She's alive. Stasya's alive. Annice repeated the litany over and over as Pjerin lit a torch and led the way into the cellars. She hasn't died. I'd know it if she died. How long did it take to die of thirst? Six days? No. She's alive.
"Here," Pjerin began, but Annice had seen the grille and the shadow below it and dove forward.
"Stasya!" Searing pain shot through both hips as she strained to lift the steel. "Stasya! Can you hear me?" She fought Pjerin's grip as he tried to move her out of his way. "Stasya!"
"Hold the torch!" He pushed her back and forced her fingers around the butt. This was the third grille he'd had to remove since dawn and he threw his anger—or whatever emotion that Annice had evoked in him—against it.
"Stasya!" Annice leaned dangerously far forward, torch shoved out over the hole. Shadowed holes in a gleaming ivory skull stared up at her. Her throat closed around a disbelieving moan. A giant's fist wrapped around her heart and squeezed. Pjerin caught the torch as it dropped from slack fingers and then caught her as she began to fall.
Stasya knew that voice. Even hoarse and desperate, there could be no mistaking it. It spoke to her in her dreams every time exhaustion overcame the cold and she slept. Slowly she unwrapped herself from her fetal curl and shoved the stable blanket back. Eyes shut tightly against the light, she lifted her head and tried to answer.
Days of cold and damp and thirst held her voice. No sound emerged.
The light burned through her lids and she raised a trembling hand to shield her face.
"N… Nees?"
"Pjerin is alive."
Lukas wet his lips. Standing well out of her reach, his tongue occasionally outrunning the story, he'd told her everything Sarline had told him. "Yes, Lady." Her calm soothed him. He could feel his heart begin to beat a little less erratically.
Olina pushed the last pin into the ebony crown of her hair and stood. She'd dismissed her dresser the moment she'd seen Lukas' expression as he stood quivering at her bedchamber door. "It seems you did well to take down that bard, after all," she mused. "She's given us time we wouldn't otherwise have had."
When she turned her ice-blue gaze on him, Lukas shivered.
"I am curious though, as to why you added delay in coming to me rather than sending your cousin while you dealt with my nephew."
"Myself?" His eyes darted from side to side, searching for a way out. "Lady, His Grace is a swordsman. I could never defeat him. But you…"
"Indeed. Well, you've told me. Now go and leave me to deal with him."
"Yes, Lady." Lukas bowed himself back out the door and scurried off. There were things he wanted from his chambers and then he had no intention of remaining in the keep. Not until he knew who won.
Olina picked up a beautifully carved horn comb, stared at it for a moment, then snapped it in half.
"Pjerin is alive," she repeated, throwing the pieces to the floor. It was the one thing she had not planned for. Albek had assured her it would not be necessary.
Eventually, Albek would pay for that error.
Striding across the room, she pulled a padded surcoat from a trunk and slipped it on. Mouth pinched white at the corners, she lifted her sword from where it rested on curved pegs over the bed and buckled the belt around her waist. It dragged at her hip, an unaccustomed weight.
Pjerin was a swordsman. And she was the only other person in the keep trained to fight with the sword.
Not that she had any intention of doing so.
Pjerin knew she had betrayed him. He was larger, younger, stronger and the moment he saw her would be consumed with a blinding rage—she knew her nephew too well to doubt the last. Had Lukas done the intelligent thing and run to the village for all twenty of their committed people, there might have been a chance of stopping him.
But her face him in single combat?
She laughed bitterly and ran for the stables.
Pjerin was alive.
If she wanted to remain alive, she had only one chance.
The Cemandian army.
Let Pjerin and King Theron have the keep; they'd find the pass not so easy to defend as they assumed. Especially in the midst of trying to explain the situation to confused and angry villagers.
Lukas could save himself by crawling back under the rock where she'd found him.
"Nees?"
"Yes. Oh, yes. Stasya, I've got you. Hold onto me.
Everything's going to be all right. You're safe." Annice breathed the last two words into a blood-encrusted cap of dark hair as she shoved the torch at Pjerin and tumbled Stasya onto her lap.
Without a rope, Pjerin had lain on the floor, his arms stretching into the hole. Stasya, harp case slung on her back, had crawled erect up the curved wall of her prison and, with the stone supporting her, lifted her arms over her head.
His hands had closed around her wrists and inch by inch he'd dragged her out of the mountain.
"S'cold, Nees." Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and every word ground shards of pain into her throat.
"C-can't… stop .. shaking."
"I know. We'll go into the sun. You'll be fine." Lips pressed against the clammy skin of Stasya's face, Annice repeated, "You'll be fine," as if defying her not to be.
"My voice…" Her voice had lost all the highs and lows; all the music. Even Pjerin, who had heard Annice reduced twice to a rough whisper, could tell the difference.
"You're just cold. It'll come back."
"No." Stasya clutched at Annice as hard as numb fingers allowed. "Too c-cold, too long. I'm afraid. Oh Nees. No K-Kigh. No K-kigh for so long. I can't Sing anymore. I c~can't Sing."
Urmi stared at Olina in astonishment, wiping sausage grease from around her mouth before she spoke. "You want Fortune saddled now, Lady?"
"Now, Stablemaster."
Under her tan, Urmi paled. Her gaze dropped to the sword hanging at Olina's hip. "Yes, Lady. But he's in the paddock, it'll take me a moment."
"A moment and no more, Stablemaster."
"No, Lady. I mean, yes, Lady."
"Can you manage from here?"
Annice nodded, Stasya supported in the circle of her arms.
Pjerin jabbed the torch at the floor, then took off at a dead run. Olina had escaped her fate for as long as she was going to. He pounded across one end of the
Great Hall, down a short flight of stairs, and through the kitchen, ignoring the crash of breaking crockery as he was recognized by the cook's helper. Shoving the slack-jawed youth aside, he exploded out into the inner court. The fastest way to Olina's rooms was around—not through—the building.
He raced past his woodpile, heard a shout of disbelief from the direction of the stables, and turned in time to see Olina swing up into the saddle. Her lips pulled off her teeth in a feral smile as she drove her spurs into the stallion's flanks and tried to ride him down. At the last instant, he dove aside. A hoof slammed into the packed earth a prayer away from his hip. Another grazed his calf as he rolled, the glancing impact still enough to drive a cry of pain through clenched teeth. Then he was scrambling back onto his feet, rage blocking everything but his desire for revenge.
Roaring Olina's name, Pjerin broke from between the buildings into the outer court just in time to see Fortune's glossy hindquarters disappear out the gate.
"NO!"
Satchel clutched in a white-knuckled grip, Lukas tottered a disbelieving step forward. "Lady?" She was abandoning him. How could she abandon him? "Lady!"
Behind him, he heard a bellow of fury. Unable to stop himself, he turned.
Lukas did not consider himself an imaginative man, but what he saw standing at the edge of the court was not the taciturn lord who allowed the kigh such license within Ohrid nor even the huge, soot-covered figure who had struck him down in Fourth Quarter. His bare and heaving chest streaked with blood, his hair a tangled mass of darkness about his shoulders, his face contorted with rage, Pjerin a'Stasiek looked like one of the old gods broke free of the Circle.