Something had changed. When the old lethargy threatened to take over again, this time Cuillioc found the energy to fight it off. It was as if all the vessels in his heart had shriveled and narrowed in the heat—but now they expanded with a fresh flow of blood.
This change, however, was not an altogether pleasant one. He spent all the rest of that day in impatient anticipation, waiting for the young knight Gerig to produce the physician. When evening brought neither Gerig nor the doctor, the Prince dined with a very poor appetite and went early to his bedchamber.
As he stood by an open window listening to insects creak in the hot, humid darkness, he cast his mind back, reliving the events of the summer, from the time he first landed with his sixty galleys of war, twelve hundred fighting men, and that viper’s nest of ambitious minor nobles, backstabbing place-seekers, and petty schemers, which his mother the Empress-Goddess had seen fit to inflict on him—whether to bolster his perceived inadequacy or to punish it, he could never be certain.
He had begun wisely, that much he knew, by sending his scouts out to the rice fields, rain forests, and primitive little villages surrounding the city on three sides. The scouts all returned with similar reports: the farmers and villagers were just as complacent and superstitious as the city dwellers, and far less equipped to fight off an invasion.
Cuillioc remembered asking himself: If the treasures of Mirizandi are to be so easily gained, why has no one ever invaded before? What do the kings and princes of Nephuar, Cenuphar, and Opidäia know that we never learned on Phaôrax?
Surely it had been sensible to choose to investigate? To seek the answers to all such questions before he went blundering off with his army into the fields and forests, or gave up the thick walls of the Citadel for some other position of unknown strength? But then came the heat—so relentless, so intense—and all of his zeal had melted away.
Idiot. Witling, he scolded himself now. You knew all along that conquering this city was only the means to an end. Mirizandi and her people are nothing to Ouriána—or at least they’ve no place in her immediate plans, except as a source of wealth to pay off her mercenaries fighting in the north. She wants to control those fabulous mines that rumors place somewhere in the interior.
How could he have forgotten any of this, particularly with Ouriána’s priest always on hand? All during that wasted summer the only exception to the general torpor and stagnation had been Iobhar, haunting the dim corridors and shady gardens of the Citadel like some irksome spirit in his heavy red robes, exhorting the Prince to action.
Cuillioc felt sick at heart when he considered what a tale the furiádh priest would have to tell when they returned to Apharos. He often thought he saw contempt in that bloodless face, disdain in those brass-colored eyes. Priests, warriors, magicians—the Furiádhin were not even human anymore, they were so steeped in sorcery, and it was useless to try to read their emotions. Yet this much he knew from experience: Iobhar hated anyone the Empress had ever honored with a scrap of her affection. He would do her son every injury and disservice he possibly could.
And now he need not do anything. To simply tell the truth would be enough.
Crossing the room with a purposeful stride, Cuillioc took a handful of rolled parchments from a shelf and carried the maps over to the bed.
Unfurling the first one he traced with his forefinger each of the features his scouts had sketched in: the city here; the indented line of the shore; a village; a long stretch of forest and swamp; the nearest cities, Persit, Meraz, and Pira. And all of the plans he had made before, the tactics he had devised with the help of these same maps and somehow forgotten, they all came swarming back into his brain.
In a sudden fervor, he fell to his knees by the bed and performed the rituals of homage to the Goddess.
For the first time in weeks he left nothing out, went through all of the hymns and chants without hurrying through a single passage. When he was finished he felt somehow cleaner and curiously exalted.
The knight named Gerig was out all night, ranging through the city, first pursuing rumors of a highly skilled and revered physician, then pursuing the man himself. He finally caught up with him just after daybreak.
But when the physician arrived at the Citadel, solemn in dark green robes and a five-cornered black hat, he had nothing much to tell, beyond what the chamberlain had already passed on. “It is the Summer Fever, a disease that crops up only in the slave quarters. I can assure you, Great Prince, there is no reason for you to feel the least alarm.”
They were in one of the dim, thick-walled audience chambers. If there was any flicker of emotion in those jet-bead eyes, it was there and gone before the Prince could even be sure that he had seen it.
“How can a disease know a free man from a slave? How did this one gain such a fine discrimination?”
“There are many mysteries of the human body we do not comprehend.” The doctor continued to speak with that same unnerving calm. “But of course there are many theories: that the disease arises from an excess of the melancholy humor, that it comes of a derangement in the animal spirits. Others say—But I hardly think these abstruse speculations would interest you. Only know this: we who have lived in this city all of our lives have no fear. Why, then, should you?”
After he dismissed the physician, Cuillioc turned to Iobhar. At his request, the priest had stood in the shadows as a silent witness to the whole conversation. “A very smooth and plausible liar, I think, but a liar nonetheless.”
“He is lying about something,” Iobhar agreed. “Yet I believe he spoke truly when he said the citizens have no fear for themselves. We know how people react to even the threat of an epidemic illness. They have a hundred different ways of warding off contagion—with fumes and smokes, talismans and philtres—though few of those measures succeed. I have seen nothing like that here. The inhabitants do seem to be convinced this Summer Fever cannot touch them.”
The Prince changed positions in his chair. “And should we, because of that, be just as certain of our own safety?”
“I would not advise it, Great Prince. For your own protection, I suggest you remove yourself and the noble lords of your household out of the city, at least until we know more. You might go to your flagship.
The winds blow inland, and the air will be purer out on the water.”
Cuillioc studied the furiádh in a tight-lipped silence. The effects of yesterday’s uproar were still with him, stirring up his sluggish blood; his thoughts were more lucid now than they had been for many weeks. And first among those thoughts was an impression that Iobhar had been uncommonly helpful, unusually forthcoming with what he knew and what he guessed.
Sweat gathered in the palms of the Prince’s hands, and he could feel it trickling down his sides; early as it was, it promised to be hotter than the day before. He was not quite certain which disturbed him more: the idea of Iobhar as his friend and counselor, or as his undeclared enemy. Weighing one thing against the other, he decided he would rather have one of the sacred crocodiles crawl into bed with him and declare undying friendship than form even a temporary alliance with the priest.
Nor could he dismiss the all-too-likely possibility that Iobhar and his Pharaxion nobles had fabricated an elaborate hoax in order to further some convoluted scheme. They had been quiet far too long. Certainly, he could not imagine any one of them balking at the murder of a slave; most of them had connived at much worse. The only trustworthy men in the Citadel were those of his own household.
But if there were plots, it would be better to pretend that he had no suspicions. So with his most guileless smile, he thanked the priest for advice he had no actual intention of following. To leave the city in Iobhar’s charge? He was not such a fool as that.