She felt the young man’s grasp on her arm increase.
“You aren’t well. Sit here, and I’ll go for Kren myself.”
And she was seated in a small lamplit room, where a fire smoked dully in the grate.
It seemed a long time before he came, a tall broad-shouldered man, dressed informally in brown leather and the dark red cloak of the Garrison. He had a tough intelligent face, scarred, like his body, in his earliest youth from border fights in the Thaddric mountains and sea skirmishes with Zakorian pirates. But the face was dominated by a pair of observant and remarkably steady eyes. His smile was concerned and friendly but no more, for there had never been sentiment between them; only in a bed had they been lovers.
“How can I be of service, Lomandra?”
She opened her mouth but could seem to get no words out. In the pause, he saw the oldness in her face. Her eyes were sleepless and unpainted, her beautiful hair hung lankly on her shoulders.
“Liun seems to think you have my child.”
“No. Besides, it would have made no difference to us.”
Again silence choked her. He went to a table and poured wine into two cups. She took the goblet, and when she had swallowed some of the drink, words came into her mouth.
“I need your help. I must leave Koramvis. If I remain, it’s likely the Queen will kill me.”
He looked at her for a while, then drank.
“I’ve told you of the Lowland girl Ashne’e.”
“The enchantress who poisons your sleep with bad dreams,” he said quietly.
“Yes, perhaps. . . . Her child was born a month ago.”
“I’d heard of it.”
“Val Mala had medicines mixed with the girl’s food—she hoped the child would be stillborn. When it lived, she ordered me to kill it—smother it. She wanted the small finger of the left hand given her as a token of its death.”
Kren’s face darkened. He drained the cup and dashed the dregs into the fire.
“The bitch is insane. Does she think you’re her butcher?”
“I didn’t do it, Kren. Ashne’e—cut the finger away—I—have never seen such a savage purpose. I sent Val Mala what she asked. But the child is still alive.”
Her whole body drooped on the narrow soldier’s couch. He set down his cup and sat beside her, putting a gentle arm about her.
“And you have this child hidden somewhere.”
She was very glad of his perception.
“Yes.”
“You’re a brave woman to go against Val Mala.”
“No. I’m afraid to my very soul. But Ashne’e—she asked that I take the baby out of Koramvis, leave it in some Lowland holding on the Plains. The Queen will murder her as soon as she has the means, and the child, too, if she can find it.”
“Then she must be positive it’s Rehdon’s work.”
“It has the skin of a Vis,” Lomandra said softly, “but its eyes—are her eyes.”
“I’ll help you get safely to the Plains,” he said. “A traveling chariot and two men—more would arouse suspicion. I’ll make certain you can trust them.”
“Thank you, Kren,” she whispered.
“And you,” he said, “what of you, Lomandra?”
“I?” She looked at him distantly, finding she had not thought of herself, only of the child. “I suppose I shall return to Xarabiss. My family are dead, but I have jewels I can sell. Perhaps I’ll marry into some noble house; I’ve been well-trained in aristocratic etiquette.”
He touched her hair lightly, got to his feet once more and went to stand beside the smoking fire.
“I’ll see to it that there’s transport ready in the morning. Sleep here tonight. There are several private chambers you can choose from.”
She saw that it was solicitude prompted him to make this offer that she sleep alone. Perhaps, besides, he had already made arrangements with a woman of the Garrison to share his bed. She felt too weary not to be glad, yet, at the same instant, vague regret, for she would not see him ever again.
4
The city was roused at midnight by an apocalyptic blaze of watch fires, running torches and the clangor of bells. Men in the black and rust livery of the Storm Palace stood shouting in the public places of Koramvis, riders galloped through the avenues and alleyways, bawling their proclamation as if the end of the world had come.
It was to be a night of fire and terror.
Treachery. Blasphemy.
Amnorh, High Warden of Koramvis, Councilor of the dead Storm Lord, had the curse of the gods on his back. He had taken the Lowland witch, whose evil had first slain Rehdon, and used her as his harlot. His bastard, not the Storm Lord’s heir, had thriven in her devil’s body.
The work was done well. The absurd pride of the Dortharian rabble, who believed themselves, even in extremes of poverty and unprivilege, to be in some remote way fathered by gods, soared to fever pitch. In the streets they bawled for Ashne’e’s death, for the spike to be driven into her womb, and howled too at the gates of Amnorh’s palace, for they fancied themselves tricked and had been given the power of revenge.
A party of soldiers, the mob behind them, strode into the Palace of Peace, their mailed feet ringing in the corridors. Two of them came to the room where the girl lay and entered a little uneasily. She was, after all, a sorceress; she might turn into an anckira when they touched her. It was said she had devoured her own child.
But she lay quite still. The torch glare seemed to shine right through her, as though she were made of alabaster.
She had not waited for them.
The soldiers carried out the corpse, nevertheless, and showed it to the people. A pyre was roughly but enthusiastically built in the Square of Doves. The populace dragged out willingly items of furniture and clothing to solidify its structure. Ashne’e’s white body was carried by a grinning baker to the top and slung down naked on the heap. Torches were applied. A black column of smoke towered into the lightening sky.
The mob broke open wine shops and became drunk. When the charcoal struts collapsed, they ran again to Amnorh’s palace and tossed blazing brands over the wall into the trickster’s court.
“My lord,” a man shouted, “the trees at the wall are on fire. The gate will go next. Once that’s down the mob will surge through, and the house guard can never hold them.”
“Is my chariot ready as I asked?”
“Yes, Lord Amnorh.”
The servant hurried ahead of him into the courtyard. The dawn air was already thick with smoke and the charred smell of burnt wood. Outside he heard an unmistakable crowd noise.
Amnorh mounted the chariot alone and took up the reins of the skittish team. He felt a certain bleak satisfaction in himself that he could turn his back so completely and promptly upon the entire sum of his power and wealth and leave it to the flames and the greed of the Dortharian scum.
“Aiyah!” Amnorh cried to the team and drove them along an avenue of smoldering feather trees, straight toward the gate. His own guard scattered, slaves pulled the gate wide for him.
Torch flare and smoke and mass, and foul stink and an impression of a single creature with a thousand yelling mouths and clawing hands. He plunged into it, the chariot’s bladed wheels spinning, and the foremost rank of the crush toppled and spread before him, screeching. It seemed for a moment the chariot would overturn or at least be halted by the mash of fallen human flesh, but the fleet, neurotic animals, blowing, and terrified by the fire, dashed on and pulled the car after them, while Amnorh slashed from side to side with his knife.