The action caused a subtle shift in the sail’s trim and the dhow slowed. The sorceress let a little line slip through her ebony fingers, returning the boom to its original position.
Once the dhow had returned to speed, Sadira looked back to Neeva. “Jo’orsh is showing himself because he wants to help us track Rkard,” she said. “When he sees us falling behind, he’ll wait.”
“And let Borys escape with my son!” Neeva spat back.
“That won’t happen,” Tithian said. “Borys wants the banshee to follow. That’s why he took the boy.”
“Explain yourself,” Rikus ordered. He rose and peered at the king over a water barrel. “If you had something to do with the Dragon seizing him-”
“I wasn’t even conscious,” Tithian spat. “But I do know Borys wants the banshees alive. In Ur Draxa-his home-he has a way to make them dispel the magic that hides the Dark Lens from him and the sorcerer-kings. The Dragon needs Rkard alive because Jo’orsh was sent to protect the boy.”
Neeva frowned. “Sent?” she asked. “By whom?”
Tithian swallowed hard and found himself gripping the tiller so hard his gnarled joints turned white. Nevertheless, the blunder did not cause the king to panic. He simply looked Neeva in the eye and lied: “Agis sent them.”
“You don’t expect us to believe that!” Sadira snapped.
“Not really, but it’s the truth,” Tithian said, silently cursing the sorceress. Did she have some way to tell that he was lying? “Jo’orsh and Sa’ram were guarding the Dark Lens when we found it. They were going to kill both of us, until Agis told them about Kemalok being uncovered. Then they left, saying something about the return of the king.”
“How’d they come by the Belt of Rank and Rkard’s crown?” demanded Neeva.
“Why don’t you tell me?” Tithian returned, dodging the question.
This was the moment the king had been dreading since Rikus had pulled him from the well. In the hurry to pack the dhow and start after Jo’orsh, there had not been time for his temporary allies to interrogate him. But now, he sensed the questions would begin. As weak as he was, Tithian feared it would be difficult to keep himself free of his own tangle of lies.
Neeva picked up her axe again. “Your raiders stole those treasures from Kemalok.” She stopped a pace in front of him, holding her weapon level with his neck. “I know that much, and it’s enough to warrant your death.”
Tithian did not flinch. “Do you really expect to frighten me? I know you won’t strike-not while you need me to rescue your son.”
Neeva’s gaze burned with a profound hatred such as the king had never seen before, and he had seen many, many kinds of hate. The warrior’s arms began to tremble, and tears of frustration welled in her eyes. For a moment, the king feared she would actually lose control of herself and strike. Then she gave a tremendous scream and spun away. Sighing in relief, Tithian committed her expression to memory as a reminder of what would happen if he allowed her to live a moment too long.
As Neeva returned to the front of the dhow, the king noticed Sadira staring at him. Instead of blue-glowing embers, her eyes now resembled a pair of sapphire-colored suns, each blazing with a radiance that nearly blinded him. The sorceress did not move or speak but merely continued to watch him. In that moment, Tithian understood why she had not asked about Agis: She knew that her husband had been murdered by him.
“You won’t kill me, either,” Tithian said, not as sure of his words as he would have liked. “We want the same thing.”
“No. I want to kill the Dragon. You want to free a monster.” As Sadira spoke, a cloud of black fumes shot from her mouth and coated Tithian’s body, bringing with it a fearsome cold that chilled his bones to the marrow. “Tell me what you’ll gain by helping Rajaat escape,” she ordered.
“Wh-what makes you think I want to?” Tithian gasped, his teeth clenched. The contrast between the Dark Lens’s heat and Sadira’s cold made his bones feel as if they were melting. He expected to burst into flame or shatter like a block of ice at any moment. “I thought the champions killed Rajaat.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Sadira hissed.
Again, the black fumes. “Stop it, wench!” Tithian’s teeth chattered so badly, he could hardly force the words from his mouth. He wanted to use the Lens and counterattack, but to use the Way now, he would have to let the dhow sink. He could not allow that. The king needed both Sadira and Rikus alive, at least until Borys no longer stood between him and freeing Rajaat. “I c-c-command it!”
“You don’t have to answer,” the sorceress said. “I’m enjoying this.”
“I’m too exhausted,” Tithian warned, fighting back the waves of darkness descending over him. “The dhow will sink.”
“I don’t think so,” said Sadira.
Tithian heard the sorceress whisper an incantation. The dhow suddenly rose out of the dust, lifting its weight off the king’s spirit. The boat’s speed increased by half, and it began to slice through the air as smoothly as an arrow.
“You still need me!” Tithian said. Hoping to use the Way to defend himself, he tried to lock gazes with Sadira-but could not bear to look into the blazing blue suns of her eyes. “What will you do if we don’t catch Rkard before dark?”
“I won’t kill you yet,” the sorceress replied. “You haven’t suffered enough.”
An inky cloud boiled from between Sadira’s blue lips, engulfing the king in cold vapor. He opened his mouth to scream, but his frozen voice did not rise to acknowledge the pain. He felt his feet slip from the Dark Lens, then he sank into a bitter slumber more icy and black than his own heart.
Later, after what seemed an eternity of bone-deep aching, Tithian returned to awareness, not so much waking as crawling from beneath a terrible, crushing blackness. His body hurt worse than it had before, as if that were possible, and he wondered-not idly-if Neeva had beaten him while he slept. Slowly, the king came to realize that he was lying on the floor of the dhow, stuffed between the side and the water casks. He heard voices, and the speakers did not seem to realize he had returned to consciousness. Always one to spy, Tithian kept his eyes closed and listened.
“I’m not saying we should let the Dragon keep Rkard,” said Sadira. “But I’m not so sure we should kill him. I’m certain that Tithian’s helping us destroy Borys only because it’ll make it easier to free Rajaat-and we know how much worse than Borys he would be.”
“So we should let the Dragon keep collecting his levies?” Rikus asked. “Never!”
“Rikus, that’s not what I said-and you know it,” Sadira shot back.
The voices of both Sadira and Rikus seemed harsher than necessary, leading Tithian to suspect that they were angry with each other-and to wonder if he could use that fact to his own advantage.
“We have the Dark Lens now,” Sadira continued. “Borys knows better than anyone how powerful it is. We can force him to return Rkard and forsake his levies.”
“But what about the prophecy?” Neeva demanded. “The banshees said Rkard would slay the Dragon. We can’t just ignore them.”
“Why not?” Sadira challenged. “They also said he’d do it at the head of an army of dwarves and humans. Where is that army now? It took Borys and his sorcerer-kings about as much effort to destroy all our warriors as it takes a mekillot to smash a jackal.”
“We must have misunderstood what they said about the army,” said Neeva. “If Jo’orsh and Sa’ram said that Rkard will slay the Dragon, I have faith he will.”
Tithian had to bite his cheek to keep from laughing. The so-called prophecy was nothing more than an elaborate ruse he had invented. Faced with the difficult task of overcoming Jo’orsh and Sa’ram before he could steal the Dark Lens, the king had instead lured the banshees away from their duties by convincing them their thousand-year-old ruler had been reincarnated as a mul child.
It had never occurred to Tithian that his deception would dupe anyone other than the two spirits, but it appeared his former slaves were bigger fools than he imagined. He could hardly wait to see what happened when a six-year-old boy tried to kill the Dragon. The entertainment might even be enough to repay him for the indignities he was suffering at the hands of the child’s mother and her friends.