She knew what he desired. Once she gave metabolism, she would go into an enchanted slumber until the lord that received her endowment died, and her own metabolism returned to her. In such a state, she would not be able to protect herself from his lust. She would not even know when he violated her. And when she woke, she would be pregnant with his child.
“I’ll give you nothing,” Myrrima growled.
“Husband love you very much. He give will to save you. Make us promise to let you live. But if we let go, you make trouble for us. No can let you go. So, you must give endowment.”
“I’ll kill you first,” Myrrima said.
He grunted as if annoyed at an idle threat. “You not understand. Give endowment, you live. Not give, I push you over.” He grabbed her roughly and held her over the ledge.
Myrrima threw her arms around his neck. If he tried to push her over, he would come too, and Myrrima had no doubt that she would fare better in the water than he. She spat in his face.
Verazeth’s eyes glittered cruelly, and his nostrils flared. He clenched his fists impotently.
“I give you day to think. Sun very hot.” He let her have a moment to ponder this. Inkarrans, with their white skin, had no protection against the sun. They burned easily and deeply. “While sun come, you think. Maybe not so bad give endowment. Maybe both you and husband give endowment to king. That way, when he die, you both get endowment back, you and husband. Is not better to live in hope than die in despair?”
He grabbed the chain that bound her, and wrestled her arms down. Then he pulled off her traveling cloak, leaving her with naught but tunic and breeches. He grabbed Myrrima’s chains once again and pushed her against a wall, even as he lifted her arms.
The next moment, Myrrima found herself hanging from her fetters, unable to touch the ground with her feet.
Verazeth said, “Many crab on rocks. Hungry crab. They climb cliff, look for food. Maybe help you think better.”
The prince turned and entered the tunnel, bolting the iron door behind him.
Myrrima glanced down to see a pair of small green kelp crabs scuttling for shelter under the rocks. She pulled at her restraints. The heavy fetters cut into her wrists. They fit so tightly, it was almost as if they’d been made for her. With her endowments of brawn, Myrrima knew that she could pull her hands out. But she’d break every bone in her wrist doing it, and would cut away much of the flesh at the same time.
What good would escape be if it left her crippled?
So she hung for a long hour as the morning sun crept over the waves. The water reflected the deep blue of the sky, and deep swelling waves were wrinkles upon the sea’s ageless face. The water stretched everywhere, limitless. Myrrima had never been in the presence of anything that made her feel so small, so humble.
She could feel it calling to her. With every wave that surged against the rocks at the base of the cliff, with the distant hiss of breakers like the clamor of spectators at a joust, she could feel the tug of the ocean, pulling her toward it, pulling her under.
Down below the cliff, seals swam about, their heads bobbing in the waves. Myrrima longed to swim with them. Cormorants and gulls and other shorebirds flew past in flocks. A little green crab scaled the rock and regarded Myrrima with its eyestalks, drops of water oozing from its mouth.
“Come, little friend,” Myrrima told it. “Come gnaw at my metal bindings.” But Myrrima was no summoner. The little crab scurried off.
The early morning wore away, and Myrrima was still hanging quietly when she heard the soft pad of footsteps.
She craned her head just as an old Inkarran woman opened the iron door. She was as white as clamshell, and hunched with age. She crept furtively, as if afraid that someone might hear.
She whispered in Rofehavanish that was surprisingly free of accent. “You came here looking for Daylan Hammer?”
“Yes,” Myrrima managed to answer through parched lips.
“Long have I wondered what has become of him,” the old woman said. “He was my tutor once, when I was a girl. My father hired him to teach us about the distant past, faraway lands, and the tongues of nations. I loved him greatly, but I could never tell him. I was a princess, you see.”
Myrrima understood. It would have been considered scandalous for a woman of the Inkarran court to love a man of Rofehavan, even a hero like Daylan Hammer.
“But as much as I loved him, my sister loved him more. Often she tried to be with him alone, and at night she would tell me how she dreamed of him. As often as she sought him, he rejected her.
“Her marriage had been arranged before her birth, you see. She was to marry Sandakra Criomethes, Prince of Inturria. As the date of her marriage drew near, she grew sick in the heart, and at last thought of a way to revenge herself against our teacher. On the night before her wedding, she cut out her own womb, and died.”
Myrrima stood for a moment, unsure what she was hearing. “Why?”
“It is the Inkarran way,” the old woman said. “When a woman has dirtied herself with a man, this is how she confesses and makes it right.”
So, Myrrima realized, to spite Daylan Hammer, the princess implicated him in her death.
“My father gave me to the prince in my sister’s place, and so I have heard over the years some of what happened next. My lord Criomethes was outraged, and demanded revenge upon your Daylan Hammer. The immortal one fled north, and many men went to hunt him. There was a great battle in Ferecia. Many of our men never returned.”
“Did they kill him?”
“I do not know,” the old woman answered. “I know only this. I did nothing to save him, a man that I admired and loved far more than I could ever care for my lord Criomethes. So, I ask that you forgive me.”
The old woman opened her clenched fist, and held out a key. Swiftly she climbed up on the lip of the parapet and unlocked Myrrima’s fetters. Myrrima slid to the ground.
“Go now,” the old woman said. “Almost everyone is asleep in the palace. Now is your chance to escape!”
“Not without my husband,” Myrrima said.
“It is too late for him,” the old woman said. “He has already given an endowment of will. He is one of the living dead.”
“Then I’ll take the endowment back,” Myrrima said dangerously. She stripped the chains from her, and only then did the old woman seem to recognize her mistake.
She let out a yelp, as if she would scream, but Myrrima grabbed her by the throat. The old woman pawed and kicked, but Myrrima had many endowments, and she choked the old woman until she lost consciousness, and then chained her, and hung her from the peg.
“I’m sorry,” Myrrima whispered as she locked the old woman into place. “I’m sorry.”
Myrrima turned the woman, so that she wouldn’t be burned by the sun, and crept back into the dark tunnel.
Sir Borenson lay upon his wooden bed, breathing in, breathing out. A cozy fire burned in the hearth, and Borenson could see the room clearly for the first time in more than an hour. He was in the main chamber of King Criomethes’s apartments. The Inkarran facilitator hunched over Borenson’s bare foot. He painstakingly dipped a long needle into an inkpot, and then inserted it into Borenson’s foot. He was constructing a tattoo to cover the whole of Borenson’s leg.
I could look down, Borenson told himself. I could see the shape of the rune of Will.
But he had no desire to do it. For ages the men of Rofehavan had sought to learn the secret of its making. But Borenson did not bother to look. There was a fat black spider on the stone ceiling, meandering along. Borenson watched it, unblinking. His eyes felt dry and itchy, and each time that the pain grew too great, he would try to summon the energy to blink them. This he did only because his tormentor forced him to do so.
His tormentor was a woman. She had stood over him with a bamboo rod since he first bestowed his endowment, and had given him orders. “Breathe for me, or I shall hit you,” she warned. And whenever he stopped breathing, she would rap his shins with the rod, causing excruciating pain. And so he breathed in for her, and he breathed out. Thus she taught him to breathe.