Stearc jerked his head at Elene and snatched up his cloak. “Let’s be off, then.”
“Not you, Thane. You are to remain here.” The prince pivoted on his heel. “You and Fedrol will detail your men as you see fit for the prior’s needs and for the security of the lighthouse and the brothers.”
Stearc flushed and glared at me. “My lord, if this is punishment for my accusations—”
“This is not punishment,” said the prince sharply. “We’ve no time for petty guilts and reprisals. Believe me when I say I would prefer to have your strong arm at my side. But Luviar has fallen. As the only living lighthouse ward-holder, your personal safety is paramount, and we’ve no time to transfer your charge to another. Thus, if you perceive the least threat to your person in these next weeks, you will entertain no foolish ideas of brave antics, but will run and hide, no matter the brothers’ safety or your daughter’s or mine. Do you understand me?”
“Aye, Your Grace. Of course.” Stearc gritted his teeth and bowed.
The prince shifted his attention to Elene, who looked as near jumping out of her skin as I felt. “Mistress, though it grieves me to say it, you cannot go with us either.”
“I thought we had no time for petty reprisals!” she snapped. “I have not faltered in my duty to this cabal, no matter our personal disagreements. I have not hesitated.”
“I would not think of underestimating your determination,” said the prince, as frosty as the windowpanes. “My only hesitation is for the dangers I must ask you to venture instead. Thanks to a few brave souls, Brother Victor lies safely at Renna. To move him was a risk, but not so much as leaving him in Palinur. Saverian will keep him alive if any physician in the world can manage it. Mistress Elene, I would ask you to meet Victor at Renna and take on the burden he and Luviar kept safe from Sila Diaglou. Saverian can work the necessary rite. We cannot leave your father the only ward-holder. Are you willing?”
“You wish me to be a lighthouse warder?” Astonishment wiped Elene’s fine-drawn features clean of anger and outrage. “Of course…of course I will.”
“Good.” The prince turned briskly to Voushanti while Elene was yet stammering. “Dispatch Philo and Melkire to safeguard Mistress Elene on her travels, Mardane. They’re our best, and if they remained with us…Well, I’d not wish them to confuse Thane Stearc’s secretary with their prince just yet.”
Voushanti nodded, as did Elene, only a rosy flush remaining of her surprise.
“I believe we have some time, if we take care,” said Osriel to all of us. “Sila Diaglou has some use for Valen beyond his grandfather’s book. As long as her attention is distracted with her own plans and she is left guessing as to mine, a small, fast party should be able to move unnoticed to intercept Gildas.”
“Gildas knows I’ll come after Jullian,” I said. I wished I shared Elene’s determined composure. My knees squished like mud and my bowels churned like a millrace.
“But you are Osriel the Bastard’s bound servant, and Osriel’s cruel games would never permit you such freedom,” said the prince. “Secrets and deceptions grant us opportunities that fate denies.”
No one could have missed this reproof of Elene. But I could read the prince’s expression no better than any other time. His cool sobriety revealed no hostility.
“Now that Gildas holds the book,” he continued, “Valen is our only hope to warn the Danae and enlist their help. As his safety is critical, and I’ve still some notion of ruling my father’s kingdom, Voushanti must keep the both of us alive through this venture.”
Voushanti bowed. “How many men?”
“Only us three.”
“My lord, no!” Voushanti and Stearc erupted in unison. “Impossible…”
Stearc argued himself hoarse about Osriel’s foolishness in taking a single bodyguard “no matter his exceptional talents.” Osriel allowed him to rant, but altered the plan not a whit. As Stearc moved from sputtering at Osriel to showering Elene with warnings and advice, the prince took up pen and paper to set his plan into motion.
Osriel took Gildas’s threat too lightly in my opinion. The monk might believe me the Bastard’s bound servant, but he also knew how I felt about villains who abused children. Worse yet, he knew my weakness; he’d left a box of nivat seeds to taunt me. I’d destroyed the box and yet clung to the belief that I could manage a few more hours of sanity—long enough to set Osriel on the right path. I could not abandon the boy. I had sworn to protect him.
Voushanti charged off to see to horses and supplies, and conversation shifted to a brisk discussion of message drops and rendezvous and other details that needed no input from me. As the moments slipped by, the knot in my belly launched a thousand threads of fire to snarl my flesh and bones. My companions and their concerns and, indeed, the entire world outside my skin began to recede, until they seemed no more than players and a flimsy stage. My time had run out.
“My lord,” I whispered from my place by the window. It was all the voice I could muster from a throat that felt scorched. “I need to tell you…”
No one heard me. Elene held Osriel’s sealed orders for his garrison at Renna and for this Saverian, his physician and house mage. Voushanti returned and hoisted the leather pack that contained the prince’s medicines. Osriel donned his heavy cloak and tossed his extra blanket to Voushanti, telling him to pack it. “A dainty flower such as I cannot afford to leave extra petals behind.”
My body burned. I tried to unfasten my cloak and padded tunic, but my hands would not stop shaking.
Soon Osriel and Stearc were laughing. They embraced fiercely. Elene clasped her father’s hands, biting her lip as she mouthed sentiments I could not hear.
I fumbled with the iron window latch and shoved the casement open far enough I could gulp a breath of frigid air to cool my fever.
“Magnus, it’s time to go.”
“Magnus Valentia!”
The calls came as from ten quellae distant. I lifted my anvil of a head, sweat dribbling down my temples. The four of them stared at me.
“What’s wrong, Valen?” said the prince.
“I can’t,” I said, pressing one arm to my belly as a vicious cramp tied my gut in a knot. “It’s too late. Gildas knew—” But I could not blame Gildas for this betrayal. He had merely taken advantage of my own sin; the excess nivat he’d given me in Palinur had but sped up what was going to happen anyway. “I’m afraid I’m no good to you after all.”
“Are you ill, pureblood?” Voushanti dropped the satchel. “You should have spoken earlier.”
I shook my head, as waves of insects with barbed feet swarmed my skin. “You’d best go now. Retrieve the book, or you’ll have to discover another way to the Danae.”
The prince appeared in front of me. Though his years numbered only six-and-twenty, fine lines crisscrossed his brow and the skin about his eyes. Concern settled in the creases as in a familiar place. “You seemed well enough yesterday. Have you some hidden injury? We can fetch Brother Anselm.”
When he touched my chin, I jerked away. But trapped in the window niche, I could not evade him. I closed my eyes, though behind my eyelids lay naught but flame. “No, my lord. A disease.”
“But not a new one.” I felt his gaze penetrate my fever like a spear of ice.
My molten gut churned. “It comes on me from time to time.”
“Have you medicines for it? How long will it hinder you? A day? A week?” Spoken with the understanding of a man who had dealt with illness every day of his life. Did his remedies skew his mind until he could think of naught else, until they became indistinguishable from the disease? Did his salves and potions leave him muddleheaded so that he killed the people he was trying to help? I doubted they tempted him to slash his flesh or scald his feet just to make the healing more pleasurable.