All through the night, lying restless and half awake, listening to footsteps or the clink of armor, a word passing between the men standing guard just outside, she had ample occasion to torture her brain with questions. If only the King and Elfhael had told her about her own origins, so many, many things that bewildered her now might have made perfect sense!
Yet more than anything else, she wondered if there were any chance she might still be rescued. Her heart sank with the knowledge that it was almost impossible that any of her people at the Old Fortress had survived. I saw Haakon and Arvi die, she remembered. The battle was already lost.
And no matter how she arranged events in her mind during that seemingly endless night, no matter how she tried to make them add up to some other outcome, she always came back to the conclusion that everyone was dead: Skerry and Kivik. Thyra, Syvi, and the other healers. All the refugees who had suffered so much and struggled so hard to win through to safety. The Eisenlonders, who took no prisoners, who spared no lives, had slaughtered them, every one.
At dawn, a different set of guards came into the tent to wake her, escorting her outside so that others could take it down. They gave her a folding stool to sit on and, with the same bashful courtesy she was beginning to expect, brought her a cold breakfast of bread, water, and dried fruit. She had scarcely finished eating when the three priests and all eight acolytes surrounded her again.
“There is something we should have attended to before this, but other matters took precedence,” said Camhóinhann, his great shadow falling over her, his broad shoulders blocking out the sky. “You have a ring made of bone with a runic inscription. Perhaps no one told you: it belonged to your mother. We know the ring was on your hand when we took you out of the fortress, and I must ask you to give it to me now.”
Winloki was bewildered, and then uncertain how to reply. On the night of her abduction, during a brief pause to change the horses, she had removed the ring and concealed it when no one was looking. She had never imagined it could have any special significance for her captors, had certainly never guessed they would know more about it than she did; she had merely deemed it too valuable to lose. Now that it seemed so important, she was more eager to keep it than ever. She considered, briefly, if a lie would avail her anything.
“No,” said Camhóinhann, reading her face, or reading her silence, all too easily. “If you told us you had lost it, we would be obliged to search you. We prefer to spare you that indignity—but don’t allow yourself to think we would hesitate if you make it necessary.”
Again Winloki felt Goezenou watching her. Turning her head to meet his gaze, she intercepted another naked and disturbing glance—one that told her as clearly as words that he at least would welcome the opportunity to lay hands on her.
Blushing furiously, she reached up under her hair, found the lock at the base of her skull where she had anchored the ring, and untied the knot. With a mutinous look, she held out her hand, palm uppermost, offering the ring to Camhóinhann.
He reached out to take it, but before his fingers touched the ring his hand wavered and his face convulsed. He staggered back with a great cry of pain. All the lesser priests and acolytes reacted at the same time: hissing and cringing, raising up their cloaks to cover their faces. Even Winloki was shaken by the violence of their recoil.
Several minutes passed. Then it was Camhóinhann, as if by some great effort of will, who recovered first.
“It seems that you must keep it after all,” he told her. “Hold it, and keep it safe. We dare not take it, and it is far too rare and valuable a thing to be entrusted to one of the temple guards.”
13
Prince Cuillioc woke in the middle of the night with the scent of smoke tickling his nose and a burning sensation in his lungs. Bonfires, he thought groggily.
But he came back awake a short time later at the sound of swift footsteps outside in the antechamber.
Still heavy with sleep, fighting the weight of it, he had succeeded only in propping himself up on his elbows when the door flew open and two of his knights, Gerig and Brihac, burst into the room. “Great Prince, our galleys are burning! They’ve set fire to our ships.”
Pulling himself up into a sitting position, Cuillioc shook the red-blond hair out of his eyes. “What—all of them?”
“At least a third, perhaps as many as half.” As he spoke, Gerig moved around the room, lighting the oil lamps, closing the shutters to keep the smoke out. “It’s still very dark, and there’s little to be seen from this side of town.”
By now, Cuillioc was most thoroughly awake. “What have we done to put out the fires?”
“Steps have already been taken to save as many ships as possible. Our men billeted down by the water claim to have the situation well in hand. But—”
“But with our ships fired,” said the Prince as he threw off the covers and left the bed, “the next thing we can expect of the natives is an open rebellion. To stop that we will need to take swift action.”
He could be decisive in a crisis like this one. Striding over to a table where pen, ink, and paper were waiting, he tore a sheet into several pieces, wrote out instructions on each one, and called for men to act as his couriers.
He dressed in haste, careless of which garments were handed him. Opening a chest at the foot of his bed, he began lifting out pieces of armor—corselet, gorget, vambraces, cuisses, greaves—and passing them one by one to Gerig or Brihac, who discarded the protective silk wrappings before placing them on the bed. But all the time his mind was busy.
“The galley slaves!” He stopped what he was doing and uttered a furious oath. “Those poor wretches chained to their oars in the middle of that holocaust—”
“Your concern for criminals, traitors, and prisoners of war is somewhat misplaced,” said a familiar, flat voice. It was Iobhar, standing in the open doorway.
“Do not grieve yourself,” the priest continued, sketching a brief genuflection. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten: rather than leave so many in idleness all of these weeks, we brought most of the slaves ashore and put them to other work.”
With a curt nod of thanks for the information, the Prince turned back to his armor chest, took out the dragon-crested helm, and passed it on to Brihac. “So the Mirazhites finally show some backbone and lash out against us. But did they truly imagine there would be no reprisals?”
Iobhar took several limping steps into the center of the room. “I take it the natives depend on us to be in a panic—and for the most part too helpless to retaliate. Things are beginning to happen very swiftly now.
I’ve spent much of this night with the garrison, where most of the men are violently ill, and every hour brings new cases. Moreover, I’ve received word that dozens of your men throughout the city are stricken as well. Some have already died. It seems the Mirazhites timed the burning of our ships very carefully.”
Cuillioc could hear shouting down in the streets, a buzz of consternation passing from room to room inside the Citadel. He forced himself to stand still as the two knights began to arm him—but all the while he was cursing himself for a fool. Cities like this one bred contagion. Why had he lingered so long in Xanthipei?
“It seems that we are all dying,” Iobhar went on in his passionless voice, “every Pharaxion in the city. In truth, we have been dying for months, without even knowing it.”
“Dying of this Summer Fever, which only kills slaves?” Lifting his arms so that Gerig could buckle the breastplate in place, the Prince gave a bitter laugh.