In the early days of her training, when the anger had dimmed until only the hurt remained, she'd dreamed about the day when he'd realize what he'd done and come to her and ask her forgiveness. With every year that passed, the hurt grew and more of the anger returned.
And now, it was too late.
A sudden blaze of light drew her out of a deepening spiral of self-pity as one of the librarians moved around the room tending the lamps. If it was that late, maybe Tadeus had a new message from Stasya.
"Hello, Nees."
"Hello, Imrich. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
The young man beamed proudly at her, close-set eyes nearly disappearing in the folds of his smile. "Going to get ribbon for Tadeus." He held up one thick-fingered hand. A scarlet ribbon had been loosely tied around his wrist. "Must match this one 'zacally."
"But it's after dark, all the ribbon makers will be closed."
"Not going to shops. Going to Ceci's rooms. Tadeus says she has ribbons to match."
Annice had no idea how Tadeus, being blind, could possibly know what color ribbons the other bard had, or even that she had ribbons, but had no wish to confuse poor Imrich by saying so aloud. With one arm curled protectively around her belly, she watched him walk down the hall, stocky body rocking from side to side as he hurried off to complete his errand.
Imrich was what the healers called a Moonchild. They said that the name came from the round and flattened features, but Annice suspected that, way back in the beginning, they'd thought the moon somehow responsible—healers were very touchy about outgrown superstitions. The son of one of the cooks at the palace, Imrich had headed for music of any kind the moment he could creep and had finally, to his great joy, been taken on at Bardic Hall as a server. He adored Tadeus, who occasionally had to be reminded not to take advantage of his good nature.
No one knew what caused a baby to be born a Moon-child or why some were more affected than others. Imrich lived a happy, productive, albeit simple life. Others Annice had seen sat grunting in corners, barely aware of self or surroundings. She felt a sudden rush of fear at the thought that her baby could be one of those.
"Are you coming in, Annice? Or did you just come up to lurk about outside my door?"
Jolted out of dark imaginings by Tadeus' appearance in the hall, Annice felt her jaw drop. "What is that on your head?"
"Do you like it?" A gentle shake sent the heavy fringe hanging off the broad brim of his felt hat swinging, the arc just clearing the tip of his nose. "There's only so many ways you can tie a scarf around your eyes before it gets old so, hokal!" He threw the Petrokian word in with a flourish and stepped to one side. "My cousin the milliner made it up for me."
Mesmerized by the swaying fringe, Annice slid past him into his room. "I thought your cousin was a tailor."
"I have a lot of cousins," Tadeus declared with satisfaction, following her in and closing the door. "And they're all in the clothing trade."
Blindness forced Tadeus to keep his room compulsively neat and the visitor who moved a chair or set a mug where it didn't belong was never invited back. Carved letters on the edge of his shelves kept clothing sorted by color. There were a great many shelves.
"You're going to have to request a double room soon," Annice observed, "so that you and your wardrobe can continue to live together."
"I'm going to have to go through all this and pass on the no longer fashionable," Tadeus corrected, carefully removing a kettle from his fire and pouring two portions of hot cider. "Shall I arrange it that you get a shirt or two?"
"Thank you, no. I've no desire to look like a slaughtered sheep when that crimson fabric of yours loses its dye in the rain."
"Try to keep up, Nees. That doesn't happen anymore." He passed her a mug and settled into the room's second chair, one slender leg draped nonchalantly over the padded arm. "Sea-trader came back from the south last summer with the secret, and, now local cloth, provided, of course, it's bought from my-cousin-the-dyer, will be just as colorfast as the imported. There's this stuff called alum they add to the bath…" Warming to his subject, Tadeus went into a complicated explanation of the process to which Annice paid little attention.
"Has a message come from Stasya yet?" she asked when he finally paused for breath.
His expression grew instantly contrite. "Oh, center it, Nees, I'm sorry. I meant to tell you right away. You shouldn't have let me babble on like that."
"I've never found a way to shut you up." The smile in her voice took the edge off the words. "So. What's she have to say?"
"The due tried to escape again."
"Again? How many times is that, three?"
"Four," Tadeus corrected glumly. "Stas is afraid he's trying to goad Otik into killing him out of hand."
"No. He's trying to stay alive. To escape the block. That's all."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. He was one of the most alive people I ever met."
"Meet a lot of dead people, do you?"
"Tad!"
"Sorry." He didn't look very sorry. "After you leave and I can get a kigh to come around, I'll tell her."
Annice tried very hard not to resent the fact that she'd been cut off from air, that messages had to be passed through an intermediary. She wasn't entirely successful. "Anything else."
"Just the usual mushy stuff." He grinned. "She misses you. I'm to see that you take care of yourself. You're not to worry about her. What do you want me to answer?"
That I'm afraid of dying. That I don't want my baby to pay for its father's crime. That I want her here to help me deal with all this. Leaning forward, she flicked the fringe above Tadeus' nose and forced a calm she didn't feel into her voice. "Oh, just the usual mushy stuff."
"I can't keep him under Command all the time! He'll go insane!"
"What difference does that make?" Otik growled. "He's going to die anyway."
"There're twenty-one of you," Stasya snarled. "And only one of him. I should think you could control him without my help."
A few feet away, Pjerin sucked in a shallow breath and grimaced as even such minor movement ground bones together. He'd very nearly made it this last time. Would have made it if those unenclosed kigh hadn't given him away. Arms cruelly bound high on his back, one cheek pushed into the mud, he listened to the argument and almost wished the bard would give in, would give him an excuse not to keep trying and failing and with every failure sliding faster and faster toward despair.
"Get up!"
The boot drove into his thigh hard enough to lift him a few inches from the ground.
"I said; get up, oathbreaker!"
The second kick smashed into his hip. Gagging from the pain, Pjerin struggled to raise himself to his knees, terrified that a third kick would hit ribs already broken. A helping hand buried itself in his hair and yanked.
He fought to stay conscious. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of throwing his limp body into the back of a wagon like so much carrion. If they were going to get him to Elbasan, they were going to have to fight him every step of the way.
Gerek looked at the family crest etched into the pommel of the Ducal sword and then up at Olina, his eyes red and puffy from crying. He'd been so certain his papa would be back by First Quarter Festival that not even the festival gifts piled by his bed at sunrise had prevented a morning of tears.
Sighing deeply, he wrapped both hands around the wire grip as far as they would go.
"As your papa isn't here, Gerek," Olina had told him as they'd walked hand in hand down to the field, "you've got to take care of things. It's up to you."