I couldn’t see exactly what she was doing and stood stock. still, burning with frustration until she rose and walked briskly in the direction of the main residence. I followed after allowing her a suitable distance, glancing briefly at the fountain as I passed. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. Several of the dull, bluish fish were floating on the surface of the water, their pale bellies stark, fins flapping feebly and in one instance not at all.
I quickened my step, determined not to loose sight of Kaeska as I tried to work out what play she was setting the board for this time. There were various fountains with fish in them around the compound and she visited them all in her apparent wanderings. Her path also took her through the section of the grounds where each wife had an aviary where she kept a variety of birds, some bright and tuneful, others with no apparent virtue unless they tasted better than they looked. As Kaeska mounted the steps to the main residence, I wondered if she was heading for those creepy lizards in the dining hall. All these animals had some significance that I had yet to determine. All I had established so far was that the first thing Laio did each morning was release a bird from her balcony and study its flight intently. What it chose to do could significantly affect her mood for anything up to the rest of the day; I had already learned to be wary on the mornings the stupid creature headed for the mountain that dominated the center of the island.
Was Kaeska poisoning the fish an end in itself? Was she testing the efficacy of whatever it was she had concealed inside her gown before slipping someone else a dose? I had better warn Laio and Grival too, I decided. He would be able to keep Kaeska from getting too near the baby, wouldn’t he? Newborn babes must be even more vulnerable than usual in this pestilential climate and Kaeska might be hoping to pass its death off as a natural tragedy.
I walked briskly back to the residence and hurried up the stairs, pleased to hear voices above. As I reached the top floor, Mahli turned the corner, leaning heavily on Shek Kul’s arm, Grival offering support on her other side. She looked at me without apparent recognition as some spasm seized her and wrenched a hoarse groan from the very depths of her being. Laio and Gar appeared, wiping her forehead, murmuring encouragement, rubbing her back until the torment passed. Mahli began her ungainly progress again, muttering a startling selection of Grival’s practice-ground obscenities under her breath. The woman looked to be in extremis to me but the midwife was smiling and nodding and, since no one else was either panicking or shouting, I had to suppose they knew what they were doing. I certainly didn’t, childbirth being an exclusively female mystery in decent Tormalin households.
I stepped forward, hoping to speak to Laio, but she waved me off with a scowl and an unmistakable dismissal. I moved backward again, frustrated but not about to risk pressing the issue given the tension knotting Laio’s brows. I went down the stairs, increasing my pace somewhat when Mahli let loose a gut-wrenching yell which I swear rattled the shutters as I passed them.
Turning a corner on the ground floor, I came face to face with the Elietimm. This time, rather than challenging me, he looked startled, almost frightened and turned instantly on his heel, running down a white-tiled passage that I knew led to the suites of reception rooms each wife commanded. I was about to head in the opposite direction when intense curiosity seized me and I found myself following the man into the labyrinth that made up the lower level of the residence. Apprehension warred with a sudden, iron determination to find out what that precious pair were up to, but I locked the warning away in the back of my mind, dimly thinking how Aiten would have mocked such uncharacteristic behavior but dismissing the notion.
The sound of a door shutting drove all such considerations out of my head. It was the main entrance to Kaeska’s reception rooms and I could hear a faint murmur of voices, which set my frustration fully alight. Moving slowly, bare feet silent on the marble floor, I edged toward the door, but I could still hear nothing clearly. Well, with the penalties for using magic around here, she was hardly going to be chanting sorceries at the top of her voice. I caught my breath as I heard a low-voiced murmur, cursing silently to myself as I saw that a muffling curtain had been drawn across the inside of the door, scarlet silk bright against the black wooden slats.
“When the child is born, you will take this message to my cousin, Danak Nyl. He will tell you—”
Who was Kaeska talking to?
“Behind you!”
In the instant that voice sounded inside my head a shadow fell across the wall in front of me and I looked back to see the Elietimm priest, arm raised as he brought down a mace to spill out my brains across the patterned tiles. I launched myself forward, crashing straight through the flimsy louvers of the door, saving my skull but taking an agonizing strike on one thigh. I found myself face to face with a startled Kaeska; she was on her own and with a shock of understanding I cursed myself for an imbecile, taking their bait like that.
“Seize him!” The Elietimm was ripping the tattered drape aside as Kaeska fluttered like a startled cage-bird. She made a futile grab for me and squealed with a mixture of outrage and fear when I put both hands around her narrow waist and threw her bodily at her enchanter. They went clashing to the floor and I ran for the shutters that opened to the gardens, vaulting over a day-bed in my haste to get away. Excruciating pain in my leg felled me like a poleaxed beast as I landed and lost my footing. I rolled around, screaming, clutching my thigh where the mace had landed. When I could blink the tears of agony from my eyes, I looked down to see ivory shards of bone sticking through a ruin of bloody flesh, torn rags of skin. Dast’s teeth, how had he done that much damage with just the one glancing blow? As I whimpered with the torment of it, the bastard came to gloat over me, a mocking cadence to the incantation he was running under his breath.
“More fool you, dungface,” I thought savagely, using the last of my strength and will to kick out with my sound foot, catching the priest in the side of the kneecap with a strike I’d used to disable bigger men than him. Sure enough, he fell like cut timber, screeching as the fine-turned legs of the day-bed splintered under his weight. I caught a mean kick in the kidneys from Kaeska for my trouble, but that hardly bothered me. As soon as the priest’s incantation had unravelled, the agony in my thigh vanished, my hands were gripping bruised but otherwise unbloodied flesh and I scrambled to my feet, shaking with a combination of rage and terror. The bastard was messing with my mind again, scrambling my own wits to trick and betray me. Shoving Kaeska full in the belly, I sent her clean off her feet into a rack of delicate vases, which shattered beneath her. I spared a scant breath to hope she collected a good few shards in her arse, the vicious bitch.
I looked swiftly toward the corridor to see if the uproar had brought any slaves to offer me unintentional protection, but that faint hope proved worthless. I dragged a hand across my eyes and swore vilely as all sense of direction dissolved beneath the insistent pulse of another enchantment in my ears, the meaningless words rebounding from the walls as the room swum before my unfocused eyes. I swung around to face the priest, hands reaching for his blurred form, but he had somehow recovered his mace. I backed off as he hefted it with worrying expertise. He drew a dagger from his belt with his off hand and tossed it to Kaeska. “Hamstring him.”