"Dorje!" he called. "I think the rat was infected."
"You hardly had time to catch a disease from it," Dorje countered, and moved to his side.
"Poisoned, then. I'm sure that if we had some light I couldn't see out my left eye."
"Then be thankful it's dark," Dorje replied. He ran his hand over Imre's face. "It does seem a bit swollen. Should I call a guard?"
"Do it," Imre said. His tongue felt numb, his eye seemed on fire, and it took enormous control for him to keep from clawing at it. "We have to kill the beast."
As Dorje called out, the other prisoners began to stir. One shouted and a moment later began to scream. The guard came running, his single torch unable to expose all the corners of the cell.
"Bring more light," Dorje said. He raised Imre's head and pointed across the cell to the third prisoner.
The bite on the man's hand was bleeding, the flesh around it swelling so quickly that blood seeped through his skin. "A rat bit them both," Dorje said.
"Rat?" The guard looked from one man to the other, then handed the torch to Dorje and called for more light.
Dorje held the torch close to the crack but it made little difference to the vermin behind it. Though their fur and whiskers were singed, they swarmed into the cell and rushed toward the men.
The remaining prisoners in Imre's cell were awake, warning comrades in the adjoining cells. They all moved close to the cell doors, stomping their boots on the vermin while screaming for the guards to let them out. Imre managed to get to his feet and join the others before the rats reached him, but the other wounded man was not so lucky. The rats covered his body, biting fiercely, oblivious to his struggles or his screams. He was dead before the guards managed to get the cells open. The rats charged them as well, biting two before prisoners and jailers alike retreated down the dark slippery passageway to the safety of the underground guardhouse.
They crowded together behind the heavy wooden doors. Dorje pulled open the tiny security door and, secure behind its heavy mesh screen, watched as the rats turned on one another.
The attack was over as quickly as it had begun. Dead rats covered the passageway and the cell floors. A few still picked at the carcasses and the body but they moved weakly, as if the poison that had infected Imre also infected them.
One of the guards retrieved a torch dropped during their flight to the guardhouse, lit it, and made his way upstairs to warn the household.
Dorje relaxed for the first time in an hour and went to tend the guards. "Cut open the bite and suck out the poison," he suggested.
The guard looked at Dorje as if he were insane. "Look how it's already swelling," he said, pointing at his leg.
"AH the more reason to act quickly," Dorje replied, then crouched beside the man. He thought he recognized the victim; someone from his own village who had joined Baron Janosk's troops years before. Dorje doubted the soldier would remember him, for Dorje had been hardly more than a child then, but village ties were strong-nearly as strong as the hatred between rebel and soldier-and made him work more diligently.
Ilsabet sat in Jorani's chambers, an illuminated manuscript open on the table before her. It was an old tract, advice given to a son and heir by his father just before he died. The printing was so beautiful and the paper so brittle that she took longer to turn the pages than to read the words on them. She had opened the book to this page before leaving the room and returned to it as quickly as she could after laying out the poisoned bait in the dungeons below.
The hawks screeched a warning, and a moment later Greta, her back pressed against the wall, slipped past them. The woman was out of breath from running up the long flight of stairs. Wisps of dull brown hair had escaped their pins and brushed her round red face.
"Ilsabet! I thought I'd find you here," Greta exclaimed. "There are rats swarming the dungeons. They attacked the prisoners and the guards. We are supposed to take care here as well." She held out a pair of heavy leather boots that laced to the knee. They were the thickest and tallest ones Ilsabet owned. "Put these on and take care. Don't let them bite you. They're infected."
Ilsabet looked evenly at her. "How do you know?"
"They bit two of the prisoners and one of the guards. A prisoner died."
"Died?" Ilsabet's eyes grew bright and hands shook.
Greta interpreted the emotion as fear and laid a hand on her arm. "It's all right," she said soothingly. "There's been no sign of rats aboveground."
"Where are the wounded now?"
"In the kitchen, I believe. The healer is drawing out the poison with boiling water."
Ilsabet frowned. "The kitchen! Aren't those Peto's prisoners?"
"Only for the moment. They say Baron Peto intends to release them as soon as the wounded man can travel. I'm going to go down now to see what help I can be."
"I'll come with you." For the first time, Ilsabet tried to display some fear. "I don't want to be alone. Just let me put the book away and change my boots. No, go on ahead. I'll be all right."
When she reached the kitchen, Jorani was kneeling beside the wounded rebel, experimenting with salves on the man's swollen face while the healer looked on and offered what advice he could. When Jorani found a salve that seemed to work, he moved to the wounded guards and used it on them as well.
As she stood in the corner watching Jorani tend the wounded, Ilsabet savored her triumph. None of the men were supposed to get out of their cells alive, but at least the combination she'd used on the rats had worked as she'd intended.
When he noticed her watching him, Jorani frowned. Understanding his concern, she shook her head slowly, implying that she'd had nothing to do with the attack.
She lied, not because she thought he wouldn't understand the reason for what she had done, but because she feared he would stop her education before it had begun if he suspected her of experimenting so soon.
And in spite of her success, she knew he'd have a right to punish her. She was young and inexperienced. The molds and poisons of Jorani's chamber were lethal. A wrong move and she would learn no more.
A wrong move and she would never have her revenge.
Greta joined her. "Would you like to come help me pack provisions for their journey?"
"Provisions!" Ilsabet whispered. "They attack us, and we send them home with supplies?"
"Enough for their trip. They're taking a conciliatory message from Baron Peto and your brother to their villages."
"I doubt I'd be much help," she said, but followed Greta anyway to a corner where the cook was loading cheese and dried meat into a sack. A second sack of the morning's bread was already full, waiting to be tied shut.
Ilsabet reached into her pocket and pulled out a white linen kerchief she'd carried to the dungeons to poison the rats' food. She'd just begun to unfold it above the bread sack when one of the servants came for it.
She moved quickly out of his way, thinking she'd be pressing her luck if she tried to kill them again. She threw the kerchief into the lit stove, pausing to watch it flare. "I'm going to sit with my sister a while. You know what she thinks of rats," she said to Greta, then left the servants to their work.
When Marishka had been a toddler, a river rat managed to sneak into her room. It waited until her wet nurse went to sleep, then slipped into her cradle, pressing its furry body close to her bare chest, licking the milk from her tiny pursed lips.
Sometime in the middle of the night, the nurse awakened and came to check on her. Seeing the rat, she let out a terrible scream. It startled Marishka and the rat, which bit her on the lip.