Her heavy black braid had been knotted at the back of her long neck and fixed in place with an ivory skewer. Easy to imagine that skewer stretching all the way down her spine. Half Evanori, half Aurellian—that likely explained her odd nature. Evanori hated Aurellians—and thus purebloods—with a passion wrought of gold, starvation, and survival.
After Ardra and Morian had fallen to the Aurellian Empire, and Caedmon had sent his infant son to the Danae for protection, the king and the remnants of his legions had retreated into the wilds of Evanore. Raiding, running, hiding in caves and corries, freezing and starving alongside his men, Caedmon taught the warlords to fight as one and helped them build impregnable strongholds to hold off the invaders and their cruel emperor, who lusted for Evanore’s gold. When Caedmon fell at last, having earned their eternal loyalty, the Evanori held out a century more. Had they yielded their region’s treasure, Aurellia would likely yet stand, and Navronne would yet be subject to an empire that built its strength on magic, slavery, and brutality.
Though feeling mostly myself again in body, my spirit remained tight wound. If Osriel meant what he said about my choosing my own course, I’d no mind to put off our coming journey into the Danae realm, no matter the state of my recovery. Thus, to learn what secrets Elene could teach, I had to see her that night. Which meant I had to find a way into the fortress. As a prison guard Saverian did not elicit the same unnerving fears as Voushanti, but she had shown power enough to make me wary, nonetheless.
“You seem excessively compliant for one who speaks of our master so slightingly,” I said as she marched into the familiar passage. The hammered gold wolf with garnet eyes glared from the far end, guarding my bedchamber door. “Is it to benefit the lighthouse you do all this?”
She snorted. “I am Renna’s physician and house mage, not a member of Osriel’s band of merry monks.”
“Your privileged position must shield you from his wrath. You don’t seem to fear him as the rest of us do.”
She waved me through the blue and yellow door hanging. “If you assume my familiarity with the prince buys me leniency from his strictures, I’d recommend you actually use these senses I’m protecting for you. Bear in mind, I’ve known him from infancy and have learned in what matters I dare cross him and in what matters I dare not.”
I made as if to enter the bedchamber, but instead blocked the doorway. “Prince Osriel wishes me out of sight—fair enough. But might there be some hidden vantage from which I could observe tonight’s events? I’ve no experience of Evanori customs, so I’m greatly curious. And, by every god in heaven, if I am left alone to parse my birth, my body, or my future for one more moment, not even your magics will keep me sane.” This last came out sounding a bit more desperate than I liked.
She tipped her head to one side and pursed her thin lips into an unflattering knot. Her brow ridges were angled slightly downward from midfore-head, giving her a forever-quizzical expression. After a breathless moment, she shrugged. “Why not? Let it never be said I granted Osriel of Evanore exactly what he desired on any occasion whatsoever.”
I didn’t think I’d ever met a person so unattached to human feelings. All the world seemed subject to her disdain. Recalcitrant logs or foolish sorcerers could cause her transitory annoyance, but I couldn’t imagine what it might take to truly frighten her, or to please her, for that matter. At least she had no red sparks centering her pupils.
Saverian sat in my room for several hours that afternoon, writing in her journal, reading from several books, annoyed when I tried to talk or ask questions.
“Sleep, if you can’t think of anything better to do,” she said, after one ill-timed query. “I’m not here to entertain you. You’ve taken enough of my time over the past few weeks.”
But my skin itched and my insides felt like a nest of ants. I could no more sleep than I could read her books. “What do you do with your time when not nursing twist-minds or demon princes? I’ve never seen anyone save monks or schoolmasters sit so long with a book.”
“Books don’t prattle. Books don’t make demands. Yet they give you everything they possess. It’s a very satisfying partnership.”
I considered that for a while, as I watched her read. Annoyance vanished as the words absorbed her attention, replaced by a fluid mix of interest, curiosity, and serious consideration. Her brow would furrow; then she would write something in her journal. Once the thought was recorded, the furrow smoothed, and she went back to reading. Books supplied companionship, perhaps, but I doubted any words on a page could do what her hands had done for me as I lay in the doulon madness. “Satisfying doesn’t sound like much to aim for.”
“Enough!” With a spit of exasperation, she scooped all her belongings into an untidy armload and headed for the door. “I’ll fetch you in time for the warmoot.”
I spent the next few hours berating myself as an idiot. I hadn’t meant to voice my musings aloud. At least she had given me something to look at beyond four walls and a bed.
One of her books had fallen to the floor beneath the table. I thumbed through it, picking out one or two letters that I knew, then watching them melt and flow into the ones next to them. Gods, useless. I threw the book across the room and went to sleep.
True to her word, Saverian returned just after a bristle-bearded serving man had lit the lamps. As I snatched a long black cloak from the clothes chest, I felt warmly satisfied that, for the first time in forever, I was both reasonably clearheaded and taking some action on my own behalf.
“You need to eat more than one bite of meat and a dried plum,” said the physician after inspecting the food tray that had arrived an hour earlier. She stuffed a slice of oily cheese into my hand. “Eat this as we walk, and I won’t find a reason to abort this venture.”
I could make no plans until we reached the fortress, but if I were to shake free of Saverian and find Elene, I would likely need magic more than nourishment. I obediently took a bite of cheese, then held out my fingers. “Can you unlock these, good physician? I feel a cripple without my bent even to know north from south.”
Her dark heavy cloak made her look taller and more than ever like a stick. She shrugged. “You assign me more skill than my due. It’s not your fingers, but only this house I’ve sealed against your magic—and that only possible because it is a peculiar house with a number of in-built protections already. I assumed you would be more in control of yourself by the time we took you out walking. Please tell me that’s true.”
“I promise I’m in possession of all the reason I was born with.” I grinned and took another bite of cheese to please her. “Honestly, I do appreciate your care.”
She blew a derisive breath and hefted a stout leather bag over one shoulder, the bag of the sort that Voushanti used to carry Prince Osriel’s medicines. The outer doors waited in a pleasant vaulted alcove I’d not glimpsed in all my wanderings. The four broad panels of the twin doors had been painted to depict the seasons, the rich hues and intricate drawing giving the depth of truth to the design. Though stunningly beautiful, the paintings left a hollow in my breast. Each panel showed a pair of dancers, their pale flesh twined with designs of azure and lapis. We pulled open the doors and stepped into the winter night.
The cold snatched my breath away. Fine, sharp grains of snow stung the skin, the particles more a part of the air itself than anything that would pile or drift on the barren ground. Across the windswept slope, bonfires and torches lit the fortress gates and walls, orange flames writhing alongside a hundred or more whipping banners that flew from the battlements.
As we trudged down the path, thick darkness crowded the light-pooled fortress and the soft-lit windows of the house we had just abandoned, as if the mountains had drawn closer under cover of the starless, moonless night. I drew my cloak tight, grateful for Saverian’s enchantment that tamed my senses. It must be that Evanore’s violent history remained raw enough to taint the night with the anguish of its dying warriors and the wails of its starving children, for the wind bore grief and despair and anger on its back as surely as it carried shouts of greeting or the smells of horses and smoke. A harsh, dry land was Evanore. I would no more touch my fingers to this earth than spit on a grave.