“Put on this cloak, fool.” Even sick and frozen, Saverian could pierce a man’s craw with her disdain. She threw something scratchy and wet over me. “You don’t want anyone to see you…like this.”
I thought at first she meant heaving, but when I drew my hand away and glimpsed the delicate outline of a dog whelk nestled in fronds of sea grass that twined my fingers, I understood—and blessed her practical wisdom. The brightness of my gards near cracked my skull. I closed my eyes and pulled the cloak around me. “Need to find my braies and hose.”
By the time Saverian screamed out her name to the sentries, most of my gards were covered, and I had even donned the pureblood mask I’d found in the pocket of my cloak. Saverian and I stood in a delicate balance, supporting each other, but if someone didn’t open the gates soon, they would have to drag us in by the heels.
The gates ground open with a soul-scraping cacophony. A torch flared the dark tunnel, searing my eyes, but I could not mistake Voushanti’s bulk in company with the soldiers.
“We need to see Prince Osriel as soon as possible,” said Saverian.
“Unfortunately His Grace is not in residence,” said Voushanti. “Dreogan, prepare to close the gates. Muserre, Querz, wake Mistress Elene and tell the steward to prepare hot food and wine for the physician and the pureblood. I’ll escort them in.”
“Where in the name of all holy gods is he?” I said, unreasonably irritated, as my bowels churned.
Voushanti waited until the three warriors had left us. Then he turned his gaze our way, the red centers of his eyes flaring savagely. “Our master has been taken captive, sorcerer. He lies in the dungeons of Sila Diaglou.”
PART THREE
Ever Longer Nights
Chapter 18
“How did this happen?” I said, rubbing my head to keep my sluggish blood flowing. I would need to sleep soon or I’d be gibbering. But not yet. Not until I understood the magnitude of this disaster. “You’re sure the witch doesn’t know his true identity?”
“We have no reason to believe she knows he is the prince,” said Voushanti. The mardane stood stiffly at the door of Elene’s retiring chamber. He had brought Saverian and me straight from the gates. “My lord’s saccheria struck him hard just as we left the Danae. In the physician’s absence, he chose to ride on to the monkhouse, where Thane Stearc would be able to care for him.”
“Papa always keeps a supply of Osriel’s medicines,” said Elene, her circled eyes speaking raw grief and desperate worry. “Saverian sees to it that he knows what to do for every variant of the disease. He had to ride as Gram. No one remaining at the abbey knows him as anyone but Papa’s secretary.”
Saverian huddled by the hearth wrapped in a dry blanket. Barely controlled fury had sealed her lips since she’d heard that all her worst fears for Osriel had come true. She clearly blamed herself.
I perched on a window seat, pretending I was not within walls. As long as I could see the sky, my lungs did not feel quite so starved or my stomach quite so certain it was going to turn wrong way out.
Elene, flushed as summer dawn, sat in a padded armchair, a bright-colored shawl covering what her shift and hastily donned bliaut did not. Sleep had left half of her short bronze braids unraveled, the others matted or sticking every which way. Heat rose from her as from a smoldering bonfire. “Sila Diaglou and a small force lay in wait at Gillarine for Papa to return from the warmoot. Before the priestess could remove Papa from the abbey, Osriel walked through the gate and right into her arms.”
Anger and resentment bulged Voushanti’s fists and twisted his scarred mouth. “My lord insisted I return to the bridge with my men as soon as we sighted the monkhouse gates. He did not permit disobedience.”
I squirmed at the remembrance of Voushanti’s battles of will with Osriel. Their hellish link of enchantment and submission still confounded me.
Elene beckoned me to her side and thrust a crumpled parchment into my hand. “The witch dispatched two of the monks to carry this message to Renna. Can you fathom her insolence?”
The precisely formed letters flowed into their usual incomprehensible blotches. My own cheeks hot, I shoved it back at her and returned to my window. “So tell me, what does it say?”
Elene frowned for a moment before her expression cleared in understanding. “Forgive me, Brother. Here, I’ll read it…” She smoothed the page and began, her voice swelling with repressed fury.
Osriel of Evanore,
Believing our partnership holds more promise for Navronne’s future than our enmity, I extend to you my sisterly goodwill and offer an exchange of benefits. Our purposes do not and cannot coincide. I serve Powers beyond the ken of any mortal born, while you serve your own secret pleasures of a diabolical odor. Yet our interests may not conflict in every instance.
You hold an injured monk, the chancellor of Gillarine Abbey, known to be involved in this Karish lighthouse foolishness. As your deeds exemplify no maudlin sympathies for Navronne’s peasants, I cannot conceive that this errant project holds any innate value in your estimation.
On the other hand, your position as Evanore’s lord makes your defensive strength dependent on a handful of ancient families who demand certain strict loyalties and protocols. Unfortunately, one of your warlords seems to have connived with these Karish librarians, and I have caught him at it. But he has convinced me he cannot work magic.
Perhaps you are strong enough to control your clansmen even while abandoning one of them to your adversaries. But if you prefer to avoid a disruption among your supporters, I can offer you this bargain. I will return your errant Thane Stearc in exchange for the monk Victor. To sweeten the offering, I will include your pureblood’s catamite. I doubt your warlord’s diseased scribe could survive the journey, but if you prefer him to the boy, you may have him instead. I believe we shall both be well pleased with the outcome of the trade, and our relative strengths will remain in balance.
I require this bargain be completed before the solstice. Do you agree to it, take the monk to the crossroads at Gilat on the Ardran High Road and send word to me at Fortress Torvo.
In the glory of the Gehoum,
Sila Diaglou
“Damnable…vile…” Rage threatened to cut off what remnants of use remained in my exhausted brain. “Gods ship them all to the netherworld!”
“Does anyone else find this letter’s language odd?” asked Saverian, her fiery anger banked by curiosity. “I thought the woman disdained learning.”
“She didn’t write it,” I said. “Gildas did. Who else would slander a child?” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead as if it might prevent my skull’s imminent disintegration. “Why would they trade one for the other? Stearc can open the lighthouse as well as Brother Victor, right?”
“No.” Saverian returned to the hearth stool. “The opening requires two paired warders—one embodying the unlocking spell, one with power to release it.”
“And Gildas knows this?”
“Not unless they’ve tortured it out of someone,” she said. “Until this hour, I’ve been the only person outside the four warders themselves who knew. Luviar and Brother Victor were one pairing. Stearc and Osriel the second. The priestess and her monk don’t understand what they have.”
“Neither my abbot nor I revealed the secret.” An ill-favored little man wearing a black cowl and an eye patch shuffled through a side door not three paces from me, leaning heavily on a cane.
“Brother Victor!” I popped up from the window seat. Only fear of crushing his fragile bones kept me from embracing him. Which would have been an entirely unseemly greeting for the chancellor of Gillarine, and an act I would never have contemplated when I lived there. But I could not help the surge of pleasure as I bowed, cupping one palm in the other and extending them in an offering of Iero’s blessings.