Then she realized how odd it was that Tchazzar had deprived the old man of the power of speech and so denied her the chance to have a true conversation with him and understand his pleas for mercy. In fact, she could only think of one reason he would have done it. She scrutinized the prisoner’s face again, and then she was certain.
She turned. “Majesty, this isn’t my father.” She knew even as she spoke that she shouldn’t say it, but Tchazzar’s ruse had so roiled her emotions that she couldn’t hold back.
He frowned. “Of course it is. Do you think your god could be mistaken?”
Upset as she still was, she made more effort to choose her next words carefully. “No, but Your Majesty has fallible mortal servants. I assume you gave one of them the task of finding my father.”
“Well, yes,” Tchazzar said. “Shala Karanok. Apparently I can’t trust the ugly sow with even the simplest task.” Jhesrhi felt sure that Shala had had nothing to do with it. “But I can correct her mistake.”
With that, the Red Dragon narrowed his slanted, amber eyes and pressed his fingertips to his temples. Jhesrhi didn’t know if he was actually attempting some sort of mystical feat or merely pretending to, but since she didn’t sense any telltale stirring of magical energy, she suspected the latter.
Tchazzar held the pose for a few heartbeats then let out a breath and smiled. “There,” he said and paused.
He was clearly waiting for Jhesrhi to ask, “ ‘There’ what?” So she did.
“Your father was dead. But I fished his soul out of the Nine Hells and placed it in this cringing carcass before us. Now you can deal with him as you see fit.”
Jhesrhi wondered if Tchazzar truly expected her to believe his bizarre assertion. She wondered if he truly believed it himself.
Whether he did or not, she couldn’t abuse the prisoner, whoever he was, any further. It just wasn’t in her. She took a breath and said, “In that case, Majesty, I pardon him.”
Tchazzar scowled. “What?”
“I agree that we with arcane gifts deserve justice. You’ve heard me assert it myself. But my father hurt me a long time ago. And you’re trying to create a Chessenta where everyone lives in harmony, not one where the persecuted and the persecutors merely switch roles. So let me set an example by forgiving.”
“If that’s what you truly want.” Tchazzar snapped his fingers, and the cell door clanged shut. “The turnkeys will release him in due course. Let’s get out of this dismal hole.”
They walked back past the cells stuffed full of prisoners. Hoping to repair whatever damage to their relationship she might have done, Jhesrhi said, “I do appreciate what you did for me. Truly.”
“Show me,” Tchazzar growled. He pivoted, grabbed her by the forearm, jerked her into an embrace, and planted his mouth on hers. Although her staff gave her a measure of protection against flame, she could still feel that his lips and probing tongue were blistering hot.
He’d caught her by surprise, and once again, although she knew how she should respond, she couldn’t control her revulsion. As she strained to pull away from him, it was all she could do to curb the impulse to knee him in the groin or resort to one of the other wrestling tricks Aoth had taught her.
Tchazzar was stronger than she was, and for a moment, it seemed that he wasn’t going to let her escape. Then his arms opened all at once. She reeled backward and banged her shoulders against the iron bars at the front of one of the cells. One of the prisoners on the other side yelped as if it meant something terrible was going to happen to them.
“I’m sorry,” Jhesrhi panted, fighting the urge to scour her lips with her sleeve. “You startled me.”
“That night in the orchard,” Tchazzar said, “I thought we were making progress. But now it seems like nothing’s changed.”
“It has,” Jhesrhi said. “It is. It’s just that, like I told you, I need time.”
“And I gave it to you,” the dragon said. “But be careful it doesn’t run out.”
Medrash, Balasar, and Khouryn stood at the rail of the carrack and watched the three Chessentan warships sail out of the north. They were still tiny with distance but not as tiny as they’d been.
Unsteady on her feet-she hadn’t acquired her sea legs yet-Vishva approached. Brown-scaled, with puckered scars on her face where she’d worn her piercings before her clan cast her out for the disgrace of dragon worship, she was one of the Platinum Cadre’s officers and the person who’d begged Medrash to purge her and her fellow cultists of Tiamat’s influence.
“Are they going to catch us?” she asked.
“I doubt it,” Medrash said, “and if they do, we’ll make them wish they hadn’t.”
“Glad to hear it.” Vishva bobbed her head and opened her arms slightly then moved off.
“I’d really rather the Chessentans not intercept us,” said Khouryn, keeping his voice low. “They’ve got us outnumbered, and I never got around to training your fellows to fight on shipboard.”
It still seemed strange to Medrash to hear the Cadre warriors referred to as his, in any sense. Adhering to the common prejudice, his own clan elders had raised him to despise wyrms and those who revered them; thus he’d taken command of the cultists with reluctance. But a good deal had happened since then, and he didn’t feel the same disdain anymore.
“I wonder if our weather witch can do any more,” Khouryn continued, glancing in Biri’s direction.
The white-scaled wizard stood near the stern, where both masts and sails were in front of her. She stared at them and chanted, mostly whispering, but sometimes raising her voice to a howl. At those moments, she accompanied her incantation with sweeps and jabs of a wand that was evidently solid to the touch but looked like a spindly, gray wisp of cloud.
“She’s doing as much as anyone could,” Balasar said. “She explained to me that she’s having to force the winds to blow contrary to their natural inclination.”
“I don’t doubt her ability,” Khouryn said. “But I still wish Jhesrhi were here.”
“I don’t know that I can help her,” Medrash said. “I’ve never done anything comparable before. But I’m going to give it a try. Excuse me.”
He looked around for a clear section of deck. Clear, of course, was a relative term in the cramped confines of a troop ship, with the sheets running every which way, mariners scrambling around to accomplish their various tasks, and everyone else gawking at the oncoming Chessentan vessels. But toward the bow and to starboard, on the opposite side from the enemy, there was a strip of space that should do.
He walked there, stood in the center, and took a breath, centering himself. Then he snatched his broadsword from its scabbard and stepped forward. He cut to the head, spun back around, parried an imaginary thrust to the heart, and riposted. It was a training dance, one intended to prepare a swordsman who might someday have to fight in a tight little alleyway or tunnel.
The final move of the dance was to sheathe one’s sword. Medrash did so and reviewed his performance. He assumed the ready position then grabbed for his blade again.
As he danced the brief dance-it was only twelve moves all together-repeatedly, he turned, struck, and parried faster and faster. His focus sharpened and narrowed until he was acutely aware of his own body and weapon, his phantom attackers, the equally hypothetical walls hemming him in on either side, and nothing else. A kind of exultation overtook him.
Many warriors and athletes knew that pure, primal feeling. Maybe other sorts of folk, musicians and craftsmen, perhaps, experienced something similar when they practiced their particular skills. Medrash couldn’t say. But he did know that for the god-touched, the exhilaration could serve as a gateway to something grander still.