A cramp tightened my left calf. I propped the toe of my boot on a stone facing and stretched out the muscle. It’s nothing. Nothing.
Prior Nemesio kneaded his chin, staring at the patterned rug. “Luviar had a great respect for Jon Hinelle, a merchant’s son in Pontia who once studied here,” he murmured, “and for Vilno, a self-taught practor who once traveled as far as Pyrrha. Hinelle, I think—he’s younger, more practical, if not quite so powerful a mind. With the abbey library in ashes, the new Scholar will need access to the lighthouse. And he’ll need protection.”
Over Nemesio’s head, the prince lifted his eyebrows at Stearc and flicked his gaze from the bemused prior to the door. Stearc nodded brusquely.
“We shall open the lighthouse the moment the new Scholar is in place, Father Prior,” said Stearc. With a firm hand, the thane dislodged Nemesio from the couch and drew him to the door. “And I’ll leave a small garrison here at your disposal for the new man’s retrieval and protection. Fedrol is a capable commander and will ask no awkward questions. I’d advise you heed his recommendations…”
As their voices faded down the stair, the prince poured himself a cup of cider from the pot on the polished table, lost in his own thoughts as he sipped. I kneaded my aching left forearm and breathed away a sharp spasm that pierced my rib cage.
Elene graced me with a rueful smile. “It is the gods’ own gift to see you safe, Brother Valen.” Her voice sounded as rich and potent as fine mead, warming even my cold spirit.
I mustered a smile and bowed, pulling off my mask and looping it on my belt. “Just Valen, mistress. I make no further pretense to holy orders.”
“Two days ago, when we saw what the Harrowers had done to the abbey, and then Voushanti straggled in, saying you had stayed behind to face our pursuers alone, we feared your brave heart lost. So when your message came to Fortress Groult—” Her red-gold skin took on a deeper shade. “While we could not rejoice at your conclusions, we did rejoice that you were alive to make them. And now”—she jerked her head at the prince—“we’ve no need to hide certain facts from you. For better or worse.”
“For better or worse,” I said softly. So she knew Osriel’s secret. “Mistress, do you know—? Last night, I—” The prince looked up from his cup, expressionless, and I dared not speak what I had seen, lest he overhear. “Lady, I am unsure of whom I serve.” Perhaps I had found the source of her bitter enmity for Gram. I could not imagine a woman so devoted to justice and right, herself so rich with exuberant life, countenancing practices so abhorrent.
“We are an inharmonious collection of comrades, to be sure.”
The clamor of boots on the stair signaled Stearc’s return, accompanied by a blast of cold air—and Voushanti. Elene promptly moved away from me, poured a cup of cider, and plopped herself onto the dusty couch.
Welcoming the fresh air, I pressed even closer to the window. The stifling heat was near choking me. Another cramp wrenched my back. I blamed the overbuilt hearth fire and the previous day’s climbing. Please, gods…
“We should inform the prior of your identity, Your Grace,” said Stearc, squatting by the fire and rubbing his hands together briskly. “If he is to be an effective ally, he should know all.”
The prince shook his head. “Too many secrets have escaped our grasp of late. Nemesio is stalwart and intelligent, but unimaginative in deceit and poor at conspiracy. That Gildas cannot expose me is one slim consolation amid Valen’s ill tidings.”
“I don’t understand why you believe all this about Gildas. The boy’s body is proof that he was murdered, not that Gildas did it. We’ve a far more likely candidate right here.” Stearc glared at me with undisguised contempt. “Did your own guilt catch up with you, pureblood? Did you realize you’d be found out, and so turn on the very one who compromised himself to aid you? Perhaps you didn’t know that Gildas confessed how he’d induced you to strike him and run. How he sent Gerard after you with supplies for your escape. The monk’s testimony shook even Luviar. Now you say some magical insight has shown you the boy’s resting place? I don’t accept it. You were half crazed that night. I say you struck down the boy so he couldn’t give you up to the purebloods.”
Voushanti shifted his position slightly, intruding between Stearc and me. “You should listen to the pureblood, Thane. Whatever else, he’s no coward. Eight days ago I was ordered to kill him did he step wrong, but I found reason enough to leave him walking. Save for his diverting the Harrowers, you, your daughter, Prince Osriel, and the rest of us would lie dead on the Palinur road.”
This casual confirmation of how close I had come to dying by Voushanti’s hand did naught to cool my burgeoning anger. I’d given Elene the benefit of the doubt, but this…Damn the woman; she had been there. She had allowed these lies to fester.
“I am certainly no innocent,” I snapped. “But bring me the man or woman who says I have ever used a child ill, and I will show you a liar. As it happens, I’ve a witness that Gildas himself brought me supplies the night of my escape, that I forbade him send the boys, and that I had no contact with either boy before I was slammed senseless near the aspen grove. As that witness has not come forward to speak for me, perhaps the coward prefers I stand guilty of the crime.”
Osriel looked surprised. “A witness?”
Stearc snorted. “I don’t believe—”
“You planned to kill Valen?” Elene rose from the couch, her face crimson. Had Osriel spouted blood from her glare, it could not have surprised anyone. “You told me you would question him and seek the truth about that night. I never thought—Are we no better than the murderous madmen we fight?”
The prince’s face hardened like mortared stone. “We did as we thought best.”
“Your secrets blight your life far worse than any illness, Gram of Evanore. Twisted pride and a corrupt soul will be the death of you, not Sila Diaglou or your wretched royal brothers.”
“Daughter!” snapped Stearc. “Mind your vixen’s tongue!”
Wrenching her glare from Osriel, Elene crossed her arms, touching opposite shoulders, and bowed to me. “I beg your forgiveness, Master Valen. I had reasons for my silence that seemed compelling at the time but were clearly selfish, foolish, and inexcusable. Please believe, if I had imagined such murderous folly, I would never have left the matter in doubt.”
She turned back to the others. Though her arms remained in the penitent’s gesture across her breast, her fists tightened as if to contain a fury that matched my own. “Papa, Mardane Voushanti, my lord prince, I indeed followed Brother Valen out to the dolmen that night. He did not leave my sight until the purebloods gave chase through the fields. All is as he has said. Only Gildas came. Not Gerard. I heard Brother Valen adamantly refuse to involve the boys in any way. He could not possibly have seen anyone that evening without my knowledge.”
“You returned at dawn, girl!” bellowed Stearc, his cheeks burning. “You said you’d been with some ailing pilgrim woman in the Alms Court all night. What were you doing with Cartamandua? And where were you after he was taken?”
“That has no bearing on Valen or Gildas, so I’ll not waste our time just now, Papa,” said Elene, acid on her tongue. “But I will tell you. What misdirected loyalties induced my silence are now moot.”
I had no wits to sort out what she might be talking about, save that it surely had to do with Osriel.
“I am satisfied that Valen is innocent of these crimes, Stearc,” said the prince, putting a sharp end to the matter. “After yesterday’s encounter with Kol, I fear our hopes of aid are even flimsier than before. Yet before we can consider how to approach the Danae, we must attempt to retrieve the boy and the book…and Gildas. We ride within the hour.”
Voushanti had passed around cups of cider, and now stood across the room, observing me curiously. Every time I blinked, the world seemed to waver. I gulped the cider and set the cup aside before the mardane could notice how my hand shook.