"What of Prince Ven'Dar, Captain?" My voice sounded weak. Defeated. Somehow the small ritual I had just witnessed riveted my heart with fear . . . for Gerick, for Avonar, for the Bridge. For all of us.
The soldier stepped back into view. "The Word Winder Ven'Dar is no longer Prince of Avonar. The succession has been restored. And he—"
"Prince or not, I must speak with him."
"That will not be possible. When the Preceptors learned that Ven'Dar yn Cyran permitted a man condemned by the law of Avonar—a Lord of Zhev'Na—to walk free in Gondai, they declared him in violation of his oath." It was not difficult to interpret the guard captain's sympathies. "Neither they nor our princess can ignore blatant treason on the part of the Heir of D'Arnath. The former prince has been placed under arrest. Pending judgment, the traitor is permitted speech with no one. And now, madam"—he slapped his hand twice on the side of the carriage—"you will go."
"Captain, the Lady is not what she claims. She cannot be allowed—"
But he wasn't listening to my panicked babbling. The hair on my arms rose as the captain swept both hands in a circle encompassing my conveyance. I rattled the latch, but the carriage door refused to open. The receding view of the wet and deserted courtyard grew hazy. I sagged back onto the padded seat, my mind reeling. The carriage rolled slowly toward the western gate.
Chapter 29
As the sun rose higher, turning our little shelter into a baking oven, Paulo watered the horses and set about examining their hooves, picking out rocks and checking for cracks and bruises. He was worried about the lack of water and good forage leaving the beasts too weak for the journey ahead of us.
I leaned back against the already warm rock and tried to convince myself to get up and help him. We had to get back to Avonar as soon as possible, but I couldn't even keep my eyelids up.
"I need to look at your foot." Sefaro's daughter dropped onto the sand at my feet and began untying the strip of linen that bound my left foot.
Paulo had told me how the woman had come to be involved in my rescue, and I didn't know what to think about it or how to behave. It felt damnably awkward to have one of my victims cooking for me and tending my injuries.
"Just leave that," I said, as she unwrapped the damp, discolored bandage. She had to tug and peel it away from the crusted blood and fluid. Though the surrounding skin was sounder and not so dark as the previous day, the wound started seeping again and hurt like the devil, which probably made my comments sharper than I intended. "Paulo will tend it later. I don't want you—"
"What do I have to do to convince you two that I'm not going to put poison in your tea?" Her face flamed, and she threw the wadded bandage in my lap.
Why was she so annoyed by my attempts to be civilized? I just didn't know how to apologize for something so trivial when the greater matters between us were beyond apology. Bereft of ideas, I held my tongue. Her flush deepened.
Paulo handled the situation much better than I. As he gentled Stormcloud and lifted the horse's right front foot onto his knees, he asked the woman how she had slept and inquired after her injured shoulder, saying that he knew it had hurt something awful, but now it was put back right, it should heal up pretty fast. Evidently the two of them had reached an accommodation in my rescue. I just wasn't a party to it. When he asked her to explain again what she'd done to make my septic wound improve so rapidly—some Dar'Nethi spell-working, evidently—I shut my ears. I didn't want to hear about Dar'Nethi magic.
I wasn't ready to wrestle the wild rimcats that prowled the Edge in the Bounded, but with a little more rest and food, I'd be able to travel well enough. Then I would decide what to do about D'Sanya and her cursed devices.
As I drowsed through the rest of that day, Sefaro's daughter scrupulously avoided touching my food, water, or bandages. Every once in a while my eyes would drift open to find her staring into nothing, her brow drawn up tight, as if she were trying to decipher something complicated. But after only a moment, her eyes would flick toward me as if she felt me looking at her. When she met my gaze, she tightened her mouth and looked away, busying herself with cleaning her boots or making another futile attempt to strain the muddy water through a scrap of canvas.
The sun angles were well stretched when I awoke with urgent proof that my body was functioning in a most human manner again. As I pulled on the spare boots Paulo had cleverly thought to bring along, the woman announced that Paulo was off scouting for something to shoot with his bow. She stuck out her chin and folded her arms quite deliberately as I hobbled off into the rocks on my own.
I sagged onto my blanket when I got back, distressingly tired after the short trip, and so hungry I thought my belly might cave in. I pressed my face into the sandy wool and thought longingly of the boiled tappa root my friend Zanore cooked back in the Bounded. Though boiled tappa was the most boring and tasteless food in any world, a vat of it would be a feast right now.
"The rest of the milk Nim brought is in the green flask." Water dribbled into a pot, and the strong smell of slightly rancid meat broth wafted over my head. "You should drink it before it spoils. I haven't breathed on it since yesterday."
"Thank you," I said. Then I wondered if she would believe I was thanking her for not breathing on the milk. Avoiding a glance at her that might reveal such a mistake, I lifted my head and spotted the painted flask that sat in the smallest mudhole. "I think I could drink the mud."
"You'll need your strength. We should leave as soon as you can travel. It's at least four days back to the next spring. These sinkholes aren't refilling as fast as they were, and we can't leave Nim and Rab with nothing."
"I'm ready to go whenever you say," I said. "Most everything is functioning now, my appetite certainly. I'll crawl if I have to." I drained the last of the milk. Even warm and slightly off, it filled some of the hollow places. I laid my head on the blanket again, happy to have gotten through this exchange without an argument. For such a slight person, the woman certainly filled up a place.
Paulo rode in a short time later, his game bag empty. As soon as he had gotten a drink and rubbed down Stormcloud, we shared out the last of the increasingly gamy oryx broth, softening a few bits of rock-hard bread in it. We spoke inanities. The future was like a fourth person at our fire that night, and none of us wanted to acknowledge her.
Paulo was too practical to let us get away with that for long, though. After scooping up the last of the stringy overcooked meat from the pot and dividing it among us, he tapped his spoon idly on the edge of his cup. "While I was out hunting, I kept thinking about all you told me this morning. So is it true … ? I mean … I guess the Lady's running the Zhid after all."
Sefaro's daughter flinched and glanced at me, rolling her eyes at Paulo as if he were mad to say such a thing outright. But I had always appreciated Paulo's frankness and tried to honor it with the same in return.
"No, I don't believe so," I said. "Not intentionally at least. She created the other things: the oculus, the slave collars, the masks, so I have to assume she made the avantirs as well. But as to who's using them now … I don't think it's her. And not just because I was . . . infatuated."
Did I still love D'Sanya? Certainly my body still desired the woman who had nestled close to me as the rain fell on the shepherds' hut. But that woman did not exist any more, if she ever had. The woman who had laughed at my pain and terror as she ripped my flesh with metal claws, then healed up the lacerations so she could do it all again, who wept and scolded as she condemned me to an eternity of madness bolted to a rock, was someone else entirely.