“Do you think anyone saw?” Flayh pleaded.
“I did,” Pezi spluttered.
“I mean anyone important.” Flayh ducked back outside to check the hallway in both directions, then danced back inside, a frightening grin spreading across his wrinkled face. “I did it! I found my alter-shape! Oh thank you, Pezi, you can’t imagine how delighted I am.”
Pezi squirmed in terror. His crazed uncle had actually embraced him.
Flayh scampered across the room, clapping his hands like a schoolgirl.
“A dog! I’m a long, lean hound! Something powerful! Not a mere insect, like Mar-Yilot, or a lizard, like that fellow Joooms a hound! A powerful hound!”
Pezi stared, open-mouthed. At last his uncle ceased his raving and turned to stare back at him. “What are you gawking at?” Flayh snapped, and Pezi, relieved, closed his mouth. That had sounded like the uncle he knew. “What are you doing here? Why did you burst in unbidden? What’s the meaning ”
“I came to give you some news.” Pezi blurted out as loudly as he could. If his uncle was going to turn into a dog whenever he got angry, Pezi was determined to keep him pacified.
“News? Of Admon Faye? What is it?” Flayh demanded in crisp brittle tones.
Now Pezi was in a quandary. “Ah… there’s no news…”
“No news? You interrupt me to bring me no news?”
“That’s the news,” Pezi whined. “That there’s no news…”
Flayh charged toward him, grabbing this nephew whose great girth dwarfed him by the collar of Pezi’s tunic. “You loathsome ”
“Please, uncle,” Pezi cried, and Flayh backed quickly to the other side of the room.
“What have you been eating?” Flayh asked in horror.
Pezi stared at him, then shrugged and began listing, “A half of A ham with cherry sauce, a breasted fowl’s breast marinated in a mint jelly with ”
“Enough!” Flayh shouted. “What possessed me to ask such a question of you…”
“Please, uncle,” Pezi rushed on to say, “I only wanted to keep you aware of the situation as you told me to ”
“Get out! And stay out until there’s some development worth telling about. And give me those keys.” Flayh held his nose and stalked over to jerk the key ring from Pezi’s hand.
“But the seneschal—”
“Out!” Flayh roared as he shoved his nephew backward and slammed the door in his face. The key scraped into the lock, and the tumblers shifted noisily.
Pezi just stood there for a moment. He noticed again that his belly ached. He felt of it, and sighed. “Must be hungry,” he muttered. He finished his onion on the way to the kitchen.
Bronwynn sat against the wall of her prison and daydreamed. She’d gotten good at that during these months of darkness. Months? It could as easily have been weeks or years, for all she knew. No, not years her hair hadn’t grown long enough for that. But it had been plenty of time for her to imagine a hundred different means of rescue. And every dream starred Rosha mod Dorlyth.
Rosha, her intended warrior of Ngandib-Mar, At first she’d been embarrassed to fantasize about him so extravagantly. Now she just leaned back and enjoyed it imagining him breaking the door down, crushing her in his arms…
The door slammed open, jolting her out of her pleasant vision and back into the ludicrous reality of her current predicament. In all her dreams of rescue, none had seemed so improbable as this.
“Resting easy, are you?” Admon Faye asked with a mock cheeriness that made her groan. “No? Pity. I’ve come to bring a little sunshine into your life. Get up.”
“Why should I?”
Adorn Faye didn’t reply. He just reached down to grab Bronwynn by the shoulders and hoisted her up. He spun her around to face the wall and, before she could react, was slipping a leather strap around her waist.
“I’m not going to be tied!” she shouted and she rammed her elbow back into his gut. He grunted, then boxed both of her ears in response. She stomped on his foot, spun around to rake his face with her fingernails, and got a punch in the eye for her trouble. That dazed her it also calmed her down. Admon Faye went on about his business, moving the strap up and wrapping it around her bust first, then dropping it down to her hips. “What are you doing?” she asked, though it was already perfectly obvious to her.
“I’m measuring you for some new clothes. Or would you prefer to keep this rag?”
“Why didn’t you just say that, then?”
“Oh, Princess Bronwynn, may I take your measurements, please?” be mocked in a squeaky falsetto. Then he snorted. “Suppose we get it straight between us who does the asking and who does the telling?” He read the last measure, then slung Bronwynn into a corner of the cell and pocketed the tape. He pointed his finger at her. He said nothing, just pointed that finger and looked at her. Then he left as quickly as he’d come.
Bronwynn didn’t bother to get up. She lay back where she was and tried hard to think about Rosha. But the thoughts now only filled her with despair. For while Ligne’s dungeon was far blacker than this place, at least there she had felt that Rosha, or Pelmen, or someone on her side might be able to find her. No one knew she was here, save Admon Faye.
And at the moment, it seemed even Ligne’s hole might be preferable to serving the whims of the slaver. She didn’t cry Bronwynn wasn’t much for weeping. But it might have helped her feelings. Bottled inside her chest was a lump of disappointed hopes and nothing could make that lump go away.
Still fuming, the House watched in silence as Joss climbed a small, private stairway into its upper levels. It felt enormous frustration; though it had warned its occupants in every consceivable way of the invasion and escape
*0 Tke Wizard in Waiting of the intruder, not a soul within its walls had paid any heed. It had been hours before the theft of the captive had even been discovered. The warders who made that discovery then took another few hours to decide how to inform the Queen. Finally they’d drawn straws, and the luckless loser carried the message to her quarters. Now, after wasting a day, the Queen had summoned her Lord of Security to inform him of his failure. The castle hoped she’d have the man hanged. His guards! Ineptitude had besmirched the honor of the Imperial House of Chaomonous!
The terraced gardens spiraled up out of the bowels of the castle to the very rooftop itself. Overall, capping the pleasure park’s floral splendor, arched a gigantic aviary wrought of iron and delicately colored glass. It stretched up to a height almost equaling the loftiest of the castle’s towers, which were themselves the tallest in this land. This rooftop cage was the warmest spot in the palace, kept so for the sake of the brightly plumed birds that fluttered from one man-made branch to another. Just as exotically plumed as the birds were the colorful courtiers who walked and talked beneath. This was one of Ligne’s favorite spots, for she felt the gorgeous gardens, illuminated by the multicolored light from above, served as a perfect setting for the jewel of her own beauty.
She greeted Joss with a forced smile, and quickly got down to business.
“I hope you haven’t regretted entering my service, Joss,” she said as she tossed a handful of seeds before a peacock. “For a man of your integrity, such a transfer of loyalties must have been most difficult.”
“I would be lying if I denied it, my Lady Ligne.” Joss nodded stiffly.
He always felt out of place in this garden. He was much more at home in the armory, many floors below.
Ligne smiled, her blue eyes sparkling. “And General Joss never lies.”
“Only for the sake of Chaomonous,” he affirmed. She waited for him to elaborate, and unwillingly he obliged. “It was not so difficult to turn my back on Talith, once the King proved himself a fool. I determined that when he would not listen to reason, he was beyond any help that I might offer.”