Shouts of alarm: his father’s voice, “Something’s gone wrong! Curse you, Cumril, catch him!”
“He’s gone all shaking—he’s bitten his tongue, my lord—”
A shift of time and space, and his wolf was bound—no, he was bound—red-silk cords whispered and muttered around him, writhing, rooting in him like vines. His wolf snapped at them, white teeth closing, tearing, but the cords regrew with frightening speed. They wrapped his head, tightening painfully.
Unfamiliar voices invaded his delirium then, irritatingly. His wolf fled. The memory of his evil dream spattered and ran away like water.
“He can’t be asleep; his eyes are half-open, see them gleam?”
“No, don’t wake him up! I know what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to lead them back to bed quietly, or, I don’t know, they go all wild, or something.”
“Then I’m not touching him with that sword in his hand!”
“Well, how else?”
“Get more light, woman. Oh, five gods be thanked, here’s his own man.”
A hesitation; then, “Lord Ingrey? Lord Ingrey!”
Candlelight doubled, doubled again. Ingrey blinked, gasped, surged to wakefulness. His head ached abominably. He was standing up. Shock brought him fully alert.
He was standing once more in the temple infirmary, if the room in back of the apothecary’s could be so designated. He wore the divine’s nightshirt half-tucked into his trousers, but his feet were bare on the board floor. His right hand gripped his naked sword.
He was surrounded by the steward, one of Ijada’s woman attendants, and the guardsman that Gesca had designated for the night watch. Well, not surrounded, exactly; the first two were plastered against the walls, staring at him with wide and terrified eyes, and the third-named hovered in the back doorway of the shop.
“I’m”—he had to stop, swallow, moisten his lips—”I’m awake.” What am I doing here? How did I get over here?
He’d been sleepwalking, presumably. He had heard of such things. He’d never done it before. And it had been more than just blundering about in the dark. He’d partly dressed, found his weapon, somehow made his way in unobserved silence down a stairway, through a door—which surely must have been locked, so he must have turned the key—across the cobbled square, and into this other building.
Where Lady Ijada lies asleep. Five gods, let her go on sleeping. The door to the bedchamber was closed—now. In sudden horror, he glanced at his blade, but it was still gleaming and dry. No dripping gore stained it. Yet.
His guardsman, with a wary glance at his sword, came to him and took him by his left arm. “Are you all right, my lord?”
“Hurt my head today,” Ingrey mumbled. “The dedicat’s medicines gave me strange dreams. Dizzy. Sorry… “
“Should I… um… take you back to bed, my lord?”
“Yes,” said Ingrey gratefully. “Yes”—the seldom-used phrase forced itself from his cold lips—”please you.” He was shivering now. It wasn’t wholly from the chill.
He suffered the guardsman to guide him out the door, around the shop, back across the silent, dark square. Back into the divine’s house. A servant who had slept through Ingrey’s exit was awakened by their return and came out into the hall in sleepy alarm. Ingrey mumbled more excuses about the dedicat’s potions, which served well enough given the porter’s own muzzy state. Ingrey let his guardsman guide him all the way to his bed and even pull his covers up, sergeantly maternal. The man retreated in a clanking, board-creaking sort of tiptoe, pulling the door shut behind him.
Ingrey waited until the footsteps had faded away in the square before he crawled out from his quilts, groped for his tinderbox, and lit a candle, flint and striker uncooperative in his shaking hands. He sat on the edge of the bed recovering for a few minutes, then arose and made a survey of his room. He could only lock the door from the inside, which meant he could unlock it as easily, unless he then threw the key out the window or shoved it under the door, which would create awkward delays and explanations in the morning. He briefly regretted not having had his guardsman lock it as he’d left, although that, too, would have entailed awkward explanations. Or clever lies, and Ingrey was feeling singularly stupid just now. At length, he set his sword and belt knife in a chest that held spare linens, and balanced several potentially noisy objects, capped with the tin basin from his washstand, atop the lid in a deliberately precarious tower.
He blew out the candle, went back to bed, lay stiffly for a time, then got up again and felt in the dark in his saddlebags for a length of rope. He tied a loop tightly around his ankle, played out a length, and tied another loop around a lower bedpost. Clumsily, he wrapped himself in his covers again.
His head throbbed, and his strained shoulder pulsed like a knot of fire under his skin. He tossed, turned, came up short against his rope. Well, at least it worked. He started to doze in sheer exhaustion, turned, and came up short again. He wallowed onto his back once more and lay staring up into the dark, teeth clenched. His eyes felt coated in sand.
Better than dreaming. He’d had the wolf dream again, for the first time in months, though it was now only slippery fragments in his memory. He had more than one reason to fear sleep, it seemed.
How did I get into this position? A week ago, he had been a happy man, or at least, contented enough. He had a comfortable chamber in Lord Hetwar’s palace, a manservant, horse and clothing and arms by his lord’s grace, a stipend sufficient for his amusements. The bustle of the hallow king’s capital city at his feet. Better, he had an engagingly irregular but solid rank in the sealmaster’s household, and a reputation as a trusted aide—not quite bravo, not quite clerk, but a man to be relied upon for unusual tasks discreetly done. As Hetwar’s high courier, he delivered rewards intact, and threats suitably nuanced. He was not, he thought, proudly honest, as some men; perhaps he’d simply lost too much already to be tempted by trumpery. Indifference served him quite as well as integrity, and sometimes served Hetwar even better. His most pleasurable reward had usually been to have his curiosity satisfied.
Bastard’s hell, three days ago he’d been an untroubled man. He had figured the retrieval of Boleso’s body and killer to be a joyless but perfectly straightforward task. Well within his capabilities as an experienced, tough-minded, shrewd, and above all, not in the least wolf-haunted or in any other way whatsoever uncanny royal servant.
The rope yanked his ankle again. His right hand clenched in the memory of his sword hilt. Curse that leopard girl! If she’d just lain down under Boleso like any other self-interested wench, spread her legs and thought of the jewelry and fine clothing she would undoubtedly have earned, all this could have been avoided. And Ingrey wouldn’t be lying here with a line of bloody embroidery itching in his hair, half the muscles in his body twitching in agony, tied to his own bed, waiting for a leaden dawn.
Wondering if he was still sane.
Chapter Four
They escaped Reedmere later in the morning than Ingrey had desired, owing to the insistence of the lord-divine in making a ceremony, with more choirs, out of loading Boleso’s coffin aboard its new carrier. The wagon at least was tolerable—very well made, with somber draperies disguising its bright paint, if not the distinct smell of beer lingering about it. The six horses that came with it were grand tawny beasts, massive of shoulder, haunch, and hoof, with orange and black ribbons braided in manes and bound-up tails. The bells on their glossy harness were muffled with black flannel, for which Ingrey, head still throbbing from yesterday’s blow, was grateful. Compared to their usual load, Ingrey imagined, the team would tow Boleso up hills and through mire as effortlessly as a child’s sled.