“Ob, stand up.” I spoke as a commander, briskly and without sympathy.
The leathery man lumbered to his feet, standing as straight as possible with his deformed back, and kept his eyes pinned to the floor. The Singlars in the passage drew close to the door. Vroon stepped forward, anxious. “My lord, please - ”
I held up my hand to silence Vroon. Softness could ruin a strong man. I needed Ob strong. “Ob, I charge you to dig the Guardian into the ground as is your custom. Bury this poison flask with him. Choose two Singlars to help you. Make no honor or special ceremony out of what you do, but do not hide it. And to all who ask, you will answer clearly and willingly that the Guardian took his own life out of selfish pride and shame at his failure to heed the Source in the matter of the king. Some may be angry at his death and make accusations against me. But you will not fight them or hurt them in any way, except to save your life or that of your assistants. Do you understand your orders?”
Ob straightened his shoulders and bowed deeply. “Majesty.”
As he came up, I motioned for him to look at me, forcing his watery red-and-yellow eyes to meet my own. “Next time, watch closer.”
As the wide brown man set to his duties, I stumbled my way to the royal apartments on the fourth level, fell into a bed the size of a banqueting table, and slept for an entire cycle of the light.
CHAPTER 17
By the time I crawled out of the royal bed on my first morning as the Bounded King, Vroon had taken most efficient charge of my household. A young male servant with only one ear and a wooden stick for a leg was waiting for me with a tub of steaming water and fresh clothes suitable for royalty. I accepted the fine-woven red shirt and black breeches, black hose, and calf-high boots - all of them, amazingly enough, made exactly to my measure - but diplomatically postponed wearing the gold-encrusted doublet and elaborately jeweled belt. Feeling properly human after the bath, I sent the servant to inform Princess Roxanne that I would wait upon her in an hour, then grabbed two hunks of hot bread, dripping with butter and honey, from a tray beside my bed, and set off to see Paulo. With my breakfast had come word from Nithea that he was awake.
When I arrived, Nithea had him propped up on pillows and was feeding him tiny spoonfuls of a thick whitish substance that smelled like rotten fish.
“Demons, have you come to rescue me?” he said weakly.
“Only to see that you’re not making Nithea too miserable with your complaining.”
“She’s got me so flat, I couldn’t lift a horse’s tail, then shoves more of this mess down me so I’ll puke out what insides I’ve got left. I thought it was a new torture from the Guardian.”
“You look better,” I said. And so he did. Some of the swelling had gone down in his face, his color was healthier wherever he wasn’t purple, green, or black, and his eyes had a spark of life in them.
Paulo screwed up his forehead and looked me up and down. “You look cleaner than last time I saw you, and your outfit’s pretty fine, but I think this lady should work on your busted face for a while and leave me be. You look like a mountain fell on you. What do you think, Nithea?”
“The king said you were to be made well before anything else. I do his will.”
Paulo squinted up at me. “The king… I was right, then.”
I shrugged.
Nithea took the pillows out from behind him and rolled him onto his side. I sat on a stool beside his bed and told him what I’d done.
“So why haven’t you gone to the Source yet?” he said, wincing as the woman spread a salve over the lash marks on his back.
“I just woke up. I had to come here first.”
He kept looking at me.
“All right, I don’t know. It’s what I wanted… what I came here for… the whole reason we got caught… ”
“You’re scared. That’s what.”
“I’m not scared. I’m just waiting for you to get on your feet again. You heard something ‘not right’ in that cave, and I didn’t. So, maybe you need to be with me when I go back.”
He pressed his face into his pillow, muffling a miserable groan. Around all the cuts and bruises he had gone a sickly yellow. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “This lady and her tree milk have done for me again.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” I said.
Nithea shook her head, holding up four fingers, then five, but her eyes smiled reassuringly above her veil. So it would take more than a day, but he would be all right.
“I’ll come back later when you’re feeling better.”
Nodding to Nithea, I left the room and headed down the stair in search of Roxanne.
Was Paulo right? Was fear what made me feel like a battle was going on in my chest every moment we stayed here? My connection to the Bounded was very deep. The land, the people, the problems… Every day, the place revealed itself a little more. I could look at the Singlars and know what names they would choose. I understood what had to be done to release them from their peculiar confinement to their towers, and I was already trying to figure out how they might share the wonders of the gardens. But I didn’t want to know these things or feel them. I didn’t belong here. I had to go back and clean up the mess I’d left behind in Leire, and then find some place to hide where no one could ever find me.
I wasn’t looking forward to my interview with Princess Roxanne, but unlike the Bounded, she was full of surprises. She wasn’t waiting for me in her apartments, but was bustling about the audience hall, peering into every nook and cranny, pulling back curtains, examining columns and doorways and every hand’s-breadth of the walls. Two Singlar women, dwarfish like Vroon, trotted after her on their stubby legs, while a male servant observed her from the wide doors to the rotunda.
The princess had gotten cleaned up as she wanted. Her hair hung heavy and damp halfway down her back. Evidently no one had found any gowns to fit her, so she wore a simple wool robe, much too large, that she had tied at her waist with a gold cord. Not very elegant, but the color, a rich blue, made her light hair look like gold thread.
When she saw me enter the room, she immediately altered course and hurried across the floor, planting herself in my way as if I had intended to walk past her. Her face, now that it was clean, looked like a fine sculpture, perfectly smooth, and rounded just enough to look soft. But you could have struck sparks from her eyes. They were gray, like steel. “So I’m a prisoner again. A fine rescuer you are.”
Why had I decided to visit her? Yes, I’d been harsh with her. And this was a strange, ugly place, bound to be frightening for someone with no experience of sorcery. But her father had burned sorcerers alive, slaughtered them and anyone who knew them: my father, Tennice’s brother, their friends, the infant they had thought was me. I had no reason to think the princess would do any different in his position. I ought to put her off the Edge.
“You are free to come and go as you like.”
“What a polite thing to say. But most houses provide doors and windows that make it a bit easier. Do you see any such things hereabouts?” She pulled back a green curtain, only to drop it again once she had shown me the blank wall behind it. With her lips pressed together, she strode from one drapery to another, nearly tearing them from the wall to illustrate her point. “And my chambers have none either. But then perhaps you still have plans to cut off my skin if I complain.”
She was certainly afraid - the Lords had taught me to smell and taste fear - but she did a good job of hiding it. I followed along behind her, hands clasped behind my back. It was true I had told Vroon to give her rooms without window slots. I had thought peeking through them might frighten her worse than she was already.
“Didn’t these women tell you how to leave the tower?” I nodded to the dwarfish women just out of politeness. They turned scarlet, placed their hands on their ruffled white collars, knelt, and bowed their heads to the floor. Roxanne glared at me. I nudged the women to get up, wishing myself ten leagues away. I’d give her a quarter of an hour and that was all.