“We should be able to find one or two women in your barracks whose minds are old-fashioned enough I can talk them into helping catch priests. We’ll go openly in daylight so there’ll be no chance of its being mistaken for a raid. Demand he accompany you to Center-of-Everywhere on a charge of poisoning, and when he refuses, I’ll seize him and our one or two others can seize Lady Shara.”
“And when he summons his own warriors, or when they see us sacrilegiously leading their priests back through their own farm and gates?”
“I’ve attacked a priestess and threatened a townmaster tonight,” said Thorn. “The sacrilege won’t be that much worse if I hold a priest with my knife at his neck.”
“And suppose they try to stop us for all that?”
Thorn seemed to flush slightly in the lamplight. “Then they’ll think again before attacking us when I move Stabber to Lady Shara’s neck.”
“And if she dies as well? My sister would not surprise me if, in such a trap, she ran herself upon your blade.”
“Then…Well, when they’re both dead, it’ll save the High Gathering some debate. You’re still a priestess, so his warriors probably won’t dare touch you—you can say I acted without your foreknowledge and approval, let ‘em hack me apart, then claim Rondasu’s Farm as his only surviving sib.”
“On behalf of Intassa’s son,” Eleva murmured, partly to remind herself. Two farms to rule for the next…almost twenty years, until Invaron was old enough to claim rule of his.…
“We can take the rest of your women along, too,” said Thorn. “Leave them at the farmgates or outside the hall. You could even command them to seize me, if I have to kill your sibs.”
The thought of Shara and Rondasu actually dead helped drive out the temptation of so much power. But Deveron and Intassa—the thought of them hardened her again.
“Thorn,” said the priestess, “I cannot determine whether you are incredibly unselfish or incredibly desperate, whether you are devoted totally to the Great Giver of Justice or to Azkor and his demons.”
The warrior looked mildly surprised, as if it had never occurred to her to probe into her own character and motives. She had begun to eat the leg of chicken while waiting for Eleva to speak, and now she finished chewing and swallowing a bite before she replied. “I’m a simple gambler, Lady Reverence. I think we’ll be able to seize them and bring them to Center alive, if we act soon enough and if you have at least one other good warrior who’ll follow my lead. As for unselfish…” She grinned and shook her head. “I’m bargaining with you for Frostflower’s safety. And Windbourne’s. And a brand of pardon for me if I survive. Or, if I don’t, a posthumous pardon, with the burial of an honest warrior and a full round of prayers and ceremonies to get me past the bloody demons.”
“You shall have all you ask.” Eleva extended her right hand across the table. Thorn glanced around, put down the chicken leg, and hastily wiped her hand on her tunic, as if disliking to soil one of the linen napkins. All this done, she linked fingers with the priestess.
“Now,” Eleva went on, “at what hour should we strike tomorrow morning?”
“Best be at Rondasu’s gates by dawn, before he has a chance to start out for town or here. But…”
“But we would need to leave here at once. And there is still our other warrior to choose. I think you will have to make that final choice, Thorn.”
“So we can’t very well get there before…say, halfway to midmorning. Well, which is your brother more likely to do first, bury his poor wife or come for you?”
Which would he do first? In his place, thought Eleva, I would come for my runner and the sorceri. Yet Rondasu cannot know that Frostflower was in his hall, unseen, to watch the poisoning of Intassa. He will not know—unless Youngwise sends him a messenger—that Thorn and his first blamecatch are with us. So he will think himself safe. Unless Swiftcurrent’s failure to return alerts him…and he may well assume that the runner lost his youth stripping the sorceress. As Rondasu planned, perhaps.
“If he had any feeling for Intassa,” Eleva said aloud, “he may decide to bury her first. And by what Frostflower has told us, I think he did love her, as nearly as he could ever love anything beyond his land and his rule.”
“That’ll give us a little time to play with, even if he uses the short burial. Maybe we could confront them in the field.”
“Oh, gods!” Eleva bent forward and put her face in her hands for a moment.
“Lady?”
“Nothing. I just realized…to break in upon her last honors…and then I realized I can hardly bear the thought of her body cut by their hands, scattered in one of their fields! Yes—sooner than allow that, we will break in upon their rites as early as we can arrive. I’ll begin by claiming her body for burial in her first husband’s farm!”
“Rondasu’s Farm should be yours soon enough, Lady, if things work out according to our plans and the gods’ justice. I’d been wondering if it wouldn’t be better to make him come to you, seize him here in your own hall? If Shara doesn’t come with him, it should be fairly easy to demand her person once we’ve got his.”
“I doubt it. My sister might see it as her chance to seize the farm for herself and hold it in defiance of us.” Even as I myself might do, thought Eleva, were I in her place, with so many sins already in my past. “But perhaps we can have the best of both plans. I’ll send a runner to my brother’s farm at once, to demand that Intassa’s body be returned for burial here. We might be able to save her body and force my sibs to come here to us, all in the same move.”
CHAPTER 14
“Thorn…” Eleva’s face suddenly grew eager. “Suppose I served as your second warrior?”
Thorn studied her. “How does your size compare with your sibs’?”
“I am the smallest, by a head. Shara the tallest, thanks to her mother. But I believe I am also the quickest.”
“How about the strongest?”
The priestess hesitated. “We wrestled only a few times, in childhood. I always lost to Shara, but she was almost seven years older! We never wrestled after we both had our full growth. I never again dared wrestle with Rondasu, not after the first time.”
The swordswoman thought back over her few moments’ grappling with Eleva and shook her head. “You’ve got pluck, Lady Reverence, and you’re not weak for your size. With the proper training from childhood, you could’ve made a bloody good spearwoman. But we don’t have time to train you tonight. And then,” she added, trying to choose her words carefully, as she saw the eagerness drain out of Eleva’s face, “when it came to the point, do you really hate your own sibs enough to hold a knife steady at one of their throats?”
The priestess smiled wanly and shook her head. “No. Not steady. Probably enough to plunge the knife through, but not…So, it must be another warrior.”
“Better check the gatewarriors first,” said Thorn. “If one of them will do, we don’t even have to wake anyone in the barracks. The fewer women who suspect what we’re planning, the better.”
The priestess left Thorn alone in the office to question the warriors with a free tongue. The swordswoman moved around to Eleva’s chair in token of her full command for the time being.
The first gatewarrior began by pulling the doorcurtain back about halfway and looking in with a good balance of confidence and respect. At Thorn’s nod, she came all the way in, letting the curtain swing into place behind her. She touched fist to lips and then stood at attention with her hands lightly on her hips: a tall, thin young woman with pale skin, hair that looked silvery in the lamplight, and a large knob of new but well-carved and highly polished golden pinewood as a pommel decoration on her sword. She was maybe seventeen or eighteen, old enough to be trustworthy now, if ever.
“Why did you salute me, warrior?” said Thorn.
“I saluted the
occupant of the priestly chair,” the younger woman replied.
Thorn nodded again and gestured to the empty chair across from hers. The other woman sat.
“Your name?” said Thorn.
“Starstroke.”
It had a near-sorcerous ring. You found that sometimes, especially in warriors with high ideas and an infatuation with the knowledge that several lifetimes ago they would have been priestesses. Not that the warriors were trying to imitate sorcerous names. Often they were among the fiercest sorceri-haters of all. They were trying to imitate what people usually supposed were the meanings of priestly names in the old language, and it came out sounding sorcerous. (Thorn wondered if Frost had ever thought much about that.) And then, Starstroke—Silverstroke, that one warrior Thorn had liked so well last summer. Starstroke—Starwind, Frostflower’s name for Thorn’s own son. Starwind—Windbourne…Thorn was not one of those women who searched for omens in the way a leaf fell across her weapon, but with another warrior to find in a hurry and nothing else to guide her, all these name links certainly had the look of an omen.
Thorn filled a cup with wine and pushed it across the table. Starstroke shook her head and pushed the cup back to the center. Her wrist already showed the sinews that indicated good strength in a thin body. “Starstroke,” Thorn asked, “who’s most likely to murder a priest?”
“Another priest.”
“Who else?”
“…A warrior, I suppose.…Maybe a sorceron.”
“Unh.” Thorn was more pleased than she let show. Most folk, even among warriors, would have put the sorceron first. “All right, Starstroke, suppose you see one priest on the point of murdering another. What do you do?”
The younger woman hesitated. “How is the first priest attacking?”
“Say you see him pouring poison into the wine.”
“I could not be sure it was poison. But…I would upset the wine as if by accident.”
“Say the first priest is about to use a pillow and smother the second?”
“I would…Which priest are we supposing to be my own Reverence, my employer?”
“Neither of them. You just happen to be around.”
“Then I would make a noise and wake the sleeping one. Warrior, I cannot see how I could be present in the bedchamber with two strange priests, and I fail to see the purpose of—”
Thorn slapped the table. “Maybe you think we’re just playing some silly game at this time of night for the demons’ sport of it? You make a noise, the sleeping priest wakes up, and the attacking priest pulls out his little dagger and goes for his neck.”
“I…think I would use the circle-hold from behind. Then I…would obey whatever commands the other priest gave me. The one under attack.”
Thorn nodded. Starstroke had given answers close enough to the kind she had hoped for to indicate that she was a good risk. Thorn’s final choice would be a gamble no matter how many women she questioned, and she had always gone into play with the notion that the gods preferred a bold gambler to a shilly-shallying one.
She reached across the table for Starstroke’s hand. “Are you willing to swear secrecy?”
The younger woman stared at the extended hand. “Who will be in most danger if I refuse your secret?”
“Probably your own Lady Reverence.”
Starstroke looked up at Thorn’s face, down again at the table. After a moment, she stretched out her hand and linked fingers with the older woman.
* * * *
“They thought to get Deveron’s Farm?” Starstroke asked after Thorn had explained her plan and part of its motive. “But why Intassa?”
“Shara was jealous of her,” Thorn said tightly. The mere fact of two sibs humping together did not horrify her as it probably should have—never having known her own parentage, she had gone through a year or so of adolescent nausea at the idea that every male she milked could be an unknown brother, and then finally decided it wasn’t worth the fear. But in this case she did not need to fake her disgust. No prick was worth committing murder for so you could keep him all to yourself, everyone knew they were sharper when they could get a little variety anyway.
“Then,” said Starstroke, “Shara alone was responsible for Intassa’s death, but Rondasu was the more responsible for Deveron’s? Then I would like to ask the favor of seizing Rondasu!”
“You would? Why?”
“It was his Reverence Deveron who hired me.”
“You may find it hard enough just to grab a priestly body without that body also being male,” Thorn pointed out, remembering the scruples she herself had had to overcome in order to fight back against a couple of outlaws despite their maleness.
Starstroke leaned across the table and gripped Thorn’s arm. “Lady Intassa was nothing to me—even Lady Eleva isn’t that much. My allegiance is to his Reverence! Let me seize Rondasu—it’ll be easier for me to take the one most to blame for murdering Deveron.”
The sudden display of temper rather pleased Thorn. If anything had been unsatisfactory about Starstroke, it had been her seemingly perpetual caution, almost too calculating for a youth her age. Thorn nodded. “All right. You take Rondasu, I’ll take Shara, if she comes. Now let’s get some sleep. Her Reverence is giving us a couple of alcoves here in the hall.”
CHAPTER 15
Eleva’s young runner Dart arrived back in her hall soon after dawn. He brought only a vocal message: Rondasu would come at once. He had not sent back Eleva’s wax tablet with his own reply; he might well be keeping her message as new evidence of her madness.
“How did his Reverence look when he read my message?” she asked Dart. “Enraged? Amused?”
Dart looked at the floor. “Lady Shara took the tablet, Reverence. She said his Reverence was mourning in the Truth Grove, and she’d give it to him. Then she sent me to one of the cottages and had the Second Nurse give me wine and fruitloaf. When his Reverence sent for me, he…he didn’t frown or smile, he only told me to say he would come at once.”
Eleva sighed. “You’ve done as well as any messenger could have done. Go to the farmgates now so that as soon as the watchgirl sees how many he’s bringing with him, you can run back and tell me.”
She summoned Blowingbud and instructed her to take the children to the arbor-house in the northwest orchard for the day. She thought they would be in no danger, but she preferred them and their nurse to be far out of hearing lest the events in the hall engrave an ugly memory in their young minds.
And the sorceri? Eleva woke Thorn and told her to bring Frostflower and Starstroke. No doubt she should have delegated the task of rousing Windbourne to the sorceress, but she reserved it for herself.
Dawnlight was beginning to filter into his alcove, but Eleva’s lamp was still useful. She stood there for several heartbeats, gazing down at Windbourne as he slept, thinking where best to touch him—on the cheek, the brow, the cleft in his chin, now covered with one or two days’ bristle of light golden beard.…Had her dream-lover always had that cleft chin, or only since she heard the description of the sorcerer who had been seized in Five Roads and escaped, the one whose innocence Maejira the merciful had shown her in another dream?
As Eleva’s hand hovered above the sheet, Windbourne’s cat suddenly bounded up, brushing the priestess’ arm and landing half on the sorcerer’s chest and half on the bed. Eleva withdrew her hand and stood back immediately as Windbourne sat up, grappling lightly with the cat even before he opened his eyes, as if used to such an awakening.
“Sorcerer,” said Eleva.
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. She thought he started a little. “Lady Reverence? Has something…?”
“Come to the dais end of the long hall at once,” she said, then turned and left the alcove. Although he had been sleeping in his robe, he might still be shy of coming out fro
m beneath the sheet in her presence.
The cat was shrewder than I, Eleva scolded herself. We needed dispatch, not dreaming.
Within a few moments they were gathered, Eleva sitting in her ruling priest’s chair, Thorn half sprawled on the edge of the dais, the others standing respectfully. The dog stood near Frostflower wagging his tail; the cat lay at Eleva’s feet. They could hear Blowingbud in one of the far eastern alcoves, dressing the children for their day’s excursion.
“My brother is on his way here,” said Eleva. “We do not know how many warriors he may bring with him, whether in an hour or two this hall will hold a few people struggling, or many. The more women in the fight, the greater chance Rondasu has of defeating me; and if he wins, there will be suffering and death for you sorceri. You might be wisest to leave my farm now.”
“Bloodshed in a priestly hall?” whispered Frostflower.
“There has been poisoning in this hall,” the priestess replied. “Why not bladework? It’s honest in comparison.”
“There will be suffering for us if you are defeated, Lady Reverence, whether we are safe or not,” said Windbourne. “And can we not help you afterwards…even in your success?”
Eleva smiled at him. “I’d thought you would hide in the forest until this morning’s work is done. If I win, you can return. If my sibs win, you can find the Mirrel River, follow its course north to the northern Wendwoods, and so, with luck and skill, avoid pursuit.”
Frostflower and Windbourne (Frostflower & Thorn) Page 23