Lukas left off nodding his continual agreement to look suddenly frightened. "But Lady, King Theron's bard will tell the bards in the capital."
"Where they have been left leaderless and in complete disarray. Helpless before the army that will roll down on them out of the mountains." Olina smiled and stood. "I have planned this too well for it to fail."
Pjerin stared out at the village, the Ducal sword an unaccustomed weight at his hip, betrayal a greater weight on his heart. How many did Olina have? How many were willing to bow their necks under the Cemandian yoke? Shkoder may have been less than willing to spend coin in principalities with so little chance of return, but at least it had left them free; something Cemandia would not do.
His hand closed around an obscuring branch and he savagely shoved it down out of his way.
The keep, built to ensure the independence of the first due and his people, tested by steel and blood in the time of both the second due and the third, would become no more than a way station for fat merchants traveling to the sea. A city would grow at the mercy of trade; dependent, parasitic, vulnerable. His people would labor for Cemandian overlords, ape Cemandian ways, subscribe to Cemandian beliefs. Priests would come and build a Center and children who showed any ability to Sing the kigh would be ripped from their mothers' embrace and put to the sword.
Ohrid would exist only at Cemandian suffrage. Better it be destroyed before that. The end would be cleaner if the mountains themselves rose up and crushed it, earth and stone wiping it from the map.
The sudden crack of the branch breaking shattered the dusk, cutting off the evening song of birds and frogs. A crow broke out of the canopy high overhead, hoarsely screaming a protest, ebony wings beating against a sapphire sky. Pjerin could feel Annice's glare in the prickling of the skin between his shoulder blades. He ignored it.
After a moment, he made his way to where she sat, Gerek sprawled half asleep over what was left of her lap, horse and mule stripping the underbrush of green and tender plants. They'd pass a sheepfold on their way to the village where they'd leave the animals. With lambing over, the fold would be empty, but there'd be food and water and a stout door to bar against predators.
"We'll wait until full dark," he said softly, dropping to the ground by Annice's side. "Most of the villagers will be asleep by then; morning comes soon enough at this time of the year."
"Your people work hard," Annice murmured as Gerek resettled himself on his father's lap.
"We aren't like lowlanders. We depend on no one." Pjerin traced the curve of Gerek's cheek with the back of one finger, the gentle motion a direct contrast to the edge in his voice.
"Maybe they work a little harder than they need to."
"What are you talking about?"
Annice pushed a kigh away from her belly. "Granted," she said thoughtfully, "that neither my most royal father nor His Majesty, Theron, King of Shkoder, High Captain of the Broken Islands, and so on, and so on, have exactly beat a path into the mountains, but neither have you done anything to remind them of their obligations. You don't take the seat you're entitled to on the council, nor do you send someone to represent you. You sit up here with your head in the clouds and you say, if they don't want us, then we don't want them."
"You weren't exactly unwelcomed," he growled.
"Because you didn't have to do anything to get me here. There's a whole wide world out there, Pjerin. Why not make an effort to be a part of it?"
"I take care of my people."
She nodded. "I know. And now you're being replaced by the entire Cemandian nation."
The weight of his son across his legs kept him from leaping to his feet. Red waves of rage washed over him, leaving him trembling, muscles knotted with the effort to remain still. "Are you saying," his voice was dangerously soft and his eyes so dark they absorbed the shadows, "that Olina was justified in what she did? In what she's doing?"
"No." The denial was almost Sung, impossible to disbelieve. "But I think that when you've dealt with what she's done, you might consider why she did it."
His lip curled up off his teeth. "I don't need a lecture from you, Annice, not about the choices I've made. You haven't always chosen wisely yourself, have you?"
Annice regarded him levelly, wincing slightly as the baby stretched. "I don't regret a single decision I've made," she told him.
His brows rose. "Not even spending ten years isolated from your family?"
"That wasn't my choice," she snapped, slapping at an insect, all at once not so eager to meet his gaze.
"Wasn't it?" Pjerin asked bluntly. "I don't recall you meeting anyone halfway. If they didn't want you," he added, "you didn't want them."
Annice started as he threw her own words back at her. "It's not the same thing."
"Isn't it?" Tucking Gerek more securely into the curve of his arm, he stood. "Maybe we both have something to think about."
Ignoring the kigh leaning against her hip, she watched as he settled the boy onto the mare's saddle. Still only half awake, Gerek clung to the saddlehorn and blinked owlishly into the night. When he turned back to her and held out his hand, she hesitated for a moment, then laid her fingers across his palm. He pulled her to her feet. She held on a moment longer.
"Maybe," she said, "you're right."
Pjerin's smile was a flash of ivory in the darkness, his lips a warm pressure against the top of her head. "Don't strain anything," he advised.
Candlelight flickered through an open window on the far side of the village, the only evidence that anyone remained awake in all of Ohrid.
"Dasa i'Ales," Pjerin murmured. "She'd like to be a poet. While she's creating, you could walk right past her singing at the top of your lungs and she wouldn't notice."
"I remember her," Annice murmured back. She's terrible. But she kept that opinion to herself as she had no desire to challenge the protective note in Pjerin's voice. This was his land. These were his people.
Bohdan's daughter's house was very nearly in the middle of the village. The three of them picked their way carefully toward it—the moon, a day off full, lighting their path, the wind pushing at their backs.
"The dogs need to catch our scent," Pjerin explained quietly as they passed the first of the gabled stone buildings. "They need to recognize who we are, then they'll know there's no reason to give the alarm."
"Every dog in the village knows you?" Annice whispered incredulously.
"Dogs like Papa," Gerek piped up, much refreshed by his nap. "And me." He frowned. "Hope Dasa's geese aren't out."
In many ways, geese were better sentries than dogs. They couldn't be bribed and they didn't like anyone.
"If they are…" Pjerin reached down and laid a cautionary finger across his son's lips. "Annice will sing them a lullaby."
Annice rolled her eyes, "I don't do lullabies for geese," she muttered.
Pjerin's voice buzzed against her ear. "You do now."
A few steps farther and a half a dozen of the village dogs raced out to meet them; ears up, tongue lolling, and great plumed tails beating at the night air. Gerek, being closer to the ground, had his face thoroughly licked. One of the dogs went into such ecstasy at Pjerin's touch that it made a nuisance of itself and finally had to be told sternly—but quietly—to go home.
Fortunately, the geese were conspicuous only by their absence.
When they reached Bohdan's daughter's house, Pjerin lifted the latch and silently swung open the heavy door. The odor of roast pork permeated the building; obviously they'd just culled one of the suckling pigs before weaning the litter and sending them out to the forest with the village swineherd for Second Quarter foraging. Annice couldn't decide whether the smell—a familiar one at this time in the year—made her feel hungry or sick.