Arhys's deep voice sounded from within, irritable as a man waking from sleep: "What is this? Illvin... ?"
Cattilara's screaming abuse abruptly stopped. Her head drew in, and she shrank in her seat. Panting, she glowered at Ista.
Movement sounded within the wagon: a creak, boot steps on the floorboards. Arhys poked his head out and stared around. "Bastard's hell! Where are we?" A glance at the familiar landscape evidently answered the question to his satisfaction, for he turned his frown on his weeping wife. "Cattilara, what have you done?"
On the wagon's other side, the tensed Foix breathed relief and sent a small salute of thanks in Ista's direction. The mauve flicker waiting in his palm died away.
Cattilara turned in her seat and threw her arms around her husband's thighs in wild supplication. Goram ducked out of her way. "My lord, my lord, no! Order these people away! Tell Goram to drive on! We must escape! She is evil, she wants to encompass your death!"
Automatically, he patted her hair. His rolling eye fell on Ista, watching grimly. "Royina? What is this?"
"What is the last thing you remember, Lord Arhys?"
His brows drew in. "Cattilara sent me an urgent message to attend upon her at the garrison's stable yard. I walked in and found this wagon standing at the ready there, then—nothing after that." His frown deepened.
"Your wife took it into her head to carry you off and seek healing for you elsewhere than Porifors. To what extent she was encouraged in this by her demon, I know not, but it certainly assisted her in it. Illvin was brought along principally, I suppose, as your commissary."
Arhys winced. "Desert my post? Desert Porifors? Now?"
Cattilara flinched at the iron in his voice. Her collapse in tears before him failed, for once, to have any softening effect. When he turned her face up to his, Ista could see the tension in the tendons of his hands, standing out like cords beneath his pale skin.
"Cattilara. Think. This desertion dishonors my trust and my sworn oaths. To the provincar of Caribastos, to the Royina Iselle and Royse-Consort Bergon—to my own men. It is impossible."
"It is not impossible. Suppose you were sick of, oh, any other illness. Someone else would have to take over then all the same. You are ill. Another officer must take your post for now."
"The only one I would trust to take over at a moment's notice in this present uncertainty is Illvin." He hesitated. "Would be Illvin," he corrected himself.
"No, no, no—!" She fairly beat on him with her fists in a paroxysm of frustration and rage.
Ista studied the pulsating lines of light. Can I do this? She wasn't sure. Well, I am sure that I can try. So. She folded her fleshly hands quietly in her lap and reached again with her spirit hands. Again leaving the demon's underlying channels undisturbed, she tightened the ligature between Illvin and Arhys nearly to closure.
Arhys fell to his knees; his lips parted in shock.
"If you want him upright and moving," said Ista to Cattilara, "you must keep him so yourself, now. No more stealing."
"No!" screamed Cattilara as Arhys half collapsed across her. Goram grabbed at him to keep his heavy body from toppling from the seat. Cattilara stared down at Arhys's pale confused face in horrified denial. The fire of her soul roiled up from her body and collected at her heart.
Yes! Ista thought. You can. Do it, girl!
Then, with a wail and a white rush, Cattilara fainted away. The disorderly fire burst from her heart, splashing irregularly in the spell-banks. Ista extended a transparent hand again. The flow steadied, settled. Not too swift, lest it drain its reservoirs altogether, nor too slow, lest it fail its purpose. Just... there. Her inner eye rechecked the lines. A tiny trickle of life still flowed from Illvin, just enough to maintain contact. She dared not touch the demon's subtle net, not that she was at all sure she could break it even if she tried. Arhys blinked, flexed his jaw, shakily stood up, one hand braced on Goram's shoulder.
"Oh, thank you," muttered Foix into the blessed silence.
"I used to carry on not unlike that, from time to time, in my first grief," murmured Ista across to him, in uncomfortable reminiscence. "Why in five gods' names did no one ever smother me and put themselves out of my misery? I may never know."
A rasping voice from within the wagon said, "Bastard's demons, now what?"
A flash of relief crossed Arhys's features. "Illvin! Out here!"
A padding of bare feet; Illvin, wearing only his linen robe and looking much like a man wakened too early after a night of too much revelry, stumbled out and stood blinking into the bright morning, one lean hand grasping the canvas frame for balance.
His eye fell on Ista, and his face lit. "Witless!" he cried in delight. This odd greeting, Ista concluded belatedly, was actually addressed to his horse, who flicked its ears and snuffed, flaring its gray nostrils, and almost, but not quite, moved from the spot on which its rider had bade it stand. "Royina," Illvin continued, giving her a nod. "I trust Feathers-for-Wits here has gone well for you? Five gods, did no one think to cut his feed?"
"He is a most perfect gentleman," Ista assured him. "I find him very shapely."
Illvin looked down at Catti, now slumped over against Goram's shrinking shoulder. "What's this? Is she all right?"
"For the moment," Ista assured both him and Arhys, who was eyeing his wife even more uncertainly. "I, ah ... required that she change chairs with you for a little while."
"I did not know you could do that," said Illvin cautiously.
"Neither did I, till I tried it a moment ago. The demon's spell is unbroken, just... reapportioned."
Arhys, his face rigid with his discomfiture, nevertheless knelt and gathered Cattilara up in his arms. Illvin felt his right shoulder and frowned; his frown deepened as his glance took in a slow red leak starting on Cattilara's shoulder. He leaned aside for his burdened brother to duck back into the wagon. Ista handed her reins to Liss and scrambled from her saddle across to the wagon seat; Illvin extended a hand to swing her safely aboard.
"We must talk," she told him.
He nodded in heartfelt agreement. "Goram," he added. His groom looked up with open relief in his face. "Get this wagon turned around and headed back to Porifors."
"Yes, my lord," said Goram happily.
Ista ducked after Arhys and Illvin as Foix began calling instructions to his men to help back and turn the team. Arhys laid Cattilara, her head lolling, down on the pallet he had just vacated. It was dim and musty under the canvas after the bright light outside, but Ista's eyes quickly adjusted. The other servant, Cattilara's woman, and the page squatted fearfully at the back of the wagon among three or four small trunks. It seemed modest provision for the journey, though the marchess's jewel case no doubt reposed somewhere within the baggage.
Arhys sent the manservant and the woman forward to sit with Goram. His page, round-eyed with worry, settled near him; he gave the boy a reassuring ruffle of the hair. Arhys sat cross-legged by his wife's head. Illvin handed Ista down onto the pallet opposite; she felt her scabs crack under their pads as she folded her knees. Illvin started to settle cross-legged next to her, realized the inadequacy of his narrow robe for that position, and sat instead on his knees.
Arhys glowered down at his wife. "I can't believe she'd think I would desert Porifors."
"I don't imagine she did," said Ista. "Hence this deceit." She hesitated. "It's a hard thing, when all your life rides on the decisions of others, and you can do nothing to affect the outcome."