“After one of your soldiers shot an arrow through my hand? An arrow that would have killed the princess?”
The commander didn’t hesitate. “Obviously.”
She turned to the scholar. “What are the odds that you have trained in healing magic?”
“Answer her.”
The scholar nodded. “I worked in a mining camp. I can make blocks, crumble them, create water...”
But Cazia had already turned her back on them both. She pulled her legs onto the cot and faced the stone wall. “Go away.”
“If you think there is a need,” the commander said, “I can provide you with a lash to pay back the man who shot the arrow at you. If you think there is a need, I can see that you punish him right there at the feast, with everyone to see. If that is what you want.”
Yes! “Go away. What good would it do to whip a soldier, even one who shot at a group of unarmed girls? He’s your man, isn’t he? If there’s someone who should be whipped like an untrained dog, it’s you. Bring me a lash and I’ll use it on you.”
He could have done anything to her in retaliation. Her bandaged hand was right there on her hip, completely exposed. All he had to do was touch it to punish her. All he had to do was knife her in the back.
Instead, he began to shout in his own language, but the princess cut him off. With three sharp words that Cazia couldn’t understand, she brought silence to the room. Once that was accomplished, the princess began talking in a low, rapid-fire voice that sounded very much like a little girl who thought things had finally gone too far.
The commander tried to break in, gently, but Ivy wouldn’t have it. After a few moments, Cazia stopped paying attention.
She had lost the use of her hand. Unless she could find a sleepstone where she might be safe from the grunts, or a medical scholar willing to work on her, she was going to have to rely on her own body to heal this wound, like she was a savage or something.
Fire take her, she could not be giving in this way. She had been locked in a cell and brought food like a prisoner. She had nothing to do; she couldn’t even talk to the other girls for fear of eavesdroppers. The Toal had done everything they could to make her helpless.
But she wasn’t helpless. She didn’t have her magic and she couldn’t speak the language, but she was still the same girl who had terrorized her tutors back at the palace, who had crossed into the Qorr Valley and flown out again with the help of the giant eagles. She was Cazia Freewell, daughter of the man who had nearly stolen an empire.
She was never going to be helpless again.
Cazia rolled over and stood, then looked from Ivy to the commander. “I’m going to talk to you in Peradaini right now. It would be polite to hear responses I can understand.”
“Of course; I’m sorry,” Ivy said, but Cazia didn’t let her finish.
“Don’t apologize, little sister. This isn’t my country and I can’t expect everyone to talk my language all the time. However, for this conversation, it would be nice.”
“Of course.”
Cazia looked straight into the commander’s eyes. “You put us in here because you thought we might transform into The Blessing, right? You were afraid we would become grunts.”
“I did,” he said. “We will hold you until the end of the month—”
“It takes three days for a person to change into a grunt. That’s it. Three days.”
“Whenever a man or woman of Peradain tells me a fact,” the commander said, “I assume the opposite is true.”
“Have you at least sent word to the princess’s family that she is here?”
The commander bowed to Ivy. “I have many duties to attend to.” When he turned to Cazia, he gave her a beady, condescending smile. “It is time for me to have myself whipped. I have decided to run my command—the post it has taken me thirty-five years to earn—on the advice of a teenage girl.”
“It’s time for you to let us head south, so we can take Vilavivianna home.”
“Peradaini girl, perhaps you should next ask for more food so that I will starve you.” He turned his back and walked out of the room, the scholar following close behind. Cazia watched them both, hoping that at least her fellow countryman would look back at her. Neither did.
Fine. The scholar had new masters. He’d told her as much. And why should he help her? So he could end up in a cell, too? Or worse?
Kinz went to the door and gently, slowly pulled on it. It was barred from the outside. “We have been stuck here too long. I do not want to be trapped in this room when The Blessing make to attack—or the Tilkilit, for that matter.”
“They do not believe me,” Ivy said. “It is only clear to me now, but the commander and the soldiers do not believe I’m Alisimbo’s daughter. They must think this is a Peradaini plot to overthrow the Alliance. I do not think they have even sent a runner south to tell my family I’m here.”
The little girl’s face was stoic, but Kinz and Cazia stepped forward and took hold of her hands. “We have to find a way. We will. I’m not sure how, but we will.”
“How?”
Neither Cazia nor Kinz had an answer for the princess’s question right away. They talked over their options for the rest of the afternoon. The doctor, who had already come that day, was always wary when she came in, and so were the servants who brought their food twice a day. What’s more, they knew that any escape might earn them a whipping. Kinz was adamant that they could not do that to the servants, and Cazia felt she owed the doctor too much. Making that old woman take a lashing would have been a betrayal. If anyone was to be blamed for their escape, it had to be the soldiers.
The Captain was not wary but he was watchful; Cazia thought he could be overcome if they rushed him as soon as the door opened. Kinz would grab his legs, Cazia would shove him, and backward he would go.
The other girls weren’t keen on the idea. To Cazia’s surprise, Ivy liked him very much, and Kinz glanced sharply at the floor at the mention of grabbing his legs. Great Way, had they falling for that smarm?
Cazia, who had always been the expert at watching everyone around her, had been too wrapped up in her own problems to notice.
Eventually, night fell, and when the three female soldiers arrived to search them, the girls were already crouched by the door. They had tossed aside their jackets, leaving only their underclothes on.
They were so quiet they could hear the bolt drawing back and the women outside talking about their next hunting trip. As the door swung outward, Kinz bolted toward the gap.
She was the oldest, the largest, and the strongest, and she struck the lead guard full in the stomach with her shoulder, lifting her up and flinging her back into a second guard.
Ivy was right behind her, moving as quick as a sparrow. She dodged low under the grasping hands of the third guard and, as the woman bent to catch her, Cazia slammed into her armor.
Cazia hit her with her right shoulder, but it still jarred her left hand so badly that it felt like someone had stuck a twig into her wound and wiggled it. The idea that she could outrun all the guards, every step jarring her hand with a dull throb, seemed suddenly impossible, but she couldn’t stop. If she hesitated at all, Ivy and Kinz would as well, and they would all be caught.
The first two guards lay in a tumble of bodies, but one of them had the wit to catch hold of Kinz’s ankle. Before the older girl could break free, Cazia ran between them, trampling the guard’s forearm. The woman cried out, but she sounded more in shock than pain. Then Kinz was free and they were all following Ivy along the wall toward an open doorway made of rough logs.
It was a laundry. The princess had assured them she’d seen it on the way in. They ducked beneath the outermost line of hanging clothes and moved into the darkness.
Behind them, they finally heard voices raised in alarm. “These!” Ivy shouted, pointed toward a line of clothing that looked like a blanket with a hole in the middle. Kinz yanked them down and they pulled them on, barely breaking stride.
&
nbsp; Cazia saw the thick coil of rope handing on a peg--a line for hanging wet clothes, supposedly--and collected it. “Got the rope!” Then they followed Ivy up a flight of stairs.
A chime began to ring from somewhere nearby. It was dull, flat, and high, coming in double strikes. Ting-ting! Ting-ting! Ting-ting!
Even their alarm bells are primitive. Cazia shook that off. The whole fort would be on alert in moments, and they were unarmed. Ivy had insisted that they not take the guards’ weapons or seriously hurt anyone; she thought it would only escalate things.
Cazia clutched at the coil of rope, ignoring the pain in her hand. Every moment made her heart beat harder, which made her hand throb even worse. She couldn’t stop. They had no time to rest, and if she fell behind, they wouldn’t have the rope they needed to climb down the southern wall.
How Cazia was supposed to climb down a rope one-handed was another issue entirely. The other girls didn’t seem to have noticed that it would be impossible for her.
So she ran behind them, determined to keep up but knowing that if they were successful, she might never see either of them again.
An old man wearing a blanket just like theirs appeared on the landing with a torch in his hand. His cloth was cinched with a rope belt but the girls’ were not; Cazia was suddenly certain that he would call an alarm.
Ivy spoke to him in a high, panicky voice, pointing back behind them. The old man waved the three of them by him and raised his light, peering down the stairs into the darkness.
At the end of the next flight, they came to a dim, curving corridor. There were no more stairs upward, so Ivy waved them to the right and ran with her. Ting-ting! Ting-ting! Ting-ting! “We have to keep heading south until we find stairs that lead up the wall.”
Ahead, a man leaned out of a doorway, a candle in his hand. Ivy kept running toward him, and Cazia could see that he was not dressed in the same blanket with the hole to poke your head through. He wore a traveling tunic that came down to his knees, soldier’s boots, and a coil of greenery woven through his blond hair. He was no servant; he was dressed for the road.
Ivy didn’t break her pace as she approached him, but one look at his expression made Cazia’s guts go sour with fear. He is not fooled.
The man stepped out of the doorway all the way, blocking the corridor. He had a gleaming bronze stabbing sword in his other hand.
Ivy pulled up short; Kinz and Cazia both rushed to stand in front of her. They showed him their empty hands.
The man’s head quirked to one side and he said, unmistakably, “Vilavivianna?”
With great surprise, the princess said, “Goherzma?”
Cazia heard heavy footsteps coming from behind them. Hurry!
The swordsman tried to stammer out a question, but Ivy cut him short with a quick entreaty. He immediately bowed, stepped back, and allowed them to rush into the room. He shut the door behind them.
They were safe. Or they had been trapped.
Chapter 20
Did it matter that he hadn’t known? Did it matter that she was so much older than his own children, both the one who had died so many years ago and the three who were supposed to be hiding safely in the distant East?
No. No, none of that mattered. One of the grunts he had trapped and burned had been a little girl. He had murdered a child.
Tejohn felt a wave of dizziness overtake him; the world seemed to have turned into an empty white void. He had killed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, but they had always been adults—or at least old enough to take up arms. But a little one? The image of his own child rushed back to him, lying in the mud beside his back door, all split open and spilled out like a butchered animal.
“My tyr?” Javien said. “Tyr Treygar, are you all right?”
“I’m not a tyr,” he answered, as though that was important. He thought he should feel suicidal right at that moment, but that would have been absurd and melodramatic. This wasn’t about him and his honor. It was about that child.
Spilled grain crunched under the boot of a square-faced soldier as he stepped toward them, and the world suddenly reappeared. Everyone was looking at Tejohn as though he was the one in trouble.
“Are you really Tyr Tejohn Treygar?”
If this soldier spoke a word of admiration to him, Tejohn would strike him dead on the spot. No one was going to treat him like a hero--like a famous man--not today.
“It were my words that hurt him,” the old farmer said. “I have to be the one to straighten things out. Tyr Treygar, if that’s who you are, you didn’t kill a little child. Not even a debt child. I saw her change into that creature--the three of us did, right here on the floor. Her body tore apart like the clothes of a werebear in a little child’s story.”
“It’s true,” his wife said. “The creature killed her, and then it ate her. You didn’t harm that little child. She was already gone.”
“As far as any of us is concerned, we died the moment we were bitten. It’s like we have poison in us, but the poison won’t let us hurry to our own preferred end.”
The stout young mother spoke up. “Can we be cured on a blessing stone? A bless... Bless--”
“A sleepstone?” Tejohn asked. She nodded gratefully. Javien turned to Tejohn, a look of warning on his face, but he knew better than to tell the others that the man was a medical scholar. “I’ve tried that. A sleepstone only makes the transformation come on stronger and faster.”
The woman looked down at the children at her feet and began to weep. The two smallest had curled up on a burlap sack and fallen asleep, while the six-year-old crouched beside them, her eyes wide.
Javien stepped forward. “I know I’m not wearing my robes of office right now, but I’m a beacon. If you need help to ease the children out of this world without pain, it is my duty to provide that help.”
Tejohn grasped his elbow. “Javien...” What had he planned to say? He couldn’t imagine.
“Back home, it was my duty as a beacon to slaughter spring lambs for the Festival of the Tides.” He said this as much for the mother’s sake as anyone’s. “I can do it in a way that is utterly painless. They don’t have to die in pain and fear when the curse takes them. They can leave The Way peacefully, in your arms.”
“Yes,” the woman said, and who else had any say in the matter? “I would bless that. Yes.” She looked down at the little ones again, and her cheeks shone with tears.
The female soldier stepped in front of Tejohn. “You promised us a quick, clean death, my tyr. If I had to take a sword thrust, I’d prefer to take it from a Finshto hero. Will you keep that promise?”
“Outside,” Javien said, as though the answer to that question was already a given--and of course it was. “I will look after the mother. Try not to make a noise that will wake the children.”
Tejohn turned and went out into the muddy yard. The rain still fell in the same misting drizzle, but no one seemed to mind. They strode out toward the woodpile, partly because there was nothing else to catch their attention but the brilliantly burning barn fire.
“I want to go first,” said a soldier that had not spoken before. He looked terrified.
“Me and the wife were bitten first,” the old man said sulkily, “but it’s all right, I guess.”
Tejohn set his shield and spear against the wall of the house, being careful to keep his eyes downcast. He didn’t want to see what was happening inside. When he turned to the others, he felt oddly defenseless, as though he was going into battle unarmed.
The man dropped to his knees like a defeated soldier awaiting execution. He looked terrified. Tejohn came close, drew his sword, and knelt with him in the mud.
“I’ll keep quiet for the little ones,” the soldier said. “I promise.”
“Do you want to say a prayer?”
“I finished all my praying.”
Tejohn thrust the point of his sword up into the man’s heart. It was quick and clean, but it was clearly not painless. As the
man slumped to the side, Tejohn eased him into the mud.
One of the soldiers began to whisper urgently to the others, and the woman with him began to talk to him in quiet, reassuring tones. Tejohn watched the man closely as he wiped off his sword. If the fellow bolted, he would have to run him down or all of this would have been for nothing. But could he catch a fellow more than twenty years his junior?
“I guess it’s for us next,” the old farmer said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do it over there, with you behind us. That hill over there is our property, and if I can’t die on it, I’d like it to be the last thing I see.”
“Of course,” Tejohn said, watching the soldiers out of the corner of his eye. The soldier at his feet had a knife at his belt. Tejohn took it and tested the edge. Good.
The farmers walked hand in hand to the corner of the muddy yard, not far from where Tejohn had crouched while waiting for Javien’s signal that he’d blocked the back entrance.
“There it is,” the old woman said. They looked out at a field of barley on the next hill over, then turned toward each other and held their faces very close.
“Grateful am I,” the man said, “to be permitted to travel The Way.”
“Kelvijinian,” the woman answered, as though they were sharing an old joke, “I return to you.”
It was a quick knife thrust for them, straight to the heart. The old man grunted, but it was a low, brief sound. Then it was done.
Tejohn turned toward the others. There were four more of them, and he was already trying to decide what would be the most humane way to end their lives.
It was nearly dark when he finished. The rain had picked up and the droplets made the fire hiss. Tejohn stood staring at it a moment, wondering how he had come to this moment in his life, with the innocent blood of allies on his sword, when Javien emerged from the house.
“No one has come about the fire,” the priest said. “If nothing else told us there was something terribly wrong here, that would be it. Farm folk do not leave fires unfought.”
The Way Into Magic: Book Two of The Great Way Page 21