg for anything.

  Teeth clenched, Pjerin scrubbed at his face with his free hand. At least when they told Gerek of his death, they’d have to tell him that his father died bravely.

  A sound at the door of his cell snapped his head around. It was still the middle of the night, barely hours into the new day; what did they want with him now? He heard the bar drawn back, then the door slowly opened.

  To his surprise, the corridor was as dark as the cell.

  “Who’s there?” His hoarse whisper sounded unnaturally loud and, rather than an answer, it brought movement. Someone slipped inside, pulled the door shut behind them, and remained standing just over the threshold.

  “Pjerin …?”

  It was a woman, the voice vaguely familiar.

  “It’s Annice.”

  Fury flung him to his feet, heart beating with such force he could hardly breathe around it. Stopped short by the chain before he could close his hands about her throat and squeeze the truth out of her, he tossed his hair back off his face and closed his fists on air instead. “Come to gloat, have you?” he asked, amazed at how restrained he sounded.

  Annice frowned. She’d expected anger—it was the active side of despair—but she couldn’t understand why it was directed at her. “I came because I needed to talk to you.”

  “Why?” Was this the payoff, then? Had she come to offer him his life in return for … for what? He still couldn’t understand what game the bards were playing, nor was he willing to play along. They’d manipulated him as far as they were going to. I’ll die first.

  “Because … well, because …” The baby rolled and kicked. She traced the motion with her fingertips and decided to just say it. “Because I don’t believe you betrayed anything.”

  Pjerin stared into the darkness and then he started to laugh.

  It was a wild, almost vicious noise and Annice wanted to Command him to stop but, listening to the pain and fear that ran beneath it, she waited silently instead. The guards were at the far end of the hall on the other side of an iron-banded door and, with the cell door pulled closed as well, they wouldn’t hear.

  And considering the cells they guarded, they’d probably heard worse.

  Staggering back, Pjerin sank down on the bench and buried his head in his hands. “You don’t believe I did it?” he managed to choke out at last. “Center it, that’s priceless.”

  This wasn’t going at all the way Annice had imagined. “What are you talking about?”

  He lifted his head and smiled. They thought he’d be panicking by now, ready to do anything to avoid the block. They didn’t know he was onto them. “When did you do it, Annice? When did you put the words into my head? Afterward, when I was sleeping? Or during, when I was concentrating on other things?”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again, unable to find the words to answer him.

  Leaning back against the wall, Pjerin wished he could see her face. “You can’t lie under Command,” he said mockingly. “Did you think I’d believe your lies over my own memory? That I wouldn’t figure out what you’d done?”

  “What I’d done?” Annice repeated. “Pjerin, I don’t understand.”

  Had she not been a bard, he would have believed her. But a bard could easily layer that kind of confusion onto her voice. “What I would like to know,” he continued, “is why you’re doing all this. Lay your cards on the table so I can tell you to stuff them up your ass.”

  He’d taken a number of blows to the head on the way in from the mountains—the bruising she’d seen stood testimony to that—perhaps one of them had shaken his brain loose. “You think that I put those words into your head? That I did something to you so that you’d admit to treason? That I want you dead?”

  It was Pjerin’s turn to frown at an unexpected response. “You. The bards. What difference does it make?”

  Annice tried to drag her thoughts around into some kind of order. “You think the bards did this to you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Why?”

  “Who else could wander through a man’s mind and change his thoughts?” His lip curled. “It’s just a small step from Command, isn’t it?”

  Forcing herself to consider it objectively, she supposed it was, although she’d never heard of the step being taken. “But why?” she repeated.

  “How should I know!” Pjerin slammed his free palm down on the bench. “You tell me; you’re the storyteller.”

  “All right.” Annice took a deep breath. “You keep insisting that you’re innocent even though you know that it’s impossible to lie under Command. This makes you either so stupidly arrogant that you can’t believe you’ve been found out—which, by the way, is what everyone else seems to think—or …” Or he didn’t actually do it, and it was possible to lie under Command and one of the foundations of the kingdom had just been swept to sea. Annice suddenly understood why no one else found it difficult to reconcile Pjerin’s personality with what he was accused of doing. The consequences of believing him innocent were just too immense to deal with.

  “Or?” Pjerin prodded stiffly. So everyone thought him stupidly arrogant. Well, he didn’t give a rat’s ass for what everyone thought.

  “Or …” If she said it, then she made it possible. If she didn’t say it, she had no reason to be here and she might as well let him die in peace. “Or, somehow, you were made to lie under Command.”

  “So you admit it?”

  “I’m not admitting anything!” He was beginning to make her angry. “Can we look at this logically? Please?” When he made no answer to her sarcastic plea, she continued. “Someone changed what you think of as the truth. Because we do similar sorts of things, it could have been a bard. But I’m the only bard who’s been near you in over a year and I know I didn’t do it.”

  He snorted, the sound an eloquent expression of disbelief. “Easy to say.”

  Annice jerked forward a step; a pointless movement in the complete darkness, but she couldn’t stay still. “Look, asshole,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I’m willing to believe you didn’t do it. I’m willing to believe something or someone made you lie under Command. But unless you start meeting me halfway, and considering the possibility that I had nothing to do with it, I’m out of here and you can … well, you can die. Do I make myself clear?”

  Flung across the cell at him, the words held no bardic artifice. Pjerin shook his head, confused and

unable to hold onto his certainty. “But if it wasn’t you, then it wasn’t a bard. Then who …?”

  “Obviously someone who wants you dead.” She wiped damp palms on the thighs of her breeches. It seemed that she no longer had any doubts. And that left only one logical action. “I’d ask who you’ve pissed off lately, but there isn’t time for the list if we’re going to get you out of the city before dawn.”

  “What?”

  Annice sighed and spoke very slowly. “I don’t believe you did it. Therefore, I can’t just let you die. So I’m going to get you out of here. Sit quietly for a minute, I’ll be right back.” She groped behind her for the edge of the door, pushed it open, and reached around the doorframe.

  Pjerin heard the door open and was suddenly terrified she’d left. “What are you doing?”

  She turned her head toward him just long enough to snap, “Shut up!” then continued her search. If they’ve moved it … But they hadn’t. She pulled the door closed again. “I was just getting the key to the manacle.”

  “Oh.” This was all happening just a little too fast. A very short time ago, he’d been standing alone against the world, preparing himself for death. Now, all of a sudden, the person he’d thought responsible had turned up to offer him life. “And I suppose they leave the key hanging on a hook just outside the door?”

  “That’s right.” Holding it tightly in her right hand, she stretched out her left and slid her feet across the floor. The last thing she wanted to do was to bump into Pjerin and have him jump to conclusions about the child she carried. “No reason why they shouldn’t. You can’t get to it.”

  That made sense. At least it made as much sense as anything else that had happened lately. “Annice, why didn’t you believe I did it? Because of the night we spent together?”

  She snorted, brushed her reaching fingers against his head, and quickly sidestepped to the back wall of the cell. “Don’t flatter yourself, although I suppose that was part of it.” From the ring, she found the chain and began tracing it to his wrist. “Don’t move. This is going to be hard enough in the dark.” Where was Tadeus when she needed him. “I took my memory of the man you were and I held it up against the man you appeared to be under Command and they didn’t match.”

  “But all your training says that the man under Command is the true man.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Pjerin found himself honestly amused for the first time since he’d seen the distant group of travelers working their way up the valley. “And they’re calling me stupidly arrogant.”

  The key turned with a metallic snick and the manacle fell open. Annice managed to snag it before it crashed into the floor, closed it again, and tucked it up into the corner. She rose awkwardly to her feet and moved away. “Come on. We’re running out of time.”

  Pjerin stood, rubbing his wrist. “Come on where? Do we just waltz out past the guards? Are you going to Command them to look the other way?”

  “There’s a secret passageway between the last two cells in this row.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a bard. We know everything.”

  Partway to the door, Pjerin stopped dead. “You’ll forgive me if I’m suspicious but, all things considered, I think I have reason. I want a real answer.”

  “You’re getting your life …”

  “I want a real answer.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I’m tired of lies!”

  “You’d rather die?”

  “I’d rather know the truth!”

  “You want the truth?” Annice threw her hands in the air and raked the cell with a glare she wished Pjerin could see. “I know where the passage is because I grew up in the palace. Surely you’ve heard the song of the Princess-Bard? All twenty-seven unenclosed verses of it? Now, can we go?”

  He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but that wasn’t it. “You’re King Theron’s youngest sister? Then why didn’t you just go to him when …”

  “Look, we don’t talk, okay?”

  “Not even for this?”

  “I have my reasons. Can we discuss them later? Or would you rather discuss it with him on your way to the block?”

  He felt warm fingers close around his and pull him forward. Still half expecting a trap, he stepped out of the cell. A glimmer of light showed under the door at the far end of the corridor, but other than that, the darkness remained absolute. His skin crawled as he realized that a hundred guards could be standing a sword’s length away and he’d never know. An imperious hand pressed him up against the wall and left him there. Straining pointlessly to see, he heard the door close and the bar slide back across it followed by the faint chime of metal against stone as Annice—Annice, the king’s youngest sister. This is getting stranger by the moment.—replaced the key. Then the fingers found his again and he followed their direction down the hall.

  This has all the elements of one terrific song. Pulling Pjerin along behind her, Annice swept the wall with her free hand, searching for the entrance to the secret passage that she’d left slightly ajar. Let’s just hope I survive long enough to sing it. She bit her lip as the baby kicked an enthusiastic endorsement. What am I going to tell him about …? At that moment, she stubbed her fingers on the protruding lip of stone and gratefully dropped the thought for more immediate concerns.

  Tucking Pjerin up against the wall once more, she forced the block of stone around on stiff pivots. When she’d opened it originally, she’d been amazed that the tortured rasp hadn’t brought the guards running. This time, she was only surprised that they hadn’t yet responded to the deafening pounding of her heart, filling the corridor like the beat of a kettle drum. A quick swipe behind her found Pjerin’s sleeve. She grabbed at the cloth, dragged him forward and, at the last instant before shoving him through the opening, reached up and yanked his head down—unfortunately, given the soft impact of flesh against stone, not quite far enough.

  Biting back a curse, Pjerin shook himself free of her grip and tried the entrance again, this time guiding himself under the low lintel. He was relieved to find he could straighten once he was actually in the passageway and, rubbing at the rising lump on his forehead, he wondered how much longer they were going to spend in the dark. He took four paces, then paused, listening to Annice fight the block of stone back into place.

  King Theron’s sister. He’d heard the song about the Princess-Bard, years ago, and couldn’t remember much of it; something romantic and asinine about her becoming a bard in spite of royal opposition. She seems to be making a habit of defying the king.

  In spite of the darkness, he knew the moment the passageway was secure. The walls, already barely clearing his shoulders, began to close in. The air grew thicker and his breathing sounded loud in his ears.

  “Well?” he whispered.

  “Well what?”

  “What about a light?”

  Annice picked the lantern down off the ledge where she’d set it for safekeeping and thought about denying she had it with her. Unfortunately, they’d never find their way out in the dark. Because there wasn’t anything else she could do, she fumbled for flint and steel, unwilling to risk fire not answering her Song.

  Pjerin closed his eyes as the lantern flared, reasonably certain that she hadn’t tried to blind him on purpose. Turning his back to the flame, he opened them a crack, then, with most of the light blocked by his body, opened them the rest of the way. Cobwebs hung like the ghosts of tapestries against the walls, torn and tattered by Annice’s earlier passage. He glanced down at his shoulders, saw he already wore the life’s work of several spiders and decided not to bother brushing them clean. Better to unwrap them, like a winding sheet, when freedom was finally achieved.

  “All right.” Pjerin pivoted back around to face her. “Where to n …” It took a moment for the full implications of what he saw to sink in.

  “I came because I needed to talk to you. I’m willing to believe you didn’t do it. I’m willing to believe something or someone made you lie under Bardic Command.”

  “But all your training says that the man under Bardic Command is the true man.”

  “I can’t just let you die.”

  He hadn’t asked her why. Why did she believe in him when everything she should believe in said he was guilty? He was suddenly afraid he knew the answer. It was the first detail in a long time that made perfect sense.

  “Annice, is … I mean, you’re … and we …” This was ridiculous. He wasn’t some teenager presented with the evidence of a Second Quarter Festival too enthusiastically enjoyed. “Am I the father?”

  Annice watched emotions rise and fade and rise again on Pjerin’s face as he realized and reacted to her pregnancy. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking—that everything she’d done, everything she believed about him had its root in the paternity of her child. As though my womb’s making decisions for me. All that matters is that he’s the father. What an ego. She didn’t have to tell him. She knew she could make him accept a lie.

  “Annice. Am I the father?”

  “Yes.” As the word left her mouth she knew for that instant how Pjerin had felt listening to himself speaking without conscious control under Command. When did I decide to tell him?

  He nodded grimly. “This changes everything.”

  Annice snapped her fingers, lifting his gaze up off her belly. “How many times did they hit you on the head?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This changes nothing.”

  “You’re carrying my child.”

  “You’re due to die at noon.” She thrust her chin toward him, daring him to dispute her. “I’d like to at least have you out of the palace by then. Turn around and start walking.”

  Caught up in the discovery of a new life, he’d forgotten that he was due to lose his own. He frowned as the thought snagged on a memory. “… and if you dare a new life/then you’re doomed to lose your own …” Why were bits of bad doggerel suddenly chasing themselves around in his head? And then he remembered. “Does His Majesty know about this?”

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