Habbakuk listened to those thoughts of Zeboim's, but found nothing in them to disturb him. Lady Revella might have heard Zeboim, too, except that she was too deeply asleep.
Far to the south, Horimpsot Elderdrake scrambled up the wall of Tirabot Manor and almost fell into Shumeen's arms.
"You must bathe before we bring your news to the young lord," she said. "You look as if you had crawled all the way, most of it through a midden pit."
"I ran most of the way," the other kender said. "But I suppose I didn't watch where I was going. My uncle-the one on the Rootslicer side-no, there were two, but it was one of them-he always said hurrying too much ends up making you slower in the end."
"I thank your uncles for saying it," Shumeen snapped. "I would thank them more if they had been able to make you listen. Now get out of those clothes before I slice them off you with a dagger, and if I take some of your hide with them it will be no more than you deserve!"
Chapter 16
Torvik slept the sleep of exhaustion until nearly dawn. He then awoke under the ministrations of Beeyona, whom Yavanna had escorted over from Kingfisher's Claw on Sorraz's orders. He awoke fully when he learned that Mirraleen had disappeared. Indeed, he leaped out of bed and began to dress himself. Beeyona finally told him that if he ran wild after Mirraleen, she would have to put him to sleep again. This time she, rather than nature, would say when he awoke.
"But something could have happened to her!" Torvik said.
"There are as many sea otters in sight as ever," Beeyona said. "This would not be so if a Dimernesti had come to harm."
"There are also as many who hate peace as ever," Torvik replied.
"Unfortunately, this is also true," Beeyona said, emptying two phials into a wooden bowl and stirring the resulting mixture with her thumb. "But I am not one of them, for all that you look at me as if I were."
"I beg your pardon, Beeyona," Torvik said. "But understand that the peace is fragile. Not all of those who attacked us last night have been taken-"
"This is true, and known to all," Beeyona said, licking her thumb to test the mixture. "It is even the subject of a proclamation, signed by Sir Niebar, Gildas Aurhinius, Zeskuk, and Andrys Puhrad. It appoints Sir Pirvan of Tirabot 'War Chief of the Fleet Off Suivinari,' and promises a pardon to all of your abductors who submit peacefully and confess fully within two days. After that they are outlaws, and any man or minotaur may slay them on sight."
The proclamation was encouraging news, if true, and Beeyona was as likely to lie in such a matter as a ship made of iron was to float. Torvik still made one last thrust.
"Then all the more reason to find Mirraleen," he said. "She has a better memory for faces than I do."
Truly. It took you three weeks to stop calling me 'Berylla.' But when she wishes to be found, she will be. Until then you cannot make her well by making yourself sick, or bring her here by going everywhere else. Drink this."
An order from the kingpriest would have had less force, one from a god hardly more. Torvik drank.
It did not taste like something stirred by someone's thumb. Indeed, Torvik was not sure what it tasted like.
He was still wondering when his eyes grew heavy and his breathing slow. His last memory was of wanting to laugh at how neatly Beeyona had tricked him.
A summer-hot day at Tirabot Manor was coming to an end with the heat fleeing before a howling gale. Rain hammered on the shutters of Gerik's chambers, nearly loud enough to drown out the thunder. The lightning was so bright that it crept in around the edge of the shutters, outshining the candles hanging above the table and rising from its center.
"I still call it a bad idea, both you and Bertsa going to burn the supplies," Grimsoar One-Eye said. "We've not only got the manor to defend now, we've the villagers-and anybody else who wants to go-to get across the border into Solamnia. That's one more caravan, maybe two. We've work for two captains here. I may be two men in bulk, but not two captains in skill. Nor can I be in two places at once."
"You're one good, trustworthy captain," Gerik said, "If we can make our enemies stumble before they attack, one will be enough. If we do not, twenty will be too few."
"Then send Bertsa and stay yourself," Grimsoar said. "With you here, attacking the manor is attacking a knight's blood and property, if not the knight himself."
"If House Dirivan cared about law, they would not have lent themselves to the kingpriest's schemes," Wylum said "Nothing will keep their troops from the manor, save the coming of those Solamnics Dargaard Keep was supposed to be sending." Her tone said that she expected them to come when snow fell on Midsummer Eve.
"But the sell-swords they have hired are a weak spot," she continued. "We must first destroy the supplies the hirelings trust to make their work easy. Then, when they have grown reluctant, Gerik and I must both play on their fears of scant reward and dire punishment. Gerik has the right. I know sell-swords' law. I may even know some of the captains."
Her tone implied that under other circumstances, she would not have admitted knowing any sell-sword who would stoop so low as to serve House Dirivan.
Grimsoar growled deep in his throat, like a bear feeding on salmon too long dead. Serafina patted his hand and said, "Do not doubt yourself, my love. Who was it who, single-handed, saved the village?"
"And who afterward had to be saved by a girl not yet twelve?" Grimsoar muttered. "A fine captain he was."
Rubina's escapade was clearly still a sore point with the old sailor. Gerik tapped on the table with his signet ring.
"It must be as we have planned it," he said. "Unless the Solamnics ride up to the gate before sunset, and even then I may ask some of them to join us as witnesses.
"But now, there is something else. It would be proper and just to give Lady Ellysta betrothal rights over me and mine, even had I not called her 'my lady' with half a hundred witnesses. I am of age, and so is she. She has no kin, and none of mine of lawful age would disapprove. Will you all be witnesses to our betrothal oaths?"
If anyone at the table wished to be elsewhere, they were not bold enough to say so. Gerik rose, walked to Ellysta's chair, knelt beside her and said, "My-my lady. This betrothal is my wish, more than anything ever has been. Is it your wish also?"
Ellysta put her hands on Gerik's shoulders. "With all my heart," she whispered.
She rose. "I, Ellysta, of lawful age and birth, here under the roof of just folk and the sky of the true gods-"
For a moment, thunder rolled so that the sky seemed about to be falling on the roof, gods and all. Ellysta tightened her grip on Gerik.
"-in the presence of honest witnesses, declare that I am in my eyes and the eyes of the gods, the betrothed wife of Gerik of Tirabot, with all the duties and rights belonging to that office, and may I meanly perish if foresworn."
It was a short form of one of the standard betrothal oaths, and Gerik noted that Ellysta had put "duties" before "rights," instead of the way his mother would surely have preferred. However, "rights" had little meaning in a battle to the death, and they had no time for long oaths.
At least the betrothal had long since been consummated. That gave Ellysta even more rights than she perhaps realized, including making any child she might bear entirely legitimate.
Now, if the rain would just stop before the roads turned to swamps-or else go on until it washed away the enemy's supply tent and all its contents, and maybe send a few-score sell-swords bobbing downstream after it….
Torvik awoke to see ruddy sunset light filling his cabin. He also awoke to hear a faint scraping close to his ear.
He had just remembered that one of the cabin ports lay there when the port flew open. It nearly hit him on the head. In avoiding it Torvik rolled out of his bunk. So he was on the floor, reaching for steel he was not wearing, when Mirraleen crawled in through the port.