"What will happen to the pieces of the other souls who are tangled up in it?" she asked in worry. But the Voice had vanished again or, at least, didn't choose to answer.
Cattilara was crouched on the tower platform, panting and hiccupping in little short sobs.
Illvin cleared his throat apologetically, and shook out his hand. "The demon tried to fling you to your death, and its freedom," he told her.
She stared up at him with a ravaged face. In a ragged voice she said, "I know. I wish it had succeeded."
Ista motioned the sewing woman, Goram, and Liss to her. "Get her to a bed, a real bed, and call her women to her. Find her what comforts this castle can yet yield. Don't let her be left alone. I'll come to her when I can." She saw them down the spiral stairs, Cattilara, weary beyond weeping, leaning on the sewing woman and shrugging away from Liss.
Ista turned back to find Illvin and dy Cabon slumping worriedly on the eastern parapet, staring down at the Jokonan camp in the growing light. It roiled with activity, half hidden beneath the trees. Wisps of smoke still rose from the tents that had been burned. A stray saddled horse trotted away from a man trying to catch it; his Roknari curses carried faintly through the moist dawn air. Ista craned her neck in hope, but it did not appear to be Illvin's red stallion.
"So what has happened, Royina?" asked dy Cabon, gazing down in perplexity. "Have we won or lost?"
"It was a very great hunt. Arhys slew seven sorcerers before they brought him down. He stumbled at the eighth. I think it was a sorceress. I wonder if she was young and beautiful, and he could not force his hand swiftly enough to the task?"
"Ah," said Illvin sadly. "That would be Arhys's downfall, wouldn't it."
"Perhaps. The Jokonans had realized how few were his numbers and were combining against him by then, anyway. But the freed demons are fled away in all directions; Joen did not recover any."
"Alas that we do not have two more Arhyses to complete the task," said Illvin. "Perhaps ordinary men must try now." He hitched his shoulders and frowned.
Ista shook her head. "Joen has hurt us, and now we have hurt her back. But we have not defeated her. She still holds eleven sorcerers on her strings and an army barely scratched. She is in a rage; her assault will redouble, without mercy."
Dy Cabon slumped on the parapet, thick shoulders bowed. "Then Arhys rode in vain. We are lost."
"No. Arhys has won us everything. We have only to reach out our hands to collect it. You didn't ask me what I did with Cattilara's demon, Learned."
His brows went up, and he turned toward her. "Did you not bind it in her, as before?"
"No." Ista's lips drew back on a smile that made him recoil. "I ate it."
"What?"
"Don't look at me; it's your god's metaphor. I have finally penetrated the mystery of the Bastard's second kiss. I know how the saint of Rauma accomplished her task of booting demons out of the world and back to their holy commander. Because it seems the trick of it has now fallen to me. Arhys's parting gift, or rather, something he made possible." She shivered with a sorrow to which she dared not yet give way. "Illvin."
Her voice was sharp, urgent; it jerked him from the grieving lassitude that seemed to be overtaking him, as he leaned all his weight on the wall and stared into nothing. He had lost, she reminded herself, a worrisome amount of his own blood in the past hour, for such an already-depleted man. Muddled with Cattilara's, it was spread out in clotting pools across half the tower platform. His wounds had all closed as if they had never been, except for the row of scabbed needle holes bound with thread across his shoulder. He looked back at her and blinked owlishly.
"What is the swiftest, most efficient possible way by which I might come face-to-face with Joen?"
With unthinking brilliance, he replied simply, "Surrender." Then stared at her aghast, and clapped his hand to his mouth as if a toad had just fallen from his lips.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ISTA HAD JUST FINISHED WASHING, OR AT LEAST, CLEANING, HER body with a half cup of water and some rags when Liss returned to their chambers. She clutched a pile of white garments in her arms, pushing open the inner door with a twist of her hips. "These are the best Cattilara's women could find in a hurry," she announced.
"Good. Put them on the bed." Ista closed the dirty black robe back about herself and came over to examine them. It had not been, by any definition, a bath, but at least the touch of her less-sticky skin against clean clothing might not feel like some violation. "How fares the marchess?"
"She is asleep now. Or unconscious. I really couldn't be quite sure, looking at her. She was very pale and gray."
"Just as well, either way. The blood she spent on the tower buys her a favor, perhaps, in this drained slumber." Ista sorted through the piles. A linen shift the color of new cream, bordered with elaborate cutwork, looked as though it had a hem short enough that she would not trip over it. A delicate white over robe, embroidered in shining white thread that lent it weight and swing, was a Bastard's Day festival garment. The unknown needlewoman had somehow endowed the friezes of tiny dancing rats and crows with considerable charm. "Perfect," Ista murmured, holding it up. The spark, she noticed, was gone from her left hand, though the frost mark on her skin remained.
"My lady, urn... isn't it a little provocative to place yourself in Quadrene hands wearing the Bastard's own color?"
Ista smiled grimly. "Let them imagine so. Its real message is one I do not expect them to read. Haste, now. Tie the ribbons of the shift in back straightly, please."
Liss did so, cinching in the graceful waist. Ista pulled on the over-robe, shook out the wide sleeves, and fastened it closed beneath her breasts with the amethyst-and-silver mourning brooch. The meaning of the heirloom had shifted, it seemed to her, half a dozen times since it had come into her possession. All its old woes had drained out utterly, last night. Today she wore it new-filled with stern sorrow for Arhys, and for those who had ridden with him. All about her must be renewed, in this hour.
"The hair next," she instructed, sitting on the bench. "Something quick and neat. I do not mean to go out to them looking like a madwoman dragged through a hedge, or a haystack hit by lightning." She smiled in memory. "Put it in one braid."
Liss swallowed hard and began brushing. And said, for the fourth or fifth time since dawn on the tower, "I wish you would take me with you."
"No," said Ista with regret. "Ordinarily, you would be much safer as the servant of a valuable hostage than left in a crumbling fortress about to fall. But if I should fail in what I attempt, Joen would make demon fodder of you, steal your mind and memories and courage for her own. Or take you in trade for her sorcerer-slaves that Arhys killed last night, and set you on me not as my servant but as her guard. Or worse."
And if Ista succeeded... she had no idea what might happen after that. Saints were no more immune to steel than sorcerers, as her predecessor the late saint of Rauma—was no longer able to testify.
"What could be worse?" The long strokes of the brush faltered. "Do you think she has enslaved Foix and his bear? Yet?"
"I'll know in an hour." What worse might be, should Liss fall into Joen's hands, suddenly occurred to Ista. Now that would be the perfect, unholy union of two hearts: to feed Liss to Foix's bear, and let Foix's own caring drive him mad with horror and woe as their souls mixed... Then she wondered whose mind was blacker, Joen's, to do such a thing, or her own, to impute such a course to Joen. It seems I am not a nice person, either.
Good.