“It will be hotter than you’re used to,” Sarika said. “Apart from that, go about your meditation in the usual way, so far as you are able.”
“Get undressed and climb in the water while they work,” Drazul said. “It makes it easier to take the heat if it comes on you slowly, rather than all at once.”
She didn’t much care for this situation, not on several levels, but Kozmer only gestured with his staff when she gave him a questioning look. Miklos met her gaze with a hard expression of his own.
“I see what you’re doing. You’re all planning to hurt me, aren’t you?”
Kozmer sighed. “Katalinka. . .”
There seemed nothing more to it, so she approached the first bath and began to strip. She ignored the workers, now shoveling charcoal into the oven, and didn’t look back at the others until she’d climbed over the stone lip, bit her lip at the icy water, and tilted her head back to wet her hair. Better enjoy the chill; she’d be wishing for it soon enough.
She pulled her hair back with one hand and slowly eased herself down. The water came up to her shoulders, moved up her neck, and then washed over her entirely. When she was under, she reached out with her sowen to feel for Miklos’s dagger.
She came up after a moment to find the warbrand giving her a hard look. “Did you need something?” he asked sharply.
“Yes, I need the lot of you to leave me alone.”
“Is that all? You don’t have something else you want from me? Something you were looking for, perhaps.”
Katalinka let a confused frown wash over her face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She withdrew, wrapped herself tightly in her sowen before they could force their way in, and submerged again, where she gave the matter more thought. Miklos knew she was thinking about the dagger, which was a problem. It would do no good to grab for it directly; she needed some other way, and unfortunately, that would require surprise—impossible given the circumstances—or some other, temporary weapon. One weapon to get hold of another, and from there, fight her way clear.
What about Kozmer’s staff? She carefully avoided looking at him or feeling for him, not wanting to commit the same mistake a second time. But she imagined how she would leap out of the baths when her sowen was at its strongest.
She’d deliver a kick to Kozmer’s chest and knock him down, then seize the hardwood staff and cave in his head so he couldn’t fight back. Then she’d smash Miklos in the face. Once she got the warbrand’s knife, she’d stab the firewalker sohn—the next biggest threat—and make a run for the armory. She’d either recover her swords there, or find some other weapons to use in the interim.
When she came up, the workers were lighting the fire, and one of the fraters handed her a lump of hard soap, which she used to scrub down. It felt good to wash off the stale sweat and the grime. She could use a pumice stone, too, but this would do for now.
As soon as she finished the active cleaning part of her bath and handed back the soap, fraters closed the sluices on either side of the basin to block the flow of water in and out. That allowed the fire to heat the pool without a continual flow of fresh cold water. She could already feel heat in the stone beneath her feet, and soon it radiated into the water and took away the chill.
“You’re not meditating,” Kozmer said. “Get your sowen under control now, while you can.”
“Demons, how am I supposed to meditate with the lot of you standing over me?”
“We can’t leave you alone.”
“Why not?”
The elder sohn raised one bushy eyebrow. “You really need an answer to that?”
“You can stay, fine, but could you at least send the others off a ways? That will help clear my mind.”
She settled with her back against the stone wall of the basin and closed her eyes while they discussed it. She felt them moving around to one side, then felt the fraters and firewalkers who’d been lighting the fire descending the hillside. Kozmer appeared to have sent them off, and now held an earnest, intense conversation with the others. She tried to listen in, but they blocked her.
Let them. They wouldn’t stop her for long. She’d already gained strength after her fight with Volfram, and would double that once she’d shoved Miklos’s dagger through his heart. After that, she’d be unstoppable, at least by anyone present. Lujza was a different matter; the rogue firewalker sohn was a true rival. There was also the missing sohn from the warbrand temple, Radolf. And Narina, of course.
She’d expected to have a half-hour or more before the bath grew too hot and she had to open the sluices to flush cooler water through. But the charcoal fire gave off far more heat than one lit with firewood, and there was plenty of fresh air flowing through the oven to keep it burning fiercely. Soon, sweat stood out on her forehead, and she eyed the sluice.
“Don’t touch the gates,” Sarika said. “It’s not nearly hot enough.”
“Maybe for a firewalker,” Katalinka said. “It is for me.” She waded toward the gate.
Miklos strode around the edge of the basin and stomped a boot on the sluice before she could lift it. “She said to leave it be. Don’t you ever listen?”
“It’s boiling down here.” She glanced toward the far side, where Sarika was moving around to block any potential escape in that direction.
“Lie back and enjoy your bath,” Miklos said.
“I’m done. I’m getting out.”
“You can try,” the warbrand told her grimly, “but we’ll only throw you back in.”
“Kozmer,” she pleaded. “Let’s do this a reasonable way. Let me go to the shrine. You can use your sowen to make sure I don’t try anything.”
He looked tired and old and discouraged, but his eyes were hard, and he kept his sowen tightly bound, ready to use. “We already tried to hold you with sowen, and it didn’t work, remember?”
“Try again.”
“You were planning to kill me just now, I felt it.” He sounded sad. “What did you hope to get out of it, my staff? You’d murder me for a piece of wood?”
“That’s a lie!” she protested.
Guilt twisted at her stomach, but it was taken over by rage. She grabbed for the lip of the pool to hoist herself out. At the first touch, she withdrew with a cry. It was hot enough to leave blisters.
That was Drazul’s doing, the villain. He’d taken the hot stone and put something into it, and now it couldn’t be touched. She waded to the other side and tried again, with the same result.
“Sit back and meditate,” Kozmer said. There was pity in his voice, which only angered her more. “Use your sowen to heal the burns, if you can.”
“Burns?”
He twisted at his staff. “I’m afraid we have to scald it out of you.”
Scalding was a mild word for what soon came. The water had been as hot as soup already, the kind you needed to blow on before putting it into your mouth, and only grew hotter by the minute. Drazul went to the oven beneath the stone ledge and poked with the shovel to stir the coals and keep them burning. Steam rose in earnest from the water, like a pot pushing toward a boil. The heat was agony.
“By all the demigods, let me out. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Once it’s gone,” Kozmer said. “Once we’ve ripped it out of you. Then, and only then, can you get out of the water.”
“I’m going to die!” she cried. “Won’t one of you please take pity?”
She looked around, but saw no mercy in any of them. Sarika kept her foot planted on the lower sluice gate with her jaw clenched. Drazul and Kozmer studied her with narrowed eyes, their sowen waiting, ready to assault her when she grew too weak to fight.
If there was any sympathy to be found, any at all, it was found with Miklos, surprisingly enough. He fingered the crystal feathers at his throat and drew his breath in slowly when she held his gaze with a pleading look. There was a hint of regret in his eyes, sorrow.
“Please. Miklos.”
“I know what y
ou’re going through,” he said. “And believe me, this is for the best.”
“And if you kill me?”
“Like I said, it’s for the best.”
The water began to boil. The pain was already intense, and she screamed in agony and fear.
Chapter Ten
Andras fed more firewood into the cook fire, though there were already enough coals to heat the simmering pot into which he was feeding turnips, carrots, potatoes, and bits of rabbit. The farmhouse was dark, and he needed the extra light to keep an eye on Narina, who squatted on her haunches against the opposite wall with her knees pulled in against her chest, staring into the fire with a grim expression, which she occasionally turned in the ratter’s direction. Every time she did so, he looked away with a shudder of fear.
He stirred the fire with an iron poker and checked the rice cakes he’d made earlier to make sure they were staying warm in a brick-lined niche in the chimney. The fire cracked and blazed, and when he dared glance once more at the bladedancer, its light reflected in her eyes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“No.”
“You said you were tricked into killing them.”
“Leave it alone, Andras.”
The door swung open, and Andras startled, but it was only his son. “There were rats in the barn,” Ruven said. “The dogs caught and ate a few of ’em, and now they’ve settled down some.”
“Good. Things are quiet out there? It’s safe?”
“Aye, so far as I see, Da.”
“I already told you,” Narina said. “Nobody is near—there’s nothing to worry about.”
Andras continued to address his son. “Draw some water from the well, will you? Then bring in more firewood. This stew needs time to cook.”
When the boy was gone, he turned back to Narina. “How are you feeling?”
“How do you think I feel?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”
When she shrugged, he took a deep breath and weighed whether to keep prodding. Her sword sheaths hung on a hook behind her, next to a pair of cast iron pots similar to the one he was using to cook the stew. Near as he could tell, a family of seven had lived in the house, with clothes for four children and three adults, with one of the adults being an elderly woman with her own bed positioned between the bed for the younger couple and bedding on the floor for the children.
The farmhouse was only about five miles from where they’d stopped the previous day, but they’d spent the day wandering through the countryside, stumbling through one burning village after another, and generally moving in circles. Sometimes it seemed as though Narina were searching. Other times, as though she were drunk or dazed and couldn’t get her bearings.
Her swords had leaped into her hands several times, and once she’d whirled about, ready to fight an unknown foe, only to stop, stand rigidly, and gradually relax her posture until she’d put the blades away.
Whenever crows flew overhead, she hissed a warning to Andras and Ruven, and the ratters held the dogs still. Narina closed her eyes, and it seemed like a shadow passed over the sun until the birds were gone and she opened her eyes again.
They’d passed one group of soldiers repairing the burned witch-hat roof of a watchtower. The men flew Damanja’s wolfhead banner with swallow tails flapping in the breeze. Andras feared Narina would start a fight, but she merely bent the shadows to conceal their presence, and they’d continued on their way.
And ended up here, in this abandoned farmhouse. Hastily butchered carcasses of a pair of sheep and smashed eggs in an empty chicken coop indicated that soldiers had come through on a scavenging mission, but the house itself hadn’t been looted or burned. No sign of whether the farmers themselves had escaped or met their end in violence.
“It isn’t your fault, you know,” he said.
“What isn’t?”
“The villagers. They attacked you.”
“I was a fool. I should have seen it coming.”
“Sounds like you were tricked. You can’t blame yourself for that.”
Narina only grunted.
“At least the trap didn’t work,” Andras added. “Miklos failed to kill you.”
“If that was his plan, it was never going to work. He couldn’t have killed me that way, he was only going to see all those people slaughtered.”
“I don’t understand then. Why do it?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out all day.” Narina turned her gaze toward Andras, who was relieved to see that her eyes had cleared and she was looking at him with lucidity for the first time since leaving the village. “The only thing I can think—the only thing that makes sense—is that he wanted to wound me, but not kill me.”
Ruven came in with his arms filled with firewood. Andras had him stack it in the bin, then ordered him to sit in the corner, behind his father, near the door. If Narina suffered one of her violent fits, the boy might stand a chance of escaping into the night before she got to him. Of course, she could then track him down, quickly and easily, but maybe she’d come to her senses first.
“You know what I think?” Narina said. “I think Miklos left Kozmer and Gyorgy and came back for me. He’s trying to capture me, and thinks he can cure me somehow.”
“And you’re sure it’s him?”
“The aura, the scent he leaves behind. . .unless he has a twin brother, it’s definitely him. I thought the curse had taken him again, but no. Now I think he’s trying to rescue me. Maybe give me poison, like you did to him.”
She pressed her fists to her temples and grimaced as if in pain. “But his tactics. . .all those villagers. Demons burn me alive, why would he have done such a thing? I keep thinking of that boy. . .the look on his face. He was the same age as my student, Gyorgy. Then there was the old woman, the man who thought he’d hit me with his walking stick. What about the man with the. . .no, I can’t dwell on that. Demons!”
“I’m sorry.”
They lapsed into silence, and Andras got up to stir the stew. It was done. He ladled portions into wooden bowls, passed them around, and gave them each a rice cake. The farmhouse had also yielded a half-filled flask of honey, which they used to sweeten their rice cakes. They ate in silence, with Andras only moving to stoke the fire.
At last he cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking. What if you went to. . .I mean, if you talked to the man. I know we’re probably a long distance off yet.”
“Miklos? No, he’s less than a mile from here.”
“Huh? How do you mean?”
“What do you think I was doing all day? Taking us back and forth for my own pleasure?”
“I thought you were shaken by the massacre.”
“Not shaken enough, believe me,” Narina said. “That’s one reason this is so disturbing. It’s like I’m numb to the pain of others, like I’m cutting off the heads of chickens. An unpleasant task to be sure, but a part of life. Only I’m not killing chickens, I’m killing people. I’d never done that before, you know. Never once killed or even intentionally injured someone before all this started. Now, what do you suppose I’m up to? How many are we talking? The farmhouse, the fight against Tankred on the hill. Now, the village. I’ve killed dozens, hundreds.”
He was still hung up on what she’d said before. “So you’ve found Miklos?”
“His scent is all over the countryside. Once I sniffed it out in the village, I knew what to look for. It was only finding where it’s strongest, and a few times back and forth across the landscape helped me find that. There’s a problem with your plan, though. I can’t walk up to him and hold out my hands for him to bind my wrists.”
“Because you’ll want to fight him, you mean? What if you left your blades behind and approached unarmed?”
A snort. “I can’t do that.”
“I suppose not.” Andras scratched his stubbly chin, thinking. “Supposing you’re wrong. Supposing he wants to kill you. If you show up without your weapo
ns, he’d slaughter you.”
“What a mercy that would be. To sleep and never wake. No, Andras. It’s that I can’t. I can’t let the blades out of my sight any more than I can stop breathing. What I have to do is fight him and hope I lose. He’ll wound me—that was apparently his plan with the villagers—and then he can use sword and sowen to subdue me.”
“And if you win?”
Narina let out a bitter laugh. “Then my power grows. Then I’ll be unstoppable. If not unstoppable, then strong enough to find Damanja, slaughter my way through her army, and kill her. Balint, too, if he’s still in the field. Any other crowlords foolish enough to face me.”
“Or maybe you’d go back to the mountains to fight the temples.”
“Yes, or that. Sooner or later, I’ll kill them all. Or they’ll kill me, if anyone is strong enough to do it. So what I need is a way to fight and lose.”
“Da,” Ruven said. “Remember what you did to Miklos?”
“I wasn’t trying to cure the man,” Andras told him. “Only make him sick so we could get away. What happened was luck—I might just as easily have killed him. It’s too risky.”
Narina straightened her posture. “Have you been carrying poison this whole time?”
“Well, no. That’s the other thing. I used it all. First, to sicken Brutus, then on Miklos. So I couldn’t try that anyway.”
“Ah, I see.” She sounded disappointed.
“I’m not talking about Lord Balint’s poison, Da,” Ruven protested. “There’s a whole patch of sleepweed growing outside next to the well. That’s what I mean.”
Ah, now Andras understood. The leaves of sleepweed could be boiled as greens to eat, and it was said they cured fatigue if chewed raw, though they were so bitter that he’d only tried it once. But it was the roots that the boy was surely talking about. They oozed a milky, bitter sap that numbed the mouth and could be used for toothache.
Boiled, the sap could be concentrated and used to deepen sleep. It served as an insomnia cure, but he’d also used it in high doses to relax Notch when she was struggling to give birth. She’d slept for hours afterward, oblivious to the pups nursing at her side.
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