by Evie Manieri
Kira bit back a curse.
But he was gone, and she hurt too much to run after him. She had lost her hood and the cold that had been soothing to her bruised skin at first now struck her like a lash. At least no one was paying any attention to her: not with the tomb’s dark doorway whispering to them of the Under-realm. Even Kira found herself drawn to the power behind that black arch.
Rho soon returned with two guards to escort them to Gannon. As they were led up the stairs and across through the smaller side door, Kira pinched the edges of her cowl together to keep it closed. If Rho was going to force her to act out this mummers’ play, she could at least keep the audience to a minimum.
Maintaining her modesty became even more difficult when they got inside. High-clansmen in full battle-dress clogged the hall and the stairs, all checking and rechecking their blades and the rivets in their shields, while messengers pushed their way through the crowds and frightened servants tried to stay out of everyone’s way. Kira dragged her feet as they moved up the steps to the second-floor gallery, her jaw clenched, hemmed in by the guards in back and Rho in front.
When they reached the throne room and the guards inside opened the doors, a rush of air as cold as outside pushed against her. Gannon had turned the room into his command post. His favorite generals—Denar, Olin and Gerstan—stood around a large table staring down at a huge map of Norland; the weighty battle-gear they wore explained why no one had lit the fire. Scribes sat around a second table, sharpening their pens or flexing their fingers to keep them limber in the freezing room. Youths not yet old enough for battle hugged themselves on the benches lining the eastern wall, waiting to carry messages that had yet to be transcribed.
Servants pulled the terrace doors open at their approach and more cold air swirled into the room, rustling through the maps and the scribes’ paper and blowing in a cloud of snowflakes that didn’t melt when they fell to the black stone floor. Rho let go of Kira’s arm and stepped away from her as they crossed the threshold. She felt surprisingly adrift without his presence next to her.
Gannon stood motionless in the center of the terrace, looking up toward the beacon fire twisting in the wind on the headland while his dogs ranged around him, lifting their heads to sniff at everything and nothing. He had already traded his imperial sword for the restored Valor’s Storm, and the newly burnished gold on its hilt and its bronze scabbard gleamed in the early evening light. Kira waited with Rho while the guards who had brought them went to explain.
Gannon did not move or even turn to look at them as they were ushered across the snowy terrace to stand before him.
Gannon finally turned around and reeled back in disgust at the sight of her battered face.
Gannon regarded her with a kind of steely inquisitiveness, studying her like a map of enemy territory. He said nothing for a long time, letting the moment stretch until she didn’t think she could stand the agitation buzzing in her bones another moment.
Rho’s triumphant relief rolled toward her like a crystal-blue wave and she straightened her spine to keep from sagging down onto the snow-covered flags. She felt him in her mind, looking to share the victory with her. His plan had worked. For the first time she thought she might be able to forgive him for running away and leaving her alone with the shame of having betrayed Trey.
Gannon suddenly said something to the guards behind Rho’s shoulder and they kicked Rho’s legs out from under him. He dropped, cracking his knees on the stone flags, while a pair of heavy hands landed on his shoulders and held him down. Another guard grabbed Kira’s arms and pinned them behind her back, making her whole body scream with pain.
said Gannon.
Kira stared down at the black stone marked with the guards’ slushy footprints, feeling like her heart was about to burst.
Kira remembered the night Gannon had cut off Ingeld’s hand and tried not to faint.
said Rho.
At a gesture from Gannon, the guards grabbed Rho’s arms and pulled him back up to his feet. Snow matted the bottom of his coat where he’d been kneeling on it, and Kira could see the wet stains on his trousers. Gannon bent down and squinted at Rho’s abdomen.
d around, and that’s when Kira saw Eofar standing in the shadows by the terrace doors. She felt nothing from him; he was as blank as a snowdrift.
Gannon reared back and struck Rho in his side; Kira felt his pain like glass shattering, but had to listen again to the blunt sound of fist against muscle even as she looked away. She heard another punch, felt another scream, and then saw Rho fall over in the dirty snow before the guards pulled him up so Gannon could hit him again.
Rho coughed and spat out blood as the dogs loped over and circled around him hungrily.
Gannon turned to her, shaking out his fist.
Gannon finally stopped and issued a few orders to the guards, but Kira couldn’t focus on what he said over the need to keep back the nauseating swell of her hatred. She would flay her own skin before she let Gannon touch her again, and if she had been able to reach her sword, she would have gone for him then and there, even though he would have ended her life in less than a heartbeat.
They were brought back through the room to the small door to the left of the dais, the one which led into the little room Emperor Eoban had used for private meetings when he was holding court. Kira’s foot caught on the raised threshold and she stumbled as they shoved her inside. Stone surfaces slammed into her from various angles as she rolled across the floor. By the time the door banged shut, she couldn’t move. She lay curled up against the pain, wheezing into the darkness.
The door swung open again, sliding dim light across one-half of the room and showing the hazy outlines of a pair of chairs and a table. Eofar Eotan came through the door and shut it behind him.
said Eofar.
But Rho ignored her, even as he clutched her shoulder for support.
Kira’s mind just stopped, like she’d turned a page in a book and found the next one blank.
said Kira, as a strange shudder wound through her, starting from the half-healed cut under her left eye.
Chapter 29
Isa found an empty room in Valrigdal where she could put on the clothes Dara had given her. As soon as she was alone a pang of homesickness shivered through her. The fire in Cyrrin’s surgery waited just down the hall, but so did Lahlil, with all her stifling, self-serving interference. She needed to be away from the twist and pull of others’ emotions so she could think of some way to get to Ravindal, because she was certain now that Lahlil had no intention of helping her.
From
Trey, she had learned that a fast triffon could reach Ravindal in less than two hours, and that someone who knew the route and how to survive the terrain could reach it on foot in a few days. None of that helped. She didn’t have a triffon, or any way to get one, and her odds of survival out there on her own would be about the same if she stripped naked and covered herself in jam first.
She went up onto the gallery and then kept climbing, stretching over gaps where the stones had fallen away. She’d tucked a piece of hard biscuit and some dried meat into her pocket—she knew she should eat something to keep up her strength—but the gamey smell of the meat only worsened the sour cramp in her stomach.
She emerged onto a stretch of battlement where holes for long-gone iron spikes lined the walls. The short walkway terminated in what had once been the tower, but was now just a few walls with the remains of a fireplace and a doorway to a four-story drop straight down into the woods below. Thaw-vine crept over all of it, and the constant dripping of the snow melting through it tapped against her raw nerves with tiny insistent fingers.
She went across to the wall and looked out over the landscape, out to where Ravindal taunted her somewhere beyond the horizon. Heavy snowflakes blended into a white haze over an empty plain; beyond that, the forest sloped up before giving way to a range of rocky hills. By screwing up her eyes, she thought she could make out a smoky shape far, far off in the distance to the southeast where flag-topped spires and spiked parapets rose up from the clouds of her imagination just as they had in the days when her mother had spun tales of far-off Norland.
A flock of dark birds swept across the sky right above her in a wave, then veered off the opposite way. A flash of color caught her eye just as the little birds scattered in all directions—the blue bird from the forest was streaking after them. The flock regrouped and headed down into the trees with the blue bird following, and she lost sight of them as they disappeared below the wall.
