Breath hissed between Mireva’s teeth. “So! That filthy bitch—she was arrogant enough after all to preserve what she stole from us!”
“Tell me about her.”
Mireva’s face darkened with fury, “This paragon of all faradh’im—she was Gerik’s wife, but she slept with anything and anyone. She spread stories of her beauty, but she was hideously ugly—when she left her keeps she cast a shape-changing spell to foster belief in her loveliness. She ruled Gerik and Rosseyn and every Sunrunner alive with an iron whip—and killed those who didn’t obey her.”
Andry almost smiled. The woman whose strength and beauty sang from the historical scrolls bore no resemblance to the one Mireva described.
“She used treachery and deceit to destroy us—nothing was too low for her. The only time she was utterly disobeyed was when she ordered all children killed at our citadel of Castle Crag. Two of them were Rosseyn’s. No one knew about them. He reported that all had been murdered—when he had in truth taken them to safety.” Mireva sprang to her feet and began to pace the narrow cell. “As for the adults—the men she didn’t kill outright, she gelded. The women she rendered barren through drugs. The pregnant ones—she tore the babes from their mothers’ bodies and had them spitted on Merida knives. Did you ever learn the secret of Merida glass knives? They were hollow, filled with poison. When stabbed into flesh, they broke and the poison seeped out. Merisel used those knives against children!”
Mireva was panting for breath as she leaned one shoulder to the wall, as if the force of her hate had exhausted her.
“So all this is your way of getting even,” Andry prompted.
“Nothing could ever repay us for what we suffered. This is only a flicker of revenge on her descendants.”
Every muscle in his body drew taut. “Pol?”
“And you!” she spat. “Proud of it, are you, Lord of Goddess Keep? To be the blood of that murderous abomination?”
“How do you know this?” he breathed.
“Don’t you think we’ve kept track of all of you through the years? And haven’t you made the connection yet between Lord Garic of Elktrap and Lord Gerik, Merisel’s husband? Ruala is one of us!”
“But the names—”
“A blind,” she sneered. “To make everyone think that their power comes from Merisel and Gerik, not Rosseyn. She’s as much a full-blooded diarmadhi as I am, as Ruval is! As Pol is!”
This time he was physically staggered. “I don’t know how, so don’t ask.” Annoyed by her lack of knowledge, still she obviously enjoyed her triumph. “Sioned’s line is obscure in many places. He must get it from her. She wears no Sunrunner’s rings anymore, so there’s no indication that way of her blood. But if you placed such a ring on Pol’s hand, and our arts were practiced around him, his finger would burn like fire.”
“Pol,” he breathed. He could scarcely believe it. Then, shocked anew: “Rings?”
“Don’t you know anything?” she shouted. “In a Sunrunner with the Old Blood, the rings burn in the presence of one of our spells!”
“Tell me the rest,” Andry said with no voice at all. She rubbed her wrists as she told him Chiana’s part in the plot—ripe for suggestion and sorcery, Chiana hated Sunrunners and Rohan about equally. Andry regretted her essential innocence. Then Mireva began to describe the scene of Sorin’s death with vicious glee. “Stop,” he whispered, in pain.
“Stop? You’re the one who wanted to hear all of it—and so you shall! He had to die, just as Maarken and his children will have to die so there will be no one left to inherit the Desert. Oh, and Hollis, as well—for murdering Segev. You claimed Marron’s life for killing your brother. Ruval will claim hers for the same reason.”
“You’ll have to kill me, too.”
“Not for dynastic reasons. No, you and your little bastards will die because you’re Sunrunners, and Merisel’s get.” The father in him trembled for Andrev and Tobren and Chayly. But what he said was, “You’ve already acknowledged that you’re the one who’s going to die—one way or another. Who’s going to perform these executions?”
“Ruval.”
It was fairly easy to laugh. “He’ll be ashes by midnight!”
“Perhaps. But if not him, then others. How many of us do you think there are?” she taunted. “Hundreds? Thousands? Remember that one diarmadhi parent guarantees that all the children will inherit power. You Sunrunners are few and weak compared to us! And how would you even find us? Merisel drove us into the Veresch—but we have moved into every other part of the continent by now. As Sioned’s heritage proves, the unsuspected power she gave to Pol. How will you find us, Lord of Goddess Keep? How will you eliminate us?”
“I have a question for you,” he said with a tiny smile. “How will you stop me?”
He already knew how he would do it. Those who had joined Chiana were still captive at Dragon’s Rest. It would be simplicity itself to be rid of them—but not until they had revealed the locations of the others. Additionally, anyone who possessed power probably used it; rumor alone would lead him to diarmadh’im from Firon to Kierst-Isel to Dorval. He would find them, and they would die.
His only problem would be the highly placed ones. Sioned. Pol. Riyan. But they were all Sunrunners—of a sort. He would find some way of putting them under his watch, if not his control.
His smile widened. “How will you stop me?” he repeated.
Her steel-braceleted arms came up and fire gushed from her fingertips. She screamed with the agony of working with iron piercing her flesh. But flames shot from her hands and his cry echoed with hers as his clothing caught fire. He fell, writhing, and rolled across the stone floor to extinguish fire before it charred him to the bone. The next instant the flames were gone.
So was Mireva.
Her brain told her she must seal Andry inside the cell, but there was no time and she could not make her swollen fingers work. Half-blind, she stumbled toward the stairs, groped her way up them. Surely there had not been so many on the way down—
She sobbed as she collided with a door. It had no lock, but in the dimness, with pain bleating along every nerve, locating the latch and shoving the door open was endless agony. She moaned with relief when she saw the hall stretch ahead of her, empty. No one had heard her shrieks or Andry’s cries. But this was the inhabited part of the keep, and she must be careful.
Mireva breathed slowly and carefully, wishing for just the tiniest pinch of dranath to clear her head. But the memory of the sweet invincibility was almost enough. She grabbed a torch from its sconce and wedged it under the door. It wouldn’t slow Andry down for long, but it was better than nothing.
Twisting her hair into a knot at her nape, she brushed off her clothing and walked down the hall as if she belonged there. She met no one until a footman came by, loaded down with Fironese crystal on a silver tray—for Pol’s victory banquet, Mireva thought acidly. She purposely stumbled into the man’s shoulder. He swore and almost lost his balance. Her hands were still clumsy, but she managed to grab one of the thin-stemmed goblets. The crystal broke very neatly against the wall and as the footman righted himself, catlike, without dropping his burden, Mireva slashed his throat.
The ensuing crash would bring people running. She must hurry. Racing down the main corridor, she climbed the servants’ stairs as fast as she could, encountering only an incurious maid carrying an armful of sheets. As she ran, she tried to pick the wire from her ear, gave it up as being too tightly wound, and started on the steel circling her wrists. By the time she reached Ruala’s chamber, the first bloodied wire had fallen to the floor.
There were no guards, not even a maid sitting in the shadowy bedroom. Ruala was asleep. As Mireva opened the curtains, the flinch brought by the rasp of steel rings on rods was forgotten in the blessed sight of new stars. She rummaged frantically through Ruala’s dressing table. Scissors at last to hand, she snipped the other bracelet from her wrist. Quickly, she must work quickly. She could draw on Ruala’s power once she was free of the steel and could work. She tried to still her tremors and leaned down to get a better look in the mirror as she worked on the wire in her earlobe.