Another face moved into view. He looked somewhat younger than Tyr Gerrit and had curly black hair with a triangular face. He looked vaguely familiar to her, although his expression was, if anything, more cruel than Gerrit’s. A stage actor wearing that sneer would have been mocked for overacting. “Do you know me, girl?”
“Tyr Bendertuk,” she said without thinking.
“Quite correct. Where is my son, Timu?”
“I don’t know.” Cazia turned to Vilavivianna, but she didn’t know, either. “On a sleepstone, last I saw. He was injured in the fighting when we escaped from Peradain.”
Tyr Bendertuk didn’t think much of that. “That’s what Treygar and the prince claimed five days ago. Has he not come through yet?”
“He had broken bones,” Cazia said, hating that she stammered a bit. “But I don’t know where he is now. I haven’t seen him since the alarm gong went off.”
“So he’s dead, then.” Tyr Bendertuk’s expression was contemptuous.
“Great Way, I hope not,” Cazia said. “Timush is my friend. Listen to me, please: the grunts overwhelmed the guards inside the fort. I don’t know how. I can hear them howling down in the courtyard, but I don’t know if you can hear it, too.” Bendertuk’s expression didn’t alter; he couldn’t--or he refused to--hear the grunts outside. “They rounded up the others and are holding them in the great hall—”
“As captives?” Tyr Gerrit said from somewhere out of sight.
“Yes.” Cazia tried to sound as forceful as possible, but the only response was laughter. “These aren’t like the ones who came through the portal at Peradain. They’re different. Listen!”
“I’ve heard the story,” Tyr Bendertuk said with a dismissive wave. “You weaken it by changing it midway. I’ll bet Treygar abandoned my son in Peradain, just as he abandoned Rolvo’s daughter. Well, tell your prince, if he’s not cowering out of sight in the room with you, that he can not control me through Tyr Freewell. I will not withhold my spears just because the Italgas hold a knife to a Freewell throat, and if he thinks otherwise, he’ll be Fire-taken like my heir.”
“Enough,” Vilavivianna said. “You have warned them. You can not make them heed.”
“And who is that?” Bendertuk said. Gerrit stepped back into the frame of the mirror, gently moving Tyr Bendertuk aside.
“Yes,” Gerrit said, his voice sharp with the habit of command. “Step forward and show your face.”
The princess’s shoulders straightened. Before Cazia could react, she stepped in front of the mirror. “I am Vilavivianna of Goldgrass Hill, daughter of—”
“I know who your father is,” Tyr Gerrit said. His cruel face seemed to open just enough to show his greed. “So, you are there! The Italga boy hasn’t married you yet, has he? Has the prince taken you to his marriage bed?”
Vilavivianna’s lip curled with disgust. Cazia pulled the girl aside, sparing the princess the sight of Gerrit’s open mouth. “That Italga boy you keep talking about isn’t a prince. He’s your king.”
She threw a cloth across it, breaking the connection. The glow was extinguished in moments, and Cazia was startled to realize that the shutters on the south wall were open. She’d just lit up this room like a candle in a tomb.
Cazia rushed to the window and looked out. She couldn’t see anything down in the unlit yard, not by starlight. The sound of the grunts had not changed. This window faced south, toward the empire, while the beasts were in the eastern yard. For once, she’d gotten lucky.
“That was what I expected.” Vilavivianna’s voice was small.
Cazia wasn’t sure what the little girl meant. She kept staring out into the yard. In the dark, the clouds had parted enough that she could see shooting stars. How beautiful they were. “What did you say?”
Vilavivianna’s voice was shaky when she repeated herself. “That was what I expected from the nobles of Peradain. You have not been; you, Cazia Freewell, have shown me kindness, have bravely saved my life, have respected me enough to strike me with your open hand when I offended you, and have trusted me enough to magic where I could see. I did not expect you.”
Cazia turned away from the window. Vilavivianna was little more than a silhouette, but Cazia could see that she was trembling.
“You have been honorable with me,” the princess continued, “to a degree I never expected, and so has Lar Italga and the whole royal family. But those two men, those tyrs, they are the Peradaini I believed I was coming to live among.”
“Not all tyrs are like that,” Cazia said without thinking about it. “Tyr Gerrit is just afraid, I think, and the king...” The king was a decent man, as kings go. He’s just another tyr, but with sole control of the Gifts, which is how he retains the Throne of Skulls. “The tyrs can be hard men, but they are not wholly evil.”
“Peradaini tyrs have been crossing the Straim for four generations, killing my people, looting storehouses, and burning towns in the cause of conquest. They do not have to be ‘wholly’ evil to be evil enough to deserve the name.”
Cazia thought that was unfair, but she had no idea how to respond. King Ellifer had sent several armies into Indregai when he was younger, and King Ghrund before that. Of course, the armies would have killed people, but... No, Cazia didn’t know how to reconcile her own vision of the empire with what Vilavivianna was saying, but she couldn’t refute the girl’s words, either.
“The king made assurances to my father,” the princess continued. “He made assurances that I would not be raped. I agreed to cross the Straim and live in the city, to marry the prince and bear the children when I was of age, but I was not to be forced into a marriage bed before my time had come.”
“Oh, no!” Cazia rushed forward and took Vilavivianna’s tiny hands. They were so cold. “Oh, no, please, I...I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Say that these tyrs coming to track me down will honor King Ellifer’s agreement.”
Cazia wanted to reassure the princess that it would be so, but she couldn’t lie. “I’m just a girl,” she said. “I don’t have any lands or any spears, except the one you told me to carry, but I will do everything in my power to keep that the agreement between Lar’s father and yours. I will do my best to protect you.”
After a moment, the princess sighed. “Thank you.”
Cazia was glad that they were standing in darkness. She didn’t want to see the expression on the princess’s face, not when she had thanked her in that tone of voice.
The howling from outside the windows became louder. Cazia went to the window and saw lights wavering in the night sky. The shooting stars she’d seen earlier were not stars at all.
“More flying troops,” Vilavivianna said, her voice flat.
Of course. How could she not have recognized them immediately? The closest was already within the walls, slowly sinking toward the yard. It was flying green Four Rivers banners--no wonder Tyr Gerrit had looked at Vilavivianna so greedily. He knew his spears were about to seize her.
A captain in full iron called for the commander and his guard to receive them. Of course, no one was nearby, but the howling of the grunts became louder and more insistent. Cazia was frozen with indecision. These were imperial soldiers like Zollik and Peraday, and after hiding and running from grunts all night, she felt a ferocious need to be surrounded by them, but she knew what that would mean for the princess.
“They are landing between us and the south gate,” Vilavivianna said. “We have to make for the north gate.”
The second cart did not float down to land; it swerved to the east, sweeping over the fort. The soldiers inside had already nocked arrows and drawn bows. The third cart flew high above the tower, beyond their field of vision.
“Yes,” Cazia said quietly. “And we don’t have much—”
Something struck the low-flying cart of archers, bursting the wooden beam connecting the front of the cart to the black disk above. The cart jolted; the soldiers within cursed or cried out, loosing arrows accidentally
against the stone below.
The lamps inside the cart lit the driver’s face clearly. She was an older woman, thick-bodied and pug-faced, her gray hair plaited over her wool and quilted cotton jacket. Cazia could see the concentration on her face as she tried to right the cart, but a volley of stones from below struck soldiers, splintered wood, and her.
The back of the cart jolted downward and the driver tipped over the rail backwards, only staying inside because of her safety harness. The cart began to slide down and sideways, as though it was losing traction on a muddy hill, and soldiers cursed and fumbled at the quivers on their hips as they struggled to stay inside.
“We have to go!” the princess hissed.
Cazia followed her out of the room and down the stairs. She wanted that mirror, but they could never have carried it, even in a litter.
Want want want. She kept wanting things she couldn’t have. It was ridiculous and she had to break the habit. She had to be ready to discard anything.
Except her friends.
At the bottom of the stair, Vilavivianna ran to the door at the northern end of the tower. It was the servants’ entrance, naturally, but Cazia didn’t follow. The princess knelt beside the open door and peered into the yard. “Now is our chance.”
“Not yet.” Cazia ran to the broken eastern door and peeked through. This led to the great hall, a direct connection between the commander’s tower and the dining and meeting hall of the fort. In fact, it opened onto the raised section at the front of the room where the tyrs and officers ate. Cazia had a momentary flinch, then leaned through the opening.
The hall was full, but as she’d hoped, most of the people were down on the main floor. Servants, farmers--whatever jobs they had--citizens sat listlessly at the tables or stretched out on the floor. Many were bloodied about the face or arms. There were no grunts in sight.
But up on the raised section, behind the high table, sat men who looked like important town officials, men dressed as riverboat captains, and most importantly, highborn hostages.
“Bitt!” Cazia tried to keep her voice low, but it seemed that everyone within twenty paces heard her. “BITT!”
Bittler looked at her with shock, then hurried to her. Timush and Jagia, their arms in slings, slept against the back wall. Bittler’s shoulder was covered by a bloody bandage; he wouldn’t be helping with the packs anytime soon. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you. The beasts are all out there fighting. Why didn’t you try to escape?”
“We have to stay,” Bitt said, his face pale and serious. “We all agreed that we must stay.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t be stupid. Get Timu and Jagia. Even if the grunts lose, Tyr Gerrit plans to take us as hostages.”
“We can’t leave, Cazia. We all agreed. We’ve been bitten. If you’re uninjured, you need to get away from us. From all of us.”
“Bitt—”
“Get out!” He bared his teeth as he spoke, his voice harsh and low and entirely unexpected. He stepped forward and shoved her, hard. Cazia stumbled backwards, the weight of her pack overbalancing her. She fell onto the wooden floor with a painful knock on her elbow. “Get out before we bless you.”
Cazia watched in shock as he shut the door in her face. Vilavivianna was suddenly at her shoulder, trying to pull Cazia to her feet. “We have lingered too long. Your friends will not come and I think you know why.”
“I don’t,” Cazia said. “I honestly don’t.”
“The fight in the front yard will not last much longer. Let us get beyond the wall and we will discuss it.”
Cazia realized there were tears in her eyes. Stupid. How could Bitt want to stay? Yes, he’d been injured, and yes, there were sleepstones at Samsit, but what good were sleepstones if you weren’t safe? Why had he said he’d “bless” her?
A nasty suspicion grew inside her mind, a thought that wasn’t ready to make itself known, and she knew she was not going to like it.
She and Vilavivianna paused at the entrance to the northern yard, but only for a moment. The screams, roars, and war cries from the far end of the fort were growing fewer and fainter. “We must hurry.”
There was no time to creep around the edges of the yard, crouching in the shadows of the eaves. They leaned forward to let the weight of their packs fall on their backs rather than their shoulders, and they ran as fast as they could.
There were no howls, thank the luck of the Gambler, because they couldn’t have outrun a grunt even without a heavy pack, but before they’d even reached the halfway point, someone shouted, “There!”
An arrow struck in the mud in front of her, and Cazia snapped the shaft with the toe of her boot as she ran over it. Another volley fell around her, and the princess began to run in an erratic, unpredictable line. Cazia did the same.
There were more shouts from behind, and she heard splintering wood and cries of pain and rage. No more arrows fell around her, and she managed to reach the gate before the little princess, who was flagging under the strain of sprinting with her pack. Cazia lifted the bar free, then pulled the bolts out of the stone wall above. Together, the two girls pushed it open--it was small, barely wider than her old room back at the palace--and the hinges were well oiled, but the wood was so thick, it took all their weight and strength to shove it wide enough to slip through.
Within two hundred paces, Vilavivianna fell into a quick walk, and Cazia gladly matched her pace. She glanced behind them but could see nothing but the light-colored stone of the fort. The starlight in the pass was welcome, especially since there could be so little of it in the grasslands and waterlands, but it was not bright enough to tell if they were being pursued or not.
“We should get as far as possible before sunrise,” the princess said. She liked authority, and Cazia thought she handled it well when she wasn’t trying to prove herself. “The soldiers will not fly through the pass in the dark, assuming they win the battle with a cart intact. We will need a place to hide from them, and it should be somewhere beyond the range they think we will be capable of.”
That made sense. “What if the grunts take the fort back?”
The princess’s response was wary. “Then we will have more time, while they spend two days, at least, with the new captives.”
“Why?” Cazia asked. “Why did Bitt refuse to flee with us?”
“Your friend knows he would be a danger to you. As for the creatures themselves, they watch over the captives for the same reason a mother stands guard over the children.”
In that moment, the unformed suspicion that had been growing in Cazia’s mind became clear.
Fire take me. I murdered my own brother.
Chapter 13
The way down into the Sweeps had not looked difficult, but Tejohn had not anticipated how exhausting and nerve-wracking it would be to walk on a slope of loose stones. They shifted under every step, required a terrible level of concentration, and made it nearly impossible to watch the skies above for more ruhgrit. The body of the grunt had been left at the campsite for the crows, but they were still carrying too much. They hadn’t even reached midday before Reglis fell onto his back and nearly slid over the edge of a cliff.
A trip to the far western end of the continent, which should have taken them ten days at most by flying cart, would be interminable on foot.
And they had little time, considering the king’s condition.
On the other side of the Southern Barrier, the winds were generally westerly. Sometimes, they might shift northward. On occasion, if you were near a pass, you might face a southerly wind as they did when they flew out of Fort Samsit. Very rarely, a bitter, chill wind might come out of the east.
In the Sweeps, there was no variation. The winds were always out of the west, always blowing toward the east. Every cloak, every bit of blown fluff, every waving stalk of grass pointed toward the rising sun. Tejohn hated the feel of it on his face, but on this switchback trail, he hated to feel it on his pack even more, as though
it was shoving him back toward his starting point. To make things worse, the air smelled sour.
They came around a switchback, starting west again. Wimnel Farrabell lagged behind, as he had all morning. He was not accustomed to marching, even without a pack, and his broken arm drained him. Tejohn felt sorry for the man, but he was not going to wait for him. Farrabell was expendable now.
Luckily, Arla’s vision had returned well before dawn. “There are no bridges,” she told them as they walked. “This far west, we won’t encounter many fast-flowing rivers. There will be mountain streams--cold and miserable to wade through, but that’s how we’ll have to do it.”
Tejohn could see no streams, only the tall grasses, the stones beneath his feet, and the blurry colors that marked the valley floor and mountains beyond. He knew from maps that the western end of the Sweeps was a bit more southern than the eastern, but it wasn’t noticeable unless the sun was very close to the horizon. And on this side, the Southern and Northern Barriers ran nearly straight, as mountain ranges go.
Arla pointed out into the middle of the valley. “Do you see Lake Windmark below?”
She gestured out into the distance. Tejohn could not see details at this distance, but he could see a long stretch of gray, the same color as the sky.
“Yes,” Reglis answered. Wimnel and Lar had barely spoken all day.
“It looks like a lake with a shore from up here, but in fact, it’s much wider than it appears. Deep marshy grasses surround it on the southern side, and okshim herders give it a wide berth when they have a choice.”
“Why?” Tejohn asked.
“Alligaunts, my tyr. They are thick at the western end of this valley, but some venture far to hunt. The Northern Barrier is a steeper range, with smooth cliff faces no human can scale, but that means the lake has settled in the northern side of the valley. It’s only once we get to the most western part of the Sweeps that the lake will broaden across the whole of the valley and we will be unable to avoid the water’s edge. If we keep high on these southern slopes, we should be safe for most of the trip.”
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