by Tanya Huff
“Gerek …”
Pjerin’s raised hand cut off Rozyte’s protest. “How did he react to your Aunt Olina,” he asked.
Gerek beamed. He knew his papa would understand. “Just exactly the same.”
“Come here.”
The boy ran to his father’s side and clambered up onto the bench looking pleased with himself.
“Since you don’t seem to be sleeping anyway,” Pjerin told him, “and since you apparently kept a pretty close eye on things while I was gone, you might as well join the council.”
“Your Grace! He’s only a child!” Rozyte’s lips drew into a tight, disapproving line. She had insisted from the moment she’d been awakened with the news that her and Sarline’s two children—both twice Gerek’s age—be left strictly out of the night’s deliberations.
“For a time, he was the seventh Duc of Ohrid. This concerns him more than any of us save myself. And I am getting into that keep tonight.” Pjerin’s tone settled the matter. “The only question is how.”
“What about the path through the thornbushes Gerek used when he ran away?” Bohdan wondered.
Gerek shook his head. “Papa’s too big. I’m almost too big.”
“What about secret passageways?” Annice demanded, ripping a crust of bread into crumbs. “The palace is full of them.”
Bohdan almost smiled. “Unfortunately, my dear, we are sadly deficient in secret passageways. A regrettable lack of foresight on the part of the first duc.”
“What about the drain?” Gerek asked. “That’s sort of like a secret passageway. ’Cept it’s not secret.”
Pjerin turned and stared at his son. “Have you been playing near the drain?”
The question merited consideration. “Not ’zactly.”
“What does not exactly mean?”
“I wasn’t playing.” He picked at a loose thread on the edge of his tunic. “I was looking.”
“What did I tell you about that area?”
Gerek sighed deeply. “Not to go near it ’cause it’s dangerous and yucky and maybe I could get drowned. But, Papa …” His small face grew serious as he fearlessly met his father’s scowl. “I was the duc. And you said a duc’s gotta know every bit of his land and stuff.”
Pjerin gripped his son’s chin between thumb and forefinger. “You are no longer the duc. Do you understand?”
The small chest heaved with the force of a second sigh. “Yes, Papa.”
“So, what about the drain?” Annice prompted. “We have to get to Stasya, Pjerin. We have to get to her as soon as we can.”
“Not that way. The drain exits under the road in full view of the gatetower. If Olina has someone on watch, we couldn’t get to it without being seen.”
“Even at night?”
“It wouldn’t matter, Annice. They’d hear you trying to get in. There’s a heavy iron grille and it’s bolted right into the mountain.”
“The third duc’s stonemason and smith installed it together,” Bohdan explained. “It would take a stonemason at least to free it.”
“Or a kigh,” Annice said pointedly.
“Earth and stone are not the same thing.”
“They are eventually. If that grille has been in place since the third Duc, it’s begun to wear. I can Sing it loose.” She twisted around and glanced at the shuttered window, trying to judge how much of the night remained. Stasya had been six days in that pit. She wouldn’t leave her there one day longer.
“Your Grace, while I recognize the necessity of your retaking the keep and rescuing the young bard, may I remind you that the drains are barely four feet around. You’ll have to crawl up a steady slope through debris that will be unpleasant at best. And don’t forget, you’re wounded, without full use of both arms. Why not just show yourself to the people? Surely when they see you’re alive …”
“Some of them may try to remedy the situation.” Pjerin stood, lifting the makeshift sling over his head and tossing it down onto the table. “We don’t know who, besides Lukas, Olina has corrupted. Gerek, I want you to stay here.” Gerek began to protest but cut it off at his father’s expression. “Annice, once you’ve freed the grille, can you make it back here without being seen?”
She stood as well. “I’m going in with you, Pjerin. After Stasya’s out of the hole, you can be a hero on your own.”
“No. You’re not taking the baby into the drains. Do you realize what you’d be climbing through?”
“Nothing will touch the baby. I’ll breathe through a damp cloth if it makes you happy, but I’m going with you.”
“I won’t allow it.”
“You don’t get in without me.”
He glowered at her. “We haven’t time to argue …”
“Then let’s not.”
They left the packs. Pjerin slung the Ducal sword across his back and Annice slid her flute case into the deep pocket of her overdress. As they slipped out into the night—Gerek glowering with Bohdan’s hands clamped firmly on his shoulders—Sarline’s hand flicked out in the sign against the kigh.
* * * *
“Well?” Pjerin demanded, the force of his whisper lifting the hair around Annice’s ear. “Can the kigh get it off.”
Perched carefully on a shelf of kigh above the gully’s highwater mark, Annice gave the grille another shake. While brute force might be able to bash the heavy iron free, it would be, as Pjerin had said, impossible to work quietly. As to whether the kigh could manage…
Fortunately, although the keep could hold the whole village in need, not many people actually lived within its walls and the area around the drain stank less than she’d feared. On the other hand, it still stank. Annice sucked a shallow breath through her teeth and very softly Sang a question to one of her attendant kigh.
“It’s attracting their attention that takes the volume,” she’d murmured to Pjerin as they’d hurried through the village. “And right at the moment, attracting their attention is hardly something I have to worry about.”
The squat brown body with its pendulous breasts and bulge of belly disappeared and tiny gray figures—identical in every respect to the first kigh save in color and size—flickered beside each of the bolts.
Frowning, Annice pitched her voice for Pjerin’s ears alone. “They can do it, but it’s going to take a while.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.” She rubbed her fingertips over the exposed bones of the mountain. Stasya? Do you know I’m here? “Apparently, no one’s ever tried to influence nascent earth kigh before. I’ll have to keep Singing in order to keep pulling them from the stone.”
“Can you Sing so they don’t hear you in the keep?”
Annice looked up, past the drain, over the lip of the gully to where the crenellation on the gate tower appeared like dark teeth against the stars. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
The Song was so quietly insistent that Pjerin felt almost compelled to drive his fingers into the rock and yank the bolts free himself. He locked his hands together and tried to listen for any sign they were discovered—tried not to listen to the Song.
Stone became earth, very, very slowly.
Pjerin waited as patiently as he could, glancing only occasionally toward the east where the bulk of the mountains hid the approaching dawn. It wasn’t until the Song grew both softer and deeper that he realized that the coming of the sun was not the only thing that could defeat them.
Only three days before, Annice had Sung her voice to a rasping croak. It couldn’t have fully healed. He thought about stopping her, then he thought about what would happen if Olina closed off the keep with him still outside, and he let her Sing on.
Annice could feel her voice sliding from her control as the pain became harder to ignore. She struggled to hold the Song, allowing it to drift into a lower key, whispering the same request over and over. Stasya had been in that pit for six days. There would not be a seventh. Finally, the whisper faded and the kigh, taller and darker than when she began
The sky behind the mountains had lightened to a hazy blue-gray.
Wrapping her hands around one of the heavy iron bars, Annice yanked at it with all her strength. Was that movement or had her imagination supplied what she so desperately desired? Adjusting her grip, she yanked again. It was movement, definitely movement. The bolts were loose but still a long way from free.
Turning to explain, she saw the expression on Pjerin’s face and silently moved out of his way.
Bracing his feet on opposite sides of the pungent mud in the center of the gully, Pjerin threw his weight against the grille. Flakes of rust dug into his palms. The bolts rocked in their anchorage, but held.
Breath hissing through his teeth, he continued to pull. The veins stood out on his forearms, muscles knotted across his back. The new tissue closing the hole the crossbow bolt had left in his shoulder tore and it felt as though hot knives were twisting in the wound. He bit off the cry of pain, couldn’t stop the sudden blurring of his vision.
Then over the roar of blood in his ears he heard a single low note throb in the stone.
The grille began to shake.
Slowly, the bolts began to pull free.
One inch. Two. A handbreadth.
Panting, Pjerin collapsed against the bars, drenched in sweat, muscles trembling. Forehead resting on his arm, he managed to turn in time to see Annice break down her flute and slip it back into its case. “I thought,” he gasped, “that you had … to Sing the … kigh.”
“You do.” He had to strain to hear her. “But the right notes will call them.” She swallowed, wincing as the motion wrenched abraded flesh. “I thought calling them back might make room around the bolts.”
“Seems you were right.” Grunting with pain, he straightened, shifted his stance, and made ready to pull again. A handbreadth’s worth of space between the grille and the mountain would do them no good at all.
“Pjerin?” She poked at one sweat damp arm. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to use a lever now?”
He looked at the grille—at the space between the grille and the mountain—and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. “Yes,” he sighed, “it would.”
Although the valley still lay in the mountain’s shadow, a cock had already crowed in the village when the grille finally slid down to rest in the mud.
Pjerin squared his shoulders and turned to face the greater challenge.
“It’s all right,” Annice told him, the stiff line of her back clearly stating how little she liked what she was forced to admit. “I’m not going with you. Not,” she added hoarsely, “because of a few bad smells.” She chopped a gesture at the dark hole. “I can’t bend. And what’s more, there’s too much of me sticking out—I couldn’t climb up into the keep at the end. Happy?”
He was.
Her hand came up to hold her throat, as though to lend strength to her voice. “Swear to me you’ll get Stasya out first.”
“Annice, if Olina …”
“Swear!”
He could see whites showing all around her eyes and her palms pressed against his arm were far too hot. “Annice, the baby …”
“Swear!”
“All right! I swear.” She took a deep breath and Pjerin watched, relieved as she calmed. “If I go up the laundry drain, I can get to the cellars without being seen. I’ll free Stasya and then take care of Olina.”
“And Lukas?”
“Without Olina, Lukas is nothing.” He pulled himself up into the drain. “Will you be able to get back to Bohdan?”
She nodded. “Be careful.”
“Don’t worry.”
As he disappeared into the darkness, she closed her eyes and murmured, “Soon, Stas. Soon.”
Although masking shadows grew fewer with every step, Annice made little effort to hide while returning to Rozyte’s house. Without Pjerin, she was completely unrecognizable as the bard who’d visited the keep back in Third Quarter. Just another pregnant woman waddling about on business of her own.
The ache in her temples finally forced her to unclench her jaw. Pjerin had given his word. Stasya would soon be free. But what did Pjerin know about bards? Stasya needed her and here she stood, helpless on the sidelines. It made no difference that her own somewhat latent good judgment had placed her there or that honesty and near exhaustion combined forced her to recognize that she needed to lie down.
Then she saw the small basket of potatoes tucked up against a low stone wall.
Pjerin couldn’t just walk in the front gate of the keep. But nothing said she couldn’t.
Just another pregnant woman waddling about on business of her own … We’ll look like a villager, delivering something to the kitchens, baby. I can’t be the only person in Ohrid shaped like a gourd.
With the village coming awake, she had no time for deliberation. Any hesitation and this chance would be lost.
Stasya’s going to need me. I can’t not be there.
Already sprouting, the potatoes had obviously been saved from last year’s harvest and, now that the ground had warmed, would probably be planted any day. Annice squatted and awkwardly stood again. A chicken, scratching in the garden, paused long enough to give her a stupidly superior stare, but no one else appeared to have seen. When this is over, I’ll see that these are returned, she promised silently.
With the basket balanced on one shoulder, screening her face from watchers on the walls of the keep, Annice picked her way onto the track and began the long curving climb up to the gates.
* * * *
Sarline quietly pulled the heavy wooden door closed behind her and shoved her feet into her clogs. It had taken her until dawn to come to a decision. Lying in the darkness beside a sleeping Rozyte, she’d weighed the alternatives.
Pjerin a’Stasiek was neither oathbreaker nor traitor, and he was their rightful duc.
But Pjerin a’Stasiek supported the dangerous belief that the kigh were enclosed in the Circle and he had fathered a child on a bard.
While Sarline by no means approved of everything that had allegedly been happening over the last two quarters, she could not allow the kigh to return to Ohrid in such strength.
Lukas a’Tynek was her cousin. As he was still steward of Ohrid, she’d give him the information she had and wash her hands of it.
* * * *
Bare feet making no sound against packed dirt, Gerek ran to the shelter of a building and peered out at his quarry. Sarline had thought he was asleep, but he’d seen her staring at him with her face all twisted. He’d been frightened, for she’d looked a bit like Lukas did and he knew now that Lukas was a bad man.
When she’d snuck out of the house, he’d got his bow and arrows from his papa’s pack and followed her.
Pushing his quiver back behind his hip, he dashed forward and ducked behind a garden wall as an early riser called out a greeting. Sarline answered without stopping.
Eyes narrowed in an unconscious imitation of his father’s glare, he watched her pass the last house and head up the track toward the keep. When the curve took her out of sight, he raced for the narrow twisting path under the thornbushes.
* * * *
Calves burning, Annice sagged against the cool stone of the gatetower. Buildings swam across her vision, then steadied into the solid black rock of the keep. She’d never wanted so desperately to sit down.
“You don’t look so good.”
Somehow, she managed to turn to face the owner of the voice.
Sandy brows drawn into a deep vee, he took the basket from her slack fingers and set it at her feet. “You shouldn’t be carrying stuff like this. Here, let … Hey! You’re not …”
As the realization she wasn’t who he thought replaced the concern in his eyes, Annice caught his gaze and snapped, “Go on with what you were doing.”
The young man shook his head. “Not until I get you where you’re going. You really don’t look like you should be walking around on your own. Are you Anezka’s sister? I heard she was visiting from Adjud.”
Annice knew she was staring at him and tried to stop. Her voice hadn’t been strong enough to carry the Command. Hand on her throat, she sank back against the wall, hoping she didn’t look as frightened as she felt. What if her voice was never strong enough again?
“You’re, uh, not … that is …”
She dropped her gaze to follow his line of sight and forced herself to think. The baby. He thought she was having the baby. “Uh, no. Not now. Soon.”
“Soon?” The word slid up an octave and shattered. “Look, you stay right here. I’m going to go get the midwife.” Before she could protest, he was gone, bounding down toward the village.
The baby twisted and Annice clutched at the curve of her belly. Not now, she pleaded silently. Not now.
Abandoning the potatoes, she moved as quickly as she could toward the laundry, hugging the shadows morning had left along the walls. Hang on, Stas. I’m coming.
* * * *
In another quarter when the rains hadn’t been so frequent and the overflow from the cisterns hadn’t regularly washed through the drains, it would have been worse. Knowing that didn’t help much. Pjerin tried not to think about what squashed beneath his boots or knees or hands, but he couldn’t stop breathing and every breath told him unmistakably where he was. The complete lack of light helped and when he began to pass the privy holes, he looked up, not down.
Fortunately, he’d stopped gagging although his ribs burned and his stomach was a tightly knotted ache. Without a healer, the shoulder wound would have to be cauterized to prevent infection.
Nice to have something to look forward to, he mused darkly.
He’d never thought of himself as having an overly active imagination, but he couldn’t banish the screams of soldiers from his mind—their scalded skin sloughing off their bodies as they drowned in boiling water. If they’d been seen as they freed the grille or Annice had been taken on her way back to Bohdan … Even now fires could be burning under the huge kettles in the laundry, the water steaming gently, Olina waiting for just the right moment to pour an agonizing death into the drains.
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