by Spurrier, Jo
‘She hasn’t been harmed,’ Isidro said. ‘No more than usual, in any case.’
Cam found his hand and gripped it, his fingers covered with ingrained grime and his nails split and splintered. ‘We have to get her out of there. I know what she did, but she doesn’t deserve this. They’re destroying her, Issey. We have to get her out.’
‘Cam, be still,’ Rhia said, catching his wrist and prying his fingers loose. ‘There will be time for that later. You are very ill: you must rest and be warm.’
Cam let Rhia tuck his hand away beneath the coat, but he didn’t shift his fevered gaze from Isidro’s face. ‘Promise me, Isidro, you have to promise.’
‘I promise,’ Isidro said. What else could he say?
It was morning by the time they made it back to camp, carrying Cam on a litter made from a pair of salmon-skin coats and two saplings. With furs and hot stones packed around him, he slept soundly. Rhia rarely looked away from him, but she assured Isidro he was not in grave danger. ‘He is ill, but not deathly so,’ she told him. ‘He knows he is safe now, and he can rest. You did the same, when we pulled you from the water.’
Since Isidro had given up his coat, he was thoroughly chilled by the time they returned to camp. He crawled into the blankets he shared with Delphine, saying he would only stay until he warmed up, but when she checked on him an hour later, he was sound asleep beneath a pile of furs.
Cam lay in a fever for the first day, but by evening he was able to drink a little broth and he then slept peacefully for the rest of the night.
By the following afternoon Cam was well enough to talk in brief snatches, and asked to see Isidro along with Mira and Ardamon. Rhia was already there when Isidro came in, frowning suspiciously at a vial of oily brown fluid. ‘This is a very noxious drug,’ she said to Cam. ‘Where on earth did you get it?’
‘Sirri gave it to me,’ Cam said, his voice still rough and his throat raw. ‘She got it from Kell’s medicine cabinet, that’s all I can tell you. Issey!’ Cam struggled to sit up when Isidro knelt beside the bed, grabbing him around the shoulders for a rough embrace. Once he lay down again, Isidro leant over to examine the vial in Rhia’s hand. ‘What is it?’
‘Kell used it to revive his victims when they passed out on the rack, but it’s poisonous if you take too much. Sirri gave it to me in case I was captured again. If it weren’t for that, Rhia, I’d’ve buried the wretched stuff when I realised it was making me sick.’
‘It poisons in small amounts, too,’ Rhia said with a scowl. ‘When did you last use it?’
‘A week ago. But if you hadn’t found me when you did I was going to have to take more just to stand up. I’m cursed glad I didn’t need to.’
Isidro looked down at the trampled spruce. ‘We’d have found you sooner if I’d been able to think clearly.’
‘Oh, what difference does a day make?’
At that point, Mira and Ardamon came in, and Cam fought his way upright again to wrap his arms around Mira, but after a moment he turned so pale that she and Rhia insisted he lie down again. ‘Mira, have you had any news of your intended? Osebian is dead — Sirri killed him and left him in the cell in my place.’
‘Fires Below!’ Ardamon said, and Mira clapped her hands over her mouth, making a sound that was half-laughter and half-sob.
‘Oh, by the Bright Sun herself,’ she said. ‘A month ago I’d have been delighted to hear it. But Cam, the clan broke the betrothal just before we left the Spire. Once Sierra and Rasten left they made a new alliance with the Akharians, granting them guides and safe passage through the Wolf Lands in return for peace with our people. The last time I heard from Mother she was speaking of arranging a marriage with one of their wretched generals or princes or something …’
‘Oh, by all the Gods,’ Cam snapped. ‘And here I thought I had such a fine gift to make up for all I put you through.’
‘So the king’s lost his heir and his right-hand man in one stroke,’ Ardamon said with a shake of his head. ‘How in the Black Sun’s name did she manage it?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Cam said. ‘And I don’t know the whole of it, but I’ll tell you what I can …’
When his second mount had died, weakened by hard riding and poisoned by the drug Sierra had given him, Cam had been too weak to go any further. He’d spent the last week foraging in between bouts of fever. By the time he finished recounting the tale, he’d talked himself hoarse and could only lie back and listen while Mira told him of all that had gone on in the Spire in his absence.
‘And what about Sierra?’ Ardamon asked at the end of it. ‘She just let you ride out on your own?’
‘She wouldn’t come,’ Cam said. ‘Issey, I’m sorry. I tried to take her away —’
Isidro shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t leave. Not until she’s seen it through to the end.’
‘Oh, now she’ll see something to the finish,’ Ardamon grumbled. ‘A pity she didn’t have such loyalty when she was still among friends.’
‘Ardamon,’ Mira said, warning him to silence with a shake of her head.
Cam closed his eyes with a sigh. ‘He should rest now,’ Rhia said. Mira and Ardamon both got up to leave, but as Isidro began to rise, Cam roused once more and waved him back. ‘Mira, will you come back in a little while? I need to talk to Isidro, and Rhia, you needn’t stay and hover. This won’t take long, I promise.’
Rhia frowned, but she couldn’t very well argue with such a clear request for privacy, and she filed out with the others.
Cam tried to sit up once more, but the effort made him so pale that he had to give up and lie still. ‘Ye Gods, I think I understand why you hated being told to rest all the time.’
‘It wasn’t the resting I hated,’ Isidro said, ‘but the need for it. You’ll be right again soon enough.’
‘I cursed well hope so,’ Cam said. ‘You’ve recovered, then, from what happened with Sirri?’
That depended, Isidro considered, on exactly what one meant by recovered, but he doubted that’s what Cam referred to. Instead, he said, ‘I slept for nearly a week, I’m told, but I’m fine now. Better, even. I’ve been studying mage-craft with Delphine — she’s been a great help to us in finding you.’
‘Rhia mentioned that,’ Cam said. ‘She said the pair of you had grown … close.’ He was hedging around something, and Isidro wondered if he were trying to find a way to say he disapproved.
Cam glanced away. ‘Have you had any word from Sierra?’
‘Not since the night you escaped. I get a few flashes now and then, but Rasten is watching her closely, and he punishes her if she slips.’ It took a great deal of effort to keep his voice steady.
Cam caught his gaze. ‘Issey, tell me … do you still care for her? After all she’s done, you’ve every right to curse her name. When I realised she was gone I was furious — I wanted to wring her blasted neck — but I shouldn’t have gone after her. She’s in a bad way, and I’m afraid I’ve only made things worse.’
‘I’m not sure they know she helped you escape,’ Isidro said. ‘Well, Rasten does, from what I’ve seen, but Kell and the king? Nothing …’ He broke off, searching for the right words. ‘Nothing they’ve done to her has been public enough, spectacular enough to be payback for freeing you.’
‘What does that mean?’ Cam asked. ‘Does it mean she’s safe? Or are we waiting for the other shoe to drop?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ Isidro said. ‘But I’m not sure it makes any difference either way. There’s nothing we can do to help her, Cam. She’s on her own now.’
Those words haunted Isidro while Cam spent the next few days wrapped in furs and fighting off illness.
The last days in the Spire now felt like a bad dream — he remembered the terror clearly, but everything else from that time seemed distant and unreal. The urge for escape that had tormented him and the driving lust for release from the pain of losing Cam were finally gone. It felt as though he’d emerged from a valley smothered with fog, climbed to
a ridge above the clouds to stand in the sunlight once again. Looking back, he was torn between shame for how he’d been overcome, and gratitude to those who had rallied around to pull him through.
For the moment all he wanted to do was breathe — to sit back and enjoy the sunlight and the sense that disaster had been turned aside.
But the lifting of one burden only made space for another. In all this time, during the long anxious hours in the Spire and then the desperate journey south, he’d been too busy holding himself together to address the fact that even if Cam were found alive, their situation would still be the same. They were still without allies or influence in the storm of politics and war brewing around them.
Since he’d woken to hear Cam’s fever had broken, and that with time and rest he would be fine, one thought rose again and again to the surface of his mind. What now?
No matter how he tried, he could not find an answer.
He had to leave the camp. He couldn’t concentrate with people talking and chattering all around him and the books offering a promise of distraction that nonetheless failed to keep the intruding thoughts at bay. So Isidro left the circle of tents, and climbed the steep hillside above them to burn off some of his pent-up, roiling energy.
At the crest of the hill was a jumble of rocks, blasted by the elements, with a few small plants clinging in crevices between the boulders. A chill wind was blowing, sharp enough to make his eyes water, but Isidro turned his back and looked to the west, trying to work out just where on the misty horizon the Greenstone fort lay, where the king’s men faced the Akharian legions across a flooded river.
It would be easier if he could somehow disconnect himself from Sierra, if he could cut her free like a fishing line hopelessly tangled beneath black water. It was not that he wanted to forget her and all they had shared in the brief months since midwinter … but she’d left him in an impossible situation. She chose him that night when she kissed him fresh from her bath in her tiny, warm tent. It had been her choice to leave, while he lay unconscious from the damage she had done. He owed her nothing. Any debts that might have accrued between them had been paid in full. Cam was safe, and Isidro had found a woman he admired and respected, and whom he could come to love. Sierra had blown into his life like a storm, a natural phenomenon that could no more be contained than a hurricane. Looking upon the situation objectively, it seemed that the wisest thing would be to watch her blow out again, to love her and let her go, since there was no way he could help her escape the nightmare that had overtaken her.
But he could not forget her. It seemed she was always in his mind, even when a dark and empty silence echoed through the connection Kell’s rituals had forged between them. He woke in the middle of the night with her name on his lips, his heart beating hard and his muscles clenched, ready for a fight. Just what he had dreamt about, he could never quite recall. He could not even tell if they were just dreams, or memories and sensations that had slipped through when her shields were weakened by exhaustion and pain.
What now? The question echoed again through his mind, and with a sigh Isidro tried to turn it into a problem that might have a solution. What did he want? His brother was safe, and the debilitating fear that had preyed on his mind for weeks was finally put to rest — he no longer had to think of how he would go on in a world without Cam, but what now? What did he want?
He wanted Sierra safe.
It was such a simple thought Isidro wondered that it had taken him so long to admit it. He wanted her safe and whole, healed of the damage Rasten and Kell had done. He was also, in some dark secret part of him that he could barely bring himself to acknowledge, afraid that he would no longer be able to touch her without bringing back the memories of what had happened to him: the torture and the rape and all the other degradations — not now that she had undergone the same treatment first hand. He was afraid they would both come away from this too badly damaged to go back to what they had had before, even if Sierra could be pulled out of this trap alive and sane.
And if it was possible, she could not thank him unless Kell and Rasten both lay dead. How could he possibly help bring that about? Even if he weren’t crippled, even if he were a warrior still, what use would he be? His talent was growing, but he would never have the strength to challenge Kell. Delphine had told him how the Akharian legions had brought down Blood-Mages in the past, and in every case it had taken dozens, even hundreds of mages, and often thousands of lives. Isidro wanted to help Sierra — and now that he admitted it to himself, he realised he wanted it as badly as he’d needed Cam to survive — but he was just one man. What could he hope to achieve in the face of the kind of power Sierra, Rasten and Kell could wield?
What now?
Isidro sat on the bare rock and scrubbed a hand across his eyes. I don’t know. It felt like a defeat.
‘Madame?’
Delphine looked up. She had been bent over her books for so long it took a real effort to focus on Rhia’s face.
They had begun using the honorific again at some point on the journey here. Delphine couldn’t recall exactly when the transition occurred, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. She’d hoped, at first, that helping these folk would help her be accepted, but instead the demonstration of her powers had only cemented her distance from them.
Perhaps it isn’t just the title causing that, Delphine thought glumly. She’d barely seen Isidro these last few days, and they’d exchanged only a handful of words. She couldn’t deny it any longer — he was pulling away from her.
She pushed the thought aside. ‘Madame Rhia?’ Delphine said. If they were going to pay such close attention to etiquette, then by the Good Goddess, so would she.
‘Cam wishes to speak with you,’ Rhia said.
A flutter of panic rippled through her chest. ‘Cam?’ Delphine said. ‘Why?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ Rhia said, but Delphine knew it was only a half-truth. Manners might well have prohibited Rhia from speaking of it, but Delphine was certain she knew perfectly well what was on Cam’s mind. ‘If your work cannot be interrupted, I can tell him you will call upon him at another time, but he is still sleeping a great deal, and he may not be able to receive visitors later.’
‘I wouldn’t keep a sick man waiting on my convenience,’ Delphine said. ‘Just let me pack these books away, and I’ll come at once.’
She had been working outside in the sunlight. It was bad for the paper and ink, but after the cold of winter and weeks of unrelenting darkness in the Spire, Delphine could not get enough of the sun’s warm rays on her face and hands.
Cam slept in an alcove attached to Mira’s tent; when Delphine entered he was sitting cross-legged on his pallet, dressed and freshly shaved. His green eyes were serious, and Delphine belatedly remembered that the man before her had been born a prince. If history had been kinder, he would right now be king of the northern lands.
‘Madame,’ he said, and with a wave of his hand he indicated a cushion set out for her. ‘Please, sit.’
Delphine did as he asked, surveying the tiny space. There was a small stove in one corner, and a pot of water simmered over the coals with a comforting hiss. Between the stove and the head of the bed one of the lantern-stones brought from the Spire had been hung from a tent-pole. Delphine had charged it and set it glowing that morning. Usually Isidro saw to that task, but he had left the camp early for one of his solitary walks. ‘I hope you’re feeling better,’ Delphine said once she had settled herself.
A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. Like Isidro, she supposed, he hated to have the weakness of the flesh pointed out to him.
‘Tolerable,’ he replied.
Delphine suppressed a sigh. She had been concerned for Cam, but truly, it was for Isidro’s sake. The brother Isidro spoke of did not quite match her impressions of the prince. To Cam, she had never been anything more than a captured enemy, and a dangerous one at that. He didn’t trust her: she could read it in his face.
‘I’m told you were
instrumental in helping my friends reach the ranges so quickly,’ Cam said. ‘It seems I am indebted to you, and I’m grateful for your help. I wish I had some means to reward you.’
Delphine felt her cheeks grow hot and tight. ‘I have no desire for any reward,’ she said.
‘That’s probably just as well,’ Cam said. ‘As there’s precious little I can offer you. But madame, would you explain to me just why you are here?’
She’d been expecting this. ‘I wanted to help. After all the damage my people have done, I wanted to do what I could to make things better.’
‘Your people, yes, but not you. You personally have done me and mine more good than ill. You saved Isidro’s life, and you protected Mira in the slave camps. You’ve done more than enough.’
Delphine leant forward and held his gaze. ‘Your brother woke to find the two people he loves most in the world gone, having abandoned him while he lay unconscious. I did all I could to keep him from harm when he was in my charge, and all that effort would be wasted if I didn’t act when he was in danger again.’
‘And so you took him to your bed?’ Cam snapped. ‘This man who’d lost all he loved?’
‘You judge me for that?’ Delphine replied. ‘When you charged off to face a Blood-Mage without leaving so much as a word for him when he awoke? What in the hells did you think would happen?’
‘That matter is between me and my kin,’ Cam said, his voice beginning to rasp again. ‘It’s your actions that concern me now. I’m trying to understand just what an Akharian is doing here, helping those who want nothing more than to see her people defeated and driven out of Ricalan. Just what, madame, did you intend to achieve by seducing Isidro?’
Delphine opened her mouth to reply, but then stopped and took a mental step back from the situation. ‘Are you asking me,’ she said, ‘if my intentions towards your brother are honourable? I should think he’s capable of determining that for himself.’
Cam narrowed his eyes.
‘After the aid I’ve given your folk, my people will hardly welcome me back with open arms, so I may as well stay and do some good. I have learnt that no one deserves to be enslaved, but I’ve never had the opportunity to oppose it in any meaningful way — now, I do. Your people once had the means to repel invaders and defend your own, before that national fit of madness caused your ancestors to destroy their mages. Thanks to Isidro we have found the treasures Vasant and his followers died to preserve, and I believe they are your only hope of preserving your nation and your people. I am not doing this out of any hope of reward or personal gain, I’m doing it because it is the right thing to do, and because the people of your country deserve to live in peace!’